Chapter II: Black and White Magic (2)

The manifestations of so-called spirits have naturally excited much attention, and given rise to the bitterest attacks. In England, especially, the learned world is all on one side and the Spiritualists all on the other; nor do they hesitate to say very bitter things of each other. The _Saturday Review_, more forcibly than courteously, speaks of American spiritualists thus: "If this is the spirit world, and if this is spiritual intelligence, and if all the spirits can do, is to whisk about in dark rooms, and pinch people's legs under the table, and play 'Home, Sweet Home,' on the accordeon, and kiss folks in the dark, and paint baby pictures, and write such sentimental, namby-pamby as Mr. Coleman copies out from their dictation--it is much better to be a respectable pig and accept annihilation than to be cursed with such an immortality as this." To which the _Spiritual Magazine_ (Jan., 1862), does not hesitate to reply. "We shall not eat breakfast bacon for some time, for fear of getting a slice of the editor of the _Saturday Review_, in his self-sought appropriate metempsychosis." It must be borne in mind, however, that spiritualists everywhere appeal to their own reason as the highest tribunal before which such questions can be decided, and to the laws of nature, because as they say, they are identical with the laws of practical reason. They believe, as a body, neither in angels nor in demons. Their spirits are simply the purified souls of departed men. Protestant theologians, who admit of no purgatory, see in these exhibitions nothing but the deeds of Satan. Catholic divines, on the other hand, and Protestant mystics, who, like the German, Schubert, believe that there exist what they curiously enough call a "more peaceful infernal spirit," ascribe them to the agency of evil spirits. In the great majority of cases, however, the spirits have clearly shown themselves nothing else but the product of the media. The latter, invariably either of diseased mind by nature or over-excited for the occasion, believe they see and hear manifestations in the outer world, which in reality exist only in their own consciousness. A Catholic medium is thus visited by spirits from heaven and hell, while the Protestant medium never meets souls from purgatory. Nothing has ever been revealed concerning the future state of man, that was not already well known upon earth. Most diverting are the jealousies of great spirits, of Solomon and Socrates, Moses and Plato--when the media happen to be jealous of each other! A somewhat satirical writer on the subject explains even the fact that spirits so often contradict each other and say vile things of sacred subjects, by the inner wickedness of the media, which comes to light on such occasions, while they carefully conceal it in ordinary life! If these spirits are really the creations of the inner magic life, of which we are just learning to know the first elementary signs, then the powers which are hidden within us may well terrify us as they appear in such exhibitions, while we will not be surprised at the manner in which many an ordinary mortal appears here as a poet or a prophet--if not as a wicked demon. Nor must it be overlooked that our memory holds vast treasures of knowledge of which we are utterly unconscious until, under certain circumstances, one or the other fact suddenly reappears before our mind's eye. The very fact that we can, by a great effort and continued appeals to our memory, recall at last what was apparently utterly forgotten, proves the presence of such knowledge. A state of intense excitement, of fever or of trance, is peculiarly favorable to the recovery of such hidden treasures, and there can be no doubt that many a medium honestly believes to receive a new revelation, when only old, long forgotten facts return to his consciousness. Generally however, we repeat, nothing is in the spirit that is not in the medium. The American spiritualist conjures up only his own countrymen, and occasionally some world-renowned heroes like Napoleon or Caesar, Shakespeare or Schiller, while the cosmopolitan German receives visits from men of all countries. Finally it must be borne in mind that, according to an old proverb, we are ever ready to believe what we wish to see or hear, and hence the amazing credulity of the majority of spiritualists. Even skeptics are not free from the influence of this tendency. When Dr. Bell, the eminent physician of Somerville, Mass., investigated these phenomena of modern magic, many years ago, he promptly noticed that the spirits never gave information which was not already in the possession of one or the other person present. Only in a few cases he acknowledged with his usual candor, and at once, at the meeting itself, that a true answer was returned. But when he examined, after his return home, these few exceptional revelations, he discovered that he had been mistaken, and that these answers had been after all as illusory as the others.

