Chapter III: Part 3

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"My knowledge is not of myself. Far, far away behind these hills, behind the snowy summits of the Alps, behind the mountains of the 'farthest-dwelling Garamantes,' on nameless heights which disappear among the clouds, the temple of truth was built long ago over the fountain from which life flows. That this temple is demolished we well know; only the first human pair has wandered through its sacred halls. But he who desires, who yearns and has patience, can sit down by the margin of the stream of Time and grasp and draw ashore some of the cedar-beams from the ruined temple drifting upon the billows, and from the form of the fragments may determine the structure of the whole. All wisdom has its roots in the past, and the farther we penetrate antiquity, the richer the remains we find of a highest human wisdom. What is Albertus Magnus with his profound knowledge in comparison with the angelic wisdom of Dionysius Areopagita, and what is the latter compared with that of the prophet who denounced his woes over Nineveh and Babylon? And yet these divinely commissioned men would gladly have been taught by the seventy elders who were allowed with Moses to approach the mountain where God chose to reveal himself, there receiving the mystic knowledge of the Cabala. On Sinai, however, God's secret was veiled in clouds, lightnings and terror; Moses himself was permitted to see him only 'from behind'--did not obtain a morning-knowledge (a knowledge _a priori_, an analogy-seeking pupil of Schelling would have called it), but an evening-knowledge (knowledge _a posteriori_, he would have added). The morning-knowledge was shown only to the man of the dawn of time and was extinguished at the first sin. From that time every successive generation has deteriorated from its predecessor:

"'_Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit
Nos nequiores, mox daturos
Progeniem vitiosiorem_,'

and with the darkness of sin reason is plunged into constantly blacker depths. The individual seeker after truth may gain enlightenment, but for himself alone, not for humanity. Therefore a magician confines the wisdom he acquires to his own bosom, or imparts it to a single pupil, or buries it under obscure expressions which he commits to parchment; but he neither can nor will impart it without reserve to humanity whose path appears to lead downward into a constantly deeper night.

"Even the theologians speak of the pristine wisdom,--the theologians with whom we, who practice the occult science, agree far more than the simple and suspicious among them think. What remained, in the time of Noah, of pristine wisdom was saved with him in the ark. His first-born obtained as his portion the fairest wisdom. Prophecy, the Cabala, and the Gospel belong to the sons of Shem, the Jews. But even Ham and Japhet were not left destitute. It was the priest of the sons of Ham that guarded the secrets of Isis,--secrets before which even we Christians must bow in the dust; for the Old Testament does not hesitate to exalt the wisdom of the Egyptians and recognize Moses as a pupil from their school. Hermes Trismegistus was an Egyptian, and we magicians who know that he transmuted whatever he chose into gold and precious stones, are not astonished when the apostle Paul speaks of the treasures of Egypt, or at what travellers relate of its pyramids and other giant works, or when Pliny estimates the number of its cities at twenty thousand, or when Marcellinus is amazed at the immense treasures which Cambyses carried away from it, for all this was a creation of the art of Hermes Trismegistus.[30] Even the portion of the children of Japhet was not insignificant. It was divided between the treasury of Zoroaster and that of the Eleusinian mysteries. Some coins of this treasure fell into the hands of Plato and Aristotle and have from them come into the possession of Porphyrius, Jamblichus, and the theosophists and scholastics. It is this diffused illumination--that of the Bible (its inner, secret meaning) the Cabala and fragments of Egyptian, Persian and Grecian wisdom--which are collected and united in the magic of learning. These are the ancestors of my science. Has it not a pedigree more noble than that of any royal family?

"I heard you mention something about the necessity for a science of investigation without presupposition. Would you then really presume to be the judge of all that past generations have thought, believed and transmitted as a sacred inheritance to those that follow? Do you not shrink before the idea that human hunger for truth must have been satisfied from Adam to our own days by nothing but illusions? that you are the children and children's children of mere idiots who have fixed their hopes, their faith, and their convictions on baseless falsehoods? Put your godless plan of investigation to the test! Do it openly, and the theologians will burn you! Do it in secret, and you will finally crave the stake as a liberator from the terrible void such a science would leave in your own soul! No, the magician believes just as devoutly as the theologian. Only in the mellow twilight of faith can he undertake those operations whose success is a confirmation of the truth of his faith. Or do you require stronger corroboration of the genuineness of his tenets than what I find when I read in these stars which wander silently past my window, the fates of men, and see these fates accomplished; when, with the potency of magical means, I summon angels, and demons, and the souls of dead and unborn men to reveal themselves before my eyes, and they appear?

