As to the spirits whose agency was so often employed in divination, we have full information from Manasseh, Ben Israel, and others. “Of wicked spirits,” says the author, “there are several varieties, of which some are intelligent and cunning, others ignorant and stupid. The former flying from one extent of the earth to the other, become acquainted with the general cause of human events, both past and present, and sometimes with those of the future. Hence many mortals conjure these spirits, by whose assistance they effect wonderful things. The books of the cabalists, and of some other writers, contain the names of the spirits usually invoked, and a particular account of the ceremonies are accompanied. If (continues the same author,) these spirits appear to one man alone, they portend no good; if to two persons together, they presage no evil: they were never known to appear to three mortals assembled together.”
The magical rites of the Jews were, and indeed are still, chiefly performed on various important occasions, as on the birth of a child, a marriage, &c. On such occasions the evil spirits are believed to be peculiarly active in their malignity, which can only be counteracted by certain enchantments[[31]]. Thus Tobit, according to the directions of the angel Raphael, exorcised the demon Asmodeus, whom he compelled, by means of the perfume of the heart and liver of a fish, to fly into upper Egypt. (Tobit, ch. viii. v. 2 and 3.)
Josephus does not think magic so ancient as many writers of this nation do; he makes Solomon the first who practised an art which is so powerful against demons; and the knowledge of which, he asserts, was communicated to that prince by immediate inspiration. The latter, continues the weakly credulous historian, invented and transmitted to posterity in his writings, certain incantations, for the cure of diseases, and for the expulsion and perpetual banishment of wicked spirits from the bodies of the possessed. This mode of cure, he further observes, is very prevalent in our nation. It consisted, according to his description, in the use of a certain root, which was sealed up, and held under the nose of the person possessed; the name of Solomon, with the words prescribed by him, was then pronounced, and the demon forced immediately to retire. He does not even hesitate to assert, that he himself has been an eye-witness of such an effect produced on a person named Eleazar, in presence of the emperor Vespasian and his sons. Nor will this relation surprise us, when we consider the deep malignity entertained by a Jew to the Christian religion, and his ceaseless attempts to depreciate the miracles of our Saviour, by ascribing them to magical influence, and by representing them as easy of accomplishment to all acquainted with the occult sciences.
We should scarcely credit the account, were it not founded on unquestionable authority, that on the great day of propitiations, the Jews of the sixteenth century, in order to avert the angel of Samuel, endeavoured to appease him by presents. On that day, and on no other throughout the year, they believed that power was given him to accuse them before the judgment-seat of God. They aimed, therefore, to prevent their grand enemy from carrying accusations against them, by rendering it impossible for him to know the appointed day. For this purpose they used a somewhat singular stratagem; in reading the usual portion of the law, they were careful to leave out the beginning and the end,—an omission which the devil was by no means prepared to expect on so important an occasion. They entertained no doubt that their cunning, in this instance, had been more than a match for him.
The cabal is chiefly conversant with enchantments, which are effected by a certain number of characters. It gives directions how to select and combine some passages and proper names of Scripture, which are believed both to render supernatural beings visible, and to produce many wonderful and surprising effects. In this manner the Malcha-sheva, (the queen of Sheba who visited Solomon,) who has often been invoked, and as often made to appear. But the most famous wonders have been effected by the name of God. The sacred word Jehovah, is, when read with points, multiplied by the Jewish doctors into twelve, forty-two, and seventy-two letters, of which words are composed that are thought to possess miraculous energy. By these Moses slew the Egyptians; by these Israel was preserved from the destroying angel of the Wilderness; by these Elijah separated the waters of the river, to open a passage for himself and Elisha; and by these it has been daring and impiously asserted, that the Eternal Son of God cast out evil spirits. The name of the devil is likewise used in magical devices. The five Hebrew letters of which that name is composed, exactly constitute the number 364, one less than the days in the whole year. Now the Jews pretended, that owing to the wonderful virtue of the number comprised in the name of satan, he is prevented from accusing them for an equal number of days: hence the stratagem of which we have before spoken, for depriving him of the power to injure them on the only day in which that power is granted him.
Innumerable are the devices contained in the Cabal for averting possible evils, as the plague, disease, and sudden death. But we see no necessity, nor even utility, in prosecuting the subject further. We have said enough to convince the reader of the gross superstition and abominable practice of those who, even in their present state of degradation and infamy, have the arrogance to style themselves God’s peculiar people,—as so many lights to enlighten the Gentiles.
