Secret Societies And Subversive Movements Part 7

Although not strictly a secret society, the Albigenses were divided after the secret society system into initiates and semi-initiates. The former, few in number, known as the _Perfecti_, led in appearance an austere life, refraining from meat and professing abhorrence of oaths or of lying. The mystery in which they enveloped themselves won for them the adoring reverence of the _Credentes_, who formed the great majority of the sect and gave themselves up to every vice, to usury, brigandage, and perjury, and whilst describing marriage as prost.i.tution, condoning incest and all forms of licence.[217] The _Credentes_, who were probably not fully initiated into the Dualist doctrines of their superiors, looked to them for salvation through the laying-on of hands according to the system of the Manicheans.

It was amongst the n.o.bles of Languedoc that the Albigenses found their princ.i.p.al support. This "Judaea of France," as it has been called, was peopled by a medley of mixed races, Iberian, Gallic, Roman, and Semitic.[218] The n.o.bles, very different from the "ignorant and pious chivalry of the North," had lost all respect for their traditions.

"There were few who in going back did not encounter some Saracen or Jewish grandmother in their genealogy."[219] Moreover, many had brought back to Europe the laxity of morals they had contracted during the Crusades. The Comte de Comminges practised polygamy, and, according to ecclesiastical chronicles, Raymond VI, Comte de Toulouse, one of the most ardent of the Albigense _Credentes_, had his harem.[220] The Albigensian movement has been falsely represented as a protest merely against the tyranny of the Church of Rome; in reality it was a rising against the fundamental doctrines of Christianity--more than this, against all principles of religion and morality. For whilst some of the sect openly declared that the Jewish law was preferable to that of the Christians,[221] to others the G.o.d of the Old Testament was as abhorrent as the "false Christ" who suffered at Golgotha; the old hatred of the Gnostics and Manicheans for the demiurgus lived again in these rebels against the social order. Forerunners of the seventeenth-century Libertines and eighteenth-century Illuminati, the Albigense n.o.bles, under the pretext of fighting the priesthood, strove to throw off all the restraints the Church imposed.

Inevitably the disorders that took place throughout the South of France led to reprisals, and the Albigenses were suppressed with all the cruelty of the age--a fact which has afforded historians the opportunity to exalt them as n.o.ble martyrs, victims of ecclesiastical despotism. But again, as in the case of the Templars, the fact that they were persecuted does not prove them innocent of the crimes laid to their charge.

Satanism

At the beginning of the fourteenth century another development of Dualism, far more horrible than the Manichean heresy of the Albigenses, began to make itself felt. This was the cult of Satanism, or black magic. The subject is one that must be approached with extreme caution, owing to the fact that on one hand much that has been written about it is the result of mediaeval superst.i.tion, which sees in every departure from the Roman Catholic Faith the direct intervention of the Evil One, whilst on the other hand the conspiracy of history, which denies _in toto_ the existence of the Occult Power, discredits all revelations on this question, from whatever source they emanate, as the outcome of hysterical imagination.[222] This is rendered all the easier since the subject by its amazing extravagance lends itself to ridicule.

It is, however, idle to deny that the cult of evil has always existed; the invocation of the powers of darkness was practised in the earliest days of the human race and, after the Christian era, found its expression, as we have seen, in the Cainites, the Euchites, and the Luciferians. These are not surmises, but actual facts of history.

Towards the end of the twelfth century Luciferianism spread eastwards through Styria, the Tyrol, and Bohemia, even as far as Brandenburg; by the beginning of the thirteenth century it had invaded western Germany, and in the fourteenth century reached its zenith in that country, as also in Italy and France. The cult had now reached a further stage in its development, and it was not the mere propitiation of Satanael as the prince of this world practised by the Luciferians, but actual Satanism--the love of evil for the sake of evil--which formed the doctrine of the sect known in Italy as _la vecchia religione_ or the "old religion." Sorcery was adopted as a profession, and witches, not, as is popularly supposed, sporadic growths, were trained in schools of magic to practise their art. These facts should be remembered when the Church is blamed for the violence it displayed against witchcraft--it was not individuals, but a system which it set out to destroy.

