The Penguin Book of Witches (5 page)

Dan.
Here is great deceit, and great illusion. Here the Devil leadeth the ignorant people into foul errors, by which he draweth them headlong into many grievous sins.

M. B.
Nay, then I see you are awry, if you deny these things, and say they be but illusions. They have been proved, and proved again, even by the manifold confessions of the witches themselves.
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I am out of all doubt in these, and could in many particulars lay open what hath fallen out. I did dwell in a village within these five years, where there was a man of good wealth, and suddenly within ten days’ space, he had three kine
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died, his gelding worth ten pounds fell lame, he was himself taken with a great pain in his back, and a child of seven years old died. He sent to the woman at R. H. and she said he was plagued by a witch, adding, moreover, that there were three women witches in that town, and one man witch,
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willing him to look whom he most suspected. He suspected one old woman, and caused her to be carried before a justice of the peace and examined. With much a doe at the last she confessed all. Which was this, in effect: that she had three spirits: one like a cat, which she called Lightfoot, another like a toad, which she called Lunch, the third like a weasel, which she called Makeshift. This Lightfoot, she said, one mother Barlie of W. sold her above sixteen years ago, for an oven cake and told her the cat would do her good service. If she would, she might send her of her errand. This cat was with her but a while, but the weasel and the toad came and offered their service. The cat would kill kine, the weasel would kill horses, the toad would plague men in their bodies. She sent them all three (as she confessed) against this man: She was committed to the prison, and there she died before the assizes. I could tell you of many such. I had no mind to dwell in that place any longer.

Dan.
You mistake me. I do not mean that the things are not. But my meaning is, that the Devil by such things both beguiles and seduces ignorant men, and leads them into errors and grievous sins.

Written in Edinburgh in 1597, King James I’s
Daemonologie
has been called “neither original nor profound,” a text that, taken on its own merits without regard to its royal authorship, would be of interest only because it promotes the Continental understanding of witchcraft in England (and, crucially, in English).
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However, the fact that
Daemonologie
was written by an individual not only with a unique ability to promote witchcraft prosecutions, but who was also a sitting monarch, makes it a worthwhile read. James I set out to refute noted skeptics of the time, in particular Reginald Scot, and in so doing addressed himself to several familiar questions. He first examined whether witches were real, basing his affirmative argument on scriptural evidence. He also described the means by which the Devil is able to work through individuals, lingered lovingly on the details of the witches’ Sabbath, remarked on the ability of witches to work magic with wax figures, and even touched upon the fact that the majority of suspected witches were women.

However, James I’s task extended beyond a restatement of widespread Continental witchcraft beliefs.
Daemonologie
provided James I with an opportunity to demonstrate his intellectual and theological rigor to a wide audience, thereby consolidating both the mandates of his kingship with his position as the head of the Church of England. This expression of competence and authority was in keeping with the kind of monarch that James I desired to be: a benevolent patriarch.
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The Devil is the first cause of ungovernability and disorder; James I’s ability to explain, and so thwart, devilish influences on earth reinforced his authority to rule over men. The same religious and political position informed not only the writing of
Daemonologie
but also the production of the Bible translation that bears his name.

The quarto is structured as a dialogue between Epistemon, a demonologist, and Philomathes, who voices the dominant skeptical objections to witchcraft. The dialogue is divided into three parts, the first of which deals with magic and necromancers, or people who consciously choose to persuade the Devil to do their bidding. The second part, reproduced below, deals with witchcraft. Witches, we are given to understand, differ from magicians in that the Devil enacts his will through them, and not the other way around. The third book describes the realm of spirits and ghosts, which Epistemon argues are real, and werewolves, which are delusions.
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Most striking to a contemporary reader will be the conflation of the pseudoscientific with the imaginary. In fact, James I was at pains to explain the difference between what was possible through witchcraft and what was merely a mental delusion. He also must have grap- pled with the continually vexing question of why God permits the Devil to have such power. James I’s theodicy took a number of tacks, including the possibility that witchcraft could challenge those with flagging faith to rekindle their belief, but ultimately he resorted to the story of Job to justify the continual ability of Satan to tempt us into sin.
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THE SECOND BOOK OF
DAEMONOLOGIE

Argument
: the description of sorcery and witchcraft in special.