PREDICTION.
Prophecy, Divination, or foretelling future events, either by divine Revelation, by art and human invention, or by conjecture.—See Divination, page [142].
Few great moral or political revolutions have occurred which have not had their accompanying prognostic; and men of a philosophic cast of mind, in the midst of their retirement, freed from the delusions of parties and of sects, while they are withdrawn from their conflicting interests, have rarely been confounded by the astonishment which overwhelms those who, absorbed in active life, are the mere creatures of sensation, agitated by the shadows of truth, the unsubstantial appearances of things. Intellectual nations are advancing in an eternal circle of events and passions which succeed each other, and the last is necessarily connected with its antecedent: the solitary force of some fortuitous incident only can interrupt this concatinated progress of human affairs. That every great event has been accompanied by a presage or prognostic, has been observed by Lord Bacon. “The shepherds of the people should understand the prognostics of state tempests; hollow blasts of wind, seemingly at a distance, and secret swellings of the sea, often precede a storm.” Such were the prognostics discerned by the politic Bishop Williams, in Charles the First’s time, who clearly foresaw and predicted the final success of the puritanic party in our country: attentive to his own security, he abandoned the government and sided with the rising opposition, at a moment when such a change in the public administration was by no means apparent. (See Rushworth, vol. i. p. 420.)
Dugdale, our contemplative antiquary, in the spirit of foresight, must have anticipated the scene which was approaching in 1641, in the destruction of our ancient monuments in cathedral churches. He hurried on his itinerant labours of taking draughts and transcribing inscriptions, as he says, “to preserve them for future and better times.” It is to the prescient spirit of Dugdale that posterity is indebted for the ancient monuments of England, which bear the marks of the haste, as well as the zeal, which have perpetuated them. Sir Thomas More was no less prescient in his views; for when his son Roper was observing to him that the Catholic religion, under the “Defender of the Faith,” was in a most flourishing state, the answer of More was an evidence of political foresight:—“True it is, son Roper! and yet I pray God that we may not live to see the day that we would gladly be at league and competition with heretics, to let them have their churches quietly to themselves, so that they would be contented to let us have ours quietly to ourselves.” The minds of men of great political sagacity were at that moment, unquestionably, full of obscure indications of the approaching change. Erasmus, when before the tomb of Becket, at Canterbury, observing it loaded with a vast profusion of jewels, wished that those had been distributed among the poor, and that the shrine had only been adorned with boughs and flowers:—“For,” said he, “those who have heaped up all this mass of treasure, will one day be plundered, and fall a prey to those who are in power.” A prediction literally fulfilled about twenty years after it was made. The fall of the religious houses was predicted by an unknown author, (see Visions of Pier’s Ploughman,) who wrote in the reign of Edward the Third. The event, in fact, with which we are all well acquainted, was realized two hundred years afterwards, by our Henry VIII. Sir Walter Raleigh foresaw the consequences of the separatists and the sectaries in the National Church, which occurred about the year 1530. His memorable words are, “Time will even bring it to pass, if it were not resisted, that God would be turned out of churches into barns, and from thence again into the fields and mountains, and under hedges. All order of discipline and church government, left to newness of opinion, and men’s fancies, and as many kinds of religion spring up as there are parish churches within England.” Tacitus also foresaw the calamities which so long desolated Europe on the fall of the Roman empire, in a work written five hundred years before the event! In that sublime anticipation of the future, he observed, “When the Romans shall be hunted out from those countries which they have conquered, what will then happen? The revolted people, freed from their master-oppressor, will not be able to subsist without destroying their neighbours, and the most cruel wars will exist among all these nations.” Solon, at Athens, contemplating on the port and citadel of Munychia, suddenly exclaimed, “how blind is man to futurity! could the Athenians foresee what mischief this will do, they would even eat it with their own teeth, to get rid of it.” A prediction verified more than two hundred years afterwards! Thales desired to be buried in an obscure quarter of Milesia, observing that that very spot would in time be the forum. Charlemagne, in his old age, observing from the window of a castle a Norman descent on his coast, tears started in the eyes of the aged monarch. He predicted, that since they dared to threaten his dominions while he was yet living, what would they do when he should be no more! A melancholy prediction of their subsequent incursions, and of the protracted calamities of the French nation during a whole century.