Hippolytus also reveals how magicians secretly fill eggs with dyes, how they cause sheep to behead themselves against a sword by smearing their throats with a drug which makes them itch, how a ram dies if its head is merely bent back facing the sun, how they obstruct the ears of goats with wax so that they cannot breathe and presently die of suffocation, how out of sea foam they make a compound which, like alcohol, will itself burn but not consume the objects over which it is poured.[2032] He tells how the magician produces stage thunder, how he is able to plunge his hand into a boiling cauldron or walk over hot coals without being burnt, and how he can set a seeming pyramid of stone on fire. He tells how the magicians loosen seals and seal them up again, just as Lucian did in his Alexander or The Pseudo-Prophet; how by means of trap-doors, mirrors, and the like devices they show demons in a cauldron; how they pretend to show flaming demons by igniting drawings which they have sketched on the wall with some inflammable substance or by loosing a bird which has been set on fire. They make the moon appear indoors and imitate the starry sky by attaching fish scales to the ceiling. They produce the sensation of an earthquake by burning the ordure of a weasel with the stone magnet upon an open fire. They construct a false skull from the caul of an ox, some wax, and some gum, make it speak by means of a hidden tube, and then cause it suddenly to collapse and disappear or to burn up.[2033]
Defects and merits of Hippolytus’ exposure of magic and of magic itself.
This exposition of the frauds of the magicians by Hippolytus is rather broken and incoherent, at least in the form in which his text has reached us.[2034] Also we do not have much more faith in some of the methods by which he says the feats of magic are really done than he has in the ways by which the magicians claim to perform them. But while his notions of the chemical action of certain substances and of the occult virtue of others may be incorrect, the noteworthy point is that he endeavors to explain magic either as a deception or as employing natural substances and forces to simulate supernatural action, and that his exposure of magic devices leaves no place for the action of demons. Moreover, we see that magic fraud involves chemical experiment and considerable knowledge or error in the field of natural science. Under the guise or tyranny of magic experimental science is at work.
Hippolytus’ sources.
The question then arises whether Hippolytus himself discovered these tricks of the magicians or whether he is simply copying his explanations of them from some previous work. An examination of the earlier chapters of his fourth book is sufficient to solve the question. His arguments against the practice of the Chaldean astrologers of predicting man’s life from his horoscope at the time of his birth are drawn from the pages of the sceptical philosopher, Sextus Empiricus, whom he follows so closely that his editors are able to rectify his text by reference to the parallel passage in Sextus. We are therefore probably safe in assuming, especially in view of the resemblances to the Alexander of Lucian which have already been noted, that Hippolytus’ attack on magic is also largely indebted to some classical work, possibly to that very treatise against magic by Celsus to which both Origen and Lucian refer, or perhaps to some account of apparatus with which to work marvels like Hero’s Pneumatics.
Justin Martyr and others on the witch of Endor.
Turning back now to the subject of the witch of Endor, we find that some of the church fathers agree with Origen rather than Tertullian that the witch really invoked Samuel. Before Origen’s time Justin Martyr in The Dialogue with Trypho[2035] had mentioned as a proof of the immortality of the soul “the fact that the soul of Samuel was called up by the witch, as Saul demanded.” Huet, who edited the writings of Origen, lists other Christian authors[2036] who agreed with Origen on this question, and further informs us that the ancient rabbis were wont to say that a soul invoked within a year after its death as Samuel’s was, would be seen by the ventriloquist but not heard, and heard by the person consulting it but not seen, an observation which suggests that Saul was deceived by ventriloquism, while by others present the ghost would be neither seen nor heard.
Gregory of Nyssa and Eustathius concerning the ventriloquist.
Two ecclesiastics of the fourth century composed special treatises upon the ventriloquist or witch of Endor in which they took the opposite view from that of Origen. The briefer of these two treatises is by Gregory of Nyssa[2037] who states, without mentioning Origen by name, that some previous writers have contended that Samuel was truly invoked by magic with divine permission in order that he might see his mistake in having called Saul the enemy of ventriloquists. But Gregory believes that Samuel was already in paradise and hence could not be invoked from the infernal regions; but that it was a demon from the infernal regions who predicted to Saul, “To-morrow you and Jonathan shall be with me.” The longer treatise of Eustathius of Antioch is a direct answer to Origen’s argument as its title, Concerning the Ventriloquist against Origen,[2038] indicates. Eustathius holds that it was illegal to consult ventriloquists in view of Saul’s own previous action against them and other prohibitions in Scripture, and that Origen’s remarks are to be deplored as tending to encourage simple men to resort to arts of divination. Eustathius contends that the witch did not invoke Samuel but only made Saul think that she did, and that Saul himself did not see Samuel. Pharaoh’s magicians similarly deceived the imagination with shadows and specters when they pretended to turn rods into snakes and water into blood. Eustathius does not agree with Origen that Samuel was in hell. He holds that the predictions made by the pseudo-Samuel were not impossible for a demon to make, and indeed were not strictly accurate, since Saul did not die the very next day but the day after it, and since not only Jonathan but his three sons were slain with him.[2039] Furthermore, David was already so prominent in public affairs that a demon might easily guess that he would succeed Saul.
Gregory of Nyssa Against Fate.