Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining) - "Poems of the Heart and Home"

W. R. Inge - "Light, Life, and Love"

E. Phillips Oppenheim - "Jeanne Of The Marshes"

Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm - "Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3)"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Lives of the Necromancers

W >> William Godwin >> Lives of the Necromancers




Here it is that he specially recognises in himself the sense of power.
Power in its simplest acceptation, may be exerted in either of two
ways, either in his procuring for himself an ample field for more
refined accommodations, or in the exercise of compulsion and authority
over other living creatures. In the pursuit of either of these, and
especially the first, he is led to the attainment of skill and
superior adroitness in the use of his faculties.

No sooner has man reached to this degree of improvement, than now, if
not indeed earlier, he is induced to remark the extreme limitedness of
his faculties in respect to the future; and he is led, first earnestly
to desire a clearer insight into the future, and next a power of
commanding those external causes upon which the events of the future
depend. The first of these desires is the parent of divination, augury,
chiromancy, astrology, and the consultation of oracles; and the second
has been the prolific source of enchantment, witchcraft, sorcery,
magic, necromancy, and alchemy, in its two branches, the unlimited
prolongation of human life, and the art of converting less precious
metals into gold.


HIS DESIRE TO PENETRATE INTO FUTURITY.

Nothing can suggest to us a more striking and stupendous idea of the
faculties of the human mind, than the consideration of the various
arts by which men have endeavoured to penetrate into the future, and
to command the events of the future, in ways that in sobriety and
truth are entirely out of our competence. We spurn impatiently against
the narrow limits which the constitution of things has fixed to our
aspirings, and endeavour by a multiplicity of ways to accomplish that
which it is totally beyond the power of man to effect.


DIVINATION.

Divination has been principally employed in inspecting the entrails of
beasts offered for sacrifice, and from their appearance drawing omens
of the good or ill success of the enterprises in which we are about to
engage.

What the divination by the cup was which Joseph practised, or
pretended to practise, we do not perhaps exactly understand. We all of
us know somewhat of the predictions, to this day resorted to by
maid-servants and others, from the appearance of the sediment to be
found at the bottom of a tea-cup. Predictions of a similar sort are
formed from the unpremeditated way in which we get out of bed in a
morning, or put on our garments, from the persons or things we shall
encounter when we first leave our chamber or go forth in the air, or
any of the indifferent accidents of life.


AUGURY.

Augury has its foundation in observing the flight of birds, the sounds
they utter, their motions whether sluggish or animated, and the
avidity or otherwise with which they appear to take their food. The
college of augurs was one of the most solemn institutions of ancient
Rome.


CHIROMANCY.

Chiromancy, or the art of predicting the various fortunes of the
individual, from an inspection of the minuter variations of the lines
to be found in the palm of the human hand, has been used perhaps at
one time or other in all the nations of the world.


PHYSIOGNOMY.

Physiognomy is not so properly a prediction of future events, as an
attempt to explain the present and inherent qualities of a man. By
unfolding his propensities however, it virtually gave the world to
understand the sort of proceedings in which he was most likely to
engage. The story of Socrates and the physiognomist is sufficiently
known. The physiognomist having inspected the countenance of the
philosopher, pronounced that he was given to intemperance, sensuality,
and violent bursts of passion, all of which was so contrary to his
character as universally known, that his disciples derided the
physiognomist as a vain-glorious pretender. Socrates however presently
put them to silence, by declaring that he had had an original
propensity to all the vices imputed to him, and had only conquered the
propensity by dint of a severe and unremitted self-discipline.


INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS.

Oneirocriticism, or the art of interpreting dreams, seems of all the
modes of prediction the most inseparable from the nature of man. A
considerable portion of every twenty-four hours of our lives is spent
in sleep; and in sleep nothing is at least more usual, than for the
mind to be occupied in a thousand imaginary scenes, which for the time
are as realities, and often excite the passions of the mind of the
sleeper in no ordinary degree. Many of them are wild and rambling; but
many also have a portentous sobriety. Many seem to have a strict
connection with the incidents of our actual lives; and some appear as
if they came for the very purpose to warn us of danger, or prepare us
for coming events. It is therefore no wonder that these occasionally
fill our waking thoughts with a deep interest, and impress upon us an
anxiety of which we feel it difficult to rid ourselves. Accordingly,
in ages when men were more prone to superstition, than at present,
they sometimes constituted a subject of earnest anxiety and
inquisitiveness; and we find among the earliest exercises of the art
of prediction, the interpretation of dreams to have occupied a
principal place, and to have been as it were reduced into a science.


