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Books: Lives of the Necromancers

W >> William Godwin >> Lives of the Necromancers




Having thus far succeeded, Alexander did not stop here. He contrived
a pipe which passed seemingly into the mouth of the animal, while the
other end terminated in an adjoining room, where a man was placed
unseen, and delivered the replies which appeared to come from the
mouth of the serpent. This immediate communication with the God was
reserved for a few favoured suitors, who bought at a high price the
envied distinction.

The method with ordinary enquirers was for them to communicate their
requests in writing, which they were enjoined to roll up and carefully
seal; and these scrolls were returned to them in a few days, with the
seals apparently unbroken, but with an answer written within,
strikingly appropriate to the demand that was preferred.--It is further
to be observed, that the mouth of the serpent was occasionally opened
by means of a horsehair skilfully adjusted for the purpose, at the
same time that by similar means the animal darted out its biforked
tongue to the terror of the amazed bystanders.




REVOLUTION PRODUCED IN THE HISTORY OF NECROMANCY AND WITCHCRAFT UPON
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY.


It is necessary here to take notice of the great revolution that took
place under Constantine, nearly three hundred years after the death of
Christ, when Christianity became the established religion of the Roman
empire. This was a period which produced a new era in the history of
necromancy and witchcraft. Under the reign of polytheism, devotion was
wholly unrestrained in every direction it might chance to assume. Gods
known and unknown, the spirits of departed heroes, the Gods of heaven
and hell, abstractions of virtue or vice, might unblamed be made the
objects of religious worship. Witchcraft therefore, and the invocation
of the spirits of the dead, might be practised with toleration; or at
all events were not regarded otherwise than as venial deviations from
the religion of the state.

It is true, there must always have been a horror of secret arts,
especially of such as were of a maleficent nature. At all times men
dreaded the mysterious power of spells and incantations, of potent
herbs and nameless rites, which were able to control the eternal order
of the planets, and the voluntary operations of mind, which could
extinguish or recal life, inflame the passions of the soul, blast the
works of creation, and extort from invisible beings and the dead the
secrets of futurity. But under the creed of the unity of the divine
nature the case was exceedingly different. Idolatry, and the worship
of other Gods than one, were held to be crimes worthy of the utmost
abhorrence and the severest punishment. There was no medium between
the worship of heaven and hell. All adoration was to be directed to
God the Creator through the mediation of his only begotten Son; or, if
prayers were addressed to inferior beings, and the glorified spirits
of his saints, at least they terminated in the Most High, were a
deprecation of his wrath, a soliciting his favour, and a homage to his
omnipotence. On the other hand sorcery and witchcraft were sins of the
blackest dye. In opposition to the one only God, the creator of heaven
and earth, was the "prince of darkness," the "prince of the power of
the air," who contended perpetually against the Almighty, and sought
to seduce his creatures and his subjects from their due allegiance.
Sorcerers and witches were supposed to do homage and sell themselves
to the devil, than which it was not in the mind of man to conceive a
greater enormity, or a crime more worthy to cause its perpetrators to
be exterminated from the face of the earth. The thought of it was of
power to cause the flesh of man to creep and tingle with horror: and
such as were prone to indulge their imaginations to the utmost extent
of the terrible, found a perverse delight in conceiving this
depravity, and were but too much disposed to fasten it upon their
fellow-creatures.


MAGICAL CONSULTATIONS RESPECTING THE LIFE OF THE EMPEROR.

It was not within the range of possibility, that such a change should
take place in the established religion of the empire as that from
Paganism to Christianity, without convulsions and vehement struggle.
The prejudices of mankind on a subject so nearly concerned with their
dearest interests and affections must inevitably be powerful and
obstinate; and the lucre of the priesthood, together with the strong
hold they must necessarily have had on the weakness and superstition
of their flocks, would tend to give force and perpetuity to the
contention. Julian, a man of great ability and unquestionable
patriotism, succeeded to the empire only twenty-four years after the
death of Constantine; and he employed the most vigorous measures for
the restoration of the ancient religion. But the reign of Julian was
scarcely more than eighteen months in duration: and that of Jovian,
his successor, who again unfurled the standard of Christianity, lasted
hardly more than half a year. The state of things bore a striking
similarity to that of England at the time of the Protestant
Reformation, where the opposite faiths of Edward the Sixth and his
sister Mary, and the shortness of their reigns, gave preternatural
keenness to the feelings of the parties, and instigated them to hang
with the most restless anticipation upon the chances of the demise of
the sovereign, and the consequences, favourable or unfavourable, that
might arise from a new accession.

