The powers of evil in Western religion, magic and folk belief [1 ed.] 0710081170, 9780710081179

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Routledge

Revivals

The Powers of Evil

First published in 1975, The Powers of Evil is an interesting study of beliefs about supernatural agencies, thought to menace and prey on human beings, are known to all societies and, even in this age of materialism and rationalism, they still have a firmer grip on Western minds that is not always understood or admitted. Richard Cavendish investigates supernatural agencies which have been involved over the ages with thought and belief in areas far beyond their own immediate spheres of suffering harm and death. These beings and forces include the Devil and the demons of Christian tradition, the evil gods and spirits of paganism, malevolent ghosts, witches, vampires, nightmares, powers of the underworld and hell, giants, dragons and many other sinister creatures of popular belief, as well as the two great evil and inescapable mechanisms of death and fate. He examines recurrent themes and motifs in the context of the ancient world and medieval Europe as well as modern Europe and North America: the connection between evil and the animal world for example, the dread of being devoured, the links between death, evil and sex, the fear of disorder. This book will be of interest to students of history, religion and folktales.

The Powers of Evil in Western Religion, Magic and Folk Belief

Richard Cavendish

(1-'-

Taylor & Francis Group

First published in 197 5 By Routledge & Kegan Paul This edition first published in 2022 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, N ew York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © Richard Cavendish 197 5

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The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes corresp o ndence fro m those they have been unable to contact. A Library of Cong ress record exists under ISBN: 0710081170

ISBN: 978 -1-032 -4 2670-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978 -1-003 -36374-3 (ebk) ISBN: 978 -1-032 -4 2672 -3 (pbk)

Book DOI 10.4324/978 100 3363743

The Powers of Evil in Western

Religion, Magic and Folk Belief

Richard Cavendish

The heart of man is the place the Devil dwells in: I feel sometimes a hell within myself. Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici

published in 1975 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane, First

London EC4V 5EL Set in ‘Monotype’ Bembo and printed in Great Britain by W & J Mackay Limited, Chatham © Richard Cavendish 1975 No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism ISBN 0 7100 8117

0

Contents

vii INTRODUCTION

2

In the Beginning 1 6 Chaos and the Dragon 17 Antichrist: The Abomination of Desolation

3 4

The

CHAPTER ONE 1

The Fall24 29 Bogyman

33 CHAPTER TWO Death and the Dead 1 The Narrow Bed34 2

3 4 5

Ghosts and Astral Evil39 Immortality, Death and Sex45 The Vampire55 The Devouring Dog 60

CHAPTER THREE 1

2

3 4

Fate64

The Infernal Machine66 The Bonds of Fate73 The Tides of Time76 Tinker, Tailor78

CHAPTER FOUR Darkness and Night86 1 Evil and Darkness87 90 2 Black, the North and the Shadow 3 4

Creatures of the Night94 The Tribe of Dreams106

CHAPTER FIVE The Powers Below 111 1 The Eaters of the Dead 112 2 Hades and Persephone117 3 4

Furies and Titans123 Giants127

CHAPTER SIX 1 The Pit141

Hell138

3

Fire and Brimstone 145 The Undying Worm 148

4

Darkness Visible156

2

CHAPTER SEVEN Evil and the Gods161 1 Anger, War and Madness163 2 3

4

170 The Goat God The Grapes of Wrath 178 The Origins of Satan 183

CHAPTER EIGHT The Devil193 1 195 Satan and the Mind

4

Possession and Psychic Powers200 Enemy in Sight206 The Devil and Witchcraft211

5

Satanism 218

2

3

CHAPTER NINE The Side of the Left229 1 Lords of the Threshold 231 3

The Hierarchy of Hell234 238 Faery Lands Forlorn

4

Animals,

5

The

2

Demons and Witches245 Kingdom of the Shells253

APPENDIX

Satan, Seth and the Yezidis263

265 NOTES 275 BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX 285

Introduction

Beliefs about evil supernatural agencies, thought to menace and prey on human beings, are known in all primitive societies and were vigorously alive in the ancient world in which the modern West has its roots—in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine and Syria, Greece and Rome, and pre-Christian western and northern Europe. They continued to flourish in medieval Europe, mingling with, influencing and being influenced by Christianity. They remained obstinately alive in subsequent centuries, were exported to America, and still have a firmer on our minds than is always understood or admitted. This book grip is a study of such beliefs. The obvious example of an evil supernatural being whose existence was accepted for centuries is the Devil, and Satan and his armies of subordinate demons bulk large in this book. But there were many other threatening and dangerous figures of popular belief: evil gods and spirits, malevolent ghosts, witches, vampires, nightmares and bogles, powers of the underworld and hell, things which prowled in the darkness of night and lurked in shadows and corners, at thresholds and turnings. And there were other ruthless entities of legend and folklore whose existence on some plane of reality was taken for granted, even

though

no one

may have

expected

to meet

them in the

flesh—giants,

dragons and hybrid monsters. Although the boundaries between them are fluid and shifting, these creatures had their own individual characters and habits, their own human, semi-human or animal forms and disguises. There were two other formidable evil powers—death and fate—which were sometimes

personified,

but

were

usually

not so

clearly

visualised.

They

were

Introduction in their operations and yet imbued with a personal and implacable spite. There were defences against the Devil, the ghost and the witch, but death and fate there was

mysterious forces of hostility, mechanical

no

escaping.

These sinister beings and forces have an important place in the history of ideas. They were involved with thought and belief in areas far beyond their own immediate spheres of suffering, harm and death—

speculation about immortality and the afterlife, time and history, fertility, luck, the nature of God or the gods, human psychology and behaviour, the workings of the universe and the purposes of society. They were for centuries an accustomed and feared reality of everyday life. They were vital to religion, and to the magic and folk belief which were inseparable from religion. At popular levels the Christian Church was often regarded primarily as a massive bulwark of protection

with

against the evil agencies at work in the world. The evil entities of the past have descended to us. A surprising number of people, in what is supposed to be an age of materialism and rationalism, have at heart either a conviction or a strong suspicion of their reality. The revival of interest in magic and the occult owes a good deal to these old fears, and modern occultism has fitted them into its own framework. But on a far broader front, and even among the sceptical, they are part of the furniture of the Western mind. They occupy all sorts of mental lodgments and points of vantage. Even if, or perhaps particularly if, we banish them to the attic and shut the door

them, they make unexpected and alarming reappearances. We are primitive than we may like to think. My interest in this subject has grown out of an earlier book, The Black Arts, a study of the European tradition of magic which necessarily on

more

dealt with beliefs about evil

spirits and beings of various kinds in that Subsequently, during several years spent mainly in editing encyclopedias, I was struck by the frequent recurrence of certain themes context.

to the powers of evil in the wider context of belief: the connection between evil and the animal general popular world, for instance, the dread of being devoured, the contradictory attitudes to the dead, the links between death, evil and sex, the fear of disorder, the refusal to believe in chance and the consequent ascription of accidental harm and damage to supernatural agencies. These and other themes are explored in this book. In it, as in the earlier one, I am

and motifs in relation

interested in the ideas themselves, their causes, consequences, than in their validity.

more

relationships

and

Introduction This book deals principally with popular and widespread ideas. It is not a survey of the philosophy and theology of evil or an attempt to solve the problem of what ‘evil’ really is, though I hope it throws some light on the matter. Whether evil non-human entities exist in their own right, or exist only in the minds which give them credence, is a question which readers must answer for themselves or decide to leave open. My own attitude is initially sceptical and ultimately agnostic. What is not in doubt is the psychological reality of the fears and anxieties which have been focused on the powers of evil over thousands of years and the terror which they in their turn have inspired. A study of them may or may not reveal the world outside us, but it does illuminate many unexpected facets of ourselves.

Chapter One

In the

Beginning

Generation after generation of men have looked out on the world and found much evil in it, and have looked within themselves and found evil there too. Life is full of sorrow and pain, hunger and cold, fear and anxiety, violence, cruelty, lies, disease, unfairness, humiliation and defeat. Some suffering, it is true, is the necessary consequence of freedom of action. If you put your hand in the fire, you will bum yourself. But there is also undeserved suffering in plentiful quantities, congenital disease and deformity, slow death in agony by incurable illness, and fear experienced by children, the suffering of animals, the pain innumerable drastic ways in which people are afflicted by injustice or ill luck. What happens to us is largely determined by factors beyond our control. Our best-laid plans go awry, our hopes are disappointed, and even the good things do not last. Youth grows old, beauty fades, love cools. Success, power, fame, money, possessions and pleasure fail to satisfy for long. And over all affection and delight hangs the shadow of death. ‘Everything is too short,’ Cecil Rhodes said, echoing many before him. ‘Life and fame and achievement, everything is too short.’ The theme sounds through the world’s literature like a tolling bell. ‘Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and behold all was vanity, and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.’ ‘The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favour to the men of skill; but time and chance

happen to them all.’ ‘Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.’ ‘All flesh is grass and all its beauty like the flower of the field: the grass withers, the flower fades.’ ‘We men are wretched things,’ says Achilles DOI: 10.4324/9781003363743-1

In the in the

Beginning

Iliad, ‘and the

gods, who have no cares themselves, have woven

lives.’ 1* There are other reactions, of course. ‘In many persons,’ as William James said, with perhaps a slight air of disapproval, ‘happiness is congenital and irreclaimable.’ 2 There are people gifted with a profound sense of the goodness of life, and to them evil is either not real or, if it is, it exists for men to try their strength against it and triumph over it. But there are others whose temperament or experience does not allow sorrow

so

into the very pattern of

sanguine

a

view. Luther

our

once

said that rather than live

through

another forty years he would give up his hope of heaven. Goethe said that his life had been at bottom nothing but pain and burden, one long torment of Sisyphus, condemned to heave the same huge boulder wearily uphill over and over and over again. Tolstoy thought that life is all very well as long as you are intoxicated with it, but when you grow sober you cannot fail to see that it is a cruel and stupid cheat. Between the extremes of optimism and pessimism, cheerfulness and despair, most of us spend most of our time. There is good in the world certainly, and in fact there is enough of it to raise the question of why evil should exist at all. From far in the remote past there has been a persistent human feeling that evil need not exist, and ought not to exist and in some area of space or time does not exist: Order was established in their time and truth came forth from heaven in their days. It united itself with those who were on earth. The land was in abundance; bodies were full; there was no year of hunger in the Two Lands. Walls did not fall: thorns did not pierce in the time of the Primeval Gods. text in praise of the Ogdoad of Hermopolis, the eight mysterious deities with the heads of frogs and snakes, believed to have emerged in the beginning from the waters of chaos. Another text says that in their days ‘there was no unrighteousness in the land, no crocodile seized, no snake bit’. 3 The order and truth to which these texts look wistfully back is not merely a matter of abundant crops and full bellies. Hunger, human wickedness, the fallibility of masonry, the fact that thorns pierce and wild animals kill, are all considered evil intrusions on the true order, which was once but is not now. Similarly in the Bible, the first human beings lived in innocent peace and happiness in Eden but, seduced by the malicious serpent, they

This is

*

The

a

notes at

the end of the book contain references

only.

In the

Beginning

committed a crime and so they were expelled from the beautiful garden, and the evils of death, pain, toil and sin came into a world which need not have known them. The belief in a golden age in the past, when there was no evil, has been almost as deeply entrenched in Western minds over the centuries as the hope of a golden age to come on the other side of death, the heavenly city where men will dwell with God and ‘he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more’. 4 The difficulty of accepting evil as a necessary ingredient of reality leads directly to concepts of malevolent supernatural forces. If evil need not be and should not be, if things have somehow gone wrong and evil has intruded itself into a world which could have been free of it, who or what is responsible? It cannot be man, because so much of the evil in the world is beyond all human contriving, and so the roots of evil

superhuman agencies—God or the gods, fate, the Devil, spirits, the dead, creatures of the underworld and the night, and legions of monsters, hags, hobgoblins and bogies. At a deeper level, the powers of evil have not been thought out so much as recognised. They are the products of fright. There are waking

are

found in

evil

nightmares as well as sleeping ones and few people have not caught a glimpse of them. Evil impulses which stir and whisper in the brain may feel alien to the person who plays unwilling host to them, as if they had been insinuated into his consciousness by something from outside. The dark, the unknown, the dead, certain places, atmospheres and experiences are

uncanny and

chilling. Things as simple and familiar as the

tapping of a branch on the windowpane or the creak of a floorboard at night uncover the deep well of fear in the mind, and some uncanny experiences far outreach any easy reassurance. They convey the imperssion of an evil presence, of something deadly and terrifying which seems overwhelmingly real. Science, psychology and parapsychology have explored some of the unknown, electricity has dispelled some of the dark, materialism and rationalism have made the existence of evil spirits and hostile ghosts seem improbable, but terrifying experiences still occur and fear of evil powers is more widespread than is always realised. In 1970 an inquest was held at Halifax in Yorkshire on a man of fifty-four who was so frightened by talk of black magic and the Devil one wild and thundery night that he threw himself out of a bedroom window and subsequently died of his injuries. In 1973 a Polish workman in Stoke-on-Trent died

piece of garlic which he had put in his mouth going sleep as a protection against vampires. In 1969 in Switzerland six people were found guilty of beating a girl to death in

when he choked before

on a

to

an attempt to drive the Devil out of her. In the last few years there have been so many cases of people convinced that they are possessed by evil spirits that professional exorcists have not been able to cope with all of them, and in Britain and America the revival of interest in magic, witchcraft, ouija boards and the occult in general has brought numerous reports of people badly scared by what they believe to be evil forces.

Accounts of sinister atmospheres and hauntings are also numerous. a house in Cambridge, let to successive academics and their

There is

there have been reports of Different tenants have seen and heard a mysterious presences. peculiar a rather like hare but with close-cropped brown, furry animal, large ears, which runs about standing up on its hind legs. Also reported on several occasions was a figure looking like a nun which came and stood at the foot of people’s beds at night and sighed. It frightened the children and the grown-ups were not entirely easy about it. Experiences of this kind are not confined to old and grand houses. 5 Thirty-five years ago or so, something distinctly odd and terrifying seems to have happened to a woman whom I will call Mrs Smith. Her husband was a fisherman and she was chatting with him and the neighbours one evening when she said, ‘It will come over the hill when it comes.’ She had no recollection of saying this and did not believe it when the others told her she had, but as the days went by she became increasingly afraid to go out of the house after dark. About three months later, she woke up suddenly in the middle of the night, trembling and shivering. She woke her husband up and told him that whatever was coming over the hill was almost upon them. They heard either the back door or the side door of the house open down below,

families, where all through this century

and the

heavy footsteps of something which sounded wet crossed the living room and came up the stairs. Mrs Smith and her husband clung together, scared for their children as well as for themselves, while a nightmare creature came into the bedroom and went across to the window. It was bloated and naked. Its skin looked green and purple, with yellow blotches, and it had a massive bull neck, with the head coming almost to a point and ear-lobes hanging nearly to its shoulders. It seemed to have webbed feet and gave the impression of wading across the

room.

Mrs Smith says that her husband

before it went

out

through

saw

it

as

well

as

herself,

the window and disappeared. ‘It was horri-

ble and the absolute essence of evil. I have never experienced anything so dreadful before or since and I hope I never shall, God willing. I still experience the same horror when I talk about it or write as I am doing now. I have never been able to discover why I saw it. and I have never been able to find out what it was.’ How much reality lies behind this story, and many others like it, there is no way of knowing. Some people will dismiss it impatiently as ridiculous, and others will feel uneasily that there may have been to but it is a it, something good example of the ordinary human for direct capacity experience of something alien and terrible, believed to have crossed into the everyday, waking world from the other side of an invisible threshold. This remains true even on the most sceptical assumption, that Mrs Smith made the whole thing up. Even if she did, the fear which comes through the story is a psychological reality, as it is in ghost stories and horror films which we know to begin with are fiction and yet which make the skin crawl. If no fleshcreeping otherworld horror confronts us without our own volition, we manufacture one, and very often we insist on manufacturing them for our children. Uncanny terrors are somehow needed. On less sceptical assumptions, the creature seen or imagined by Mrs Smith and its many relatives all over the world may exist independently in their own right, or they may be creations of the mind which are vividly projected onto the screen of consciousness or the outside world. If these projections are creatures of the unconscious and its strange and still largely unexplored abilities (which have to be brought in on this hypothesis, to account for cases of two or more people seeing the same thing), this would explain their convincing impression of objective reality, for they would in fact come from outside the part of the mind which experiences them. This may turn out to be the right explanation, but it is just as incapable of demonstration as the other. All that is certain is the persistence and deep-rootedness of the fear of mysterious evil entities, reinforced by experience of disasters and horrors whose .

.

.

.

.

objective reality is less in doubt—death, disease, pain and damaging accidents and misfortunes. Against this is the view that evil is an illusion, that we label some things good and others bad because we lack a true perspective and cannot see through the veil of appearances. ‘To God all things are beautiful, good and just,’ said Heraclitus, ‘but men have assumed some things to be just, others unjust.’ Plotinus maintained that evil, if it exists at all, is ‘situate in the realms of non-Being’ and is ‘something of an utterly

different order from Authentic-Being’. You might reach some conception of it, he says, by thinking of ‘measurelessness as opposed to measure, of the unbound against bound, the unshaped against the the everundefined, principle of shape, the ever-needy against the self-sufficing the never at rest, the all-accepting but never sated, utter dearth. .’6 Christian theologians have followed along this track in explaining evil as a negative, the absence of good, the ‘privation of good’. What we call evils, St Augustine thought, are defects in good things and cannot exist independently of good things. You may have a bowl which is cracked, for example, but you cannot have the crack without the bowl. Some things are better than others, but the others are not evil but simply less good. The difficulty about this view is that it makes no sense to tell someone who is trapped in a burning building and roasting to death that he is not having an experience of Authentic-Being. To call agonising pain a negative or to say that a person born crippled is in a condition of lesser good is mere juggling with words. In practice, philosophical and theological reasoning of this kind has cut little ice. Reactions to evil have been far less a matter of rational thinking than of temperament, experience and immediate unconsidered responses, and the argument that evil is really good in disguise has foundered on the rocks of common sense. But evil has many mansions and Plotinus accurately identified one of its persistent lurking places as the realm of the measureless and the unshaped. There is an old and deep human horror of the chaotic, the unformed and deformed, the shapeless thing which has too many shapes, the quicksand of potential which hungers to absorb and destroy the actual. The Devil, whose shifting shapes and appearances nearly always reveal deformity, has this terror in him. An alternative to the belief in a golden age in the past on which evil intruded is the belief that what existed in the beginning was evil, on which good was partially but inadequately imposed. .

.

.

.

.

The

murky primeval chaos of unformed potentialities still exists if only in the deep recesses of our own minds, and from monsters rise up to threaten sanity and order.

somewhere, it

1

Chaos and the

Dragon

The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all the malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to

whose dominion even the modem Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds. All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonism of life and thought, all evil. Melville, Moby Dick .

.

.

.

.

.

Human beings need security. Hobbes remarked sardonically in the Leviathan that we live in groups less because we like each other than because we need the protection from each other that only the group can supply and without which human life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Good government has always meant first and foremost the keeping of order, and anarchy is so intolerable that people will prefer slavery under a tyrannical order to a situation of continuing chaos. Every society imposes order on anarchy and is permanently threatened by it, in the form of human enemies at home and abroad, and catastrophes—plague, drought, sterility, storm, fire and flood, earthquakes and eruptions—which are generally felt to be not part of the natural order but unjustified disruptions of it. The need for order and the fear of disorder have profoundly affected concepts of evil. Anything which threatens order and sanity is evil and may be caused by a great variety of supernatural beings, including hostile or offended gods, powerful demonic forces, or the machinations of witches and sorcerers. Or it may be caused by titanic monsters left over from the beginning of time, as in modern science fiction and in the old Babylonian creation epic, Enuma elish, which explained how order was imposed on the chaos that existed in the beginning and which was also a magical device for keeping chaotic evil at bay in the present. It was recited every year, and may have been acted out as well, at the New Year festival in Babylon in the spring, when the gods were believed to gather at the temple of Marduk to settle the destinies of the coming year. In the

beginning, according to the Enuma elish, before the sky and the

earth existed, there

were the male Apsu, the fresh water which is the of springs and rivers, and the female Tiamat, the salt water of the sea. They mingled together and the gods formed within them. The young gods were playful and noisy and would not stay still, to the intense irritation of their father Apsu, who decided to destroy them, to source

restore

the

young

gods were

silence and allow him to go back to sleep. The terrified but one of them, Ea, the god of magic, put

primeval

Apsu into an enchanted sleep and murdered him. This who determined

to

enraged Tiamat, brood of horrible monsters teeth and poison in their veins

revenge him and created

a

to help her; serpents with sharp instead of blood, the dragon, the viper, the great lion, the mad dog, the storm demons, the dragonfly, the bison and the scorpion-man. The gods, again afraid for their lives, chose Marduk, the son of Ea, as their champion. He was a huge fire-breathing god of ferocious majesty and though all the gods were equal, he was twice as equal as the others, and so he had two faces, four piercing eyes and four large ears. He armed himself and went out to battle with Tiamat and her monsters, who were cowed at the sight of him. Tiamat roared threateningly at him but he killed her and seized the tablet of destinies which had belonged to her. Then he made the universe from her body and organised the year and the calendar, the stars in the sky and the paths of the sun and moon. He also decided to create a stupid and primitive creature, to be called ‘man’, who would serve the gods and provide them with temples and offerings, so that they could loll about at their ease and do no work. This myth was meant to justify the dominance of Marduk, who was the city god of Babylon, and so the dominance of Babylon itself. It also taught that the purpose of man’s existence was to serve the gods, who in theory owned all the land in Mesopotamia, and so it supported established order. As Greek myths did later, it found the original source of evil in the hostility of an older and more primitive generation of gods for a younger and more civilised generation. But more importantly in practice, it was intended to guarantee order, stability and to security, renew and perpetuate the triumph of Marduk over chaos, and its recitation at the New Year was part of the festival in which the king was ritually reinvigorated, to ensure effective government in the

year

to come.

The

Babylonians do not seem to have lived in constant sharp terror of Tiamat and the primitive forces of chaos. In everyday life they were far more concerned with angry gods and evil demons and ghosts, but the myth and the New Year festival were important in providing a background of reassurance and confidence. Similarly in Canaan, the god Baal was believed to have defeated the chaotic waters, Sea and River, also known as the Dragon, which had menaced the gods. Baal lord of the winter rains which were essential to fertility in Syria and Palestine, and every year in late autumn his victory over Sea and River was celebrated, and again perhaps acted out, as a magical way of keeping the forces of disorder subdued. Baal had also to win an annual

was

the principle of drought, sterility and dearth. In the fierce summer heat, when Mot had the upper hand and vegetation wilted, Baal died, but in the coming of the rain he triumphantly revived and life recovered. As with other dying and rising gods, Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, the myth of his annual resurrection was a guarantee of the renewal of fertility and the continuance of order. The various Egyptian creation myths agree with the Enuma elish and Genesis that what existed in the beginning was a chaotic waste of waters. There is no parallel in Egyptian mythology to the battle of Marduk and Tiamat but the principle of order, in Egypt as elsewhere, was menaced by hostile supernatural powers. It was believed, for that instance, during the night the sun travelled through the underworld beneath the earth’s surface and was attacked by a monster named Apophis, a huge serpent or crocodile which lived in the darkness. The daily rising of the sun was hailed as a triumph of order over death, chaos and evil. Apophis was later identified with Seth, the god of the desert, the destroyer and the enemy of life, and both of them were believed to inspire the human enemies of the state, rebels against Pharaoh at home and foreign invaders from abroad. In Canaanite mythology, Baal’s enemy Mot had his home either in the darkness of the underworld or in the withering heat of the desert. All over the ancient East the desert was feared as the place of death and sterility, the haunt of terrible demons, savage animals and savage men, the land from which plagues of locusts and raiding nomads swooped on settled communities, the arid reservoir of chaos and desolation always threatening to overwhelm civilised society. In Egypt the destroying Seth was connected with both the desert and the barren sea into which the life-giving waters of the Nile flowed and were lost. The sea, which like the desert reduces human beings to a feeling of helpless insignificance, has also been feared as a hostile, infertile, untillable element. A passage in the Old Testament book of Habakkuk which seems to echo the Canaanite myth of Baal defeating Sea and River asks: ‘Was thy wrath against the rivers, O Lord? Was thy anger against the rivers, or thy indignation against the sea, when thou didst ride upon thy horses, upon thy chariot of victory?’ In the Psalms, God is described ‘rebuking’ the waters which covered the earth and forcing them to retreat to the place appointed for them, and in the book of Job, God gives as an example of his overwhelming might the fact that he has set bounds to the encroaching sea and told it, ‘Thus far you shall

struggle against Mot,

come, and no

farther,

and here shall your

proud

waves

be

stayed.’

When the author of Revelation describes the new heaven and the new earth after God has destroyed his enemies in the last days, almost the first thing he says about it is ‘and there was no more sea’. In medieval Christian imagery the sea stood for the world and its perils. The ship of Faith or of the Church, beset by the storms of sin and sorrow, tosses on the raging waves of life’s menacing sea, ‘salt and bitter, restless, swelling

and foul’. 7 The ageless, cruel and implacable sea is by long tradition the home of dangerous monsters and hybrids—the kraken, the sea serpent, the Old Man of the Sea, and the mermaids, sirens, seal women and sea nymphs which combine the beauty of the sea with its fickleness and its murderous savagery. Mythical sea creatures change their shapes readily, because they live in a constantly flowing, shifting element, and the production of hybrid monstrosities was also characteristic of the primeval waters of chaos. A Babylonian priest of Marduk, writing in the third century B.c., said that in the beginning ‘all was darkness and water’, and in this murky chaos strange beasts came into being, things like men but with wings, hermaphrodites with two heads, one male and one female, humanoids with the horns and legs of goats or with horses’ hooves, centaurs, man-headed bulls, dogs with quadruple bodies and fishtails. These and other weird creatures were ruled by Tiamat. Chaos, as Ovid said, contained the ‘seeds’ or potentialities of all things in

of ill-assorted elements all jumbled together. Peculiar hybrids product of this chaotic muddle before the order of nature as we

a mass

are

the

know it has been established. The

primeval mud, according

to

Apollonius

of Rhodes,

spontaneously generated monsters before the earth solidified. ‘But Time, combining this with that, brought the animal creation into order.’ 8 One great composite

monster of chaos is the dragon. It used to be the Babylonian primeval sea, was herself a doubted. She certainly created a dragon as one of her monstrous brood and it seems to have been imagined as a huge snake with the forelegs of a lion, the hindlegs of a bird of prey, a single horn and the stinging tail of a scorpion. The dragon of later Western lore is a similar combination of aggressive, poisonous and death-dealing creatures, apparently based on the snake or the crocodile or a mixture of the two, with legs and sometimes wings. It often resembles a dinosaur and discoveries of the bones of gigantic prehistoric reptiles may have something to do with the dragon tradition. A dragon has a long coiling

thought that Tiamat, dragon but this is now

covered with scales which resist sword-thrusts, a forked or barbed tongue, sharp fangs and claws, flaring nostrils, and sometimes a head and forelegs based on a lion, eagle or hawk. It may have a barbed tail, twisting round on itself, which seems to be based on the scorpion’s

body,

sting. out fire and smoke, and are creatures of heat. When the northern hero Sigmund the Volsung killed a blazing Worm which a rich treasure, it melted guarded away to nothing. huge The Greek earth dragon, Typhon, had a hundred snake-heads which burned with fire and uttered the cries of all sorts of animals. Typhon was identified with the evil Egyptian god Seth. He would have subjected gods and men to his tyranny if Zeus had not attacked him with thunder and lightning. They fought a tremendous battle and Zeus hurled the monster into the abyss. Typhon was responsible for stormy winds which wreak havoc on land and sea. He was later said to have been buried under Mount Etna, where he caused eruptions. The dragon of the Old Testament is a creature of the waters. ‘In that day,’ says Isaiah, ‘the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.’ This is one of several references in the Old Testament to a myth of God’s combat with a sea monster, which may have been recited and acted out at the Hebrew New Year festival as the Enuma elish was in Babylon. The monster is called tannin, ‘the dragon’, or Leviathan, or Rahab, which means ‘violence’ or ‘defiance’. Leviathan was a seven-headed serpent destroyed by Baal in Canaanite mythology: ‘When thou smotest Leviathan the slippery serpent, [and] made an end of the wriggling serpent, the tyrant .’ A seven-headed serpent is also mentioned in with seven heads. Babylonian texts. In Ezekiel, the Pharaoh of Egypt is called ‘the great dragon that lies in the midst of his streams’, and elsewhere in the Old Testament the dragon is identified with Egypt as a menacing foreign power. Some of the Jewish rabbis thought that Leviathan or Rahab was the Prince of the Sea who rebelled against God before the world was created, and some said that he was the great dragon which God would finally destroy at the end of time. 9 God describes Leviathan to Job, when he is comparing his own irresistible power to man’s puny insignificance. It seems to be a colossal supernatural crocodile, with enough whale-like characteristics to enable later generations to identify it as a whale, and with flames belching from its jaws and smoke pouring from its nostrils as if from a

Dragons usually breathe

.

.

pot. These details influenced the medieval picture of hell-mouth, which was frequently depicted as the gaping maw of Leviathan. Some artists showed the boiling pot itself as a cauldron in which the damned are seethed inside the mouth. As a rebel against God and as ‘king over all the sons of pride’, Leviathan was identified with Satan, the arch-rebel and the chieftain of all supernatural forces of destruction and disorder. Satan was believed to have corrupted Adam and Eve in the form of the serpent, which was like a dragon because it was able to talk and presumably had legs before God condemned it to go on its belly. In Revelation, a great red dragon with seven heads is seen in heaven, his lashing tail sweeping a third of the stars down to the earth. He is identified with the Devil, ‘that ancient serpent’, and is presumably Leviathan. An alternative theory is that he is the zodiac sign of Scorpio, which certainly has a dark and sinister character in astrological tradition, and that he is red because the most noticeable star in the constellation Scorpio is Antares, which has a reddish look. A third of the stars are at his tail because four of the twelve signs follow Scorpio in the zodiac.10 The early Christians identified the dragon with Satan as the lord of this world and the ruler of death and hell. In the fourth century, for example, Cyril ofJerusalem said that the body of the Saviour was used as bait to catch Death, the dragon that waited to devour him. The earlier Acts of Thomas used a theme well known in folk tales by describing Christ as the king’s son who fought and defeated the worlddragon and seized the precious pearl which it guarded. Medieval artists, following Revelation, showed St Michael, victorious in the war in heaven, trampling underfoot the dragon Satan, and Christ was also shown humbling the dragon when he harrowed hell and released the Devil’s prisoners from captivity there. Several Christian saints were famous for routing demonic dragons. St Margaret of Antioch, for instance, was a devout virgin of the third century who was tortured and imprisoned for her faith. Satan came to tempt her in prison and when she resisted him he turned into a fire-breathing dragon. He swallowed her whole but could not stomach her and sanctity exploded, leaving her unhurt. She was the saint who

boiling

to alleviate the pains of women in childbirth, presumably by association with the woman clothed with the sun in Revelation, who is with child and crying out in the agony of labour, and is unsuccessfully attacked by the great red dragon. St George, according to legend, was a Christian soldier who came to a city in Libya where a huge drago

helped

lurked in a lake or a marsh nearby. To prevent it from invading the city, the people offered it a virgin a day, chosen by lot, and eventually the lot fell on the king’s beautiful only daughter. She was being delivered to the monster, dressed as a bride, which indicates the nature of the dragon’s appetites, when St George rode up. He made the sign of the cross against the dragon and fought it, and after a fierce struggle succeeded in pinning it to the ground with his lance. He cut off its head with his sword and the grateful citizens promptly accepted Christianity, but St George went on to Palestine, where he was martyred. The dragon was interpreted as the Devil seeking to devour the Church, the beautiful virgin, who is rescued by the gallant Christian knight. However, St George and the dragon were also interpreted in a much older way, in terms of fertility and the evil power which is hostile to it. St George’s day was celebrated in the spring, on 23 April, and for hundreds of years in Europe springtime was naturally a season of On or near St George’s day in many places a procession out, led by the village priest, to bless the fields and pray against blight and storm. Sometimes an effigy of the dragon, which might be named Satan, was carried in the procession and defeated in a mock

fertility rites. went

combat

or a

mumming play.

In

eastern

Europe

on

St

George’s day a

carried in a procession headed by a figure covered garlanded in leafy branches and known as Green George. The Green George was ducked in a pond or a river as a magical way of ensuring adequate rain during the coming summer. 11 The dragon is sometimes linked with underground sources of water. The legend of St George is a pious variation on the common theme of the hero who rescues a beautiful princess from a voracious monster which devastates the land and demands human sacrifices. In some of these tales the dragon guards the springs and will not let the people have water unless it is provided with human victims. The bonfires which were lit at Midsummer in the Middle Ages were believed, among other things, to drive away dragons which would otherwise copulate riotously in the sky and pollute springs and wells by spilling their seed into tree

them. A

was

dragon

called the Knucker used

to

live in Knucker Hole

at

Lyminster in Sussex, a deep and reputedly bottomless pool which never dries up and is fed by an underground spring, so that water can be

flowing out from it but none is ever seen flowing in. There are other supposedly bottomless pools of this kind in Sussex, also called knucker holes, and each of them may originally have have housed its own Knucker, which derives from an Anglo-Saxon word for ‘water

seen

monster’. The Knucker of Lyminster roamed the countryside for miles around, devouring men and cattle, until in desperation the King of Sussex promised the hand of his daughter in marriage to anyone who would get rid of it. A hero duly appeared and the dragon was killed after a ferocious struggle. The curious thing is that, on the face of it, something which lives at the bottom of a perpetual source of fresh water ought to be a beneficent creature, not an evil monster. The bottomless and mysterious nature of the pool seems to have been responsible for its uncanny reputation, for it was reported in 1855 that the local people vaguely connected it with another bottomless pit, the one from which the Great Beast 666 rises in Revelation. 12 The lore of dragons is jumbled and not easily fitted into any clear pattern, but essentially the dragon seems to be a monster from far back in the mists of time, before order was established, a creature of chaos in both its appearance and its habits. It is a composite of bits and pieces of various aggressive and murderous animals, to which is added the destroying power of fire, and sometimes of blight, storm or eruption. It is a dweller on the threshold between the settled, cultivated land and the wild country. Like the deserts of the East, it lurks around the outskirts of civilisation, in the marsh or the lake near the city, in the sea, in a bottomless hole or well, in a cave or a barrow on an unfarmed hilltop. Fierce, predatory and anarchic, addicted to pillage and rape, it harries and destroys ordered and peaceful communities. What leads it to defeat in the end is its huge destructive greed. People poison it, or it eats so much that it becomes too bloated to move, or its appetite for virgins of good family rouses against it the king, the government, the apparatus which keeps order, and it is put down. Even when the forces of disorder which threaten civilisation and peace are human invaders, they may be identified with an evil supernatural power, as with Seth in Egypt and the dragon in the Old Testament, and as in early Zoroastrianism in Iran. Popular Zoroastrianism saw two great opposing forces of good and evil at war in the world, the principles of Truth and the Lie. In the Gathas, which preserve the of Zoroaster himself, the dualism between Truth and the Lie the situation of a peaceful cattle-breeding population constantly menaced by the inroads of fierce nomadic tribes. Zoroaster called these tribesmen ‘followers of the Lie’, the evil principle later personified as Ahriman, the Evil Spirit or Aggressive Spirit, who influenced the concept of the Devil in Judaism and Christianity. The Lie in the Gathas is essentially ‘predatory aggression against, or sub-

teaching is based

on

version

of,

good government

and

a

peaceful agricultural

and

pastoral

order’. 13 Zoroaster was in fact attacking a traditional religion, the worship of the daevas, who in the Zoroastrian system became demons but who were originally accepted Indian and Iranian gods. The greatest of them was Indra, the war god. The religion which Zoroaster condemned celebrated every New Year the defeat of the great dragon, Azhi or ‘serpent’. This dragon was the wicked ruler of the world, which condemned Yima, the first man, to be sawn in half, and carried off his two sisters. As Zoroastrianism developed it had to put its stamp of approval on the various gods and heroes said to have slain the dragon, but the dragon itself remained a figure of evil. The warrior societies of Iran, however, found a positive value in the violence and aggression of the dragon. They carried dragon banners and wore dragon helmets, and Parthian cavalrymen were expected to conduct themselves ‘like

dragons’. 14 In the

same

way in Europe,

though the dragon was evil,

its

strength,

aggressiveness, ferocity, invulnerability and greed for plunder attracted fighting men, who hoped to tap its power by using it as an emblem: hence the

importance

of the

dragon in heraldry.

