P. Pomponatius also says: Sic contigit, tales esse homines, qui habeant ejusmodi vires in potentia, et per vim imaginativam et desiderativam cum actu operantur, tales virtus exit ad actum, et afficit sanguinem et spiritum, quæ per evaporationem petunt ad extra et producunt tales effectus.[316]
Jane Leade, an English mystic visionary of Cromwell's time and pupil of Pordage, has given us some very curious disclosures of this kind. She is led to Magic in a very singular way. For, as the doctrine of their becoming one with the God of their religion is a fundamental characteristic of all Mystics, so is it with Jane Leade also. Now, with her however, the human will has its share in the omnipotence of the Divine will as a consequence of the two having become one, and accordingly acquires magic power. What other magicians therefore believe to be due to a compact with the Devil, she attributes to her becoming one with her God. Her Magic is therefore in the highest sense 'white Magic.' Besides, this alters nothing as to the practice and results. She is reserved and mysterious, as people had to be in those times; still it is easy to see that the thing is not a mere theoretical corollary, but that it has sprung from knowledge and experience obtained in another way.
It is in her "Revelation of Revelations"[317] that we find the chief passage; but the following one, which is rather an abridgment than a literal quotation and is contained in Horst's "Zauberbibliothek,"[318] comes from the same book: "Magic power enables its possessor to rule over and to renew the creation—i.e. the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms—so that, were many to co-operate in one magical power, Nature might be created anew as a paradise.... How is this magic power to be acquired? By renascence through faith: that is, by our will harmonizing with the divine will. For faith subjects the world to us, inasmuch as our own will, when it is in harmony with the divine will, results, as St. Paul tells us, in making everything submit to and obey us." Thus far Horst.—p. 131 of the "Revelation, &c.," Jane Leade shows that it was by the force of his will that Christ worked miracles, as, for instance, when he said to the leper: "I will; be thou clean." Sometimes however he left it to the will of those who, he saw, believed in him, saying to them: "'What will ye that I shall do unto you?' in which cases no less was done for them than they had desired in their will that the Lord should do. These words of our Saviour's are well deserving of notice, since the highest Magia lies in the will, so far as it is in union with the will of the Almighty: when these two wheels fit into each other, becoming in a sense one, they are, &c."—Again, p. 132, she says: "For what could resist that which is united with the will of God? The power of such a will is so great, that it always achieves its end. It is no naked will deprived of its clothing, or power; on the contrary, it brings with it an irresistible omnipotence, which enables it to uproot, to plant, to put to death and to bring to life, to bind and to loose, to heal and to injure, which power will be collected and concentrated in its entirety in the royal, free-born will. Of this power we shall attain knowledge, when we shall have been made one with the Holy Ghost. or when we shall be united in one spirit and being."—Again, p. 133: "We must quench or drown altogether the many multifarious wills which arise out of the mixed essence of souls, and they must lose themselves in the abysmal depth from which there will then arise and present itself the virgin will, which was never the slave of anything belonging to degenerate man; on the contrary, it stands in connection with the Almighty Power, quite free and pure, and will infallibly produce fruits and results quite similar to those of the divine will ... wherefrom the burning oil of the Holy Ghost flows up in Magic, as it emits its fiery sparks."
Jacob Böhme too[319] speaks of Magic precisely in the sense here described. Among other things he says: "Magic is the mother of the essence of all beings: for it creates itself and is understood in desire.... True Magic is not a being, but the desiring spirit of the being.—In fine: Magic is action in the will's spirit."
In corroboration, or at any rate in explanation, of the above view of the will as the real agent in magic, a curious and interesting anecdote, related by Campanella, from Avicenna, may here find its place.[320] "Mulieres quædam condixerunt, ut irent animi gratia in viridarium. Una earum non ivit. Ceteræ colludentes arangium acceperunt et perforabant eum stilis acutis, dicentes: ita perforamus mulierem talem, quæ nobiscum venire detrectavit, et, projecto arangio intra fontem, abierunt. Postmodum mulierem illam dolentem invenerunt, quod se transfigi quasi clavis acutis sentiret, ab ea hora, qua arangium ceteræ; perforarunt: et cruciata est valde donec arangii clavos extraxerunt imprecantes bona et salutem."
Krusenstern[321] gives a very curious and minute description of maleficent sorcery as practised, it is said successfully, by the priests of the savage tribes on the island of Nukahiva, the procedure in which is exactly similar to that of our cures by charms.—This fact is especially remarkable on account of the identity of the thing, notwithstanding the distance from all European tradition. With it ought to be compared Bende Bendsen's account of a headache he caused in another person by sorcery, through the medium of some of that person's hair which had been cut off. He concludes with the following words: "As far as I can learn, what is called witchcraft consists simply in preparing and applying noxious magnetic charms combined with a maleficent influence of the will: this is the detestable league with Satan."[322]
The agreement of all these writers, not only among themselves, but with the convictions to which Animal Magnetism has led in latter years, and finally even with what might be concluded from my speculative doctrine on this point, is surely a most remarkable phenomenon. This much is at any rate certain, that at the bottom of all the experiments, successful or unsuccessful, which have ever been made in Magic, there lies an anticipation of my Metaphysic. For in them is expressed the consciousness, that the causal law only connects phenomena, while the inner nature of things remains independent of it; and also, that if any direct influence on Nature be possible from within, it can only take place through the will itself. But even if Magic were to be ranked as practical Metaphysic, according to Bacon's classification, it is certain that no other theoretical Metaphysic would stand in the right relation to it but mine, by which the world is resolved into Will and Representation.
The zealous cruelty with which Magic has always been persecuted by the Church and to which the papal malleus maleficarum bears terrible evidence, seems not to have for its sole basis the criminal purposes often associated with the practice of Magic or the part assumed to be played by the Devil, but rather to proceed partly from a vague foreboding and fear lest Magic should trace back its original power to its true source; whereas the Church has assigned to it a place outside Nature.[323] The detestation shown by the cautious clergy of England towards Animal Magnetism[324] tends to confirm this supposition, and also the active zeal with which they oppose table-turning, which at any rate is harmless, yet which, for the same reason, has been violently assailed by the anathemas of the French, and even of the German, clergy.[325]