The joint reign of Valentinian and Valens, Christian emperors, had now
lasted several years, when information was conveyed to these princes,
and particularly to the latter, who had the rule of Asia, that
numerous private consultations were held, as to the duration of their
authority, and the person of the individual who should come after them.
The succession of the Roman empire was elective; and consequently
there was almost an unlimited scope for conjecture in this question.
Among the various modes of enquiry that were employed we are told,
that the twenty-four letters of the alphabet were artificially
disposed in a circle, and that a magic ring, being suspended over the
centre, was conceived to point to the initial letters of the name of
him who should be the future emperor. Theodorus, a man of most eminent
qualifications, and high popularity, was put to death by the jealousy
of Valens, on the vague evidence that this kind of trial had indicated
the early letters of his name. [141] It may easily be imagined, that,
where so restless and secret an investigation was employed as to the
successor that fate might provide, conspiracy would not always be
absent. Charges of this sort were perpetually multiplied; informers
were eager to obtain favour or rewards by the disclosures they
pretended to communicate; and the Christians, who swayed the sceptre
of the state, did not fail to aggravate the guilt of those who had
recourse to these means for satisfying their curiosity, by alleging
that demons were called up from hell to aid in the magic solution. The
historians of these times no doubt greatly exaggerate the terror and
the danger, when they say, that the persons apprehended on such
charges in the great cities outnumbered the peaceable citizens who
were left unsuspected, and that the military who had charge of the
prisoners, complained that they were wholly without the power to
restrain the flight of the captives, or to control the multitude of
partisans who insisted on their immediate release. [142] The
punishments were barbarous and indiscriminate; to be accused was
almost the same thing as to be convicted; and those were obliged to
hold themselves fortunate, who escaped with a fine that in a manner
swallowed up their estates.




HISTORY OF NECROMANCY IN THE EAST.


From the countries best known in what is usually styled ancient
history, in other words from Greece and Rome, and the regions into
which the spirit of conquest led the people of Rome and Greece, it is
time we should turn to the East, and those remoter divisions of the
world, which to them were comparatively unknown.

With what has been called the religion of the Magi, of Egypt, Persia
and Chaldea, they were indeed superficially acquainted; but for a more
familiar and accurate knowledge of the East we are chiefly indebted to
certain events of modern history; to the conquests of the Saracens,
when they possessed themselves of the North of Africa, made themselves
masters of Spain, and threatened in their victorious career to subject
France to their standard; to the crusades; to the spirit of nautical
discovery which broke out in the close of the fifteenth century; and
more recently to the extensive conquests and mighty augmentation of
territory which have been realised by the English East India Company.

The religion of Persia was that of Zoroaster and the Magi. When
Ardshir, or Artaxerxes, the founder of the race of the Sassanides,
restored the throne of Persia in the year of Christ 226, he called
together an assembly of the Magi from all parts of his dominions, and
they are said to have met to the number of eighty thousand. [143]
These priests, from a remote antiquity, had to a great degree
preserved their popularity, and had remarkably adhered to their
ancient institutions.

They seem at all times to have laid claim to the power of suspending
the course of nature, and producing miraculous phenomena. But in so
numerous a body there must have been some whose pretensions were of a
more moderate nature, and others who displayed a loftier aspiration.
The more ambitious we find designated in their native language by the
name of _Jogees_, [144] of the same signification as the Latin
_juncti_.

