XXXV

OF MAGIC

WHAT IS magic? The secret of doing what nature cannot perform; what is impossible: yet magic has at all times gained credit. The word is derived from the Mag, Magdim, or magi of Chaldea. They knew more than other people; they sought for the cause of rain and fine weather; and they were soon reckoned to be the makers of rain and fine weather. They were astronomers; the most ignorant and daring were astrologers. An event happened under the junction of two planets, these two planets had therefore produced this event; and the astrologers were the masters of the planets. Distempered imaginations had in a dream seen their friends dying or dead: the magicians made the departed friends appear.

Having discovered the course of the moon, they could easily make the moon take a trip down upon earth. They also disposed of the life of man either by figures of wax, or by pronouncing the name of God or the devil. Clement of Alexandria in his Stromates, book v says, that according to an ancient author, Moses pronounced the name Ihaho, or Jehovah, so effectually to the ear of Phara Nekefr, king of Egypt, that he died upon the spot.

In fine, from the time of Jannes and Membres, who were the patent sorcerers of Pharaoh, till that of La Marechale D’Ancre, who was burnt at Paris, for killing a white cock when it was full moon, there was not any period destitute of sorcery.

The Pythoness of Endor who raised the ghost of Samuel is very well known; it is true there is something strange that the word Python, which is Greek, should be known to the Jews, in the time of Saul. Many learned men have concluded from hence that this history was not written, till the Jews traded with the Greeks, after the time of Alexander; but this is not the point in question here.

To return to magic: the Jews carried on the trade as soon as they were dispersed over the world. The sorcerer’s sabbath is an evident proof of this: and the he-goat, with which the sorceresses were supposed to have copulated, is derived from the ancient correspondence the Jews had with goats in the Desert, with which they are reproached in Leviticus, chap. xvii.

There are scarce any criminal prosecutions carried on amongst us for sorcery, without some Jews being impeached.

The Romans, as enlightened as they were in the time of Augustus, were still infatuated with sorcery, as we are. See Virgil’s Eclogue, entitled Pharmacentria.

Carmina vel coelo possunt deducere lunam.

 

The voice of the enchanter brings down the moon.

 

His ego saepe lupum fieri & se condere silvis.
Maerim saepe animas imis exire sepulchris.

 

Smear’d with these pow’rful juices, on the plain
He howls a wolf among the hungry train:
And oft the mighty necromancer boasts,
With these, to call from tombs the stalking ghosts.

People are astonished that Virgil to this day passes for a sorcerer at Naples. There is no occasion to seek for the reason any where but in this Eclogue.

Horace reproaches Sagana and Canidia with their abominable sorcery. The first heads of the republic were infected with these shocking notions. Sextus, son to Pompey the Great, immolated a child in one of these enchantments.

Philters were charms of a less violent nature, that they might gain more admirers: the Jews were the proprietors of them, and sold them to the Roman ladies. Such of that nation as could not become rich brokers fabricated prophecies or philters.

All these extravagances, ridiculous impositions, or shocking impostures, are perpetuated amongst ourselves; and no age has discredited them. Missionaries have been astonished to find these extravagances at the extremities of the world, and they have complained to the people whom the demon had inspired with them. Why, my friends, did you not remain in your own country? You would not, indeed, have met with more devils there; but you would have found every whit as much nonsense.

You would have seen thousands of wretches insensible enough to believe themselves sorcerers, and judges stupid and barbarous enough to condemn them to the flames; you would have seen a jurisprudence in Europe founded on magic, in the same manner as there are laws against theft and murder; a jurisprudence established upon the decision of councils. What was still worse, was, that the people finding the magistracy of the church believed in magic, they were only the more invincibly persuaded of its existence; and consequently the more sorcerers were persecuted, the more numerous they became. Whence arose so fatal and general an error? From ignorance; and this evinces that those who undeceive men are their greatest benefactors.

It has been said, that the universal consent of all men was the test of truth. What a proof! Every people has believed in magic, in astrology, in oracles, in lunar influences. It should at least have been said, that the consent of all wise men was not a proof, but a kind of probability! did not all the sages before Copernicus believe, that the earth was motionless, and fixed in the center of the world?

No one people have a right to ridicule another; if Rabelais calls Picatrix, “my reverend father in the devil,” because magic was taught at Toledo, Salamanca, and Seville, the Spaniards may retort upon the French the prodigious number of their sorcerers.

France is, perhaps, of all countries that which has the most blended cruelty and ridicule. There is not a single tribunal in France, that has not burnt many magicians. In ancient Rome there were madmen who fancied themselves sorcerers; but we do not find any barbarians that burnt them.