The essence of Satanism is desecration. In the ceremonies for infernal evocation described by Eliphas Levi we read: "It is requisite to profane the ceremonies of the religion one belongs to and to trample its holiest symbols under foot."[223] This practice found a climax in desecrating the Holy Sacrament. The consecrated wafer was given as food to mice, toads, and pigs, or denied in unspeakable ways. A revolting description of the Black Ma.s.s may be found in Huysmans's book _La-bas_. It is unnecessary to transcribe the loathsome details here. Suffice it, then, to show that this cult had a very real existence, and if any further doubt remains on the matter, the life of Gilles de Rais supplies doc.u.mentary evidence of the visible results of black magic in the Middle Ages.

Gilles de Rais was born at Machecoul in Brittany about the year 1404.

The first period of his life was glorious; the companion and guide of Jeanne d'Arc, he became Marechal of France and distinguished himself by many deeds of valour. But after dissipating his immense fortune, largely on Church ceremonies carried out with the wildest extravagance, he was led to study alchemy, partly by curiosity and partly as a means for restoring his shattered fortunes. Hearing that Germany and Italy were the countries where alchemy flourished, he enlisted Italians in his service and was gradually drawn into the further region of magic.

According to Huysmans, Gilles de Rais had remained until this moment a Christian mystic under the influence of Jeanne d'Arc, but after her death--possibly in despair--he offered himself to the powers of darkness. Evokers of Satan now flocked to him from every side, amongst them Prelati, an Italian, by no means the old and wrinkled sorcerer of tradition, but a young and attractive man of charming manners. For it was from Italy that came the most skilful adepts in the art of alchemy, astrology, magic, and infernal evocation, who spread themselves over Europe, particularly France. Under the influence of these initiators Gilles de Rais signed a letter to the devil in a meadow near Machecoul asking him for "knowledge, power, and riches," and offering in exchange anything that might be asked of him with the exception of his life or his soul. But in spite of this appeal and of a pact signed with the blood of the writer, no Satanic apparitions were forthcoming.

It was then that, becoming still more desperate, Gilles de Rais had recourse to the abominations for which his name has remained infamous--still more frightful invocations, loathsome debaucheries, perverted vice in every form, Sadic cruelties, horrible sacrifices, and, finally, holocausts of little boys and girls collected by his agents in the surrounding country and put to death with the most inhuman tortures.

During the years 1432-40 literally hundreds of children disappeared.

Many of the names of the unhappy little victims were preserved in the records of the period. Gilles de Rais met with a well-deserved end: in 1440 he was hanged and burnt. So far he does not appear to have found a panegyrist to place him in the ranks of n.o.ble martyrs.

It will, of course, be urged that the crimes here described were those of a criminal lunatic and not to be attributed to any occult cause; the answer to this is that Gilles was not an isolated unit, but one of a group of occultists who cannot all have been mad. Moreover, it was only after his invocation of the Evil One that he developed these monstrous proclivities. So also his eighteenth-century replica, the Marquis de Sade, combined with his abominations an impa.s.sioned hatred of the Christian religion.

What is the explanation of this craze for magic in Western Europe?

Deschamps points to the Cabala, "that science of demoniacal arts, of which the Jews were the initiators," and undoubtedly in any comprehensive review of the question the influence of the Jewish Cabalists cannot be ignored. In Spain, Portugal, Provence, and Italy the Jews by the fifteenth century had become a power; as early as 1450 they had penetrated into the intellectual circles of Florence, and it was also in Italy that, a century later, the modern Cabalistic school was inaugurated by Isaac Luria (1533-72), whose doctrines were organized into a practical system by the Hasidim of Eastern Europe for the writing of amulets, the conjuration of devils, mystical jugglery with numbers and letters, etc.[224] Italy in the fifteenth century was thus a centre from which Cabalistic influences radiated, and it may be that the Italians who indoctrinated Gilles de Rais had drawn their inspiration from this source. Indeed Eliphas Levi, who certainly cannot be accused of "Anti-Semitism," declares that "the Jews, the most faithful trustees of the secret of the Cabala, were almost always the reat masters of magic in the Middle Ages,"[225] and suggests that Gilles de Rais took his monstrous recipes for using the blood of murdered children "from some of those old Hebrew _grimoires_ (books on magic), which, if they had been known, would have sufficed to hold up the Jews to the execration of the whole earth."[226] Voltaire, in his _Henriade_, likewise attributes the magical blood-rites practised in the sixteenth century to Jewish inspiration:

Dans l'ombre de la nuit, sous une voute obscure, Le silence conduit leui a.s.semblee impure.