Their notions of the Supreme Being are said to have been of the
highest and abstrusest character, as comprehending every possible
perfection of power, wisdom and goodness, as purely spiritual in his
essence, and incapable of the smallest variation and change, the same
yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Such as they apprehended him to be,
such the most perfect of their priests aspired to make themselves.
They were to put off all human weakness and frailty; and, in
proportion as they _assimilated_, or rather _became one_
with the Deity, they supposed themselves to partake of his attributes,
to become infinitely wise and powerful and good. Hence their claim to
suspend the course of nature, and to produce miraculous phenomena. For
this purpose it was necessary that they should abstract themselves
from every thing mortal, have no human passions or partialities, and
divest themselves as much as possible of all the wants and demands of
our material frame. Zoroaster appears indeed to have preferred
morality to devotion, to have condemned celibacy and fasting, and to
have pronounced, that "he who sows the ground with diligence and care,
acquires a greater stock of religious merit than he who should repeat
ten thousand prayers." But his followers at least did not abide by
this decision. They found it more practicable to secure to themselves
an elevated reputation by severe observances, rigid self-denial, and
the practice of the most inconceivable mortifications. This excited
wonder and reverence and a sort of worship from the bystander, which
industry and benevolence do not so assuredly secure. They therefore in
frequent instances lacerated their flesh, and submitted to incredible
hardships. They scourged themselves without mercy, wounded their
bodies with lancets and nails, [145] and condemned themselves to
remain for days and years unmoved in the most painful attitudes. It
was no unprecedented thing for them to take their station upon the top
of a high pillar; and some are said to have continued in this position,
without ever coming down from it, for thirty years. The more they
trampled under foot the universal instincts of our nature, and shewed
themselves superior to its infirmities, the nearer they approached to
the divine essence, and to the becoming one with the Omnipresent. They
were of consequence the more sinless and perfect; their will became
the will of the Deity, and they were in a sense invested with, and
became the mediums of the acts of, his power. The result of all this
is, that they who exercised the art of magic in its genuine and
unadulterated form, at all times applied it to purposes of goodness
and benevolence, and that their interference was uniformly the signal
of some unequivocal benefit, either to mankind in general, or to those
individuals of mankind who were best entitled to their aid. It was
theirs to succour virtue in distress, and to interpose the divine
assistance in cases that most loudly and unquestionably called for it.

Such, we are told, was the character of the pure and primitive magic,
as it was handed down from the founder of their religion. It was
called into action by the Jogees, men who, by an extraordinary merit
of whatever sort, had in a certain sense rendered themselves one with
the Deity. But the exercise of magical power was too tempting an
endowment, not in some cases to be liable to abuse. Even as we read of
the angels in heaven, that not all of them stood, and persevered in
their original sinlessness and integrity, so of the Jogees some,
partaking of the divine power, were also under the direction of a will
celestial and divine, while others, having derived, we must suppose, a
mighty and miraculous power from the gift of God, afterwards abused it
by applying it to capricious, or, as it should seem, to malignant
purposes. This appears to have been every where essential to the
history of magic. If those who were supposed to possess it in its
widest extent and most astonishing degree, had uniformly employed it
only in behalf of justice and virtue, they would indeed have been
regarded as benefactors, and been entitled to the reverence and love
of mankind. But the human mind is always prone to delight in the
terrible. No sooner did men entertain the idea of what was supernatural
and uncontrolable, than they began to fear it and to deprecate its
hostility. They apprehended they knew not what, of the dead returning
to life, of invisible beings armed with the power and intention of
executing mischief, and of human creatures endowed with the prerogative
of bringing down pestilence and slaughter, of dispensing wealth and
poverty, prosperity and calamity at their pleasure, of causing health
and life to waste away by insensible, but sure degrees, of producing
lingering torments, and death in its most fearful form. Accordingly it
appears that, as there were certain magicians who were as Gods
dispensing benefits to those who best deserved it, so there were
others, whose only principle of action was caprice, and against whose
malice no innocence and no degree of virtue would prove a defence. As
the former sort of magicians were styled _Jogees_, and were held
to be the deputies and instruments of infinite goodness, so the other
sort were named _Ku-Jogees_, that is, persons who possessing the
same species of ascendancy over the powers of nature, employed it only
in deeds of malice and wickedness.