"I confess that our science, if it is looked at only on the surface, resembles a variegated carpet with artfully interwoven threads; but as only a limited number of manipulations is required to produce the most remarkable texture, so it is also but a few simple thoughts which support all the doctrines and products of magic.

"That the universe is a triple harmony, as the Godhead is a Trinity, you are aware. We live in the elemental world; over our head the celestial space, with its various spheres, revolves; and above this, finally, God is enthroned in the purely spiritual world of ideas. The unhappy scientists of your century have in their narrow prejudice separated these worlds from one another (but by crowding together the celestial and the elementary). Your so-called students of nature investigate only the elementary world, and your so-called philosophers only the ideal; but the former with all their delving in the various forms of matter, never reach the realm of the spiritual, but are rather led to disavow its existence; and the latter can never from the dim world of ideas summon up the concrete wealth of nature. In vain your students of nature imagine that in physiology, or your philosophers that in anthropology, they shall find the transition from one world to the other. We magicians, on the contrary, study these worlds as a unit. We find them combined by two mighty bonds: those of correspondence and causality. All things in the elementary world have their antitype in the celestial, and all celestial things have their corresponding ideas. These correspondences are strung from above downwards as strings on the harp of the universe, and on that harp the causalities move up and down like the fingers of a player. While your students of nature seek the chains of causality in only one direction, the horizontal, that which runs through things on the same level, that which connects things in one and the same elementary world; we, the students of magic, search with still greater diligence those perpendicular chains of causality which run through and combine corresponding objects in the three worlds. Our manner of investigating this perpendicular series resembles your method of examining the horizontal but slightly, if at all. What unnecessary trouble your induction causes you! You wish to investigate the nature of some manifestation of force, for instance; you analyze it with great painstaking into different factors, you strive to isolate each of these factors and to cause them to act each its own part, to find out what each has contributed to the common expression of force. We meet with no such hindrances. A secret tradition has presented to us our perpendicular lines of causality almost entire, and we are able to fill up the lacunae of this tradition by an investigation which is not impeded with any great difficulties. This investigation relies on the resemblances of things, for this similarity is derived from a correspondence, and causality is interwoven with correspondence. Thus, for instance, we judge from the resemblance between the splendor of gold and that of the sun that gold has its celestial correspondence in that luminary, and sustains to it a causal relation. Another example: the two-horned beetle bears a causal relation to the moon, which at its increase and wane is also two-horned; and if there were any doubt of this intimate relation between them, it must vanish when we learn that the beetle hides its eggs in the earth for the space of twenty-eight days, or just so long time as is required for the moon to pass through the Zodiac, but digs them up again on the twenty-ninth, when the moon is in conjunction with the Sun.[31] Do not smile at this method of investigation! Beware of repeating the mistake which 'common sense' is so prone to make in seeing absurdities in truths which happen to be beyond its horizon? Our method is founded on the idea that there is nothing casual in nature. To be sure we accept a divine arbitrament, but by no means a natural fortuity. Not even the slightest similarity between existing objects is a meaningless accident! Not even the slightest stroke in the figures by which we fix our words and thoughts in writing is without deep significance. Every thing in the work of nature and of man has its cause and its effect. We can not make a gesture, nor say a word, without imparting vibrations to the whole universe, upward and downward,--vibrations which may be strong or feeble, perceptible or imperceptible. This principle runs through the whole of our cosmical system, and this thought must be true even for you analyzers.

"Before explaining more fully the magical use of our series of correspondence and causality, I wish to show you a couple of them. I shall choose the simplest, but at the same time the most important. I commence with

THE SCALE OF THE HOLY TETRAD. (Table I.)

_From which is found the Correspondences to the Four Elements._

"Here you see one of the nets which magic has stretched from the Empyrean down into the abyss. For each of the sacred numbers there is a separate scale of the same kind: 'The universe,' says Pythagoras, 'is founded upon numbers,' and Boethius asserts that 'Every thing created in the beginning of time was formed according to the relations of certain numbers, which were lying as types in the mind of the Creator.' It is consequently a settled fact with us that numbers contain greater and more effective forces than material things; for the former are not a mixture of substances, but may, as purely formal entities, stand in immediate connection with the ideas of divine reason. This is recognized also by the fathers: by Hieronymus, Augustine, Ambrosius, Athanasius, Bede, and others, and underlies these words in the book of Revelation: 'Let him who hath understanding count the number of the beast.' Those varied and relatively discordant objects which form a unity in the same world, are arranged side by side in the scale; whereas those things which in different groups or different worlds correspond to one another, form the ascending and descending series.