There can be no doubt therefore, that modern magic, as far as it consists in table-moving and spirit-rapping, with their usual accompaniments, is neither the work of mechanical jugglery exclusively, nor, on the other hand, the result of revelations made by spirits. In the mass of accumulated evidence there remain however, after sifting it carefully, many facts which cannot be explained according to the ordinary course of nature. The power which produces these phenomena must be classified with other well-known powers given to man under exceptional circumstances, such as the safety of somnambulists in dangerous places; the cures performed by faith, and the strange exhibitions made by diseased persons, suffering of catalepsy and similar affections. If men, under the influence of mesmerism, in a state of ecstatic fervor, or under the pressure of strong and long-continued excitement, show powers which are not possessed by man naturally, then modern magic also may well be admitted as one of the means by which such extraordinary, and as yet unexplored forces are brought to light. All that can be reasonably asked of those who so peremptorily challenge our admiration, and demand our respect for the new science, is that it shall be proved to be useful to man, and this proof is, as yet, altogether wanting.

In Mexico the preparation for acts of magic seems to have been downright intoxication; at least we learn from Acosta, in his _Hist. nat. y moral de los Indias_ (lv.), that the priests, before sacrificing, inhaled powerful perfumes, rubbed themselves with ointments made of venomous animals, tobacco and hempseed, and finally drank chica mixed with various drugs. Thus they reached a state of exaltation in which they not only butchered numbers of human beings in cold blood, and lost all fear of wild beasts, but were also able to reveal what was happening at a great distance, or even future events. We find similar practices, also, nearer home. The Indians of Martha's Vineyard had, before they were converted, their skillful magicians, who stood in league with evil spirits, and as pawaws discovered stolen things, injured men at a distance, and clearly foretold the coming of the whites. The pious Brainert gives us full accounts of some of the converted Delawares, who, after baptism, felt the evil spirit depart from them, and lost the power of magic. One, a great and wicked magician, deplored bitterly his former condition, when he was a slave of the evil one, and became, in the good missionary's words: "an humble, devout, hearty, and loving Christian." It is more difficult to explain the magic of the so-called Archbishop Beissel, the head of the brotherhood at Ephrata, in Pennsylvania, who, according to contemporary authorities "oppressed by his magic the father and steward of the convent, Eckerling, to such a degree, that he left his brethren and sought refuge in a hermit's hut in the forest!" The spirits of departed brethren and sisters returned to the refectory at this bishop's bidding; they partook of bread and meat, and even conversed with their successors. There can be no doubt that Beissel, abundantly and exceptionally gifted, possessed the power to put his unhappy subordinates, already exhausted by asceticism of every kind, into a state of ecstasy, in which they sincerely believed they saw these spirits, and were subjected to magic influences. That such power has by no means entirely departed from our continent, may be seen in the atrocities perpetrated at the command of the negroes' Obee, of which well-authenticated records abound in Florida and Louisiana, as well as in Cuba.

The Indo-Germanic race has known and practised black magic from time immemorial, and the Vendidad already explains it as an act which Ahriman, the Evil Spirit, brought forth when overshadowed by death. In Egypt it flourished for ages, and has never become entirely extinct. Jannes and Jambres, who led the priests in their opposition to Moses (2. Tim. iii. 8), have their successors in our day, and the very miracles performed by these ancient charmers have been witnessed again and again by modern travelers. Holy Writ abounds with instances of every kind of magic; it speaks of astrology, and prophesying from arrows, from the entrails of animals, and from dreams; but, strangely enough, the charming of serpents and the evil eye are not mentioned, if we except Balaam. The Kabbalah, on the contrary, speaks more than once of the evil eye (ain hara), and all the southern nations of Europe, as well as the Slavic races, fear its weird power.

The eye is, however, by no means employed only to work evil; by the side of their _mal occhio_ the Italians have another gift, called _attrativa_, which enables man, apparently by the force of his eye only, to draw to himself all whom he wishes to attract. The well-known Saint Filippo Neri thus not only won all whom he wished to gain over, by looking at them, but even dogs left their beloved masters and followed him everywhere. Cotton Mather tells us in his "Magnolia" that quakers frequently by the eye only--though often, also, by anointing or breathing upon them--compelled others to accompany them, to join their communion, and to be in all things obedient to their bidding. Tom Case, himself a quaker, certainly possessed the power of overwhelming those at whom he looked fixedly for a while, to such a degree that they fell down as if struck with epilepsy; once, at least, he turned even a mad bull, by the force of his eye, till it approached him humbly and licked his hand like a pet dog. Even in our own age Goethe has admitted the power of certain men to attract others by the strength of their will, and mentions an instance in which he himself, ardently wishing to see his beloved one, forced her unconsciously to come and meet him halfway. (Eckermann, iii. 201.)

