Witchcraft in America. Charles Wentworth Upham
Читать онлайн книгу.
by the spectators according to their faith: but the credulity of the believers could hardly exceed that of a large number of educated people, who in our own generation detect in the miracles of animal magnetism, or the legerdemain of jugglers, an infernal or supernatural agency.
14. Chashaph and Pharmakeia. Biblical critics are inclined, however, to accept in its strict sense the translation of the Jacobian divines. 'Since in the LXX.,' says Parkhurst, the lexicographer of the N.T., 'this noun (pharmakeia) and its relatives always answer to some Hebrew word that denotes some kind of their magical or conjuring tricks; and since it is too notorious to be insisted upon, that such infernal practices have always prevailed, and do still prevail in idolatrous countries, I prefer the other sense of incantation.'
15. A sort of ingenuity much exercised of late by 'sober brows approving with a text' the institution of slavery: divine, according to them; the greatest evil that afflicts mankind, according to Alexander von Humboldt. See Personal Narrative.
16. Cicero, in his second book De Divinatione, undertakes to refute the arguments of the Stoics, 'the force of whose mind, being all turned to the side of morals, unbent itself in that of religion.' The divining faculty is divisible generally into the artificial and the natural.
17. The proclamation of the birth of Apollonius to his mother by Proteus, and the incarnation of Proteus himself, the chorus of swans which sang for joy on the occasion, the casting out of devils, raising the dead, and healing the sick, the sudden appearances and disappearances of Apollonius, his adventures in the cave of Trophonius, and the sacred voice which called him at his death, to which may be added his claim as a teacher having authority to reform the world, 'cannot fail to suggest,' says a writer in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, &c., ed. by Dr. W. Smith, 'the parallel passages in the Gospel history.'
18. Particularly in the Batrachoi. The dread of the infernal apparition of the fierce Gorgo in Hades blanched the cheek of even much-daring Odysseus (Od. xi. 633). The satellites of Hecate have been compared, not disadvantageously, with the monstrous guardians of hell; than whom
'Nor uglier follow the night-hag when, called
In secret, riding through the air she comes
Lured with the smell of infant blood to dance
With Lapland witches—.'
19. An exceptional case, on the authority of Demosthenes, is that of a woman condemned in the year, or within a year or two, of the execution of Socrates.
20. St. Augustin, in denouncing the Platonic theories of Apuleius, of the mediation and intercession of demons between gods and men, and exposing his magic heresies, takes occasion to taunt him with having evaded his just fate by not professing, like the Christian martyrs, his real faith when delivering his 'very copious and eloquent' apology (De Civitate Dei, lib. viii. 19). In the Golden Ass of the Greek romancist of the second century, who, in common with his cotemporary the great rationalist Lucian, deserves the praise of having exposed (with more wit perhaps than success) some of the most absurd prejudices of the day, his readers are entertained with stories that might pretty nearly represent the sentiments of the seventeenth century.
21. It will be observed that veneficus and maleficus are the significant terms among the Italians for the criminals.
22. If the philosophical arguments of Menippus (Nekrikoi Dialogoi) could have satisfied the interest of the priests or the ignorance of the people of after times, the infernal fires of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries might not have burned.
23. De Divinatione, lib. ii.
24. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, xxv. This description applies more to the Christian and later empires.
25. 'The Canidia of Horace,' Gibbon pronounces, 'is a vulgar witch. The Erichtho of Lucan is tedious, disgusting, but sometimes sublime.' The love-charms of Canidia and Medea are chiefly indebted to the Pharmakeutria of Theocritus.
26. Annales, ii. 69. Writing of the mathematicians and astrologers in the time of Galba, who urged the governor of Lusitania on the perilous path to the supreme dignity, the historian characterises them truly, in his inimitable language and style, as 'a class of persons not to be trusted by those in power, deceptive to the expectant; a class which will always be proscribed and preserved in our state.'
27. Cod. Justinian, lib. ix. tit. 18.
28. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, xxv.
29. It may be safely affirmed, according to a celebrated modern philosopher, that popular religions are really, in the conception of their more vulgar votaries, a species of demonism. 'Primus in orbe deos fecit timor,' or, in the fuller expression of a modern, 'Fear made the devils, and weak Hope the gods.'
30. Aurinia was the Latin name of another of these venerable sagæ. Tacitus, Histor. iv. 61, and Germania, viii.
31. The following story exhibits the influence of witchcraft among the followers of Odin. Towards the end of the tenth century, the dreaded Jomsburg sea-rovers had set out on one of their periodical expeditions, and were devastating with fire and sword the coast of Norway. A celebrated Norwegian Jarl, Hakon, collected all his forces, and sailed with a fleet of 150 vessels to encounter the pirates. Hakon, after trying in vain to break through the hostile line, retired with his fleet to the coast, and proceeded to consult a well-known sorceress in whom he had implicit confidence for any emergency. With some pretended reluctance the sorceress at length informed him that the victory could be obtained only by the sacrifice of his son. Hakon hesitated not to offer up his only son as a propitiatory sacrifice; after which, returning to his fleet, and his accustomed post in the front ranks of the battle, he renewed the engagement. Towards evening the Jomsburg pirates were overtaken and overwhelmed by a violent storm, destroying or damaging their ships. They were convinced that they saw the witch herself seated on the prow of the Jarl's ships with clouds of missile weapons flying from the tips of her fingers, each arrow carrying a death-wound. With such of his followers as had escaped the sorceric encounter, the pirate-chief made the best of his way from the scene of destruction, declaring he had made a vow indeed to fight against men, but not against witches. A narrative not inconsistent with the reply of a warrior to an inquiry from the Saint-king Olaf, 'I am neither Christian nor pagan; my companions and I have no other religion than a just confidence in our strength, and in the good success which always attends us in war; and we are of opinion that it is all that is necessary.'—Mallet's Northern Antiquities.