"Do not forget that correspondence also implies reciprocal activity! Thus, for instance, the letter [Hebrew] in the holy name of God indicates a power which is infused into the successive orders of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, and which is imparted through them to the constellations Leo and Sagittarius, and to the two wandering luminaries Mars and the Sun. These angels and stars all pour down into the elementary world the abundance of their power, which produces there fire and heat, and the germs of animal organisms, and kindles in man reason and faith, in order to meet finally in the lowest region, its opposites: cold, destruction, irrationality, unbelief, represented by the names of fallen angel-princes. I will now show you another table which is an introduction to the study of Astrology and treats more in detail of certain parts of the preceding, showing how things in the elementary world and microcosm are subject to the planets. In showing this to you I will remind you of the verse:

'_Astra regunt hominem; sed regit astra Deus._'
(_The stars guide man; but God guides the stars._)

(TABLE II.)

"The value of these, as of many other tables, will be clear to you when I now pronounce the first practical principle of magic:--

"_As the Creator of the universe diffuses upon us, by angels, stars, elements, animals, plants, metals and stones, the powers of his omnipotence, so also the magician, by collecting those objects in the elemental world which bear a relation of mutual activity to the same entity (an angel or a planet) in the higher worlds, and by combining their powers according to scientific rules, and intensifying them by means of sacred and religious ceremonies, is able to influence this higher being and attract to himself its powers._

"This principle sufficiently explains why I have collected around me all the strange things you here see. Here, for instance, is a plate of lead on which is engraved the symbol of a planet; and beside it a leaden flask containing gall. If I now take a piece of fine onyx marked with the same planet-symbol, and this dried cypress-branch, and add to them the skin of a snake and the feather of an owl, you will need but to look into one of the tables given you to find that I have only collected various things in the elementary world which bear a relation of mutual activity to Saturn; and, if rightly combined, can attract both the powers of that planet, and of the angels with which it is connected.

"The greatest effect of magic--at the same time its triumph, and the criterion of its truth--is a successful incantation. Shall we perform one? If we go through all the necessary preparations, we shall have a bird's-eye view of the whole secret science. Only certain alchemists have a still greater end in view; they aspire to produce in the retort man himself,--nay, the whole world. You men of the nineteenth century know only by reputation of our attempts to produce an _homunculus_, and _a perpetuum mobile naturae_. Could you only count the drops of perspiration these efforts have wrung from us! There is something enchanting, something overpowering, in alchemy. It is gigantic in its aims, and in its depths dwells a thought which is terrible, because it threatens to crush that very cosmic philosophy on which our faith is founded. We occupy ourselves with the elements, until the idea steals upon us that every thing is dependent on them; that every thing, Creator and created, is included in them; that every thing arises by necessity and passes away by necessity. If you can only collect in the crucible those elements and life-germs which were stirring in chaos, then you can also produce, in the crucible, the six days of creation, and find the spirit which formed the universe. I have abandoned alchemy only to escape this thought; but a parchment will, sealed with seven seals, and hidden in the most secret corner of my vaults, contains the remarkable experiences I have had when experimenting for the _perpetuum mobile_ and _homunculus_.[32]

