In other districts, where the Callicantzari are represented as demoniacal and not human and as monsters of mixed rather than of variable shape, the popular memory goes back to a period somewhat less remote, that period in which a new conception, encouraged perhaps unwittingly by archaic art, became predominant in classical art and literature, with the further result, we must suppose, that in the minds of some of the common-folk too monsters of composite shape took the place of the old human wonder-working Centaurs.
And yet again in other districts, where the Christmas mummers in the guise of Callicantzari are the modern representatives of those worshippers of Dionysus who dressed themselves in the guise of Satyrs or Sileni, the traditions which survive are mainly those of a post-classical age in which the half-human half-animal comrades of Dionysus lost their distinctive names and were enrolled in the Centaurs’ ranks.
Finally in the few districts where language at least testifies that werewolves have also been numbered among the Callicantzari, popular belief, though preserving much that is ancient, may have been modified by a superstition, or rather by an actual form of insanity, which was particularly prevalent in the Middle Ages.
Such have been in different districts and periods the various developments of a superstition which originated in the reputation for sorcery enjoyed by a Pelasgian tribe inhabiting Mount Pelion in a prehistoric age; and the complexity of modern traditions concerning the Callicantzari is due to the fact that they do not all date from one epoch but comprise the whole history of the Centaurs.
§ 14. Genii.
The tale of deities is now almost told. There remain only a few miscellaneous beings, identical or, at the least, comparable with the creations of ancient superstition, who may be classed together under the name of στοιχει̯ά[662] (anciently στοιχεῖα) or, to adopt the exact Latin equivalent, genii.
The Greek word, which in classical times served as a fair equivalent for any sense of our word ‘elements,’ became from Plato’s time onward a technical term in physics for those first beginnings of the material world which Empedocles had previously called ῥιζώματα and other philosophers ἀρχαί. The physical elements however were commonly supposed to be haunted each by its own peculiar spirit, and hence among the later Platonists the term στοιχεῖα became a technicality of demonology rather than of natural science[663]. Every component part of the visible universe was credited with an invisible genius, a spirit whose being was in some way bound up with the existence of its abode; and the term στοιχεῖον was transferred from the material to the spiritual.
But though the Platonists invented and introduced this new sense of the word, its widespread acceptance was probably not their work, but a curious accident resulting from misinterpretation of early Christian writings. In St Paul’s Epistles[664] there occurs several times a phrase, τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου, ‘worldly principles,’ which was apparently a little too cultured for many of those who heard or read it. It conveyed to their minds probably no more than ‘being enslaved to weak and beggarly elements[665]’ conveys to the British peasant of to-day. What more natural then than that the commentator should accept the word in the sense given to it by the Platonists, and that the common-folk who heard his exposition should readily identify the στοιχεῖα whom they were bidden no longer to serve with the lesser deities and local genii to whose service they had long been bound—to whose service moreover in spite of the supposed injunction they have always continued faithful? The Church, they would have felt, acknowledged the existence of these beings; ecclesiastical authority endorsed ancestral tradition; and since such beings existed, it were folly to ignore them; nay, since the Church declared that they were powers of evil, it was but prudent to propitiate them, to appease their malevolence. Thus στοιχεῖα came to be reckoned by every right-minded peasant among his regular demoniacal entourage. And so they remain—some of them hostile to man, some benevolent, but all alike wild, uncontrollable spirits—so that St Paul’s phrase στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου even appears in one folk-song metaphorically as a description of wild and wilful young men[666].
Thus the very origin of the term rendered it comprehensive in meaning. Even the greater deities of ancient Greece were, in a sense, local—the occupants of prescribed domains; Poseidon might logically be called the genius of the sea, Demeter of the corn-land; while lesser deities were always associated with particular spots and often unknown elsewhere. But mediaeval usage of the word στοιχεῖον and of its derivatives tended to widen the meaning of the word yet more. A verb στοιχειοῦν[667] was formed which properly meant to settle a genius in a particular place—either a beneficent genius to act as tutelary deity, or an evil genius whose range of activity would thus be circumscribed within known and narrower limits; but it was used also in a larger sense to denote the exercise of any magical powers. A corresponding adjective στοιχειωματικός[668] was applied to anyone who had dealings with genii or familiar spirits, and more vaguely to wizards in general. Thus the famous magician Apollonius of Tyana is described as a ‘Pythagorean philosopher with power over genii’ (φιλόσοφος Πυθαγόρειος στοιχειωματικός)[669]; and two out of his many miracles may be taken as typical of his exercise of the power. Once, it is recorded, he was summoned to Byzantium by the inhabitants and there ‘he charmed (ἐστοιχείωσεν) snakes and scorpions not to strike, mosquitoes totally to disappear, horses to be quiet and not to be vicious either towards each other or towards man; the river Lycus also he charmed (ἐστοιχείωσεν) not to flood and do damage to Byzantium[670].’ In the first part of this passage the verb is undoubtedly used in a very lax sense, for snakes, scorpions, mosquitoes, and horses can hardly have been conceived to have their own several genii or guardian-spirits upon whom magic could be exercised; but the charming of the river Lycus certainly suggests the restraining of the στοιχεῖον or genius of the river within settled bounds. This stricter sense of the word however comes out more clearly in relation to good genii who were settled by magical charms in any given object or place. Hence even the word στοιχεῖον reverted to a material sense, and was sometimes employed to mean a ‘talisman[671]’—an object, that is, in which resided a genius capable of averting wars, pestilences, and suchlike. Genii of this kind, we are told, were settled by the same Apollonius in the statues throughout Constantinople[672], where the belief in their efficacy seems to have been generally accepted; for there was to be seen there a cross in the middle of which was ‘the fortune of the city, namely a small chain having its ends locked together and possessed of power to keep the city abounding in all manner of goods and to give her victory ever over the nations (or heathen), that they should have strength no more to approach and draw nigh thereto, but should hold further aloof from her and retreat as though they had been vanquished. And the key of the chain was buried in the foundations of the pillars[673]’ on which the cross rested. The locked chain was probably the magical means by which the tutelary genius of the city was kept at his post.
But these wide and vague usages of the word and its derivatives have now for the most part disappeared. Leo Allatius[674] still used στοιχειωματικός in the sense of ‘magician,’ but I have not found it in modern Greek. A remnant of the verb στοιχειοῦν[675] is seen in the past participle στοιχειωμένος, which at the present day is applied in its true sense to objects ‘haunted by genii.’ And the word στοιχειά, though locally extended in scope so as to become in effect synonymous with δαιμόνια or ἐξωτικά[676], comprising all non-Christian deities irrespectively of their close connexion with particular natural phenomena, still maintains in its more strict, and I think more frequent, usage the meaning of genii.