European and American Witchcraft
In a general way, the history of witchcraft in Europe and in the American colonies is supplementary to what has already been said, seeing that it is an offshoot of mediaeval magic, which in turn is an offshoot of ancient magic. Witchcraft in the West, in probably a majority of cases, is a mere fabric of absurd superstitions and practices—as it is shown to be by the evidence brought out so many of the horrible legal and ecclesiastical processes conducted against helpless and eccentric old people, and other men and women, including the young, often for the sake of private revenge, and generally on no better foundation than hearsay and false accusations. In the remaining instances it undoubtedly arose, as ancient witchcraft (black magic) seems to have arisen, through the infiltration of occult knowledge into uneducated and often criminally inclined minds, so that what had formerly been secretly guarded among the learned, and generally used for legitimate ends, degenerated in the hands of the unfit into black magic. In our own age, a parallel development, which adequately illustrates our subject of inquiry, has taken place in the United States: fragments of magical lore bequeathed by Mesmer and his immediate predecessors, the alchemists, were practically and honestly applied to the practice of magnetic healing and healing through mental suggestion by a small group of practitioners in Massachusetts, and then with much ingenuity and real genius were applied by Mary Baker Eddy to the interpretation of miraculous healing by Jesus Christ. Hence arose a new religion called Christian Science. But this religious movement did not stop at mental healing: according to published reports, during the years 1908-9 the leader of the New York First Church of Christ, Scientist, was deposed, and, with certain of her close associates, was charged with having projected daily against the late Mrs. Eddy’s adjutant a current of ‘malicious animal magnetism’ from New York to Boston, in order to bring about his death. The process is said to have been for the deposed [leader and her friends to sit together in a darkened room with their eyes closed. ‘Then one of them would say: “You all know Mr. ——. You all know that his place is in the darkness whence he came. If his place is six feet under ground, that is where he should be.” Then all present would concentrate their minds on the one thought—Mr. —— and six feet under ground.’ And this practice is supposed to have been kept up for days. Mrs. ——, who gives this testimony, is a friend of the victim, and she asserts that these evil thought-waves slowly but surely began his effacement, and that had the black magicians down in New York not been discovered in time, Mr. —— could not have withstood the forces.[181] Perhaps so enlightened a country as the United States may in time see history repeat itself, and add a new chapter to witchcraft; for the true witches were not the kind who are popularly supposed to ride on broomsticks and to keep a house full of black cats, and the sooner this is recognized the better.
According to this aspect of Christian Science, ‘malicious animal magnetism’ (or black magic), an embodied spirit, i. e. a man or woman, possesses and can employ the same magical powers as a disembodied spirit—or, as the Celts would say, the same magical powers as a fairy—casting spells, and producing disease and death in the victim. And this view coincides with ordinary witchcraft theories; for witches have been variously defined as embodied spirits who have ability to act in conjunction with disembodied spirits through the employment of various occult forces, e. g. forces comparable to Mesmer’s odic forces, to the Melanesian mana, or to the ‘soul-stuff’ postulated by William James, or, as Celts think, to forces focused in fairies themselves. So, also, according to Mr. Marett’s view, there is a state of rapport between the victim and the magician or witch; and where such a state of rapport exists there is some mana-like force passing between the two poles of the magical [circuit, whether it be only unconscious mental or electrical force emanating from the operator, or an extraneous force brought under control and concentrated in some such conscious unit as we designate by the term ‘spirit’, ‘devil’, or ‘fairy’.
In conformity with this psychical or animistic view of witchcraft, in the Capital Code of Connecticut (a. d. 1642) a witch is defined as one who ‘hath or consorteth with a familiar spirit’.[182] European codes, as illustrated by the sixth chapter of Lord Coke’s Third Institute, have parallels to this definition:—‘A witch is a person which hath conference with the devil; to consult with him to do some act.’[182] And upon these theories, not upon the broomstick and black-cat conception, were based the trials for witchcraft during the seventeenth century.
The Bible, then so frequently the last court of appeal in such matters, was found to sustain such theories about witches in the classical example of the Witch of Endor and Saul; and the idea of witchcraft in Europe and America came to be based—as it probably always had been in pagan times—on the theory that living persons could control or be controlled by disembodied spirits for evil ends. Hence all black magicians, and what are now known as ‘spirit mediums’, were made liable by law to the death penalty.[183]
In mediaeval Europe the great difficulty always was, as is shown in the trials of Jeanne d’Arc, to decide whether the invisible agent in magical processes, such as was imputed to the accused, was an angel or a demon. If an angel, then the accused was a saint, and might become a candidate for canonization; but if a demon, the accused was a witch, and liable to a death-sentence. The wisest old doctors of the University of Paris, who sat in judgement (or were consulted) in one of Jeanne’s trials, could not fully decide this knotty problem, nor, apparently, the learned churchmen who also tried her; but evidently they all agreed that it[was better to waive the question. And, finally, an innocent peasant girl who had heard Divine Voices, and who had thereby miraculously saved her king and her country, was burned at the stake, under the joint direction of English civil and ecclesiastical authorities, and, if not technically, at least practically, with the full approval of the corresponding French authorities, at Rouen, France, May 30, a. d. 1431.[184] In April, a. d. 1909, almost five centuries afterwards, it has been decided with tardy justice that Jeanne’s Voices were those of angels and not of demons, and she has been made a saint.
How the case of Jeanne d’Arc bears directly upon the Fairy-Faith is self-evident: One of the first questions asked by Jeanne’s inquisitors was ‘if she had any knowledge of those who went to the Sabbath with the fairies? or if she had not assisted at the assemblies held at the fountain of the fairies, near Domremy, around which dance malignant spirits?’
