Witchcraft and the Black Art - A Book Dealing with the Psychology and Folklore of the Witches

J.W. Wickwar

Description

The old craft of the witches was a close order. Its members were sworn to secrecy. Although some records were kept, very few of these still exist today. In early ecclesiastic and in mediaeval literature, however, references to witchcraft are numerous. This book endeavours to set out in an interesting manner the story of the craft from earliest times. The book's three hundred and twenty pages contain fourteen Comprehensive Chapters: Witchcraft: A Primitive Cult. Initiation and Ceremony. Spells, The Evil Eye, and Possession. Practical Witchcraft. Witchcraft on the Continent. Werewolves and Vampires. Blood and Fire in England. Demons and Mascots. Witch Hunting cameos. A Typical English Witch Trial. Witchcraft in America. Witchcraft Phantasmagoria. A Typical Witch Tract. The Last Phase. This book will prove a fascinating read for anyone interested in the occult arts, and will provide much information to historians of this hitherto arcane subject.

Sujets

• Witchcraft
• Spirituality
• Wicca

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 17 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528769563
• Langue: English

Extrait

WITCHCRAFT AND THE BLACK ART
WITCHCRAFT AND THE BLACK ART
A BOOK DEALING WITH THE PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLKLORE OF THE WITCHES
BY
J. W. WICKWAR
For far too long the science of Folklore has been the possession of the few, and any effort made to popularise it should be welcomed.
-Sir William Osler, Bt., M.D., F.R.S .
HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED 3 YORK STREET ST. JAMES S LONDON S.W.1 MCMXXV
Printed in Great Britain by Butler Tanner Ltd., Frome and London
Dedicated
TO THE MEMORY OF
W. H. R. RIVERS
M.D., D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S.,
WHOSE FRIENDSHIP AS
PRESIDENT OF THE FOLKLORE SOCIETY
IS COUNTED AMONG THE AUTHOR S
MOST TREASURED POSSESSIONS
FOREWORD
THE old craft of the witches, like many a craft since, was a close order; its members were sworn to secrecy. This being so, it kept such records as it made in safe keeping, and although at one time or another there must have been many of them in existence-for every district had its Coven and its Register of Adherents-there is probably to-day not a single one in any library the wide world o er. In early ecclesiastic and in medi val literature, however, references to witchcraft are numerous, and it is from a study of these that we are able to form an opinion as to what witchcraft really was.
In the pages that follow, an endeavour has been made to set out in an interesting manner the story of the craft from earliest times.
As, up to the present, very little of a popular nature has been written on the subject, it has been thought that such an account as is here given may be appreciated by the general reading public.
CONTENTS
F OREWORD
I. W ITCHCRAFT : A P RIMITIVE C ULT
II. I NITIATION AND C EREMONY
III. S PELLS , THE E VIL E YE , AND P OSSESSION
IV. P RACTICAL W ITCHCRAFT
V. W ITCHCRAFT ON THE C ONTINENT
VI. W EREWOLVES AND V AMPIRES
VII. B LOOD AND F IRE IN E NGLAND
VIII. D EMONS AND M ASCOTS
IX. W ITCH - HUNTING C AMEOS
X. A T YPICAL E NGLISH W ITCH -T RIAL
XI. W ITCHCRAFT IN A MERICA
XII. W ITCHCRAFT P HANTASMAGORIA
XIII. A T YPICAL W ITCH -T RACT
XIV. T HE L AST P HASE
A PPENDIX
I NDEX
THE WITCH
Within a gloomy dimble she doth dwell,
Down in a pit o ergrown with brakes and briers,
Close by the ruins of a shaken abbey,
Torn with an earthquake down into the ground,-
Mongst graves and grots, near an old charnel house,
Where you shall find her sitting in her form
As fearful and melancholic as that
She is about, with caterpillars kells
And knotty cobwebs rounded in with spells.
Then she steals forth to make ewes
Cast their lambs, swine eat their farrow,
And housewife s tun not work, nor the milk churn!
Writhe children s wrists and suck their breath in sleep,
Get vials of their blood! and where the sea
Cast up his slimy ooze, search for a weed
To open locks with, and to rivet charms
Planted about her in the wicked feat
Of all her mischiefs, which are manifold.
B EN J ONSON .
WITCHCRAFT AND THE BLACK ART
CHAPTER I
WITCHCRAFT: A PRIMITIVE CULT
What are these
So wither d, and so wild in their attire,
That look not like the inhabitants o the earth,
And yet are on t?
B ANQUO .
IN order that the reader may understand aright the inner meaning of the many strange narratives recorded in the following pages, it will be necessary here at the opening to explain just who the witches were and what witchcraft really was. Let it be said, however, that knowing how disliked preliminaries usually are, and especially when of an explanatory nature, this shall be done in as brief a manner as possible.
Although some authorities on witchcraft write as though it was a product of the sixteenth century, there can be no doubt but that it was firmly established more than a dozen centuries earlier, when paganism first gave place to Christianity. Certain it is also that before witchcraft became a kind of rubbish heap for worn-out creeds and superstitions which were made bad use of in times of social unrest, political change, and religious schism, it was essentially-for the want of a better descriptive term-a religious organisation; crude, it may be, but with principles nevertheless, and a belief that called for adoration, sacrifice, and service. Moreover, it was presided over by a priestly craft who held their position on sufferance, according to the amount of magical or mystical power imputed to them.
