Part 11

Mithras mysteries, contain a copy, by anticipation, of the sacrament of baptism, 57; imitate other mysteries of the Church, 58, 60.

Moon, path of, 2.

"_Mus exenteratus_," etc., quoted, 60.

Native spirits popularly believed to inhabit land, air and water, 202.

Nature, knowledge of, same as a knowledge of the angels, 5.

Neoplatonism arises, 40.

Nine revolving heavens, 1.

Nork's "Sitten und Gebräuche der Deutschen," etc., quoted, 202.

Number 72, its significance, 143, 144; number 488, 147.

Origen, attempts to unite belief and thought, 41; rejects the doctrine of eternal punishment, 43.

Origin of the names of the days of the week, 135, 136.

Ormuzd and Ahriman, are the real adversaries repelled at Marathon, 36; author of _white_ magic, 54.

Pentecost, its gifts transmitted, 91.

Peter de Abano, author of an important question, 97.

_Perpetuum mobile naturæ_, method of producing, 130, 131.

Pierre Delancre complains against witch-knots, 216.

Philosophy, system of possible within the Church, 20; adherents of the scholastic may use Aristotle's dialectics, 21.

Planetary world, next beneath that of fixed stars, 2; consisting of seven heavens, 2.

Planets guided by angels, 3; influence the elements and man, 134, 135.

Plotinus, tries to restore Neoplatonism, 40.

Pope, feudal lord of emperors, 18; determines the true inductions of philosophy, 21; Sergius III., 63; Urban Vitus, 65.

Pope John XXII., complains that his life is endangered by sorcerers, 177.

Pope Innocent VIII., puts forth a bull against the spread of sorcery, 178.

Popular maxims of superstition, 208-211.

Power, from a spiritual source only, 3; communicated to the heavens and the earth by angels, 3.

Power, order of angels, guide the stars and planets, 5.

Principalities, Archangels, and Angels, the third and lowest hierarchy, hold supremacy over terrestrial things, 5, 6.

Principalities, part of the lowest hierarchy of angels, guardian spirits of nations, 6.

Proclus, last Neoplatonician, 44.

Pythagoras, glorified as fit to rank with Christ in miraculous gifts, 40; believed the universe founded on numbers, 124.

Rain-processions in the Middle Ages, 74.

Reason, darkened by apostacy, 13.

"Recognitiones divi Clementis ad Jacob.," quoted, 165.

Reformation, retains somewhat of the Church-magic, 92.

Relics, their magical use, 66.

Remigius, ascribes witchcraft to Zoroaster, 45.

Renaissance, overthrew the darkness and superstition of the Middle Ages, 222-223.

Saints, intercession of, more effective than that of Seraphim, 17; not disturbed by misery of the damned, 27; have control over various diseases, 69.

Satan, the Judaized Ahriman, 35.

Saturn, belonging to the first of the planetary spaces, 2.

Scale of the Holy Tetrad (Table I.), 123.

_Schemhamphoras_, or God's mystical names, 144, 146.

_Scholastici errantes_, 220.

Science the, of the Greeks is rational, originates logic and geometry; of the Middle Ages is _magic_, 30.

Scotus Erigena, mentioned, 44.

Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, the first hierarchy, and nearest God, 5.

Simon Magus, legend of his discomfiture by St. Peter, 165.

Sprenger, author of Malleus Malificarum, ascribes the origin of witchcraft to Zoroaster, 45.

Stedinghs persecuted, 174.

_Summa Theologica_, quoted on the delectation of the redeemed upon seeing the misery of the damned, 28.

Sun, belonging to the middle space of planetary world, 2.

Superstitious prognostics of disease and death, 212-216.

Synodal decree of Ancyra, 171.

Table of correspondences between microcosmos and things on earth, and the planets, 127.

Tekfael, name of the demon summoned, 147, 153.

Terrestrial things, images of the celestial, 6; are composed of the coarsest matter, 6; are all under the control of special angels, 7; are also influenced by stars, planets and archetypes, 7.

Theologie der Thatsachen wider die Theologie der Rhetorik (A. F. C. H. Vilmar, 1857) quoted, 48-50.

Thomas Aquinas, on the acquiescence of the saints in the punishment of the lost, 28; on the power of demons, 73.

