Witch, Warlock, and Magician

A violent trumpet-note on the side of intolerance was blown by King James I. in 1597 in his famous ‘Dæmonologia.’ It is written in the form of a dialogue, and numbers about eighty closely-printed pages. James, as the reader has seen, had had ample personal experience of witches and their ‘cantrips,’ and had ‘got up’ the subject with a commendable amount of thoroughness. He divides witches into eight classes, who severally work their evil designs against mankind; then he subdivides into white and black witches, of whom the former are the more dangerous; and again into ‘acted’ and ‘pacted’ witches, the former depending for their power on their supernatural gifts, and the latter having made a compact with Satan contrary to ‘all rules and orders of nature, art or grace.’ Further, the demons have a classification of their own; some of the higher ranks of the demonarchy looking down contemptuously enough on those of the inferior grades, who consist of ‘the damned souls of departed conjurers.’ These ‘damned souls’ discharge all kinds of mean and servile offices – bringing fire from heaven for the convenience of their employers; conveying bodies through the air; conjuring corn from one field into another; imparting a show of life to dead bodies; and raising the wind for witches to sell to their nautical customers – who received pieces of knotted rope, and, untying the first knot, secured a favourable breeze, for the second a moderate wind, and for the third a violent gale.

After describing the rites in vogue on the conclusion of a compact between witch and devil, King James enlarges on other points of ceremonial, such as the making of various magic circles – sometimes round, sometimes triangular, sometimes quadrangular; the use of holy water and crosses in ridicule of the papists; and the offer to the demons of some living animal. He adds that the great witches’ meetings frequently took place in churches: and he says that the witches mutter and hurriedly mumble through their conjurations ‘like a priest despatching a hunting masse’; and that if they step out of a circle in a sudden alarm at the horrible appearance assumed by the demon, he flies off with them body and soul.

The royal expert proceeds to indicate the means by which you may detect a witch. ‘There are two good helpes that may be used for their trials; the one is the finding of their marke and the trying the insensibility thereof. The other is their fleeting on the water: for as in a secret murther, if the dead carkasse be at any time thereafter handled by the murtherer, it will gush out of blood, as if the blood were crying to the heaven for revenge of the murtherer, God having appoynted that secret supernaturale signe for triale of that secret unnaturale crime, so it appears that God hath appoynted (for a supernaturale signe of the monstrous impietie of witches) that the water shall refuse to receive them in her bosome that have shaken off them the sacred water of Baptism and willingly refused the benefit thereof: no, not so much as their eies are able to shed teares (threaten and torture them as you please) while first they repent (God not permitting them to dissemble their obstinacie in so horrible a crime), albeit the womenkind especially be able other waies to shed teares at every light occasion when they will, yea altho’ it were dissemblingly like the crocodiles.’

Incidentally, our witch-hunting King offers an explanation of a peculiarity which, no doubt, our readers have already noted – the great numerical superiority of witches over warlocks. ‘The reason is easie,’ he says; ‘for as that sex is frailer than man is, so is it easier to be intrapped in the grosse snares of the devil, – as was over well prooved to be true by the serpente deceiving of Eva at the beginning, which makes him the homelier with that sex sensine [ever since].’

As regards the external appearance of witches, he remarks that they are not generally melancholic; ‘but some are rich and worldly wise, some are fat and corpulent, and most part are given over unto the pleasures of the flesh; and further experience daily proves how loth they are to confess without torture, which witnesseth their guiltinesse.’ He concludes by asking, ‘Who is safe?’ and replies that the only safe person is the magistrate, when assiduously employed in bringing witches to justice. One Reginald Scot, Esq., however, hop-grower and brewer of Smeeth, in Kent, a persistent disbeliever in and ridiculer of witchcraft, who had the courage to break lances with the King and the bench of Bishops in contemporary pamphlets, and is called by the King an ‘Englishman of damnable opiniones,’ irreverently answered this question by saying that the only safe person was the King himself, as his sex prevented his being taken for a witch, and the whole kingdom was satisfied that he was no conjurer.

In 1616, John Cotta, a Northampton physician, published a forcibly written attack on the vulgar delusion, under the title of ‘The Trial of Witchcraft,’ which reached a second (and enlarged) edition in 1624. Cotta was also the author of a fierce blast against quacks – ‘Discovery of the Dangers of ignorant Practisers of Physick in England,’ 1612; and of a not less vehement attack on the aurum potabile of the chemists, entitled, ‘Cotta contra Antonium, or An Ant. Anthony,’ 1623.