CASTING OF LOTS.

The casting of lots seems scarcely to come within the enumeration here
given. It was intended as an appeal to heaven upon a question involved
in uncertainty, with the idea that the supreme Ruler of the skies,
thus appealed to, would from his omniscience supply the defect of
human knowledge. Two examples, among others sufficiently remarkable,
occur in the Bible. One of Achan, who secreted part of the spoil taken
in Jericho, which was consecrated to the service of God, and who,
being taken by lot, confessed, and was stoned to death. [1] The other
of Jonah, upon whom the lot fell in a mighty tempest, the crew of the
ship enquiring by this means what was the cause of the calamity that
had overtaken them, and Jonah being in consequence cast into the sea.


ASTROLOGY.

Astrology was one of the modes most anciently and universally resorted
to for discovering the fortunes of men and nations. Astronomy and
astrology went hand in hand, particularly among the people of the
East. The idea of fate was most especially bound up in this branch of
prophecy. If the fortune of a man was intimately connected with the
position of the heavenly bodies, it became evident that little was
left to the province of his free will. The stars overruled him in all
his determinations; and it was in vain for him to resist them. There
was something flattering to the human imagination in conceiving that
the planets and the orbs on high were concerned in the conduct we
should pursue, and the events that should befal us. Man resigned
himself to his fate with a solemn, yet a lofty feeling, that the
remotest portions of the universe were concerned in the catastrophe
that awaited him. Beside which, there was something peculiarly
seducing in the apparently profound investigation of the professors of
astrology. They busied themselves with the actual position of the
heavenly bodies, their conjunctions and oppositions; and of
consequence there was a great apparatus of diagrams and calculation to
which they were prompted to apply themselves, and which addressed
itself to the eyes and imaginations of those who consulted them.


ORACLES.

But that which seems to have had the greatest vogue in times of
antiquity, relative to the prediction of future events, is what is
recorded of oracles. Finding the insatiable curiosity of mankind as to
what was to happen hereafter, and the general desire they felt to be
guided in their conduct by an anticipation of things to come, the
priests pretty generally took advantage of this passion, to increase
their emoluments and offerings, and the more effectually to inspire
the rest of their species with veneration and a willing submission to
their authority. The oracle was delivered in a temple, or some sacred
place; and in this particular we plainly discover that mixture of
nature and art, of genuine enthusiasm and contriving craft, which is
so frequently exemplified in the character of man.


DELPHI.

The oracle of Apollo at Delphi is the most remarkable; and respecting
it we are furnished with the greatest body of particulars. The
locality of this oracle is said to have been occasioned by the
following circumstance. A goat-herd fed his flocks on the acclivity of
mount Parnassus. As the animals wandered here and there in pursuit of
food, they happened to approach a deep and long chasm which appeared
in the rock. From this chasm a vapour issued; and the goats had no
sooner inhaled a portion of the vapour, than they began to play and
frisk about with singular agility. The goat-herd, observing this, and
curious to discover the cause, held his head over the chasm; when, in
a short time, the fumes having ascended to his brain, he threw himself
into a variety of strange attitudes, and uttered words, which probably
he did not understand himself, but which were supposed to convey a
prophetic meaning.

This phenomenon was taken advantage of, and a temple to Apollo was
erected on the spot. The credulous many believed that here was
obviously a centre and focus of divine inspiration. On this mountain
Apollo was said to have slain the serpent Python. The apartment of the
oracle was immediately over the chasm from which the vapour issued. A
priestess delivered the responses, who was called Pythia, probably in
commemoration of the exploit which had been performed by Apollo. She
sat upon a tripod, or three-legged stool, perforated with holes, over
the seat of the vapours. After a time, her figure enlarged itself, her
hair stood on end, her complexion and features became altered, her
heart panted and her bosom swelled, and her voice grew more than
human. In this condition she uttered a number of wild and incoherent
phrases, which were supposed to be dictated by the God. The questions
which were offered by those who came to consult the oracle were then
proposed to her, and her answers taken down by the priest, whose
office was to arrange and methodize them, and put them into hexameter
verse, after which they were delivered to the votaries. The priestess
could only be consulted on one day in every month.

