16. Witchcraft And Spellsa

WHAT sorcerers and necromancers sought above all in their evocations of the impure spirit was that magnetic power which is the possession of the true adept, but was desired by them only that they might abuse it shamefully. The folly of sorcerers was an evil folly, and one of their chief ends was the power of bewitchments or harmful influences. We have set down in our “Doctrine” what we think upon the subject of bewitchment, and how it seems to us a dangerous and real power. The true Magus bewitches without ceremonial and by his mere reprobation those whom he condemns and considers it necessary to punish; his forgiveness even bewitches those who do him wrong, and never do the enemies of initiates carry far the impunity of their injustice. We ourselves have witnessed numerous examples of this fatal law. The murderers of martyrs always perish miserably, and the adepts are martyrs of intelligence; Providence seems to scorn those who despise them and to slay those who would deprive them of life. The legend of the Wandering Jew is the popular poetry of this arcanum. A Wise Man was driven by a nation to His doom; it bade Him “Go on!” when He sought to rest for a moment. What is the consequence? A similar condemnation overtakes the nation itself; it is proscribed bodily. Men have cried to it: “Get on! Get on!” for centuries, and it has found no pity and no repose. A man of learning had a wife whom he loved wildly and passionately, in the exaltation of his tenderness; he honoured her with blind confidence and trusted her entirely. Vain of her beauty and understanding, this woman became jealous of her husband's superiority and began to hate him. Some time after she deserted him, disgracing herself with an old, ugly, stupid and immoral man. This was the beginning of her punishment, but it did not end there. The man of learning pronounced solemnly the following sentence upon her: “I take back your understanding and your beauty.” A year after she was no longer recognized by those who had known her; she was disfigured by obesity and reflected in her countenance the hideousness of her new affections. Three years later she was ugly; seven years later she was deranged. This happened in our own time, and we were acquainted with both persons. The Magus condemns after the manner of the skilful physician, and for this reason there is no appeal from his sentence when it has been once pronounced against a guilty person. There are no ceremonies and no invocations; he does but abstain from eating at the same table, or if forced to do so neither accepts nor offers salt. But the bewitchments of sorcerers are of another kind, and may be compared to an actual poisoning of some current of Astral Light. They exalt their will by ceremonies till it becomes venomous at distance; but, as we have observed in our “Doctrine”, they expose themselves more often to be the first that are killed by their infernal machinery. Let us stigmatize at this point some of their guilty proceedings. They procure hair or garments of the person whom they seek to destroy; they select an animal which seems to them symbolic of the person, and by means of the hair or garments they place it in magnetic connexion with him or her. They give it the same name and then slay it with one blow of the magic knife. They cut open the breast, tear out the heart, wrap while still palpitating, in the magnetized objects and hourly, for the space of three days, they drive nails, red-hot pins, or long thorns therein, pronouncing malediction upon the name of the bewitched being.