There is a lively work by John Gaul, preacher of the Word at Great Haughton, in the county of Huntingdon – ‘Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches and Witchcraft,’ 1646, which is worth looking into. Gaul was a courageous and persevering opponent of the great witch-finder, Hopkins.

The unhappy victims of popular prejudice found a strenuous champion also in Sir Robert Filmer, who, in 1653, published his ‘Advertisement to the Jurymen of England, touching Witches, together with a Difference between an English and Hebrew Witch.’ Filmer is best known to students by his ‘Patriarcha,’ an apology for the paternal government of kings, which does violence to all constitutional principles, but has at least the negative merit of obvious sincerity on the part of its writer. It is somewhat surprising to find a mind like Filmer’s, fettered as it was by so many prejudices and a slavish adherence to prescription, openly urging the cause of tolerance and enlightenment, and vigorously demolishing the sham arguments by which the believers in witchcraft endeavoured to support their grotesque theories.

Three years later followed on the same side a certain Thomas Ady, M.A., who, with considerable vivacity, fulminated against the witch-mongers and witch-torturers in his tractate, ‘A Candle in the Dark; or, A Treatise concerning the Nature of Witches and Witchcraft: being Advice to Judges, Sheriffs, Justices of the Peace, and Grand Jurymen, what to do before they pass sentence on such as are arraigned for their lives as Witches.’ The quaintly-worded dedication ran as follows:

‘To the Prince of the Kings of the Earth. It is the manner of men, O heavenly King, to dedicate their books to some great men, thereby to have their works protected and countenanced among them; but Thou only art able by Thy Holy Spirit of Truth, to defend Thy Truth, and to make it take impression in the heart and understanding of men. Unto Thee alone do I dedicate this work, entreating Thy Most High Majesty to grant that, whoever shall open this book, Thy Holy Spirit may so possess their understanding as that the Spirit of error may depart from them, and that they may read and try Thy Truth by the touchstone of Thy Truth, the Holy Scriptures; and finding that Truth, may embrace it and forsake their darksome inventions of Anti-Christ, that have deluded and defiled the nations now and in former ages. Enlighten the world, Thou art the Light of the World, and let darkness be no more in the world, now or in any future age; but make all people to walk as children of the light for ever; and destroy Anti-Christ that hath deceived the nations, and save us the residue by Thyself alone; and let not Satan any more delude us, for the Truth is thine for ever.’

In 1669 John Wagstaffe published ‘The Question of Witchcraft Debated.’ According to Wood, he was the son of John Wagstaffe, a London citizen; was born in Cheapside; entered as a commoner of Oriel College, Oxford, towards the end of 1649; took the degrees in Arts, and applied himself to the study of politics and other learning. ‘At length being raised from an academical life to the inheritance of Hasland by the death of an uncle, who died without male issue, he spent his life afterwards in single estate.’ He died in 1677. Wood describes him as ‘a little crooked man, and of a despicable presence. He was laughed at by the boys of this University because, as they said, he himself looked like a little wizard.’

His book is illuminated throughout by the generous sympathies of a large and liberal mind. His peroration has been described, and not unjustly, as ‘lofty’ and ‘memorable,’ and, when animated by a noble earnestness, the writer’s language rises into positive eloquence. ‘I cannot think,’ he says, ‘without trembling and horror on the vast numbers of people that in several ages and several countries have been sacrificed unto this cold opinion. Thousands, ten thousands, are upon record to have been slain, and many of them not with simple deaths, but horrid, exquisite tortures. And yet, how many are there more who have undergone the same fate, of whom we have no memorial extant? Since therefore the opinion of witchcraft is a mere stranger unto Scripture, and wholly alien from true religion; since it is ridiculous by asserting fables and impossibilities; since it appears, when duly considered, to be all bloody and full of dangerous consequence unto the lives and safety of men; I hope that with this my discourse, opposing an absurd and pernicious error, I cannot at all disoblige any sober, unbiased person, especially if he be of such ingenuity as to have freed himself from a slavish subjection unto those prejudicial opinions which custom and education do with too much tyranny impose.