It avails nothing to stigmatize a faith so deeply rooted and so universal as mere superstition. Among the mass of errors which in the course of ages have accumulated around the creed, the little grain of truth, the indubitable power of man's mind to act through the eye, ought not to be overlooked.

It is the same with the magic known as such to the two great nations of antiquity. If the Greeks saw in Plato the son of Apollo, who came to his mother Perictione in the shape of a serpent, and in Alexander the Great the son of Jupiter Ammon, they probably intended merely to pay the same compliment to their countrymen which modern nations convey by calling their rulers Kings and Kaisers "by the Grace of God." But the consistency with which higher beings came to visit earth-born man in the shape of favored animals, is more than an accident. The sons of God came to see the daughters of men, though it is not said in what form they appeared, and the suggestion that they were the "giants upon the earth," mentioned in Holy Writ, is not supported; but exactly as the gods came from Olympus in the shape of bulls and rams, so the evil spirits of the Middle Ages appeared in the shape of rams and cats. A curious instance of the mixture of truth and falsehood appears in this connection. It is well-known that the Italians of the South look upon Virgil as one of the greatest magicians that ever lived, and ascribe to his tomb even now supernatural power. The poet himself had, of course, nothing whatever to do with magic; but his reputation as a magician arose from the fact that, next to the Bible, his verses became, at an early period, a favorite means of consulting the future. _Sortes Virgilianae_, the lines which upon accidentally opening the volume first met the eye, were a leading feature of the art known as stichomania.

The story of the greatest magician mentioned in the New Testament has been thoroughly examined, and the main features, at least, are well established. Simon Magus was a magician in the sense in which the ancients used that term; but he possessed evidently, in addition, all the powers claimed by better spiritualists, like Home in our day. A native of Gitton, a small village of Samaria, he had early manifested superior intellectual gifts, accompanied by an almost marvelous control over the minds of others. By the aid of the former he produced a lofty gnostic system, which crumbled, however, to pieces as soon as it came into contact with the inspired system of Christianity. His influence over others led him, in the arrogance which is inherent to natural man, to consider himself as the Great Divine Power, which appeared in different forms as Father, Son, and Spirit. He professed to be able to make himself invisible and to pass, unimpeded, through solid substances--precisely as was done in later ages by Saint Dominic and other saints (Goerres. Mystic, ii. 576)--to bind and to loosen others as well as himself at will; to open prison doors and to cause trees to grow out of the bare ground. Before utterly rejecting his pretensions as mere lies and tricks, we must bear in mind two facts: first, that modern jugglers in India perform these very tricks in a manner as yet unexplained, and secondly, that he, in all probability, possessed merely the power of exciting others to a high state of exaltation, in which they candidly believed they saw all these things. At all events, his magic deeds were identical with the miracles of later saints, and as these are enthroned in shrine and statue in Rome, so the Eternal City erected to Simon Magus, also, a statue, and proclaimed him a god in the days of Claudius! Another celebrated magician of the same race, was Sedechias (Goerres. Mystic, iv. ii. 71), who lived in the days of Saint Louis, and who, once, in order to convince the skeptics of his day of the real existence of spirits, such as the Kabbalah admits, ordered them to appear in human form before the eyes of the monarch. Instantly the whole plain around the king's tent was alive with a vast army; long rows of bright-colored tents dotted the lowlands, and on the slopes around were encamped countless troops; whilst mounted squadrons appeared in the air, performing marvelous evolutions. This was probably the first instance of those airy hosts, which have ever since been seen in various countries.