Great ingenuity and contrivance were no doubt required to uphold the
credit of the oracle; and no less boldness and self-collectedness on
the part of those by whom the machinery was conducted. Like the
conjurors of modern times, they took care to be extensively informed
as to all such matters respecting which the oracle was likely to be
consulted. They listened probably to the Pythia with a superstitious
reverence for the incoherent sentences she uttered. She, like them,
spent her life in being trained for the office to which she was
devoted. All that was rambling and inapplicable in her wild
declamation they consigned to oblivion. Whatever seemed to bear on the
question proposed they preserved. The persons by whom the responses
were digested into hexameter verse, had of course a commission
attended with great discretionary power. They, as Horace remarks on
another occasion, [2] divided what it was judicious to say, from what
it was prudent to omit, dwelt upon one thing, and slurred over and
accommodated another, just as would best suit the purpose they had in
hand. Beside this, for the most part they clothed the apparent meaning
of the oracle in obscurity, and often devised sentences of ambiguous
interpretation, that might suit with opposite issues, whichever might
happen to fall out. This was perfectly consistent with a high degree
of enthusiasm on the part of the priest. However confident he might be
in some things, he could not but of necessity feel that his
prognostics were surrounded with uncertainty. Whatever decisions of
the oracle were frustrated by the event, and we know that there were
many of this sort, were speedily forgotten; while those which
succeeded, were conveyed from shore to shore, and repeated by every
echo. Nor is it surprising that the transmitters of the sentences of
the God should in time arrive at an extraordinary degree of sagacity
and skill. The oracles accordingly reached to so high a degree of
reputation, that, as Cicero observes, no expedition for a long time
was undertaken, no colony sent out, and often no affair of any
distinguished family or individual entered on, without the previously
obtaining their judgment and sanction. Their authority in a word was
so high, that the first fathers of the Christian church could no
otherwise account for a reputation thus universally received, than by
supposing that the devils were permitted by God Almighty to inform the
oracles with a more than human prescience, that all the world might be
concluded in idolatry and unbelief, [3] and the necessity of a Saviour
be made more apparent. The gullibility of man is one of the most
prominent features of our nature. Various periods and times, when
whole nations have as it were with one consent run into the most
incredible and the grossest absurdities, perpetually offer themselves
in the page of history; and in the records of remote antiquity it
plainly appears that such delusions continued through successive
centuries.


THE DESIRE TO COMMAND AND CONTROL FUTURE EVENTS.

Next to the consideration of those measures by which men have sought
to dive into the secrets of future time, the question presents itself
of those more daring undertakings, the object of which has been by
some supernatural power to control the future, and place it in
subjection to the will of the unlicensed adventurer. Men have always,
especially in ages of ignorance, and when they most felt their
individual weakness, figured to themselves an invisible strength
greater than their own; and, in proportion to their impatience, and
the fervour of their desires, have sought to enter into a league with
those beings whose mightier force might supply that in which their
weakness failed.


COMMERCE WITH THE INVISIBLE WORLD.

It is an essential feature of different ages and countries to vary
exceedingly in the good or ill construction, the fame or dishonour,
which shall attend upon the same conduct or mode of behaviour. In
Egypt and throughout the East, especially in the early periods of
history, the supposed commerce with invisible powers was openly
professed, which, under other circumstances, and during the reign of
different prejudices, was afterwards carefully concealed, and
barbarously hunted out of the pale of allowed and authorised practice.
The Magi of old, who claimed a power of producing miraculous
appearances, and boasted a familiar intercourse with the world of
spirits, were regarded by their countrymen with peculiar reverence,
and considered as the first and chiefest men in the state. For this
mitigated view of such dark and mysterious proceedings the ancients
were in a great degree indebted to their polytheism. The Romans are
computed to have acknowledged thirty thousand divinities, to all of
whom was rendered a legitimate homage; and other countries in a
similar proportion.


SORCERY AND ENCHANTMENT.