In the Iliad the shield

of Agamemnon, the Greek war leader, has a grim Gorgon’s head at its centre, with figures of Panic and Rout on either side, and on his baldric is a writhing three-headed snake or dragon. The Roman army adopted the standard of the flying dragon and carried it into western and northern Europe. Warriors of the north bore a dragon device on their shields. Poets called the Viking war galleys ‘sea dragons’ and they often had a dragon’s head ravening at the prow. English kings in the Middle Ages fought under the banner of the dragon. The dragon with wings and fierce teeth on the great shield found at Sutton Hoo resembles the flying Worm described in the finest of all dragon-slaying tales, Beowulf. This monster, like many of its kind in the north, guarded through centuries a treasure-hoard in a funeral barrow on the high heathland. It is a gliding, twisting, coiling brute, which flies by night, burning like a fireball. The creature is very old and is called ‘the ancient scourge that haunts the half-light of dawn’, which may have been meant to identify it with the Devil and suggests that it is an enemy from the dim beginnings of time. Enraged because a thief has crept into its lair while it slept and has stolen a jewelled cup, it flies out over the surrounding country, spewing flames and dropping burning embers, firing houses and killing men and beasts. The king,

it after a terrifying combat in which he is scorched heat and lacerated by its jaws. His sword bounces off it by blazing until at last he contrives to pierce its soft underbelly. He harmlessly himself has met his death, however, for the monster’s poison has entered his bloodstream. In northern mythology the forces of chaos win in the end. The gods themselves will go down to defeat, when the powers of evil fight the last battle. The dragon of Beowulf is killed, but so is the hero-king and, with his death, order is destroyed and the he people has ruled and protected are doomed to war, invasion and

Beowulf, destroys its

anarchy. 15 The dragon of violence and destruction in the north is also the guardian of the grave-mound, where valuable objects were buried

with the dead. It is based on the snake, which, among its many roles symbolism, is the serpent of wisdom and immortality, and is closely connected with death. In hero legends the dragon’s hoard may be a treasure of something else besides jewels and gold. Siegfried killed the snake-dragon Fafnir, which guarded the gold of the dwarfs, and while it lay dying he cross-examined it about the secrets of the otherworld. A drop of its blood on his tongue gave him understanding of the language of birds and when he bathed in its blood, every part of his skin which the blood touched became invulnerable to wounds. Similarly in the south, the golden apples of the Hesperides were guarded by a snake or dragon and so was the golden fleece at Colchis, and the heroes who went to seize these treasures, Hercules and Jason, had to kill or outwit the monster first. The dragon’s lair is on the borderlands of this world and it guards the secrets of death. There are also Celtic traditions of dangerous treasure-guarding serpents. Snakes seen emerging from holes and crannies in the ground could be connected with the buried dead, with grave-goods and buried treasure, with deposits of mineral wealth in the earth and with the fertility of the soil, the wealth of growing crops. It was an old Greek belief that the dead lived on in their tombs in the form of snakes and in some of the northern sagas the dragon that greedily hugs to itself a hoard which it cannot use hut which it denies to others is the dead man himself, guarding the riches in his own grave. Behind this there may lie an image of death itself as a dragon, a devouring monster whose fierce heat and fiery breath owe something to the blazing flames in which dead warriors were sometimes cremated on a battlefield. There is a vivid description in Beowulf of the dead being burned on a pyre after a battle. The huge flames roar and swirl up to the sky and the greedy in

fire swallows the corpses. The 16 prey. 2

dragon

of destruction has seized its

Antichrist: The Abomination of Desolation Dan shall be

a

serpent in the way,

a

viper by the path. Genesis 49:17

The great dragon of Christian tradition, the supreme power of anarchy, destruction and death, is the Devil, but for`centuries Christians expected and feared the appearance on earth of another monster of chaos, Antichrist. The threat of his coming and the horrors of war, plague, famine and devastation which he would bring in his train loomed in the background of everyday life much as the threat of a nuclear holocaust does now, though people in the past had a consolation that we since it was believed that Antichrist would be defeated by Christ lack, in returning majesty, and his victory would usher in the eternal peace and happiness of the kingdom of God. Antichrist was Christ’s evil counterpart. They were like two sides of one coin, the one all goodness and light, the other all evil and darkness, the one the Saviour, the other the Destroyer, the one working miracles, the other sham illusions, the one born of a virgin, the other of a whore. The relationship between Antichrist and the Devil, however, varies in different authors. Antichrist is sometimes the Devil himself, or an aspect of him, or sometimes a human being possessed by the Devil. Or he may be the Devil’s son. He is the leader of the Devil’s armies on earth in the time of the final reckoning, in his earthly form a powerful human ruler, in his true, otherworldly form a monstrous flying dragon. Antichrist had his origins in pre-Christian traditions. The old Babylonian, Canaanite and, possibly, Hebrew New Year rituals implied that although order had been imposed on chaos long ago, the menace of chaos still existed. Perhaps there would have to be a last reckoning with it before the golden age of the future could be achieved. The famous passage about Leviathan in Isaiah, quoted earlier (see p. II), refers to the destruction of the present world at the end of time. It is on that day that the Lord will punish Leviathan, will slay the dragon of the sea. Just as God defeated the chaos monster in the beginning, before the world was made, so he will smash it at the end, before the world we know is destroyed and the new order begins. In the Antichrist tradition, again, the violence of human aggressors was linked with supernatural evil. The first human model for the later

Antichrist was Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid king of Syria, who captured Jerusalem in 168 B.C. and slaughtered or enslaved many of the inhabitants. Epiphanes means ‘the manifest god’ and Antiochus claimed to be divine, as it was afterwards expected that Antichrist would. In his zeal to bring the benefits of Greek civilisation to the Jews, he announced that their God was the same as Olympian Zeus and the Syrian Lord of the Heavens, and ordered the sacrifice of pigs, which were Baal, animals in Jewish law, on the site of Yahweh’s altar of burnt unclean offering in the Temple. This sacrilege was the ‘abomination of desolation', a phrase which has come ringing down the centuries and which was originally a Hebrew pun on the words for ‘Lord of the Heavens’. The book of Daniel, which was written soon after these events, although it treats them as if they were still to come, became the foundation text of the Antichrist legend. It describes a dream in which four huge beasts are seen emerging, significantly, from the sea, the element of primeval chaos. The fourth beast, a devouring monster with iron teeth, is the empire of Alexander the Great, and Antiochus is the little horn which swells up from this beast till it casts some of the stars to the ground and tramples on them. Antiochus is also the king of the north who profanes the Temple and sets up the abomination of desolation, who persecutes the righteous and seduces others from the true faith, who exalts himself above every god: At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been seen since there was a nation till that time; but at that time your 17 people shall be delivered. .

Since Daniel

.

,

all this in the future, later

events could be interpreted and other powerful human rulers who oppressed the Jews were identified as the superhuman monster of the last days. Pompey stormed the Temple in 63 B.C., massacred the priests as

set

fulfilments of the

prophecy

and strolled

enquiringly into the Holy of Holies, the dwelling place of was sacrilege for anyone but the high priest to enter. Some Jews recognised in him the dragon, the adversary of God. Caligula, not long before his death in A.D. 41, ordered a statue of himself as Zeus to be installed in the Holy of Holies. The order was not carried out but the intended sacrilege recalled the predictions of Daniel and horrified the Jews. Nero qualified in both Jewish and Christian eyes as a possible dragon of the end of time. He was murdered in A.D. 68 but, as in Hitler’s case centuries later, many people doubted the reports of God himself, which it

his death. There was a widespread belief that he would appear from the at the head of an army of barbarians and plunge the world into war, devastation and anarchy. The Caligula episode may lie in the immediate background of the words attributed to Jesus in the New Testament which supported the Antichrist tradition. A time of troubles is approaching, of wars and earthquakes and famine, when the desolating sacrilege predicted in Daniel will be set up, when false Christs and false prophets will come with signs and wonders, trying to lead the faithful astray. And then when the sun is darkened and the moon fails, when the stars fall from the sky and the nations are terrified by the roaring of the sea, the Son of Man will be seen coming on the clouds in glory, to gather his elect from the ends of the earth.18 After the death of Jesus, Christians believed that his return in glory would be preceded by the appearance of the man of lawlessness or man of sin:

East

The son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the The coming of temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. the lawless one by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are to perish, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 19 .

For

.

.

generations afterwards, Christians took ‘those who

are

to

perish’

the Jews, who refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah. Unlike the pagan gods, and even the God of the Old Testament in some of his aspects, the Christian godhead was believed to be wholly and stainlessly good, with no particle of evil in its nature. In accounting for the evident evil in the world, Christians were consequently bound to stress the power of the Devil and the forces of supernatural evil. C. G. Jung said that the figure of Christ ‘is so one-sidedly perfect that to mean

20 psychic complement to restore the balance’. The psychic was not far to seek. The Jews obstinately continued to complement

it demands

a

look for the Messiah, which convinced Christians that the Saviour the Jews awaited was Antichrist. He would be a Jew himself, of course, and the popular Christian attitude in the Middle Ages linked the Jews firmly with Satan, Antichrist and the demonic. They were believed to worship the Devil in the form of a cat or a toad in their synagogues (which is why the meetings of witches were at first called ‘synagogues’),

and Christian authorities tried to make them display their demonic openly by wearing homed hats in public. When Antichrist appeared, he would lead a barbarous and cannibal army consisting of the lost ten tribes of Israel, now identified with the hordes of Gog and Magog from the book of Revelation, and when Christ came on the clouds to obliterate Antichrist he would make a clean sweep and

nature

destroy

all the

Jews

as

well. It is ironic that what

was

originally

a

Jewish belief should have been turned so drastically against them. When the word Antichrist finally appears in the New Testament, in the letters of John, it is used to attack deviationist thinking within the Christian flock. ‘Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come.’ Antichrist is ‘the liar’ and ‘the deceiver’, who will not acknowledge ‘the coming of 21 Jesus Christ in the flesh’. The ‘many antichrists’ were Christians who, in their disgust with the human body, could not believe that the Son of God had degraded himself by appearing in one: they said that his human nature was an illusion, not a reality. The application of the term Antichrist to them set a precedent for its frequent employment by Christians later as a term of abuse for other Christians who failed to agree with them. The word Antichrist is not used in Revelation but the idea is there and many elements from Daniel reappear in the stupendous visions which determined what generations of men expected would happen not far in the future. The great red dragon is seen in the sky, his tail sweeping a third of the stars down to the earth. There is war in heaven and the dragon, which is the Devil, is defeated by Michael and hurled down to earth with his angels. He gives his throne and power and authority to the Great Beast, the monster of chaos which rises from the depths of the bottomless pit and the sea. The monster has seven heads and ten horns and its number is 666. It utters blasphemies against God, and rules every tribe and nation, and persecutes the righteous. A second beast, with two horns, rises from the earth to work signs and wonders, and deludes people into worshipping the Great Beast. There are concealed allusions to Nero and to Caligula’s intention of profaning the Temple. The Devil and the two beasts are eventually vanquished and thrown alive into the lake of fire and brimstone, to be tormented day and night for ever. The Great Beast was evidently meant to stand for the Roman Empire and the second beast, or false prophet, for the priesthood of the Roman emperor-cult. It was because they would take no part in this cult that Christians were persecuted, but the asso-

ciation of the two

monsters with Rome had unexpected consequences when Protestants identified the papacy as Antichrist. later, The fear of Antichrist remained alive in Christendom all through the Middle Ages and into modem times. Invasions by predatory hordes of Goths, Huns, Mongols and Turks were successively identified as the appearance of Gog and Magog. In 1271 Roger Bacon said that the wise were confident that Antichrist was at hand. In the 1390s St Vincent Ferrer, in the grip of the same conviction, led processions of flagellants and preached to enormous crowds on the horrors of the time of troubles to come. Hell-fire preaching of Antichrist created such alarm and became such a nuisance that in 1516 a Church council prohibited it. In 1861 Cardinal Manning, disturbed by events in Italy which threatened the papacy, lectured on the imminent appearance of the Jewish Antichrist.

People were always on the watch for the ‘signs’ which, according to the prophetic tradition, were to herald and accompany the final ‘time of troubles’; and since the ‘signs’ included bad rulers, civil discord, war, drought, famine, plague, comets, sudden deaths of prominent never

any

persons and

difficulty

an

about

increase in

finding

general sinfulness,

there

was

them. 22

In the Middle Ages it was generally expected that the son of perdition, the wicked and detestable dragon, would be bom in Babylon, the

belief influenced by the Scarlet Woman of Revelation, whose name is ‘Babylon the Great, mother of harlots’ and who is seen riding on the Great Beast. The belief that he would be a Jew of the tribe of Dan was taken over from the Jewish tradition, in which Dan had an old and dubious reputation as a half-caste and a renegade, because the tribe of Dan settled to the north of the other tribes in Canaan and became cut off from them and semi-Canaanite. Trailing disorder and destruction in his wake, the monster would establish himself in Jerusalem, gather the scattered Jews together again and rebuild the Temple. He would work sham miracles in parody of Christ which would delude many into taking him for the real Christ. Some Jewish writers also expected an Antimessiah, though he was son

of

not as

a

prostitute,

important

a

a

figure

in

Judaism

as

in

Christianity.

His name,

Armilos, may be based on Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome. It was said that he would be King of Edom, which the Jewish rabbis had used as a cover-name for Rome, and he was sometimes identified with the Christian Church. He was expected to be a huge monster with two heads, or alternatively he would be bald, and deaf in his

right ear, with a scab on his brow, one eye bigger than the other, his right arm unnaturally stunted and his left arm unnaturally long, the left being traditionally the side of evil. Although Antichrist was supposed to be a Jew, the Christian habit of lavishing the term on other Christians flourished exceedingly. In the thirteenth century some identified the dragon as the Emperor Frederick II, that notorious ‘wonder of the world’, with his glittering court and dangerous learning, his harem and his travelling menagerie, his tolerance of infidel Muslims and his intolerance of Popes. His partisans retaliated by turning the accusation against the Popes themselves. Later, Boniface VIII and John XXII were each denounced as Antichrist. Popes and anti-popes hung the same label round each other’s necks. The Protestant reformers denounced not merely an individual Pope but the whole institution of the papacy as the Great Beast, with the Roman Catholic clergy as ‘the body of Antichrist’. Catholics returned the compliment, and the Anabaptists announced that everybody except themselves was Antichrist. In England, Mary Queen of Scots, feared as the spearhead of Catholic reaction, was referred to as ‘the dragon’ in debates in the House of Commons and in the seventeenth century Puritans denounced the papacy, the Catholics and the High Church Anglicans as Antichrist, not as a conventional term of abuse but with real loathing and dread, and in justification of the rebellion against Charles I. Since then, Napoleon, the Kaiser, Al Capone, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and. the World Council of Churches have been identified as Antichrist or the Great Beast at one time or another. In War and Peace Tolstoy mentions the vague notions of the approach of Antichrist, the end of the world and the gaining of freedom in the new order, which were stirred up among the serfs in Russia in 1812 with the rumours of

Napoleon’s coming invasion. In 1866 the Empress Charlotte of Mexico, on the edge of insanity and haunted by childhood memories of Dürer engravings of Revelation, decided on the basis of personal inspection that Napoleon III of France was Antichrist and the Devil incarnate, and to

many

people

her husband, the unfortunate Emperor Maximilian, After the Russian revolution of 1917 a good the conclusion that Bolshevism was the Antichrist.

wrote to

tell him came

so.

to

One Tsarist partisan, Roman Ungem-Stemberg, who fought the Reds in Mongolia and regarded revolutionaries as evil spirits in human form, identified the Grand Duke Michael as ‘the great prince Michael’ of the book of Daniel and proclaimed him Tsar.

The belief that the Pope is the Beast 666 is still alive in fundamentalist Protestant circles. At the age of fifteen the future Cardinal Newman became

convinced that the Pope was Antichrist, though he gradually changed his mind. By 1833 he had decided that the Scarlet Woman of Revelation was not the Church of Rome after all, but the city of Rome, the place itself, or rather its genius loci, the evil spirit which had haunted it for centuries. By 1841 he felt that the ‘spirit of Liberalism’ was the destined Antichrist: ‘The spirit of lawlessness came in with the Reformation, and Liberalism is its offspring.’ Charles Taze Russell, the founder of Jehovah’s Witnesses, took the dragon in Revelation to stand for the Roman Imperial government and the Great Beast to be the subsequent papal system of government. He also identified the second beast or false prophet as the Protestant Church Federation, and Jezebel in the Old Testament as the Roman Catholic Church itself. He regarded all the established Churches as agencies of Satan, and his successor, J. B. Rutherford, who died in 1942, defined religion as a system of belief or teaching ‘induced and put forward by God’s adversary the Devil in order to turn men away from God’. The Witnesses now interpret the Great Beast as the prevailing political organisation of the world at any given moment. When Revelation was written, it was the Roman Empire, but it is now the United Nations. 23 The conviction that the Jews would ally themselves with the evil power of chaos to destroy Christendom, order and civilisation also continues. Mrs Nesta Webster’s Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, published in 1924, became the bible of those in Britain determined to believe in a secret conspiracy, hatched by the forces of evil, to take over the world. The five groups which she believed to be involved in this conspiracy were Grand Orient Masonry, Theosophy, Pan-Germanism, International Finance, by which she meant the Jews, and Social Revolution, by which she meant the Bolsheviks. ‘How is it possible’, she asked, ‘to ignore the existence of an Occult Power at work in the world? Individuals, sects or races fired with the desire for world-domination have provided the fighting-forces of destruction, but behind them are veritable powers of darkness in eternal conflict

firmly

with the powers of light.’ 24 At a less eccentric level, the apocalyptic tradition remains alive in the tendency to see in any national crisis the ‘time of troubles’ which heralds the approaching end of the world as we know it and the dawn of a

though not always very agreeable, age. These proclamations appeal to a deep layer of fear and excitement in our minds, as do the new,

of science fiction, the huge prehistoric beasts which the abyss to wreak havoc and destruction on earth. They dramatically express the simple truth that, both inside man and in the world outside him, order is always precarious and chaos always

primeval monsters

rise from the

sea or

threatening. 3

The Fall I argue about the world;—if there be a God, since there is a race is implicated in some terrible aboriginal It is of out calamity. joint with the purposes of its Creator. Cardinal Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua

And

so

God, the human

The fear of chaos, the dragon, the Devil and Antichrist is an example of the persistent human tendency towards dualism: the belief in two great rival powers of light and darkness, one responsible for all the good in the world and the other for all the evil. Dualism has made sense to many people as an explanation of the mixture of good and evil in the world and in human nature, and in practice many Christians have behaved as if Satan was virtually an independent god of evil in his own but official Christian theology has always firmly opposed dualism right, because it robs God of his omnipotence. Unfortunately, those who believe in a God who is both all-powerful and good are caught on the horns of a dilemma. If God is omnipotent, then he must ultimately be responsible for everything that exists, including evil, and so the root of evil must be in God. If God is utterly good and not responsible for evil, then evil must exist against his will and so he cannot be omnipotent. As Shaw put it, if the God of love is all-powerful and all-knowing he must also be the God of cancer and epilepsy. The argument that evil is really a lesser good is an attempt to escape from this difficulty. Another attempt to escape from it, again stemming mainly from St Augustine, says that ‘evil’ exists because God created beings to whom he gave free will and some of these beings deliberately turned away from the highest good. First the Devil and his angels rebelled against God and were expelled from heaven, and then humanity fell from grace in its turn when Adam and Eve disobeyed God in Eden. In both cases the motive was the same, the desire to be like God, and it was these twin defections that brought into the world death, pain, sin and the rest of what we commonly call evil. Unfortunately again, the same difficulty reappears if we ask whether God intended these events to happen. If he did, he would seem to be the author of evil, and if he

did not, he would not appear to be all-powerful. St Augustine, in fact, driven by his conviction of God’s omnipotence to say in effect that God predestined both the rebellion of Satan and the crime of Eden. Theology apart, however, the two great myths of the fall of the angels and the fall of man were accepted for centuries as convincing explanations of how evil came into the world which a good God had created. They were convincing, and to many people still are, because they meet the needs of two different experiences of evil and attitudes to it. One attitude sees evil mainly in the world outside man, in the hostility or indifference of the environment, and so it looks for the source of evil outside man, in superhuman forces. The other attitude is profoundly conscious of the viciousness of human nature itself, and it looks for the taproot of evil inside man. It is this attitude which explains evil primarily in terms of an aboriginal calamity that has put the whole human race out of joint with God’s purposes. Although the two attitudes can be broadly distinguished, they are not necessarily independent of each other and frequently coexist with varying shades of emphasis in the same mind. They also coexist in the generally accepted story of the fall of man. Although there is no warrant for it in Genesis, it was believed that the serpent which led Adam and Eve astray was either the Devil in disguise or an agent of the Devil, who in his abounding malice and jealousy was determined to cause man’s downfall. This means that the responsibility for evil is shared between Satan and man. The familiar tale of Adam and Eve, the forbidden fruit and the serpent is one of the key myths of European civilisation and, even in a brief summary, it lights up a whole network of reactions and connections in the mind. God made man in his own image from the dust of the ground and planted a garden for him in Eden, in the east, which contained every tree that is good to look at and good for food, and also the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God told Adam that he must not eat the fruit of this second tree, for if he did he would die. Then God made all the animals and birds, and brought them to Adam, who gave them their names. But none of them was a suitable mate for him, so God made Eve from Adam’s rib, and they were both naked and were not ashamed. But the serpent, the most subtle of animals, told Eve that if they ate the forbidden fruit they would not die, far from it. ‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ Eve ate the fruit and gave some to Adam, who ate it too. Then they was

were naked and made themselves clothes of leaves. When what they had done, Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent. God cursed the serpent and punished Adam and Eve with death, the hard labour of agriculture, the pain of childbirth and the subjection of woman to man. To prevent them from eating the fruit of the tree of life and becoming immortal, God drove them out of Eden and set an angel with a flaming sword to guard it.

knew

God

they

saw

In the nuclear age, menaced

by

over-use

or resources

and

pollution,

the message seems clear. The story is about the double nature of man, whose life is made of toil, pain, frustration and defeat, but who also has his moments of beauty, splendour and power. Man is half-animal and half-god, made in the divine image but made of clay. He tries to raise himself too high, refusing to submit to the conditions in which he finds himself and attempting to master everything around him and so, like the Devil at an earlier point in mythical history, to make himself fully God. It is this insistence on grasping what he cannot control that brings evil on the world, and as a result man knows good and evil in the sense of experiencing them. It is clear that in Genesis death is a consequence of Adam’s sin and the story has usually been taken to mean that mankind could have been immortal. A more sophisticated, and perhaps too sophisticated interpretation is that man was subject to death in any case but would have seen it not as cruel and frightening but as his natural end: in which case there is a parallel in the Greek myth of the first, golden race of men who lived like gods without sorrow or toil or old age, and when died it was no more terrible to them than sleep. they Genesis also refers the association of shame with sex to man’s first disobedience, and Eve’s role in it reinforced the feeling, which spreads far beyond the Judaeo-Christian tradition, that woman is peculiarly and inherently vicious. The legend grew up that the serpent physically seduced Eve, infecting all her descendants with bestial lust. It was Eve who

persuaded the weak-willed Adam to eat the fatal fruit, and so Eve was responsible for the consequences. ‘From a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die.’ 25 Tertullian castigated woman as ‘the Devil’s gateway’ and pointed out bitterly that because of the

who

death Eve inflicted on humanity the Son of God himself had to die. Christians believed that Adam, the failed man-god, had alienated man from his Maker and subjected the human race to the power of the Devil and the toils of sin and death, from which Christ, the second

Adam, the God-man,

came

to

offer the

promise of release. Christian

bound to take a different view of the Jewish theologians. The Jewish rabbis accepted that all generations of men had inherited the consequences of Adam’s sin— death and the other evils of the human condition. They also thought that God implants in each human being the yetser ha-ra, or ‘evil imagination', a rooted impulse or inclination to evil. They drew this from Genesis where, after the fall of the angels, ‘the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and every imagination [yetser] of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually’. It is every man’s duty to wrestle with his impulse to evil and subdue it, and it is for his moral advancement in this way that God implants it in him. Men are sinful beings, certainly, but this is their own individual fault. ‘Adam is not therefore the cause, save only of his own soul, but each one of us has been the Adam of his own soul.’ 26 Christian doctrine, as it eventually crystallised, went much further than most Jewish authors in holding that all generations have inherited not only Adam’s punishment but also his sinfulness. This is ‘original sin’, a slimy taint of corruption in human nature which cannot be eradicated by human effort alone, for if man could overcome it unaided there would have been no need for Christ. St Augustine, who the first to use the term ‘original sin’ itself, in a work written in 397, was that it is physically inherited by generation after generation: said

theologians

were

consequently

fall from

For God (the Creator of nature, and not of vice) made man upright: who being willingly depraved and justly condemned, begot all his offspring under the same depravation and condemnation. For in him were we all, since we all were that one man, who, through the woman who was made of himself before sin, fell into sin. We had not our particular forms yet, but there was the seed of our natural

propagation, which being corrupted by of that same nature, the slave condemnation. 27 man

to

sin

must

needs

produce

death, and the object of just

The doctrine of original sin has not met with unqualified approval. Huxley, for instance, made the caustic comment that ‘since the innocence has been identical, for all practical purposes, with total Fall, Aldous

total depravity. Every young girl is potentially the most knowing of widows and, thanks to Original Sin, every potential impurity is already, even in the most innocent, more than half actualized.’ But it draws its strength from a psychological fact, a deep conviction of the worthlessness of human nature and the blindness of human ambition,

earthly remedy. A Lutheran Church document of 1577 it forcibly: that in place of the image of God which has been lost there has

beyond states ...

any

succeeded an intimate, grievous, most profound and abyss-like, inscrutable and indescribable corruption of the whole nature and of all the powers of man, most chiefly of the superior and principal faculties of the soul, a corruption which infects the mind, intellect, heart and will. Wherefore after the Fall man receives from his parents by heredity a congenitally depraved impulse, filthiness of heart, depraved concupiscences and depraved inclinations. 28

again is the old, persistent feeling that long ago something badly wrong with the world. Things are not as they should be

Here went

and could have been, man is not what he was meant to be, and is at odds with the divine. This is why human beings are nasty and brutish, why there is suffering, why our plans fail and even our achievements are unsatisfying, and this is why we die. ‘In Adam I fell,’ said St Ambrose, ‘in Adam I was cast out of Paradise, in Adam I died.’ A distinguished modern Roman Catholic writer, Karl Rahner, has said that death is a

visible demonstration of the fissure between God and man which being to its very essence and which was opened at the

cleaves man’s very

beginning

of his

spiritual-moral history.

.

.

.

Man’s death is the

demonstration of the fact that he has fallen away from God. Death is guilt made visible. 29 There was all evil from

old Christian maxim that all

.

.

.

good comes from God, but most people have not taken so deeply pessimistic a view of human nature and have not accounted for all evil in terms of man’s depravity. The sin of Eden itself was popularly attributed to the malice of the Devil, and many Christian writers and preachers warned the faithful of the influence and subtlety of Satan and his subordinate fiends, lurking everywhere in wait to foster sin and trap human souls. Demons, monsters and bogies have haunted the popular imagination all through the Christian centuries. They have descended to us and still haunt our children, frequently with our approval and an

man,

encouragement.

4

The

Bogyman

‘Now, I aint alone, as you may think I am. There’s a young man hid with me, in comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart and at his liver. It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young man. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open.’ Dickens,

Great

Expectations

stages of each person’s life, as at the beginning of human in Genesis, there comes the knowledge of good and evil. itself history who was always fascinated by the uncanny and macabre, had Dickens, vivid memories of the tales his nursemaid told him as a small boy, which caused him nightmares and cold sweats. One of them was about a certain Captain Murderer, whose ‘warning name would seem to have awakened no general prejudice against him, for he was admitted into the best society and possessed immense wealth’: he married numerous ladies, whom he killed and chopped up and baked in pies and ate. There was also the Black Cat, ‘a weird and glowing-eyed supernatural Tom, who was reputed to prowl about the world by night, sucking the breath of infancy, and who was endowed with a special thirst (as I was given to understand) for mine.’ The fear of cannibalism and of being devoured is an old element of folk terrors and appears in beliefs about giants, dragons, witches, ghosts and hell. When it turns up in children’s games, as it frequently does, it may be in part the evil aspect of an impulse of love for a child—‘Oh, I could eat you.’ Another of the nursemaid’s stories was about Chips the carpenter, who sold his soul to the Devil for an iron pot, a bushel of tenpenny nails and a talking rat. The Devil had eyes like saucers, which squinted dreadfully, and struck out sparks of blue fire, and when he winked his eyelashes clattered like flints and steels. Chips found himself plagued In the

early

by an increasing number of rats, which squatted in his pockets and in his hat, wrapped themselves in his handkerchief, and got into his bed and his boots and his teapot. ‘At intervals ever since,’ Dickens said, ‘I have been morbidly afraid of my own pocket.’ Chips lost his carpenter’s job and was pressed for a sailor. His ship sailed on and on,while

rats gnawed at it, eating it stealthily away until it sank with all hands. When what little remained of Chips drifted in to shore, there 30 was a huge overgrown rat sitting on it and laughing. the ancient world to known from have been Child-scaring bogies

the

our own.

Fragments survive of a poem by Erinna of Telos, of the fourth

which she recalls the games she played as a child and how she frightened of a bogy called Mormo, ‘which had huge ears and four feet, and kept on changing its shape’. Children in ancient, medieval and modern Greece have been scared of a child-stealing ghostwodival named Gello. In Napoleon’s time, the young were threatened with the giant Bonaparte who would come and eat them up if they were bad. The nineteenth century was rich in nightmarish children’s stories, some of which, as in Dickens’s case, go far beyond any intention of frightening children into being good and display a gleeful relish in terror for its own sake. In a tale in Mrs W. K. Clifford’s Anyhow Stories (1882), two happy and contented children meet a strange woman, who promises to show them marvellous toys if they are naughty enough. They obediently become naughtier and naughtier, but the strange woman is not satisfied, until their mother can bear it no longer and leaves them. The children beg her to come back, but she will not, and in her place comes a new mother, who has flashing glass eyes and a wooden tail. The children run away to the woods, where they stay, sometimes at night creeping close to the house where they had been happy. They see a blinding flash at the window and they know it is the light from the new mother’s glass eyes and they hear the muffled thump of her wooden tail dragging on the floor. 31 The cruel Victorian taste for the grotesque and their liking for inflicting it on children can be seen in the original ‘Happy Families’ cards, which must give many modem parents qualms. But the readiness to frighten the young did not die out with the nineteenth century. Any one who keeps an eye now on books, television programmes and films for children will find them well stocked with supernatural century

B.C., in was

horrors—witches, wizards, ghosts, giants

and assorted monsters— frequently spine-chilling possible. Scenes from some Disney films linger uncomfortably in the memory. Children are sometimes badly upset by these ghoulish creatures, but very often they seem scared and pleased by them at the same time, as if it were necessary for inward fears to be given outward figures to focus on. In a study conducted in New York City in the 1930s, children aged

made as

from five

to

twelve

as

were

asked about their fears and those

they

men-

tioned first were recorded. The biggest single group of fears, about 19 per cent, had to do with supernatural beings, ghosts, witches and corpses, and mysterious agents and events. The next group, close to 15 per cent, were fears of being alone, in the dark, in a strange place, and being lost. Other fears of this more realistic kind, of animals, illness, injuries and criminals, ranked lower, though when the children were asked to name the worst thing that had ever happened to them, far and away the largest group, almost 73 per cent, described injuries and illnesses. A. T. Jersild, who cites this study, says:

youngster grows older, his fear of certain tangible and immediate situations, such as specific objects, noises, falling and danger of falling, strange objects and persons, decreases; his fear of imaginary creatures, the dark, and being alone or abandoned increases. As

a

Very small children may suffer from spectral fears. One of Professor Piaget’s children, aged two, was woken by the crowing of a cock and, still half-asleep, said, ‘I’m afraid of the lady who’s singing.’ A week later she woke up screaming and said, ‘It was all dark, and I saw a lady over there.’ Another child, aged three, had an imaginary horrid lady, who did bad things and whom she saw in dreams. She played a game of eating the horrid lady, ‘except her mouth, which was nasty’. 32 Fear of the dark or being lost is natural and sensible, and fear of the unknown in general must have been of great practical value all through human history in protecting people from real dangers. But not enough is known about children’s fears of spooks and ghouls to explain where they come from or how they work. Though many of these fears are put into their minds by adults or older children, it is very doubtful whether all of them are and it is interesting that children are reported to have generally greater psychic abilities than adults. There is no evidence that fears are inherited, though a proneness to fear can be. Jungians, who believe that our brains have been shaped and affected by the experiences of mankind over millions of years, locate frightening supernatural figures in the ‘collective unconscious’, a deeper layer of the mind than the personal unconscious, a reservoir of images and fantasies common to all human beings. The sinister elements in some of the games which children enjoy playing have long been observed, so much so that in some of the medieval mystery plays the torturers of Christ are presented as playing a game, with an appalling childish delight in evil. They play blind man’s buff with Jesus, blindfolding him and asking who struck him:

a hint of this very old game in the gospel itself. Sometimes of the Crucifixion the executioners hammering in the out their blows in the nursery style of ‘One, two, buckle

there is possibly in

scenes

nails count 33 my shoe’.

Iona and Peter Opie, collecting children’s games in Britain, found various examples of ‘a children’s diversion being the enactment of an ancient horror story’. There is the game in which one child is the dead man and lies on the ground under a blanket or a pile of coats. The others walk round, pretending not to look at him and calling out, ‘Dead man, arise’. When least expected, he jumps up and chases them. Another game is played in the dark, often on the way home from school. One child is the bogyman who goes on ahead of the others, hides, and

jumps

out at

them,

at

which

they scream and run. The Opies describe

this game as ‘one of the classic examples of children enjoying being scared (provided that the situation is one of their own arranging)’. In other games children are chased by the Black Man, who was presumably the Devil originally, or by Black Peter, Black Tom, Blackthorn, Old King Dick, the wolf or the fox. ‘Time and again it is apparent that children either have a need to act out their fears, or actually enjoy the pretence of being frightened’: nor is it always a pretence, for children may act being frightened, as the game requires, and at the same time games in which one player hides in

actually

be

frightened.

There

are

dark place, which is called ‘the well’, and jumps out at whoever looks in. He is the Old Man or the Ghost or the Frog in the Well, or in Austria he is the Witch in the Cellar. In a Devon version the Old Man intends to cut off the heads of the children he catches, and in an Essex version to eat them. In Gloucester the Opies found a group of little girls, enjoying a game of Fairies and Witches, who explained that if the witch caught you, she took you to her corner. The Opies asked, ‘And then?’ ‘Stews you,’ said the little girls. ‘And then?’ ‘Eats you.’ ‘And then?’ ‘Throws the bones away!’ 34 a

This final horrid line is interesting because it expresses a fear straight from the ancient world, the horror of maltreatment of one’s own corpse. That death and the dead figure so often in children’s games is a reflection of the fact that they have frightened generations of adults.

Chapter Two

Death and the Dead

Of all life’s armoury of evils the worst is that it ends, and the next worst is that we know it will. Awareness of our own mortality is one of the things which distinguish us from other animals, but it is a piece of knowledge which nowadays tends to be kept under lock and key, because we live in a climate of scepticism about life after death. The change from a general hopeful belief in the soul’s immortality to widespread doubt or flat disbelief is one of the most drastic which Western societies have undergone and has probably made the experience of dying more frightening than ever. ‘The decay of religion has made death even more of an unknown quantity; the materialist goes with nothing to cling to, into the dark and annihilation.’ 1 The great, black, luxurious, confident funerals of a hundred years ago—everyone wrapped in layers of mourning, towering hearses, black horses with sable plumes, mutes, wreaths, slow tread, crape-swathed ear-trumpets for deaf and sorrowing aunts—have been replaced by awkward and uncertain ceremonies which no longer effectively ritualise grief to help purge it away. We do not talk about death as easily as people used to. Dr Johnson, who himself was terrified of death and hell-fire, used to charge like a bull to the bedsides of ailing friends, where he urged them with formidable eloquence not to die whatever they did. Many people would now consider his behaviour offensive and almost sacrilegious. The tear-drenched, cathartic deathbed

scenes

of nineteenth-century

literature embarrass twentieth-century readers and the way in which death was treated in Victorian children’s hooks would shock modern parents. The mortality rate among children was much higher in those

DOI: 10.4324/9781003363743-2

Death and the Dead

days

and

one reason

for

cramming edifying infant deathbeds

into die. Another

was simply to teach them how to try to make sure that if they did die they would go to heaven and not to hell, so that death was a sanction against juvenile naughtiness. William Carus Wilson, an evangelical parson and friend of Wilberforce and Shaftesbury, edited a magazine called The Children's Friend, which described real children’s deaths so as to scare the readers into

literature for the young

was

to

being good: Let me beg of you, dears, to try ‘perhaps I may soon die,

think about death; say to yourselves, and then where will my soul go? will it go to heaven, or will it be cast down into hell, where there will be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth?’ 2 to

Times have changed and we do not now beg our children to think about death. On the contrary, we wrap the grim reaper in a shroud of his own, composed of hushed voices, euphemisms and unexpressed furtive misery, and in doing so may scare our children just as badly as the Victorians frightened theirs, if not worse. Death has become private, lonely and taboo, which suggests that we are even more afraid of it than our ancestors were.

