Curios Phases of Witchcraft
“A chronicle —Shelley.
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In the first dim light of history the idea and belief in the possibility of close communion between the inhabitants of the earthly and spiritual worlds is found prevalent—such communion as Genesis describes. All know how much of the Greek religion and worship was based on the intercourse of gods and mortals; the heroes and semi-divine personages, around whom the most glorious poetry in the world has crystallized, were the offspring of the gods by mortals. The finch mind saw nothing strange in the spiritual inhabitants of the Olympian sphere seeking the daughters of men, nor in children springing from such union. Men pre-eminently great were indeed certain to have an origin ascribed to superhuman parentage. Alexander of Macedon claimed Jupiter for his tire. Plato was reputed the child of Apollo, born of the virgin Perictione. Who can surmise in what events, or tradition of events, reaching backwards—perhaps to the unknown prehistoric times, perhaps of nearer date—such beliefs had their root and warrant.
Such ideas, however, seem confined to the Aryan and Semitic races, and to be strange to the Red Men of America and the black nations of Africa. In India and Scandinavia no less than in old Greece, sages and heroes sprang from the gods, but a strange transmutation has passed over European conceptions since the triumph of Christianity.
As is ever the case the bright deities of the old religions become the hideous fiends and demons of the new. The solemn oracles and mysteries that stood for the highest national ceremonials shrank and darkened into witchcraft and necromancy, practised by the lowest, most ignorant classes, and commerce with Satan and evil spirits took the place of the loves of the “sons of God” with mortal women. For more than a century Europe has agreed to look upon witch, craft as a huge delusion, the result of popular and scientific ignorance, and to point to the records of witch trials with pity and a tense of humiliation that such follies and cruelties could have been countenanced by the best understandings of the day. It does not teem improbable that the immense records of witchcraft and trials connected with it, existing all over Europe, may be reopened and scanned with different eyes and conclusions. Jean Paul Richter remarks that “ordinary minds make everything in the trials of witchcraft to be the work of imagination. But he who has read many such trials finds that to be impossible,” and modern spiritualistic experience throws a strange and startling light upon those dismal records. Preternatural strength and alteration of weights are frequent features, and when to-day we hear of baby mediums, some explanation, though little excuse, may be offered for what has always seemed the Incredible barbarity of burning children as witches. One feature runs through all these trials: intercourse between witches and Satan, or the imps be scat, was always assumed and generally admitted indeed, as the seal and completion of their initiation. Moreover, the offspring of such intercourse were not unfrequent—sometimes Calibans, “oafs,” deformed, malignant wretches; sometimes persons of distinguished beauty and genius.
Doctor Martin Luther relates in his “Table-talk" that he personally knew well one of these “devil’s children,” and evidently saw nothing wild or Incredible in the idea.
ln the “Lady of the Lake” the weird, grisly priest Brian the Hermit was of no mortal parentage; strange tales were told of his birth—how mother had watched a midnight fold by an ancient battle field covered with the bones of men, and the “spectre’s child” that was born, beheld the future, and was familiar with the disembodied world.
The literature of two or three centuries ago is full of popular accounts of famous witches and “wise women,” who would now very probably be ranked as very powerful mediums. The names of several still linger in popular remembrance. To select one— “Mother Shipton” now only suggests a bent, old woman with a steeple-hat and nose and chin meeting together; perhaps to Londoners some further notion of a favorite inn. She seems, however, to have been a woman of extraordinary spiritualistic powers.
A curious tract printed in London in 1686, relates that she was born in Yorkshire, and “as the common story is, that she never had any father of human race or mortal wight, but was begot (as the great Welsh Prophet Merlin was of old) by the Phantasm of Apollo or some wanton aerial demon, in manner following:—Her mother Agatha being left an orphan about the age of sixteen, and very poor, was once upon a time sitting bemoaning herself on a shady bank by the highway side, when this spirit appeared to her in the shape of a handsome young man, tempted her, and prevailed so far as to gain her. He was as cold as ice or snow.” (A similar statement was very generally made in the witchcraft trials). “From this time forth she was commonly once a day visited by her hellish gallant, and never wanted money.”
The tract goes on to relate how Mother Shipton was born, and was christened by the name of Ursula by the Abbot of Beverly, how her mother becoming sensible of her evil course retired to a convent; how as the child grew up it was often visited by the fiend its father, and performed many amazing exploits and manifestations. The tract contains a list of her most notable prophecies, and states that “she was advised with by people of the greatest quality,” among them Cardinal Woolsey, of whom she prophesied that he should never come to York; and indeed, when within eight miles of it, he was suddenly recalled by the king, and died at Leicester. She also foretold the Great Fire of London, many events of the Reformation, the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., and the execution of Charles I. Luckily for herself she lived before the times of the witch-terror, and appears rather to have been regarded as an oracle. At the age of seventy- three she foretold the day of her death, and at the hour predicted lay down on her bed and died. This remarkable woman left an abiding impression on the popular remembrance. Even now a little day-flying moth, common next month in hay-fields, the dark markings on whose wings present something like the profile of a face with hooked nose and chin, is known to the keen working insect-hunters of Spital-fields and the East-end as the “Mother Shipton.” The idea of such unearthly connections has never quite faded away.
William of Malmesbury has a story truly mediaeval in its wildness, how a young man of Rome, wealthy and noble, having newly married a wife and given a grand banquet, did after the feast propose a game at ball, and taking off his finger his betrothed ring put it upon that of a brazen statue of Venus which chanced to be standing near. After the game he went for it but found the finger of the statue, that before was straight, bent round into the palm of the hand, and that his ring could not be got away. Not liking to say anything, he went away, and returned at night with his servants, intending to break the hand, but to his amazement found the finger straightened again, and his ring gone. In confusion be returned to the bridal chamber, but on lying down he felt something like a dense cloud tumbling about, something that could be felt but not seen; and also heard a voice that said, “Stay with me, for thou hast exposed me this day! I am Venus, on whose finger thou didst put thy ring: I have got it, and will not give it back.” He astounded, dared not reply, and spent a sleepless night. In his “Earthly Paradise,” Mr. W. Morris has told this strange story at length, as be only can tell it; and in “The Ring given to Venus” the reader may learn by what terrible and perilous means the young man was delivered from his unwelcome visitant and recovered his ring.
These marvellous old stories may perhaps be read with different thoughts to what they would have awakened twenty years ago. A spirit teacher asserts that the present is one of these epochs of special spiritual activity lor which the mind of nun may be hoped to be better prepared than in days when popular ignorance and terror could only be expressed in witch-burnings and murderous violence; though he warns us “the full time is not yet.”
Finally, to show how the notion dealt with in this paper still exists, and is familiar to other races in distant lands, the following extract from an account of village superstitions in Southern India, written by a native la the present year, is subjoined, quite as wild and grotesque as anything medieval;—
“A few demons are so voracious that they search up with <... continues on page 3-237 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ Curios Phases of Witchcraft by unknown author, Spiritual Scientist, v. 2, No. 17, July 1, 1875, pp. 200-1. Phenomenal
Sources
Spiritual Scientist, v. 2, No. 17, July 1, 1875, pp. 200-1