"But to the preparations for our conjuration! First we are met with the question: Is the hour favorable? Do the aspects oppose? Aspect is the relative position of two planets to each other. Every calendar from the centuries which lie between you and me speaks of these aspects: of the conjunction of the planets (when they are on the same meridian, and consequently separated by no angular distance); their opposition (when in a directly opposite part of the heavens); their quadrature (distance of 90 deg.), trigon (120 deg.), and hexagon (60 deg.). If the blood-red Mars, or the pale Saturn stand in quadrature or in opposition to one another, or to any of the other wandering stars, this portends destruction. But to-day both these planets are harmless; the aspects are good, and Mars itself being in the first 'face' of its own house,[33] is consequently even kindly disposed. Even the moon, whose assistance is needed, is in the house of a friendly star, and in a favorable quadrature to Jupiter. Here we meet consequently with no hindrances. It remains, however, on the side of Astrology to find out what planets are the regents of the present year. In other words, what planets form the first aspect of the year. Look here in my calendarium. Mars was one of them. This suits us all the better as to-day is Tuesday, Mars' own day, and as the hour will soon be here which, on this day, he presides over absolutely.[34] It is therefore of importance that we use in our incantation the martial part of my magical apparatus. Among the elements fire is martial. We shall therefore kindle a fire upon this altar. Among the planets, the thorny, poisonous and nettle-like are martial. We shall therefore feed this fire with dry twigs and rose-bushes. Among the animals the ferocious and bold are connected with the blood-red star. Here you see three belts of lion's hide fringed with the teeth of tigers, leopards and bears, and provided with clasps of iron, because iron is the martial metal. Let us fasten those belts, when the time has arrived, about our waists. Among the stones the diamond, amethyst, jasper and magnet are martial. I show you here three diadems which, though of pure iron, sparkle with these stones, and are furnished with the signs and signatures of our planet. Here you have three iron staves marked with the same signs: we must bear them in our hands. These breast-plates studded with amethysts, whose Hebrew inscriptions and characters refer to the same stars, we must wear over our hearts on the outside of the white clothing which we shall put on before our incantation begins. Here again you will notice three diamond rings: we shall wear them on our middle finger during the solemn and awful moment for which we are preparing. These two bells we place on the table; one of a reddish alloy and furnished with iron rings, summons the martial spirit hither, the other made of _electrum magicum_ (_i. e._, a proportional alloy of all metals with some astral tincture added), serves to call celestial reserve-forces of all kinds, if needed. Further, we require these breast-plates and these rings of electrum, which do not bear the name of any planet, but the glorious and blessed name of God himself, as a protection for the conjurers against the conjured spirit. Who he is we shall soon find. Observe here, further, a terrible arsenal which is also necessary for our purpose. Mars is the star of war, murder and passion. The demons of Mars have a corresponding nature, and there exists between them and the tools by which their work on earth is accomplished, a power of attraction. Therefore we have here this heavy sword with which the magic circle is to be drawn; we therefore place in rows these skulls and bones which have been collected in places of execution, these nails, extracted from gallows, these daggers, knives and axes rusty with stains of blood. We must not forget the incense which was kindled on the altar shortly before the first citation. There is a different kind of incense for every planet and its demons. That appropriate for Mars is composed of euphorbia, bdellium, ammoniac, magnet, sulphur, brains of a raven, human blood and the blood of a _black_ cat.[35] It is highly important that the quality of this incense should be genuine. I might quote what Porphyrius says upon this point; but confine myself to pointing out that it has an influence on the conjurer as well as upon surrounding objects. It saturates both the air and the breast of the conjurer with substances that are connected with the planet and its demons. It draws down the conjured being and intoxicates him, as it were, with divine influences, which act on his mind and imagination. As a matter of course we must prepare besides, such implements as are needed in every incantation without bearing any relation to any certain planet. To them belong amulets inscribed with the names of seraphs, cherubs and thrones, and with sentences from the Bible and the sacred books of Zoroaster. To them belong further the magical candlestick of electrum with seven branches, every branch bearing the sign of a planet; and above all the pentagrams, those figures with fine points which no demon can overstep. We shall place the latter as a line of fortification around the magic circle, and we must be sure that no one of the points is broken. Inside the circle between the table, the seven-armed candlestick and the incense-altar there is room for the tripod with the bowl of holy water and the sprinkler.

"Having thus made the necessary preparations for our feast, let us think of the guest who is to be invited.

"The air of the evening is cool. I close the window, move my study lamp to this table, and ask you to be seated around it. We must consult concerning the invitation, in which we must follow the directions given in this cabalistic manuscript.

"You have found from the table I first showed you that it is the orders of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones which are related by a reciprocal activity to Mars. But these three orders constitute the highest celestial hierarchy, which remain constantly in the presence of God and must not be summoned hither even if we were able to do so. We may only implore their assistance. The orders of Dominions, Powers and Empires are the only intelligences connected with the stars. Among them we must address ourselves to the spirits of Mars, since Mars is the regent of this year, this day and of the intended incantation. The choice between the _good_ and the _evil_ spirits ruled by Mars is still open; but since it is not our purpose to invoke by supplication but to compel by conjuration, we must choose the wicked. This is no sin: it is only danger. It gives joy to the good angels to see the power of God's image over their adversaries. But we can not force the whole host of Mars' demons to appear in our circle. We must select _one only_ among their legion and this one must be well chosen. It is therefore necessary to know his name, for with spirits, far more than men and terrestrial things, the name implies the essence and the qualities of the named. The Cabala teaches us the infinite significance of words and names. It proclaims and demonstrates the mysteries which dwell in all the holy names of God; it reveals to us the mysteries in the appellations of angels; it shows us that even the names of men are intimately related to the place in creation and the temporal destiny of those who bear them. Even names of material things show, though less distinctly, a connection between the sound and the thing itself or its nature. Who can hear, for instance, the words _wind_, or _swing_, without perceiving in the very sound something airy or oscillating? Who can hear _stand_, and _strong_, without perception of something stable and firm?

