Subsection 3 Witches and magicians: how they cause melancholy

You have heard what the Devil can do by himself. Now you shall hear what he can accomplish through his instruments, who are often worse—if that is possible—than he is, and cause more mischief to satisfy their revenge and desire. “For the demon would not have committed many evils had witches not provoked him,” as Erastus thinks: much harm would never have been done if witches had not goaded him into it.

He would not have appeared in Samuel’s shape if the witch of Endor had left him alone, or displayed those serpents before Pharaoh had the magicians not urged him to it. “Nor would he inflict diseases on people or animals,” Erastus maintains, “if witches kept quiet.” People and cattle might escape if witches would leave him alone.

Many deny that witches exist at all, or believe that, if they do exist, they can do no harm. Of this opinion are Weyer, On the Deceptions of Demons, book 3, chapter 53; Augustin Lercheimer, a German writer; Biarmannus, Ewichius, Euwaldus and our countryman Scot. Like the man in Horace, they greet with laughter—

Dreams, magic terrors, marvels, witches, Ghosts abroad at night, and Thessalian wonders— They greet them all with laughter.

They laugh at all such stories; but most lawyers, theologians, physicians and philosophers take the opposite view: Augustine, Hemmingsen, Daneau, Chytraeus, Zanchi, Aretius, and so on; Delrio, Sprenger, Nider, book 5 of the Formicarius; Cujas, Bartolus, Legal Opinions, volume 1, opinion 6; Bodin, Demonomania, book 2, chapter 8; Godelmann, Damhouder, and others; Paracelsus, Erastus, Erbanius, Camerarius, and so on.

The people through whom the Devil operates may be reduced to two classes. First are those who command him, at least in appearance, such as conjurers and magicians, whose detestable and dreadful mysteries are contained in their book called Arbatel: “For demons appear when summoned and allow themselves to seem compelled by exorcisms and conjurations, so as to keep the wretched race of magicians in impiety.”

The second class consists of those who are commanded, such as witches, who act through an implicit or explicit pact, as the King has aptly defined them. There are many subdivisions and many different kinds of sorcerers, witches, enchanters, charmers, and so forth.

Some of them have been tolerated in the past, and magic was publicly taught in former times at Salamanca, Kraków and elsewhere, though later condemned by several universities. It is now generally opposed, although some still practise, defend and excuse it “as a secret art communicated only to great men endowed with a special gift from heaven”—I use Boissard’s words.

Some princes approve of them so thoroughly “that they dare undertake nothing in politics, religion or counsel without their judgment.” They consult them continually and indeed dare do nothing without their advice. Nero and Elagabalus, Maxentius and Julian the Apostate, were never so addicted to magic in ancient times as some of our modern princes and even popes are nowadays.

Eric, king of Sweden, had an enchanted cap. Through its power, and through some magical murmuring or whispered words, he could command spirits, disturb the air and make the wind blow whichever way he wished. Whenever there was a great wind or storm, the common people used to say that the king had his conjuring cap on. But such examples are endless.

They can do almost as much as the Devil himself, who is always ready to satisfy their desires and so bind them more firmly to him. They can raise tempests and storms, a familiar practice among witches in Norway and Iceland, as I have shown. By love potions they can turn friends into enemies and enemies into friends, “bring about shameful loves,” and compel affection.

They can tell anyone where his friends are and what they are doing, even in the remotest places, and, if they wish, bring their sweethearts to them at night on the back of a goat flying through the air. Sigismund Scheretzius, On Apparitions, part 1, chapter 9, confidently reports that he spoke with several people who had been carried many miles in this way, and heard witches themselves confess as much.

They can harm and infect people and animals, vines, grain, cattle and plants; cause women to miscarry, fail to conceive or become barren; and make men and women, married or unmarried, sexually incapable in fifty different ways, says Bodin, book 2, chapter 2. They can fly through the air and meet when and where they please, as Cicogna demonstrates, and Lavater in On Apparitions, part 2, chapter 17.

They can steal young children from their cradles “through the agency of demons” and put deformed ones in their places, whom we call changelings, says Scheretzius, part 1, chapter 6. They can make men victorious, fortunate and eloquent. For this reason, in those ancient single combats and duels, men were searched beforehand to make sure they had no magical charms.

They can make people proof against stabbing, able to withstand a rapier’s point or a musket shot without being wounded. Read more about this in Boissard, On Magic, chapter 6: the form of the invocation, who makes it, and where and how it is to be used “in military expeditions, battles, duels,” and so forth, with many particular instances and examples.

They can walk through fiery furnaces, make people feel no pain on the rack or under other tortures, stop bleeding, display the shapes of the dead, and change themselves and others into various forms at will. Agaberta, a famous witch in Lapland, would do as much openly before all spectators: “Now a little girl, now an old woman, now tall as an oak, now a cow, a bird, a snake,” and so on.

Now young, now old, tall, short, like a cow, a bird, a snake—what could she not become? She could display whatever forms people most wished to see, show them absent friends and reveal secrets, “to everyone’s greatest astonishment,” and so forth. Yet, for all their cunning, as Lipsius aptly observes in The Natural Philosophy of the Stoics, book 1, chapter 17, neither these magicians nor the devils themselves can take gold or letters out of my chest or Crassus’s and “distribute them to their clients.”

For they are mostly base, poor, contemptible fellows. As Bodin notes, they can do nothing “about judges’ decrees or punishments, kings’ counsels or secrets, money or treasures.” They cannot give their clients money, change judges’ decrees or alter kings’ counsels. These “lesser spirits” cannot do it: “Higher spirits have reserved this for themselves”—the higher powers keep these matters in their own hands.

Now and then, perhaps, there may be more celebrated magicians—Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana, Pasetes, Iamblichus, Odo de Stellis—who can for a time build castles in the air, display armies, and so on, as they are said to have done; command wealth and treasure; suddenly feed thousands with every variety of food;