Witchcraft, therefore, being a pseudo-religious organisation, was not without its recognised observances, which, doubtless, had evolved from immemorial belief in magic as a set-off against the mysteries of Nature.
These observances, fundamental in themselves, changed with the periods through which they passed, and adapted themselves to whatever the popular fancy or the prevailing fashion happened to be. Thus, whereas the ritual of the witches before the fourth century was essentially pagan in character, it was for some centuries after both pagan and Christian.
The reason for such a contradictory combination may be found in the fact that the early converts from the old stock, including as they did those that practised witchcraft, did not renounce all the ritual they had been accustomed to observe at the same time that they changed their gods.
Those under whose authority and guidance the conversion of Britain was taking place knew this, and understood human nature only too well, with its vain hankerings after mere formalities, than to have expected anything else, and they were also well aware that the visible symbolic form of a religion always takes a firmer hold of the imagination than mere belief.
In addition, St. Augustine knew that if the conversion of England was to be carried through to a successful conclusion he dare not interfere too much with what had until then been the custom of his unruly neophytes; in fact, he harmonised as far as he thought he safely could his own customs with theirs. Pagan temples were changed into churches by the mere sprinkling of holy water so that the converts would not have to grow accustomed to a new environment, and the sacrifices that previously had been made to heathen gods were replaced by processions in honour of some saint or martyr; while oxen were slaughtered, not to propitiate idols, but in praise of the true God, knowledge of whom had been brought to them.
A letter from Pope Gregory the Great, in the sixth century, to Abbot Mellitus, then going to Britain, desires him to tell Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, that after mature deliberation on the affair of the English he was of the opinion that the temples of the idols in that nation ought not to be destroyed, but that the idols should. He further orders the temples to be sprinkled with holy water, and relics to be placed in them; and because our ancestors sacrificed oxen in their pagan worship, he advises that the objects of the sacrifice be exchanged; and permits them to build huts of the boughs of trees about the temples so transformed into churches; and on the day of the dedication, or nativities of the martyrs whose relics they contain, to kill the cattle, and celebrate the solemnity with religious feasting. (Bede s Eccl. Hist. of Eng.)
So persistently were the deliberations of Pope Gregory adhered to, that in the metropolis itself, hundreds of years afterwards, it was usual to bring up a fat buck to the altar of old St. Paul s, with horns blowing, in the middle of the service. For on the spot where old St. Paul s stood, or very near it, there was once according to tradition a temple of Diana.
That pagan temples could have been so easily changed into Christian churches is of course a striking tribute to the adaptability of the English temperament, even in those far-off times; and although to-day the idea of it may call forth expressions of wonder, it was not, all things considered, so very surprising that it should have been so.
So the first of the converted witches perpetuated into the new order of things quite a goodly few of the old customs that hitherto had been associated with the practice of pagan witchcraft.
On the other hand, the converted witches who had espoused the new faith and then later on had broken their vows, returned to their old gods and to their old form of worship, but retained much of the new ritual that had been taught them. Thus the witches of the early centuries not only observed a Sabbath, a Dedication, and a Sacrament, but they possessed a Baptistry; and their meetings, or covens as they were called, only functioned when they consisted of thirteen: twelve witches and a chief, as though to burlesque the twelve disciples with their Master.
The combination or confusion of such ritual was of course a bad one. It did not work well. Indeed, it could not. A state of rivalry between the witches and the Christians came into being, each section striving to gain mastery over the other; and while the Christians called upon Saints and Angels to aid them in their task, the witches co-opted all the Powers of Darkness from the nether world that they could think of. It has also been affirmed that the witches, as fanatical Dianists, endeavoured to outnumber the Christians by their own prolific progeny, while at the same time they cast spells over them, and poisoned their children. Such was the popular indictment.
Witchcraft, having its real inception in that period of fear, wonder, and sacrifice which is common to all primitives, passed through the long centuries in an ever-changing order of observance and behaviour, and, truth to tell, the change was not always for the better. The witchcraft of the third