Chapter 1 Argument

Proved by the scripture that such a thing can be. And the reasons refuted of all such as would call it but an imagination and melancholic humor.
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Philomathes.
NOW Since ye have satisfied me now so fully, concerning magic or necromancy, I will pray you to do the like in sorcery or witchcraft.
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Epistemon.
That field is likewise very large, and although in the mouths and pens of many, yet few knows the truth thereof, so well as they believe themselves, as I shall so shortly as I can, make you (God willing) as easily to perceive.

Phi.
But I pray you before ye go further, let me interrupt you there with a short digression, which is that many can scarcely believe that there is such a thing as witchcraft.
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Whose reasons I will shortly allege unto you, that ye may satisfy me as well in that as you have done in the rest. For first, whereas the scripture seemed to prove witchcraft to be, by diverse examples, and specially by sundry of the same, which you have alleged, it is thought by some that these places speak of magicians and necromancers only and not of witches. As in special, these wise men of pharaohs, that counterfeited Moses’ miracles were magicians, say they, and not witches. As likewise that Pythoness that Saul consulted with. And so was Simon Magus in the New Testament, as that very stile imports.
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Secondly, where thee would oppose the daily practice and confession of so many, that is thought likewise to be but very melancholic imaginations of simple raving creatures.
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Thirdly, if witches had such power of witching of folks to death (as they say they have), there had been none left alive long since in the world, but they, at the least, no good or godly person of whatsoever estate could have escaped their devilry.

Epi.
Your three reasons, I take, are grounded the first of them negative upon the scripture, the second affirmative upon physick,
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and the third upon the certain proof of experience. As to your first, it is most true indeed that all these wise men of Pharaoh were magicians of art. As likewise it appears well that the Pythoness, with whom Saul consulted was of that same profession and so was Simon Magus. But ye omitted to speak of the law of God, wherein are all magicians, divines, enchanters, sorcerers, witches, and whatsoever of that kind that consults with the Devil, plainly prohibited, and alike threatened against. And besides that, she who had the spirit of Python, in the Acts, whose spirit was put to silence by the apostle, could be no other thing but a very sorcerer or witch, if thee admit the vulgar distinction to be in a manner true, whereof I spake in the beginning of our conference.
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For that spirit whereby she conquested such gain to her master was not at her raising or commanding, as she pleased to appoint, but spake by her tongue as well publicly as privately. Whereby she seemed to draw nearer to the sort of Demoniacs or possessed, if that conjunction betwixt them had not been of her own consent, as it appeared by her, not being tormented therewith, and by her conquesting of such gain to her masters (as I have already said). As to your second reason grounded upon physick, in attributing their confessions or apprehensions to a natural melancholic humor: any that pleases physically to consider upon the natural humor of melancholy, according to all the physicians that ever writ thereupon, they shall find that that will be over short a cloak to cover their knavery with. For as the humor of melancholy in the self is black, heavy, and terrene,
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so are the symptoms thereof in any persons that are subject thereunto, leanness, paleness, desire of solitude, and if they come to the highest degree thereof, mere folly and mania. Whereas by the contrary, a great number of them that ever have been convict or confessors of witchcraft, as may be presently seen by many that have at their time confessed, they are by the contrary, I say, some of them rich and worldly wise, some of them fat or corpulent in their bodies, and most part of them altogether given over to the pleasures of the flesh, continual haunting of company, and all kind of merriness, both lawful and unlawful, which are things directly contrary to the symptoms of melancholy, whereof I spake, and further experience daily proves how loath they are to confess without torture, which witnesseth their guiltiness, where by the contrary, the melancholics never spare to betray themselves by their continual discourses, feeding thereby their humor in that which they think no crime.
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As to your third reason, it scarcely merits an answer. For if the Devil their master were not bridled, as the scriptures teacheth us, suppose there were no men nor women to be his instruments, he could find ways enough without any help of others to wrack all mankind, whereunto he employs his whole study, and goeth about like a roaring lion (as Peter saith) to that effect, but the limits of his power were set down before the foundations of the world were laid, which he hath not power in the least jot to transgress.
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But beside all this, there is over great a certainty to prove that they are, by the daily experience of the harms that they do, both to men and whatsoever thing men possesses, whom God will permit them to be the instruments, so to trouble or visit, as in my discourse of that art, ye shall hear clearly proved.