In the mean time these magicians appear to have produced the wonderful
effects which drew to them the reverence of the vulgar, very frequently
by the intervention of certain beings of a nature superior to the
human, who should seem, though ordinarily invisible, to have had the
faculty of rendering themselves visible when they thought proper, and
assuming what shape they pleased. These are principally known by the
names of Peris, Dives, [146] and Gins, or Genii. Richardson, in the
preface to his Persian Dictionary, from which our account will
principally be taken, refers us to what he calls a romance, but from
which he, appears to derive the outline of his Persian mythology. In
this romance Kahraman, a mortal, is introduced in conversation with
Simurgh, a creature partaking of the nature of a bird and a griffon,
who reveals to him the secrets of the past history of the earth. She
tells him that she has lived to see the world seven times peopled with
inhabitants of so many different natures, and seven times depopulated,
the former inhabitants having been so often removed, and giving place
to their successors. The beings who occupied the earth previously to
man, were distinguished into the Peris and the Dives; and, when they
no longer possessed the earth in chief, they were, as it should seem,
still permitted, in an airy and unsubstantial form, and for the most
part invisibly, to interfere in the affairs of the human race. These
beings ruled the earth during seventy-two generations. The last
monarch, named Jan bin Jan, conducted himself so ill, that God sent
the angel Haris to chastise him. Haris however became intoxicated with
power, and employed his prerogative in the most reprehensible manner.
God therefore at length created Adam, the first of men, crowning him
with glory and honour, and giving him dominion over all other earthly
beings. He commanded the angels to obey him; but Haris refused, and
the Dives followed his example. The rebels were for the most part sent
to hell for their contumacy; but a part of the Dives, whose
disobedience had been less flagrant, were reserved, and allowed for a
certain term to walk the earth, and by their temptations to put the
virtue and constancy of man to trial. Henceforth the human race was
secretly surrounded by invisible beings of two species, the Peris, who
were friendly to man, and the Dives, who exercised their ingenuity in
involving them in error and guilt. The Peris were beautiful and
benevolent, but imperfect and offending beings; they are supposed to
have borne a considerable resemblance to the Fairies of the western
world. The Dives were hideous in form, and of a malignant disposition.
The Peris subsist wholly on perfumes, which the Dives, being of a
grosser nature, hold in abhorrence. This mythology is said to have
been unknown in Arabia till long after Mahomet: the only invisible
beings we read of in their early traditions are the Gins, which term,
though now used for the most part as synonimous with Dives, originally
signified nothing more than certain infernal fiends of stupendous
power, whose agency was hostile to man.

There was perpetual war between the Peris and the Dives, whose proper
habitation was Kaf, or Caucasus, a line of mountains which was
supposed to reach round the globe. In these wars the Peris generally
came off with the worst; and in that case they are represented in the
traditional tales of the East, as applying to some gallant and heroic
mortal to reinforce their exertions. The warriors who figure in these
narratives appear all to have been ancient Persian kings. Tahmuras,
one of the most celebrated of them, is spoken of as mounting upon
Simurgh, surrounded with talismans and enchanted armour, and furnished
with a sword the dint of which nothing could resist. He proceeds to
Kaf, or Ginnistan, and defeats Arzshank, the chief of the Dives, but
is defeated in turn by a more formidable competitor. The war appears
to be carried on for successive ages with alternate advantage and
disadvantage, till after the lapse of centuries Rustan kills Arzshank,
and finally reduces the Dives to a subject and tributary condition.
In all this there is a great resemblance to the fables of Scandinavia;
and the Northern and the Eastern world seem emulously to have
contributed their quota of chivalry and romance, of heroic achievements
and miraculous events, of monsters and dragons, of amulets and
enchantment, and all those incidents which most rouse the imagination,
and are calculated to instil into generous and enterprising youth a
courage the most undaunted and invincible.


GENERAL SILENCE OF THE EAST RESPECTING INDIVIDUAL NECROMANCERS.

Asia has been more notorious than perhaps any other division of the
globe for the vast multiplicity and variety of its narratives of
sorcery and magic. I have however been much disappointed in the thing
I looked for in the first place, and that is, in the individual
adventures of such persons as might be supposed to have gained a high
degree of credit and reputation for their skill in exploits of magic.
Where the professors are many (and they have been perhaps no where so
numerous as those of magic in the East), it is unavoidable but that
some should have been more dextrous than others, more eminently gifted
by nature, more enthusiastic and persevering in the prosecution of
their purpose, and more fortunate in awakening popularity and
admiration among their contemporaries. In the instances of Apollonius
Tyanaeus and others among the ancients, and of Cornelius Agrippa, Roger
Bacon and Faust among the moderns, we are acquainted with many
biographical particulars of their lives, and can trace with some
degree of accuracy, their peculiarities of disposition, and observe
how they were led gradually from one study and one mode of action to
another. But the magicians of the East, so to speak, are mere
abstractions, not characterised by any of those habits which
distinguish one individual of the human race from another, and having
those marking traits and petty lineaments which make the person, as it
were, start up into life while he passes before our eyes. They are
merely reported to us as men prone to the producing great signs and
wonders, and nothing more.