‘If the doctrine of witchcraft should be carried up to a height, and the inquisition after it should be entrusted in the hands of ambitious, covetous, and malicious men, it would prove of far more fatal consequences unto the lives and safety of mankind than that ancient heathenish custom of sacrificing men unto idol gods, insomuch that we stand in need of another Heracles Liberator, who, as the former freed the world from human sacrifice, should, in like manner, travel from country to country, and by his all-commanding authority free it from this evil and base custom of torturing people to confess themselves witches, and burning them after extorted confessions. Surely the blood of men ought not to be so cheap, nor so easily to be shed by those who, under the name of God, do gratify exorbitant passions and selfish ends; for without question, under this side heaven, there is nothing so sacred as the life of man, for the preservation whereof all policies and forms of government, all laws and magistrates are most especially ordained. Wherefore I presume that this discourse of mine, attempting to prove the vanity and impossibility of witchcraft, is so far from any deserved censure and blame, that it rather deserves commendation and praise, if I can in the least measure contribute to the saving of the lives of men.’

Meric Casaubon, a man of abundant learning and not less abundant superstition, attempted a reply to Wagstaffe in his treatise ‘Of Credulity and Incredulity in Things Divine and Spiritual’ (1670).

At Thornton, in the parish of Caswold, Yorkshire, was born, on the 3rd of February, 1610, one of the ablest and most successful of the adversaries of the witch-maniacs, John Webster. It is supposed that he was educated at Cambridge; but the first event in his career of which we have any certain knowledge is his admission to holy orders in the Church of England by Dr. Morton, Bishop of Durham. In 1634 we find him officiating as curate at Kildwick in Craven, and nine years later as Master of the Free Grammar School at Clitheroe. He seems afterwards to have held for a time a military chaplaincy, then to have withdrawn from the Church of England, and taken refuge in some form of Dissent. In 1653 his new religious views found expression in his ‘Saints’ Guide,’ and in 1654, in ‘The Judgment Set and the Books Opened,’ a series of sermons which he had originally preached at All Hallows’ Church in Lombard Street. It was in this church the incident occurred which Wood has recorded: ‘On the 12th of October, 1653, William Erbury, with John Webster, sometime a Cambridge scholar, endeavoured to knock down learning and the ministry both together in a disputation that they then had against two ministers in a church in Lombard Street, London. Erbury then declared that the wisest ministers and the purest churches were at that time befooled, confounded, and defiled by reason of learning. Another while he said that the ministry were monsters, beasts, asses, greedy dogs, false prophets, and that they are the Beast with seven heads and ten horns. The same person also spoke out and said that Babylon is the Church in her ministers, and that the Great Whore is the Church in her worship, etc., so that with him there was an end of ministers and churches and ordinations altogether. While these things were babbled to and fro, the multitude, being of various opinions, began to mutter, and many to cry out, and immediately it came to a meeting or tumult (call it which you please), wherein the women bore away the bell, but lost some of them their kerchiefs; and the dispute being hot, there was more danger of pulling down the church than the ministry.’

In 1654, our iconoclastic enthusiast strongly – but not without good reason – assailed the educational system then in vogue at Oxford and Cambridge in his treatise, ‘Academiarum Examen,’ which created quite a sensation in ‘polite circles,’ fluttering the dove-cots of the rulers of the two Universities. Very curious, however, are its sympathetic references to the old Hermetic mysteries, Rosicrucianism, and astrology, to the fanciful abstractions and dreamy speculations of Paracelsus, Van Helmont, Fludd, and Dr. Dee. One cannot but wonder that so acute and vigorous an intellect should have allowed itself to be entangled in the delusions of the occult sciences. But his study of the works of the old philosophers was, no doubt, the original motive of the laborious research which resulted in his ‘Metallographia; or, A History of Metals’ (1671). In this learned and comprehensive treatise are declared ‘the signs of Ores and Minerals, both before and after Digging, the causes and manner of their generations, their kinds, sorts, and differences; with the description of sundry new Metals, or Semi-Metals, and many other things pertaining to Mineral Knowledge. As also the handling and showing of their Vegetability, and the discussion of the most difficult Questions belonging to Mystical Chymistry, as of the Philosopher’s Gold, their Mercury, the Liquor Alkahest, Aurum potabile, and such like. Gathered forth of the most approved Authors that have written in Greek, Latin, or High Dutch, with some Observations and Discoveries of the Author Himself. By John Webster, Practitioner in Physick and Chirurgery. “Qui principia naturalia in seipso ignoraverit, hic jam multum remotus est ab arte nostra, quoniam non habet radiam veram super quam intentionem suam fundit.” Geber, Sum. Perfect., lib. i., p. 21.’

