Use of divine names.
This brings William to the delicate question of divine names. He censures the use of the name of God by “magicians and astronomers” in “working their diabolical marvels.”[1158] He also notes that they employ a barbaric name and not one of the four Hebrew names of God. They forbid anyone who is not pure and clad in pure vestments to presume to touch the book in which this name is written, but they try to gain evil ends by it and so blaspheme against their Creator. William, however, seems to feel that the names of God have a virtue not found in ordinary words and he states that not only servants of God but even wicked men sometimes cast out demons by making use of holy exorcisms.
Christian magic.
In short, incantations possess no efficacy, but exorcisms do. This is an indication, not merely of William’s logical inconsistency, but also of the existence of a Christian or ecclesiastical variety of magic in his day. He will not believe in Nectanebo’s wax images, but he believes that the forms of wax which have the likeness of lambs receive through the benediction of the pope the virtue of warding off thunderbolts.[1159] He denied that magic words had efficacy through their sound but he affirms that consecrated bells prevent storms within the sound of their ringing, and that salt and water which have been blessed obtain the power of expelling demons. William, however, takes refuge in God’s omnipotent virtue to explain the efficacy of these Christian charms.
Magic of sex and generation.
Magic appears to have always devoted considerable attention to matters of sex and generation, and William’s works give one or two instances of this. He states that sorcerers investigate the cohabiting of certain animals, thinking that if they kill them at that hour they will obtain from their carcasses potent love-charms and aids to fecundity.[1160] We are also told that men have tried to produce, and thought that they succeeded in producing human life in other ways than by the usual generative process.[1161] “And in the books of experiments may be found mockeries of women similar to those which the demons called incubi work and which certain sorcerers have attempted and left in writing for posterity.” They have recorded a delusive experiment by which women who have been known only once or twice think that this has occurred fifty or sixty times.
William’s contribution to the bibliography of magic.
As has been already incidentally suggested, William offers considerable information as to the bibliography of magic in his day. Besides his many general allusions to works of magic, writings of sorcerers and prestidigitateurs and astrologers and books of experiments, he mentions several particular works ascribed to Aristotle and Avicenbros, to Hermes Trismegistus and Solomon, the “cursed book” of Cocogrecus on “Stations to the cult of Venus” and, what is perhaps the same, of Thot grecus on “The cult of Venus.”[1162] An Artesius or Arthesius, whom in one passage he calls a magician and cites concerning divination by water and whom in another passage he calls both a magician and a philosopher who had written a book on the virtue of words and characters,[1163] is probably the same Artesius who is cited concerning divination by the rays of the sun or moon in liquids or mirrors in a work of alchemy in a twelfth century manuscript,[1164] and further identical with the Artephius who Roger Bacon says lived for one thousand and twenty-five years,[1165] to whom a treatise is ascribed in the Theatrum Chymicum[1166] and a Sloane manuscript,[1167] and who seems to have been the same as Altughra’i, a poet and alchemist who died in 1128.[1168] There also are a number of magic books of which William does not give the author’s name or the title, but of which he gives descriptions or from which he makes citations which would be sufficiently definite to identify the works should one meet with them elsewhere. In our chapters on pseudo-literature and experimental literature we treat of many of these works.
Plan of the rest of this chapter.
From our survey of magic proper as delineated in William’s works we now turn to what he represents as the two chief forces in magic, namely, the demons and the occult virtues in nature, and to two subjects which he closely connects with magic, namely, divination and astrology. These four topics will be taken up separately in the order stated.