In Asia, however, the Gods were divided into two parties, under
Oromasdes, the principle of good, and Arimanius, the principle of
evil. These powers were in perpetual contention with each other,
sometimes the one, and sometimes the other gaining the superiority.
Arimanius and his legions were therefore scarcely considered as
entitled to the homage of mankind. Those who were actuated by
benevolence, and who desired to draw down blessings upon their
fellow-creatures, addressed themselves to the principle of good; while
such unhappy beings, with whom spite and ill-will had the
predominance, may be supposed often to have invoked in preference the
principle of evil. Hence seems to have originated the idea of sorcery,
or an appeal by incantations and wicked arts to the demons who
delighted in mischief.

These beings rejoiced in the opportunity of inflicting calamity and
misery on mankind. But by what we read of them we might be induced to
suppose that they were in some way restrained from gratifying their
malignant intentions, and waited in eager hope, till some mortal
reprobate should call out their dormant activity, and demand their
aid.

Various enchantments were therefore employed by those unhappy mortals
whose special desire was to bring down calamity and plagues upon the
individuals or tribes of men against whom their animosity was
directed. Unlawful and detested words and mysteries were called into
action to conjure up demons who should yield their powerful and
tremendous assistance. Songs of a wild and maniacal character were
chaunted. Noisome scents and the burning of all unhallowed and odious
things were resorted to. In later times books and formulas of a
terrific character were commonly employed, upon the reading or recital
of which the prodigies resorted to began to display themselves. The
heavens were darkened; the thunder rolled; and fierce and blinding
lightnings flashed from one corner of the heavens to the other. The
earth quaked and rocked from side to side. All monstrous and deformed
things shewed themselves, "Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire,"
enough to cause the stoutest heart to quail. Lastly, devils, whose
name was legion, and to whose forms and distorted and menacing
countenances superstition had annexed the most frightful ideas,
crowded in countless multitudes upon the spectator, whose breath was
flame, whose dances were full of terror, and whose strength infinitely
exceeded every thing human. Such were the appalling conceptions which
ages of bigotry and ignorance annexed to the notion of sorcery, and
with these they scared the unhappy beings over whom this notion had
usurped an ascendancy into lunacy, and prepared them for the
perpetrating flagitious and unheard-of deeds.

The result of these horrible incantations was not less tremendous,
than the preparations might have led us to expect. The demons
possessed all the powers of the air, and produced tempests and
shipwrecks at their pleasure. "Castles toppled on their warder's
heads, and palaces and pyramids sloped their summits to their
foundations;" forests and mountains were torn from their roots, and
cast into the sea. They inflamed the passions of men, and caused them
to commit the most unheard-of excesses. They laid their ban on those
who enjoyed the most prosperous health, condemned them to peak and
pine, wasted them into a melancholy atrophy, and finally consigned
them to a premature grave. They breathed a new and unblest life into
beings in whom existence had long been extinct, and by their hateful
and resistless power caused the sepulchres to give up their dead.


WITCHCRAFT.

Next to sorcery we may recollect the case of witchcraft, which occurs
oftener, particularly in modern times, than any other alleged mode of
changing by supernatural means the future course of events. The
sorcerer, as we shall see hereafter, was frequently a man of learning
and intellectual abilities, sometimes of comparative opulence and
respectable situation in society. But the witch or wizard was almost
uniformly old, decrepid, and nearly or altogether in a state of
penury. The functions however of the witch and the sorcerer were in a
great degree the same. The earliest account of a witch, attended with
any degree of detail, is that of the witch of Endor in the Bible, who
among other things, professed the power of calling up the dead upon
occasion from the peace of the sepulchre. Witches also claimed the
faculty of raising storms, and in various ways disturbing the course
of nature. They appear in most cases to have been brought into action
by the impulse of private malice. They occasioned mortality of greater
or less extent in man and beast. They blighted the opening prospect of
a plentiful harvest. They covered the heavens with clouds, and sent
abroad withering and malignant blasts. They undermined the health of
those who were so unfortunate as to incur their animosity, and caused
them to waste away gradually with incurable disease. They were
notorious two or three centuries ago for the power of the "evil eye."
The vulgar, both great and small, dreaded their displeasure, and
sought, by small gifts, and fair speeches, but insincere, and the
offspring of terror only, to avert the pernicious consequences of
their malice. They were famed for fabricating small images of wax, to
represent the object of their persecution; and, as these by gradual
and often studiously protracted degrees wasted before the fire, so the
unfortunate butts of their resentment perished with a lingering, but
inevitable death.


