Page 80 (part 2)

A battlefield or other place of public slaughter is still more favourable, but best of all is the scene of a murder before the removal of the carcase. The ritual of Necromantic Evocation is indicated but not given by the authority just cited; we must seek it in Ebenezer Sibley and in the supplementary portions of the Grand Grimoire and the Red Dragon . The astrologer Sibley does not give account of his sources, but they were evidently not in printed books. The Sloane MS. numbered 3884 in the Library of the British Museum would appear to have been one. It is, in any case, not an invented process; it develops the principles laid down in pseudo-Agrippa and is quite in harmony with the baleful genius of Black Magic. It is here given verbatim. But if, instead of infernal or familiar spirits, the ghost or apparition of a departed person is to be exorcised, the Magician, with his assistant, must repair to the churchyard or tomb where the deceased was buried, exactly at midnight, as the ceremony can only be performed in the night between the hours of twelve and one. The grave is first to be opened, or an aperture made by which access may be had to the naked body. The magician having described the circle, and holding a magic wand in his right hand, while his companion or assistant beareth a consecrated torch, he turns himself to all the four winds, and, touching the dead body three times with the magical wand, repeats as follows:--By the virtue of the Holy Resurrection, and the torments of the damned, I conjure and exorcise thee, Spirit of N. deceased, to answer my liege demands, being obedient unto these sacred ceremonies, on pain of everlasting torment and distress. . . . BERALD, BEROALD, BALBIN, GAB, GABOR, AGABA . Arise, arise, I charge and command thee . After these forms and ceremonies, the ghost or apparition will become visible, and will answer any questions put to it by the exorcist. But if it be desired to put interrogatories to the spirit of any corpse that has hanged, drowned or otherwise made away with itself, the conjuration must be performed while the body lies on the spot where it is first found after the suicide hath been committed, and before it is touched or removed. The ceremony is as follows. The exorcist binds upon the top of his wand a bundle of St. John's wort or Millies perforatum , with the head of an owl; and having repaired to the spot where the corpse lies, at twelve o'clock at night, he draws the circle and solemnly repeats these words:-- By the mysteries of the deep, by the flames of Banal, by the Power of the East and the silence of the night, by the Holy Rites of Hecate, I conjure and exorcise thee, thou distressed spirit, to present thyself here and reveal unto me the cause of thy calamity, why thou didst offer violence to thy own liege life, where thou art now in being, and where thou wilt hereafter be . Then gently smiting the carcase nine times with the rod, he adds:-- I conjure thee, thou Spirit of this N. deceased, to answer my demands that I propound unto thee, as thou ever hopest for the rest of the holy ones and ease of all thy misery; by the [paragraph continues] Blood of Jesus which He shed for thy soul, I conjure and bind thee to utter unto me what I shall ask thee .