Universe, a vast lyre, 7; an unbroken harmony, 9; divided between Good and Evil, 11.

University of 15th century described, 96-98.

Vampirism, 207.

Venus, path of in planetary world, 2.

Vilmar, Neo-Lutheran, would restore to the clergy their mediæval prerogatives, 48-50.

Virgil quoted, 205, 216.

Von Görres, attempts to restore the belief in vampirism, 207.

Witch-hammer, contains directions for the judge in witch-trials, 90, 178-195.

Witches' Sabbath, supposed origin of, 170.

Witch-knots, 216.

Zoroaster, the reputed founder of magic science; and by some believed the author of witchcraft, 45; his religion allows evil to disappear in course of time, and promises a final restoration of all things, 46.

Zoroaster and Plato's systems blended, 37.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Henricus Cornelius Agrippa ab Nettesheim: "De occulta Philosophia."--I., XIII.

[2] Henricus Cornelius Agrippa ab Nettesheim: "De occulta Philosophia."--I., XIII.

[3] _Ibidem._

[4] This passage, directed against the ruler of Assyria, was already interpreted by the early fathers as having reference to Satan. Thus Lucifer, the Latin translation for Morning Star, came to be a name for the prince of darkness.

[5] Luke x. 18.

[6] "De Contemptu Mundi sive de Miseria Humanæ Conditionis," a little book written about 1200, by the afterwards Pope Innocent III.

[7] The words of Luther, who, in addition to his dualistic belief, was a genuine son of this same Middle Age, though the destroyer of its autocratic faith.

[8] As such,--as perishable and unreal, are all evil things regarded by an unknown author in the Middle Ages. In his beautiful opuscule "Deutsche Theologie," he says among other things: "Now some one may ask, 'Since we must love every thing, must we also love sin?' The answer is, no; for when we say every thing, we only mean every thing that is good. Every thing that exists is good by virtue of its existence. The devil is good in so far as he exists. In this sense, there is nothing evil in existence. But it is a sin to wish, desire or love any thing else than God. Now all things are essentially in God, and more essentially in God than in themselves; therefore are they all good in their real essence."--The little work from which the above is quoted, is the expression of a deep and pious soul, struggling to master the dualism which fettered his age. It is remarkable that Luther was not more strongly influenced by its spirit, although he confesses that "Next to the Bible and St. Augustine I have found no book from which I have learned more."

[9] See the work "Summa Theologica" (supplementum ad tertiam partem, quæst. 94) by the most prominent and most influential among the theologians of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas. It is there said: "Ut beatitudo sanctorum eis magis complaceat et de ea uberiores gratias Deo agant, datur eis ut poenam impiorum perfecte videant.... Beati, qui erunt in gloria, nullam compassionem ad damnatos habebunt.... Sancti de poenis impiorum gaudebunt, considerando in eis divinæ justitiæ ordinem et suam liberationem de qua gaudebunt."--With this may be compared the following execrable effusion of another theologian: "Beati coelites non tantum non cognatorum sed nec parentum sempiternis suppliciis ad ullam miserationem flectentur. Imo vero lætabuntur justi, cum viderint vindictam; manus lavabunt in sanguine peccatorum."

[10] Tertullian.

[11] This has been denied in so far as the original teachings of Zoroaster are concerned, but is confirmed by a passage in Aristotle (Metaphys., I., XIV., c. 4).

[12] A. F. Ch. Vilmar: "Theologie der Thatsachen wider die Theologie der Rhetorik" (Marburg, 1857).

[13] Thus, for instance, the red lustre of copper was supposed to indicate that it was connected with Mars, which shines with a reddish light.

[14] "Non baptisatis parvulis nemo promittat inter damnationem regnumque coelorum quietis vel felicitatis cujuslibet atque ubilibet quasi medium locum; hoc enim eis etiam hæresis Pelagiana promisit" (Augustinus: De Anima et Ejus Origine, 1. I., c. IX). In one of his letters Augustine declares that even if the parents hurry to the priest, and he likewise hasten to baptize the child, but find it dead before it has obtained the sacrament, it is nevertheless then doomed to be eternally tormented with the damned, and to blaspheme the name of God.

[15] All these are found, in connection with baptism, in heathen mysteries.

[16] Extract from the formula given at the council of Rome, A. D. 1059, to Berengar of Tours, to which he was forced to swear under penalty of death.

