Chapter 9: On the magi

1. The first of the magi was Zoroaster, king of the Bactrians, whom Ninus, king of the Assyrians, slew in battle, and of whom Aristotle writes that on the evidence of his works it is clear that he composed 2,000,000 verses.

2. This art was enlarged by Democritus many centuries later when Hippocrates was famous for his knowledge of medicine....

3. And so this vanity of the magic arts flourished during many generations in the whole world by the teaching of the bad angels, through a certain knowledge of the future and the summoning up of infernal spirits. Their inventions are divinations, auguries, the so-called oracles, and necromancy.

4. And there is no miracle in the feats of the magicians, whose arts of wickedness reached such perfection that they actually resisted Moses by wonders very like his, turning twigs to serpents and water to blood.

5. It is said that there was a very famous magician, Circe, who turned Ulysses’ companions into beasts. We also read of a sacrifice which the Arcadians offered to their god Lycaeus when all who ate of it were changed to the shapes of beasts.

6. And it is plain that the famous poet wrote of a certain woman who excelled in the magic arts: “She promises to soothe by her charms the minds of whomsoever she wishes, and to cause others cruel anxieties; to stay the current in the stream, to turn the stars back. She summons the spirits of the dead at night; you shall hear the earth bellow beneath your feet and see the ash trees come down the mountain side.”[318]

[318] Verg. _Aen._ 4, 487–491, not quoted directly but taken from
Augustine, _De Civitate Dei_, 21, 6.

7. Why should I tell further of the sorceress—if it is right to believe it—how she summoned the soul of the prophet Samuel from the secret places of hell and presented him to the gaze of the living—if we are to believe that it was the soul of the prophet and not some fantastic deceit created by the trickery of Satan.

8. Prudentius, too, tells of Mercury: “It is said that he recalled the souls of the dead to the light by the power of the wand he held, and others he condemned to death.” And a little later he adds: “The wicked art can summon unsubstantial forms with its magic murmur and utter incantations over sepulchral ashes, and others it can deprive of life.”

9. The magi are they who are usually called _malefici_ because of the greatness of their guilt. They throw the elements into commotion, disorder men’s minds, and without any draught of poison they kill by the mere virulence of a charm.

10. ... They summon demons, and dare to work such juggleries that each one slays his enemies by evil arts. They use blood also, and victims, and often touch dead bodies.

11. Necromancers are they by whose incantations the dead appear to revive and prophesy and answer questions.... To summon them blood is thrown on a corpse; for they say demons love blood, and therefore as often as necromancy is practiced blood is mixed with water, that they may be more easily attracted owing to the color of blood.

12. The _hydromantii_ are so named from water. For it is hydromancy to summon the shades of demons by looking into water and to see their likenesses or mockeries, and to be told some things by them, while the pretence is made that it is actually the dead who are being questioned by the aid of blood.[319]

[319] From Augustine, _De Civitate Dei_, bk. vii. cap. 35.

13. This sort of divination is said to have been introduced by the Persians. Varro says there are four kinds of divination, namely, by earth, air, water, fire; hence geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, pyromancy.

14. _Divini_ (sooth-sayers) are so called as if they were _Deo pleni_ (full of God); for they pretend that they are full of divinity and they guess men’s future by a deceitful cleverness.

There are two sorts of [this] divination, skill and frenzy.

16. _Arioli_ (sooth-sayers) are so named because they utter their execrable prayers at the altars (_aras_) of idols and make funeral offerings, and because of their solemn observances they receive responses from demons.

23. The _genethliaci_ are so named because of their observance of natal days. They lay out men’s nativities according to the twelve constellations of heaven, and by the course of the stars endeavor to foretell the characters, deeds, and fortunes of the new-born, that is, under what sign each has been born, and what result it has for the life of him who is born.

25. At first the interpreters of the stars were called _magi_, as is read of those who announced the birth of Christ in the Gospel; later they had only the name of _mathematici_.

26. A knowledge of this art was granted up to the time of the Gospel, that when Christ was born no one after that should read the nativity of anyone from heaven.

30. To these belong also the _ligatures_, with their accursed remedies, which medical science condemns, whether in charms or in signs or in suspending and binding articles.

31. In all these the demonic art has arisen from a pestilential association of men and bad angels. Whence all must be avoided by Christians and rejected and condemned with thorough-going malediction.

Chapter 10. On the heathen.

2. The Gentiles are they who are without the law and have not yet believed. Moreover they are called Gentiles because they are in their con-genital state, that is, just as in the flesh they have plunged down into sin, to wit, serving idols and not yet regenerate.