COMPACTS WITH THE DEVIL.

The power of these witches, as we find in their earliest records,
originated in their intercourse with "familiar spirits," invisible
beings who must be supposed to be enlisted in the armies of the prince
of darkness. We do not read in these ancient memorials of any league
of mutual benefit entered into between the merely human party, and his
or her supernatural assistant. But modern times have amply supplied
this defect. The witch or sorcerer could not secure the assistance of
the demon but by a sure and faithful compact, by which the human party
obtained the industrious and vigilant service of his familiar for a
certain term of years, only on condition that, when the term was
expired, the demon of undoubted right was to obtain possession of the
indentured party, and to convey him irremissibly and for ever to the
regions of the damned. The contract was drawn out in authentic form,
signed by the sorcerer, and attested with his blood, and was then
carried away by the demon, to be produced again at the appointed time.


IMPS.

These familiar spirits often assumed the form of animals, and a black
dog or cat was considered as a figure in which the attendant devil was
secretly hidden. These subordinate devils were called Imps. Impure and
carnal ideas were mingled with these theories. The witches were said
to have preternatural teats from which their familiars sucked their
blood. The devil also engaged in sexual intercourse with the witch or
wizard, being denominated _incubus_, if his favourite were a
woman, and _succubus_, if a man. In short, every frightful and
loathsome idea was carefully heaped up together, to render the
unfortunate beings to whom the crime of witchcraft was imputed the
horror and execration of their species.


TALISMANS AND AMULETS.

As according to the doctrine of witchcraft, there were certain
compounds, and matters prepared by rules of art, that proved baleful
and deadly to the persons against whom their activity was directed, so
there were also preservatives, talismans, amulets and charms, for the
most [Errata: _read_ for the most part] to be worn about the
person, which rendered him superior to injury, not only from the
operations of witchcraft, but in some cases from the sword or any
other mortal weapon. As the poet says, he that had this,

Might trace huge forests and unhallowed heaths,--
Yea there, where very desolation dwells,
By grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades,

nay, in the midst of every tremendous assailant, "might pass on with
unblenched majesty," uninjured and invulnerable.


NECROMANCY.

Last of all we may speak of necromancy, which has something in it that
so strongly takes hold of the imagination, that, though it is one only
of the various modes which have been enumerated for the exorcise of
magical power, we have selected it to give a title to the present
volume.

There is something sacred to common apprehension in the repose of the
dead. They seem placed beyond our power to disturb. "There is no work,
nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave."

After life's fitful fever they sleep well:
Nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch them further.

Their remains moulder in the earth. Neither form nor feature is long
continued to them. We shrink from their touch, and their sight. To
violate the sepulchre therefore for the purpose of unholy spells and
operations, as we read of in the annals of witchcraft, cannot fail to
be exceedingly shocking. To call up the spirits of the departed, after
they have fulfilled the task of life, and are consigned to their final
sleep, is sacrilegious. Well may they exclaim, like the ghost of
Samuel in the sacred story, "Why hast thou disquieted me?"

There is a further circumstance in the case, which causes us
additionally to revolt from the very idea of necromancy, strictly so
called. Man is a mortal, or an immortal being. His frame either wholly
"returns to the earth as it was, or his spirit," the thinking
principle within him, "to God who gave it." The latter is the
prevailing sentiment of mankind in modern times. Man is placed upon
earth in a state of probation, to be dealt with hereafter according to
the deeds done in the flesh. "Some shall go away into everlasting
punishment; and others into life eternal." In this case there is
something blasphemous in the idea of intermedding with the state of
the dead. We must leave them in the hands of God. Even on the idea of
an interval, the "sleep of the soul" from death to the general
resurrection, which is the creed of no contemptible sect of
Christians, it is surely a terrific notion that we should disturb the
pause, which upon that hypothesis, the laws of nature have assigned to
the departed soul, and come to awake, or to "torment him before the
time."