A la pale lueur d'un magique flambeau S'eleve un vil autel dresse sur un tombeau.

C'est la que des deux rois on placa les images, Objets de leur terreur, objets de leurs outrages.

Leurs sacrileges mains out mele sur l'autel A des noms infernaux le nom de l'eternel.

Sur ces murs tenebreux des lances sont rangees, Dans des vases de sang leurs pointes sont plongees; Appareil menacant de leur mystere affreux.

Le pretre de ce temple est un de ces Hebreux Qui, proscrits sur la terre et citoyens du monde, Portent de mers en mers leur misere profonde, Et, d'un antique ramas de superst.i.tions, Out rempli des longtemps toutes les nations, etc.

Voltaire adds in a footnote: "It was ordinarily Jews that were made use of for magical operations. This ancient superst.i.tion comes from the secrets of the Cabala, of which the Jews called themselves the sole depositaries. Catherine de Medicis, the Marechal d'Ancre, and many others employed Jews for these spells."

This charge of black magic recurs all through the history of Europe from the earliest times. The Jews are accused of poisoning wells, of practising ritual murder, of using stolen church property for purposes of desecration, etc. No doubt there enters into all this a great amount of exaggeration, inspired by popular prejudice and mediaeval superst.i.tion. Yet, whilst condeming the persecution to which the Jews were subjected on this account, it must be admitted that they laid themselves open to suspicion by their real addiction to magical arts. If ignorant superst.i.tion is found on the side of the persecutors, still more amazing superst.i.tion is found on the side of the persecuted.

Demonology in Europe was in fact essentially a Jewish science, for although a belief in evil spirits existed from the earliest times and has always continued to exist amongst primitive races, and also amongst the ignorant cla.s.ses in civilized countries, it was mainly through the Jews that these dark superst.i.tions were imported to the West, where they persisted not merely amongst the lower strata of the Jewish population, but formed an essential part of Jewish tradition. Thus the Talmud says:

If the eye could perceive the demons that people the universe, existence would be impossible. The demons are more numerous than we are: they surround us on all sides like trenches dug round vineyards. Every one of us has a thousand on his left hand and ten thousand on his right. The discomfort endured by those who attend rabbinical conferences ... comes from the demons mingling with men in these circ.u.mstances. Besides, the fatigue one feels in one's knees in walking comes from the demons that one knocks up against at every step. If the clothing of the Rabbis wears out so quickly, it is again because the demons rub up against them. Whoever wants to convince himself of their presence has only to surround his bed with sifted cinders and the next morning he will see the imprints of c.o.c.ks' feet.[227]

The same treatise goes on to give directions for seeing demons by burning portions of a black cat and placing the ashes in one's eye: "then at once one perceives the demons." The Talmud also explains that devils particularly inhabit the waterspouts on houses and are fond of drinking out of water-jugs, therefore it is advisable to pour a little water out of a jug before drinking, so as to get rid of the unclean part.[228]

These ideas received a fresh impetus from the publication of the Zohar, which, a Jewish writer tells us, "from the fourteenth century held almost unbroken sway over the minds of the majority of the Jews. In it the Talmudic legends concerning the existence and activity of the _shedhim_ (demons) are repeated and amplified, and a hierarchy of demons was established corresponding to the heavenly hierarchy.... Mana.s.seh [ben Israel]'s _Nishmat Hayim_ is full of information concerning belief in demons.... Even the scholarly and learned Rabbis of the seventeenth century clung to the belief."[229]

Here, then, it is not a case of ignorant peasants evolving fantastic visions from their own scared imaginations, but of the Rabbis, the acknowledged leaders of a race claiming civilized traditions and a high order of intelligence, deliberately inculcating in their disciples the perpetual fear of demoniacal influences. How much of this fear communicated itself to the Gentile population? It is at any rate a curious coincidence to notice the resemblances between so-called popular superst.i.tions and the writings of the Rabbis. For example, the vile confessions made both by Scotch and French peasant women accused of witchcraft concerning the nocturnal visits paid them by male devils[230]

find an exact counterpart in pa.s.sages of the Cabala, where it is said that "the demons are both male and female, and they also endeavour to consort with human beings--a conception from which arises the belief in _incubi_ and _succubae_."[231] Thus, on Jewish authority, we learn the Judaic origin of this strange delusion.

