The Philosophy of Mystery

by Walter Cooper Dendy

The sun to make two hundred compasses,

In her prophetic fury sew’d the work.”

And here is a scroll of vellum folded within it. Listen, and you shall hear the pencillings of some unhappy student, benighted in the mazes of the Cabala.

“The eye of modern philosophy may wink at the wisdom of occult sciences, and sorcerers and magicians, necromancers and Rosicrucians, cabalists and conjurers, astrologers and soothsayers, Philomaths, Drows, and Oreades, wizards and witches, and warlocks, and sibyls and gipsies, may be, in its estimation, a mere legion of cyphers. Yet faith hath been long and firmly lavished on the art of divination by the learned and mighty men of all ages. The Chaldean, who read the stars, was the coryphæus and the type of superhuman knowledge; the magi of Persia and Egypt, and other orient lands, followed in his wake. The venerable Hermes Trismegistus was surrounded by his proselytes in the year of the world 2076; and Apollonius and Zoroaster, and Pythagoras, and, in later ages, John of Leyden, Roger Bacon, and other learned mystagogues, have imbibed a more than mortal wisdom from the aspect of those starry lights which gem the vaulted firmament; while the luminous schools of Padua, and Seville, and Salamanca, were rich in the records of occult and mystic learning. Emperors and kings, and ministers, who ruled the destiny of mighty nations, have believed. Wallenstein was all confiding; Richelieu and Mazarin (as Morin writes) retained soothsayers as a part of their household; Napoleon studied with implicit faith his book of fate; and Canute, obedient to his confidence in the virtue of relics, directed his Roman agent to buy St. Augustine’s arms for one hundred silver talents, and one of gold.

“Nay, what saith divinity itself? Glanvil, the chaplain of King Charles II., affirms in his ‘Saducismus Triumphatus,’ that ‘the disbeliever in a witch must believe the devil gratis;’ and Wesley said, that ‘giving up witchcraft was, in fact, giving up the Bible.’ Now, as the Chaldean sophs were divided into three classes—1. the ‘Ascaphim,’ or charmer; 2. the ‘Mecascaphim,’ or magician; 3. the ‘Chasdim,’ or astrologer; so the legion of modern witches was composed of a mystic tryad, distinguished by colours that were a symbol of their influence on our mortal frame. The black witch could hurt, but not help; the white could help, but not hurt; the grey could both help and hurt.”

Ida. My own Castaly, have pity on us. Evelyn may unrol the coils of this unholy manuscript if he will.

I do believe this lettered clerk has, in some unhappy hour, wandered by the ruins of the Seven Churches in the valley of Glendalough; and there, creeping up to St. Keven’s bed, that hangs over the gloomy waters of its lake, has won the fatal gift of Catholic magic. Or perchance he has sworn allegiance with Faust and Friar Bacon.

Astr. If an Oxford student must kneel at the shrine of a fair lady, he will whisper this confession. In exploring the treasures of black-letter romance, he revelled among the occult mysteries, slighting that pure analysis of nature which is the essence of all philosophy. The legends of Reginald Scott, De Foe, Glanvil, and Wanley, were the companions of his pillow; and thus in poring over the legends of enchantment, he was himself enchanted, and contemplated a wondrous history of witchcraft, where Sir Walter himself had failed. Let me have light penance, and I promise in the simple and beautiful light of nature alone to read her wonders; and if I dare, to study astrology in those planet eyes which look so mildly on their proselyte.

Ida. Or rather, as the magi of old, you will burn your books of divination; and, like Friar Bacon, who broke the rare glass which showed him things fifty miles off, you will study divinity, and become a pious anchorite.

Cast. I am happy that you abandon the dark and dooming spells of the magus and the witch, Astrophel, for witchcraft is the unholy opposition of a demon to the Deity. Yet in your fate I read my own. But censure not the poetry of that innocent romance that lights up the legends of the berry-brown sibyl, whether she be a tirauna prowling in the streets of Madrid, or a gipsy perched upon the heath-brow of Norwood; for theirs are happy prophecies. Yet if, like Astrophel, I am to be the slave of philosophy, let me at least make “a dying and a swan-like end.”