Magical Instruments:26. And as by natural reason every Magical Charm or Receipt had its first institution; In like manner have Magicians disposed the Matter and Manner together with the times of their Utensils and Instruments, according to the Principles of Nature: As the Hour wherein they compose their Garments, must either be in the hour of Luna, or else of Saturn, in the Moons increase.
Their matter,27. Their Garments they compose of White Linnen, black Cloth, black Cat-skins, Wolves, Bears, or Swines skins. The Linnen because of its abstracted Quality for Magick delights not to have any Utensils that are put to common uses. The skins of the aforesaid Animals are by reason of the Saturnine and Magical qualities in the particles of these beasts: Their sowing thred is of silk, Cats-guts, mans Nerves, Asses hairs, Thongs of skins from Men, Cats, Bats, Owls, Moles, and all which are enjoyn’d from the like Magical cause.
Substance,28. Their Needles are made of Hedge-hog prickles, or bones of any of the abovesaid Animals: Their Writing-pens are of Owls or Ravens, their Ink of Mans blood: Their Oyntments Mans fat, Blood, Usnea, Hoggs-grease, Oyl of Whales. Their Characters are ancient Hebrew or Samaritan: Their Speech is Hebrew or Latine. Their Paper must be of the Membranes of Infants, which they call Virgin-parchment, or of the skins of Cats, or Kids. Besides, they compose their Fires of sweet Wood, Oyl or Rosin: And their Candles of the Fatt or Marrow of Men or Children: Their Vessels are Earthen, their Candlesticks with three feet, of dead mens bones: Their Swords are steel, without guards, the poynts being reversed. These are their Materials, which they do particularly choose from the Magical qualities whereof they are composed.
And Form.29. Neither are the peculiar shapes without a natural cause. Their Caps are Oval, or like Pyramids with Lappets on each side, and furr within: Their Gowns reach to the ground, being furr’d with white Fox-skins, under which they have a Linnen Garment reaching to their Knee. Their Girdles are three inches broad, and have many Caballistical Names, with Crosses, Trines and Circles inscribed thereon. Their Knives are Dagger-fashion: and the Circles by which they defend themselves are commonly nine foot in breadth, but the Eastern Magicians give but seven. And these are the matter and manner of their Preparations, which I thought fit here to insist upon, because of their affinity with the Instruments of Charms, for both which a natural cause is constantly pretended.
The Conclusion.30. Thus I have briefly spoken of the Nature of every Spirit good or evil, so farr as safety or convenience would permit; adding also this last Discourse of Charms and Conjurations, in their speculative part, forbearing to describe the Forms themselves, because many of them are not only facil, but also of mighty power when they are seasonably applyed: So that to describe distinctly, by what means Magicians kill, cure, or conquer, were to strengthen the hands of the Envious against their Neighbours Lives and Fortunes. And therefore the Readers must rest contented with what is here related of the Nature of Astral or Infernal Spirits.
FINIS.
SHAKESPEARE NOTINGS.
[P. 99]. Bodin’s “asseheaded man”. N. Drake, in his Shakespeare and his Times, vol. ii, p. 351, suggested that Bottom’s “translation” was derived from p. 315 in Scot, where a receipt for such transformations is given. This may in part have been in Shakespeare’s memory, as may the commonly received belief that magicians could do such things. He may, too, have remembered another tale, told at p. 533, of Pope Benedict IX having been condemned after death to walk the earth (I presume at night, after his purgatorial day) in a bear’s skin, with an ass’s head in such sort as he lived. But I incline to think that these after-statements only caused him to remember the more this first, full, and remarkable M. Mal-Bodin-Cyprus tale; and more especially this passage, for in iv, i, 30, Bottom declares—“Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay: good hay, sweet hay hath no fellow.” So acute and ready an observer may have the more remembered the epithet “asseheaded” because, as most readers must observe, Scot uses this word, though the sailor in the tale is an ass from his snout and ears down to the end of his tail and the tips of his hoofs.