1

The Narrow Bed

Death devours all lovely things; Lesbia with her sparrow Shares the darkness,—presently Every bed is narrow. Edna St Vincent Millay, Passer Mortuus Est

beings have believed that something survives death. Apparently substantial minority in the West, or perhaps even a narrow majority, still do, though not always with much confidence. From the beginning of history the dead have been treated with care, concern and fear. Massive monuments and acres of ground, astonishing Most human

a

of effort, time, emotion and money, even human life itself on occasion, have been devoted to them. They have been buried— lying down, sitting or standing—or burned, or covered with clay and baked, sent to sea in ships, hung up in trees, immersed in water, or respectfully devoured by relatives and privileged neighbours. The one thing which is really rare is for a dead body to be left lying casually about. Even before the appearance of homo sapiens, Neanderthal men

quantities

Death and the Dead took trouble over their dead, and the early development of religion and magic was probably based in part on the feeling that the dead live on in some way, that life on earth in an ordinary physical body is not the sum total of human and animal existence, with the implication that

non-physical, spiritual beings exist. Prehistoric corpses were frequently

buried in a pre-natal position, with the knees tied up against the chest. This may have been done merely to save effort by digging as small a grave as possible, or perhaps to prepare the dead man for a rebirth, or perhaps to stop him getting out of his grave. It may be that death was considered a form of sleep by these very early men, as the Greek myth says, for a good many bodies were buried facing west, where the sun sinks to rest in the evening: or the west where the sun ‘dies’ each night may have been regarded as the home of the dead. The analogy between death and sleep is old and tenacious. ‘For each living soul on earth must seek the appointed place, where after the feast of life his body shall sleep fast in a narrow bed.’ R.I.P., requiescat in pace, rest in peace. ‘Went byes 18th October 1964’, says a memorial to a dog named Prince in the Hartsdale Canine Cemetery, New York. The dead are ‘at rest’, or so we devoutly hope, and the undertaker has a ‘chapel of rest’ on the premises. They are arranged to look as if they were asleep and the process known in Britain as laying out is called ‘helping repose’ by American funeral directors. In Britain bodies are usually laid out in pyjamas or night dresses, sometimes with a simulated

dressing gown. 3 According to Spiritualists, to

the basis of communications believed

on

have come from the dead, the

recuperation immediately

after

departed do need a period of rest and

death,

in which

to recover

from the

that, as Hamlet suspected, this sleep after death is broken by dreams, a hallucinatory re-experiencing of the dead person’s life on earth. Some of the recently dead, however, are said to be confused shock. Some say

or terrified. In 1945, at the home of a member of the Society for Psychical Research, the following communication came through by ouija board. ‘Aisee [sic] not write. It is terrible to die like me. Can you tell me it was a nightmare the same as this man does and if I am really dead?’ They asked him his name. ‘Rupert.’ They told him he had died.

live. .’ 4 The sleeping dead evoke complicated mixtures of emotions in the living, who do not keep their feelings in neatly separated compartments. There is affection for the dead, sorrow at their loss, an impulse

‘No,

I

want to

.

.

repair the gap created by their passing, the desire to help them in the afterworld, the hope of obtaining their help for those left alive. But another emotion which they frequently arouse is fear. When a corpse is nailed down in a box and put in a hole six feet deep, or buried under a heavy slab of stone or mound of earth, one can scarcely help feeling that an element of precaution is involved. The kindly injunction to to

rest

in peace contains

Many funeral

a

certain uneasiness. and ceremonies involve the contradictory express their affection for the dead but also to

customs

attempt of the living to separate themselves from them

barrier which the dead cannot cross. It was long the custom in the north of England to take the body to the churchyard by a roundabout route, and although the practice survived long after the reason for it had been forgotten, it was probably meant to confuse the ghost and prevent it from finding its way home. In Bohemia the mourners wore masks on their way back home from the graveyard, so that the dead man could not recognise and follow them. This double-edged attitude to the dead has been described as ‘a projection of the love and hate that mark the relations we have with our nearest and dearest’, and it is the dead man’s nearest and dearest, who have both the most to lose by his death and also the most to gain by inheritance from him, who are in the greatest danger from his ghost. 5 Methods of affectionately easing the deceased’s passage into the next world involve the fear of his continued presence in this one. Aligning the deathbed parallel with the floorboards, opening all the doors and windows, untying all knots, stopping the clocks and letting the fires go out, throwing away all perishable foods, were ways of ensuring that the dear departed would swiftly leave the house, for his own good and everyone else’s.

by creating

a

The mirror in the death-chamber

was veiled or turned to the wall, in become spirit entangled the reflection and so be unable to on. Another reason for pass doing this was to prevent any living into it and person looking perhaps seeing the dead man looking back at him from the glass. This was a sure sign of another death in the family very soon, for it showed that the soul was waiting to take someone else with it, usually, but not always the person who saw it

lest the

there. 6

Though the dead occupy

a

different

believed to he still alive in some sense, they plane of existence from the living and any contact are

across

the frontier between these

planes is felt

to

be

deeply unnatural,

dangerous: though the opposite feeling coexists with this fear and many bereaved people have drawn comfort from a sense of closeness to the beloved dead. Leaving a corpse without burial, which means failing to despatch the dead man to his proper plane of existence, uncanny and

in the ancient world with a revulsion which we still share in feeling that a human being should have a ‘decent uneasily burial’. There is an element of this in what we do when a child’s dearly loved pet has died. We give the animal a decent burial, and the child seems much relieved. A famous example of the classical attitude occurs in the Iliad, when the ghost of Patroclus passionately reproaches Achilles for leaving him without a funeral, which prevents him from crossing the river to join the rest of the dead, and promises that when his funeral rites have been celebrated he will never come back again to trouble the living. The river which Patroclus could not pass, the Styx across which the ferryman rowed the dismal shades, the Jordan which in Christian hymns and spirituals is the river of death that separates this world from the promised land of heaven, is a symbol of the barrier between the living and the dead. In Greece, when a man was wrongly assumed dead and mourning rites were performed for him, an awkward situation was created if he reappeared. The mourning rites had assimilated him to the dead, which meant that for all intents and purposes he actually was dead, and so his presence among the living was dangerous. He had to be formally reborn again, washed and wrapped in baby clothes and in mimicry fed at the breast, after which he could take his place with the living. In medieval Europe, when a man apparently dying had been given the last rites of the Church he was considered virtually dead, and if by any chance he recovered he was not supposed to eat meat, sleep with his wife or go barefoot. In the Antigone of Sophocles, King Creon of Thebes cherishes so fierce a hatred of Antigone’s dead brother, Polynices, that he orders his corpse to be left unburied outside the city walls, to be eaten by dogs and birds. Antigone defies the order by going out and scattering dust was

regarded

which, though obviously inadequate to protect it from was in Greek custom sufficient to count as burial. animals, enquiring Creon punishes Antigone by walling her up alive in a tomb, and is

over

the corpse

later told that he has doubly aroused the wrath of the gods, by keeping the dead among the living in the case of Polynices and the living among the dead in that of Antigone. He has twice broken down the barrier between two different worlds.

When this barrier is breached the living are in peril. Though some Greek accounts of the dead describe them as mere powerless shadows of their former selves, the deeper and more widespread belief was that they could harm the living, either directly or by appealing to the gods and powers of the underworld. In the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, Clytemnestra speaks of the anger of the dead waiting to surprise the living with vengeance. Behind this lies the old belief, which has survived into this century in Greece, that when a man is killed, deliberately or accidentally, he hungers for revenge and, if his kindred do not exact it, the dead man will take vengeance himself, either on his killer or on his negligent relatives. He may even enter into his corpse again and bring it temporarily back to life for this purpose. This belief is not confined to Greece, and the vengeance of the dead has been feared all over the world. There is a typical story from North Carolina in the nineteenth century:

lady found her lover was unfaithful, and pined away— threatening before she died to come and claim the fickle man. Later, the man was returning from an evening with the other girl, when the ghost of his dead sweetheart met him and clasped his right hand, agonisingly. The hand shrivelled, and the man died within three days. A young

In his book

on

the French Revolution, Paris in the Terror, period when the Terror reached its height:

Stanley

Loomis says of the

spell of horror seems temporarily to have fallen over the city of a nightmare in which all communication with reality was suspended. It is impossible to read of this period without the impression that one is here confronted with forces more powerful than those controlled by men. Fouquier-Tinville, the Public Prosecutor, who had sent hundreds to the guillotine, ‘was crossing the Pont Neuf one evening when he was seen A

Paris,

stagger. “I

am

imagine that I

see

to

not

well,”

he said

to

his

the shadows of the dead

companion. “Sometimes

following me.”’ 7

I

2

Ghosts and Astral Evil Tom

was a

carter

by trade, but

which, however, he

once

kept a toll-bar in South Wales,

obliged leave at the end of two years, the owing annoyance which he experienced from ghosts and and goblins, unearthly things, particularly phantom hearses, which used to pass through his gate at midnight without paying, when the gate was shut. George Borrow, Wild Wales was

to

to

Traditionally, ghosts are the spirits of the dead, but there are a good many other possible explanations of them. Sometimes, of course, a supposed ghost is merely a fake. Or it may be perfectly genuine but a creation of the mind that senses it. Alternatively, it may be a clairvoyant perception of the dying or the dead by the living, as in the frequently reported cases of someone seen or sensed close to the moment of his death by another person a long way away. It has also been suggested that a ghost may be a fragment of a dead personality, a piece of psychic flotsam left over from a previous existence. Or again, it may be that situations of severe strain, including but not limited to the scenes of violence traditionally connected with hauntings, somehow impress themselves on the atmosphere of a place. There are many accounts of episodes from the past being acted by ghostly figures repeating some critical moment of their lives, as if a piece of film was being run through again. Or there may be no ghostly figures or shadow play but an atmosphere of appalling menace, which clings to a place and impresses itself on strangers who know nothing of its history. Whatever the cause of this atmosphere, it can have damaging psychological effects on

people who spend much time in it. The ghost of popular belief is a sinister and malignant entity, linked with atrocious crimes and deeds of blood, with graveyards, old houses and lonely and chilling places, dead of night, creaking floorboards, footfalls in an empty corridor. There is a good example of this type of ghost in Lorna Doone, in which we are told that Black Barrow Down ‘lay under grave imputation of having been enchanted with a very evil spell. Moreover, it was known, though folk were loth to speak of it, even on a summer morning, that Squire Thom, who had been murdered there, a century ago or more, had been seen by several shepherds, even in the middle day, walking with his severed head carried in his left hand, and his right arm lifted towards the sun.’ The significant thing is that the majority of reported ghosts do not

fit into this stereotype at all, yet the stereotype persists. It is felt that a ghost ought to be frightening, which reflects a deep-seated uneasiness

anything which crosses the threshold between living and dead. Though a sensation of cold is frequently associated with the presence of ghosts, most of them do not seem hostile. Some of them appear to be indifferent to the living and some are timid and readily overborne, like one in the Vale of Usk who was given such a terrible talking-to by Miss F. Marryat in 1893 'that he found the place too hot for him, and about

far from carrying their heads under their and uttering blood-curdling shrieks, behave like the late President Paasikivi of Finland, encountered in 1957 by two ladies in Helsinki. They found him waiting by the elevator in an

took his arms,

departure’. Others,

clanking chains

apartment building. He joined them in the lift and when it stopped at the fourth floor—though no one had pressed the fourth floor button— he got off, and they last saw him smiling in at them through the glass doors. He seemed perfectly natural and normal, and it was not until later that they remembered he had died four months before, and not till then that they felt frightened. Stories like this raise the question of whether perhaps we all meet many more ghosts than we realise. 8 Some ghostly experiences, however, are starkly terrifying. In his autobiography, Journeyfrom Obscurity, Harold Owen recalled that when he was a small boy his elder brother, Wilfred Owen, the poet, liked to make the younger children wait in dark rooms and cupboards, while he disguised himself in a sheet and approached them, holding a shaded candle and mumbling incantations. This was frightening enough but was entirely eclipsed by something which happened during one of these games, in the dark on the upstairs landing: It

was

when I

was

half-way along the tiny where I

with

petrified, standing unseen thing was there, something terribly,

was

one so

passage that I became ground. An

foot off the

menacing,

so

utterly

unphysical

and unheard of and, with my awareness of the uncanny, so terribly dangerous, that I felt with clear and absolute knowledge

that here was

something far beyond any nonsense of Wilfred’s,

something terribly unknown but realized with a clarity and a vision brought to me by a new sense I had not before possessed. It was as if 9 I had plunged out of this world. .

The killed

.

.

ghost of anyone who has not died a natural death but has been by violence or accident is considered peculiarly dangerous, because it carries a powerful charge of unused life-energy and a fierce

current

of the dead man’s resentment

at

having

been taken before his

time. In 1587 a Roman Catholic priest named Thomas Pilchard was executed in Dorchester jail. That evening the keeper of the prison was walking in the garden when he saw a man who looked like Pilchard

coming towards him. The figure told him it was going to visit another priest in the prison, ‘and presently,’ it said, ‘I will return to you’. The keeper went indoors, sickened and died. During the night, a pregnant in the jail woke up in terror and told her husband that she had Pilchard and must join him. She had done Father Pilchard no harm, but she fell into labour and died. It was said that all those who had taken 10 part in the execution died soon afterwards. Besides those killed prematurely, others of the dead are thought likely to linger menacingly in the land of the living. Plato stated what has become a widely-held opinion, that when a man immerses himself in worldly concerns and fleshly pleasures, his soul becomes so earthy and contaminated that after death it cannot sever its links with the physical world. 11 The same view is taken by modern Spiritualists. The spirits of the ‘earthbound’, who lived selfish, materialistic lives and failed to develop their spiritual capacities, haunt the world they cannot bear to leave. They can be dangerous, and they sometimes fasten on and obsess the living, driving their victims to drug addiction or insanity. Those who object to all efforts to communicate with the dead as transgressions of God’s law explain the matter differently. ‘Hello! Is woman

seen

Anybody There?’, a pamphlet issued by the Evangelical Tract Society, maintains that the spirits who communicate through mediums or ouija boards are not the souls of the dead but ‘demon spirits—the spirits of impersonate the dead and possess the bodies of those who They are evil spirits without a body, so practices. indulge .’ In less fundamentalist to take over will yours if they can. they try circles, the recent unease over a minor craze for ouija boards in the USA and Britain probably stems from the fear of tampering with the natural order, of breaking through the barrier which it is felt should keep the living and the dead apart. Another way of explaining ghosts, presences and sinister ‘atmospheres' is in terms of the astral plane, another world which is believed to surround and interpenetrate the familiar world of everyday life. All the phenomena of the ordinary physical world have their counterparts on the astral plane, including all thoughts, emotions, desires and fantasies. An alternative name for the astral plane is ‘desire world’, the plane on which our longings and imaginings have an independent devils that

in these

.

.

.

.

.

It is, in

reality. world

which

theory, the world which

we

visit in dreams and the

go after death. The astral region in which the soul finds itself after death is roughly the equivalent of the Christian purgatory. Before the soul can rise to higher planes it must rid itself of the dross of its lower, unspiritual characteristics and free itself of its ties with earthly life and the physical to

we

a process which may take a long time. The lowest level of this otherworld is ‘hell’ and a soul on this level is in a realm of darkness and

plane,

horror,

though it is a

web of its embodiments of its

spider’s

hell of its own making, where it is entangled in a guilt and tormented by the astral shapes and own crimes and passions in earthly life. ‘A murderer own

might seem to see his victim pursuing him in his turn, a chronic drunkard might tend to see frightening or monstrous forms similar to those seen in drunken delirium. .’ 12 Those whose lives have been gross, brutish and materialistic, like the earthbound ghosts of Plato, suffer agonies on the astral plane because their desires are still with them .

.

but they have no way of slaking them, except by fastening on some living person of similar tendencies. For the beings of the astral world are not necessarily cut off from us in the physical world. If their earthly ties and appetites are still strong, or equally if people on the physical plane maintain strong emotional ties with them, they may be drawn across the threshold into the physical plane as apparitions or presences or intangible obsessive entities. Many

of these are not in the least hostile, but some are. In agreement with the folklore tradition, anyone who, in full health and strength, has been murdered or accidentally killed or who has committed suicide is thought to be peculiarly dangerous. He carries with him into the next world a charge of life-energy undiminished by old age or disease and he may turn into a malignant astral being, which gratifies its appetites by seizing on a living person and obsessing him. Like the vampirecorpses of ancient Mesopotamian belief, which sucked the blood of the living in their hunger for earthly existence, this entity prolongs its astral life by drawing vitality from its living victim. It has been identified by occultists with the incubus or succubus demon of medieval belief, which copulated with human beings, and it is said to inspire

bloodshed, malice, greed,

lies and lust. sight has been opened’, C. W. Leadbeater wrote of entities of this sort, ‘will often see crowds of these unfortunate creatures hanging round butchers’ shops, public houses, or other even more disreputable places—wherever the gross influences in which they

‘One whose psychic

delight are to be found, and where they encounter men and women still in the flesh who are like-minded with themselves.’ 13 This quotation is typical of its author, an eccentric clergyman who became a leading light of the Theosophical Society and a bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church. When the soul passes on to higher planes, it leaves its astral body—a spectral replica of the physical body—behind on the astral plane like an empty shell. Or almost empty, for just as the physical body retains sufficient energy to grow its hair and nails for a time after death, so the astral corpse retains a lingering spark of vitality. It longs to live again and it too can be drawn back into the physical world, deliberately or sometimes unintentionally, where it prolongs its existence by absorbing energy from the living. It has been suggested that many of the ‘spirits’ which communicate through mediums at seances are really astral corpses. Alternatively, an astral shell may be seized on by an elemental which uses it to communicate with the living, and this has been advanced as an explanation of mischievous, trivial or incoherent statements made by the supposed spirits of the dead. An elemental is another of the creatures of the astral plane, which has many inhabitants besides the dead. It is populated by all sorts of beings, whether of human imagining or independent origin—the gods, spirits and demons of outworn creeds and primitive beliefs, the astral bodies of animals, the astral simulacra of celebrated characters of fiction and legend, like Hamlet or Robin Hood, into whom sufficient human interest has been poured to endow them with long-lived astral existence, and innumerable nature spirits, fairies and other beings of folklore, nymphs and satyrs, trolls and gnomes, elves and goblins. All human thoughts are believed to impress themselves on the material of the astral plane—the astral light—creating corresponding astral forms which have a life of their own. Though this life is usually very brief, since a passing thought creates only a fleeting astral image, any powerful, persistent or deliberately concentrated current of thought and imagination creates a vigorous elemental, which feeds on the energy of the mind that gives it birth and which, for good or ill, devotes itself to the person at whom that thought is directed. A violent flow of raging hatred against an enemy, for example, sends a fiercely hostile elemental against him. Similarly, menacing ‘atmospheres’ may be created by the impact of powerful emotion on the astral light: Wherever any intense

passion has been felt, such

as

terror,

pain,

hatred, etc., so powerful an impression is made on the astral that persons with but a faint glimmer of psychic faculty may be light impressed by it. A slight temporary increase of sensibility would enable a man to visualise the entire scene: hence many stories of haunted places, and of the unpleasant influences of such spots as

sorrow,

Tyburn Tree, the Chamber of Horrors

at

Madame Tussaud’s,

etc. 14

The Western idea of the astral body has its roots in Greek philosophical speculation about the souls of stars, hence the term ‘astral’, but modern occultists believe in a variety of subtle bodies, ‘sheaths’ or ‘vehicles’ of human personality. Some distinguish between the astral body and the etheric body. The etheric body, which is the animating principle in the physical body, is an ethereal replica of the physical body and can be extruded from it, voluntarily or involuntarily, though it remains connected to it by the ‘silver cord’ of Ecclesiastes: ‘Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken.’ 15 At death the silver cord is loosed and the etheric body separates from the physical body, but remains close to it and slowly disintegrates. According to this theory, vague spectres and ghostly lights seen hovering about graves in churchyards are mouldering etheric bodies. Here again, the occultists have fitted old folk beliefs into their own framework, for it has been widely believed that, whatever may happen to the soul after death, something uncanny and dangerous remains close to the dead physical body. This is why graveyards are not

generally regarded as pleasant places to linger in, especially at night, and European folklore is full of mysterious and sinister lights and flames, corpse lights and corpse candles, associated with the dead. The ancient Egyptians looked forward to a vigorous existence after death, for which they considered a physical body essential and so took pains to preserve it. They thought that man consisted of a physical body and several psychic elements, some of which remained close to the mummified corpse. There was an early belief that the dead lived on in their tombs, where they were provided with the food and equipment they needed by their relatives and descendants. Though the concept of the dead man living on in his grave became overlaid with more complicated

notions of what

happened

to

him after

death,

the

Egyptians

believe that something which had power existed in the tomb. It was invoked against anyone who might want to rob the tomb or steal it, as in an inscription of about 2500 B.C. inside a tomb, in which the dead man is made to say, ‘As for any man who shall enter continued

to

into this tomb as his mortuary possession, I will seize him like a wild fowl. .’ 16 The Egyptians also wrote letters to the dead, posting them by putting them in the tombs, and one of about 1200 B.C. has survived in which a man begs his dead wife to stop persecuting him. He had taken good care of her when she was alive, and when she was dead he had made sure that she was decently buried. ‘What harm have I done you’, he says plaintively, ‘that you so distress me?’ And he threatens to complain to the gods about her. 17 .

3

.

Immortality, Death and

Sex

beyond porch and portal, Crowned with calm leaves, she stands, Who gathers all things mortal With cold immortal hands; Pale,

Her

languid lips are sweeter

Than love’s who fears to greet her To men that mix and meet her From many times and lands. Swinburne, The Garden

of Proserpine

have welcomed the prospect of dying, as a merciful release Some from this world or as the gateway to a better one, but the far more common reaction has been fear, fear of pain, fear of parting from those who love you, fear of hell or purgatory, fear of the threshold, of the unknown, of obliteration. These fears are naturally resented and death is sometimes regarded as an intruder on the scene. Left to itself, life would have gone on for ever, but death stalked onto the stage to spoil the play. In the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, for instance, the pharaohs are told that they are sure of immortal life because they are divine and existed before death came into the world. There is a disagreeable Babylonian myth about a man named Adapa, who was created by the god Ea as a leader among men. He was summoned before the supreme men

god of the sky because in a fit of temper he had broken the south wind’s

His father, Ea, warned him not to accept the bread and water of death which the sky god would offer him, but his defence satisfied the god and the food which he was offered and refused turned out to be the bread and water of life. Then the supreme god laughed at him and said, ‘Take him back to his earth’. In this way Adapa forfeited immortality and brought disease and, apparently, death upon all men. 18

wing.

There are other myths of how mankind could have been immortal except for someone’s mistake. The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis is one, and there is another in the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, where a snake is again the villain of the piece, and mortality and immortality are again a matter of eating something—we eat to live, after all—in this case a prickly plant which grows at the bottom of the sea and restores youth to the old. Gilgamesh is a superhuman hero of colossal vitality and vigour, but even he is caught in the web of ageing and death. When his dearest friend dies, he cannot escape the sorrow of his loss and cannot call him back from the dead, and he himself grows older each day. So he sets out in quest of immortality and after overcoming all sorts of dangers and difficulties he reaches the bottom of the sea and seizes the precious plant. But on his way back with it, he stops to bathe in a pool and leaves the plant on the bank. A snake smells the plant’s fragrance and promptly makes off with it, sloughing its skin as it goes, and so stealing the immortality which might have belonged to man. The central theme of the Epic, however, is the simple tragic truth that all men die. Gilgamesh is told that when the gods made man, they allotted him death, and immortal life they kept for themselves. 19 Similarly, the earliest Greek writers drew the distinction between men, who are ‘mortals’, and the gods, ‘the immortals’, kept forever young by what they eat and drink, ambrosia and nectar. Though the gods can kill men when they choose, death is essentially beyond their control, for as the goddess Athene says in the Odyssey, they cannot save a man’s life when death puts its hand on him. Herodotus quotes the great Athenian lawgiver Solon as saying that the happiest man he ever knew was an Athenian named Tellus, who lived in a prosperous city, had fine sons, survived to see his grandchildren, and after a good life enjoyed a glorious death, for he fell fighting patriotically in battle and was given a public funeral on the spot where he fell. At less philosophical levels, however, death and the carnage of battle were not so calmly accepted. In the Iliad death ‘devours’ its victims, who are ‘engulfed by the unlovely dark’. The shield made for Achilles by Hephaestus, the divine craftsman, depicted a pitched battle: And there was the dreadful Spirit of Death laying her hands on a freshly wounded man who was still alive and another not yet wounded, and dragging a corpse by its foot through the crowd. The cloak on her shoulders was red with human blood. .’ 20 .

.

In northern mythology the battle-maidens called Valkyries, ‘choosers

of the slain’, ride about battlefields, selecting brave warriors to die and leading them to Valhalla. The raven, as an eater of the slain, is connected with the Valkyries, who may originally have been believed to devour the dead: Old Norse literature has left us with a picture of dignified Valkyries riding on horses and armed with spears, but a different, cruder picture of supernatural women connected with blood and slaughter has also survived. Female creatures, sometimes of gigantic size, pour blood over a district where a battle is to take place; they are sometimes described as carrying troughs of blood or riding on wolves, or are seen rowing a boat through a rain of blood falling from the

sky. 21 The Valkyries officiated described

at

may be partly descended from real priestesses who human sacrifices. An Arab traveller of the tenth century

a ceremony performed by Swedish settlers in the Volga River country when, as was customary, a slave-girl had volunteered to be killed at the funeral of her master. For several days before the ceremony the girl drank and sang joyfully and ‘seemed to be looking

forward to a coming happiness’. On the day of the sacrifice she visited some of the settlers’ tents, whose owners copulated with her and told her to tell her master that they had done this out of love for him. Then they took her to a thing like a door-frame which they had made and three times they lifted her up so that she could see over the top of it. The first time she said that she could see her father and mother, the second time that she could see all her dead kinsmen, the third time that she could see her dead master sitting in paradise, which was fair and green, and others with him. And she said, ‘He is calling me, let me go to him.’ Then she was taken to the tent where her master’s corpse was and there six men had intercourse with her. She was then stabbed and throttled with a cord by an old priestess and her assistants, and her body was burned with her master’s corpse on a pyre so that she would go to him in the afterworld. The priestess was ‘an old hag-like woman, thickset and grim-looking’. She was called the Angel of Death. 22 The mixture of sexuality and death in this ceremony is startling, but the act in which life is created and the act in which it is taken away have often been closely linked. It is a widespread poetic observation serve

phallus ‘dies’ in the orgasm which generates new life. The loss of sperm in orgasm has frequently been regarded as a loss of some of the male’s life-substance and the Volga settlers who copulated with the

that the

of her dead master may have thought that of their vital energy for his sake.

slave-girl for love sacrificing

some

they were

Life and death are opposites which merge into a unity at a more sophisticated level when death is regarded as part of a natural cycle. This is an alternative, which provides some psychological armour against death, to the view of it as an unnatural intruder. Nature can be thought of as perpetually renewing itself in a cycle of life, death and rebirth, as the sun and moon do in the sky, as plants do on the earth, as the dying god does, resurrected every spring. There was a close connection in ancient religions between mother goddesses, the earth, vegetation and the dead. The dead buried in the soil could naturally be thought to influence the growth of crops, and perhaps they were laid to rest in the body of the Earth Mother, like sperm finding its way to her womb, in the hope that they would he reborn as the crops were. The Eleusinian Mysteries grew out of agricultural ceremonies and the belief that their initiates were assured of immortality seems to have been based on an analogy with the seed-corn, reborn in the spring. In many societies the important stages in human life have been interpreted as successive deaths and rebirths. The newborn baby is an ancestor returned to life. At puberty he dies as a child and is reborn as an adult. He eventually becomes an elder, and then he dies and is reborn again as a baby. Similarly, a magician must die as an ordinary and be reborn as an adept. These transitions involve ceremonies man of initiation which simulate death and rebirth. Initiation as a Master Mason, for example, involves the mimicked killing of the candidate by a blow from a hammer. An open grave is drawn on a sheet on the floor and the candidate is lowered into it. In some lodges a clock or a gong strikes twelve, in some a funeral hymn is sung or the Dead March in Saul is played on an organ. The Master of the lodge then raises the candidate to life again. He is instructed in the secret signs and the word of his new degree and is presented with his Master’s apron. He has acted out the story of Hiram Abiff, the chief architect of the Temple at Jerusalem who, according to Masonic legend, was murdered by some of his fellow craftsmen for refusing to reveal the secrets of a Master Mason. A prayer spoken by the Master of the lodge before the mock

death asks Almighty God to imbue the candidate ‘with such fortitude that in the hour of trial he fail not, but that passing safely through the valley of the shadow of death, he may finally rise from the tomb of transgression, to shine as the stars for ever and ever’. 23

The view of birth and death as complementary stages of the natural process results in the paradoxical association of the dead with festivals of renewal, at springtime or the New Year. In simpler societies the ancestors are an important part of the family group and their presence at the year’s opening is a mark of continuity, of the beginning of a new stage in the continuing cycle of a family or a people or the world. The dead were believed to come back to their old homes at Hallowe’en, for example, which originally marked the end of the Old Year and the opening of the New, at the beginning of November. In The Golden Bough Frazer emphasised the affection for the dead implied in Hallowe’en customs:

Not only among the Celts but throughout Europe, Hallowe’en, the night which marks the transition from autumn to winter, seems to

have been of old the time of year when the souls were thought to revisit their old homes to warm themselves by the fire and to comfort themselves with the good cheer provided for them in the kitchen or the parlour by their affectionate kinsfolk. It was, perhaps, a natural thought that the approach of winter should drive the poor shivering hungry ghosts from the bare fields and the leafless woodlands to the shelter of the cottage with its familiar fireside.24 But where there was family affection and merriment on Hallowe’en, with games and divinations for the coming year, there was also fear, for both the dead and the beginning of a new, untried year arouse unease. It was not a good night to walk in the darkness, while the hosts of the dead drifted by like autumn leaves and all sorts of sinister creatures prowled the threshold of the Old Year and the New—the fairies, who were closely connected with the dead, ghouls and hobgoblins, witches riding on broomsticks or black horses, or flying in sieves or eggshells. The singers and dancers went from house to house in blood-curdling masks and costumes which may have been meant to protect them against evil and which were probably also tangible representations of what lurked unseen in the night. It is these masks and disguises which have descended to children, who visit the neighbours for the offerings that once belonged to the dead and play malicious tricks on those who refuse them. The modern

witches, who celebrate Hallowe’en with more serious fervour and try to make contact with dead relatives and friends at their ceremonies, regard the ‘great rite’ of copulation between their high priest and high priestess as essential to the occasion. The witches set

store by pagan seasonal symbolism and for them life and death linked in the cycle of nature, in a unity of opposites, so that to are celebrate one is to celebrate the other, and to achieve orgasm is both

much

to

mime death and affirm life.

In Athens, the spring festival of Anthesteria, the feast of flowers, was a time of rejoicing, celebrating the broaching of the new wine and the sacred marriage of Dionysus, god of wine, who was brought into the city on a wheeled ship and bedded with the wife of the King Archon in rites whose details we are not told. But this festival of spring and intoxication and reawakened sexuality was also uncanny and sinister, for during it the ghosts of the dead blossomed like flowers and thronged the city. Each family cooked a meal for its dead kinsfolk and the citizens nervously chewed blackthorn, which is a laxative and therefore effective

ridding oneself of evil influences. Dionysus was the god of than wine, the ruler of sap and sperm, of intoxication and ecstasy and orgy, of all the fruitfulness and vigour and abandon of pulsing life, and he was also the master of the dead. In a book on the god which has been described as ‘itself a document of the Dionysiac cult’, the German scholar W. F. Otto said, ‘Man’s experience tells him that wherever there are signs of life, death is in the offing. The and terror of life are so because are intoxicated profound they rapture with death.’25 Among the plants sacred to Dionysus were the myrtle, which was associated with death and also belonged to Aphrodite, the love goddess; the fig of sexuality; the pine which bears a phallic cone; and the of ivy intoxication. Myrtle, pine and ivy are all evergreens, implying immortality, and ivy was used to decorate graves, presumably as a symbol of life persisting through the winter of death. Evergreen trees grow in our churchyards and we still send evergreen wreaths to funerals, though the wreath is being steadily displaced by the sheaf, which is an emblem of both reaping and fertility, death and new life. Close association of sex with death is known from prehistoric times in Europe, in the custom of placing carvings of the phallus in graves, in

far

more

.

.

.

as symbols of the dead penetrating the Earth Mother, a final of incest in which man returns to the womb that gave him birth, and perhaps in the hope of new life, for the phallus itself is a dying and rising godling. It was said that Dionysus planted a fig tree at the gateway of Hades, and the fig is a sexual emblem, as D. H. Lawrence observed, combining male and female. The tree itself looks male but the fruit represents ‘the fissure, the yoni, the wonderful moist conductivity

perhaps act

towards the centre’. So the story of the fig at the entrance to the land of the dead suggests that the ‘little death’ of love is an image of the greater death. Ovid used the same image in saying that he wanted to die making love: ‘Let me go in the act of coming to Venus; in more senses than one let my last dying be done.’ The narrow bed of death can become the marriage bed of the soul and its god. Neo-platonist philosophers and Christian mystics spoke of the soul’s union with God in terms of a sexual embrace. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Christian spiritual values were mined from beneath the surface of classical literature to such an extent that Ovid’s Ars Amatoria improbably became recommended reading for medieval nuns. Ganymede was in Greek mythology the victim of a homosexual rape by Zeus which gained him immortality, for he was carried off to be the cupbearer of Olympus. He became in Alciati’s Emblematum Liber of the sixteenth century a type of ‘the unsullied soul finding its joy in God’. One commentator on Alciati even reminded his readers in this connection of Christ’s saying, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me’. 26 The expression ‘come through to Jesus’ has been used with a double meaning, physical and spiritual, by American revivalist preachers in the South in this century. In late Roman art the god of desire, Eros or Amor or Cupid, appeared in funeral contexts. For instance, he was shown burning to ashes with inverted torch a butterfly, a symbol of the soul. The love story of Cupid and Psyche was interpreted as an allegory of the soul’s dealings with the divine (psyche is the Greek for ‘soul’) and Renaissance humanists identified the funeral Eros with death itself, inflicting on the soul the burning torment of love and consummation. They were also impressed by pictures on Roman tombs of the loves of gods and mortals, Jupiter and Leda or Ganymede, Bacchus and Ariadne, Diana and Endymion, with the implication that the most blessed death is the embrace of the deity, in union with whom the soul achieves immortal delight. Pico della Mirandola in the fifteenth century said that he had found in the Cabala the theme of the mors osculi, ‘the death of the kiss’, the final rapture in which the soul is united with the divine. Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’Amore deals with ‘union and copulation with God Most High’, and Professor Wind said that the humanist view ‘comes remarkably close to a modern opinion that the pagan mysteries culminated in a hieros gamos, an ecstatic union with the god which was experienced by the neophyte as an initiation into death’.27 In medieval funeral dances men and women kissed in anticipation of resurrection.

