Magic And Witchcraft | by George Moir
Contains details and records of history of magic and witchcraft. All the facts included are also properly referenced and elaborately expressed.
| Title | Magic And Witchcraft |
| Author | George Moir |
| Publisher | Chapman And Hall |
| Year | 1852 |
| Copyright | 1852, Chapman And Hall |
| Amazon | Magic and Witchcraft |
Preface- We have long wished that some English or foreign university would offer a prize for a history of Magic and Witchcraft. The records of human opinion would contain few chapters more instructive than one...
- Magic And Witchcraft
- An amusing work appeared at Mainz, in 1826, from the pen of Herr Kirchenrath Horst, the title of which, translated in extenso, runs thus :- The Magical Library; or, of Magic, Theurgy, and Necroman...
- The Legendary Lucifer
- The picture, however, drawn by these intelligent spiritual travellers is by no means calculated to impress us with a high notion of the dominions of the Prince of the Air, or that the personnel of his...
- Sources Of Superstition
- It is true that the current of human opinion seems now to set in a different direction, and that if the evil spirit of persecution is again to re-appear on earth, his avatar must in all probability be...
- Monkish Superstition
- The grand postulate of direct diabolical agency being once assumed and quietly conceded on all hands, any absurdity whatever was easily engrafted on it. Satan being thus brought home, as it were, to m...
- Executions For Witchcraft
- How dreadful are the results to which these data lead ! If we take 157 as a fair average of the executions at Wurtzburg (and the catalogue itself states that the list was by no means com-plete), the a...
- Self-Delusions
- It was one fatal effect of the perseverance with which Satan and his dealings were thus brought before the view of every one, that thousands of weak and depraved minds were actually led into the belie...
- Spectral Illusions
- It was still less wonderful that those mysterious phenomena which sometimes occur in the human trame, such as spontaneous combustion, delusions arising from the state of the brain and nerves, and opti...
- Coincidences In Evidence
- Neither, we are afraid, is there much reason to doubt that some of the most horrible of their conceptions were founded on facts which were but too real ; that the cunning and the depraved contrived to...
- Sweden. The Blocula
- In the seventeenth centurv, the manner in which the delusion was communicated seems exactly to resemble those remarkable instances of sympathy which occur in the cases of the Scottish Cambus-lang Conv...
- Delusions
- Thirty years before, a similar instance of the progress of the epidemic had taken place at Lille, in the hospital founded by the pious enthusiast Antoinette Bourignon. On entering the schoolroom one d...
- Confessions
- But what a deluge of blood had been shed before even this principle came to be recognized, and still more before the judicial belief in the existence of the crime was fully eradicated ! What a spectac...
- The Reformation
- The Reformation, which uprooted other errors, only strengthened and fostered this. Every town and village on the continent was filled with spies, accusers, and wretches who made their living by preten...
- Persecutions In Germany
- The first decisive blow which the doctrines of the inquisitors received in Germany was from the publication of the 'Cautio Criminalis/ in 1631. In the sixteenth century, it is true that Ponzonibius, W...
- Persecutions In Hungary
- In 1701 the celebrated inaugural Thesis of Thomasius, 'De Crimine Magise/ was publicly delivered, with the highest applause, in the University of Halle, a work which some fifty years before would assu...
- Edict Of Louis XIV
- In France, the edict of Louis XIV., in 1682, directed only against pretended witches and prophets, proves distinctly that the belief in the reality of witchcraft had ceased, and that it was merely the...
- Persecution In England
- In turning from the Continent to the state of matters in England and Scotland, the prospect is anything but a comfortable one; and certainly nothing can he more deceitful than the miction which Dr. Fr...
- Scottish Superstition
- In no country perhaps did this gloomy superstition assume a darker or bloodier character than in Scotland. Wild, mountainous, and pastoral countries, partly from the striking, varied, and sometimes te...
- Trials In Scotland
- Two or three of these are peculiarly interesting ; one, from the difference between its details and those which form the usual materials of the witch trials ; the others, from the high rank of some of...
- Remarkable Trials
- This was evidently a pure case of mental delusion, but it was soon followed by one of a darker and more complex character, in which, as far as the principal actor was concerned, it seems doubtful whet...
- Case Of Lady Fowlis
- The object of the conspirators in this last case was the destruction of the young lady of Balna-gown, which would have enabled George Ross, of Balnagovvn, to marry the young Lady Fowlis. But in order ...
- James The First
- To trace out the wide field of witchcraft which was opened to him by the confessions of the accused, as they were successively examined, was an employment highly congenial to the credulous mind of Jam...
- Tortures
- But the weight to be attached to this confession was soon made apparent by what followed; for Fian, who had been recommitted to prison, and who had appeared for a day or two to be very solitarye and...
- Convention Of Witches
- James, it appears, from his singular piety, and the active part which, long before the composition of his 'Demonologie' he had taken against Satan and his invisible world, had been, from the first, mo...
- Dr. Fian
- Such is the strange story in which all the criminals examined before James and the Council substantially agree; and unquestionably the singular coincidence of their narratives remains at this day one ...
- Euphemia Macalzean
- In the trials of Bessie Roy, of James Reid, of Patrick Currie, of Isobel Grierson, and of Grizel Gardiner*, the charges are principally of taking off and laying on diseases either on men or cattle ; ...
- Charles The First
- Matters continued much in the same state during the reign of Charles I. From 1625 to 1640 there are eight entries of trials for witchcraft on the Record, one of which, that of Elizabeth Bathgate, is r...
- The Puritans
- The scene darkens however, towards the close of this reign, with the increasing dominion of the Puritans. In 1640 the General Assembly passed an act, that all ministers should take particular note of ...
- The Restoration
- Though the tide of popular delusion in regard to this crime may be said to have turned during the reign of Charles II., its opening was perhaps more bloody than that of any of its predecessors. In the...
- Isobel Gowdie
- Her devotion to the sendee of the devil took place in the kirk of Auldearn, where she was baptized by him with the name of Janet, being held up by a companion, and the devil sucking the blood from her...
- Amusements Of Witches
- The amusements and occupations of the witches are described with the same firmness and minuteness of drawing. When the devil has appointed an infernal diet, the witches leave behind them, in bed, a be...
- Anecdotes Of Witches
- It is needless to pursue further these strange details, which however form a valuable appendix to the records at that time. It would seem as if the violence of this popular delirium began after 166...
- Superstitious Enthusiasm
- So ends in Scotland the tragical part of the history of witchcraft. In 1735, as already mentioned, the penal statutes were repealed ; much to the annoyance however of the Seceders, who, in their annu...
- Pagan Witchcraft
- The work of Church-Councillor Horst, and the review of its principal contents, leave however one hemisphere at least of the subject of Magic, Theurgy, and Necromancy unnoticed. These arts, or at least...
- Lucian And Apuleius
- In Lucian and Apuleius indeed we are presented with a singular and terrible aspect of social existence. The most ordinary acts and functions of life were believed to be affected by the invisible power...
- The Baker's Wife
- Availing ourselves of Sir George Head's excellent translation, we extract from the c Golden Ass' of Apuleius a story which, to our conceptions, is unsurpassed for its horror by any of the dreariest le...
- High Treason
- The following story seems to have been substantially a deposition taken before the magistrates of Constantinople, and extracted from the witnesses or defendants by torture. The principal deponent is s...
- Later Pagan Superstitions
- The lingering belief in the old religion, and in the magical and thaumaturgical practices which had, like ivy around an oak, gradually accrued to it, was productive in the decline of Paganism of many ...