It is clearly to the same source that we may trace the magical formulae for the healing of diseases current at the same period. From the earliest times the Jews had specialized in medicine, and many royal personages insisted on employing Jewish doctors,[232] some of whom may have acquired medical knowledge of a high order. The Jewish writer Margoliouth dwells on this fact with some complacency, and goes on to contrast the scientific methods of the Hebrew doctors with the quackeries of the monks:

In spite of the reports circulated by the monks, that the Jews were sorcerers (in consequence of their superior medical skill), Christian patients would frequent the houses of the Jewish physicians in preference to the monasteries, where cures were pretended to have been effected by some extraordinary relics, such as the nails of St. Augustine, the extremity of St. Peter's second toe, ... etc. It need hardly be added that the cures effected by the Jewish physicians were more numerous than those by the monkish impostors.[233]

Yet in reality the grotesque remedies which Margoliouth attributes to Christian superst.i.tion appear to have been partly derived from Jewish sources. The author of a further article on Magic in Hastings'

_Encyclopaedia_ goes on to say that the magical formulae handed down in Latin in ancient medical writings and used by the monks were mainly of Eastern origin, derived from Babylonish, Egyptian, and Jewish magic. The monks therefore "played merely an intermediate role."[234] Indeed, if we turn to the Talmud we shall find cures recommended no less absurd than those which Margoliouth derides. For example:

The eggs of a gra.s.shopper as a remedy for toothache, the tooth of a fox as a remedy for sleep, viz. the tooth of a live fox to prevent sleep and of a dead one to cause sleep, the nail from the gallows where a man was hanged, as a remedy for swelling.[235]

A strongly "pro-Semite" writer quotes a number of Jewish medical writings of the eighteenth century, republished as late as the end of the nineteenth, which show the persistence of these magical formulae amongst the Jews. Most of these are too loathsome to transcribe; but some of the more innocuous are as follows: "For epilepsy kill a c.o.c.k and let it putrefy." "In order to protect yourself from all evils, gird yourself with the rope with which a criminal has been hung." Blood of different kinds also plays an important part: "Fox's blood and wolf's blood are good for stone in the bladder, ram's blood for colic, weasel blood for scrofula," etc.--these to be externally applied.[236]

But to return to Satanism. Whoever were the secret inspirers of magical and diabolical practices during the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the evidence of the existence of Satanism during this long period is overwhelming and rests on the actual facts of history. Details quite as extravagant and revolting as those contained in the works of Eliphas Levi[237] or in Huysmans's _La-bas_ are given in doc.u.mentary form by Margaret Alice Murray in her singularly pa.s.sionless work relating princ.i.p.ally to the witches of Scotland.[238]

The cult of evil is a reality--by whatever means we may seek to explain it. Eliphas Levi, whilst denying the existence of Satan "as a superior personality and power," admits this fundamental truth: "Evil exists; it is impossible to doubt it. We can do good or evil. There are beings who knowingly and voluntarily do evil."[239] There are also beings who love evil. Levi has admirably described the spirit that animates such beings in his definition of black magic:

Black magic is really but a combination of sacrileges and murders graduated with a view to the permanent perversion of the human will and the realization in a living man of the monstrous phantom of the fiend. It is, therefore, properly speaking, the religion of the devil, the worship of darkness, the hatred of goodness exaggerated to the point of paroxysm; it is the incarnation of death and the permanent creation of h.e.l.l.[240]

The Middle Ages, which depicted the devil fleeing from holy water, were not perhaps quite so benighted as our superior modern culture has led us to suppose. For that "hatred of goodness exaggerated to the point of paroxysm," that impulse to desecrate and defile which forms the basis of black magic and has manifested itself in successive phases of the world-revolution, springs from fear. So by their very hatred the powers of darkness proclaim the existence of the powers of light and their own impotence. In the cry of the demoniac: "What have we to do with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth? art Thou come to destroy us? I know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of G.o.d," do we not hear the unwilling tribute of the vanquished to the victor in the mighty conflict between good; and evil?