There is the same sense of voluptuous death in the fleshly, languorous statues which decorate Forest Lawn, the famous cemetery and funeral

park

in Los

Angeles.

the poetic and philosophical personification of death in a comely form of flesh, as Eros or Cupid, is the representation of him as a skeleton in the Middle Ages and later. The skeleton holds the dart, which was also Cupid’s weapon, with which he strikes the fatal blow, or is sometimes shown aiming a crossbow at the living. He also acquired a scythe, with which he mows all flesh as grass, and an hourglass in which the sands of time run out for every man. In the medieval dance of death, a theme which originated in a late thirteenth-century poem and was carved and painted on the walls of churches, grinning skeletons caper hand-in-hand round graves and slide their bony arms confidingly round the waists of the living. The theme was not confined to pictures. Miming dances of death were performed and have not entirely died out. In Spain, for example, skeletons cavort in Holy Week processions and they abound in Mexico on the Day of the Dead. The ravages of the Black Death stimulated this grisly clowning. In 1433 Death armed with a scythe rode through the streets of Florence in a black wagon painted with skulls, crossbones and crosses. On the wagon were graves which opened at the sound of a trumpet, and skeletal figures climbed out of them to chant a lament of pain and repentance. The wagon was accompanied by dead men on starving horses with black torches and black flags bearing a cross and a skull. 28 In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a horrified preoccupation with the body’s corruption in the grave shows itself in funeral monuments, apparently a reaction to an overdose of death in the form of raging epidemics and to a new sense of the value and dignity of man, and so of the indignity of his ending. The sixteenth-century tomb of John Wakeman, Bishop of Gloucester, at Tewkesbury, shows a mouse, In

sharp

contrast to

snakes and snails On

one

of the

feeding most

on

the corpse:

beautiful Gothic tombs in

England,

that of the

Duchess of Suffolk at Ewelme, the Duchess lies in prayer, her finely-drawn ageing features almost certainly a portrait; above is a choir of angels while on the sarcophagus other angels hold armorial shields; but below, through a tracery panel, can be seen a decomposing corpse, carved with infinite detail despite the obscurity of its position, stretched on its shroud, the long hair still falling from the skull. 29 The literature of the

period

is also full of

worms

and maggots, cold

obstruction and rot, the skull beneath the skin. The preoccupation waned, disappeared in the Age of Reason, and was replaced in the late eighteenth century by gothic tales of horror and a new fascination with ghosts and vampires, the dead who have not departed to immortality or extinction but linger threateningly among the living. The skeletal Death of the Middle Ages is a warning of the rot and ultimate destruction of the flesh, and so of the corruption and ultimate emptiness of the things of this world. He robs the king of his power, the merchant of his riches, the fighting man of his strength, the woman of her beauty. He reduces all men to a common nonentity as meat for worms in the grave. He may be shown with a pretty girl in his clasp, but his embrace is not a consummation to be wished. He is the wages of sin, the penalty for the crime of Eden which brought death into the world. If the interpretation put forward by S. G. F. Brandon is correct, the original intention of the story of Adam and Eve was to explain death as the inevitable consequence of sex. One of the purposes of the creation myth in Genesis was to provide a basis for a theology which did not believe in any effective afterlife and which was opposed to the old cults of the dead, which flourished in Palestine as elsewhere, because they involved the worship of beings other than Yahweh, the one true God. Hence the play on the words adam, ‘man’, and adamah, ‘the ground’, from which man is formed and to which the story condemns him to return. The immediate result of eating the forbidden fruit, which seems to have been a fig originally, not the apple of later tradition, was that Adam and Eve blushed at their nakedness and covered themselves, and it was only after the fall that ‘Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived'. The knowledge of good and evil which they gained was the knowledge of how to reproduce the human species, and in acquiring it they became ‘like God’, the maker of life. That this knowledge necessarily brought death in its train is explained, Professor Brandon suggested, by the belief found in other traditions that if there was no death the earth would become intolerably overcrowded. Once man had discovered how to reproduce himself, he had to be condemned to die and moulder away to nothing in the dust. 30 Dying, as we think of it, is a characteristic of creatures which reproduce themselves sexually and so create new lives, and we do not usually talk about the death of an organism which reproduces itself by splitting into two identical halves. But if this was the original meaning of the story in Genesis, Christian writers failed to recognise it. However, it did become accepted Christian doctrine that original sin, the death-dealing

taint in human nature, was transmitted generation after generation through the sexual mechanism, and this view contributed to the body-hating strain in Christianity. In St Augustine’s opinion, which had a dominating influence on Christian thought on the subject, sexual passion was the result of the fall. Before he fell, Adam’s sexual impulse was under his control, afterwards it was not. St Augustine was horrified by the irrationality of erotic love, by desire which sweeps human beings away on an irresistible floodtide, smashing down all barriers of reason, convention and self-control. It was through the carnal heat and excitement of the sexual act, he thought, that original sin was transmitted to each generation, and slavery to uncontrollable desire was the ironic consequence of man’s attempt

authority and be his

to

free himself from God’s

own master.

This attitude seems to stand at the opposite pole from the theme of the death of the kiss in late paganism and among Renaissance humanists. But St Augustine contrasted carnal passion on the fallen human plane with spiritualised sexuality on the divine plane, the love which human beings would have enjoyed if it had not been for the fall. And he was perfectly capable of using sexual imagery to describe the Crucifixion as the marriage of Christ and ‘the woman’, the Church: Like

went forth from his chamber, he went of his presage nuptials into the field of the world. He came to the marriage-bed of the cross, and there, in mounting it, he consummated his marriage. And when he perceived the sighs of the creature, he lovingly gave himself up to the torment in place of his bride, and he joined himself to the woman for ever. 31 out

a

bridegroom Christ

with

a

.

.

.

No great personified figure of Death stalks across the landscape of the European imagination, though the ‘death on a pale horse’ of Revelation has occasionally been a subject of art, because the Devil was regarded as the author of death and he had an iconography of his own. Later Jewish writers, as part of a tendency to place God at one remove from the evils of the world he had created, built up the figure of the angel of death, Sammael. Like the Devil himself in his early development, this dark angel is the servant of God, but he makes a useful whipping-boy for human resentment of death. He strangles his victims with a cord or kills them with a poisoned sword, hence his name, which means ‘venom of God’. Sammael and Satan were often identified and the author of the Wisdom of Solomon flatly attributed

death to the Devil.

God did

make death, and he does not delight in the death of the for God created man for incorruption, and made him in living the image of his own eternity, but through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his party experience it. 32 .

not

.

.

Christians regard death as the penalty of sin, the divinely appointed punishment of the crime in Eden, but as they identified the Devil with the serpent they made him responsible for it. Christ’s life and death on earth had, in Christian theory, broken Satan’s inexorable grip on mankind and had brought back to men the possibility of immortality which Adam had forfeited. St Paul believed that Christ would soon in glory to destroy ‘every rule and every authority and power. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.’ Until this point in the future was reached, the effect of faith in Christ was not to eliminate physical death but to gain the blessed otherworld beyond the grave, where there was no death and also no sex, no marrying or giving in return .

.

.

St Paul used agricultural symbolism in image of the resurrected seed-corn which

marriage.

speaking

of this, the

same

seems

to

have been

central

to

the Eleusinian Mysteries. ‘What you

sow

does

not come to

life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives

body as he has chosen. .’ And he goes on to talk of the ‘spiritual body’, which alchemists and occultists later took as a reference to an ethereal body, or astral body, which has its existence on a plane that

it

a

.

transcends the

4

The

.

physical world,

the

plane of life after

death. 33

Vampire But

first, on earth

as

Vampire sent,

shall from its tomb be rent: Thy Then ghastly haunt thy native place, And suck the blood of all thy race; There from thy daughter, sister, wife, At midnight drain the stream of life; Yet loathe the banquet which perforce Must feed thy livid living corse. corse

Byron, The

a black variation on the theme of the death of the kiss. embraces draw the life from its victims and bestow on them fanged of its own sort, for unless saved in time they become immortality

The vampire is Its an

Giaour

in their

is a living corpse, a gruesome conjunction in its grave but does not decay. If it of opposites, which lies is dug up, it looks as if it is peacefully asleep, though there may be traces of blood round its mouth, for it sustains itself by emanating silently from its grave at night and draining the energies of the living.

vampires

turn.

A

vampire

only by biting their throats to suck blood but also through sex, though this element of its activities was bowdlerised into the background in the nineteenth century. The vampire of legend is probably based on real human sadism. It does this

not

In late classical times the empusa and the lamia, which were nursery that would come and steal away naughty children, were also described as demons which turned themselves into beautiful girls to satisfy a cannibal sexual appetite for young men. The vampire of more recent lore, however, may be either male or female, preying on the opposite sex, and is not a demon but an animated corpse which clings to life with distressing zeal. It is rapaciously erotic because it needs both the blood, the vehicle of life, and the life-giving sexual energy of its

bogies

to keep itself in existence, and its hypnotic stare throws them sexual daze in which they do not realise what is happening to

victims into

a

them.

Though the vampire are

and what can suitably be called its blood-relations known in many parts of the world, it is especially a creature

of eastern Europe—Hungary and Transylvania, Poland, Russia, the Balkans and Greece. Its ranks are recruited partly by selection and partly from witches, suicides and other evil men and women, especially dabblers in black magic. The principal weapons against it are light, garlic, iron, the sign of the cross and the sound of bells, all of which it hates. It can be identified if its coffin is opened and it is found looking fresh and healthy. It should then be decapitated and either burned to

ashes or buried at a crossroads with a stake through its heart. As the stake is driven through it the body may writhe in agony, but after that it will rest in peace. In 1732 five army officers signed a report on an apparent case of vampire activity at a village near Belgrade. A young soldier had returned to the village from service in Greece, saying that while away he had been attacked by a vampire. He died not long afterwards and was buried in the village churchyard, but after a month or so he was seen at walking night and those who had seen him felt strangely weak. Several of them died, fear spread, and the soldier’s corpse was exhumed

by a military party, including two army

doctors. The

body looked as

if it had

not been dead more than a day. A thin trickle of blood had of the corner of its mouth, which was open. They scattered garlic over it and drove a stake through it. It screamed and spouted blood. Then they dug up the bodies of four people thought to have died as a result of its activities, drove whitethorn stakes through them and finally burned all five corpses. 34 Premature burials may account for some cases of bodies exhumed and found suspiciously fresh and stained with blood, but this was not an explanation which satisfied people in the past. The clergy saw the Devil at work, energising corpses and preserving them from decomposition, and sending them to attack the living so as to bring yet more souls under his sway. A Jesuit named François Richard published in 1657 an account of his experiences on the Aegean island of Santorin, where the people would gather at the grave of a suspected vampire on a Saturday, which was the one day of the week when they felt sure of finding it there. After saying prayers they dug it up and if the body looked too healthy the local priest commanded the Devil to come out of it. If this was successful, the corpse would rapidly lose its colour and plumpness. If not, they burned it to ashes. 35 At the popular level in some parts of Europe a peculiar parallel seems to have been drawn between Christ, who died and rose again, and vampires which in their own unholy way did the same. Saturday, the day on which the people of Santorin expected to find a vampire at rest in its grave, was the day between the death of Jesus on the cross, on a Friday, and his resurrection, on a Sunday. There is also a tradition that anyone born on Christmas Day is likely to be a vampire. As part of the enthusiasm for spine-chilling gothic romances in the nineteenth century there was a craze for vampire stories. The popular tale of Varney the Vampire, or the Feast ofBlood was published in 1847 and late in the century appeared the supreme specimen of the genre, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, whose life has subsequently been nourished on the vital energies of several generations of filmgoers. A blood-drinking bat, discovered in South America, was promptly named vampire bat, and the bat and the vampire became closely linked. The liking for gothic horrors was one sign of a revival of interest in the occult, which has gone on gaining strength ever since. Some of the members of the Order of the Golden Dawn, an interesting and influential occult society in Britain at the turn of the century, were nervously liable to see vampires round every corner. In occult theory, earthbound ghosts or astral corpses drain vital energy from living victims, or an elemental run out

may be responsible. J. W. Brodie-Innes, a lawyer and novelist who was of the leaders of the Golden Dawn’s branch at Edinburgh, found himself confronted by a ‘vampirising elemental’ which he believed to be preying on his wife, who was suffering from exhaustion after an illness. He worked out a magical ritual for summoning this creature to visible appearance and ‘a vague blot, like a scrap of London fog’ materialised before him and slowly condensed into ‘a most foul shape, between a bloated big-bellied toad and a malicious ape’. Mobilising all his inner one

lightning-flash of concentrated destructive slight feeling of shock, a foul smell, a momentary

resources, he struck it with

will. ‘There

was a

a

dimness, and then the thing was gone.’ His wife rapidly recovered.36 J. F. C. Fuller, the strategist and military historian, was for a time as ardent disciple of Aleister Crowley, the notorious who had earlier been a member of the Golden Dawn. Fuller magician, told the dramatic tale of how Crowley had vanquished a vampire, ‘Mrs M.’. Visiting her one day, Crowley felt ‘something velvet-soft a

young

man an

and M.

soothing and withal lecherous’ stroking his hand and found Mrs bending over him, suddenly transformed from a middle-aged woman, ‘worn with strange lusts’, into a ‘young woman of bewitching beauty’. Crowley swiftly ‘smote the sorceress with her own current of evil’. Her hair turned white, her skin wrinkled and her eyes dulled. ‘The girl of twenty had gone; before him stood a hag of sixty, bent, decrepit, debauched. With dribbling curses she hobbled from the room.’ 37 ‘Mrs M.’ comes from a long line of voracious enchantresses of legend and folk belief, given a new lease of life in modern fiction, and she indicates the tendency to identify as a vampire anyone of greedy and exhausting habits. In her book Psychic Self-Defence, Dion Fortune, who was a pupil of Brodie-Innes and later founded the Fraternity of the Inner Light, considered the way in which one partner in a relationship may seem to feed on the energy of the other. This can sometimes be observed of a pair of friends or lovers, a married couple or a parent and child. She suggested that: In

some

way which

we

do

not as

yet

fully understand,

the

negative

partner of such a rapport is ‘shorting’ on to the positive partner. There is a leakage of vitality going on, and the dominant partner is more or

less

consciously lapping

it up, if not

actually sucking it out.

She distinguished this ‘psychic parasitism’ from vampire activity proper, in which the attack is deliberate and which she thought depends on ‘the power to project the etheric double’, that is, to send the subtle body to

attack the victim. She recommended that in a suspected case the victim’s body should be carefully examined with a magnifying-glass: The search will probably be rewarded by the discovery of numerous minute punctures, so minute that they are not discovered by an examination with the naked eye unless they reveal themselves by becoming infected and suppurating, when they are usually mistaken for insect bites. They are bites right enough, but not those of an insect. 38

That some people are curiously voracious and exhausting—sexually otherwise—is a common fact of experience, and though this is a long way from the throat-puncturing animated corpse of the legend it probably has a good deal to do with belief in the legend. An extraordinary or

case

of vampirish

poltergeist activity in Indianapolis, Indiana,

in 1962 was investigated by a leading American parapsychologist, W. G. Roll. A poltergeist is a noisy and tiresome ‘spirit’ which moves furniture about and smashes crockery, but in this case it also bit people.

There were three people in the house, a girl of thirteen, her mother and her grandmother. The grandmother received most of the wounds and on several occasions when Roll was there, she cried out and fresh punctures, sometimes bleeding, were found on her body. Poltergeist cases, where genuine, seem to be connected with someone in the house who is deeply disturbed and who apparently causes the occurrences unconsciously. The mental disturbance involved is usually to do with feelings of violent hostility which the person cannot or will not express openly. In this case the old lady’s daughter seems to have been responsible and if, as seems likely, she was the unconscious cause of the bites, some cases of supposed vampirism may have more in them than is

generally imagined. 39

The old belief in the animated corpse is by no means extinct. A vampire is thought to be buried in Highgate Cemetery in London, and in 1970 a man was found there with a crucifix and a wooden stake, intent

on

seeking

it out and

destroying

it. At Stoke-on-Trent in 1973

elderly Polish workman who had been inquest terrified of vampires and took complicated precautions against them. He put cloves of garlic in a bowl which he hung up outside the window of his room and sprinkled salt on his blanket and round the room. When he went to bed he put a bag of salt beside his head and another between his legs. He also put a piece of garlic in his mouth before going to sleep, and it was choking on this which killed him. an

was

held

on an

5

The

Devouring Dog Call for the robin redbreast, and the wren, Since o’er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. But keep the wolf far thence, that’s foe to men, For with his nails he’ll dig them up again. Webster, The White Devil .

.

.

In spite of the fear which the restless, vengeful dead generally provoke, people have quite often been denied decent burial, as a way of punishing

after death and sometimes to protect the soil from the In Greece and Rome the bodies of suicides and criminals were not given proper burial. Christian burial was frequently refused in the Middle Ages to suicides, heretics, witches and noxious criminals, and any of them who had been buried in error might be dug up again and burned. In England the bodies of executed traitors were quartered and the pieces were hung up to rot in high places, neither in heaven nor on earth. After the restoration of Charles II in 1660 the mouldering carcass of Oliver Cromwell was disinterred and hanged at Tyburn. The body of a debtor could be denied burial until the debt was paid and as late as 1811 a corpse was arrested for debt in London. Fear of the unhallowed dead persisted, however. Suicides, as well as suspected vampires, were buried at crossroads with a stake through the body, the stake to keep the dead thing from walking and the cross-roads perhaps to confuse it if it did. The last crossroads burial in England occurred in 1823, outside Lord’s cricket ground in London. Alternatively, a suicide’s head might be cut off and placed between his legs. When this was done in Lithuania in 1892, the locals explained that it them

even

pollution of their presence.

meant to stop the dead man walking. In the second century A.D., the Christians of Lyons complained that the authorities, ‘stimulated by the savage beast Satan’, prevented them from burying the bodies of their martyrs. The corpses were burned and the ashes thrown into the Rhone, ‘that there might not be a vestige of them remaining on the land’. This was intended, as the was

authorities

explained,

to

destroy the Christians’ hopes of resurrection,

‘that they might not have any hope of rising again, in the belief of which .’ 40 Seventeen they have introduced a new and strange religion. centuries later, in spite of St Paul’s teaching about the spiritual body, .

.

modern advocates of cremation met fierce opposition based on the principle, that burning a person’s body to ashes would destroy his chance of resurrection. In Rome in the year 897 the corpse of Pope Formosus, dead seven months, was dug up on the orders of his successor, Stephen VII, and tried by a synod for having usurped the papal throne. The body was duly found guilty and two fingers of its right hand were cut off, to teach it not to do it again. It was then thrown into the Tiber. Some fishermen found it bobbing unhappily about in the river and it was reburied, but in 905 Pope Sergius III had it dug up again. It was dressed in papal robes and seated on a throne to be tried once more. The body was condemned, beheaded, deprived of the remaining fingers of its right hand, and again thrown into the Tiber. In Scotland in 1562 the dead body of the Earl of Huntly was embalmed and shipped from Aberdeen to Edinburgh where, seven months later, it was propped upright in its coffin and tried for treason in the presence of Mary, Queen of Scots. It was found guilty, its armorial bearings were broken in front of it, and the poor tattered thing hung about until it was finally allowed burial, three years afterwards. After Kitchener’s victory over the dervishes at Omdurman in 1898, he had the tomb of the Mahdi, the dead leader whom the dervishes reverenced, razed to the ground and the Mahdi’s bones thrown into the Nile, except for the skull which was preserved. Queen Victoria was deeply shocked and Kitchener wrote to her to explain that he had destroyed the corpse to destroy belief in the Mahdi. The skull was then secretly buried in a Muslim cemetery, but Kitchener’s intentions were frustrated in the end, for the tomb was rebuilt by the Sudan government in the 1940s and has become a place of pilgrimage. The Mahdi episode, like the removal of Stalin’s body from view in the Kremlin or the incineration of the corpses of executed German war criminals in the Dachau ovens in 1946, is an example of the belief that to destroy a man’s mortal remains and funeral monument is to wipe same

his memory, his influence and his identity. This is felt to obliterate totally in a far more thoroughgoing way than his physical death entails. The prospect of such a thing happening to them has been viewed by many men with a revulsion which accounts for the denial of decent burial as a deterrent against crime and which also lies behind some attitudes to the dog in Western traditions. In many of its roles in folklore and symbolism the dog is naturally a warmly loved and admired animal, man’s loyal helper and companion, out

him

but it also has an evil reputation as an eater of corpses. The fate of Jezebel in the Old Testament was to be devoured by dogs, to destroy her identity. ‘In the territory of Jezreel the dogs shall eat the flesh of Jezebel; and the corpse of Jezebel shall be as dung upon the face of the field in the territory of Jezreel, so that no one can say, This is Jezebel.’ The horror of ‘man’s best friend’ in this role is vividly brought out in the Iliad, when the aged Priam foresees what will happen if the Greeks take Troy and he is killed: I shall be door. The very my pieces by ravening dogs watch will loll about I have fed at table and trained to dogs my gate when an old in front of it, maddened by their master’s blood man is killed and dogs defile his grey head, his grey beard and his 41 we privy parts, plumb the depths of human degradation.

And when someone’s javelin

or

sword has laid at

torn to

own

me

dead,

street

.

.

.

The pariah dogs of Eastern cities scour the streets for carrion and rubbish to eat, dogs like to roll in carrion and they and their relatives,

wolves, were seen to gnaw at corpses

on battlefields. In Egypt and Asia Minor jackals sniff out bodies in shallow graves and devour them. They also smell offensively and make horrible laughing and wailing noises at

are uncanny because they howl in the dark outside when all right-minded creatures are asleep, and because they seem to have psychic abilities denied to most humans, in sensing the presence of ghosts or the approach of danger. In folklore dogs are closely connected with death, of which their howling at night is an omen. Some families and houses are warned of an imminent death by the appearance of a spectral dog, and there are various phantom black dogs, the sight of which is fatal. In Norfolk, for example, a huge demonic hound named Black Shuck pads silently over the marshes and along lonely paths, leaving no footprints. ‘They say it is wise to shut your eyes if you

night. Dogs, similarly,

hear it

howling,

for

no one

survives whose eyes

meet

those of Black

Shuck.’ 42 The

dog

is

a

creature

of the threshold, the

guardian

of doors and

appropriately associated with the frontier between life and death, and with demons and ghosts which move across the frontier. The yawning gates of Hades were guarded by the monstrous watchdog Cerberus, whose function was to prevent the living from entering the underworld and the dead from leaving it. In Norse mythology the wolf-dog Garm guarded the entrance to the underworld. The was the beast of Hecate, the classical dog goddess of ghosts, darkness portals,

and

so

it is

and witchcraft. At Alexandria the Egyptian god Anubis was linked with the Greek Hermes, who led the dead down to the underworld, to form the dog-headed deity Hermanubis, called ‘the barker’, guide of dead souls. His priests wore dog-masks with black ears and muzzles. The hellhounds of Welsh lore are the white pack of the lord of the underworld. They have red ears and the voices of beagles. They fly through the air on the howling wind and their baying is an omen of death. So are the cries of the wisht hounds of Dartmoor, which are black and sprinkled with blood and serve a black huntsman. Numerous other packs of death-hounds are known in European folklore, and again the terror of them lies largely in the reversal of normal roles. The hounds which man uses for hunting hunt man to his own death. They are also linked with the image of devouring Death, the eater of men. It is perhaps not surprising that no dogs are allowed into the heavenly city, New Jerusalem, in the book of Revelation.

Chapter Three

Fate

say that fate has been kind to a man, but it is said with with a certain resentment. Fate is generally regarded surprise as an evil power, which operates the levers of time and death, which

It is

possible to

or even

thwarts a man’s ambitions, blights his hopes, turns his achievements to dust and ashes, and brings him in sorrow to the grave. Some men, like Napoleon and Hitler, have drawn strength from a conviction of being destined to greatness, but philosophical resignation or romantic defiance have been more common attitudes. Contradictory attitudes are as closely woven together in the web of ideas about fate as in reactions to death. Death itself is the obvious example of an inescapable fate waiting for every man at the end of his road, and the two are sometimes identified, as in the expressions ‘fatality’ and ‘fatal accident’. But though fate is inexorable, it is also not inexorable. We can say that a man has altered his fate or escaped it. An adventurer sets out to ‘seek his fortune’, with the implication that a different fate is in store for him outside his normal round than awaits him within it. Hero legends are full of examples of a man choosing one fate in preference to another. Cuchulain, the hero of Ulster, in his youth overheard a Druid saying that whoever was given his arms that day would grow up to be a great warrior, though his life would be hard and short. He went at once to the king to ask for his arms that day, and in the story his choice is both real and heroic. Achilles in the Iliad has a choice of two fates—to die young in battle and win eternal fame or to live quietly at home to a ripe old age and never be heard of again. Since he is a hero, he chooses fame and an early death. Most people are not logicians and are perfectly capable of believing

DOI: 10.4324/9781003363743-3

Fate

firmly and simultaneously in the affairs of men and we

in both fate and free-will. There is a tide can take the current when it serves, or fail,

and lose our ventures. The advantage of this way of looking at things is that it provides both a spur to action and a consolation for failure. It is not necessary to sink into an inert, fatalistic stupor to feel that, for all your own best efforts, some mechanism beyond human control and beyond all ordinary cause and effect will determine the outcome. If you try your best but fail, you must ruefully conclude that what you wanted was not to be, but you are not forced to tear yourself to pieces in

self-reproach. If fate is the repository of much blame that

might otherwise be turned the damagingly inwards, frequently repeated criticism that belief in it leads to a state of passive apathy is wide of the mark. In the Icelandic sagas, for instance, which must be the most relentlessly doom-haunted literature ever produced in the West, the characters are all convinced that they are in the grip of inexorable fate. But far from being supine, they are fiercely determined to have their own way and do as they please, regardless of the fated consequences. The contradiction is brought out into the open in an episode in Njal’s Saga in which a man sees an omen of his own approaching death and is told to be on his guard: to which he wryly replies that if his fate is sealed, taking care is not likely to help him. Belief in destiny, in other words, can liberate a man from an overcautious concern with the consequences of his actions. 1 Very often in practice fate is felt to determine only the major trends and events of life, and to allow for all sorts of different ways of reaching a destined goal. It is rather as if each man’s life was a complex maze with numerous blind alleys and many alternative paths which lead him to certain turning points, and sooner or later to the centre where his death awaits him. Fate and free-will are roughly reconciled by thinking then’ terms. If Achilles goes to Troy, then he will die young, in ‘if. not as the logical consequence of his action but because fate has so decreed. And so we sometimes decide not to act as a reasoned appraisal .

.

of probabilities suggests, but at the dictates of an obscure prompting of the trend of fate, the set of the tide, the direction in which things are moving. ‘I feel in my bones’, people say, that a particular line of action is the one to choose, or ‘something tells me’ or even ‘a little bird tells me’, which is a reminiscence of one of the principal roles of birds in to indicate the right action. Fate is jealous and vindictive. Those

folklore, most to

most favoured by fortune have for the wheel the balance tilts, and the taller they fear, turns,

Fate

the harder

come,

they fall. Many people feel uneasy when things

go

compensating retribution will overtake them people are also deeply reluctant to tempt fate by of the future. To say, or even to let yourself think, too confident being that all will be well, that success is assured, is to risk attracting the attention of something grimly envious that lurks round the corner, waiting to strike. Fingers are crossed and wood touched to ward it off, that

well, sensing before long. Many too

but it is better 1

not

a

alerted

at

all.

The Infernal Machine

When she plodded on in the shade of the hedge, silently thinking, she had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of Time and Chance, except, perhaps, fair

play. Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge

Our whole

complicated package

of feelings about fate

seems

to come

largely untouched by Christian hand. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition there is no such thing as fate. What exists instead is providence, the majestic and inscrutable purpose of God, which unlike fate is unchangeable, untemptable, just and benign. In the Old Testament God chooses a people, Israel, as the vehicle of his intentions in the play which he has written for the world. The Christian view also sees history as a play written by God, though in this case, as R. G. Collingwood remarked, to us

it is a play in which no character is the author’s favourite character. The Christian’s duty is to be a willing instrument of providence, to act his part in the play, whether he has a leading role or is only walking on. Carried to an extreme of submissiveness, this ideal has led some Christians to proclaim acceptance of an eternity in hell-fire in accordance with God’s purposes. ‘I have often said to Our Lord, in the midst of my labours’, wrote St Jeanne Fran oise de Chantal, ‘that if it pleases him to assign hell as my resting place, providing he ordains that my

will be

being

there will

not

insult him and that my eternal

torment

his everlasting glory, then I shall be content, and he will remain my God for ever.’ 2 This is an uncomfortably perverse statement, but the weakness of the concept of providence has not been its occasional masochistic excesses or even its association with doctrines of predestination that are hard to stomach, but simply that it is not easy to believe that God is working a beneficent purpose out as year succeeds to year. Wars, to

plagues, calamities and undeserved suffering make pagan attitudes seem more relevant to reality, and pagan attitudes have in fact persisted through all the centuries of Christianity. In Norse mythology the whole world is under sentence of death. In the future there lies inevitably Ragnarok, the Doom of the Gods. There will be devastating wars among men and all order will collapse in anarchy. An icy winter will seize the earth in its grip, a great wolf will devour the sun. The powers of evil will rise in fury to slaughter the gods in a last titanic battle. Fire will consume the whole race of men and the world will sink beneath the sea. Then a new and better world will rise from the waves and the beautiful god Balder will return from the dead bringing all the magic of springtime. All this is destined, inevitable, inescapable. Christians also believed that this world would be destroyed and replaced by a better one, but this was a consummation that would be engineered by God. In the Norse myth the Doom is beyond the control of the gods, who will themselves be destroyed in it, nor is the lovelier world of the future one which we shall ever see. Paganism discerns an order in the universe as surely as Christianity does. The plays of Sophocles, for example, present all events as part of a mysterious but divinely ordered design. The Women of Trachis, in which the characters are snared in an implacable pattern of anguish and death, ends with the magnificent lines: famines,

You have

seen strange things, The awful hand of death, new Uncounted sufferings; And all that you have seen Is God. 3

shapes of woe,

But the handiwork of this

god, Zeus, does not resemble anything a Christian would recognise as providence. There is a design, and man may learn wisdom by contemplating what little of it he can see, but its purpose is not the salvation of believers in heaven and it does not

lead to an eventual establishment of God’s kingdom, where ‘death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any

more’. What

and their relationship of him differ, easy but what many have felt drawn to in his plays is a sense of human helplessness, of man’s inability to understand or control the network of circumstance in which he is enmeshed. The order of the universe is

exactly Sophocles thought

to men

is

not

to

be

sure

about the

gods

of, and interpretations

embodied in the gods. When this order is threatened, the gods act to maintain it, and catastrophe strikes mortals who may not be at fault. And yet the gods are always right, for they see reality and we see only appearances. We make our decisions and they have their consequences, but a man is what he is, and if he is so flawed that like Oedipus he inevitably murders his father and sleeps with his mother, even though the flaw is not his fault, the gods will strike him down. What will happen, will happen, and we must respectfully bear what the gods send. Call no man happy until the day when he carries his happiness down to the grave in peace. But it is a universe of balance, of golden beauty as well as blinding pain, and when Oedipus has fought his gallant, arrogant, hopeless battle against his destiny he gains heroic stature in defeat. In Oedipus at Colonus, the last play which Sophocles wrote, the Chorus reflect that really it would be best not to live at all but, given life, then better to die young and escape as much misery as possible. But they go straight on to admire the obstinate courage with which Oedipus, like a rocky the shore, endures surging breakers of adversity. And in the end he receives a gentle death and becomes a semi-divine hero, one of those rare beings who have bridged the gap between gods and men. This happy ending, however, has been lost sight of, and the story of Oedipus has become the most famous of all tales of a man trapped in the barbed-wire entanglements of fate, caught in what Jean Cocteau called an infernal machine, constructed by the gods for the mathematical destruction of a mortal. Freud thought Oedipus Rex was a fundamentally immoral play and disliked ‘the pious subtlety which declares it the highest morality to how to the will of the gods’, but at the same time he believed that the tragedy makes its formidable impact because it expresses something very deep in human life and character. In the natural course of events the son grows up to replace his father, to succeed to his place in the world and to inherit the family property. The urge to do this adds hostility to affection in the son’s relationship with his father, and the Oedipus legend puts in extreme form the two longings arising from the son’s situation—to kill his father and appropriate his mother. There is the same background of inescapable necessity in Freud’s theory as in Sophocles, for the complex, if it exists, is an inevitable result of man’s situation in the world, a necessary consequence of being a man. Freud suggested that ‘we ought to reconcile ourselves to facts in which the Greek myth itself saw the hand of inexorable

destiny’. 4

In the

Iliad, which like Sophocles has

no concept of accident, your slice of life (the word is used in the ‘portion’, a for of If Odyssey ‘helping’ meat). something happens to you for which you see no evident explanation, you either say it was your moira, it had to be, or you say that a god or some lesser supernatural being has done it. The gods are ultimately in control of events, but with reservations. Zeus complains that fate is unkind to him because

fate is your moira, your

his

dearly

Troy.

loved

Zeus

can

or

Sarpedon, is doomed to die in the fighting for evidently alter human destinies if he wishes, for he son,

considers saving Sarpedon, but decides against it for fear that the other gods will want to rescue their doomed favourites too. In other words, an order exists behind events, which the gods control but of which they are also and a man’s fate would to part, change upset this order. The same is in an old a man who lived in dire made about point Jewish story poverty and asked God in a dream how long this would go on. ‘My son,’ God answered, ‘would you have me overthrow the world?’ To what extent the order of fate leaves the gods truly free is not a question which Homer asks or answers. His characters find no difficulty in thinking in contradictory terms. At one point in the Iliad Apollo is afraid that the Greeks will anticipate the day appointed by fate and sack Troy at once. At the beginning of the Odyssey Zeus says that men insist on blaming their troubles on the gods when it is their own wickedness which brings them suffering ‘beyond what is fated’ (hyper moron). When a character in Homer behaves in an uncharacteristic way, ‘unlike himself’ as we might say, he and other people put this down to supernatural influence. In pursuit of their purposes the gods inspire a fierce access of energy in one warrior, weaken the resolve of another, cloud a man’s mind with misunderstanding or infect him with lunatic rashness. A sudden remarkably brilliant or extraordinarily silly idea, a flash of insight or recognition or surprising memory, or a surprising inability to remember, are ascribed to gods and spirits. As E. R. Dodds says,

The recognition, the insight, the memory, the brilliant or perverse idea have this in common, that they come suddenly as we say ‘into a man’s head’. Often he is conscious of no observation or reasoning which has led up to them. But in that case, how can he call them ‘his’ ? A moment ago they were not in his mind; now they are there. Something has put them there, and that something is other than himself. More than that he does not know. So he speaks of it non-

committally as ‘the gods’ or ‘some god’, or more often (especially 5 prompting has turned out to be bad) as a daemon. These promptings are like the obscure intimations of fate’s trends and currents which we find difficult to ignore and, especially when the results are unfortunate, they make a man feel ‘fated’. The Iliad, as its opening lines show, is about the working out of a divine purpose, the plan of Zeus, and it begins with the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles over a confiscated slave-girl. When Agamemnon later comes to explain himself, he says that it was not his fault: when its

was the cause of this act, but Zeus and my moira and the in who walks in darkness wild ate Erinys put my understanding, on that day when I arbitrarily took Achilles’ prize from him. So what could I do? Deity will always have its way. 6

Not I

.

.

.

Ate, which is usually translated ‘infatuation’, is an abnormal and irrational state of mind in which a man is temporarily not in control of himself. Agamemnon’s apology is a rueful comment—‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t myself’—not the desperate cry of a man in the iron grip of fate. But Achilles says bitterly that the gods, who have no cares themselves, weave sorrow into the pattern of our lives, and the nymph Calypso says in the Odyssey that the gods are a cruel people, unmatched for jealousy, who grudge anyone happiness. In later Greek writers this dark sense of man’s helplessness comes more often to the surface. We are not responsible for our successes or failures, for Zeus controls what happens to us and we live like animals at the mercy of what each day may bring. The gods are envious of human prosperity and like to trouble us. The same note is struck in Aeschylus and Sophocles. There is danger in happiness, success, prosperity, any rising above a modest level, for the gods resent it and pride will go before a fall. This is all bound up with the Greek ideal of the mean, of ‘nothing in excess’. Man is not a god, and if he rises too high and threatens to become godlike, then he threatens the order of things and the gods will see to it that he falls. It is this same sense of success and achievement creating an imbalance which is bound to be corrected that causes our own uneasiness when things go ‘too well’. It can be represented as wisdom and justice on the part of the gods, or fate, but it can equally well lead to a conviction that men are at the mercy of forces which are cruelly vindictive, that as Cocteau said: ‘For the gods really to enjoy themselves, their victim must

fall from

a

great height.’

The mental

of a man who rises too high is hubris—boundless self-confidence, roughly what we mean when we say, significantly, that someone is ‘above himself’. It is the dangerous self-confidence which causes one to tempt fate. ‘Infatuation’, ate, irrational boldness, now becomes the punishment of hubris and the means by which the gods lead a man to make mistakes that carry him to ruin. This is the doctrine that whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad, which also has an established place in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, in God hardening Pharaoh’s heart in the Old Testament, in the Christian notion of God hardening the heart of a sinner, and at the centre of Christian piety in the Lord’s Prayer itself: ‘Lead us not into temptation.’ Divine resentment of hubris, and the retribution which it brings, was eventually personified as the goddess Nemesis, whose name is still used for a mechanism of retribution beyond human control and outside normal cause and effect. This ‘implacable deity to men of violence’ had a shrine at Rhamnus in Attica, where there was a statue of her holding an apple branch and, according to Pausanias, a cup, or according to other authors a wheel, presumably the wheel of fortune, signifying the balance of opposite forces, rise and fall, triumph and defeat, crime and state

punishment. 7 Several generations of a family are caught in a network of retribution legend of the house of Atreus which, like the story of Oedipus, has been felt for hundreds of years to say something horrifying but essentially true about the human condition. Atreus, King of Argos, had a brother named Thyestes. Thyestes seduced the wife of Atreus and had children by her. Atreus revenged himself by killing the children and serving their flesh up to Thyestes at a banquet, a crime so hideously against nature that the sun flinched in the sky at the sight of it. When Thyestes realised what he had eaten, he fled away and consulted an oracle, which told him that he would gain vengeance only through a son born to him by his own daughter. So he raped his daughter, the priestess Pelopea, in a sacred grove. Their son was Aegisthus, who duly murdered Atreus. Atreus was succeeded by Agamemnon, who married Clytemnestra, sister of Helen of Troy. When Agamemnon sailed for in the

he sacrificed Iphigenia, his daughter by Clytemnestra, to placate goddess Artemis. Aegisthus remained behind and seduced Clytemnestra,

Troy, the

and the two lovers murdered Agamemnon on his victorious from Troy. They in their turn were murdered in revenge by Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.

return

This

appalling tale, which piles murder upon murder, atrocity upon

atrocity, has such vitality that Elizabethan and Restoration dramatists and Racine, Voltaire, O’Neill, Eliot and Sartre, among others, have based plays on it. It reflects an early Greek society in which justice required vengeance, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. When a man was killed, it was his family’s duty to avenge him, and until this had been done the family lay under a miasma, an enveloping atmosphere of pollution. It was the function of the Erinyes, or Furies, to make sure that revenge

was

duly taken.

of the legend in the Oresteian trilogy is at one the from the primitive system of vendetta to more level about change civilised state-run institutions of justice, and at another about two strands in Greek religion, the worship of the Olympians of the sky and the worship of the dark powers of the underworld. But what has made the plays last, and has made the Agamemnon itself the most popular of them, is the theme of an inexorable machinery of doom, a chain whose links are horrors. The anger of the dead demands vengeance, blood cries for blood, the killer will be killed. As in the case of the Oedipus legend, it is the primitive theme, not the civilised resolution, that has struck home to generations of audiences. The characters are caught up in a network of destruction, not only because each of them feels bound to revenge a murder itself committed in revenge but because the family for three generations is polluted by the original crime of Atreus, infected by hereditary guilt. Aeschylus sees behind the story the working out of the just purpose of Zeus, but his characters feel themselves obsessed and hounded by evil forces. The murdered children hover about the palace, the Furies haunt it, drunk with blood, and Clytemnestra says that it was an evil spirit which acted through her to strike down

Aeschylus’

treatment

Agamemnon. It was an old belief, expressed by Solon, that the crimes of the fathers may be visited upon the children. ‘One man has to pay at once, one later, while others altogether escape overtaking by the gods’ doom; but then it always comes in aftertime, and the innocent pay, the of the sinners or those born long afterward.’ In Israel in the time of Joshua a man named Achan committed sacrilege. Not only was he stoned to death but so were his sons and daughters, and his oxen and asses and sheep. Job says bitterly, ‘How often is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out, that their calamity comes upon them?. You say, “God stores up their iniquity for their sons.” Let him recompense it to themselves, that they may know it.’ The grim saying that ‘the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge’ is sons

.