"Let us hasten to find the name of the demon who is to be summoned. Astrology as well as the Cabala gives various methods for this purpose.[36] Let us choose the simplest, which is perhaps also the most efficient.

"I must commence our work by pointing out the significance of number 72. To this number correspond the seventy-two languages, the seventy-two elders of the synagogue, the seventy-two interpreters of the Old Testament and the seventy-two disciples of our Lord. This number is also closely connected with the sacred number twelve. If the twelve signs of the Zodiac are divided into six parts, we obtain the seventy-two so-called celestial quinaries, into which the seventy-two mystical names of God, his '_schemhamphoras_,' infuse their power and which are each of them presided over by an angel-prince. The same number also corresponds to the joints of the human frame; and there are many other correspondences.

"Well, while the Cabalists were searching out the sacred inner meaning of the Bible; while they proceeded slowly, starting with the 'In the beginning,' and stopping at every word, every letter, and found in every word and every letter a mine of secrets,[37] they finally, after the lapse of centuries, came as far as to the 19th verse in the 14th chapter of Exodus, commencing: 'And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel arose.' The cabalistical rule which says wherever, in the Bible, an angel is spoken of, there is also the name of an angel hidden among the Hebrew letters of the verse, admonished them to pause and consider. They had at first no idea of the extraordinary discovery they were now on the point of making. But their attention was attracted by the fact that there were seventy-two letters in the verse (in the Hebrew text). Still more surprised were they when they found that even the following verse, the 20th, contained exactly seventy-two letters; and then surprise grew into awe when even the 21st verse showed the same number. In the Bible there is no fortuity: a great secret was hidden here. Finally, by placing the three verses, letter by letter (the middle verse written from left to right, the others conversely), above one another, God's seventy-two mystical names '_schemhamphoras_' each consisting of three letters, from the three verses, was discovered. These names, provided with the suffix _el_ or _jah_, are also the names of the seventy-two quinary angels, of which God has said that his name is in them.

"Here in this cabalistic manuscript these names are preserved. Let us select one of them at random. My eye happens to fall upon _Mizrael_ first. We will take that. This high name of an angel which we may not invoke, will give us the key to the name of the demon which is to appear presently. Here is the table that will help us. The three root-consonants of the word _Mizra(el)_ correspond to three others in the planet Mars, which contain the name--let us pronounce it silently, let us merely whisper it, for it is the name of the desired demon--_Tekfael_![38]

"The sum of the numerical value of the letters in this name is 488. A remarkable number, every figure reminding us of the mystical _four_, of the elements and of their correspondences! We shall commune with one of the mightiest and most terrible among the demons. On the waxen tablet with an iron frame, I now inscribe the name of the demon, adding the number 488, and these peculiar strokes which make up his signature. Time does not allow me to tell you now the rules by which the signature is formed from the name.[39]

"The preparations are now completed, it only remains to order the apparatus, and to array ourselves. When we have put our implements in order, consecrated the room, cleansed ourselves by a bath, put on the white robe, wrapped a red mantle around (for red is the color of Mars), buckled the girdle of Mars about our waists, assumed the diadem, the breast-plates and the rings, I kindle on the altar my magical light, and the fire for incense, and draw the magical circle. Then an intense prayer for the protection of God, then the incantation.

"Here is the conjuration-book, the so-called Conjurer of Hell. I open at the page on which the martial incantations begin. The book is placed within the circle. When needed, I grasp it with the left hand; I hold the staff with my right."...

The Gothic room in which the incantation was to take place, presented a strange and at the same time solemn and awful aspect. The magician had arranged with practiced hand the things before mentioned. The skulls, the bones of men and beasts, the murderous weapons and the martial essence-flasks, the various and indescribable fragments from all the kingdoms of nature formed, nearest to the walls, different figures, triangles, squares and pentagons. Red drapery was hung over the naked walls. In the midst of the room and inside the circularly arranged pentagram were the fire and incense-altar with holy water. On a table in the rear, but partly within the circle, the magical lights were burning, and diffused an uncertain whitish-yellow light over the objects. Near the candlestick were the two bells. We were arrayed in our garments. The face of my companion was pale as death: probably mine also.

"Courage, fortitude! ... or you are lost!" whispered the magician, whose eye beamed with a dark, solemn determination, and whose every feature expressed at this moment a terrible resolution.

These were his last words before the incantation. We were allowed to answer nothing. I tried to be courageous, but my soul was shaken by a dreadful expectation. The prayer and religious ceremonies which we had performed after the bath and change of dress, had not diminished but only intensified this feeling.