The Christian era gave to magic phenomena a new and specific character; what was a miracle in apostolic times remained in the eyes of the multitude a miracle to our day, when performed by saints of the church--it became a crime and an abomination when the authors were laymen, and yet both differed in no single feature. The most remarkable representative of this dual nature of supernatural performances is, no doubt, Dr. Faust, whom the great and pious Melanchthon states to have well known as a native of the little village of Knittlingen, near his own birth-place, and as a man of dissolute habits, whom the Devil carried off in person. His motto, which has been discovered under a portrait of his (Hauber's "Bibl. Mag."), was characteristic of his faith: _Omne bonum et perfectum a Deo, imperfectum a diabolo_. His vast learning, his great power over the elements, and the popular story of his pact with the Evil One, made him a hero among the Germans, of whose national tendencies he was then the typical representative. Unfortunately, however, nearly every Christian land has had its own Faust; such was, for instance, in Spain the famous Dr. Toralba, who lived in the sixteenth century, and by the aid of a servile demon read the future, healed the sick, traveled through the air, and even when he fell into the hands of the Inquisition, obtained his release through the Great Admiral of Castile. Gilles de Laval, who was publicly burnt in 1440, and Lady Fowlis, of Scotland, are parallel cases.

One of the most absurd ceremonies belonging to black magic, was the well-known Taigheirm, of the Scotch Highlands, a demoniac sacrifice evidently handed down from pagan times. The so-called magician procured a large number of black cats, and devoted them, with solemn incantations, and while burning offensive incense of various kinds, to the evil spirits. Then the poor victims were spitted and slowly roasted over a fire of coals, one after the other, but so that not a second's pause occurred between the death of one and the sufferings of the next. This horridly absurd sacrifice had to be continued for three days and nights, during which the magician was not allowed to take any food or drink. The consequence was, that if he did not drop down exhausted and perish miserably, he became fearfully excited, and finally saw demons in the shape of black cats who granted him all he desired (Horst. "Deuteroscopia," ii. 184). It need hardly be added that in the state of clairvoyance which he had reached, he only asked for what he well knew was going to happen, and that all the fearful visions of hellish spirits existed only in his overwrought imagination. But it will surprise many to learn that such "taigheirms" were held as late as the last century, and that a place is still shown on the island of Mull, where Allan Maclean with his assistant, Lachlain Maclean, sacrificed black cats for four days and nights in succession. The elder of the two passed for a kind of high-priest and chief magician with the superstitious islanders; the other was a young unmarried man of fine appearance, and more than ordinary intelligence. Both survived the fearful ceremony, but sank utterly exhausted to the ground, unable to obtain the revelation which they had expected; nevertheless they retained the gift of second sight for their lives.

It must not be imagined, finally, that the summoning of spirits is a lost art; even in our day men are found who are willing to call the departed from their resting-place, and to exhibit them to the eyes of living men. The best explanation of this branch of magic was once given by a learned professor, whom the Prince Elector of Brandenburg, Frederick II., sent for from Halle, in order to learn from him how spirits could be summoned. The savant declared that nothing was easier, and supported his assertion by a number of actual performances. First the spectator was prepared by strong beverages, such as the Egyptian sorcerers already used to employ on similar occasions, and by the burning of incense. Soon he fell into a kind of half-sleep, in which he could still understand what was said, but no longer reflect upon the sense of the words; gradually his brain became so disturbed, and his imagination so highly excited, that he pictured to himself images corresponding to the words which he heard, and called them up before his mind's eye as realities. The magician, protected against the effects of the incense by a sponge filled with an alcoholic mixture, then began to converse with his visitor, and tried to learn from him all he could concerning the person the latter wished to see, his shape, his clothes, etc. Finally the victim was conducted into a dark room, where he was suddenly asked by a stern, imperious voice: "Do you not see that woman in white?" (or whatever the person might be,) and at once his over-excited imagination led him to think that he really beheld what he expected or wished to see. This was allowed to go on till he sank down exhausted, or actually fainted away. When he recovered his consciousness, he naturally recollected but imperfectly what he had seen while in a state of great excitement, and his memory, impaired by the intermediate utter exhaustion and fainting, failed to recall the small errors or minute inaccuracies of his vision. All that was left of the whole proceeding was a terrifying impression on his mind that he had really seen the spirits of departed friends.