The Rosicrucians

In dealing with the question of Magic it is necessary to realize that although to the world in general the word is synonymous with necromancy, it does not bear this significance in the language of occultism, particularly the occultism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Magic at this date was a term employed to cover many branches of investigation which Robert Fludd, the English Rosicrucian, cla.s.sified under various headings, of which the first three are as follows: (1) "_Natural Magic_, ... that most occult and secret department of physics by which the mystical properties of natural substances are extracted"; (2) _Mathematical Magic_, which enables adepts in the art to "construct marvellous machines by means of their geometrical knowledge "; whilst (3) _Venefic Magic_ "is familiar with potions, philtres, and with various preparations of poisons."[241]

It is obvious that all these have now pa.s.sed into the realms of science and are no longer regarded as magical arts; but the further categories enumerated by Fludd and comprised under the general heading of _Necromantic Magic_ retain the popular sense of the term. These are described as (i) _Goetic_, which consists in "diabolical commerce with unclean spirits, in rites of criminal curiosity, in illicit songs and invocations, and in the evocation of the souls of the dead"; (2) _Maleficent_, which is the adjuration of the devils by the virtue of Divine Names; and (3) _Theurgic_, purporting "to be governed by good angels and the Divine Will, but its wonders are most frequently performed by evil spirits, who a.s.sume the names of G.o.d and of the angels." (4) "The last species of magic is the _Thaumaturgic_, begetting illusory phenomena; by this art the Magi produced their phantoms and other marvels." To this list might be added _Celestial Magic_, or knowledge dealing with the influence of the heavenly bodies, on which astrology is based.

The forms of magic dealt with in the preceding part of this chapter belong therefore to the second half of these categories, that is to say, to Necromantic Magic. But at the same period another movement was gradually taking shape which concerned itself with the first category enumerated above, that is to say, the secret properties of natural substances.

A man whose methods appear to have approached to the modern conception of scientific research was Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, commonly known as Paracelsus, the son of a German doctor, born about 1493, who during his travels in the East is said to have acquired a knowledge of some secret doctrine which he afterwards elaborated into a system for the healing of diseases. Although his ideas were thus doubtless drawn from some of the same sources as those from which the Jewish Cabala descended, Paracelsus does not appear to have been a Cabalist, but a scientist of no mean order, and, as an isolated thinker, apparently connected with no secret a.s.sociation, does not enter further into the scope of this work.

Paracelsus must therefore not be identified with the school of so-called "Christian Cabalists," who, from Raymond Lulli, the "doctor illuminatus"

of the thirteenth century, onward, drew their inspiration from the Cabala of the Jews. This is not to say that the influence under which they fell was wholly pernicious, for, just as certain Jews appear to have acquired some real medical skill, so also they appear to have possessed some real knowledge of natural science, inherited perhaps from the ancient traditions of the East or derived from the writings of Hippocrates, Galen, and other of the great Greek physicians and as yet unknown to Europe. Thus Eliphas Levi relates that the Rabbi Jechiel, a Cabalistic Jew protected by St. Louis, possessed the secret of ever-burning lamps,[242] claimed later by the Rosicrucians, which suggests the possibility that some kind of luminous gas or electric light may have been known to the Jews. In alchemy they were the acknowledged leaders; the most noted alchemist of the fourteenth century, Nicholas Flamel, discovered the secret of the art from the book of "Abraham the Jew, Prince, Priest, Levite, Astrologer, and Philosopher," and this actual book is said to have pa.s.sed later into the possession of Cardinal Richelieu.[243]