.

quoted with disapproval later in the Old Testament. 8 This belief, which naturally contributes to a sense of the inescapable

impress of fate on human lives, is a product of societies in which blood ties are thought to create such a close family relationship that a father’s crimes infect his children. If it seems an absurdly primitive notion, its survivals flourish like green bay trees. A good many people still believe that original sin is inherited. The children of murderers still find acceptance difficult. In the most enlightened intellectual circles it is held that we are responsible for the crimes of our ancestors in colonising other parts of the world or in importing black men and women to America and keeping them enslaved there. And this belief in genetically transmitted guilt, though contrary to all common sense, is not easily shaken off. The Bonds of Fate

2

the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way. Melville, Moby Dick .

.

.

Oedipus was not so calamitously fated because of anything he had done, but because of a crime, a kidnapping, which his father had committed. Belief in inherited guilt is part of a general recognition that character and fate are inextricably entwined: not only in the sense that ‘character is destiny’, as Heraclitus said, that a man does what he does because he is what he is, but also in the opposite sense that destiny is character, that what a man is depends on factors operating before his birth and throughout his life. This is why the death-bringing Fates of mythology and folk belief are so closely connected with birth. The Greek Fates, or Moirai, ‘the apportioned’, had shrines in many places but their appearance was not clearly defined. There were no images of them in their sanctuary at Thebes and the images in their temple

at

Corinth

were

kept

hidden. There

were

three of them—

Clotho, who spun the thread of each man’s life, Lachesis who measured it, and Atropos who severed it at death. Hesiod called them ‘ruthless

avenging Fates’ and in the Hesiodic poem The Shield of Heracles they seen at a battle presiding over the spirits which drink the blood of

are

fallen

men.

The Moirai visited each child at birth to give him his helping of life. They were taken over into Roman belief as the Fata, from whom we

get

‘fay’ and ‘fairy’ and the good and bad fairies who in nursery stories to the child’s cradle with gifts which are assets or liabilities of

come

character and fortune. This belief survives in modern Greece and is found in folklore elsewhere. The three fairy godmothers of German tradition are descended from the Noms of northern mythology, three of whom live near the well of fate beneath one of the roots of the world-tree, Yggdrasil. According to the Prose Edda, there are also Norns who come to each child that is born, to shape its life, and some of them are evil and inflict lives of misfortune on their victims. The three witches in Macbeth, who are called ‘weird sisters’—weird from Anglo-Saxon wyrd, ‘fate’—may also be descended from the Noms. Shakespeare took them from Holinshed, where they are described as ‘three women in strange and fearful apparel, resembling creatures of an elder and are shown world’, standing by a large tree which may be a reminiscence of Yggdrasil. 9

lives till night’, it was said, ‘once the Noms’ word goes forth.’ There were also female spirits called disir, which were attached to a family and seem to have been responsible for the fertility of its women. They were sometimes said to visit each child at birth. They may have been female ancestors originally and they had a dangerous side to them. There are rocks in Iceland called ‘stones of the disir’ and until recently children were not allowed to play near them. 10 The difficulty of bridging the gap between pagan and Christian concepts can be seen in Beowulf, which was written by a Christian poet about a great pagan hero. Before his battle with the monster Grendel, Beowulf first says that fate (wyrd) will decide the issue and then that God will. He also remarks that ‘unless he is already doomed, fortune [wyrd] is apt to favour the man who keeps his nerve’, which is the pagan equivalent of the Christian saying, ‘The Lord helps them that help themselves’. Later Beowulf is warned against pride and told that a ‘No

man

man who is too successful grows arrogant: but ‘a killer is at hand who shoots wickedly from his bow’—the Devil—and he infects the offender with miserly greed. This is an attempt to force the pagan principle of hubris and retribution into a Christian context. In the early thirteenth century again, in the Nibelungenlied, retribution follows hubris, but where Greek authors thought that the gods punished hubris, the author of the Nibelungenlied does not say whether it is God’s providence or an impersonal mechanism of fate that is responsible. His failure to pin it onto the former seems significant. 11 The spinning of the Fates is part of a motif which R. B. Onians has

shown

gods

woven

all

through Homer’s references to the action of fate or the determining human destinies. Men’s fortunes are spun or

to run

in

and then bound

on

them:

The

‘binding’ of the gods is no mere trick of language but a literal description of an actual process, their mode of imposing fate upon fortune in its mortals, a religious belief and not a metaphor different forms is a cord or bond fastened upon a man by the powers .

.

.

above.

Similarly in Anglo-Saxon literature, fate is ‘woven’, and in Njal’s Saga Valkyries are seen at a loom, weaving the web of a great battle that is about to begin. The word ‘destiny’ comes from Latin destino, used of binding, whose primary meaning was ‘fix’, and when we regard an event as inevitable we say it is ‘bound’ to happen. Cords, threads and knots are traditional weapons of witches, used for ‘binding’ spells on their victims. The basis of all this, as Onians pointed out, is simply that a piece of string was one of the most useful possessions of early man, the

used for joining things together and fixing them in place. 12 To connect fate with spinning, weaving, webs, nets and. entanglements expresses both a realisation of human helplessness and a sense of a design behind events. In Moby Dick, Melville uses the image of weaving for the interplay of fate, chance and free-will. His own acute sense of human bondage seems to have stemmed from a disaster which suddenly struck his family when he was young, destroying his hopes and prospects like a bolt from the blue and forcing him out of a comfortable bourgeois home to earn his living in humble and hateful circumstances. Dickens had

a

similar

experience—the blacking factory

in which he was ignominiously put to work as a boy haunts his books— and in his novels the characters and incidents are knitted together by strands of circumstance and relationship which are sometimes perilously over-contrived, the product of a mind determined to see a design behind every apparent coincidence. But this is also one of the characteristics

which have drawn generations of audiences

to

Greek tragedy, and

connected web of characters and events, with no loose ends, as the essential basis of a satisfactory plot. This demand for design holds good for real life as well as art, as Rebecca West pointed out in Black Lamb and Gray Falcon: most

readers and

playgoers

still

regard

a

grow older and see the ends of stories as well as their beginnings, we realise that to the people who take part in them it is almost of greater importance that they should be stories, that they

As

we

recognisable pattern, than that they should be happy not a plaything, but a necesssity, and its essence, tragic. a is not decorative form, adjustment, but a cup into which life can be and lifted to the lips and tasted. If one’s own existence has poured should form

or

no

.

form,

.

a

.

if its

significance,

Art is

events

we

do

not come

handily to mind and disclose their

feel about ourselves

as

if

we

were

reading

a

bad

book. 13

3

The Tides of Time Force is the midwife of history. Lenin

the view that history is God or not, is working out a purpose planned, something, whether In the classical world, when the religion of the year by year. had Olympian gods collapsed, Tyche or Fortuna or Heimarmene, fate The human

longing for design also lies behind

that

fortune or ‘what must be’, became an object of worship as the principle which determined the course of events. According to Suetonius, the Emperor Tiberius neglected the practice of religion because he was convinced that the world is entirely ruled by fate. An emperor of more elevated reputation, Marcus Aurelius, thought that it is ‘the characteristic of the good man to delight in and to welcome what is being spun for him by destiny’. What will be, will be, and we had better try to enjoy it. 14 Much earlier, Heraclitus said that everything is always changing— ‘You cannot step twice into the same river’—but also that all change is governed hy an iron law of destiny—‘All events proceed with the necessity of fate.’ Sir Karl Popper finds this double attitude characteristic of thinkers whose central doctrine is that the course of history is or

controlled

by laws,

whose

discovery would

make it

possible to

foresee

the future. He puts it down to a deep fear of change. ‘It often seems as if they were trying to comfort themselves for the loss of a stable world

by clinging to the view that change is ruled by an unchanging law.’ They may also comfort themselves by deciding that history is invariably right, that what happens is for the best, with the corollary of approving success and regarding the ‘great man’ as the ideal man. Heraclitus himself agreed with Homer’s heroes and the warrior caste of many other societies that the highest of human goals is fame. ‘The best seek one thing above all others; eternal fame. Who falls fighting .

.

.

will be glorified by gods and by men.... One man is worth more than thousand, if he is Great.’ 15 The Middle Ages could scarcely take such a view, the highest of its goals being heaven, but German philosophers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries resurrected the view of history as the massive and measured evolution of a plan, and Hegel revived Heraclitean ideas of fate and fame, maintaining that the destiny of a person or a nation expresses his or its truest inner nature: ten

The Great Man of his time is he who expresses the will of his time; who tells his time what it wills; and who carries it out. He acts according to the inner Spirit and Essence of his time, which he realizes. 16 Men are the instruments of destiny and fame is the reward of their labours in its service. A Caesar, an Alexander, pursuing their own purposes, are in touch with the intentions of destiny and forward the plan of history. This is what makes them great men, and this, as Hegel has frequently been quoted as saying, is what justifies their crimes. ‘So mighty a form must trample down many an innocent flower, crush to

object in its path.’ high philosophical power a common, and essentially sense of the overmastering trends of fate. The same view has pagan, been adopted with atrocious consequences by politicians. In February 1794 Robespierre made a speech to the National Convention in Paris, pieces

many an This raises to

a

explain the aim of the Revolution, a matter about which many people were in doubt. ‘We wish in a word to fulfil the course of nature, to

to make good the promises of from the long reign of tyranny and absolve Providence philosophy, crime.’ He went on to reach the conclusion that ‘if the basis of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the basis of popular government in time of revolution is both virtue and terror: virtue without which 17 terror is murderous, terror without which virtue is powerless.’ Hitler thought of himself as a great man of the Hegelian sort, marked out hy destiny for his task, and like Robespierre tried to put to

accomplish the destiny of mankind, to

this belief into uncomfortable double harness with the Christian concept of providence. In a speech at Munich in 1936 he said, ‘I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker’, and his biographer says of him: It was in this sense of mission that Hitler, a man who believed neither in God nor in conscience (‘a Jewish invention, a blemish like circumcision'), found both justification and absolution. He was the Sieg-

reawaken Germany to greatness, for whom morality, and ‘the litany of private virtues’ were irrelevant. It was suffering he sustained the ruthlessness and determination such dreams that by Hitler played out his ‘world-historical’ role to the of his will. bitter end. But it was this same belief which curtained him in illusion and blinded him to what was actually happening, leading him into that arrogant overestimate of his own genius which brought him to defeat. The sin which Hitler committed was that which the ancient Greeks called hybris, the sin of overweening pride, of believing himself to be more than a man. 18

fried

come to

.

.

.

innocent flower has been trampled down by totalitarians, of and the left, who welcome theories of an inexorable destiny right to their working advantage, of history as a tide whose current must them carry irresistibly forward. Those in Germany who hopefully

Many

an

the

Rosenberg, the chief theoretician of Nazism, ‘were seeking to regain confidence in themselves, to recapture—against all the evidence—the belief that they were a people of destiny’. They succeeded. German Nazis, drawing on an earlier climate of belief in the read Alfred

historic role of the Aryans, ‘were able to believe themselves to be potential heroes simply by virtue of being born Germans; they were predestined to greatness and anyone opposing them was flying in the face of the laws of Nature and of Fate’. In earlier centuries quantities of blood were shed by Christians of various denominations in confident

expectation

of furthering the

providential

purposes of God. The

great nineteenth-century controversy over evolution was not merely about the literal truth of Genesis but about the replacement of the divine plan by the impersonal mechanism of natural selection, a mechanism sufficiently close to the idea of fate to enable Sir Julian Huxley to say: ‘An earlier generation could speak of man’s place in nature: this static formulation is now outdated; to-day we must speak rather of man’s

4

Tinker,

destiny in

the

world-process.’ 19

Tailor

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behaviour—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves and

treachers

by spherical predominance.

.

.

.

Shakespeare, King Lear

Human attitudes

fate

being what they are, belief that an iron tide is sweeping through history and carrying you with it goes hand in hand to

with moods of severe doubt about its reliability. When Goebbels visited a German army headquarters on the eastern front in April 1945, he tried to convince the commanding general and his staff that ‘for reasons of Historical Necessity and Justice a change of fortune must occur now. .’ He expected the death of one of Germany’s leading opponents, though he did not know who it would be: ‘Fate still held many possibilities in her hand.’ On returning to Berlin he heard the news that President Roosevelt had died, and delightedly rang up Hitler to say, ‘It is written in the stars that the second half of April will be the turning-point for us. This is Friday, April the 13th. It is the turningpoint.' (The writing of the stars was contained in two horoscopes, kept Himmler’s by staff.) But when it became clear that the expected turningpoint had not been reached, Goebbels said sadly, ‘Perhaps Fate has again heen cruel and made fools of us.’ 20 The philosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias remarked in the third century A.D. that: .

.

Those who maintain energetically in their discourses that Fate is inevitable and who attribute all events to it, seem to place no reliance on it in the actions of their own lives. For they call upon Fortune, thus recognising that it has an action independent of Fate; and moreover they never cease to pray to the gods, as though these could grant their prayers even in opposition to Fate; and they do not hesitate to have recourse to omens, as though it were possible for them, by learning any fated event in advance, to guard against it. 21 This comment on late classical paganism seems equally applicable to the new paganism of today, with astrology flourishing, I Ching sticks and Tarot cards selling well, and evidence from parapsychology that some people have an ability to see into the future supporting widespread popular interest in prophetic dreams and premonitions. There

people’s minds a mixture of ideas about fate feeling for omens and a hope that appeals to God may be effective on desperate occasions, all combined with confidence in free-will into an amalgam found necessary in a society in which does

seem

to

be in many

with belief in luck,

a

both rationalism and religion are felt inadequate. In astrology’s long dominion over Western minds pagan ideas of fate have survived beside and mingled with Christian beliefs. Pious Christians have frequently adopted an attitude to providence which

pious pagans found appropriate to fate, suffering in silence and patiently bearing what God in his inscrutable wisdom has chosen to send. Christian writers condemned astrology because it implied the worship of created instead of the God who created them, because it perpetuated the pagan gods and because it could be taken to imply that man was not responsible for his actions, which were imposed on him by the stars. But the Church grew up in a world already grown all over with astrology like ivy and the Christian attack was not successful. Early attempts to christen the weekdays ‘first day’, ‘second day’ and so on, repeated by Puritans in England in the seventeenth century and French Revolutionaries in the eighteenth, failed in the face of popular fondness for the names which connected them with gods and planets. The Christian Lord’s Day itself was and has remained the day of the sun. The fact that the planets were identified with gods who in Christian theory were powerful demons contributed to keeping astrology alive. If they were powerful it was best to find out what they were up to, and if they were evil they provided an easier explanation of undeserved misfortune than the providence of a beneficent God. The two planets which in astrological tradition are ‘malefic’ are Mars and Saturn. Mars is the planet of violent energy, aggressiveness, destruction, hostility and war, linked in Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome with gods of war, presumably because of its blood-red tint. Saturn is the cosmic principle of restriction, limits, contraction, coldness, time, old age and death, because it was the outermost of the planets known in antiquity and so was thought to set the bounds of things, and the furthest from the sun, which meant that it must be cold. It was also linked with the old and savage Greek god Cronus and then, by a mistaken etymology, with Chronos, ‘time’. The Picatrix, a magical textbook well known in the Middle Ages, includes an incantation adapted from a Greek astrological prayer to Cronus, calling on Saturn, ‘the Cold, the

things

Sterile, the Mournful, Impenetrable’. 22

the Pernicious

.

.

.

the

Sage

and

Solitary,

the

Significant relationships of Mars and Saturn in the sky were taken portents of catastrophe and suffering on earth. A conjunction of Jupiter, the planet of health, with Mars and Saturn in the sign of Aquarius in 1345 was said to have heralded the Black Death. A conjunction of Mars and Saturn in Pisces in 1496 was blamed for the appearance of syphilis in Europe. The headmaster of Merchant Taylors’ school in London suggested in a book published in 1686 that conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter pushed up the suicide rate. as sure

Modem

not to think ill of the stars and tend to of Mars and Saturn, but the tradition persists. gloss A German astrologer, Frau Elsbeth Ebertin, predicted in an almanac issued in July 1923 that Hitler might soon ‘expose himself to over

astrologers prefer

the baneful

nature

personal danger by excessively uncautious action and could very likely trigger off an uncontrollable crisis’. She based this on relative positions of Saturn and the sun, and gained considerable kudos when Hitler was hurt in the Munich putsch in November. 23 In 1931 the American astrologer Evangeline Adams predicted that the USA would be at war in 1942, on the basis of the coming conjunction of Mars and Uranus in that year. Many Christians, in the Middle Ages and later, reconciled astrology with providence by taking the planetary movements and relationships as signs through which God announced his intentions for the future: though it was not easy to reconcile the unvarying orderliness and predictability of the stars with the belief that God could and did alter his dispensation when he chose. The orderliness of the heavens was the essential basis of astrology, for it opened fate to human scrutiny, but

providence was not open to calculation and prediction,

or not in principle being mysterious and indecipherable, though many people attempted to decipher them all the same. The two concepts of providence and fate were frequently mingled, in fact, in an acceptable muddle. The planets were thought of as, under

at

least—the ways of God

God, moulders of character and causers of events, or as the vehicles of demonic forces which caused them, especially if they were evil events. St Thomas Aquinas, for example, thought that ‘the stars determine individual character, at least in a physical sense, and since most men follow their passions—that is to say, their physical appetites—it is really 24 by the stars that they are led into sin’. Astrology’s survival meant that men could think of themselves, when they needed to, as the helpless victims of fortune. The doctrine of providence meant that they could think of themselves, when they chose, as being borne up by the hand of God. The survival of

sure

carried with it the survival of magical techniques intended to turn the starry forces to good account, in ways not readily reconciled with the rule of providence. Amulets and talismans were carried to attract favourable planetary influences and ward off unfavourable ones. Kings and bishops retained astrologers as advisers and astrology continued to be used in medical practice, to learn a patient’s fate or help to cure him. Popular astrology has always been

astrology

directed, and still is, as horoscopes in newspapers and magazines demonstrate,

only to acquiring knowledge of the future but to manipulating by taking advantage of promising trends and avoiding difficult

not

it,

ones. Fate is inexorable and not inexorable, and the contradiction worries nobody. The same is true of palmistry, card-reading and other methods of fortune-telling. When Christians feel uneasy about these techniques it is because they sense the pagan implications: that we live in a network of circumstance which conceals not the benign authority of God but the enigmatic wheels and levers of an impersonal engine of destiny which is, to a limited extent at least, open to human inspection.

All sorts of minor divinatory methods, ways of interpreting omens, ways of securing good luck or warding off bad, ways of making wishes come true, flourished in the Christian centuries, though the Church understood and denounced their implications. A list of superstitions condemned by the among others:

Bishop

of Exeter in the twelfth century reproves,

Whosoever has prepared a table with three knives for the service of the fairies, that they may predestinate good to such as are bom in the house whosoever shall pollute New Year’s Day by magic into the future, after the pagan fashion, or who begin their enquiries works on that day, that they may prosper better than in any other whosoever on St John’s Day shall have wrought any witchcraft year to foretell the future whosoever shall believe that good or evil comes to him from the croak of a jackdaw or raven, or from meeting a priest or any animal whatsoever. 25 .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The belief that priests were uncanny and might be ominous to meet have been one of the most irritating superstitions with which the Church had to bear, though it was a natural consequence of the insistence that the Church was the only proper channel of communication

must

between God and man. There were also numerous superstitions about inherently lucky and unlucky days, including the belief which still flourishes that Friday, as the day on which Christ died, is a bad day on which to be married, move to a new house or start on anything of importance. Conversely, it is very unlucky and consequently very rare to bury anyone on a Sunday, the day on which Christ rose from the dead. It was unlucky to be married or move house when the moon was waning, because good fortune would naturally be on the wane too. Christian symbols and observances were used both as affirmations of faith in God and as weapons against the prevailing malevolence of the

world. Tertullian in the third century records Christians as crossing themselves so frequently that one wonders whether they ever had time to do anything else. In North Wales, it was reported in 1589, people crossed themselves when they went out of their houses in the morning, when they left their cattle and when they shut their windows: If any misfortune befell them or their animals their common saying ‘You have not crossed yourself well today’, or ‘You have not

was

made the

sign of the rood

this omission had been the

upon the cause

In the seventeenth century in

cattle’,

of their

on

the

mishap.

England, George

assumption that

26

Herbert

wrote

that

the country parson

considering the great aptness country people have to think that all labours to reduce them things come by a kind of natural course to see God’s hand in all things, and to believe that such things are not set in such an inevitable order but that God often changeth it according as he sees fit, either for reward or punishment. 27 .

.

.

All systems of divination and omens are based on the sense of an inevitable order, so that what appear to be coincidental or random events—lines on the palm, moles on the body, the appearance of a priest or a black cat, or whatever indicator is used—are really clues to an underlying pattern. There were medieval Books of Fate from which you discovered your fortune by throwing dice. The Bible was used to

by opening it and picking out a passage at random, in the way that the works of Virgil had been used earlier. An educated Christian could regard this as a way of gaining an intimation of God’s providence, hut the medieval Church disapproved of it as unduly fatalistic and at popular levels it was probably felt to provide a clue to

find

omens

same

impersonal, destined pattern of events. Similarly, sophisticated Christians could believe that a prophetic dream conveyed information about the future which came direct from God, but in less sophisticated an

circles a girl would put an apple or an ash-leaf under her pillow to induce an automatic dream of her future husband. Superstitions which Iona and Peter Opie found flourishing among British schoolchildren in the 1950s included the beliefs that breaking a mirror brings seven years’ bad luck, that a dog howling outside a house is an omen of death, that it is lucky to see a white horse and unlucky to see anyone with red hair. It is also unlucky to see a funeral and very unlucky to count the number of cars in a funeral procession. There was

tempting fate by anticipating success, for example by in the jar before catching the first tiddler, and an uneasiness putting about seeing the backs of things, including ambulances, mail vans, blind men, chimney sweeps, nuns, and men with wooden legs. The Opies also recorded various light-hearted ways of finding out who you would marry, including an extraordinarily complicated one taking several days to complete, in the Millwall district of London, where a girl would count 99 policemen, then watch for a postman, and then a bicycle. The next man she spoke to would be her future husband. Also flourishing was the method of discerning your future by counting the fruit-stones on your plate and saying: ‘Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief.’ With children, as with grown-ups, it is usually a mistake to suppose either that superstitions are taken very seriously or that they are merely empty little rituals, devoid of any serious significance. The truth more often is that they are taken seriously in some moods and lightly in others. A man may touch wood, for instance, as an almost meaningless habit until he finds himself suddenly faced with danger or evil, when his hand leaps for the nearest piece of wood in a lightning reaction which is seriously meant. You can pick up a superstition from the society around you and not take it seriously until it turns out to meet a need, a

dislike of

water

the need to act in self-defence, to assert some small measure of will against the hostility of the universe. It is not surprising if children are especially superstitious, since their defences are even weaker than those of adults and their degree of control over their environment even smaller. It is the characteristic of meeting

a need which militates against the the flotsam and jetsam left behind by the retreating tides of outmoded beliefs, which will disappear as people become more rational and enlightened. Superstitions do not disappear,

view of superstitions

as

in fact, but obstinately persist, though they may be adapted to new circumstances as time goes by. Several psychologists have discerned at the root of belief in fate the child’s reaction to the all-powerful, frustrating and arbitrary authority

of his parents, and one modem investigation associates proneness superstition with authoritarian home backgrounds,

to

where parents exercised a rigid control which was not permitted to be questioned, although it was experienced as arbitrary. This seems consistent with the development of a belief that one’s fate is in the

hands of unknown external powers, one has no control. 28

governed by forces over which

The theory suggests a possible reason for the greater prevalence of superstition among the working class than the middle class, which many observers have noticed. Very broadly speaking, working-class parents are more inclined to give their children arbitrary and unexplained

orders: ‘Do what I say, because I say so.’ Middle-class parents

are more

likely to give reasons for the rules they make and to prod their children into taking responsible decisions for themselves. Lying behind this difference is something more basic still. Those who have less money are more at the mercy of uncontrollable external factors in their lives and have less scope for decision-making than those who are more affluent. But a feeling of helplessness, the sense of a tide running for or against you, a rueful recognition of the obstinate contrariness of things, are not confined to poorer groups or to the children of authoritarian parents. Very few people are entirely immune from superstition and a sense of fate.

Chapter Four

Darkness and

Night

Byron feared the dark and always

kept a taper burning at night. Even he would hear so, uncanny footsteps and lie afraid to move. Harold a as Owen, young ship’s officer, once had to spend the night alone in the hulk of an old ship with only six matches between himself and a terrifying sense of evil lurking in the darkness. ‘I could feel in the old ship other existences besides my own in alien unknown forms. I was conscious of a pervasion of obscure animation. I had the curious sensation that I could be seen and in some strangely evil way was being watched.’ He felt that something hideously corrupt was trying to entice him, that he was ‘on the fringe of some devastating revelation, of being vouchsafed some secret and terrible knowledge’, against which he must

guard himself, despite ‘the drag of horrid invitation from this unknown beastliness’. 1 Harold Nicolson vividly described a type of night terror experienced by children: He would come in, quite small at first, like a piece of string; but once inside he would swell quickly, and he would creep about the room on all slowly clumsy fours, searching for my bed in the comer, beside the bed quite silently at first, waiting till I should crouching off to None the less, I knew it was Herr Geverts, with his drop sleep. whiskers and his steel spectacles;—the man who kept the sausage shop at the corner of the Andrássy Ut. Herr Geverts who had slipped into the room as a piece of string and had then become a small dog, and then a great dog, and then a wolf; and who was now himself, only with a bear’s feet and claws, crouching at the end of my bed,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003363743-4

Darkness and

ready if I another. .

slept, .

.

to

get closer,

ever

closer,

first

one

Night paw, then

2

must be one of the oldest and most common of all There is a famous episode in Bede’s History in which a pagan Northumbrian likens the life of man to the flight of a sparrow across a firelit room, coming in out of the cold black night and flying out into it again, an interlude of light and warmth between two unknown darknesses. Beowulf has been called ‘an expression of the fear of the dark’ and its most famous character, after the hero himself, is the evil monster Grendel, who is an incarnation of darkness, a black shadow of death, who comes out from his lair at night to prowl the moors and prey upon men. ‘Now Grendel, with the wrath of God on his back, came out of the moors and the mist-ridden fells. .’ He is a descendant of Cain, the first murderer, the first to put out the light of another man’s life, from whom, the poet says, sprang all ogres and elves and the walking dead and the giants who fought against God. 3 The dualism of light and darkness is based on the fundamental rhythms of life. In the daytime we are conscious and active, at night passively asleep, a condition uneasily resembling death. In the light we can see, in the dark we are blind and groping, easily ambushed. The light and heat of the sun bring nature to life in the spring, the winter of suspended animation comes in with darkness and cold. Light implies life, warmth, security, the known and familiar, intellectual and spiritual vision. Darkness implies death, danger, the unknown, inertia and sterility, ignorance, doubt and spiritual blindness. The antithesis is not always as clear-cut as this, because the darkness of love-making, of sleep, of the depths of the mind, of the earth in which the seed grows and the womb in which the foetus forms, has its own powerful promise and comfort. But even so, the realms of night are mysterious and

Fear of the dark terrors.

.

.

menacing. 1

Evil and Darkness Lighten

our

darkness,

we

beseech thee, O Lord. Book

of Common Prayer

Darkness has often been felt to be older and more primitive than light, which shines into a darkness that was there before it. In the beginning, according to Genesis, the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. The first thing God made was light, and he separated the light from the darkness to form day and night.

Darkness and God

saw

that the

Night

light was good, but the same thing is not said of the

darkness. In the Prose Edda night existed before day and was the mother of day, and similarly in Hesiod’s Theogony, where in the beginning there came into existence Chaos and Earth and Tartarus, the abyss in the depths of the earth. From Chaos came Darkness and Night, and from their mingling Day was born. Night was also the mother of Sleep and

Pleasure of Love and the tribe of Dreams, and of a whole brood of black horrors including Death, the ruthless avenging Fates, Nemesis, Deceit, Old Age and Strife. She has her home deep under the earth at the roots of things, where she cradles in her arms Sleep and his brother, Death. In the Iliad Night is the subduer of gods and men, of whom even Zeus is afraid, which may reflect an old belief in Night as one of the

great primeval powers of the universe. The world after death in ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek and Jewish belief is dark, reflecting the suffocating blackness of the grave and the parallel between death and sleep. When a man is killed in the Iliad, he is engulfed by the ugly dark, or black darkness veils his eyes, or night descends on his eyes, as if a curtain fell. The idea of night ‘falling’ like a curtain is embedded in our own language and most people think of darkness not as the mere absence of light but as something positive and almost palpable. In an Anglo-Saxon poem, The Wanderer, time is said to pass away under the dark helmet of night and the notion of darkness closing round a man’s head at death may explain the cap of darkness which was worn by Hades, the Greek god of the dead. It was made of dog skin and anyone who put it on became invisible. 4 In the Bible darkness is connected with death, the land of the dead, evil and sin. ‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me.’ Job says of the afterworld, ‘Are not the days of my life few? Let me alone, that I may find a little

comfort before I go alone whence I shall

not return, to the land of and deep darkness, the land of gloom and chaos, where light is as darkness.’ And when in his misery Job curses the night of his conception, he wishes upon it the same obliteration: ‘Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it hope for the light but have none, nor see the eyelids of the morning.’ Night will be abolished when God establishes his kingdom on earth, ‘for at evening time there shall be light’. Jesus said, ‘I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness,

gloom

but will have the light of life’, and so there is no night in the Land paradise which St Brendan and his com-

of Promise of the Saints, the

panions reached after seven years of voyaging. Dusk and darkness are unknown there, where Christ himself is the light. The carrying of Christianity to the Gentiles was seen as the bringing of light into darkness, and similarly in the nineteenth century Christian missionaries set off to carry the light of the gospel into ‘darkest’ Africa and other ‘benighted’ heathen regions. 5 Dualistic systems draw a sharp distinction between light and darkness, which are identified with good and evil. In Zoroastrianism the good god, Ohrmazd, lives in eternal light and his evil enemy, Ahriman, is master of darkness. The Manichaean religion, which drew heavily on Zoroastrianism, also saw two great opposing forces of light and darkness, good and evil, at work in the world. The Essene community at Qumran, in the desert to the east of Jerusalem, which produced the Dead Sea Scrolls, seems to have been influenced by Zoroastrian dualism. One of their fundamental doctrines was that there are two great spirits of good and evil, the Prince of Light and the Angel of Darkness. These spirits are subordinate to God, who has set them in an equal balance and inspired in them an unyielding hatred of each other. They are at war and they fight their battles in the minds and hearts of men, who are drawn now to one side and now to the other. According to the Manual of Discipline, possibly dating from the late second century B.C., ‘the Angel of Darkness leads all the children of righteousness astray, and until his end, all their sin, iniquities, wickedness, and all their unlawful deeds are caused by his dominion in accordance with the mysteries of God’. This evil angel, whose personal name is Belial, inspires lies, greed, pride, deceit, cruelty, folly, lust, blasphemy and all other varieties of

turpitude: And the visitation of all who walk in this spirit shall be a multitude of plagues by the hand of all the destroying angels, everlasting damnation by the avenging wrath of the fury of God, eternal torment and endless disgrace together with shameful extinction in the fire of the dark

regions. 6

The Manual of Discipline says that each man inherits a mixture of good and evil in his composition and another Qumran document, written in code, says that the proportions are indicated by his horoscope. Someone horn under Taurus, for instance, will have six parts of in good him to three parts of evil. 7 But the Qumran sect believed that a man can devote himself to good and reject the darkness in his character, and God will purge him of his evil inclinations, though his

choice of good is predestined by God and is part of God’s providence. The Essenes have been likened to the Scots Covenanters and it is ironic that in the nineteenth century the ruins of their community were thought to be all that was left of Gomorrah. They regarded themselves as the children of light, the faithful remnant, the righteous fragment of Israel which God would preserve from the damnation awaiting the great majority of mankind. The time of the end was fast approaching, when the forces of evil would be destroyed, and the War Scroll sets out the order of battle of the sons of light in their final victorious campaign against the sons of darkness. An inclination

to

think of yourself as

a

small vessel of light in

a

black

and threatening sea of wickedness tends to promote dualistic attitudes. In the New Testament the gospel and epistles of St John are full of the theme of the opposition of light and darkness. ‘And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.’ ‘God is light and in him is no darkness at all.’ There is also St Paul’s question to the Corinthians: ‘Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial?’ The Didache, which mirrors the beliefs of a Christian community in Syria (or possibly in Egypt) late in the first century, opens with a section contrasting ‘the two ways’ of life and

death, good

and evil, which is apparently based on an earlier Jewish This section was repeated soon afterwards in the. Epistle ofBarnabas, whose author added a short introduction to it: text.

There are two ways of teaching, and two wielders of power; one of light and the other of darkness... over the one are posted the lightbearing

angels of God, and over the other the angels of Satan; and of these two is the Lord from all eternity to all eternity, while the other stands paramount over this present age of iniquity. one

Though the Church, battling against dualistic Manichaean and gnostic systems, soon condemned dualism, the tendency to ignore shades of grey and

see

Christianity. 2

Black,

the world all in black and white remained endemic in

8

the North and the Shadow And I

In

Christianity,

as

am

black, but O my soul is white! Blake, ‘The Little Black Boy’

in Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and the Dead Sea

Scrolls, the forces of evil

are powers of darkness. The Devil himself is described as black or dark and in all sorts of common words frequently and phrases blackness and darkness connote evil—dark deeds, black magic, the Black Mass, blackmail, blackguard, black-hearted, a black day, the black or dark side of things. The three witches in Macbeth are ‘secret, black and midnight hags’. The villains in Western films are often dressed in black. In legends and romances black knights are usually wicked and white knights good, and black or dark towers are peculiarly ominous. ‘Childe Roland to the dark tower came’, and in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings the great power of evil is the Dark Lord, ruler of the black land of Mordor, ‘where the shadows lie’. Black is the colour of death, worn for mourning, and churches are hung in black on Good Friday, which is changed to white on Easter Sunday for the Resurrection. Black also implies dirt and foulness, by contrast with white, which is the colour of cleanliness, purity and innocence. These connotations of black have naturally struck black people with disagreeable force. Some writers have suggested that the blackness of the Devil is an expression of the white man’s terror and hatred of black skins, though the truth is probably the other way round. The Devil is black because he is evil and the master of the darkness of sin, the supreme rebel against the light of holiness and truth. People with black skins may consequently be feared as demonic. Some of the Devil’s other characteristics—animality, lustfulness and outsize genital equipment— have been projected onto black men in white race fantasies. Heretics and witches in the Middle Ages were accused of worshipping the Devil in the form of a black goat, cat or other animal, and he frequently appeared as a ‘black’ man, though this usually did not mean a but a man with black hair and a dark complexion, or in black Negro clothes. In early Christian literature, however, the Devil is sometimes a Negro, Egyptian or Ethiopian. In the Acts of St Bartholomew he is a hairy Negro with the wings of a bat and a dog’s snout. St Perpetua, who was martyred at Carthage in 203, was said to have experienced a vision in which she turned into a man and was forced to fight for her life in the arena against an ugly Egyptian. She wrestled with him and defeated him, afterwards realising that he was the Devil. According to Cassian of Marseilles in the early fifth century, the Devil appeared to one of the

desert hermits as a hideous Ethiopian, and another, St Macarius the Younger, saw a crowd of imps like foul Ethiopians flying about and putting impure thoughts and idle fancies into the minds of his brethren. In

an

episode in the legend

of St Brendan’s voyage,

probably

written

down in the ninth century, the saint sees a demon take the form of a little Ethiopian boy to tempt a monk. A French Dominican of the thirteenth century, Etienne de Bourbon, who fiercely disapproved of dancing and thought that all dances had been invented by Satan, said that the Devil had been seen leading a dance in the form of a small

Ethiopian. In alchemical symbolism an Ethiopian is one of the emblems of the nigredo, the crucial ‘black’ stage of the work in which the material in the alchemist’s vessel is ‘killed’ and lies ‘dead’, to be revived again in the

following ‘white’ stage. He stands for matter, the body, the base and unspiritual. According to a treatise attributed to Albertus Magnus, ‘the black head bearing the resemblance of the Ethiopian is well washed begins to turn white. .’ In the early sixteenth century Nicholas Melchior, astrologer to the King of Hungary, wrote an alchemical Mass in which, when the nigredo is achieved: and

.

