While condemning the cruelty and severity of the laws against witchcraft, and reflecting on the injustice and ignorance with which they were enforced, we must remember that in many cases sorcerers and other dabblers in black magic have added to their supposed supernatural methods the very real and serious arts of the poisoner, and the not less real, though purely mental influences of terror and alarm. To know that an evil-minded person was compassing one’s death or was busied in bringing about, by diabolical influences, some dreadful sickness or other injury to one’s person, was quite sufficient, in ignorant and superstitious times, to effect all the evil which it was in the mind of the magician or witch to induce. But probably there never was a regular professional sorcerer who did not use the actual weapons of poison, or deleterious drugs of some kind or other, to assist his evil intentions. In the case of the trial of the Countess of Somerset, in 1616, a charge of witchcraft was joined with the charge of poisoning Sir Thomas Overbury.[949] Witchcraft and murder were combined in the Master of Orkney’s case. The last case ever brought before the “Chambre Ardente” in France resulted in the condemnation, in 1680, of a woman named Voisin, for sorcery and poisoning, in connection with the Marquise de Brinvilliers. But even apart from considerations of material injury, the mental impressions are often fatal enough; thus, in the Pacific Islands, to quote but one instance, magical arts have been proved effective through the patient’s own imagination. “When he knows or fancies that he has been bewitched, he will fall ill, and he will actually die unless he can be persuaded that he has been cured. Thus, wherever sorcery is practised with the belief of its victims, some system of exorcism or some protective magical art becomes, not only necessary, but actually effective—a mental disease being met by a mental remedy to match it.”[950] Hearne, when travelling in North America, was entreated by an Indian to give him a charm against an enemy (savages and primitive folk are great believers in white men as magicians). Hearne complied, and for fun, drew on a sheet of paper some circles, signs, and words. The Indian took care to let his victim know that he had “medicine” against him, and the poor wretch fell sick immediately, and shortly afterwards died. Cockayne quotes from Wier an account of a woman who wore an amulet to cure bad eyes, which were made worse by her constantly flowing tears. Some one who hated sorceries induced her to open and examine the charm. When unfolded, the paper showed nothing but these words: “May the devil scratch thine eyes out, and—— in the holes.” As soon as the woman saw how she had been deceived, she lost faith, took to crying again, and her eyes became as bad as ever.[951]
Law against Sorcery.
At the accession of James I. of England, a law against witchcraft was passed, which continued in force for more than a century. We quote it in full (1 Jac. i. c. 12):—
“If any person or persons shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil and wicked spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil and wicked spirit, to or for any intent or purpose, or take up any dead man, woman, or child out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place where the dead body resteth, or the skin, bone, or any part of any dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment, or shall use, practise, or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her body or any part thereof, every such offender is a felon without benefit of clergy.”
Magic and Medicine.
Pliny says that the art of magic first originated in medicine, and that under the guise of promoting health it insinuated itself among mankind as a higher and more holy branch of the medical art. Then it added the religious element, and lastly incorporated with itself the astrological art, and so enthralled the senses of man by a three-fold bond.[952]
Magic in Virgil and Horace.
The sorceress of Virgil is a witch whose ancestry we shall have no difficulty in tracing anthropologically. We can discover her lineage from the parent witches of savage tribes, and we detect her offspring in the sorceress of our own times. She burns vervain and frankincense, chaunts a solemn lay, binds the victim’s image with fillets of three colours, and in binding the knots makes the attendant say, “Thus do I bind the fillets of Venus.” One wax and one clay image are placed before the fire, and as the clay image hardens, so does the heart of Daphnis harden towards his new mistress; and as the wax softens, so is the heart of Daphnis made tender towards the sorceress. She buries the relics of what had belonged to Daphnis beneath her threshold; bruises poisonous plants from Pontus to enable him to transform himself into a wolf, and orders her attendant to cast the ashes of these herbs over her head into a running stream, at the same time taking care not to glance behind her.[953] Horace also describes the concoction of a charm in a perfectly orthodox style whose family history is intelligible enough to the student of comparative sorcery. There is nothing in the classic witchcraft which does not exist to-day in the islands of savage peoples, and the methods of medicine-men in primitive forests.
Images of Wax, etc., in Sorcery.
A very widespread and ancient method of compassing a person’s death by witchcraft is that of making a figure in wax, or other plastic material, to represent the victim of the incantation. The object seems to be the concentration of will-power to effect the wishes of the user of the charm. There is an innate belief that words are creative symbols; it may be derived from the perception of the power of man to effect that which he desires earnestly to effect, so that “whenever a good or evil wish,” as Dr. Tylor says, “is uttered in words, it becomes a blessing or curse.” This idea lies at the root of what is called “Christian science healing,” i.e. healing by good wishes. In its evil form we have an ancient example in Ovid’s sorceress:[954]—