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Black Magic

Black magic as practiced in medieval times may be defined as the use of the supernatural knowledge of magic for evil purposes; the invocation of diabolic and infernal powers to blind them as slaves and emissaries to man's will; in short, a perversion of legitimate mystical science. While black magicians certainly existed, there is every reason to believe that the majority of the reports of the spread of black magic were simply polemics against idealogical and personal enemies. Thus, members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn accused Aleister Crowley of practicing black magic while Crowley complained that black magicians had perverted his system.

The existence of the black art and its attendant practices can be traced from the time of the ancient Egyptians and Persians, from the Greeks and Hebrews, to the period when reports of black magic were most numerous, during the Middle Ages, thus forming an unbroken chain. In medieval magic may be found a degraded form of popular pagan rites—the ancient gods had become devils, their mysteries orgies, their worship sorcery.

Some historians have tried to trace the areas in Europe most affected by these devilish practices. Spain is said to have excelled all in infamy, to have plumbed the depths of the abyss. The south of France next became a hotbed of sorcery, branching northward to Paris and the countries and islands beyond, southward to Italy, finally extending into the Tyrol and Germany.

Many diseases, including catalepsy, somnambulism, hysteria, and insanity, were attributed to black magic. It followed that curative medicine was also a branch of magic, not a rational science, the suggested cures being such fantastic treatments as incantations and exorcisms, amulets and talismans of precious stones, medicines rendered powerful by spells and philters and enchanted drinks. The use of herbs and chemicals, which later became the foundation of modern curative science, then had more enchanted and symbolic significance when they were first prescribed by magicians.

Folk history surely exaggerated its intimations that the followers of the black art swarmed everywhere. The fraternity had grades from the pretenders, charlatans, and diviners of the common people to the various secret societies and orders of initiates, among whom were kings, queens, popes, and dignitaries of church and state. In these advanced levels, knowledge and ritual were carefully cherished and preserved in manuscripts, some of which still exist. These ancient grimoires, variously termed the Black, the Red, the Great Grimoire, are full of weird rites, formulas, conjurations, and evocations of evil malice and lust in the names of barbaric deities; charms and bewitchments clothed in incomprehensible jargon; and ceremonial processes for the fulfillment of imprecations of misfortune, calamity, sin, and death.

The deity who was worshiped and whose powers were invoked in the practice of black magic had many names: the Source and Creator of Evil, Satanas, Belial, the evil, a debased descendent of the Egyptian Set, the Persian Ahriman, the Python of the Greeks, the Jewish Serpent, Baphomet of the Templars, the Goat-deity of the Witches' Sabbat. He was said to have the head and legs of a goat and the breasts of a woman.

His followers called him by the names of forgotten deities as well as the Black One, the Black He-goat, the Black Raven, the Dog, the Wolf and Snake, the Dragon, the Hell-hound, Hell-hand, and Hell-bolt. His transformations were unlimited, as is indicated by many of his names; other favorite and familiar forms were a cat, a mouse, a toad, or worm, or again, the human form, especially a young and handsome man as he would appear on his amorous adventures. The signs by which he might be identified, though not invariably, were the cloven hoof, the goat's beard, cock's feathers, or the ox's tail.

In the Devil are embedded ancient mysteries and their symbols, the detritus of dead faiths and faded civilizations. The Greek Pan with the goat limbs masquerades as the Devil, also the goat as emblematic of fire and symbol of generation, and perhaps traces of the Jewish tradition where two goats were taken, one pure, the other impure, the first offered as sacrifice in expiation of sin, the other, the impure burdened with sins by imprecation and driven into the wilderness, in short, the scapegoat. In the Hebrew Kabala, Satan's name is Jehovah reversed. He is not a devil, but the negation of deity.

Beneath the Devil's sway were innumerable hordes and legions of demons and spirits, ready and able to procure and work any and every evil or disaster the mind of man might conceive and desire. In one grimoire, as presented in Francis Barrett's The Magus, it tells of nine orders of evil spirits, these being False Gods, Lying Spirits, Vessels of Iniquity, Revenge led by Asmodeus, Deluders by the Serpent, Turbulents by Merigum, Furies by Apollyon, Calumniators by Astaroth, and Tempters by Mammon. These demons again are named separately, the meaning of each name indicating the possessor's capacity, such as destroyer, devastator, tumult, ravage, and so forth.

Each earthly vice and calamity was personified by a demon—Moloch, who devours infants; Nisroch, god of hatred, despair, fatality; Astarte, Lilith, and Astaroth, deities of debauchery and abortion; Adramelek, of murder, and Belial, of red anarchy.