[17] The wafer substituted in the twelfth century for bread was called the host.

[18] The discovery made in our days by the Danish theologian Martensens that the food obtained in the Supper of our Lord is not for the soul only, but also for the body,--for the nourishment of our ascension-body, is not really new; the pagan initiated into the Mithras mysteries was taught that the consecrated bread and wine, being assimilated into his flesh and blood, gave immortality to his corporeal being. Like presuppositions produce in different times like ideas.

An important question in the Middle Ages and one which had been already argued with great heat from the time of Petrus Lombardus until the seventeenth century, is propounded as follows: Has a rat which has eaten of the host thereby partaken of Christ's body? In connection with this it was further asked: How is a rat which has eaten of Christ's body to be treated,--ought it to be killed or honored? Ought the sacrament to be venerated even in the stomach of the rat? If some of the consecrated bread is found in the stomach of a rat, is it a duty to eat it? What must be done if immediately after partaking of the sacrament one is attacked by vomiting? When a rat can eat the host, can not the devil also do it?--One of the last products of these important investigations is a book published in Tübingen in 1593, entitled: "_Mus exenteratus, hoc est tractatus valde magistralis super quæstione quadam theologica spinosa et multum subtili_," _etc._

[19] During the period of political reaction in 1815, when Schlegel and de Maistre praised the Middle Ages as man's era of bliss, and Görres sought to restore to credence during the "state period of enlightenment" all the forgotten ghost and vampire stories, the clergy of Brussels were celebrating with processions and other solemnities the anniversary of this persecution of the Jews in Namur.

At the synod in A. D. 1099 a proclamation was issued forbidding priests to enter into any servile relations with laymen, because it were shameful if the most holy hands which prepared the flesh and blood of Almighty God should serve the unconsecrated laity. The famous orator Bourdaloue requested that greater homage should be paid to the priest than to the holy Virgin, because God had been incarnated in her bosom only once, but was in the hands of the priest daily, as often as the mass was read.

[20] The oldest Christian art in which the dying spirit of antiquity yet reveals itself, represented Jesus as a shepherd youth carrying a lamb upon his bosom. Many a one could only turn away sadly from the beaming world of Olympus to the new Christian ideal, and when they must needs so do, they would fain transfer to the new "_puer redemptor_" the mild beauty of the former youthful mediator, Dionysus Zagreus. In the hymns, still preserved to us, of Synesius, who combined in one person the bishop and the Greek who still longs for wisdom and beauty (doubtless known to many of our readers by Kingsley's novel of Hypatia), this sadness is in wonderful harmony with Christian devotion. With the ruin of the antique world, this longing as well as the capability of satisfying it ceased. The material symbol obtained thereafter a more prominent place. If the Phoenicians and Canaanites represented their god corporeally as the powerful steer, the Christians chose the patient and inoffensive lamb as the type of theirs. The Council of Constantinople in A. D. 692 confirmed this lamb-symbol. As Aaron had made a golden calf, Pope Sergius III. procured a lamb to be made of gold and ivory. All who rebelled against its worship were treated as disorderly and heretical. In the time of Charlemagne one of them, Bishop Claudius of Turin, from whom the Waldenses derive their origin, complained: "_Isti perversorum dogmatum auctores agnos vivos volunt vorare et in pariete pictos adorare._"

[21] Pope Urban Vitus presented an _agnus Dei_ to the Byzantine Emperor. An accompanying note described its wonderful powers in the following monkish-Latin hexameters:--

_Balsamus et munda cera cum chrismatis unda Conficiunt agnum, quod munus do tibi magnum Fonte velut natum per mystica sanctificatum. Fulgura desursum depellit, et omne malignum Peccatum frangit, ut Christi sanguis et angit. Prægnans servatur, simul et partus liberatur. Dona refert dignis, virtutem destruit ignis. Portatus munde de fluctibus eripit undæ._

[22] As late as 1784 a statute was issued by Carl Theodor, Elector of Pfalz, referring to the magic power of St. Hubert-relics, and forbidding the employment of "worldly" remedies against the bite of mad dogs.

