[48] It was observed they (devils) had a peculiar attachment to women with beautiful hair, and it was an old Catholic belief that St. Paul alluded to this in that somewhat obscure passage in which he exhorts women to cover their heads because of the angels.—Sprangler.
[49] The attention of scientific men and governments has recently been directed to what are now called “The Accursed Sciences,” under whose action certain crimes have been committed from “suggestion,” the hand which executed being only that of an irresponsible automaton, whose memory preserves no traces of it. The French Academy has just been debating the question—how far a hypnotized subject from a mere victim can become a regular tool of crime.—Lucifer, October 1887.
“Merck’s Bulletin,” New York medical journal, in an editorial entitled Modern Witchcraft, December, 1892, relates some astonishing experiments recently made at the Hôpital de la Charité, Paris, in which the power to “exteriorize sensibility” has been discovered, reproducible at will; suggestion through means of simulated pinching producing suffering; photographs sensitive to their originals even having been produced. Thus modern science stamps with truthfulness the power asserted as pertaining to black magicians, of causing suffering or death through means of a waxen image of a person. “The Accursed Sciences,” although brought to the bar of modern investigating knowledge, seem not yet to have yielded the secrets of the law under which they are rendered possible.
[50] In 1609 six hundred sorcerers were convicted in the Province of Bordeaux, France, most of whom were burned.—Dr. Priestly. Within the last year fourteen women have been tried in France for sorcery.
[51] The supreme end of magic is to conjure the spirits. The highest and most inscrutable of all the powers dwells in the divine and mysterious name, “The Supreme Name,” with which Hea alone is acquainted. Before this name everything bows in heaven and earth, and in hades, and it alone can conquer the Maskim and stop their ravages. The great name remained the secret of Hea; if any man succeeded in divining it, that alone would invest him with a power superior to the gods.—Chaldean Magic and Sorcery.
[52] Venetians concluded not unreasonably that the latter ran no more risk from the taint of witchcraft attached to their inheritance than did the clergy or the church. Where profits were all spiritual their ardor soon cooled. Thus it happened as the inevitable result of the people’s attitude in religious matters, that while in Venice there were representatives of the vast sisterhood, which extended from the Blockula of Sweden to the walnut tree of Benevenuto, sorcery there never became the terrible scourge that it was in other lands where its victims at times threatened to outnumber those of the Black Death.—The Witches of Venice.
[53] One of the most powerful features of the belief in witchcraft was the power that greed had in producing belief and causing persecution. The church had grown rich from such trials, and the state was now to take its turn. By the public offering of a reward for the finding of witches, their numbers greatly increased.
[54] The most exceptional conduct, the purest morals in constant practice of every day life, are not sufficient security against the suspicion of errors like these—Montesquieu.
[55] For a number of years her celebrated son struggled amid his scientific studies for the preservation of her life.
[56] Michelet.—La Sorcerie 151. See Papers on the Bastile.