The night wind shook the windows hidden behind the heavy draperies. It seemed as if ghosts from another world had been lurking behind the gently waving curtains.

Even the skulls appeared to me to bode from their sunken, vacant eyes, the arrival of something appalling. One of them attracted my attention for a long time, or rather exercised on me the same influence which the eye of the rattle-snake is said to have upon the bird which he approaches to devour. I noticed in the eye a metallic lustre. It was the gleam of the light reflected from a martial stone fastened in the skull.

In the mean time the magician had seized the blood-stained sword, and drew, murmuring a prayer the while, a threefold magical circle around the pentagram. Between the circumferences he wrote the names of the angels of the year, the season, the day and the hour. Towards the east he made the sign of _Alpha_, towards the west of _Omega_. Then he divided the circle by a cross into four fields. He assigned two of them, those behind him, to me and my companions. They were large enough to kneel upon. We were strictly enjoined not to leave them, not to allow even a fold of our mantles to wave outside the circle. Forgetfulness in this respect would cost us our lives. The magician put aside his sword in a triangle outside of the circle. He sprinkled himself and us with holy water, read formularies over the incense and the thorn twigs, and kindled them. This was the sign for us to give ourselves to prayer. We must not cease praying until we had heard the first word of the incantation. The incense spread, as it were, a dim transparent veil over the room. Here and there it was condensed into strange figures: now human, now fantastic animal shapes arose against the vaulted wall and sank again.

There must have been something narcotical in those vapory clouds. I looked at them in a half dreaming state while my lips repeated inaudibly the enjoined prayers.

I was aroused from this condition by the first word of the incantation which struck my soul like a thunder-bolt, and awakened me to full consciousness of my position and of the significance of the hour. The blood in my veins seemed changed to ice.

The magician stood before me, tall, erect and commanding. He had taken the incantation-book and now read from it with a hollow voice the first citation, which begins with a long formulary invoking the different mystical names of God.

I can not repeat the quotation. The highest and the lowest, the divine and the infernal, that for whose sacredness we feel an irrepressible reverence and that for whose impiety we experience the deepest horror, were united here in the most solemn and the most terrible words that human tongue has ever stammered. Now first I began to form an idea of the power of words.

The name of the demon was not yet uttered. The nearer the moment for its pronunciation approached, the deeper became the voice of the magician. Now came the formula of invocation, and now--resounded the name _Tekfael_.

It appeared as if a thousand-fold but whispering echo from the vault above, from the corners of the room, from all the skulls and from the very incantation-book itself, repeated that name.

The magician became silent, the incense was condensed and assumed a reddish tint which gradually became more and more diffused. We seemed to hear the thunder rolling, at first from a distance, then nearer, finally over our heads. It was as if the tower had been shaken and the vault over our heads been rent. My knees trembled. Suddenly a flash of lightning shot through the red mass. The magician extended his staff, as if he had wished to stop it. He raised his voice anew, strong and powerful amidst the continued peals of thunder. The smoke grew thin again; from its wreaths there appeared before the magician in the immediate vicinity of the circle, and at the opposite end of his staff, a dim apparition, a figure whose first aspect bereft me of my reason. I felt as if I had fallen to the floor,--as if I had been lost....

I awakened with the perspiration of agony on my forehead, but fortunately in my own bed and in the nineteenth century. The view from my window is cheerful and enlivening. I see a river which bears proud ships, quays swarming with men, and broad streets with houses in a graceful and light _renaissance_ style. I lived again in the present which pleased me the best, next to dreaming of the future....

They strove for something great, however, those learned magicians of the Middle Ages. Theirs was a mighty imaginative creation. It lies in ruins never to arise again; but the crumbled _debris_ testify to the belief in an all-embracing human power and knowledge.

These learned magicians were likewise restless Faust-natures, as distinct from the usual type of the learned of their time as Faust from the pedantic _gloss_-proud, unaspiring milk-sop Wagner. While they paid their tribute of weakness to tradition, and formed their system on received dicta, it was among them that presentiments of the future began to stir, and a longing for a clearer light than that with which the scholastics and doctors _angelici et seraphici_ felt themselves well contented. When the study of ancient Greece was recommencing, when the dawn of the _renaissance_ appeared, it was these enthusiastic natures, still groping among the dreams of magic art, that first began to awake and think. It was a feeling of the insufficiency of the ruling theology and scholasticism which had driven them into the temple of "secret philosophy." Since its pillars were brought from diverse spheres of culture, distrust and fear of magic had become more universal than directly ecclesiastical; they had drunk as deeply from profane tradition as from Christian, considering them both to flow from the same divine source: their writers quote Porphyrius by the side of John, and the pretender Hermes by the side of Paul. The courage with which they tried to burst open the portals of the spirit-world served them afterwards when from the shores of their childhood's belief they were to venture out on the ocean of thought. Campanella, Vanini, Giordano Bruno, and Cardanus stand on the dividing line between dogmatico-fantastical magic and a philosophy in the sense of the old Greeks and of modern times. If already previously some magicians of the old type had died from persecution, it was not to be wondered at that such "atheists" as Vanini and Bruno must now ascend the pile.