.

Then will appear in the bottom of the vessel the mighty Ethiopian, burned, calcined, bleached, altogether dead and lifeless. He asks to be buried, to be sprinkled with his own moisture and slowly calcined till he shall rise in glowing form from the fierce fire. Behold a wondrous restoration or renewal of the Ethiopian! .

.

.

dying and rising of the Ethiopian may have something to do with passage in the Odyssey, where the god Poseidon goes to visit ‘the

The a

distant Ethiopians, half of whom live where the sun goes down and half where he rises’. These Ethiopians are a mythical tribe, not yet identified with the people to the south of Egypt. 9 In a series of cases in the Dauphiné, in the south-east of France, in the 1420s and 1430s, various people were accused of invoking demons, which appeared to them as animals or more often in human form, and sometimes as Negroes. Professor Russell has pointed out that at this period Portuguese, Spanish and Italian traders were coming into contact with African blacks and the traffic in slaves was getting under way: Given the ancient fear of darkness, it was natural that the European mind should associate the black Africans with the Devil and his demons. The difficulty today of escaping from this ancient tradition sometimes seems ludicrously clear, as when a recent candidate for the position of mayor of New York, addressing a crowd of blacks in friendly fashion, announced that ‘My heart is as black as yours’. 10

The north is

closely connected with evil,

death and the Devil,

prob-

ably because

it is

literally the black side of things, the side

shadows lie. When Mary, Queen of Scots,

came

to

on which her execution at

Fotheringay Castle in 1587, the Dean of Peterborough in a set speech besought her to consider her death and mortality: Your going from hence to be no more seen, your departure into a land where all things are forgotten, your entry into a house of clay where worms shall be your sisters, and rottenness and corruption your father (as Job sayeth). Where the tree falleth there it must lie, whether it be towards the south of life and blessedness, or towards the north of death and dolefulness, now is the time of your rising to God or your fall into outer darkness, where shall be weeping and 11 wailing and gnashing of teeth. A link between the Devil and the north

was deduced from the great which the Devil owes his name of Lucifer, where in proclaiming his intention to make himself like God the morning star says, ‘I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far north’. This may refer to a myth in which the rebellious morning star tried to make himself master of the stars by scaling the holy mountain which reached to the sky in the north, the point round which the constellations revolved, but the text as it stands seemed to associate evil with the north. So did the passage in Jeremiah in which God says, ‘Out of the north evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land’. In the Vulgate this evil is ‘an evil wind’, the north wind, which Christian commentators identified with the Devil. St Augustine said, ‘Who is that north wind save him who said: I will set up my seat in the north, I will be like the Most High?’ 12 In the book of Daniel the wicked Antiochus IV Epiphanes is the king of the north, and the tribe of Dan of evil repute came from the north. Adam Scotus in the twelfth century said that evil emerges from a terrible dragon’s head in the north, which is evidently the ‘boiling pot’ in the north seen by Jeremiah in his vision, identified with the boiling pot in the mouth of the dragon Leviathan. There is a tradition in Scotland that on the day of the Last Judgment everyone will gather on the moor above the cliffs near Cromarty called the Cromarty Suitors, with the righteous towards the south and the wicked to the north. In Jewish folk belief demons love shadow and cluster in the shade of trees and in shadows cast by the moon. Their home is in the north, which is the source of storm-winds, cold and hail. Some said that when God made the world he left the north unfinished, like the demons themselves,

text in

Isaiah

to

which have souls but no bodies. One medieval Jewish writer thought that all demons came from Norway. C. G. Jung used the term 'shadow' for the dark part of the personality, the demon in oneself, the animal, instinctive, primitive creature which is usually masked by the outward persona. He said that the shadow appears in dreams as an unpleasant and degraded person, a Mr Hyde figure. It was in a dream, in fact, that Robert Louis Stevenson, who suffered badly from nightmares, saw the key scene in what became The Strange Case ofDr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, that classic story of what its author called ‘man’s double being’. Jung regarded the shadow as a necessary component of the personality. The shadow is created by the sun, the light of consciousness, and a man without his psychological

shadow would be incomplete, as inhuman as a person without a physical shadow is in folklore. When the shadow temporarily evades your control, you say afterwards, like Agamemnon in the Iliad, ‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t myself’, or ‘I was carried away’ or ‘I don’t know what came over me’. In analysing the dreams of Americans, Jung said that he found the

shadow of a

frequently represented by a Negro or an Indian. In the dreams it would be ‘a somewhat shady individual of his own

European

unpleasant figures in dreams, he thought, were sometimes representations of archetypal structures in the unconscious:

kind’. Other

of the collective unconscious can often and horrible forms in dreams and fantasies, so grotesque that even the most hard-boiled rationalist is not immune from shattering nightmares and haunting fears. 13

The

archetypal

contents

assume

3

Creatures of the

Night

Here

comes a

candle to

Here

comes a

chopper

light you to bed,

to

chop off your head. Children’s game

‘Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night,’ says Psalm 91, ‘nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness.’ The words were used as a magic charm to ward off a fear which is only too familiar. The sense of being watched and stalked in the dark, of something crouched and ready to spring, of what Harold Owen called ‘a pervasion of obscure animation’, is extraordinarily difficult to banish. For hundreds upon hundreds of years evil

spirits, witches, ghosts

presences have been believed

to

and malevolent

supernatural

be especially active and power-

ful

because darkness is the native sphere of evil. Equally which are naturally active at night and can see in the dark— like cats, bats and owls—reverse the normal and proper order of things and so are uncanny, ominous or positively devilish. Bats, with their grotesque, demonic faces, are almost always sinister creatures in European folklore, frequently identified as the souls of the restless dead. Satan has bat’s wings and in Sicily bats were burned to death or hung as incarnations of the Devil. The Old Testament, which naturally had a forceful influence on European attitudes, speaks unfavourably of bats and owls, and bats have been widely believed to bring bad luck or even death into a house if they get inside. The feminine fear that a bat will entangle itself in a woman’s hair does not seem to be rationally based, since it does not apply to birds, and is possibly connected with the old belief that evil spirits are attracted by the beauty of women’s hair. The owl also has an old evil reputation. It is unlucky to hear one hooting (the right way to stop it, incidentally, is either to tie a knot in your handkerchief or turn your pockets inside out) and if it perches on a house, flies round it or tries to come down the chimney, it is an omen of death. The owl’s solitariness and liking for ruins and churchyards probably added to the uneasiness aroused by its nocturnal habits and mournful cry, as did its semi-human face and the stare of its yellow eyes. Owls screeched before the deaths of Julius Caesar and the Emperor Augustus, and the bird was associated with witchcraft. Ruskin said that he had found the hooting of an owl invariably prophetic of mischief. The nightjar, which is also active at night and has an eerie cry, is another bird of ill omen. In parts of England it used to be called lychfowl, ‘corpse bird’. If one perches on a house, which fortunately rarely happens, it is a sign of death or serious misfortune. There is a strong tendency to connect eerie night creatures and noises with the dead. The deaths of members of old Irish families are announced by the wailing in the night of the banshee, which means literally ‘fairy woman’. Her cry is the saddest of all earth’s sounds and at

night

creatures

she is probably in origin an ancestral ghost. She has long hair, a green dress and a grey cloak, and her eyes are red with weeping. She is sometimes seen crouching among trees or flying in the moonlight. When W. B. Yeats was a boy in Sligo people told him how the banshee had been heard crying on the night before his brother died. The voices of the Seven Whistlers also make the flesh crawl in the night. They are birds which fly overhead with a whistling cry, or

rather they seem to be birds but they are really the souls of the unquiet dead or of unbaptised babies or of the Jews who cannot find rest because they crucified Christ. They are omens of death. They have been identified in different areas as curlews, plovers, whimbrel, widgeon or sea-birds, in which case they are the souls of drowned sailors. Seamen and miners were particularly afraid of them and in 1855 at a colliery in Leicestershire the miners refused to go down the pit after the Whistlers had been heard. They said that twice before men had been killed in the mine after the Whistlers had flown over in the night. 14 In Yorkshire curlews were identified as the Seven Whistlers and were also called Gabriel Hounds. Geese flying and honking at night were known as ‘gabble ratchets’, or Gabriel Hounds, and the nightjar was called ‘gabble ratch’. There was evidently a mingling of beliefs about the Whistlers and the death-hounds, whose baying was feared in northern Europe. Both sets of beliefs are connected with the tradition of the Wild Hunt, which expresses the fear of the whistling and howling of the wind on stormy nights. The Wild Hunt tore across sky and earth with the baying of hounds, the blasting of horns and the shouts of huntsmen. The riders might he dead souls or demons. Hedges and barriers collapsed before them and they destroyed or devoured everything in their path. If you were outdoors and heard the Hunt coming, you hurried inside or, if caught in the open, you threw yourself face-down on the ground, otherwise you would be snatched up and whirled away like a leaf in the wind and finally dropped in some unknown place far from home. To look at the Hunt or speak to its leader was to court death, madness or catastrophe. The original leader of the Wild Hunt in the north seems to have been the Germanic god Woden or his Scandinavian equivalent, Odin, god of the dead and god of war and raging fury, associated with the Valkyries who rode through the air as heralds of carnage. The huntsmen may originally have been warriors killed in battle, the restless and

vengeful ghosts of men cut off in their prime. Later the leader was often a less prominent god or goddess. After the Church had convinced everyone that all pagan deities were evil spirits the leader became a demon, sometimes called Wode, or the Devil himself, or a notorious human sinner like Cain or King Herod. Or he might be some great, restless, insatiable paladin of history or legend—King Arthur, Charlemagne,

Dietrich of Bern,

Hugh Capet, Wild Edric—preserving the

connection with the souls of warriors. The story that Sir Francis Drake drove over Dartmoor in a black coach drawn by horses that

had

heads, with hounds whose baying killed every dog that heard marks a them, stage in the evolution of the Hunt, which eventually turned into the black coach that collects the souls of dying sinners and takes them away to hell. Witches also rode through the sky at night. The witch-figure in its long history in Europe ranges across most of the scale from the human to the superhuman. At one end is the ordinary village witch, who lives down the road and was born and will die like other mortals, but who has secret knowledge and magical power. At the other is the supernatural hag or the great enchantress, whose human form is only one of her disguises and who is either immortal or at least lives far longer than any human span. And there are other types of witch at various points between the two extremes. Greek and Roman writers associated witches with night, with the moon shining in darkness and with the powers of the underworld who ruled the land of the dead. They were believed to work various kinds of harmful magic—killing or injuring people and cattle, blasting crops, causing storms or drought, provoking lust or hindering love. They were skilled in poisoning. They could change shape, as the moon does in the sky, turning themselves into birds, dogs, mice or flies, and they could also turn their victims into animals. They could resurrect the dead, temporarily at least, and they used bits of dead bodies in their magic. Witches were also credited with more high-flown and wildly improbable powers over the forces of nature—making the sea boil on a windless day, for instance, or halting waterfalls in mid-flight or even throwing the earth off centre. Running through these extraordinary feats is the theme of witches reversing the natural and normal order of things. ‘There are witches,’ says a character in the Satyricon, ‘and the ghouls go walking at night, turning the whole world upside down.’ Sophisticated people did not always take these supposed powers with as many pinches of salt as might be supposed. St Augustine quoted quite seriously as an example of what magic can do a passage in the Aeneid about a priestess whose incantations stop the flow of rivers, turn no

the stars back on their courses and bring trees marching down hillsides. 15 Witches invoked moon goddesses—Hecate, Diana or Selene—and they could draw the moon down from the sky, which the modern witches take to mean drawing power down from the goddess. In the Medea of Euripides the enchantress calls on Hecate, ‘who dwells apart, the flame of flame, in my fire’s inmost heart’, 16 and Hecate was constantly invoked in magic spells. She was goddess of darkness, the dead,

blood and terror, believed to wander among tombs and drink the blood of corpses, and to afflict the living with madness, epilepsy and nightmares. She was represented with three heads or three bodies, linked with three phases of the moon—new, full and old—and identified with Luna in the sky, Diana on earth and Persephone in the underworld. She was particularly associated with the restless ghosts of suicides and others who had died before their time. They followed her as she roamed grimly through the night, making dogs shiver with fright. People walking at night in lonely places saw her and were terrified, and so she was called antaia, ‘the meeter’, and einodia, ‘she who appears on the way.’ Offerings of dogs’ flesh were put out for her at crossroads, where her triple image frequently stood. She was the moon in its eerie and baneful aspect, and the torch and the scourge, dogs and snakes were her attributes. In the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, Medea tells Jason how to invoke this terrible goddess of the night. He must bathe in a running stream and then, alone at midnight, wearing dark clothes, he must sacrifice a sheep and pour a libation of honey, with prayers to the goddess. Then he must go away and on no account look behind him, though he may hear footsteps and the baying of hounds. Jason does as he is told, and the goddess comes to accept the offering, lit by a thousand torches, garlanded with snakes, with dogs of the underworld howling shrilly around her and the ground trembling under her feet.17 A prayer to Hecate addresses her as:

ghosts, witchcraft, dogs,

Infernal,

terrestrial and celestial Bombo, goddess of the cross-roads, light, queen of the night, enemy of the sun, and friend and

guiding companion of the darkness; you who rejoice to hear the barking of dogs and to see blood flow; you who wander among the tombs in the hours of darkness, thirsty for blood, and the terror of mortal men;

Gorgo, Mormo,

moon

of a thousand forms.

...

‘Three-headed, nocturnal, excrement-eating virgin, Persephone holder of the keys, Kore of the underworld,

In another prayer she is

Gorgon-eyed terrible dark one’. 18 The name Bombo is obscure. Mormo was the nursery bogy which Erinna of Telos feared. Gorgo was the monster also called Medusa, which had snakes for hair and huge wings and whose glance turned people to stone—in other words she possessed to a marked degree the power of ‘fascination’ or ‘glamour’. The face in the moon was sometimes called ‘the Gorgon’s head’. Later on, in medieval Europe, the connection between witchcraft

and the moon largely lapsed. Although there are traces here and there of a goddess of witches, their presiding deity was almost always male, and though in his name of Lucifer he was a bringer of light into darkness, he had nothing to do with the moon. The goddess has been restored to her place of honour by the modern covens, which are far more pagan in spirit than their medieval predecessors. The old connection between witches and the night did persist, however, and though

they frequently confessed to meeting and working their wiles in the daylight, in the popular stereotype to this day evil witches have remained essentially creatures of the night, allied to the powers of darkness. Dressed in black, they ride their broomsticks through a midnight sky which may contain a crescent moon, the pale survivor of the classical witch goddess. The shape-changing beliefs also persisted and so did the association of witches with torchlight flickering eerily in darkness, fascination and the evil eye, child-killing, cannibalism and devouring sexuality.

Night is the time of love-making, which has its own constellations of terror: the fear of an invasion of the self; in virgins of both sexes the fear of initiation; in men the fear of loss of vital energy, and so the fear of female rapacity; the fear of letting loose the animal in oneself; the fear of a union against nature with some non-human creature which preys on the animal desires it awakes. Medieval Jews identified ‘the terror by night’ of Psalm 91 as the demoness Lilith. She had a human form, with wings and long, dishevelled hair, though some said that she flew about at night as a bird, wailing. She and her children, the lilim or liliot, seduced men in their sleep and sucked their blood. They also attacked newly born children and their mothers. For protection a circle was drawn around mother and child and the words ‘Sanvi, Sansanvi, Semangelaf, Adam and Eve, barring Lilith’ were written in chalk on the walls or the door. If a child laughed in his sleep it was a sign that Lilith was fondling him. It was believed that a man should not spend the night alone in a house, nor should a baby be left alone in a house by day or night, for Lilith would seize man or child in her fatal embrace. According to legend, Lilith was Adam’s first wife, made out of filth and mud before Eve was created. Lilith left Adam because he wanted her to lie beneath him, which she resented because she considered herself to be his equal. In other words, she wanted to reverse what in a was the natural and proper order of things. named God sent three angels Sanvi, Sansanvi and Semangelaf to bring Lilith back to Adam, but she refused and said that her only reason for

male-dominated

society

weaken children. Meanwhile she had been copulating with lustful demons and had spawned an immense progeny of demonic offspring. To punish her, God ordered a hundred of her children to be killed every day. According to another story, after Cain and Abel were born Adam had nothing to do with Eve for 130 years, when she bore Seth. In the interval Adam fathered numerous demons on Lilith.

existing

was

to

theme of unnatural lust and unnatural preying on children appears in Greek and Roman folk beliefs. Lamias were creatures which made love to sleeping men and also killed and ate The

same

twin

children, both types of attack being methods of absorbing the victim’s vital energy. The original Lamia was said to have been a beautiful Libyan queen. Zeus made her his mistress but his wife, Hera, was bitterly jealous and murdered Lamia’s children. Lamia went mad with grief, her beauty changed to bestial ugliness and in desperate revenge she stole and devoured other people’s children. She was passionately lustful, could change into any shape she liked, and preyed on men in the form of an alluring woman. Lamia and Lilith were identified when the Old Testament was turned into Latin. A verse in Isaiah which in the original referred to Lilith was translated ibi cubavit lamia et invenit sibi requiem, which in the Authorised Version becomes ‘the screech-owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest’ 19 Late classical authors identified the lamias with the empusas, children of Hecate, which disguised themselves as beautiful girls to lie with men and kill them. There were similar beliefs about owls, hence the Authorised Version’s screech-owl in Isaiah. Ovid said that screechowls (striges) are birds which fly at night and attack children, tearing their flesh and drinking their blood, searching for the heart and entrails. They are descended from the Harpies and have large heads, goggle eyes, ravenous beaks, hooked talons, and wings blotched with grey. They may be real birds or old hags turned into birds by spells. That there was a sexual element in their activities is suggested by Ovid’s use of the adjective avidus for the birds, meaning ‘longing, desirous’ as well as ‘greedy’, and the verb vitiare, ‘to weaken’ but also ‘to rape’ for their attacks. 20 The nymphomaniac witch Pamphile in The Golden Ass of Apuleius turns herself into an owl and flies in at the bedroom window of a young man on whom she has designs. Lamia and strix or striga, ‘screech-owl’, later became common words for a witch, and derived from strix is Old French estrie, meaning a creature which is a mixture of bird, evil

spirit

and witch that preys

on

small children. It takes the

form of a woman to lie with men and drain their blood and life-energy.

night it can return to its demonic form and fly about. In Scots Gaelic the owl is called ‘night hag’. Various elements are mingled together in these traditions: the sinister nocturnal bird; the bird of prey that lives on flesh and blood; the evil spirit or vampirish ghost that supports its spectral life on the energies of the living; woman as the seductive destroyer of men gorging herself on their bodies; the nursery horror of the evil mother. All these ingredients were blended into the stereotype of the witch. Allied with the powers of evil, active at night and turning the world upside down, witches kill and eat babies instead of loving and nourishing them. In a horrible reversal of nature they gulp mangled children’s flesh into their bellies, which should form and give life to them. They are also sexually rapacious and through both cannibalism and devouring sex they absorb fresh supplies of vigorous energy. Their appetite for young children has in it, in the stories of Lilith and Lamia, the twisted longing of the barren woman or the woman robbed of her children. Other elements from real life lie behind the fantasy. It flourished when the infant mortality rate was far higher than it is now, and comparatively primitive societies frequently ascribed to malevolent witchcraft what we put down to accident or unknown causes. Another ingredient may be the fear of harming children with which some women become obsessed. In his book on Obsession Arthur Guirdham describes the cases of ‘Mrs F’ and ‘Mrs G’. Mrs F had no children of her own and had herself been an unwanted child. ‘She had one predominant, unvarying and terrifying obsession, that she might kill children.’ Normally she was very fond of them and delighted to look after the children of friends and neighbours, who left them with her: At

When her obsessions were active she was terrified if children came While she the house and even of the sight of a perambulator. her evil were forced into her that what she called thoughts accepted mind against her will, for the most part she rejected reassurance and persisted that it was all her fault and that these thoughts came from

to

.

.

.

the Devil. Mrs G had also been an unwanted child. Her obsessional fear was that might have sexual intercourse with children, and also with animals, which recalls the witch’s familiar, the pet animal-demon of the stock British witch. Cases like these could well contribute to a belief in the existence of wicked women, driven by evil impulses to attack children and satisfy unnatural lusts. 21

she

The belief that witches were cannibals was closely linked with their night-riding which, as it eventually developed, combined the northern tradition of the Wild Hunt with the late classical belief that legions of ghosts and bogies followed Hecate as she stalked through the night.

The Canon Episcopi, which goes back at least to the early tenth century, says that certain women who are followers of Satan believe that they ride on animals with their Lady, the pagan goddess Diana, in the silence of the dead of night, covering great distances. This is widely believed, the Canon says, but it is an illusion created by the Devil, who makes women think that these things happen to them in the body when in reality they occur only in the mind. A hundred years later Archbishop Burchard of Worms again condemned this belief as an illusion, together with other related popular beliefs: ‘that at night a woman in bed in her husband’s arms, with the doors closed, can go out and with other women, deceived by similar error, traverse spaces of earth and without arms slay men, baptized and redeemed with Christ’s blood, and eat their cooked flesh and replace their hearts with straw and wood or other things and then revive them and give them further life’; or that at night women ‘can rise in the air and fight with others, giving and receiving wounds’. Burchard apparently thought that the women experienced a diabolically inspired collective hallucination. The reference to the creation of zombies, or walking corpses, is interesting and the beliefs about killing and fighting in the air recall both the Wild Hunt and the

Valkyries. 22 Writing in

the early thirteenth century, Gervaise of Tilbury said that doctors put lamias and witches of this kind down to nightmares— ‘nocturnal imaginations, which disturb the minds of sleepers and oppress with weight’—but he himself thought that ‘it is the misfortune of certain men and women to fly by night through vast distances, enter

houses, oppress sleepers with heavy dreams; they seem to eat and light candles, dissolve human bones, suck human blood and move infants from place

place’. 23 They only ‘seem’ to do these things apparently, in the nightmares which they induce, but their flying about at night and going into people’s houses is real. All through the early medieval references, however, it is clear that many people thought the activities to

of witches entirely real. It had long been believed that nightmares were caused by evil beings. The ‘mare’ is not a horse but the Germanic mara, an evil spirit which squats on a sleeper’s chest and causes a feeling of suffocation and frightening dreams. Like Lilith and the lamia, the nightmare was essentially

it is in Freudian

theory. The Latin for nightmare was incubo, basically meaning something which lies on and weighs on a person, and an incubus in the Middle Ages was a demon which lay with women, erotic,

as

being one that lay with men, according to the demonologists, demons have no sex and no bodies but can appear in human male or female form, either animating a corpse for the purpose or manufacturing a body from condensed air or smoke, or from male a

succubus

ejaculated in masturbation or nocturnal emission. Aquinas thought that a demon acts as a succubus with a man, so acquiring his semen, and then serves a woman as an incubus, injecting the man’s seed into her and sometimes fathering a child. In the background of the incubus and succubus were earlier beliefs about unions between spiritual beings and humans. In Genesis there was the story of the angels, or ‘sons of God’, who saw that the daughters of men were fair and begot children on them. There were numerous Greek and Roman tales of the loves of mortals with gods and goddesses, sperm

and satyrs and other spirits. One of them, Faunus, a Roman was also identified with Incubo, the nightmare. There were similar beliefs in northern Europe, as St Augustine noted in discussing whether the angels of Genesis, ‘being of an incorporeal nature’, could have copulated with human women, Though doubtful, he was reluctant to dismiss it:

nymphs forest

god identified with the Greek Pan,

And seeing it is so general a report, and so many aver it either from their own experience or from others, that are of indubitable honesty and credit, that the silvans and fauns commonly called incubi, have often injured women, desiring and acting carnally with them, and that certain devils whom the Gauls call dusii do continually practise this uncleanness, and tempt others to do it, which is affirmed by such persons, and with such confidence, that it were impudence to deny 24 it, I dare not venture to determine anything here. .

.

.

demonologists cited this passage as a firm endorsement of the reality of incubi and succubi, though it is clear from the vigour with which they argue the point that not everyone agreed with them. A late thirteenth-century work on dreams says that ‘the incubus, popularly thought of as a dwarf or satyr who sits on the sleeper is really a feeling of suffocation produced by blood pressure near the heart’. Antonio Guaineri, writing at Pavia in the fifteenth century, thought that an incubus ‘was merely a psychological illusion caused by some kind of

Later

physiological disorder’. Henri Boguet, the witch-judge who wrote Discours des Sorciers (1602), says of the coupling of witches with demons, ‘some treat the matter with derision, some are doubtful about it, and others firmly believe it to be a fact’. Boguet was also conscious of the background of pagan tradition. ‘I thoroughly believe all that has been written of Fauns, Satyrs and woodland gods, which were no more than demons, and were inordinately lustful and lascivious.’25 The story that the Huns were the children of witches by fauns or incubi was first written down in the sixth century and persisted long afterwards: Guazzo’s Compendium Maleficarum (1608) refers to it, for example. It was also said that the entire population of Cyprus was descended from demons, a notion with which modern Britons may feel a certain wry sympathy. Another popular story was that Gerbert of Aurillac, who became Pope as Sylvester II in 999, had a succubusmistress named Meridiana, who supplied him with money and taught him the magical arts. According to John Nider’s Formicarius (1435), the most successful prostitute plying for hire at the ecclesiastical Council of Constance was a succubus. Martin Luther’s enemies said that he was the son of an incubus, or of the Devil himself. Witches were accused of copulating with incubi and succubi in a frenzy of perversion at the sabbath, and a connection between demons and sexual deviation lingered on into the Age of Reason. In the late eighteenth century Mrs Piozzi, the friend of Dr Johnson, referred to a lesbian as ‘a female Fiend’ and to homosexuals as ‘He Demons that haunt each other’. The general Jewish medieval belief was that demons were of two sexes and propagated their kind by mingling with each other. But they also coupled with sleeping humans and the resulting offspring enjoyed great prestige and high rank in the world of demons. When a man had amorous dreams it was because a demoness was lying with him. Demons could also disguise themselves in human form to enjoy loveaffairs, which raised the problem of whether a married woman who with such a demon was guilty of adultery. A Polish rabbi in the sixteenth century was consulted in a case of this kind, when the demon had appeared to the woman once in the form of her husband and once as a local nobleman: he found her not guilty. A Jewish court in the of Posen at the end the Polish province of seventeenth century heard a lawsuit between the inhabitants of a house and a demon who claimed to have inherited the house from his human father, a former owner of it. The demon was represented in court by a second demon, who was

slept

invisible but audible. Judgment was given against him, on the ground that waste and desert places are the proper habitat of evil spirits, not the dwellings of men. 26 Though in official Christian and Jewish theory the incubus or nightmare was a demon, there are traces of it preserving its older character as a pagan spirit. It was believed to tangle the hair of people and animals during the night, which in medieval Germany was put down to Holle, or Holda or Hulda, a demon-witch with long matted hair and protruding teeth who seized and devoured children. She appears in a thirteenth-century manuscript as the goddess of love. She had earlier appeared in stories from Germany as the leader of the Wild Hunt, and one version of the Canon Episcopi names her as leader of the night-ride. In Shakespeare’s Romeo andJuliet it is Mab, the queen of fairyland, who plaits the manes of horses in the night and tangles elf-locks in foul sluttish hair. She is also the sender of dreams and the nightmare. ‘This is the hag, when maids lie on their back, that presses them and learns them first to bear, making them women of good carriage.’ In Michael Drayton’s Nimphidia (1627) Mab ‘by night bestrides young folk that lie upright’ and, he says, was formerly called the Mare. Belief in the incubus did not die out. W. B. Yeats, who was a member of the Golden Dawn, said that the head of the Order, MacGregor Mathers, was much pestered by ladies seeking spiritual advice: ‘one has called to ask his help against phantoms who have the appearance of dead corpses, and try to get into bed with her at night. He has driven her away with one furious sentence, “Very had taste on both sides.”' In modern magical theory of the variety taught by Aleister Crowley, seed spilt in masturbation, coitus interruptus or nocturnal emission cannot go entirely to waste, because it contains life-energy. It generates demonic entities, incubi and succubi. ‘The ancient Jewish Rabbins knew this,’ Crowley said, ‘and taught that before Eve was given to Adam the demon Lilith was conceived by the spilth of his dreams, so that the hybrid races of satyrs, elves, and the like began to populate those secret places of the earth which are not sensible by the organs of the normal man.’ An incubus or succubus, on this hypothesis, is an exteriorisation in dream or fantasy of unbridled animal desire, ‘the satyr in each individual’, given human form in the imagination. Deliberately to project such a creature onto the outside world and embrace it is to open a gateway into ‘the secret places of the earth’, the subtle world which surrounds the world of everyday life. 27 J. K. Huysmans, the novelist, once had an encounter with a succubus.

exploring what he called ‘the latrines of the supernatural', Huysmans retired to a Trappist monastery for a change. there one night, he had an amorous dream: Asleep After years spent

Then at the moment of acute and almost painful ejaculation he awoke and disturbed his astral visitor. Succubi are said to vanish with incredible speed and Huysmans caught a flicker of her as she burst out of sight. The sheet she shared with him was still in disarray and took a moment or two to settle down after she had fled. The did not attribute this experience to an fact that Huysmans ordinary erotic dream common to most men shows how deeply the ancient traditions can influence the judgment of a person of high .

.

.

intelligence. 28 4

The Tribe of Dreams

Perhaps

in order

insane every

to

preserve

our

sanity

every

day,

we

need

to go

night. Benjamin Walker, Beyond the Body

Besides fear of the dark and the things that go bump in it, the night holds two other dangers—frightening dreams and night terrors. Night terrors, as distinct from nightmares, occur when you are in the process of falling asleep. They are particularly common among children and may be set off by seeing something terrifying in the patterns on the wallpaper or in the looming outlines of furniture. I remember more than once as a child seeing something black and horrible rushing at me across the room, shutting my eyes in panic and then opening them

again, though dreading to, and realising that it was only my coat hanging on a chair. Night terrors can also occur without any discernible basis of this kind. Fear of things under the bed, which may be witches or bears or shapeless and featureless bogies, is extremely common. Children often see evil faces. ‘Nasty, grinning faces,’ says Arthur Guirdham disquietingly, ‘are mentioned by children for whom such phraseology is the acme of their descriptive capacity. It is as though for the first time they had encountered a vivid and describable reality.’ Also seen are featureless beings, ghostly figures, skeletons and peculiar, distorted animals. Dr Guirdham believes that what the child sees is ‘the visual symbolisation of evil in forms which have descended to us through

aeons

of time and which

are

independent of the child’s so-called

29

imaginative capacity.’ We spend about one-third of our lives asleep, and much of this time is spent in dreaming. Although many dreams are enjoyable, it seems that

least that most of the ones we remember on Unpleasant dreams are more common than pleasant waking ones, and dreams involving fear, anger and sadness are reported to occur twice as often as dreams in which the dreamer feels happy. Dreams which apparently predict the future are frequently reported and tend to be distinctly gloomy, foretelling death, disaster and tragedy. It has been discovered by experiment that preventing people from dreaming adversely affects their mental balance. This suggests, as children’s waking fears of the supernatural do, that the mind needs to focus its anxieties and terrors onto fairly stereotyped figures and give them dramatic form. The older generally accepted explanation was simply that evil beings and influences existed in all their grim reality outside the mind, and if you were afraid of the dark and of what lurked in it you had good reason to be. On the night of 10 November 1619 the philosopher Descartes, then a young man of twenty-three, dreamed three dreams ‘which he imagined could only have come from above’. In the first dream he was walking in the streets and saw phantom figures which so terrified him that he was forced to lean heavily to the left, because ‘he felt a great weakness in his right side’. Ashamed of walking in such a silly way, he tried to stand straight, but a violent wind spun him round three or four times on his left foot. He went on, dragging himself along with difficulty. He tried to go into a chapel to say his prayers, but turned back when he saw a man he knew. The wind blew again and forced him back towards the chapel. Several people came to talk to him, standing up straight, while he was still bent over and tottering: most are are

not,

or at

not.

At this point he awoke and immediately felt a real pain, which made him fear that it was the work of some evil spirit who wanted to seduce him. He at once turned over on to his right side, for he had dreamt while sleeping on his left. He prayed that he might be protected from the evil effect of his dream. .

.

.

He then had two more dreams, which gradually comforted him. He himself thought that the first dream had to do with the sinfulness of his past life—the left is traditionally the side of evil, and the right of good—and that the wind:

other than the evil spirit that tried to hurl him by force place it was his intention to visit voluntarily. That is why God did not allow him to go further or to be carried even into a holy 30 place by a spirit he had not sent.

was

none

into

a

Popular tradition in Europe has seen various causes and purposes at work behind dreams. Many dreams are meaningless and illusory but some convey information about the future. It is lucky to dream of violets, which are emblems of spring, and to dream of red roses means good fortune in love, but it is unlucky to dream of white flowers. To turn a bed or a mattress on a Sunday will bring bad dreams all week. Some dreams are inspired by the dead and if you are taken to see the body of someone who has died you should touch the corpse, which prevents you from dreaming about the dead person. Yarrow picked from a young man’s grave or a sprig of churchyard yew, placed under your pillow will inspire a dream of your future husband or wife. Traditionally, some dreams are caused by indigestion or a cramped position or some other physical factor, but some are sent by God or a good angel or an evil spirit, or God or a spirit may appear in them, as Descartes supposed in his own case. Or a dream may actually be a spirit, like the mare which squats on the sleeper’s chest or the horrible dreams, night-walking terrors, which torment the murderess Clytemnestra in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus. In the Iliad, Zeus decides to send Agamemnon an evil dream. He summons one to him and instructs it to give Agamemnon a misleading message in his sleep. To be as convincing as possible, the dream puts on the appearance of Agamemnon’s most valued councillor. The dream here is an independent entity which gets into the sleeping man’s room through the keyhole, stands by his bed and acts out a performance, the dreamer meanwhile being fully aware that he is dreaming. This notion of the action of a dream was probably supported by the fact that most people ‘see’ their dreams, which consist of visual images. The Greeks always spoke of ‘seeing’ a dream, not of ‘having’ one. The Iliad also knows the common dream sensation of struggling to move, like Descartes dragging himself along with difficulty. When Achilles pursued Hector round the walls of Troy, ‘it was like a chase in a nightmare, when no one, pursuer or pursued, can move a limb’. 31 In Jewish and Christian tradition dreams may be put into the mind by God or a spirit, or may be the appearance of God or a spirit. ‘But

God

came to

Abimelech in

a

dream by night, and said to him, “Behold

are a dead man, because of the woman whom you have taken. ..."' Still in the dream, the unfortunate Abimelech pleaded his innocence and God relented and told him what to do in the morning when he woke up. One ofJob’s comforters described a dream in which he saw and heard a spirit:

you

word was brought to me stealthily, my ear received the whisper of it. Amid thoughts from visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, dread came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake. A spirit glided past my face; the hair of 32 my flesh stood up. Now

a

Tertullian thought that most dreams are sent to us by demons, though on comparatively rare occasions they are sent by God. Aquinas thought that some dreams come from within the sleeper, caused by physical conditions and sensations or involving ideas and feelings which have occupied his mind while awake, but that others come from outside and are inspired by God or by evil spirits. He granted the difficulty of

knowing which was which and thought that only the dreamer himself had any hope of distinguishing between them. The belief that dreams have meaning and are not mere fantasies probably goes back to the dawn of humanity and many primitive peoples think that the world of dreams is as real in its own different way as the waking world. It is a time-honoured principle that dreams speak in riddles. A dream of sleeping with his mother encouraged Julius Caesar to cross the Rubicon and violate his motherland. The oldest known dream hook, written in Egypt about 1350 B.C. but containing older material, frequently relies on the same type of associations and plays on words used in interpreting dreams in modern psychoanalysis. from the earliest Egyptian and Mesopotamian interpretation to the present day, is that dreams attempts often go by contraries, so that like witches and the powers of evil in general, dreams reverse the normal and turn the world upside down. Another

accepted principle, at

dream books of the sixteenth century and after taught of an apostle meant bad luck, to dream of an archbishop meant danger by night, and to dream of a librarian was a sign of mental confusion and an omen of insanity. Similarly, in Freudian theory to dream of someone’s death and feel sad means that the dreamer wants that person to die. On the other hand, a dream of missing a train is essentially reassuring, because the train pulling out of the station is a The

that

popular

to

dream

symbol of death and so the dream is telling you that you are not going to

die

yet—in which case it seems a pity that this comforting assurance

in a way which creates acute anxiety. Research at the Pavlov Institute in Moscow has accounted for dreams going by contraries in terms of the ‘paradoxical’ and ‘ultra-paradoxical’ behaviour of the brain under stress, when the brain’s usual reactions to stimuli are turned the wrong way round, as it were. For example, a sleeping subject who was touched on the cheek by a test-tube full of warm water dreamed that he was in an icy forest in winter, unable to reach a fire glowing in the distance. Little more seems to be known about anxious and frightening dreams than that they are distorted reflections of an inner hell. On the title page of the first edition of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud placed a line from Virgil: Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo, ‘If I cannot change the will of heaven, I will release hell.’ He thought that dreams are expressions of wishes deep in the unconscious mind and that those which are disturbing and terrifying express longings which the waking mind will not countenance, evil and rejected impulses which rise up in the night to frighten and disgust. Freud’s own dream interpretations generally seem patently absurd, but it has long been recognised that dreams, insane delusions and the illusions or hallucinations of the sane mind have much in common. Aristotle pointed this out, and more recently the relevance of certain experiences under drugs has been noticed. In the eighteenth century Wesley still believed that some dreams were sent by good angels and others by evil spirits, but both Coleridge and De Quincey, driven to take opium for the relief of pain and becoming addicted to it, experienced extraordinary dreams and nightmares. De Quincey found that shadowy terrors settled and brooded over his whole waking life, as well as his dream-life in which every night he seemed ‘to descend—not metaphorically, but literally to descend—into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I could ever re-ascend. Nor did I, by waking, feel that I had re-ascended.’ He wrote his Confessions of an is

expressed

after he had broken his addiction, but he says: ‘One memorial of my former condition nevertheless remains: my dreams are not calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing

English Opium-Eater

off, but

not

departed.