[23] In the year 1240 a large rain-procession was held in Lüttich. Three times repeated it failed of all effect, "because in the supplication of all saints God's mother had been forgotten." In a new procession "_Salve regina_" was therefore sung, and the rain immediately came down with such violence that the devout procession was dispersed.--The clergy sometimes, in order to produce rain, would lead a donkey before the gate of the church, hang the litany about his neck, put a wafer in his mouth, and then bury the animal alive.

[24] Especially was the Church of the Middle Ages rich in awful formularies of malediction, testifying to an enormous brutalization of thought and feeling. A single specimen of these formularies will be more than sufficient to illustrate:--

"By the might, power and authority of God, the Almighty Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost and in the name of the Holy Virgin the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the holy angels, archangels, St. Michael and St. John the Baptist, in the name of the holy apostle Peter and all the apostles, in the name of the holy Stephen and all the holy martyrs, and St. Adelgunda and all the holy virgins, and of all the saints in heaven and on earth to whom power is given to bind and loose,--we curse, execrate and exclude from the mother Church through the bond of malediction (here follows the name of the persons). May their children be orphaned; may they be cursed upon the field, cursed in the city, in the forest, in their houses and barns, in their chamber and their bed, in the town-hall, in the village, on land and sea; may they be cursed in the church, in the churchyard, in the court-room, on the public square and in war; whether they be talking, sleeping, waking, eating or drinking, whether they be going or resting, or doing any other thing, let them be accursed in soul and body, reason and all their senses: cursed be their progeny, cursed be the fruit of their land, cursed be all their limbs, head, nose, mouth, teeth, throat, eyes, and eyelashes, brain, larynx, tongue, breast, lungs, liver, legs, and arms, skin and hair; cursed be every thing living and moving in them from head to foot, etc. I conjure thee, Lucifer, and all your crew, by the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, by the incarnation and birth of Christ; I conjure thee by the power and the virtue of all saints, that thou never leave them in quiet, night or day, until thou have brought them to ruin, destroyed them by water, or led them to the gallows, or caused them to be torn by wild beasts, or their throat to be cut by enemies, or their bodies to be destroyed by fire," etc., etc.

[25] A biblical ground for ordeals was found in Numbers v. 12-28.

[26] The "Witch-hammer" will be more fully described hereafter. The student of history should not neglect this volume, which is the ripest fruit of Catholic dualism, and clearly shows the results to which it tends.

[27] "Gott in der Geschichte," III.

[28] Yet in the days of Erasmus of Rotterdam the theologians were making great ado over this knotty problem.

[29] This confession Cornelius Agrippa makes in his "Occult Philosophy." Theophrastus Paracelsus and others were less modest.

[30] Thus reasoned, as late as the middle of the sixteenth century, Borrichius (Olaf Borch), who was professor in chemistry at the University of Copenhagen and wrote a book upon the wisdom of the Egyptian Hermes.

[31] Agrippa: "De Occulta Philosophia," 1. I., c. 24.

[32] We have found in a "_Magia Divina_" the following directions for accomplishing a _perpetuum mobile naturæ_, the efficacy of which we leave for the reader to decide.

"During the twelve nights after Christmas 1-1/2 measures of dew are collected from fruit-trees, and preserved well enclosed. In the month of March dew is again collected from both fruit-trees and meadows and is preserved in another phial. Dew collected in May is poured in a third and rain of a thunderstorm during the summer in a fourth. Thereupon the contents of the four phials are mixed and one measure of it is poured into a great transparent glass retort where, well covered, it must remain a month until it becomes foul. Put it then over fire and subject to heat of the second degree. When sufficiently distilled a substance thick as honey is left. In this residue are poured four grains of astral tincture. The mixture is exposed to a heat of the first degree, by which it is converted into a thick, jet-black lump which again is dissolved, forming below an ink-like fluid, and above a vapor, in which many colors and figures are seen. These soon disappear, and every thing is changed into water, which begins to turn green, and green palaces, constantly enlarging, and mountains and lovely pastures appear, while the water is diminished more and more. When now you find that no more dew rises from the earth within the glass, take the water which you received from the distillation, mix with it a drachm of astral tincture and pour an ounce of this mixture into the glass bulb. Then every thing begins again to live and grow. Add every month an ounce of this mixture. If then the glass ball is well closed, and is not stirred, a vapor gradually arises, and is condensed into two shining stars, like the sun and the moon, and like the latter, one of these stars waxes and wanes; and all the phenomena of nature, thunder, lightning, hail, rain, snow and dew, will appear in your glass ball as in the real world around you. All this will happen if you keep the great Creator before your eyes and in your heart, and if you conceal from the wicked world this great secret."