The occult sciences of the Middle Ages with their origin not from paradise and Noah's ark, as believed by their adherents, but from an ancient Oriental culture and with their power over even the strongest and most independent souls that could arise under the influence of a Church which levels all thought, may properly remind those who are willing to forget it, of a sad but incontestable truth: That humanity may embrace during the course of many and long centuries with the most candid faith, and construct with immense labor into a system, dogmas which have been received without questioning, and which contain more of the false than of the true, the great antiquity of which does not give them more claim for validity than is possessed by the error which arose yesterday and vanished to-day. No special divine influence has saved or will save the generations from inheriting the errors less than the acquired truths of their predecessors--no other divine influence, I should say, than the impulse we feel to think for ourselves in order to attain to clearness.

IV.

THE MAGIC OF THE PEOPLE AND THE STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH AGAINST IT.

Wherever religious thought divides the empire of the world and humanity into two absolutely opposed powers, a good and an evil, there it also distinguishes two kinds of magic: the divine and the infernal. So with the Persians who knew a white and a black magic. So also in the Middle Ages of Christianity. The Greeks, on the contrary, knew nothing of this distinction. The world being to them a harmonious whole, both in moral and physical respects, magic was with them only a means of finding out and using the secret powers in the harmonious cosmos; and the wonder-worker who could not be thought of as deriving his powers from an evil source, was undoubtedly a favorite of the gods and an equal with the heroes, not unworthy of statues and temples, if he used his art for the benefit of humanity. For the rest, magical speculation was with the Greeks more and more pushed aside by philosophy,--by scepticism and rational investigation, until on account of the nearer contact between Europe and Asia, after the death of Alexander, it began again to exercise its influence, and finally celebrated its triumph in that dualistic form of religion which by the name of Christianity took possession of the Occident.

The struggle which the spirit of orientalism waged on its march through Europe, first against the Hellenic paganism, and then against the Christian paganism which had penetrated into the Church itself, has been briefly sketched above. When Christianity had spread later among the Germanic and Slavic nations, there arose a new process of attraction and repulsion between it and the natural religions of the barbarians, the elements of which were partly blended with it and partly repelled by it. The gods were transformed into devils, but their attributes and the festivities in their honor were transferred to the saints. Pope Gregory the Great ordained that the pagan festivities should be changed only gradually to Christian, and that they were to be imitated in many respects.[40]

In the time of Boniface there were many Christian priests in Germany who sacrificed to Thor and baptized in the name of Jesus at the same time. Of especial influence on the rapid spread of Christianity was the maxim of Gregory not to be particular in the choice of proselytes, because hope was to be placed in the better generations of the future. To be allowed to attend divine service, and to be buried in the churchyard, it was only necessary to have the benediction of the priest. Gifts to the Church, pilgrimages, self-scourgings, repeating of prayers in Latin, opened the gates of heaven to the proselytes easier than virtue and bravery those of Valhall to the heathen. For the rest the pagan could enter the community of the Church while retaining his whole circle of ideas. The Church did not deny, but it confirmed, the real existence of every thing which had been the object of his faith, but it treated these objects in accordance with its dualistic scheme, sometimes elevating them to the plane of sanctity, and again degrading them to something diabolical. Thus, for instance, it changed the elementary spirits--which the Celts and Germans believed in--from good or morally indifferent natural beings into fallen angels, envying man his heavenly inheritance; and if a thinking heathen could before accept or reject the existence of such beings at his pleasure, it now, when he had become a proselyte, became a matter of eternal bliss to believe in them. There was no superstitious idea gross enough not to receive the signet of the Church; nay, the grosser it was, the more likely was it to be appropriated. Even so cultured an intellect as Augustine, the most prominent of the fathers and authors of his time, declared it to be "insolent" to doubt the existence of fauns, satyrs and other demoniac beings which lie in wait for women, have intercourse with them and children by them.[41] Thus was laid the foundation of that immense labyrinth of superstition in the darkness of which humanity has groped during the thousand years of the Middle Ages.