.

.

.’

Chapter Five

The Powers Below

The forces of evil are powers of darkness and they are also ‘the powers below’, for they belong not only to night but to the twin darknesses of the underworld and the depths of the mind. De Quincey’s nightmares carried him down into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths. Abyss means ‘bottomless’ in Greek and it is from the abyss, the dreadful measureless chasm in the heart of things that the monster of chaos rises to challenge order and the gods, just as it is from the bottomless pit in the mind that the impulses of anarchy and madness surge up to

challenge the rule

of reason, convention and conscience.

Depth has connotations of mystery, secrecy, intensity, potentiality and wisdom, and also, very often, of evil. Height is associated with power, success and moral superiority, depth with their opposites. To be down or depressed is to be in a worse than normal condition, the bottom of a scale is the bad end of it, something low or degraded is morally inferior, and a person who is hopelessly miserable is in the depths of despair. The custom of burial has a good deal to do with this tendency to think of the direction down as bad, while the direction up, towards the sun and the sky, is good. Because corpses were generally buried in the ground, the afterworlds of ancient societies were located underground or in the far west where the sun goes down at night, and the journey to the afterworld was a descent. Some of the characteristics of underworlds and hells are drawn directly from the grave—darkness, helplessness, loneliness, stench, the loathsome penetrations of worms

and maggots. The unknown darkness into which a man goes down at death naturally inspires fear and underworlds are generally ruled by sinister deities

DOI: 10.4324/9781003363743-5

The Powers Below monsters, which are frequently in animal or and which, like dragons and witches and death partly animal form itself, devour their victims. Perhaps they are projections of the savage impulses which infest the dark underworld of our own minds, so that

and contain

terrifying

one’s animal, nightmare self, and they are often composite creatures, because their home is the teeming disorderly potential of chaos. They also suggest a deep and persistent fear of the animal world, from which the earliest human beings emerged, which preyed on them and on which they preyed. That man the carnivore should suffer from the dread of being eaten in his turn seems an appropriate to meet

them is to

encounter

judgment. 1

The Eaters of the Dead ‘He

disagreed with something that

ate

him.’ Ian

Fleming, Live and Let Die

Paintings of headless human figures being attacked by huge black birds, apparently vultures, were found at çatal Hüyük in Turkey, dating from before 6000 B.C. They may have been meant to show what happened after death. The devouring theme is certainly present in ancient Egypt, where it was believed that each man was judged after death. The famous picture of the scene in the Papyrus of Ani shows the ominous black balance with two scales hanging from its beam. In one is the dead man’s heart, which is his conscience, and in the other the feather of Maat, the principle of order and truth. To pass the test, the heart must weigh exactly the same as the feather. What happened to those weighed and found wanting is shown by the presence, crouched and ready to spring, of a monster, part crocodile, part lion and part hippopotamus, named Am-mut, ‘the eater of the dead’. In chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead, a collection of texts placed with the dead in their tombs as a guidebook to the afterworld (which modern occultism regards as a record of explorations of the astral plane), the dead man says, ‘Save me from Baba, who feeds on the entrails of the dead, in this day of the great reckoning.’ He makes this appeal to forty-two beings with alarming names which suggest their manner of dealing with the wicked: Eater of Shades, Terrible of Face, Double Lion, Crusher of Bones, Eater of Entrails, and so on. He then goes on to tell them all the good deeds he did in his life. Although the Egyptians relied heavily on magic and incantations to make sure of a

The Powers Below

good afterlife, the notion of weighing the dead man’s conscience, or in texts of weighing his good actions against his evil ones, implies a judgment which is mechanical and implacable. The life has been lived, the deeds have been done, the balance weighs them impartially, and some

of prayer,

pleading, repentance or bribery can affect its this did not deter the Egyptians from trying to affect verdict: though An in the tomb it. of Petosiris, a priest of Hermopolis about inscription no amount

300 B.C., says of the afterworld:

There favour is shown only to him who is found to be without sin, when the balance and the weight are placed in the presence of the Master of Eternity.... He who does evil on earth and is not punished for it, he will be punished in the other world. 1 .

.

.

The hope that the wrongs of this world will be righted in the next is of the fundamental strands in beliefs about heaven and hell, and the weighing of the soul became a motif in medieval Christian art, in which the archangel Michael presides over the balance and demons sneak up to try to tilt the scales against the soul. The theme of the wicked being devoured also bulked large in Christian beliefs about what happened after death. Most of the Egyptian references suggest that the wicked would be devoured and annihilated, hut there are some which imply that they would be tortured, and the monsters of the Egyptian afterworld influenced the picture of hell in Coptic Christianity. A biography of a Coptic bishop of the seventh century named Pisentios records a conversation which the good man had with a mummy that he met in an old tomb. Lamenting that in life it had never heard of Christ, the mummy said that when it died pitiless angels came and tied it beneath something which looked like a black horse and led it away to be tormented in a place of wild beasts. Then, cast into outer darkness, it saw a huge ditch full of seven-headed scorpions, and a giant snake with teeth like iron stakes which chewed on the dead five days a week. They had a break on Saturdays and Sundays, as the snake took the weekends off. 2 The Egyptians could look forward to the afterworld with hope as one

as fear, but in Mesopotamian literature there is nothing to hope for. All the dead go to ‘the land of no return’, reached by the road that runs only one way, where it is dark and silent and thick with dust, and the dead, feathered and flying like birds, feed on dust and clay. There was an entrance to the underworld in the west where the sun went down and each grave was also an entrance. The dead were ferried across a

well

by a boatman who had four hands and the face of a bird. Then they went to the great city of the dead, with its seven walls and seven gates and seven gate-keepers. Within it was the palace of lapis lazuli where Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld, lived with her consort, Nergal, eating the bread and drinking the beer which the living gave to the dead. Ereshkigal, ‘lady of the place below’, was the older sister, opposite and bitter enemy of the beautiful goddess Inanna or Ishtar, the queen of heaven. She acquired her husband unintentionally. He disrespectful y river

stand up in the presence of her messenger in the she summoned him to appear before her, meaning to kill him. But when Nergal came, he dragged Ereshkigal from her throne by her hair and threatened to cut off her head. She hastily offered him the lordship of the underworld, and he spent half the year there and half above ground. Nergal seems to have been the sinister aspect of the sun god, Shamash, responsible for war, plague, flood and destruction. An Assyrian text of about 650 B.C. describes a dream in which a prince saw the underworld in all its terror, with its gods and officials, many of which were composite beings, part human and part animal or bird. The chief gate-keeper, for instance, had a lion’s head, human hands and a bird’s feet. In his dream the prince saw Nergal, sitting on his royal throne and wearing his royal tiara, brandishing terrible weapons. Lightning flashed from him and he roared and shouted like a howling storm. It is made clear that the dream-experience was one of almost failed

to

assembly of the gods and

intolerable fear. 3 The great goddess

Ishtar,

queen of heaven and ruler of love and

fertility, once descended to the underworld and demanded to be let in, threatening to smash down the gate and set the dead free. When Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld, heard this, her face turned yellow and her lips black, for if the dead were released there would be no more bread and beer, and she would have to live on clay and muddy water. So Ishtar was ushered through the seven gates, and at each one some of her royal robes and jewels were taken from her, her great crown at the first gate, her earrings at the second, her necklaces at the third, and so on until she came naked into the presence of Ereshkigal, who loosed her. In the earlier Sumerian version of this myth, when before Ereshkigal, the seven judges of the underworld, goddess the Annunaki, ‘fasten their eyes upon her, the eyes of death’ and ‘at their word, the word which tortures the spirit’, she turns into a corpse, which is hung from a stake. In both versions the goddess is

sixty diseases the

at

comes

rescued and returns to the surface of the earth, which has been barren without her. 4 The stripping of the goddess may stand for the loss of all living characteristics and faculties, and all earthly rank and circumstance, in the world after death. If so, the descent through the seven gates is a parallel, though in reverse as far as the direction and desirability of the progress is concerned, to the later belief in the West that after death the soul rises to heaven through the spheres of the seven planets, losing on its way the traits and characteristics with which they had endowed it before birth. The texts do not explain why the queen of heaven wanted to go to the underworld to begin with. If it was to release the dead from their gloomy captivity, her failure to do so and her own subjection to the experience of dying may have been meant to teach the lesson of the inescapability of death. The picture in the written texts of the dead leading a shadowy, powerless existence in darkness and dust contrasts oddly with Mesopotamian burial customs, which imply that the dead were believed to live on in a much more active way, and also with the prevalent fear of the dead. They were buried with supplies of food and drink and other equipment, and the supplies were replenished at intervals by their surviving relatives. The dead who had a grudge against the living were feared and loathed. Anyone who was not buried could not enter the underworld and stayed in this world as a menace to the living, and those who were buried but subsequently neglected would become famished with hunger and might return to this world and roam the streets, rooting in rubbish heaps and attacking people. Diseases and misfortunes were generally put down to the unburied or dissatisfied dead. It looks as if the texts, which insist that the dead are helpless and do not return, were intended to discourage the cult of the dead. In Homer, again, the dead are powerless and, once their bodies have been decently disposed of, time spent on them is time wasted. They all exist in helpless misery in the dark gloom of the underworld, flitting about witlessly as shadows, deprived of bodies and so of everything that makes life worth living: or almost all of them—a few, specially favoured by the gods, go to the paradise of Elysion or the Isles of the Blest. There were other, more influential traditions, however. The oldest strand in Greek beliefs about the afterlife may have been that the dead lived on in their tombs, where they needed supplies of food and the affectionate attention of their families, whom in turn they protected. Some particularly distinguished dead, the ‘heroes’, protected

whole community which honoured them. If the dead were theoretically powerless, in practice they were feared. If they were theoretically helpless prisoners in the underworld, in practice they were believed to return to the land of the living in force on occasion, as they did at Athens during the Anthesteria and as they did on certain days of the year at Rome, where they were greeted with the same mixture of hospitality and dread. Similarly in medieval Europe, the presence of the dead was sensed and feared at Hallowe’en, though the great majority of them were officially supposed to be safely tucked away in purgatory. a

There

was

also the fear that

something

worse

might

lurk in the

beyond death than the helpless flitting of phantoms. In the fifth century B.C. Polygnotus painted at Delphi scenes of punishment in the underworld, and a portrait of a demon named Eurynomus, who shadows

believed to eat the flesh of corpses. ‘He is of a colour between blue and black, like that of meat flies; he is showing his teeth, and under him is spread a vulture’s skin.’ 5 One of the characters in Plato’s Republic says that a man may laugh easily enough at the tales of how those who have done wrong are punished in the afterworld, as long as he thinks that death is a safe distance away, but when he grows old or ill he cannot was

ugly suspicion that the stories might be true. It was in an attempt dispel popular fears of tortures to come that Lucretius in the first century B.C. argued that at death the soul is annihilated. The fears persisted, however, and found an approved place in Christianity. In Hesiod’s account in the Theogony of how the world began, one of the first things to come into existence is Tartarus, a gulf of damp and misty gloom far down in the depths. The space between it and the earth escape

an

to

is, apparently, another of the earliest primeval creatures, Chaos or Chasm. This chasm, which is ‘stuffed with darkness’, is treated as female. Hesiod may have thought of it as a gigantic yawning throat, which is interesting in view of the theme of devouring death and the hell-mouth of Christian tradition. 6 Tartarus later became a name of hell and the Christian picture of the afterworld was influenced by the description of Tartarus in the Aeneid. Aeneas enters the underworld through a cave at Lake Avernus, whose water is black and poisonous. At its threshold are the ugly shapes of diseases, old age, fear, hunger, poverty, pain and death. He passes the giant elm tree of false dreams and the shadowy figments of monsters of men’s imagining, centaurs, gorgons and harpies, and comes to the river which must be crossed by the dead, flocking like autumn leaves, and the grim old ferryman,

Charon.

Across the river are the territories of those who died in childhood, those unjustly executed, suicides and warriors. These, it seems, cannot go further: perhaps they are held back, closer to earthly life than the rest, because they died before their time. The road now forks, the path to the right running to Elysium, the other leading the wicked to Tartarus. Aeneas sees the outer walls of Tartarus, massively fortified, and a white-hot river of flame, Phlegethon, roaring below them. The gateway has columns of unforgiving adamant and an iron tower. From inside come the sounds of savage flogging and the clanking of chains. The gates creak open and Aeneas sees in the entrance the Fury who scourges the dead, her robe streaked with blood. Further inside there is a monstrous hydra with fifty gaping throats and further in still, yawning steeply downwards, is the ultimate abyss where the guiltiest of all are imprisoned. Aeneas is told that the dead are tortured to purge them of evil: Some are hung, stretched and helpless, for the winds to blow on them. From others the pervasive wickedness is washed away deep in an enormous gulf, or it is burnt out of them by fire. Each of us finds the world of death fitted to himself. Once purged and clean, the souls wander free in Elysium until it is time for them to be reborn on earth. 7 The motif of being swallowed by a mouth is repeated over and over again in this description—the black jaws of the lake, the gaping cave, the fifty-throated hydra, the yawning descent into the final gulf. Virgil’s dark woods and phantom monsters, the towering battlements and the river of flame, also have their echoes in Christian literature and art. The purging of the soul by torture, though not the belief in reincarnation, appears again in the Christian purgatory. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, an account of the afterworld so detailed and vivid that simple-minded people thought that Dante had really been there, the guide through the horrors of hell and purgatory is Virgil himself. 2

Hades and

Persephone

Not that fair field Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers Herself a fairer flower by gloomy Dis Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world. Milton, Paradise Lost

There was a contrast in Greek religion between the Olympian gods of the sky and the powers of the underworld, shrouded in mystery and darkness, and approached by night. The Olympians, who were related to the Germanic and Norse gods, belonged to the tribes which invaded Greece from the north in the second millennium B.C. and imposed themselves on the native inhabitants. The natives, whose civilisation centred on Crete, worshipped powers which were mainly connected with the earth rather than the sky—the mother goddess, the young god who was her lover, and the dead buried in the ground. The Olympians were the gods of the ruling class of warrior chieftains. The underworld or ‘chthonian’ powers (from chthon, ‘the earth’) were the gods of ordinary people, concerned with fertility and the world after death. It was their cults, in which the dead were not powerless, which held out the hope of immortality. The two religions did not remain completely separate and the distinction between Olympian and underworld deities was not clearcut. Zeus himself, the supreme Olympian god, mingled the two different strains in his nature. He was the sky and weather god of the Indo-European invaders, the patriarchal chieftain of gods and men, but he was also the local chthonian god of the native cults. As a result of this blending there was not only the familiar Zeus of the sky, but also ‘another Zeus’, who was ‘Zeus beneath the earth’, and Hesiod told farmers to pray to ‘chthonian Zeus and pure Demeter’, the com goddess,

good crop. 8 The god of the dead and ruler of the underworld was himself an Olympian, an older brother of Zeus, and the Zeus beneath the earth is sometimes this dark brother and counterpart of the bright one of the sky. When the Olympians came triumphantly to power, Hades was given the lordship of the land of the dead, which later came to bear his for

a

‘the dank house of chill Hades’, ‘the hateful Chambers of Decay that fill the gods themselves with horror’. Stem, grim and pitiless, he

name,

famous for his horses and his obstinacy, and the Iliad says that he is more than any other god because he is adamantine and unyielding. The Greeks who like many people to this day referred to the dead as ‘the departed’, preferred not to name him too plainly. The name Hades means ‘the Unseen One’ and is a euphemism for death, and he had other euphemistic titles, including one with a pleasingly sardonic ring—Polydegmon, ‘the Hospitable One’, the host of many guests. He was not much worshipped, naturally, though he had a temple at Elis. It was opened only once a year because, Pausanias said, ‘men was

loathed

down only once to Hades’, and even then nobody but the priest allowed to go inside. The god was shown holding the key of the underworld. His name at Elis was Pluton, ‘wealthy’, because of the wealth of crops which the earth produces, so that he was not only god of death but also a god of sprouting life. In Roman religion he became Pluto or Dis, short for dives, ‘rich’. 9 Persephone, the queen of the underworld, also linked together the opposites of death and fertility. A native earth goddess originally, she was identified by the Greek invaders with their own goddess Kore, the the Maiden, virgin daughter of Demeter. The story of how the Maiden was carried off by Hades is told in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. She was innocently picking flowers in a meadow when she saw a large and beautiful narcissus, which Earth had grown specially to tempt her. ‘It was a thing of awe, whether for deathless gods or mortal men to see; from its root grew a hundred blooms and it smelled most sweetly....' But when she reached for it the ground split open and suddenly, like the Demon King in pantomine, there appeared the Hospitable One, he who has many names, with his chariot and horses. He carried her off screaming and weeping to the underworld. Her sorrowing mother Demeter searched everywhere for her and when she discovered what had happened she shut herself away at Eleusis, disguised as an old woman, while no crops grew and men were threatened with famine and the gods with the loss of their offerings and sacrifices. Zeus ordered Persephone to be returned to her mother but because, tricked by Hades, she had eaten a pomegranate seed in the underworld, she had to return there for part of each year—the period in the summer when the Greek farmer’s seed-corn was stored underground in pits or large jars. Demeter, rejoicing, made the com grow and the plants sprout, and she taught the Eleusinians her Mysteries, the most famous of the ancient world: too go

was

Happy is he among men upon earth who has seen these mysteries; but he who is uninitiate and who has no part in them, never has lot of like

good things once he is dead,

down in the darkness and

gloom.

Faith in Demeter lasted down to the beginning of the nineteenth century among the people of Eleusis, who complained that their harvests had been disappointing since their statue of the goddess had been carried off by a marauding Englishman and presented to Cambridge University. The Mysteries themselves had perished centuries before, overwhelmed by Christianity. They evidently saw in the annual death and

rebirth of the com the promise of life after death for men. The story of Persephone implies that death has an insatiable desire to clasp life in its icy arms. But Persephone (or her Roman equivalent, Proserpine) was a goddess of death who was also a goddess of renewed life. The myth provides a bridge between two aspects of the earth, as the home of the dead and the source of fertility and life. The pomegranate which tied her to the underworld and the dead is a symbol of

and abundance, because each fruit contains many juicy seeds. In Christian art it is a symbol of hope for resurrection and immortality, and also an emblem of the Church, the many contained in a unity. The significance of the narcissus in the myth is doubtful. Some authors have decided that it is really a phallus and that this part of the story is about the sexual initiation of the Maiden. In Christian art the narcissus is sometimes included in scenes of the Annunciation, when the angel tells the Virgin that she is to bear the divine child, to show the victory of divine love and eternal life over sin and death. The central myth of the modern witchcraft movement is based on the story of Persephone and, as described by Gerald Gardner, the movement’s leading propagandist in the 1950s, is concerned with death and rebirth. The god of the witches, who appears in the myth as Death,

fertility

is

the

of the next world, or of death and resurrection, or of reincarnation, the comforter, the consoler. After life you go gladly to his realms for rest and refreshment, becoming young and strong, waiting for the time to be reborn on earth again.

god

.

.

.

to the myth, the witches’ goddess who, like Persephone is connected with the moon and, like Kore, at the beginning of the story is a virgin, went to the underworld to solve the mystery of death. The guardians of the gates made her strip herself of her clothes and jewels, because she could bring nothing with her into the land of the dead. When she was naked they bound her and Death scourged her and she cried out, ‘I know the pangs of love’. Death said, ‘Blessed be’, and embraced her. And he taught her all mysteries, ‘and they loved and were one’, and he taught her all magic. ‘But to be reborn you must die and be ready for a new body; to die you must be born; without love 10 you may not be born, and this is all the magic.’ This myth, which is acted out at witch ceremonies, is an affirmation of the natural cycle of life and death as a unity of opposites, of lovemaking as the ‘death’ which creates life, and death as the love-making

According

which

life renewed. Whether Gardner invented the myth himself found it in existence, as he said he did, is an open question, though it has a Crowleyan ring and Gardner was an admirer of Crowley. Gardner said he thought it was probably Celtic in origin, and did not mention Persephone, though he did refer to the old Mesopotamian myth of Ishtar’s descent to the underworld, from which the stripping off of the goddess’s clothes and jewels is drawn. The underworld powers of Greek religion were far more numerous than the Olympians. Besides powerful deities, they included lesser local fertility spirits and ‘heroes’, dead men and women believed to live on in their tombs. Their underground homes were frequently inhabited by sacred snakes to whom worshippers nervously presented honeycakes. Although they gave fertility and life and help to the living, they were also profoundly uncanny and frightening. Pausanias described from his own experience the terrifying procedure of consulting the oracle of the hero Trophonius in Boeotia. After sacrifices and purifications the enquirer was washed in a stream by night and anointed with oil. Then he was taken to two springs and drank of each in turn, first the water of Lethe, or forgetfulness, to clear his mind of his current preoccupations, and then the water of Mnemosyne, or memory, so that he would remember what was to come. He was shown the secret image of Trophonius and then he went to the oracle itself, which was on a hillside beyond a grove of trees. The entrance was set in a circular floor of white marble and, apparently, the enquirer went in through a maze, possibly placed there to stop what lived underneath from finding its way out. He climbed down a portable ladder to a narrow hole leading further down into the ground. Clutching his offering of honey-cakes, he then had to lie on his back, put his feet into the hole and thrust hard to get his knees into it. Then he would be drawn swiftly down into the hole, as if seized in the current of a rapid river. After this what he wanted to know would be revealed to him, sometimes by sight, sometimes by hearing. He returned through the same hole, paralysed with fear and unconscious of both himself and his surroundings. He was creates

or

taken to a nearby building to recuperate. ‘Afterwards, however, he will recover all his faculties, and the power to laugh will return to him.’ Or so Pausanias says, though it was commonly believed that someone who had been through this experience never laughed again. The reference to the springs of Lethe and Mnemosyne makes it clear that the cave was in the underworld and that to visit it was to penetrate into the land of the dead. 11

Offended chthonian spirits could be extremely dangerous. The hero Talthybius, who in life had been Agamemnon’s herald and who had a temple in Sparta, became angry with the Spartans because they murdered heralds sent to them by Xerxes. They knew that he was angry when for a long time they failed to obtain favourable omens from their sacrifices. The hero’s rage was not soothed until two noble Spartans volunteered to go to the court of Xerxes in Persia and offer their lives in compensation. Xerxes generously spared them. A horrible ghost called ‘the Hero’, described as black and clothed in a wolf’s skin, plagued the city of Temesa, mercilessly killing its inhabitants, until they placated it by giving it a beautiful girl every year. Eventually, Euthymus of Locri, the Olympic boxing champion, fell in love with a girl intended for ‘the Hero’ and drove the ghost away for ever. The people of Orchomenus in Boeotia found that the ghost of the unburied Actaeon was going about and ravaging their land, so they gave him a proper burial, sacrificed to him as a hero once a year, and made a statue of him which they fastened securely to a rock, presumably to prevent him from stirring again. 12 One function of chthonian powers was to give effect to curses. People consigned their enemies to the tender mercies of Hecate, Hades, Persephone, Demeter, the Furies and other beings of the underworld. Tombs were placed in their care, as in an inscription from Roman Crete which puts the tomb under the protection of Pluto, Demeter, Persephone, the Furies and all the other subterranean deities and puts a curse on anyone who violates the tomb, ‘that such a person shall not be able to escape by land or sea and that he should be uprooted with all his kith and kin. He should then become the victim of all kinds of plagues and diseases.’ One of the characters in the Iliad, Phoenix the charioteer, tells how he made love to one of his father’s concubines, and his father called on the avenging Furies to see to it that Phoenix himself should have no son: ‘and as time showed, his curses were fulfilled

by He goes own

the on

gods,

to

Zeus of the Underworld and august

tell the story of Meleager, who

was

Persephone.’ fatally cursed by his

mother:

He had killed her brother, and she in her grief had importuned the gods to kill her son, falling on her knees, deluging her lap with tears, and beating the earth with her fists, as she called on Hades and august Persephone. And the Fury that walks in the dark and has

inexorable

thoughts heard her from Erebus. 13

3

Furies and Titans A stone’s throw

out on

either hand

From that well-ordered road we tread, And all the world is wild and strange:

Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite Shall bear us company tonight, For we have reached the Oldest Land Wherein the Powers of Darkness range. Kipling, ‘From the Dusk

to

the Dawn’

The

Erinyes, or Furies, were terrifying underworld powers which made that revenge was taken for murders and other crimes, especially the killing of a kinsman. They frequently operated by driving their guilty victim mad, hounding and obsessing him and driving him away from his native soil, so ridding it of his dangerously polluting presence. In Aeschylus’ Oresteian trilogy the Furies haunt the royal palace, drunk with the blood of successive generations. Orestes has a vision of them, cloaked in grey and with snakes coiling round their bodies, bloody pus dripping from their eyes. They pursue him to the temple of Apollo at sure

Delphi and in a

scene

that draws

a

fierce

contrast

between the underworld

powers of darkness and the

Olympian gods of the clear light of day, they are seen asleep, crouched and snoring, black and ancient hags whose home is in the abyss of Tartarus and whose presence is intolerable to gods, men and beasts alike. Apollo angrily banishes them from the temple, telling them that their proper place is ‘some pit of

punishments, where

heads are severed, eyes torn out, throats cut, manhood unmanned’. 14 Balked, they chant an incantation to drive Orestes out of his wits and bring him into their power. In the Orestes of Euripides the Furies which hound Orestes are his own pangs of conscience, as they are again in T. S. Eliot’s play The Family Reunion. In Greek art the Furies are not shown in such an ugly light. They are beautiful but stern women, carrying torches and scourges, like Hecate, and with snakes wreathed in their hair or coiling round their bodies. In a society where the punishment of murder was a private matter, where blood demanded blood and the dead cried for vengeance, and where the presence of a killer made the soil barren and caused all sorts of misfortunes, they performed a useful service by driving him out of the community. This seems to be one reason why they were called

Eumenides, ‘Kindly Ones’, nervous

there was probably an element of The belief that spilled blood pollutes

though

euphemism in the name.

also appears in the Old Testament. The punishment of the first murderer, Cain, is to be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth and any land which he tries to cultivate will be barren. Later Greek tradition had it that there were three Furies, whose names were Alecto, Megaira and Tisiphone, meaning Never-Ceasing, Grudger and Avenger of Blood. Tisiphone was the Fury seen by Aeneas in the gateway of Tartarus. Earlier there had been more than three Furies. Their origins are doubtful and disputed, but they were closely connected with the Fates and they may originally have been the powers which inflict retribution whenever the proper order of things is seriously violated: hence the famous remark of Heraclitus that if the sun strayed from his course the Furies would attend to him. They may perhaps have personified the angry resentment aroused by a personal injury or a serious wrong. They were called on to witness oaths and so to provide a sanction against breaches of agreements. It was an essential part of their character that they never forgot. They did not soften and forgive an offence, as men may do after a time. They were not interested in motives, excuses and mitigating circumstances. Once the deed was done, the compensating retribution followed. In mythology the Furies had their origin in a savage act of bloodshed. The Olympians came to power by forcibly supplanting an older generation of gods. Long ago in the beginning of things, according to Hesiod’s Theogony, Earth gave birth to Uranus, the starry sky, to be her mate and by him had children, the Titans, of whom the youngest and most terrible was Cronus. Uranus hated his children and prevented them from being born, by keeping Earth locked in his embrace. In other words, as in many mythologies, the earth and the sky were originally joined together. In pain and resentment Earth fashioned a great toothed sickle and incited her sons to attack their father. The older brothers were afraid, but Cronus took the sickle, hid in ambush in the

ground

Earth’s body and castrated Uranus. In this way he separated the sky from the earth. He flung his father’s severed genitals into the sea, where a white foam spread around them in which there formed the beautiful goddess of love, Aphrodite. The drops of blood which fell on the ground impregnated Earth and she bore the Furies and the

giants. Cronus had children by his sister, Rhea, and these Because he was afraid of being supplanted in his turn, he swallowed all the children, but when his youngest son, Zeus, was born, Rhea hid the baby in a cave in Crete and tricked The

were

triumphant

the

Olympian gods.

Cronus into swallowing a stone wrapped in baby clothes instead. Later Cronus was beguiled into vomiting up the stone and the other children,

and the stone was kept reverently at Delphi where Pausanias saw it: was anointed with oil every day. Zeus, now grown up, and the other Olympians waged war against Cronus and the Titans for ten years. In the final battle Zeus came from Olympus in a blaze of fury, storm and earthquake, hurling lightning, setting the ground and the woods on fire and making the sea and the rivers boil, so that the Titans were seethed in flames and heat. They were also pelted with giant rocks by three huge monsters, allies of Zeus, which had a hundred hands apiece. The monsters flung the Titans down beneath the earth and chained them in the abyss of Tartarus, where they languish to this day. Like the Babylonian Enuma elish, this myth describes the defeat of an older generation of gods, who are vague and chaotic forces from far back in the early mists of time, by a younger generation, who are more like human beings and who create what we know as the natural order and invent agriculture, the arts and civilisation. The theory that the myth preserves the memory of the Indo-European invaders imposing themselves and their gods on the native inhabitants of Greece has been made doubtful by the discovery of a parallel Hurrian myth, the Hurrians being a non-Indo-European people who dominated western Asia in the period about 1500 B.C. The basic statement made by the myth seems to be that order and civilisation are only achieved by defeating forces of inertia which resist progress, which are old, barbaric and anarchic, and which still exist, chained in the depths where it is essential to keep them. There is also the theme of the conflict between generations. The old cling to power and keep the young down, until the young ruthlessly assert themselves, take control and relegate their elders to powerless seats in the chimney-corner. It is a favourite folktale theme, incidentally, that the youngest son outstrips his older brothers, as both Cronus and Zeus do, and achieves what they cannot. The defeated Titans had little cult but the memory of them survived. it

In Lucan’s Pharsalia the gruesome witch Erichtho invokes the

powers of the underworld in

an

operation of necromancy:

Kindly Ones, who torture the damned; I invoke Chaos, always anxious to tumble worlds into ruin; I invoke the true Ruler of the Earth, who suffers endless agony below since the gods are so long a-dying. I invoke Styx and the Elysian Fields where no witch will ever attain. I invoke you, Proserpina, as one who prefers I invoke you,

life with Pluto in the Underworld to life with your detested mother Ceres in Heaven; and as the infernal aspect of triple Hecate who allows ghosts to enjoy secret intercourse with me. I invoke you, Thrice Great Hermes, janitor of the lordly halls of Death, whose task is to feed hungry Cerberus on the flesh of men; and you, old 15 Charon, ferryman of hell ....

The true Ruler of Earth in this incantation, with its gloating reversal of normal values, is presumably Cronus. He seems to have been indeed a devourer of children, for human sacrifice was offered to him at Rhodes and by the fifth century B.C. he had been identified with the Phoenician god Moloch, to whom children were sacrificed. Festivals dedicated to Cronus were held at Athens, Thebes and Rhodes in the slack period of the agricultural year between harvest and ploughing, at which the natural order was temporarily set aside and masters and men sat down together as equals. The timing of these festivals fits in with the tradition that when Cronus ruled the world long ago men lived like gods without toil or sorrow, basking in peaceable ease and cheerfully feasting. When they died it was as if they had been overcome by sleep and they were spared the miseries of old age which Greek writers so bitterly detested. They did not have to work because in those days the earth bore its fruits without tilling, but when Zeus displaced Cronus it became necessary for men to wring a living from the land. This is apparently a reminiscence of a primitive gathering economy, and the organising activities of the Olympians were not an unmixed blessing. ‘For the gods keep hidden from men the means of life. Else you would easily do work enough in a day to supply you for a full year even without working.’ 16 Some said that Cronus was released from imprisonment in the abyss and became King of the Isles of the Blest at the the of world, the earthly paradise where the idyllic life of the edge

golden age

continues. Others said that Cronus and the Titans

slept for

island near Britain in the west. The Romans identified Cronus with their own god Saturn, to whom the myths about Cronus were transferred. His festival, the Saturnalia in mid-December which has influenced our own Christmas celebrations, was again a time when normal social distinctions and conventions were suspended. But the sinister connotations also persisted, especially in astrology, through which the myth of the vanquished chief of the ever on an

Titans has remained influential. The father became

an

devouring his

own

children

alchemical motif and through a mistaken piece of etymology

identified with Chronos, ‘Time’, which also swallows its offspring. The figure of Old Father Time with his sickle goes back to Cronus and Saturn. Another strand in the evil repute of the Titans was the myth that Zeus in the form of a snake fathered on Persephone a divine child named Zagreus, who was identified with Dionysus. He was meant to become the ruler of the world, but Hera, the wife of Zeus, jealously incited the Titans to kill him. They made friends with the little boy by bringing him toys, and when they had won his confidence they tore him limb from limb and ate him. The goddess Athene was able to save his heart, which she gave to Zeus, who swallowed it. Then he burned the Titans to ashes with a thunderbolt and from the ashes made mankind. This is why there is a mixture of divine and evil, Titanic elements in human nature. Zeus then begot Zagreus a second time, on Semele, the Phrygian earth goddess, and this second Zagreus became Dionysus. This story implies the old belief in inherited guilt and accounts for ‘original sin’, the persistent inherent evilness of human beings. Plato talked about ‘the old Titan nature’ of man in this sense. ‘The Titan myth neatly explained to the Greek puritan why he felt himself to be at once a god and a criminal.’ 17 It carried the implication, however, unlikely to be welcome to puritans, that the divine element in man is a Dionysiac element. Cronus

was

own

4

Giants Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive or be he dead,

I’ll

grind his bones

myth about the fall of the

The

story, of the battle between the evil

beings in legends, folk tales

make my bread. ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’

to

was later confused with another and the giants. Giants are familiar

Titans

gods

and children’s stories.

They are closely

connected with the earth, mountains and great stones and boulders, and they are a stony-hearted race. Besides being of huge size, they are violent, turbulent and lawless, hostile to order and civilisation. Savage and rapacious, they desire human women to lie with and men’s flesh to eat. They are ponderous and stupid, usually defeated not by brute strength, in which they far surpass human beings, but by cunning and skill.

Children live in a world of giant adults and the sight of father gnawing on a succulent joint may have had some influence on the concept of huge, shambling, dim-witted beings who are so fiercely carnivorous that their appetite might even, uneasy thought, extend to human meat. But the theory that parents are the prototypes of the ogres and ogresses of folklore raises more difficulties than it solves. For example, it fails to account for the lawlessness which is a fundamental general characteristic of giants. However, childhood experience very likely does lie behind one of the roots of the giant tradition, the tendency to magnify the great men of yore by magnifying their size.

