The occult virtue of the human mind is another matter which Albert seems inclined to place within the field of magic. In the treatise on minerals[1834] he remarks that whether fascination is true or not is a question for magic to settle, and in his On Sleep and Waking[1835] he cites Avicenna and Algazel as adducing “fascination and magic virtues” as examples of occult influence exerted by one man over another. It will be remembered that he cited the same authors anent fascination in his Commentary on the Sentences,[1836] but there denied that fascination or magic could harm anyone who had firm faith in God, although he illustrated the possibility of potent human occult virtue exercised at will by the marvelous virtues exerted constantly by the sapphire and emerald. Peter of Prussia gives us to understand that Albert’s belief was that fascination did not operate naturally but by the aid of demons; nevertheless certain men are generated at rare intervals who work marvels like the twins in Germany in Albert’s time at whose approach bolts would open.[1837]
Interpretation of dreams and magic.
Albert also regards the interpretation of dreams as especially the affair of magic. In one passage of On Sleep and Waking[1838] he grants that probably the art of interpreting dreams cannot be acquired without a knowledge of magic and “astronomy.” In a second passage[1839] he speaks of the magicians as teaching the interpretation of dreams and the “astronomers” as talking of signs of prophecies, but not the sort of prophecy accepted among theologians. In a third passage[1840] he defines the kind of dreams “which wise men interpret and for which was invented the art of interpretation in the magical sciences.” Albert seems to have no particular objection, either moral or religious, to the interpretation of dreams, even if it is a branch of magic. Rather he censures Aristotle and other philosophers for not having investigated this side of the subject further, and he thinks that by physical science alone one can at least determine what sort of dreams are of value for purposes of divination and are susceptible to interpretation.[1841] Magicians make great use not only of dreams but also of visions seen when one is awake but with the senses distracted.[1842] The magicians indeed specialize in potions which clog and stupefy the senses, and thereby produce apparitions by means of which they predict the future.
Magic and divination.
In this same treatise On Sleep and Waking Albert lists together “the astronomer and augur and magician and interpreter of dreams and visions and every such diviner.”[1843] He admits that almost all men of this type delight in deception and are poorly educated and confuse what is contingent with what is necessary, but he insists that “the defect is not in the science but in those who abuse it.” Thus magic and divination in general are closely associated.
Summary of Albert’s accounts of magic.
This last passage, like the connecting of enchanters and necromancers with magic which we have noted in a previous paragraph, is hard to reconcile with the passage in his commentary upon the Gospel of Matthew where Albert separated the Magi and magic from diviners, enchanters, necromancers, and their arts. So far as mere classification is concerned, Albert’s references to magic in his scientific writings are in closer accord with his discussion of magic in the Summa and Sentences, where too he associated magic with the stars, with occult virtues, with fascination, and with images. But the emphasis which he there laid upon the evil character of magic and its connection with demons is now almost entirely lacking. Our attention is rather being continually called to how closely magic, or at least some parts of it, border upon natural science and astronomy. And yet we are also always being reminded that magic, although itself a “science,” is essentially different in methods and results from natural science or at least from what Albert calls “physical science.” Overlapping both these fields, apparently, and yet rather distinct from both in Albert’s thought, is the great subject of “astronomy” which includes both the genuine natural science and the various vagaries of astrology. It is all like some map of a feudal area where certain fiefs owe varying degrees of fealty to, or are claimed by, several lords and where the frontiers are loose, fluctuating, and uncertain. Perhaps the rule of the stars can be made to account for almost everything in natural science or in magic, but Albert seems inclined to leave room for the independent action of divine power, the demons, and the human mind and will. But his attitude to the stars and to astrology will be considered more fully later; we shall first examine in more detail his own attitude towards marvelous virtues in inferior nature and towards some of the other matters which he has located expressly or by implication along the ill-defined frontier of “magic and astronomy.” In concluding the present section let us make the one further observation that while Albert describes magic differently and even inconsistently in different passages, it is evident enough that he is trying to describe the same thing all the time.
IV. Marvelous Virtues in Nature
Properties of the lion.
So many instances have already been given from other authors of the occult virtues ascribed to parts of animals that we shall note in Albert’s treatise on animals only two or three passages, chiefly for purposes of comparison. The properties which he ascribes to the carcass of the lion,[1844] for instance, bear a certain resemblance to Pliny’s paragraph on its medicinal virtues and to Thomas of Cantimpré’s compilation concerning it, yet are considerably different. Its fat is hotter than that of other animals, and they flee from anyone who is anointed with it, while fumigation therewith keeps wolves away from sheep. A diet of lion’s flesh benefits paralytics. Garments wrapped in its skin are secure from moths, and the hair falls out of a wolf’s skin which is left near a lion’s skin. If the tooth of a lion which is called caninus is suspended about a boy’s neck before he loses his first teeth, he will be free from toothache when his second teeth come. Lion’s fat mixed with other unguents removes blotches, and rubbing cancer with its blood cures that disease. Drinking a little of its gall cures jaundice; its liver in wine checks pain in the liver. Its brain, if eaten, causes madness; but remedies deafness, if inserted in the ear with some strong oil. Its testicle, administered pulverized with roses, causes sterility—a case, it would seem, of sympathetic magic operating by contraries. But no doctrine of sympathy and antipathy is needed to explain the further assertion that its excrement drunk with wine makes one abhor wine.