Two of the most remarkable exceptions that I have found to this rule,
occur in the examples of Rocail, and of Hakem, otherwise called
Mocanna.


ROCAIL.

The first of these however is scarcely to be called an exception, as
lying beyond the limits of all credible history, Rocail is said to
have been the younger brother of Seth, the son of Adam. A Dive, or
giant of mount Caucasus, being hard pressed by his enemies, sought as
usual among the sons of men for aid that might extricate him out of
his difficulties. He at length made an alliance with Rocail, by whose
assistance he arrived at the tranquillity he desired, and who in
consequence became his grand vizier, or prime minister. He governed
the dominions of his principal for many years with great honour and
success; but, ultimately perceiving the approaches of old age and
death, he conceived a desire to leave behind him a monument worthy of
his achievements in policy and war. He according erected, we are not
told by what means, a magnificent palace, and a sepulchre equally
worthy of admiration. But what was most entitled to notice, he peopled
this palace with statues of so extraordinary a quality, that they
moved and performed all the functions and offices of living men, so
that every one who beheld them would have believed that they were
actually informed with souls, whereas in reality all they did was by
the power of magic, in consequence of which, though they were in fact
no more than inanimate matter, they were enabled to obey the behests,
and perform the will, of the persons by whom they were visited. [147]


HAKEM, OTHERWISE MOCANNA.

Hakem was a leader in one of the different divisions of the followers
of Mahomet. To inspire the greater awe into the minds of his
supporters, he pretended that he was the Most High God, the creator of
heaven and earth, under one of the different forms by which he has in
successive ages become incarnate, and made himself manifest to his
creatures. He distinguished himself by the peculiarity of always
wearing a thick and impervious veil, by which, according to his
followers, he covered the dazzling splendour of his countenance, which
was so great that no mortal could behold it and live, but that,
according to his enemies, only served to conceal the hideousness of
his features, too monstrously deformed to be contemplated without
horror. One of his miracles, which seems the most to have been
insisted on, was that he nightly, for a considerable space of time,
caused an orb, something like the moon, to rise from a sacred well,
which gave a light scarcely less splendid than the day, that diffused
its beams for many miles around. His followers were enthusiastically
devoted to his service, and he supported his authority unquestioned
for a number of years. At length a more formidable opponent appeared,
and after several battles he became obliged to shut himself up in a
strong fortress. Here however he was so straitly besieged as to be
driven to the last despair, and, having administered poison to his
whole garrison, he prepared a bath of the most powerful ingredients,
which, when he threw himself into it, dissolved his frame, even to the
very bones, so that nothing remained of him but a lock of his hair. He
acted thus, with the hope that it would be believed that he was
miraculously taken up into heaven; nor did this fail to be the effect
on the great body of his adherents. [148]


ARABIAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS.

The most copious record of stories of Asiatic enchantment that we
possess, is contained in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments; to which
we may add the Persian Tales, and a few other repositories of Oriental
adventures. It is true that these are delivered to us in a garb of
fiction; but they are known to present so exact a picture of Eastern
manners and customs, and so just a delineation of the follies, the
weaknesses and credulity of the races of men that figure in them, that,
in the absence of materials of a strictly historical sort of which we
have to complain, they may not inadequately supply the place, and may
furnish us with a pretty full representation of the ideas of sorcery
and magic which for centuries were entertained in this part of the
world. They have indeed one obvious defect, which it is proper the
reader should keep constantly in mind. The mythology and groundwork of
the whole is Persian: but the narrator is for the most part a
Mahometan. Of consequence the ancient Fire-worshippers, though they
contribute the entire materials, and are therefore solely entitled to
our gratitude and deference for the abundant supply they have furnished
to our curiosity, are uniformly treated in these books with disdain
and contumely as unworthy of toleration, while the comparative upstart
race of the believers in the Koran are held out to us as the only
enlightened and upright among the sons of men.