It was likewise from a Florentine Jew, Alema.n.u.s or Datylus, that Pico della Mirandola, the fifteenth-century mystic, received instructions in the Cabala[244] and imagined that he had discovered in it the doctrines of Christianity. This delighted Pope Sixtus IV, who thereupon ordered Cabalistic writings to be translated into Latin for the use of divinity students. At the same time the Cabala was introduced into Germany by Reuchlin, who had learnt Hebrew from the Rabbi Jacob b. Jechiel Loans, court physician to Frederick III, and in 1494 published a Cabalistic treatise _De Verbo Mirifico_, showing that all wisdom and true philosophy are derived from the Hebrews. Considerable alarm appears, however, to have been created by the spread of Rabbinical literature, and in 1509 a Jew converted to Christianity, named Pfefferkorn, persuaded the Emperor Maximilian I to burn all Jewish books except the Old Testament. Reuchlin, consulted on this matter, advised only the destruction of the Toledot Yeshu and of the Sepher Nizzachon by the Rabbi Lipmann, because these works "were full of blasphemies against Christ and against the Christian religion," but urged the preservation of the rest. In this defence of Jewish literature he was supported by the Duke of Bavaria, who appointed him professor at Ingoldstadt, but was strongly condemned by the Dominicans of Cologne. In reply to their attacks Reuchlin launched his defence _De Arte Cabalistica_, glorifying the Cabala, of which the "central doctrine for him was the Messianology around which all its other doctrines grouped themselves."[245] His whole philosophical system, as he himself admitted, was in fact entirely Cabalistic, and his views were shared by his contemporary Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim. As a result of these teachings a craze for Cabalism spread amongst Christian prelates, statesmen, and warriors, and a number of Christian thinkers took up the doctrines of the Cabala and "essayed to work them over in their own way." Athanasius Kircher and Knorr, Baron von Rosenroth, author of the _Kabbala Denudata_, in the course of the seventeenth century "endeavoured to spread the Cabala among the Christians by translating Cabalistic works which they regarded as most ancient wisdom." "Most of them," the _Jewish Encyclopaedia_ goes on to observe derisively, "held the absurd idea that the Cabala contained proofs of the truth of Christianity.... Much that appears Christian [in the Cabala] is, in fact, nothing but the logical development of certain ancient esoteric doctrines."[246]

The Rosicrucians appear to have been the outcome both of this Cabalistic movement and of the teachings of Paracelsus. The earliest intimation of their existence was given in a series of pamphlets which appeared at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The first of these, ent.i.tled the _Fama Fraternitatis; or a Discovery of the Fraternity of the most Laudable Order of the Rosy Cross_, was published at Ca.s.sel in 1614 and the _Confessio Fraternitatis_ early in the following year. These contain what may be described as the "Grand Legend" of Rosicrucianism, which has been repeated with slight variations up to the present day. Briefly, this story is as follows[247]:

"The most G.o.dly and highly-illuminated Father, our brother C.R.," that is to say, Christian Rosenkreutz, "a German, the chief and original of our Fraternity," was born in 1378, and some sixteen years later travelled to the East with a Brother P.A.L., who had determined to go to the Holy Land. On reaching Cyprus, Brother P.A.L. died and "so never came to Jerusalem." Brother C.R., however, having become acquainted with certain Wise Men of "Damasco in Arabia," and beheld what great wonders they wrought, went on alone to Damasco. Here the Wise Men received him, and he then set himself to study Physick and Mathematics and to translate the Book M into Latin. After three years he went to Egypt, whence he journeyed on to Fez, where "he did get acquaintance with those who are called the Elementary inhabitants, who revealed to him many of their secrets.... Of those of Fez he often did confess that their Magia was not altogether pure and also that their Cabala was defiled with their religion, but notwithstanding he knew how to make good use of the same." After two years Brother C.R. departed the city Fez and sailed away with many costly things into Spain, where he conferred with the learned men and being "ready bountifully to impart all his arts and secrets" showed them amongst other things how "there might be a society in Europe which might have gold, silver, and precious stones sufficient for them to bestow on kings for their necessary uses and lawful purposes...."

Christian Rosenkreutz then returned to Germany, where "there is nowadays no want of learned men, Magicians, Cabalists, Physicians, and Philosophers." Here he "builded himself a fitting and neat habitation in which he ruminated his voyage and philosophy and reduced them together in a true memorial." At the end of five years' meditation there "came again into his mind the wished-for Reformation: accordingly he chose some few adjoyned with him," the Brethren G.V., I.A., and I.O.--the last of whom "was very expert and well learned in Cabala as his book H witnesseth"--to form a circle of initiates. "After this manner began the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross." Five other Brethren were afterwards added, all Germans except I.A., and these eight const.i.tuted his new building called Sancti Spiritus. The following agreement was then drawn up:

First, that none of them should profess any other thing than to cure the sick, and that gratis.

Second, none of the posterity should be constrained to wear one certain kind of habit, but therein to follow the custom of the country.