Such skillful manoeuvres were more than once employed for sinister purposes. Thus it is a well-known historical fact that the men who obtained control over King Frederick William II., after his ascension to the throne, and held it for a time by the visions which they showed him, employed means like these to summon the spirits he wished to see. The master in this branch of black magic was undoubtedly Joseph Balsamo, the Count Cagliostro of French history. He was neither a magician in the true sense of the word, nor even a religious enthusiast, but merely an accomplished juggler and swindler, who had acquired, by natural endowment, patient study, and consummate art, a great power over the minds of others. He played upon the imagination of men as upon a familiar instrument, and the greatest philosophers were as easily victimized by him as the most clear-sighted women, in spite of the natural instinct which generally protects the latter against such imposition. His secret--as far as the summoning of the spirits of the departed is concerned--has died with him, but that enlightened, conscientious men candidly believed they had been shown disembodied spirits, is too well established by memories of French and Dutch writers to be doubted. In the meetings of his "lodges of Egyptian Freemasons" he, as Grand Cophtha, or those whom he had qualified by breathing upon them, employed a boy or a girl, frequently called up at haphazard from the street, but at other times carefully prepared for the purpose, to look into the hand or a basin of water. The poor child was, however, first made half-unconscious, being anointed with the "oil of wisdom," no doubt an intoxicating compound, and after numerous ceremonies, carried into a recess called the Tabernacle, and ordered to look into the hand or a basin of water. After the assembly had prayed for some time, the "Dove," as they called the child, was asked what he saw. Ordinarily he beheld first an angel or a priest--probably the image of Cagliostro himself in his sacerdotal robes--but frequently also monkeys, the offspring of a skeptical imagination. Then followed more or less interesting revelations, some utterly absurd, others of real interest, and at times actual predictions of future events. Cagliostro himself, during his last trial before the Inquisition of Rome, while readily confessing a large number of impostures, stoutly maintained the genuineness of these communications and insisted that they were the effects of a special power granted by God. His assertion has some value, as the shrewd man knew very well how much more he was likely to gain by a prompt avowal than by such a denial; his wife, also, although his accomplice in former years, and now by no means disposed to spare her quasi-husband, always stated that this was a true mystery which she had never been able to fathom. If we add to these considerations the fact that numerous masters of lodges, even in Holland and England, obtained the same results, and that they cannot all have been impostors or deluded victims, there remains enough in these well-established phenomena to ascribe them to a mysterious, magic power. (_Compendio della vita, etc. di G. Balsamo_, Roma, 1791.) It is in fact quite evident that the unfortunate juggler possessed in a very rare degree a power akin to that practised by a Mesmer, a Home, and other men of that class, without having the sense to understand its true nature or the ambition to employ it for other than the lowest selfish purposes. Trials of magicians, who have conjured up the dead and compelled them to reveal the future, are still taking place every now and then; in the year 1850 not less than four men, together with their associates, were accused of this crime in enlightened Germany, and the proceedings in one case, which occurred in Munich, created no small sensation.

Black magic, therefore, must also be looked upon as by no means a mere illusion, much less as the work of evil spirits. The results it obtains at times are the work of man himself, and exist only within his own conscience. But if man can produce such marvelous effects, which lie apparently beyond the range of the material world, how much more must the Creator and Preserver of all things be able to call forth events which transcend--to our mind--the limits of the tangible world. Such occurrences, when they have a higher moral or religious purpose in view, we call Miracles, and they remain incomprehensible for all whose knowledge is confined to the physical world. Above the laws of nature there rules the Divine Will, which can do what Nature cannot do, and which we can only begin to understand when we bear in mind the fact that by the side of the visible order of the world or above it, there exist spiritual laws as well as spiritual beings. In a miracle, powers are rendered active which ordinarily remain inactive, but which exist none the less permanently in the world. Hence all great thinkers have readily admitted the existence of miracles: a Locke and a Leibnitz as well as, more recently, a Stahl and a Schopenhauer. Locke, in his "Discourse of Miracles," goes so far as to call them the very credentials of a messenger sent from God, and asserts that Moses and Christ have alike authenticated the truth and the divine character of their revelations by miracles. Even their possible continuance is believed in by those who hope that men will ever continue among us who "have tasted the good word of God and _the powers of the world to come_." (Hebrews vi. 5.)