16. Bewitchments-b

For this reason, it is important that children should sleep always alone. In conventional seminaries certain pupils absorb the intelligence of the others, and in every given circle of men one individual emerges who avails himself of the wills of the rest. Bewitchment by means of currents is exceedingly common, as we have observed already; morally as well as physically, most of us are carried away by the crowd. What, however, we have proposed to exhibit more especially in this chapter is the almost absolute power of the human will upon the determination of its acts and the influence of every outward demonstration of will upon outward things. Voluntary bewitchments are still frequent in our rural places because natural forces, among ignorant and isolated persons, operate unreduced by any doubt or any diversion. A frank, absolute hatred, unleavened by rejected passion or personal cupidity, is, under certain given conditions, a death-sentence for its object. I say unmixed with amorous passion or cupidity, because a desire, being an attraction, counterbalances and annuls the power of projection. For example, a jealous person will never efficaciously bewitch his rival, and a greedy heir will never by the mere fact of his will succeed in shortening the days of a miserly and long-lived uncle. Bewitchments attempted under such conditions reflect upon the operator and help rather than hurt their object, setting him free from a hostile action which destroys itself by unmeasured exaggeration. The term envoutement (bewitchment) so strong in its Gaelic simplicity, expresses admirably what it means, the act of enveloping someone, so to speak, in a formulated will. The instrument of bewitchments is the Great Magical Agent which, under the influence of an evil will, becomes really and positively the demon. Witchcraft, properly so called, that is, ceremonial operation with intent to bewitch, acts only on the operator, and serves to fix and confirm his will, by formulating it with persistence and travail, the two conditions which make volition efficacious. The more difficult or horrible the operation, the greater is its power, because it acts more strongly on the imagination and confirms effort in direct ratio of resistance. This explains the bizarre nature and even atrocious character of the operations in Black Magic, as practised by the ancients and in the Middle Ages, the diabolical masses, administration of sacraments to reptiles, effusions of blood, human sacrifices and other monstrosities, which are the very essence and reality of Goetia or Nigromancy. Such are the practices which from all time have brought down upon sorcerers the just repression of the laws. Black Magic is really only a graduated combination of sacrileges and murders designed for the permanent perversion of a human will and for the realization in a living man of the hideous phantom of the demon. It is therefore, properly speaking, the religion of the devil, the cultus of darkness, hatred of good carried to the height of paroxysm: it is the incarnation of death and the persistent creation of hell: The Kabalist Bodin who has been considered erroneously of a feeble and superstitious mind, had no other motive in writing his Demonomania than that of warning people against dangerous incredulity.' Initiated by the study of the Kabalah into the true secrets of Magic, he trembled at the danger to which society was exposed by the abandonment of this power to the wickedness of men. Hence he attempted what at the present time M. Eudes de Mirville is attempting amongst ourselves; he gathered facts without interpreting them and affirmed in the face of inattentive or preoccupied science the existence of the occult influences and criminal operations of Evil Magic. In his own day Bodin attracted no more attention than will be given to M.