According to the grimoires, the rites and rules are multifarious, each demon demanding special invocation and procedure. The ends that might be obtained by performing the rites are indicated in such chapter headings as these: "to take possession of all kinds of treasure," "to live in opulence," "to ruin possessions," "to demolish buildings and strongholds," "to cause armed men to appear," "to excite every description of hatred, discord, failure, and vengeance," "to excite tempest," "to excite love in a virgin, or in a married person," "to procure adulteries," "to cause enchanted music and lascivious dances to appear," "to learn all secrets from those of Venus to Mars," "to render oneself invisible," "to fly in the air and travel," "to operate underwater for twenty-four hours," "to open every kind of lock without a key, without noise, and thus gain entrance to prison, larder, or charnel-house," "to innoculate the walls of houses with plague and diseases," "to bind familiar spirits," "to cause a dead body to revive," "to transform one's self," "to transform men into animals or animals into men."

These rites were classified as divination, bewitchments, and necromancy. Divination was carried out by magical readings of fire, smoke, water, or blood; by letters of names, numbers, symbols, or arrangements of dots; by lines of hand or fingernails; by birds and their flight or their entrails; by dice, cards, rings, or mirrors. Bewitchments were carried out by means of nails, animals, toads, or waxen figures and mostly to bring about suffering or death. Necromancy was the raising of the dead by evocations and sacrilegious rites, for the customary purposes of evil. These rites might take place around pits filled with blood, in a darkened and suffocating room, in a churchyard, or beneath swinging gibbets, and the number of ghosts so summoned and galvanized into life might be one of legion.

Regardless of desired outcome the procedure usually included profanation of Christian ritual, such as diabolical masses and administration of polluted sacraments to animals and reptiles; bloody sacrifices of animals, often of children; of orgiastic dances, generally of circular formation, such as that of the Witches' Sabbat.

For paraphernalia and accessories the sorcerers scoured the world and the imagination and mind of man and bent all things, beautiful or horrible, to their service. Because different planets were believed to rule over certain objects and states and invocations, such would be of great potency if delivered under the planets' auspices. Mars favored wars and strife, Venus love, Jupiter ambition and intrigue, Saturn malediction and death.

Vestments and symbols proper to the occasion were donned. The furs of the panther, lynx, and cat added their quota of influence to the ceremonies. Colors were also observed and suitable ornaments. For operations of vengeance, the robe had to be the hue of leaping flame, or rust and blood, with belt and bracelets of steel, and crown of rue and wormwood. Blue, green, and rose were the colors for amorous incantations; black for encompassing death, with belt of lead and wreath of cypress, amid loathsome incense of sulphur and assafoetida.

Precious stones and metals also influenced spells. Geometrical figures, stars, pentagrams, columns, and triangles were used; also herbs, such as belladonna and assafoetida; flowers, honeysuckle, being the witches' ladder, the arum, deadly nightshade, and black poppies; distillations and philters composed of the virus of loathsome diseases, venom of reptiles, secretions of animals, and poisonous sap, fungi, and fruits, such as the fatal manchineel, pulverized flint, impure ashes, and human blood. Amulets and talismans were made of the skins of criminals wrought from the skulls of hanged men, ornaments rifled from corpses and thus of special virtue, or the pared nails of an executed thief.

To make themselves invisible, it is said that sorcerers used an unguent compounded from the incinerated bodies of newborn infants mixed with the blood of nightbirds. For personal preparation, the sorceror fasted for 15 days, then got drunk every five days, after sundown, on wine in which poppies and hemp had been steeped.

For the actual rites the light came from candles made from the fat of corpses and fashioned in the form of a cross; the bowls were made from skulls, those of parricides being of greatest virtue; the fires were fed with cypress branches, with the wood of desecrated crucifixes and bloodstained gibbets; the magic fork was fashioned of hazel or almond, severed at one blow; the ceremonial cloth, was to be woven by a prostitute, and around the mystic circle were the embers of a polluted cross. Another potent instrument of magic was the mandragora, unearthed from beneath gallows where corpses were suspended, tied to a dog. The dog was then killed by a mortal blow, after which its soul was to pass into the fantastic root, attracting also that of the hanged man.

Widespread belief in black magic pervaded the Middle Ages. Machinations and counter-machinations engaged church and state, rich and poor, learned and ignorant. In persecutions and prosecutions, the persecutor and judge often met the same fate they dealt to the victim and condemned. In this dreadful phantasmagoria and procession can be found the haughty Templars, the blood-stained Gilles de Laval, the original of Bluebeard, Catherine de Medici the Marshals of France, as well as popes, princes, and priests. Literature divulges traces of black magic in weird legends and monstrous tales, in stories of spells and enchantments. The tale of Dr. Faustus recounts his pact with the Devil, his pleasures and their penalty when he must forfeit his soul to Hell. Traces exist in lewd verses and songs. Infernal influence is seen in pictures, sculptures, and carvings decorating palaces and cathedrals; the Devil's likeness peeps out from carven screen and stall, and his demons appear in gargoyles grinning and leering from niche and corner and clustering beneath the eaves.

The atmosphere of superstition and fevered imagination coexisted with religious dogma and repression. The great witchcraft manias flourished from the Middle Ages onward. The thousands of innocent men, women, and children who were brutally tortured and executed have left a deep stain on the church.