[ . . . ]

Chapter 3 Argument

The witches’ actions divided in two parts: the actions proper to their own persons and their actions toward others. The former of the conventions, and adoring of their master.

Phi.
Ye have said now enough of their initiating in that order. It rests then that the discourse upon their practices, for they be passed apprentices, for I would faine hear what is possible to them to perform in very deed. Although they serve a common master with the necromancers (as I have before said), yet serve they him in another form. For as the means are diverse which allures them to these unlawful arts of serving of the Devil, so by diverse ways use they their practices, answering to these means, which first the Devil used as instruments in them, though a tending to one end. To wit, the enlarging of Satan’s tyranny and crossing of the propagation of the kingdom of Christ, so far as lieth in the possibility, either of the one or other sort, of the Devil their master. For where the magicians, as allured by curiosity in the most part of their practices, seeks principally the satisfying of the same, and to win to themselves a popular honor and estimation, these witches on the other part, being enticed either for the desire of revenge or of worldly riches, their whole practices are either to hurt men and their goods
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or what they possess, for satisfying of their cruel minds in the former, or else by the wrack in whatsoever sort, of any whom God will permit them to have power off, to satisfy their greedy desire in the last point.

Epi.
In two parts their actions may be divided: the actions of their own persons and the actions proceeding from them towards any other. And this division being well understood will easily resolve you what is possible to them to do. For although all that they confess is no lie upon their part, yet doubtlessly in my opinion, a part of it is not indeed according as they take it to be. And in this I mean by the actions of their own persons. For as I said before, speaking of magic, that the Devil eludes the sense of these scholars of his
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in many things, so say I the like of these witches.

Phi.
Then I pray you, first to speak of that part of their own persons, and syne
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ye may come next to their actions towards others.

Epi.
To the effect that they may perform such services of their false master, as he employs them in, the Devil as God’s ape, counterfeits in these servants this service and form of adoration that God prescribed and made his servants to practice. For as the servants of God, publicly uses to convene for serving of him, so makes he them in great numbers to convene (though publicly they dare not) for his service. As none convenes to the adoration and worshipping of God, except they be marked with his seal, the sacrament of baptism. So none serves Satan and convenes to the adoring of him that are not marked with that mark
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whereof I already spake. As the minister sent by God teacheth plainly at the time of their public conventions how to serve him in spirit and truth, so that unclean spirit in his own person teacheth his disciples at the time of their convening how to work all kind of mischief. And craves compt
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of all their horrible and detestable proceedings passed for advancement of his service.
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Yea, that he may the more vilely counterfeit and scorn God, he oft times makes his slaves to convene in these very places which are destined and ordained for the convening of the servants of God (I mean by churches). But this far, which I have yet said, I not only take it to be true in their opinions, but even so to be indeed. For the form that he used in counterfeiting God amongst the Gentiles makes me so to think. As God spake by his oracles, spake he not so by his? As God had as well bloody sacrifices, as others without blood, had not he the like? As God had churches sanctified to his service, with altars, priests, sacrifices, ceremonies and prayers, had he not the like polluted to his service? As God gave responses by urim and thummim, gave he not his responses by the entrails of beasts, by the singing of fowls, and by their actions in the air?
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As God by visions, dreams, and ecstasies revealed what was to come and what was his will unto his servants, used he not the like means to forewarn his slaves of things to come? Yea, even as God loved cleanness, hated vice, and impurity, appointed punishments therefore, used he not the like (though falsely I grant, and but in eschewing the less inconvenient, to draw them upon a greater) yet dissembled he not I say, so far as to appoint his priests to keep their bodies clean and undefiled before their asking responses of him? And feigned he not God to be a protector of every virtue, and a just revenger of the contrary? This reason then moves me, that as he is that same Devil and as crafty now as he was then, so will he not spare as prettily in these actions that I have spoken of concerning the witches’ persons. But further, witches oft times confesses not only his convening in the church with them, but his occupying the pulpit. Yea, their form of adoration, to be the kissing of his hinder parts.
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Which though it seem ridiculous, yet may it likewise be true, seeing we read that in Calicute, he appearing in form of a goat buck,
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hath publicly that un-honest homage done unto him, by every one of the people. So ambitious is he and greedy of honor (which procured his fall) that he will even imitate God in that part, where it is said, that Moses could see but the hinder parts of God, for the brightness of his glory. And yet that speech is spoke but [Greek interjection].
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