The frankness, perspicuity, definiteness, and point, taken in connection with the calm, earnest tone, and gentle, candid spirit in which his then placid Majesty dictated that account of himself to his Reverend scribe, win our credence, and induce us to believe he utters only the simple truth when he describes himself as “a personification of the dark side of humanity and the universe,”—as one who “cannot boast of a heavenly birth,” but was “born, bred, and nurtured of human fancy, folly, and fraud,”—as possessing “a sort of quasi omnipresence and a quasi omniscience,” existing “wherever man exists, ... dwelling in human hearts,” knowing “all that men think, feel, and do,” having power “to tempt and mislead,” and, in his “worst moods, is pleased to exercise” that power. Such a Satan, or devil, no doubt exists. But, though we admit that he was a mighty impersonal power in the midst of witchcraft scenes, he was vastly different from the heaven-born “Archangel fallen,” whom the good people of New England believed in, feared, and supposed themselves to be fighting against.
A personification of the principle of evil, or “of the dark side of humanity and the universe,” is the only devil who is simultaneously present with the whole human race. But hosts of unseen personalities—earth-born, expanded, wily, malignant, and powerful—may act upon man, and bands of such may be subservient to some abler ones of their kind, who reign over them as princes of the dark powers of the air. Malignant departed mortals are the only disembodied personal devils who molest mankind. We believe in many devils, but not in Christendom’s witchcraft chief One.
The devil of our fathers, though but a fiction, was chief cause of witchcraft’s woes, and therefore merits attention first, in any attempt to subject that matter to new analysis.
Demonology and Necromancy.
Demonology—intercourse with demons—implies dealings with spiritual personalities; but these may be either good or bad, and may consist wholly, or only in part, of departed human beings, provided there be any other grade of spirits residing in, or able to enter, earth’s spirit spheres: probably there are not.
In earlier ages, these demons were often deemed to be intermediate messengers and links facilitating intercourse between mortals on earth and most eminent gods above. That idea, somewhat qualified, is having revival now in the minds of those who are receiving from their departed friends instructions and influences which allure humans heavenward. In the olden faith, demon was used to designate a spirit who might be good; and demonology, then, far from being branded as Diabolism, or dealings with one great Devil and his special devotees, was generally deemed not only innocent, but helpful;—as much so as man’s communings to-day with either his disembodied kindred and friends, or with benighted, forlorn, and anguished souls who seek needed encouragement and solace, which they can obtain from none other than an earthly source, are deemed helpful by those loving and philanthropic men and women who take active part in similar demonological interviews now. Bad as demonology seems at this day, when the word has come to suggest dealings with bad and demoralizing spirits alone, time was, when both it and necromancy, or intercourse with the dead, could be legitimately applied to such interviews as Jesus had with Moses and Elias on the Mount of Transfiguration; and therefore then might have imported communings that would spiritualize and elevate whoever experienced its operations. Strictly, there are no dead. Moses and Elias were living personages when seen by Jesus. Socrates, and many another ancient and wise teacher, drew much profound wisdom and inspiration from out the vailed recesses of demonology and necromancy, and the example of such wise and good men of old has practical imitation by the spiritually-minded and philanthropic disciples of modern communicators living in supernal spheres.
Biblical Witch and Witchcraft.
Very great difference existed between the witchcraft of Bible times and that of Christendom fifteen hundred years after John recorded the Revelation. The difference was almost as marked as that between the devils of those two periods.
The word witch seems primarily to mean, “a knowing one,” and perhaps has always hinted at knowledge or power acquired by some mysterious method. Witch has generally meant, not only a knowing one, but also any person who gets knowledge or help by processes which are mysterious. Witchcraft has been the utterance of knowledge, or the application of power, thus obtained. But neither all such utterance, nor all such application of force, was, in biblical times, called witchcraft. Far, very far different from that. Daniel, Ezekiel, and John the Revelator, all obtained knowledge mysteriously from the lips of departed men; their promulgation of it, however, was not called witchcraft, but the word of God.