In the rupture between the Church and the natural religion of the northern peoples we find, in a certain sense, the same spectacle repeated which we have seen in the struggle between the Christian and the Greco-Roman culture. If the Neoplatonicians held up their Appolonius of Tyana as a type of the Christian sorcerers, Celts, Germans and Northmen had also their soothsayers endowed with supernatural powers whom the Christian missionaries must excel in the power of working miracles, if they would gain consideration for the new religion. There are many accounts of bishops and priests who have worn gloves of fire, walked on white-hot iron, and so forth, before the eyes of the astonished heathen. If the miracles worked by the apostles of Christianity had their source in divine agencies, then those performed by its opponents must have their origin in the assistance of the devil. Already here the white magic stood opposed to the black magic, the immediate and supernatural power of God in His agents to the devil: and if the chief significance of the Church was to be an institution for deliverance from the devil; if all her magical usages from the sacrament to the amulet were so many weapons against his attacks; if the pagan religions which had succumbed to Christianity were nothing but varied kinds of the same _devil-worship_, and their priests, seers and physicians but tools of Satan; then it was natural for all traditions from the pagan time which the Church had not transformed and appropriated should be banished within the pale of devil-worship, and partly also that every act to which supernatural effects were ascribed, but which was not performed by a Christian priest, or in the name of Jesus, should be referred to a black magic, partly in fine that the possibility of an immediate co-operation, a conscious league between the devil and men should be elevated to a dogma.

A struggle between good and evil, between God and Satan, between church and paganism, which is carried on with the weapons of miracles by two directly opposed human representatives of these principles, was a theme which must by necessity urge the power of creative imagination into activity, and we find also in one of the oldest monuments of Christian literature[42] a tale of this character. It is Simon Peter, the rock on which the Church is built, who fights there against Simon the magician of Samaria, mentioned in the Acts. When the cities of Asia Minor had witnessed their emulation in miracle-working, the decisive battle was fought out to the end in Rome. In the presence of the assembled people, Simon the magician attempts an ascension into heaven, but falls and breaks his legs because Simon Peter had commanded the evil spirits who were carrying the magician towards the sky to let him drop. This fable appears still further embellished in later ecclesiastical authors. It is soon accompanied by others, such as that of Cyprianus, Theophilus, Militaris, Heliodorus, and many others, who from love of earthly glory abjure Christ and enter into solemn covenants with the devil. In the biography of the holy Basilius, archbishop of Caesarea and Cappadocia (he was a contemporary of the apostate emperor Julian), there is a story of a young man who had obtained from a heathen sorcerer a letter of recommendation to Satan. When the young man, according to the precept of the magician, had gone to a heathen grave and there taken out the letter, he was suddenly taken up and borne to the place where Satan, surrounded by his angels, sat on a throne. The youth abjured in writing his baptism and swore allegiance to his new master. But after some time the apostate repented and confessed to the holy Basilius what he had done. The bishop prayed for him forty days. When at length the day had come that Satan according to the compact should bear away his victim, the bishop had the young man placed in the midst of his congregation. Satan arrived: a battle between him and the bishop followed--a battle which was carried on with the people stretching forth their hands imploring God for assistance, and was ended when the compact fell from the claws of the fiend, and was torn by the bishop. The before-mentioned Theophilus had likewise pawned his soul to the devil, but the contract was restored to him after urgent supplication, by the holy Virgin, after which, warned by his experience, he led a holy life, and became Saint Theophilus before he closed his eyes. These early legends of compacts between the devil and men end, as we see, with the sinner's salvation; not so the later. If we now remember that it was one of the dogmas proclaimed by the Church that all magical and miraculous arts not performed by the priests in the name of Jesus were wrought by the devil; that he gives his adherents power over nature and that the demons as "_incubi_" and "_succubi_" seek and obtain carnal intercourse with human beings,[43] we discover already in the ideas of the first Christian centuries the elements of the sorcery of the Middle Ages. And when we read further the accusations which the first Christian sects hurled against one another,--when we learn that the party which was raised by the Council of Nice to the orthodox position accused the Gnostics, Marcionites and Arians of devil-worship, confederacy with Satan and sorcery, we meet already here that union of heresy and sorcery by which the Church of the Middle Ages acquired such a fearful weapon against dissenters,--a union which must not be looked upon as a mere casual invention of wickedness and theological hatred, but as the necessary consequence of the whole dualistic theory of morals, as the necessary fruit of the belief in devils.

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The Magic of the Middle AgesChapter III: Part 3

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