From the second part of Goethe's Faust the reader may remember Doctor Wagner, Faust's former _famulus_, busily engaged at the alchemic furnace in preparing a _homunculus_, an artificial man. The same "_Magia Divina_" from which we have quoted the preceding directions, allows us also to trace the secret of the learned Wagner: the art of producing "homunculos philosophicos." In a retort of the most beautiful crystal glass is poured one measure of the purest May-dew, collected when the moon is crescent, and two measures of blood from a youth, or three measures from a girl. Both the boy and the girl must be hale and, "if possible," chaste. When this mixture has fomented during a month, and been transformed into a reddish clay, the _menstruum_ which is formed on the top is drawn off by means of tubes hermetically attached to the retort, gathered into a clean glass vessel, mixed with one drachm animal tincture, and the mixture is again poured into the retort where it is kept during a month in gentle heat. A sort of bladder will have then formed which is soon gradually covered with an organic net of little veins and nerves. Sprinkled every fourth week with the _menstruum_ above quoted, the bladder grows during four months. When now you notice a peeping sound and movements of vitality in the glass, look into it and you will discover to your joy and amazement a most beautiful pair, a boy and a girl, which you can contemplate with heart-felt admiration for this lovely work of nature, though their height is but six inches. They move and walk about in the glass, where in the midst there is a tree growing with all kinds of pleasant fruits. If now you pour into the retort every month, two grains of animal tincture, you can keep them alive six whole years. When one year old they can inform you of many secrets of nature. They are benevolent in their disposition, and obey you in every thing. But at the end of the sixth year you will find that this beautiful pair who have eaten hitherto of all kinds of fruit, except those growing on the tree which sprang up in the midst of the retort, now begin to eat also the fruit of that. Then a vapor is found in the retort, which grows denser, assumes a blood-red color and emits flashes. The two _homunculi_ are terrified, and try to hide themselves. Finally every thing around them is parched, they die, and the whole is changed into a fuming mass. If the glass is not very large and strong it explodes, causing great damage.

[33] Every planet had among the twelve signs of the Zodiac its own house, and it was especially propitious when in any of those abodes. The following table shows the order:--

Saturn dwells in Capricornus. Jupiter " " Pisces and Sagittarius. Mars " " Aries and Scorpio. The Sun " " Leo. Venus " " Taurus and Ursa Major. Mercurius " " Virgo and Gemini. The Moon " " Cancer.

Each of the twelve signs (thirty degrees on the arc of the heavens) was divided into three "faces" (ten degrees). The position of the planet was most auspicious when in the first face of the house; if in the third its favorable influence was doubtful.

As the reader will see from the first table given above, the signs of the Zodiac were supposed to sustain a relation to the elements and to temperaments. Aries, Leo and Sagittarius were warm, dry, fiery and choleric. Mars entering these signs--excepting that of Aries which was his own house, in which he was auspicious--must therefore bode draught, conflagration and pestilence. Taurus, Virgo and Capricornus, were cold, dry, earthy, melancholic. Saturn in the second sign of Taurus might consequently betoken a severe winter. The signs of Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces were cold, damp, watery and sanguine. The dominion of the Zodiacal constellations over the human body was divided as follows: Aries presided over the head and face, Taurus over the neck and throat, Gemini over the shoulders, arms and hands, Cancer over the breast, ribs, lungs and spleen, Leo over the upper part of the stomach, back and side, Virgo over the lower part of the stomach and intestines, Scorpio over the generative organs, Sagittarius over the anus, Capricornus over the knees, Aquarius over the thighs, Pisces over the feet. The planets exercised the same influence as their houses, and all elementary things subordinated to a planet were considered to be, during auspicious aspects, excellent remedies for affections in the limbs presided over by that planet. The series of analogies, of which we have given an example above, were therefore inexhaustible mines even for the physicians of the Middle Ages. Since, for instance, Capricornus which presided over the knees, is the house of Saturn, and all crawling animals are connected with this planet, the fat of snakes is an effective remedy against gout in the knees, especially on Saturday, the day of Saturn.