In 1677, Webster, who had abandoned the cure of souls for that of bodies, produced the work which entitles him to honourable mention in these pages. According to the fashion of the day, its title was almost as long as a table of contents. I transcribe it here in extenso:

‘The Displaying of supposed Witchcraft, Wherein is affirmed that there are many sorts of Deceivers and Impostors. And Divers persons under a passive Delusion of Melancholy and Fancy. But that there is a Corporeal League made betwixt the Devil and the Witch, Or that he sucks on the Witches Body, has Carnal Copulation, or that Witches are turned into Cats or Dogs, raise Tempests or the like, is utterly denied and disproved. Wherein also is handled the Existence of Angels and Spirits, the Truth of Apparitions, the Nature of Astral and Sidereal Spirits, the Force of Charms and Philters; with other Abstruse Matters. By John Webster, Practitioner in Physic. “Falsæ etenim opiniones Hominum præoccupantes, non solum surdos sed ut cæcos faciunt, ita ut videre nequeant, quæ aliis perspicua apparent.” Galen, lib. viii., de Comp. Med. London. Printed by I. M., and are to be sold by the Booksellers in London, 1677.’

Webster, who was evidently a man of restless and inquiring intellect, and independent judgment, died on June 18, 1682, and was buried in St. Margaret’s, Clitheroe, where his monument may still be seen. Its singular inscription must have been devised by some astrological sympathizer:

Qui hanc figuram intelliguntMe etiam intellexisse, intelligent.

Here follows a mysterious figure of the sun, with several circles and much astrological lettering, which it is unnecessary to reproduce. The inscription continues:

Hic jacet ignotus mundo mersus que tumultusInvidiæ, semper mens tamen æqua fecit,Multa tulit veterum ut sciret secreta sophorumAc tandem vires noverit ignis aquæ.Johannes Hyphantes sive Webster.In villa Spinosa supermontana, inParochia silvæ cuculatæ, in agroEboracensi, natus 1610, Feb. 3.Ergastulum animæ deposuit 1682, Junii 18.Annoq. ætatis suæ 72 currente.Sicq. peroravit moriens mundo huic valedicens,Aurea pax vivis, requies æterna sepultis.

In 1728, Andrew Millar, at the sign of The Buchanan’s Head, against St. Clement’s Church in the Strand, published ‘A System of Magick: or, A History of the Black Art,’ by Daniel Defoe; a book which, though it by no means justifies its title, is one of more than passing interest, partly from the renown of its author, and partly from the light it throws on the popularity of magic among the English middle classes in the earlier years of the eighteenth century. As it has not been reprinted for the last fifty years, and is not very generally known, some glimpses of the stuff it is made of may be acceptable to the curious reader.58

In his preface Defoe lavishes a good deal of contempt on contemporary pretenders to the character of magician, who by sham magical practices imposed on a public ignorant, and therefore credulous. Magicians, he says, in the first ages were wise men; in the middle ages, madmen; in these latter ages, they are cunning men. In the earliest times they were honest; in the middle time, rogues; in these last times, fools. At first they dealt with nature; then with the devil; and now, not with the devil or with nature either. In the first ages the magicians were wiser than the people; in the second age wickeder than the people; and in this later age the people are both worse and wickeder than the magicians. Like many other generalizations, this one of Defoe’s is more pointed than true; and it is evident that the so-called magicians could not have flourished had there not been an ignorant class who readily accepted their pretensions.

Defoe’s account of the origin of magic is so vague as to suggest that he knew very little of the subject he was writing about. ‘I have traced it,’ he says, ‘as far back as antiquity gives us any clue to discover it by: it seems to have its beginning in the ignorance and curiosity of the darkest ages of the world, when miracle and something wonderful was expected to confirm every advanced notion; and when the wise men, having racked their invention to the utmost, called in the devil to their assistance for want of better help; and those that did not run into Satan’s measures, and give themselves up to the infernal, yet trod so near, and upon the very verge of Hell, that it was hard to distinguish between the magician and the devil, and thus they have gone on ever since: so that almost all the dispute between us and the magicians is that they say they converse with good spirits, and we say if they deal with any spirits, it is with the devil.’

Here the greatness of his theme stimulates Defoe into poetry, which differs very little, however, from his prose, so that a brief specimen will content everybody:

‘Hail! dangerous science, falsely called sublime,Which treads upon the very brink of crime.Hell’s mimic, Satan’s mountebank of state,Deals with more devils than Heaven did e’er create.The infernal juggling-box, by Heaven designed,To put the grand parade upon mankind.The devil’s first game which he in Eden played,When he harangued to Eve in masquerade.’

