The Superstitions of Witchcraft. Howard Williams

Persian theology, the shadowy idea of the devil of western Asia was wholly different from the grosser conception of Christendom. Neither the evil principle of Magianism nor the witch of Palestine has much in common with the Christian. 'No contract of subjection to a diabolic power, no infernal stamp or sign of such a fatal league, no revellings of Satan and his hags,'6 no such materialistic notions could be conformable to the spirit of Judaism or at least of Magianism. It is not difficult to find the cause of this essential dissimilarity. A simple unity was severely inculcated by the religion and laws of Moses, which permitted little exercise of the imagination: while the Magi were equally severe against idolatrous forms. A monstrous idea, like that of 'Satan and his hags,' was impossible to them. Christianity, the religion of the West, has received its corporeal ideas of demonology from the divinities and demons of heathenism. The Satyri and Fauni of Greece and Rome have suggested in part the form, and perhaps some of the characteristics, of the vulgar Christian devil. A knowledge of the arts of magic among the Jews was probably derived from their Egyptian life, while the Bedouins of Arabia and Syria (kindred peoples) may have instilled the less scientific rites of Fetishism. It is in the early accounts of that people that sorcery, whatever its character and profession, with the allied arts of divination, necromancy, incantations, &c., appears most flourishing. The Mosaic penalty, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,' and the comprehensive injunction, 'There shall not be found among you that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer,' indicate at once the extent and the horror of the practice. Balaam (that equivocal prophet), on the border-land of Arabia and Palestine, was courted and dreaded as a wizard who could perplex whole armies by means of spells. His fame extended far and wide; he was summoned from his home beyond the Euphrates in the mountains of Mesopotamia by the Syrian tribes to repel the invading enemy. This great magician was, it seems, universally regarded as 'the rival and the possible conqueror of Moses.'7

6 Sir W. Scott, Letters on Demonology.

7 Dean Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Church.

About the time when the priestly caste had to yield to a profane monarchy, the forbidden practices were so notorious and the evil was of such magnitude, that the newly-elected prince 'ejected' (as Josephus relates) 'the fortune-tellers, necromancers, and all such as exercised the like arts.' His interview with the witch has some resemblance to modern diablerie in the circumstances. Reginald Scot's rationalistic interpretation of this scene may be recommended to the commentating critics who have been so much at a loss to explain it. He derides the received opinion of the woman of Endor being an agent of the devil, and ignoring any mystery, believes, 'This Pythonist being a ventriloqua, that is, speaking as it were from the bottom of her belly, did cast herself into a trance and so abused Saul, answering to Saul in Samuel's name in her counterfeit hollow voice.8 An institution very popular with the Jews of the first temple, often commemorated in their scriptures—the schools of the prophets—was (it is not improbable) of the same kind as the schools of Salamanca and Salerno in the middle ages, where magic was publicly taught as an abstruse and useful science; and when Jehu justifies his conduct towards the queen-mother by bringing a charge of witchcraft, he only anticipates an expedient common and successful in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A Jewish prophet asserts of the Babylonian kings, that they were diligent cultivators of the arts, reproaching them with practising against the holy city.

8 Discoverie of Witchcraft, lib. viii. chap. 12. The contrivance of this illusion was possibly like that at Delphi, where in the centre of the temple was a chasm, from which arose an intoxicating smoke, when the priestess was to announce divine revelations. Seated over the chasm upon the tripod, the Pythia was inspired, it seems, by the soporific and maddening drugs.

Yet if we may credit the national historian (not to mention the common traditions), the Chaldean monarch might have justly envied, if he could scarcely hope to emulate, the excellence of a former prince of his now obscure province. Josephus says of Solomon that, amongst other attainments, 'God enabled him to learn that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful and sanative to men. He composed such incantations also by which distempers are alleviated, and he left behind him the manner of using exorcisms by which they drive away demons so that they never return.'9 The story of Daniel is well known. In the captivity of the two tribes carried away into an honourable servitude he soon rose into the highest favour, because, as we are informed, he excelled in a divination that surpassed all the art of the Chaldeans, themselves so famous for it. The inspired Jew had divined a dream or vision which puzzled 'the magicians, and the astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans,' and immediately was rewarded with the greatest gift at the disposal of a capricious despot. Most of the apologetic writers on witchcraft, in particular the authors of the 'Malleus Maleficarum,' accept the assertion of the author of the history of Daniel that Nebuchadnezzar was 'driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen,' in its apparent sense, expounding it as plainly declaring that he was corporeally metamorphosed into an ox, just as the companions of Ulysses were transformed into swine by the Circean sorceries.

9 Antiquities, book viii. 2. Whiston's transl.

The Jewish ideas of good or at least evil spirits or angels were acquired during their forced residence in Babylon, whether under Assyrian or Persian government. At least 'Satan' is first discovered unmistakably in a personal form in the poem of Job, a work pronounced by critics to have been composed after the restoration. In the Mosaic cosmogony and legislation, the writer introduces not, expressly or impliedly, the existence of an evil principle, unless the serpent of the Paradisaic account, which has been rather arbitrarily so metamorphosed, represents it;10 while the expressions in books vulgarly reputed before the conquest are at least doubtful. From this time forward (from the fifth century b.c.), says a German demonologist, as the Jews lived among the admirers of Zoroaster, and thus became acquainted with their doctrines, are found, partly in contradiction to the earlier views of their religion, many tenets prevailing amongst them the origin of which it is impossible to explain except by the operation of the doctrines of Zoroaster: to these belongs the general acceptance of the theory of Satan, as well as of good and bad angels.11 Under Roman government or vassalage, sorceric practices, as they appear in the Christian scriptures, were much in vogue. Devils or demons, and the 'prince of the devils,' frequently appear; and the demoniacs may represent the victims of witchcraft. The Talmud, if there is any truth in the assertions of the apologists of witchcraft, commemorates many of the most virtuous Jews accused of the crime and executed by the procurator of Judea.12 Exorcism was a very popular and lucrative profession.13 Simon Magus the magician (par excellence), the impious pretender to miraculous powers, who 'bewitched the people of Samaria by his sorceries,' is celebrated by Eusebius and succeeding Christian writers as the fruitful parent of heresy and sorcery.

10 Some ingenious remarks on the subject of the serpent, &c., may be found in Eastern Life, part ii. 5, by H. Martineau.

11 Horst, quoted in Ennemoser's History of Magic. It has been often remarked as a singular phenomenon, that the 'chosen people,' so prompt in earlier periods on every occasion