The displaying of supposed witchcraft

by John Webster

Isai. 13. 21.

Levit. 17. 7.

Deut. 32. 17.

Psal. 106. 37.

2 Chron. 11. 15.

2. It is no less believed by many, that those kind of Creatures which are called Satyres are but a kind of Demons; for learned Gesner reckoning them to be a kind of Apes, doth tell us this: “Even as (he saith) the Apes Cynocephali, or with Dogs-heads, have given the occasion of the Fable, that some have thought such to be men: So Satyrs being also a rare kind of Apes, and of greater admiration, some have believed them to be Devils: also of some men deluded by the Poets and Painters, as also Statuaries, who have feigned that they had Goats feet and horns, the more to augment the admiration and superstition, they have been thought Devils: when in Ape-Satyres there is no such thing to be seen.” And this opinion hath been the more strengthened because the most of the Translators have in the Old Testament rendered the word שָׂעִיר (which properly signifieth an happy man or beast) a Goat, a Satyre, (as Gen. 27. ver. 11. Esau my Brother is a hairy man; where the very same word is used) Demon, or Devil. But it is plain that it did and doth signifie no more but only Satyrs, as will appear by these reasons. 1. First, as our English Translators have truly rendred it in that of Isaiah, And the Satyre shall cry unto his fellow: for it is certainly related, both by ancient and modern Navigators, that in those desolate Islands where there are store of them, they will upon the nights make great shouting and crying, and calling one unto another. And in another place of the same Prophet it is said by the same Translators, and Satyres shall dance there; dancing being one of the properties of that hairy Creature, as a thing it is much delighted with, and so are but Satyres that are natural Creatures and not Devils. 2. And though the same Translators have rendred the plural of the same word, by the name Devils, yet it there properly signifieth also Satyres; for though in another place it be said; they sacrificed to devils, not to God, and so again by the Psalmist, for they sacrificed their sons and daughters unto devils; where in both places the word is שֵדִים vastatoribus, to the destroyers or to Devils; because in those Idols the Devils were worshipped, and thereby destroyed the souls of men: 3. Yet it is manifest that their Idols were formed in the shape of Satyres, in a most terrible manner; for the late and most credible travellers that have been in those parts of Asia, where those Idolatries are still upholden, do unanimously relate that they make their Images or Idols that they worship, as terrible and frightful as they can devise, as may be seen in the relations of the Travels of Vincent le Blanc, Mandelslo, and Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, and M^r Herbert our Countryman gives us the Idol of the Bannyans in the ugly shape of a monstrous Satyre. 4. So that though this worshipping and sacrificing, in respect of its abominableness, filthiness and Idolatrousness, was yielded to Devils, which spiritually and invisibly ruled in these Children of disobedience, and was the Author of all those delusions and impostures; yet it doth no where appear, that it was Demons in the corporeal shape of Satyres (as many have erroneously supposed) no more than the golden Calves that Jeroboam made, were real Devils: but these Idols were made in the figure or shape of Satyrs or hairy Creatures, as saith the Text: And he ordained him Priests for the high places, and for the hairy Idols or Satyres, and for the Calves that he had made. It is the same Hebrew word here that our English Translators render Devils, that in the two former places of Isaiah they translate Satyres; and as the Calves are not rendred Devils, why should the Images that were like Satyres be translated so? Surely the Devil was as much in the Calves, and as much worshipped in those dumb Idols as he was in the dumb and dead Idols or Images of the Satyres, and so no more reason to call the one Devils than the other. But that which totally overthrows the conceit that they should be real Devils in corporeal shapes and figures, is this, that both the Calves and the Images of these Satyres were made by Jeroboam: now it is manifest that he could not make a real Devil, but only Images of Calves and Satyres, wherein and whereby the Devils might be worshipped in those Idolatrous ways.

Hist. 3.

Observ. Medic. lib. 3. c. 56. p. 283.

So that it is most apparent, that these Satyres being seldom seen and of strange qualities, have made many to believe that they were Demons; nay it seems their Images and Pictures have been taken for Devils, and yet are but meer natural Creatures, and by learned men accounted a kind of Apes, which we shall now prove by an undeniable instance or two; and first this from the pen of that learned Physician Nicholaus Tulpius, who saith thus: “In our remembrance (he saith) there was an Indian Satyre brought from Angola; and presented as a gift to Frederick Henry Prince of Aurange. This Satyre was four-footed and from the humane shape which it seems to bear, it is called of the Indians Orang antang, homo silvestris, a wild man, and of the Africans Quoias morron, expressing in longitude a Child of three years old, and in crassitude, one of six years. It was of body neither fat nor lean, but square, most able and very swift. And of its joints so firm, and the Muscles so large, that it durst undertake and could do any thing; on the foreparts altogether smooth, and rough behind, and covered with black hairs. Its face did resemble a man, but the nose broad and crooked downwards, rugged and a toothless female. But the ears were not different from humane shape. As neither the breast, adorned on both sides with a swelling dug (for it was of the feminine Sex) the belly had a very deep navil; and the joints, both those above and those below, had such an exact similitude with man, that one egg doth not seem more like another. Neither was there awanting a requisite commissure to the arm, nor the order of fingers to the hands, nor an humane shape to the thumb, or a prop of the legs to the thighs, or of the heel to the foot. Which fit and decent form of the members, was the cause that for most part it did go upright: neither did it lift up any kind of weight less heavily than remove it easily.

When it was about to drink it would hold the handle of the Kan with the one hand, and put the other under the bottom of the Cup, then would it wipe off the moysture left upon its lips, not less neatly than thou shouldest see the most delicate Courtier. Which same dexterity it did observe when it went to bed. For lying her head upon the Pillow, and fitly covering her body with the Cloaths, it did hide it self no otherwise, than if the most delicate person had laid there.