Dividing his treatise into two parts, our author, in the introduction to Part I., discusses the meaning of the principal terms in magical lore; who, and what kind of people, the magicians were; and the meaning originally given to the words ‘magic’ and ‘magician.’ As a matter of course, he strays back to the old Chaldean days, when a magician, he says, was simply a mathematician, a man of science, who, stored with knowledge and learning, was a kind of walking dictionary to other people, instructing the rest of mankind on subjects of which they were ignorant; a wise man, in fact, who interpreted omens, ill signs, tokens, and dreams; understood the signs of the times, the face of the heavens, and the influences of the superior luminaries there. When all this wisdom became more common, and the magi had communicated much of their knowledge to the people at large, their successors, still aspiring to a position above, and apart from, the rest of the world, were compelled to push their studies further, to inquire into nature, to view the aspect of the heavens, to calculate the motions of the stars, and more particularly to dwell upon their influences in human affairs – thus creating the science of astrology. But these men neither had, nor pretended to have, any compact or correspondence with the devil or with any of his works. They were men of thought, or, if you please, men of deeper thinking than the ordinary sort; they studied the sciences, inquired into the works of nature and providence, studied the meaning and end of things, the causes and events, and consequently were able to see further into the ordinary course and causes both of things about them, and things above them, than other men.

Such were the world’s gray forefathers, the magicians of the elder time, in whom was found ‘an excellent spirit of wisdom.’ There were others – not less learned – whose studies took a different direction; who inquired into the structure and organization of the human body; who investigated the origin, the progress, and the causes of diseases and distempers, both in men and women; who sought out the physical or medicinal virtues of drugs and plants; and as by these means they made daily discoveries in nature, of which the world, until then, was ignorant, and by which they performed astonishing cures, they naturally gained the esteem and reverence of the people.

Sir Walter Raleigh contends that only the word ‘magic,’ and not the magical art, is derived from Simon Magus. He adds that Simon’s name was not Magus, a magician, but Gors, a person familiar with evil spirits; and that he usurped the title of Simon the Magician simply because it was then a good and honourable title. Defoe avails himself of Raleigh’s authority to sustain his own opinion, that there is a manifest difference between magic, which is wisdom and supernatural knowledge, and the witchcraft and conjuring which we now understand by the word.

In his second chapter Defoe classifies the magic of the ancients under three heads: i. Natural, which included the knowledge of the stars, of the motions of the planetary bodies, and their revolutions and influences; that is to say, the study of nature, of philosophy, and astronomy; ii. Artificial or Rational, in which was included the knowledge of all judicial astrology, the casting or calculating nativities, and the cure of diseases – (1) by particular charms and figures placed in this or that position; (2) by herbs gathered at this or that particular crisis of time; (3) by saying such and such words over the patient; (4) by such and such gestures; (5) by striking the flesh in such and such a manner, and innumerable such-like pieces of mimicry, working not upon the disease itself, but upon the imagination of the patient, and so affecting the cure by the power of nature, though that nature were set in operation by the weakest and simplest methods imaginable; and, iii. Diabolical, which was wrought by and with the concurrence of the devil, carried on by a correspondence with evil spirits – with their help, presence, and personal assistance – and practised chiefly by their priests. Defoe argues that the ancients at first were acquainted only with the purer form of magic, and that, therefore, sorcery and witchcraft were of much later development. The cause and motive of this development he traces in his third chapter (‘Of the Reason and Occasion which brought the ancient honest Magi, whose original study was philosophy, astronomy, and the works of nature, to turn sorcerers and wizards, and deal with the Devil, and how their Conversation began’). Egyptologists will find Defoe’s comments upon Egyptian magic refreshingly simple and unhistorical, and his identifications of the Pyramids with magical practices is wildly vague and hypothetical. Of the magic which was really taught and practised among the ancient people of Egypt, Defoe, of course, knows nothing. He tells us, however, that the Jews learned it from them. He goes on to speculate as to the time when that close intercourse began between the devil and his servants on earth which is the foundation of the later or diabolical magic, and concludes that his first visible appearance on this mundane stage was as the enemy of Job. Thence he is led to inquire, in his fourth chapter, what shapes the devil assumed on his first appearances to the magicians and others, in the dawn of the world’s history, and whether he is or has been allowed to assume a human shape or no. And he suggests that his earliest acquaintance with mankind was made through dreams, and that by this method he contrived to infuse into men’s minds an infinite variety of corrupt imaginations, wicked desires, and abhorrent conclusions and resolutions, with some ridiculous, foolish, and absurd things at the same time.