Its fantastic character.
Thus, as we have already seen over and over again, the fantastic and deceptive character of magic is dimly realized. Usually, however, when Augustine represents “the powers of the air” as deceiving men by magic, the deceit consists merely in the magicians’ imagining that they are working the marvels which are really performed by demons, or in men being lured into subjection to Satan and to their ultimate and eternal damnation through the attractions of the magic art.[2180]
Samuel and the witch of Endor.
Augustine twice responded to questions concerning the witch of Endor’s apparent invocation of the spirit of Samuel, repeating in his De octo Dulcitii quaestionibus[2181] what he had already said in De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum.[2182] In certain respects Augustine’s treatment of the problem differs from those which we have previously examined. What, he asks, if the impure spirit which possessed the pythonissa was able to raise the very soul of Samuel from the dead? Is it not much more strange that Satan was allowed to converse personally with God concerning the tempting of Job, and to raise the very Christ aloft upon a pinnacle of the temple? Why then may not the soul of Samuel have appeared to Saul, not unwillingly and coerced by magic power but voluntarily under some hidden divine dispensation? Augustine, however, also thinks it possible that the soul of Samuel did not appear but was impersonated by some phantasm and imaginary illusion made by diabolical machinations. He can see no deceit in the Scripture’s calling such a phantom Samuel, since we are accustomed to call paintings, statues, and images seen in dreams by the names of the actual persons whom they represent. Nor does it trouble him that the spirit of Samuel or pretended spirit predicted truly to Saul, for demons have a limited power of that sort. Thus they recognized Christ when the Jews knew Him not, and the damsel possessed of a spirit of divination in The Acts testified to Paul’s divine mission. Augustine leaves, however, as beyond the limits of his time and strength the further problem whether the human soul after death can be so evoked by magic incantations that it is not only seen but recognized by the living. In his answer to Dulcitius he further calls attention to the passage in Ecclesiasticus (XLVI, 23) where Samuel is praised as prophesying from the dead. And if this passage be rejected because the book is not in the Hebrew canon, what shall we say of Moses who appeared to the living long after his death?
Natural marvels.
Augustine had some acquaintance with ancient natural science and in one passage rehearses a number of natural marvels which are found in the pages of Pliny and Solinus in order to show pagans their inconsistency in accepting such wonders and yet remaining incredulous in regard to analogous phenomena mentioned in the Bible. So Augustine rehearses the strange properties of the magnet; asserts that adamant can be broken neither by steel nor fire but only by application of the blood of a goat; tells of Cappadocian mares who conceive from the wind; and hails the ability of the salamander to live in the midst of flames as a token that the bodies of sinners can subsist in hell fire. Augustine also admits “the virtue of stones and other objects and the craft of men who employ these in marvelous ways.”[2183] He denies, however, that the Marsi who charm snakes by their incantations are really understood by the serpents. There is some diabolical force behind their magic, as when Satan spoke to Eve through the serpent.[2184]
Relation between magic and science.
Once at least, however, Augustine associates science and magic. In his Confessions, after speaking of sensual pleasure he also censures “the vain and curious desire of investigation” through the senses, which is “palliated under the name of knowledge and science.” This is apt to lead one not only into scrutinizing secrets of nature which are beyond one and which it does one no good to know and which men want to know just for the sake of knowledge, but also “into searching through magic arts into the confines of perverse science.”[2185]
Superstitions akin to magic.
Of this dangerous borderland between magic and science Augustine has more to say in some chapters of his Christian Doctrine.[2186] After mentioning as prime instances of human superstition idolatry, other false religions, and the magic arts, he next lists the books of soothsayers (aruspices) and augurs as of the same class, “though seemingly a more permissible vanity.” In his Confessions,[2187] however, he tells of a soothsayer who offered not only to consult the future for him, but to insure him success in a poetical contest in which he was to engage in the theater. The incident is a good illustration of the fact that prediction of the future and attempting to influence events go naturally together, and that arts of divination cannot be separated either in theory or practice from magic arts. In the Christian Doctrine Augustine is inclined further to put in the same class all use of invocations, incantations, and characters, which he regards as signs implying pacts with evil spirits, and the use of which in working cures he asserts is condemned by the medical profession. He is also suspicious of ligatures and suspensions, and states that it is one thing to say, “If you drink the juice of this herb, your stomach will not ache,” and is another thing to say, “If you suspend this herb from the neck, your stomach will not ache. For in one case a healing application is worthy of approval, in the other a superstitious signification is to be censured.” Augustine recognizes, however, that such ligatures and suspensions are called “by the milder name of natural remedies (physica)”; and if they are applied without incantations or characters, possibly they may heal the body naturally by mere attachment, in which case it is lawful to employ them. But they may involve some signal to demons, in which case the more efficacious they are, the more a Christian should avoid them.