Abraham, according

Jewish tradition,

was seventy times as big as In many other traditions the mighty ancestors of the past are credited with colossal size, and the present generation is considered dwarfish and puny by comparison. This tendency may well stem from the situation of the child, who has to look up to his elders literally as well as metaphorically. It is noticeable

any

man

to

of the present

day.

that Superman and Batman, the heroes of children’s comics, bigger than the other adult characters on the scene.

are considerably

Belief in an age of giants has been reinforced by the massive monuments of earlier civilisations and by discoveries of the outsize bones of prehistoric animals or of unusually large human bones. Even in this

century, when

party of academics examining the megalithic building Transjordan, he remarked ‘that for the men of olden times it was easy to handle such great blocks of stone, because people then were giants’. 18 The ruins of Roman towns in Britain were afterwards supposed to be the work of giant stonesmiths. Hill figures like the Cerne Abbas Giant or the Long Man of Wilmington have also suggested that there were giants in the earth long ago, and massive natural features, like the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland or Fingal’s Cave in the Hebrides, have been attributed to them. So have large boulders, said to have been thrown at each other by the brutes a

passing Arab

remains of a

in

a rage Giants

saw a

in

or strewn

about in

some

gigantic game of primeval

bowls.

old people. They stem from a time long ago before the present order of things was established and the present race of men was settled on the earth. Their violence was endemic in that far-off time are an

and is

an expression of their antipathy to the restraints of civilised society. The stories about them may in fact preserve some dim recollection of primitive and barbaric peoples of the distant past. It is tempting

to

think that

homo sapiens

they

to

his

may more

contain a memory of the reactions of primitive manlike predecessors, the Neandereven

thal

whom he may have exterminated, and that the same memory lie behind may myths of the subjugation of an older and savage generation of gods by a younger and more civilised one. If so, however, the memory has been overlaid by other themes. The giants ofJewish tradition are ‘the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown’, who were a terror in the land. They were the offspring of the ‘sons of God’, the angels who sinned by coming down to earth and mating with human women, and they filled the earth with such violence that God sent the Flood to destroy all living things. Their violence was connected with their huge size and correspondingly enormous appetites. Like cuckoos in the nest, they gobbled up everything that men could provide and then, ‘when mankind could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another’s flesh and drink the blood. Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones.’ There seems to be an element here of uneasiness about meat-eating and the killing of living creatures for food, projected onto flesh-eaters so voracious that they eat men and eventually even each other, There is also an element of concern about the demands which giant appetites would make on the economy. It was said of two of the giants that they each consumed a thousand camels, a thousand horses and a thousand oxen every day. 19 The Greek giants were children of Earth, generated by the drops of blood which fell on the ground when Uranus was castrated, so that they were after a fashion brothers of the Titans. Greek writers assumed that the word gigantes, ‘giants’, was formed from the words for ‘earth’ and ‘birth’, and the giants’ leader, Alcyoneus, was so much a part of the ground that he could not be killed on his native soil and had to be dragged away elsewhere before he was despatched. The giants were born in full armour, which implies that they were a violent race. The story of their battle with the gods was one of the most popular Greek myths, though there is no detailed account of it until surprisingly late. The giants attacked the gods, according to one version, because the gods had imprisoned the Titans in Tartarus. They piled up great heaps of rocks from which to assault heaven and advanced to the attack, hurling huge stones and blazing oak trees. One leaped into heaven and tried to rape the goddess Hera and another had lustful designs on Athene, but both were felled. After a fearsome struggle the giants fled back to the earth. The gods pursued them and imprisoned them under volcanoes in Greece and Italy, where their writhings cause eruptions men

and earthquakes. The giant Enceladus, for instance, lies under the island of Sicily, which Athene threw at him during the fight. The flames and smoke of Mount Etna are his breath and when he turns over, the whole island shakes. The battle of the gods and the giants is another example of the theme of the struggle between order and chaos. Later Greek authors interpreted it in terms of the triumph of civilisation over barbarism and this was one reason for its popularity. In the same way, giants in English tales tend to cluster in non-English and supposedly barbarous areas such as Cornwall and Wales. The Greek giants wore long hair down to their shoulders and did not cut their beards. They wielded primitive and barbaric weapons—rocks and tree-trunks. The typical giant’s weapon in later folk tales is similarly the rustic cudgel. The most famous of Greek giant stories appears in the Odyssey, when Odysseus and his men come to the land of the one-eyed Cyclopes, which later writers located on the slopes of Mount Etna. The Cyclopes are a rude and lawless people, who are ignorant of agriculture and live by gathering crops and fruit and pasturing sheep and goats. They live in primitive fashion in mountain caves where each family is a law to itself and cares nothing for its neighbours. Odysseus and his men take refuge in the cave of Polyphemus, who is big enough to remind Odysseus of a solitary mountain peak. He scoffs at Zeus and the gods, and he displays a constantly recurring characteristic of giants by outraging the laws of hospitality. Instead of welcoming travellers and giving them food, he murders them and eats them. Picking up two of the Greeks, he dashes their brains out on the floor and gobbles them up, flesh, guts, bones and all. Odysseus gets him disgustingly drunk, puts out his solitary eye and escapes with the surviving Greeks by a trick. It has been pointed out that the contrast in this story between nature red in tooth and claw on one side and civilised culture on the other is

simple as it looks. The Cyclopes are primitive, barbarous and notably deficient in community spirit and a proper sense of hospitality, but they are also fortunate. Like the men of the age of Cronus long ago, they do not work on the land because everything they need grows by itself. Because they have no ships they have not spoiled a pleasant island close to their shores by developing it as any sharp Greek would. Apart from his distressing appetite for passing Greeks, Polyphemus seems to be a vegetarian, and he is close to his sheep and fond of them. The simple natural life has its attractions as well as its savagery and the not as

20 story shows both aspects of raw nature.

The Cyclopes are like the giants of many other tales in their association with caves and mountains, their solitary individualism and their man-eating habits, but in most stories there is no hint that what the giant stands for has anything to be said for it. The giant is usually a wicked brute who is rightly and ruthlessly put down. Polyphemus reappears in an English folk tale as the one-eyed giant of Dalton in Yorkshire, who was so misguided as to employ a youth named Jack. The giant was a hard taskmaster and would not allow Jack a holiday, so when he was asleep Jack took a knife and drove it into his single eye. with Howling pain, the giant barred the door but Jack craftily killed the giant’s dog, wrapped himself in its skin and, barking loudly, crawled between the giant’s legs to the door, unbolted it and ran away. The ruse is basically the same as the one used by Odysseus to elude the blinded Cyclops. 21 This story uses the giant-killing theme for an essay in class warfare. The giant is the wicked employer and Jack is the honest working man, deprived of his rights, who rebels. That his triumph is one of superior cleverness, not superior force, reflects both the social situation and the old tradition that brute strength is mastered by quick wits. In the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus the struggle between the gods and the Titans is presented in this light. Prometheus says he foresaw that not brute force and violence but cunning would decide the issue and determine who would rule the future. But the Titans despised cunning in the pride of their strength. The Greek giants are defeated but in the hard lands of the north, where civilisation, peace and plenty were more precarious commodities, the giants are a constant menace to the gods and will join in the successful attack on them at the end of the world. A wall of huge boulders protected the gods’ stronghold of Asgard against the frost ogres and cliff giants. It was built by a giant who offered to construct it in one winter if the gods would give him the goddess Freyja and the sun and moon in payment. When the winter was almost over and to the astonishment of the gods the immense wall was almost complete, they regretted their bargain. They enticed away the giant’s horse, which did most of the work, so that he could not finish in time. The giant flew into a rage and Thor, the god of thunder, smashed his skull with the

great hammer,

Mjöllnir. significant that the giant demanded Freyja, the beautiful goddess of love and fertility, and also the sun and moon, the sources of light, life and growth. There are several other stories of giants desiring It is

are forces of destruction and sterility which threaten and order, peace fertility. They long to lay their icy, petrifying hands on life and love and fruitfulness. The giant Thiazi stole the golden forever of Idun which the apples kept gods young, and had to be lured into an ambush and killed or the gods would have grown old and grey. A great wall was built round Midgard, the world of men, to

Freyja. They

keep marauding giants out and Bifrost, the fire-glowing rainbow bridge into the sky, was guarded to prevent them from storming heaven across it. The northern giants are linked with cold and frost instead of but fiery volcanoes, they keep their connection with mountains and stone.

Mjöllnir, Thor’s hammer,

was

also called

with it he killed the strongest of

‘Hrungnir’s bane’

giants, Hrungnir,

because who had a

head and a three-cornered heart made of stone with sharp edges. He wielded a stone shield and a colossal hone, and threatened to kill all the gods except Freyja and Thor’s wife, Sif, whom he wanted for himself. Thor killed him, breaking Hrungnir’s hone to bits. All the whetstones men use are pieces of it. The trolls of northern folk belief were creatures part spirit and part stone. They loved the cold dark and feared the sun, which would kill them if it shone in their faces. Some trolls were quite small but many were of massive size. They were hairy and lived in mountain caves, eating human flesh and stealing human women and babies. They disliked loud noises, which reminded them of the thunder of Thor, their enemy, and after the coming of Christianity they dreaded the sound of church bells, which would turn a troll into a pile of powerless pebbles. Being animated stones themselves, giant trolls were great builders and constructed churches and castles, frequently demanding human souls in payment but being cheated of their wages by their employers. The Devil often had the same experience. stone

legends and folk tales, where the giants are opposed by human champions instead of gods, it is the giants who own treasures which inspire greed and they long for human women rather than goddesses, though they show a certain preference for aristocratic ladies which perhaps continues the goddess tradition. They often have several heads or other distortions of shape, or only a single eye, like one ogress who In hero

has a lone eye in the middle of her chin. Even when their appearance is less dramatically abnormal, they are repulsive and brutish. A typical example is the Welsh giant who lived in a cave in the mountains and had

‘goggle

cheeks like

a

eyes like flames of

couple

fire,

a

countenance

grim

and

ugly,

of large flitches of bacon, the bristles of his beard

rods of iron wire, and locks of hair that hung down upon brawny shoulders like curled snakes or hissing adders’. His roaring was like thunder. He kept a great treasure in his cave and many human captives and a cauldron to boil them in after he had fattened them up. 22

resembling

his

Aristocratic heroes in these tales defeat giants by skill at arms, where plebeian giant-killers and women must rely on cunning. According to a story told by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 1130s, a huge giant came from Spain in King Arthur’s time and carried off the Duke of Brittany’s niece, who died of fright in his clutches. He established himselve on

Mont-Saint-Michel and when

men went to

attack him he

sank their ships by dropping boulders on them and snatched up wounded men and ate them alive. King Arthur went to deal with the giant

himself and though the monster wielded a club which two men could have lifted, he was no match for Arthur’s skill with a sword. This story reappears in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, where it is told with far more gruesome detail. The giant had been ravaging the countryside for years and devouring the common people’s children, without

hardly

authority feeling unduly concerned, apparently, but he went altogether too far by carrying off the Duchess of Brittany and, in raping her, splitting the unfortunate lady to the navel and killing her. This brought King Arthur to the scene. He found the giant munching his supper by a fire, where a dozen young children were roasting like birds on spits. The king castrated the giant with his sword and killed him with a dagger thrust. 23 Cannibalism and bloodthirsty cruelty remained essential ingredients of the giant tradition. Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen, a Victorian politician anyone in

and author of fifteen volumes of children’s stories, included in his Stories for my Children (1869) a horrible tale about an ogre who hangs his human meat up in his cellar to season. ‘A stout farmer, in boots and A priest hung next with breeches, hung by the chin from a hook ....

his throat cut from ear to ear.’ The ogre has a captive girl bled to death, so that her flesh will be deliciously white. In the preface to his next collection, entitled Crackers for Christmas and published the following year, Knatchbull-Hugessen defended himself against the criticism which this bloodthirsty tale had aroused:

Seriously speaking, the Ogres and Dwarfs of Fairy Literature are, in point of view, intended to represent the evil of various sorts and degrees which surrounds mankind; and to describe them as otherwise than repulsive would be to destroy the whole force of the allegory. 24 one

One of the evils which giants represent is that like robber barons and wicked capitalists they exploit their weaker neighbours. The stories of Jack the giant-killer owe some of their popularity to the theme of the common man downing the rich and powerful, though Jack is not by any means a revolutionary hero. He rids the poor people of the giant who oppresses them, hut he himself acquires the treasure and the princess. One of his victims is the giant of St Michael’s Mount in

Cornwall. Cornwall is particularly well-stocked with giants and with animated standing stones which hoist themselves out of their sockets and go down to streams to drink, returning in time to squash il advised persons who are looking for treasure where they stood. The giant of St Michael’s Mount is a man-eater named Cormelian who stands eighteen feet high. Jack digs a pit outside his cave, covers it over with sticks and a coating of earth, and blows his horn. The giant charges out in a fury and falls into the pit. Jack kills him with a pickaxe and is rewarded with his treasure. Jack also kills an ogre named Thunderbore who lives in an enchanted castle in a lonely wood, rescuing the fair ladies imprisoned there. Sometimes the treasures which he wins are magical. In ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, for instance, he steals a bag of the giant’s gold, a hen that lays golden eggs and a golden harp which plays by itself. A three-headed giant who fell victim to Jack owned not only a fortune in gold and silver but a coat of invisibility, a cap of knowledge, a sword of invincibility and shoes of surpassing swiftness. Some giants are magically invulnerable, or nearly so. One named Trencoss, in an Irish story, could not be killed by any sword made by human hands. The terror of the whole region round about, he lived in a great stone castle, guarded by a pack of cruel and iron-clawed hounds, in a forest of tall trees which never shed their leaves. He carried off the Princess Maeve, the only daughter of a neighbouring king. The gallant prince who eventually rescued her had to cross the sea in a magic silver boat to an island on which no man before him had ever set foot. There in the great hall of the palace he found hanging on the wall the only sword in the world which could kill the giant. He also found a hundred little cakes which he fed to the giant’s hounds to kill them. 25 Some giants are peculiarly difficult to kill because their hearts or souls

hidden away in a secret place. One of them is the villain of a Norwegian story about a king who has seven sons, six of whom he sends out into the world to find wives. On their way home with the princesses they have chosen, they meet at the foot of a mountain a are

giant who turns them all to stone. This is a not entirely unmerited judgment on them, because they have selfishly forgotten to find a bride for their youngest brother, who has been kept at home. The youngest brother, a noble-hearted youth who is kind to animals and is helped by them in return, makes his way to the giant’s house, where the giant’s mistress, a princess, falls in love with him. She tells him that the giant cannot be killed by any normal means because his heart is not in his body. In bed with the giant at night, she coaxes the monster into revealing where his heart is. It is inside an egg in a duck which swims in a well in a church on an island far away in the sea. The young prince contrives to find the egg, forces the giant to release the captives from their imprisonment in stone, and then kills the giant by crushing the 26

egg. In

story from the Scottish island of

Islay, a giant carries off a his soul is hidden in an that king’s revealing in the of a duck which is in the belly of a sheep which is egg belly buried under one of the flagstones of his threshold. She kills him by finding the egg and smashing it. Near Kinveachy, south of Inverness, so another story went, there lived a wicked giant who kept his heart hidden under a stone in Kinveachy Woods. If a man put his bonnet on this stone the giant would die, but the heart was alive to the danger and if it saw a man with a bonnet approaching its stone, it hopped out and hid under another one. 27 One reason for giving a giant a heart which is separate from his body and hard to find is simply to make the hero’s task more difficult and his success more satisfying. But in addition, folk beliefs and tales do a

wife who tricks him into

keep their motifs in neatly separated compartments and there is always a clear distinction between giants, dragons, heroes, enchanters, fairies and the dead, all of whom are likely to be equipped with magical treasures and magical defences. For instance, the giant’s not

not

murderous cry of ‘Fee fi fo fum’ in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ was attributed to a different kind of supernatural being in the story of Child Roland, as told in Aberdeen about 1770. Child Roland went to the Dark Tower of Elfland to rescue his sister, and when the Elf King came in he said, ‘Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of a Christian man. Be he dead, be he living, with my brand I’ll clash his harns [brains] from his harn-pan.’ (Edgar’s lines in King Lear show that Shakespeare knew this

story.) 28 The distinctions between giantesses and supernatural hags are also as in the story of the Witch of Man, who agreed to build a

blurred,

castle for

a

Scots lord, the Great Comyn of Badenoch. She was seen the air and carrying in her apron an immense rock,

flying through

which tumbled

to the ground when she passed over a pious gamekeeper her and said, ‘God preserve us!’ Building and stone-carrying are typical activities of giants. The female beings associated with battle and slaughter in northern mythology, who share with ogresses a thirst for human blood, are sometimes of giant proportions. When Harold Hardrada of Norway gathered an army to invade England in 1066, one of his following had an ominous dream of a huge ogress holding a knife in one hand and a trough in the other and chanting a gleeful song of the filling of England’s graveyards to her advantage: and another man dreamed of a giant troll-woman longing to feast on the bodies

who

saw

of fallen warriors. 29 As with dragons, the

treasure-guarding of giants suggests a connection with the dead, and there are links between giants, the dead and some of the supernatural smiths of northern legends, the makers of valuable swords, armour, rings and other treasures. Many giants live in caves, which have been frequently regarded as entrances to the land of the dead, and some giants and supernatural craftsmen are associated with tombs, barrows and mounds, where the dead were buried with their treasure of grave-goods beside them. Alberich, the guardian of the Nibelung hoard, who is sometimes a dwarf and sometimes a giant, lives in a ‘hollow hill’ which seems to be a burial mound. The legendary craftsman Weland the Smith, who has some giant characteristics, is traditionally linked with a stone burial chamber, on the Ridgeway in Berkshire, which was originally covered by a long barrow. There are many stories in the north of men breaking into burial mounds to seize treasure and having to deal with the angry dead man inside. In the Hromundar Saga, when the hero and his companions break open a mound and look into the burial chamber, they see a huge black fiend, clothed in glittering gold. He is blowing a fire and making a loud roaring noise, which suggests a smith at work. 30 The Celtic otherworld contained priceless treasures and great heroes invaded it to carry them off. Cuchulain stole the cauldron of the afterworld and Arthur raided the Isle of Annwn, which was the land of the to seize the magic cauldron from which only the brave and the dead, true could eat. Several Irish and Welsh gods owned magic cauldrons, including Goibniu, the Irish divine smith. He brewed beer in his cauldron and all who drank it became immortal. The Irish Dagda, ‘the good god’, had a cauldron which restored the dead to life and so

did the Welsh Bran, whose cauldron revived the dead who were thrown into it. These cauldrons, in which the food for the otherworld feast was cooked, and other afterworld vessels of plenty, were sources of life, fertility and immortality, and they eventually contributed to the legend of the Holy Grail. It seems significant that the goggle-eyed Welsh giant mentioned earlier, who kept a great treasure in his cave, also owned many human captives and a cauldron to boil them in. He may originally have been a lord of the underworld, his captives the dead and his cauldron the magic vessel of regeneration and plenty. Trencoss, the giant in the Irish story, with his pack of hounds and his castle in a forest of trees which never shed their leaves, invulnerable to human weapons, also has the air of a master of the otherworld about him. Some other giants may have the same ancestry and the murderous hospitality they offer to strangers may have been in origin a welcome to the land of the dead. The Druids taught men to believe in a happy life after death, but the otherworld’s hospitality always had a grim side to it, for the Celts sacrificed human victims by drowning or suffocating them in cauldrons. The development from otherworld god to giant, if it occurred, also have been influenced by an otherworld which has no desirable may treasures, feasting and cheerful company. Its lord is the Evil One and its cauldron is not a marvellous vessel of plenty but a boiling pot of agony. This is the tortured underworld of the Christian hell.

Chapter Six

Hell

as a boy was so haunted by nightmares of hell that he wished he was a demon, on the principle that it would be better to be a torturer than one of the tortured. Another famous preacher of the day, Vavasor Powell, traced his conversion to a bout of toothache which

John Bunyan

made him wonder, if that temporary pain was so hard to bear, what would the eternal agony of hell be like? St Teresa of Avila, the great Roman Catholic

mystic of the previous century, who was profoundly convinced of her own unworthiness, said that as a girl her decision to become a nun was mainly based on her fear of hell. ‘Go where I will,’ John Wesley wrote as a young man, ‘I carry my hell about me.’ One reason why hell kept its long tenacious hold on belief was that it corresponded to something experienced in states of intense unhappiness and depression, and in visions and nightmares. There are people who feel themselves irredeemably soiled with evil and who suffer in this life the poena damni, hell’s ‘pain of loss’, in a tormented sense of being rejected by God,

of being already damned. ‘The sorrows of hell compass me about,’ Florence Nightingale wrote, ‘pray God He will not leave my soul in hell.’ Bunyan at one stage of his life was more loathsome in his own eyes than a toad and thought that he must be an equally disgusting object in God’s sight. Only the Devil rivalled him in inward wickedness and pollution, God had forsaken him, and he reflected on how much happier animals are than men, for they are not sinful by nature, they are not hateful to God, they are not going to hellfire. ‘In the Kingdom of Hell which depression reveals,’ John Custance has written from personal experience, ‘the ego is increasingly .

.

.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003363743-6

Hell become an almost infinitesimal point of and fear. It is very noticeable that the repulsion abject misery, disgust, pain is not only felt for the outside world; it invades the personality in the form of intense disgust for oneself, horror of one’s body, of seeing 1 one’s reflection in a mirror It is not so long ago that hell-fire preaching went out of style and it is not yet extinct. Robert Hughes recalls being told in a sermon by a Jesuit in Australia in the 1950s that the infernal punishment of masturbation would be to be kicked ‘in a certain part of the body, by a demon with a great clawed foot, twenty times a minute, sixty minutes an hour, twenty-four hours a day, for all eternity.’ 2 James Joyce wrote a hideously powerful sermon on hell in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, based on what he had been taught at school in Ireland. ‘Hell is a strait and dark and foul-smelling prison, an abode of demons and lost souls, filled with fire and smoke.’ The damned are so helpless that they cannot even remove from the eye a worm that gnaws it. They lie in the atrocious stench of all the filth of the world, all its offal and scum, and their own bodies exhale such a pestilential odour that any one of them would suffice to infect the whole world. Trapped in fire of unimaginable intensity, they are tormented by their hatred of each other and by the horrible presence of the evil angels. Wesley in the eighteenth century and Gladstone in the nineteenth thought that to deny the everlasting punishment of the wicked in hell was to call in question the entire Christian faith. As Wesley wrote to William Law in 1756, if the New Testament teaching about hell is not true, there is no reason to believe its teaching about anything else:

restricted, until

it

seems to

.'

.

If there be ‘no

asserted, if

heaven, E. B.

no

Pusey,

severe

on

writings

wherein

they

are

so

there is

expressly

of the eternity of heaven any more than of hell. So up the one, we must give up the other. No hell, no revelation!

one

of the leaders of the Oxford Movement, drew up

a

rule of life for himself:

Never

to

look

unworthiness; drink

water at

beauty of nature without inward confession of smile (if I can help it) except with children; to dinner as only fit to be where ‘there is not a drop to

at

the

not to

cool this flame’;

hell.

those

nor

give

we

.

unquenchable fire, no everlasting burnings’,

dependance

no

.

to

make the fire

to me

from time to time the type of

Hell

children’s books in the nineteenth century, preoccupied with hell as a deterrent to and naughtiness working-class attitudes. In The History of Susan the heroine is told: Gray

Mrs

Sherwood, author of highly was

praised

much

Children who

play in the streets with others, learn to lie and to perhaps to steal. They grow up to be idle, bold, bad men and women; and when they die, they go to a place where they live

swear, and

with devils in fire and brimstone, and chains and darkness. But holy children, who never lie, nor swear, and learn to read and to write, become modest, industrious, honest men and women, and when they die, go to heaven.

Evangelicals similar

eighteenth century had already warned children in of the consequences of bad behaviour. Rowland Hill

in the

terms

wrote:

While

they enjoy his heavenly love

Must I in torments dwell? And howl (while they sing hymns And blow the flames of hell? 3

above)

This belief in hell’s effectiveness as a deterrent was a major factor in keeping belief in it alive. It was assumed that without the fear of hell people would do whatever they liked and society would collapse in anarchy. For centuries hell was a bulwark of order against chaos and this was one of the reasons why those who doubted its reality, like Newton and Locke, tended to keep their reservations to themselves. Even

more

important

thought right

that

was

a man

the

principle

of retributive

justice.

who broke the law should pay the

It

was

penalty.

Criminals and heretics and rebels were punished, tortured, executed, not only as a deterrent but simply because they deserved it, and the worse the crime the more horrible the punishment. Executions were held in public so that crowds of spectators could enjoy them, just as the saved in heaven were believed to enjoy watching the tortures of the damned. When rigorous, vengeful punishment was considered both morally right and an effective deterrent in this life, it is not surprising that it was projected into the life to come. 4 Hell was a social and political tranquilliser. It persuaded the poor and unfortunate to look for justice in the next world, not in this one. Meanwhile they could warm the winter of their discontent at the prospect of the fire that waited for the fortunate and the rich after death. The

cruelty with

which the torments of hell were imagined was partly an expression of resentment against those whose lot in life was easy and comfortable. This note is clearly sounded by John Bromyard, an English Dominican of the fourteenth century, preaching on the fate of the rich, powerful and sinful, kings and lords, judges and lawyers, usurers, wicked churchmen, the haughty, the envious, the lustful and

gluttonous. Their soul shall have, instead of palace and hall and chamber, the deep lake of hell, with those that go down into the depth thereof. In place of scented baths, their body shall have a narrow pit in the earth; and there they shall have a bath more black and foul than any bath of pitch and sulphur. In place of a soft couch, they shall have a bed more grievous and hard than all the nails and spikes in the world; in place of inordinate embraces, they will be able to have there the embraces of the fiery brands of hell Instead of wives they shall have toads; instead of a great retinue and throng of followers, their body shall have a throng of worms and their soul a throng of demons and in place of the torment which for a time they inflicted on others, they shall have eternal torment. 5 .

.

.

.

.

.

.

The decline of belief in hell and the rise of belief in democracy went hand in hand. It was largely as a result of helpless resentment of injustice and oppression that hell had come to power in men’s minds in the first place. 1

The Pit

Abandon hope all ye who

here. Dante,

enter

Inferno

Christianity was born into a world which already believed in rewards and punishments after death, a belief imposed by popular demand on earlier denials of it. As in Homer and Mesopotamian literature, in most of the Old Testament references all the dead, good and bad, rich and poor, go down into gloomy darkness, dust and silence, where they are powerless, ‘mere carbon-copies of living beings in the eternal filing system of the underworld’. The great gulf fixed between the divine and man is that God is immortal, men are mortal: ‘You are dust and to dust you shall return.’ Again it looks as if the insistence on the ineffective helplessness of the dead was part of a deliberate effort to suppress their cult, which involved paying attention to spiritual

beings other than God. Monotheism preferred not to hear the voices of the dead, whispering out of the dust. 6 The name of this dreary Jewish underworld was Sheol, also called ‘the pit’ or Abaddon, ‘destruction’. Abaddon was later personified as ‘the angel of the bottomless pit’ in Revelation. His name in Greek is Apollyon, ‘the Destroyer’, who appears in Pilgrim's Progress. Christian meets him in the Valley of Humiliation: monster was hideous to behold; he was clothed with scales like a fish (and they are his pride), he had wings like a dragon, feet like a bear, and out of his belly came fire and smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of a lion.

Now the

fire-belching animal horror is devouring Death and the Devil in He reproaches Christian for deserting him for God: in other words, he is the evil power which rules and is the ultimate fate of the ‘old Adam’, the unregenerate animal in man. Sheol, however, unlike the Mesopotamian ‘land of no return’ which in other ways it resembles, has no gods and no civil service. A monotheism

This

one.

which could not tolerate active spirits of the dead naturally had place for underworld deities. Either God rules in Sheol as elsewhere, or the dead are so totally forsaken and cut off that God does not remember them, or they him. They are also forgotten by the living and they have no memory of life and no interest in it. A live dog is better than a dead lion, says Ecclesiastes grimly:

no

For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no reward; but the memory of them is lost. Their

love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and they have no more for ever any share in all that is done under the sun. He goes on to draw the same conclusion before: eat, drink and be merry:

as

the Epic

of Gilgamesh long

your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a heart Whatever your hands find to do, do it with your merry for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in might;

Go,

eat

.

Sheol,

to

.

.

which you

are

going.

7

Old Testament writers were all the more ready to consign the dead ineffectual inertia in Sheol because they were mainly concerned with Israel’s destiny as a nation, as the chosen people of God carrying to an

out

God’s purpose in

history, and not with individuals. The corollary

that for the individual it was this life, here and now, which mattered. But this raised the problems of undeserved suffering and life’s notorious unfairness. If God is just and all-powerful, how is it that the good so often suffer, while the wicked flourish like green bay trees? The answer was that God rewards goodness and punishes wickedness in this life, so that prosperity is a certificate of righteousness, but was

it was not possible to maintain convincingly a position so contrary to human experience. Another old answer, that the sins of the wicked, if not

punished in this life, as

are

visited

on

their descendants,

was

also

rejected

inadequate.

The solution was to trust that the wrongs of this world would be righted in the next, that not all the dead would receive the same treatment. This is stated in a few places in the Old Testament. The writer of Psalm 73 says that he has envied the prosperity of the wicked, the proud and violent people who ‘are not in trouble as other men are’

and ‘are not stricken like other men’, but now he understands that the balance will be redressed, for the wicked will perish but God will receive the good to glory. Similarly, Psalm 49 says that the wicked will be herded to Sheol like sheep, but God will save the good and receive them himself. The disaster of the sixth century B.C., when the state of Judah was demolished and many Jews were taken away into exile in Babylonia, raised the problems of undeserved suffering and God’s justice in an acute form, and so did the subsequent misfortunes of Israel, oppressed by foreign nations. By the second century B.C. it had become widely accepted that the good would be rewarded after death and the bad punished. During the struggle against Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a party went out to recover the bodies of Jews who had fallen in battle and found idolatrous amulets on them, ‘sacred tokens of the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbids the Jews to wear’. It was assumed that God had allowed these soldiers to be killed because they had broken the law and Judas Maccabaeus, the Jewish leader, was worried about their prospects in the afterlife. He took up a collection and sent the money to to be offered as a sacrifice to release the dead soldiers from their sin. He did this, as the story in the Apocrypha says, ‘taking

Jerusalem

of the resurrection. For if he were not expecting that those who fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish had for to pray the dead.’ He did it, ‘looking to the splendid reward that is laid up for those who fall asleep in godliness.’ 8 The promise of eternal happiness in paradise has often been held out account

those who risk their lives in battle for a holy cause, but the last chapter of Daniel, which dates from the same period, carries the concept further: to

Michael, the great prince who has

charge of And there shall be a time of trouble such as never has been seen since there was a nation till that time; but at that time your people shall be delivered, every one whose name shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to everlasting At that time shall arise

your

people.

contempt.

long been believed that there would be a Day of Yahweh, when God would rout and destroy the enemies of Israel, but the deliverance now extended to the dead, or many of them, as well as to those alive at the time. The deliverance in Daniel may have been meant to apply only to Jews, with the miserable goyim of past ages left to moulder gloomily away in the ground, but the picture swiftly developed into one of a great universal judgment at the end of time, when the Messiah would come in majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, chosen people and foreigners alike. The centre of attention was still the destiny of Israel as a nation and the retribution to be visited on the nation’s enemies. In one of the visions of the judgment in the book of Enoch, for example, it is the oppressors of Israel who are in the forefront of those to be punished when the earth and sea give back their dead and the Messiah comes to do justice on ‘the kings and the mighty and the exalted, and those who dwell on the earth’, when ‘the word of his mouth slays all the sinners, and all the unrighteous are destroyed from before his face’. It is on the kings and the mighty that pain will come as on a woman in travail and who will be terrified when they see the It had

Son of Man

on the throne of his glory. It is they who are handed over angels for punishment, because they have oppressed God’s elect, their downfall which provides a pleasing spectacle for the righteous, they who ask for a little respite from their punishment, for a little rest

to

in which to praise God, but ask in vain. 9 Elsewhere in Enoch, there is a ‘deep valley’ where the angels of punishment prepare ‘all the instruments of Satan’ to destroy ‘the kings and the mighty of this earth’, and ‘a deep valley with burning fire’, into which the kings and the mighty are hurled. 10 The introduction of the angels of punishment, who in Christian belief became Satan and his

demons stoking the fires of hell, means, ironically enough, that underworld deities have crept into a monotheistic system. They act, strictly speaking, on the instructions or with the permission of God, but in the power with which they were credited and the grotesque semi-human, semi-animal forms they were given, they resemble the underworld gods and officials of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Despite the concentration on national fortunes, the fate of individuals after death also attracted attention. Sheol became a mixture of transit camp and concentration camp, where the dead waited for the judgment and the wicked among them suffered. It is described in Enoch as a high mountain in the west, in which there are four hollow places. One of the hollow places, which has a spring of bright water in it, is for the good, and the others are for the bad, who are kept there in great pain, possibly the pain of thirst. 11 Evidently the good and the wicked are separated immediately after death, before the final judgment. The hollow places and the spring may have been drawn from Egyptian traditions. The earlier Sheol had been a place of gloomy darkness, not a prison of pain. But now the comforting belief that the unfairness of this life would be put right when the good were rewarded in the life to come carried with it the pleasing assurance that the sleek and prosperous wicked would pay an atrocious price. The fate awaiting them was imagined in increasingly vivid and vindictive terms as time went on. Fire and Brimstone

2

‘Ye know, doan’t ye, what it feels like when ye bum your hand in takin’ a cake out of the oven or wi’ a match when ye’re lightin’ one of they godless cigarettes? Aye. It stings wi’ a fearful pain, doan’t it? And ye run away to clap a bit o’ butter on it to take the pain away. Ah but (an impressive pause) there’ll be no butter in hell!' Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm

By

the time of Christ the belief had grown up that the wicked would

go

to an area

by

separate place, where they would be tortured called Gehenna, from the valley of place the south ofJerusalem, where children had been burned to of Sheol,

fire. The

or a

was

Hinnom to death long before in sacrifice to Canaanite gods, who had been worshipped by many Jews. These sacrifices were offered at a sanctuary named Topheth, meaning a hearth or fireplace. Later the valley seems to have been used as a dump where the carcasses of dead animals were

thrown and

appropriate

Jerusalem’s

rubbish

was

burned, which made

for the part of the afterworld where human

its

name

garbage

was

consumed. The God of the Jews was from of old a god of thunder and lightning, and one of the weapons of his wrath was naturally fire. When he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah he rained fire and brimstone on them from the sky and the smoke went up as if from a furnace. Brimstone, literally burning stone, is sulphur. Psalm n predicts a rain of fire and brimstone on the wicked and Ezekiel a similar rain on the enemies of Israel. In Isaiah, God says, ‘the peoples will be as if burned to lime, like thorns cut down that are burned in the fire’, and the theme of burning up rubbish is repeated in Malachi: ‘For behold, the day comes, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evil-doers will be stubble; the day that comes shall bum them up. .’ 12 These references are all to the punishment of offenders in this life, not the next, but they provided a model for the later picture of God’s retribution after death. At the end of Isaiah, God says of the bodies of dead rebels against him, ‘for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh’. Whatever this may have meant, in the book of Judith it becomes a prophecy against the nations which oppress Israel, that God ‘will take vengeance on them in the day ofjudgement; fire and worms he will give to their shall flesh; they weep in pain for ever'. In the New Testament, Jesus is of quoted talking Gehenna, ‘where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched’. The worm that dieth not had a long career in Christian imagery and the smells of sulphur and burning rubbish joined the grave-odour of decay to form hell’s intolerable stench. 13 Not all Jews believed in rewards and punishments after death, and those who did were not agreed about the details. Some of the rabbis said that the torment by fire in Gehenna would last no more than a year, .

.

others that the

exceptionally wicked would suffer there for a long time qualified a man for Gehenna ranged from idolatry, pride, anger, adultery, slander, flattery, lewd speech or shaming a neighbour, to accepting advice from one’s wife, indulging in unnecessary conversation with her or ‘making derogatory remarks or

for

ever.

The sins which

about deceased scholars’. Gehenna

believed to be of vast extent and with seven divisions or usually placed underground, layers and three entrances, one in the desert, one in the sea, and one in Jerusalem. Some said that Gehenna was in the north. Some located it in the sky, to the north of the Garden of Eden in the third heaven: there ‘dark fires

was

was

perpetually smoulder, and a river of flame runs through a land of biting cold and ice’. 14

Many thought that Gehenna and Paradise were next door to each other, with the implication that it was part of the punishment of the damned to see the bliss which they had forfeited. A Jewish commentary Leviticus drew the other implication, that the saved in Paradise watched and gloated over the sufferings of the wicked in Gehenna, which became Christian doctrine. The saved in heaven find pleasure in all God’s acts and one of the reasons why the damned bum in hell is to enable those in heaven to see them and realise more acutely the joy of their own happy state. This disagreeable notion was based on the passage in Isaiah about the worm that dieth not, which says that the worshippers of God ‘shall go forth and look on’ the rebels whose fire is not quenched. The doctrine had the approval of both Augustine and Aquinas, and was stated again in the late sixteenth century by St Robert Bellarmine, though after this it went largely out of fashion with a change in the attitude to the principle of retributive justice. 15 Paradoxically, the belief that the wicked would be punished after death, which had grown up as an answer to the problem of life’s unfairness, was as difficult to reconcile with the goodness of God as the older belief which it had replaced. The difficulty is brought out in 2 Esdras, which was written soon after the destruction of the Temple and the obliteration of Israel as a nation in A.D. 70. Ezra is told by God that after history has run its course, the world will return to primeval silence for seven days, as it was in the beginning. The earth will give up those who are asleep in it and the Most High will be revealed on the judgment seat. ‘Then the pit of torment shall appear, and opposite it shall be the place of rest; the furnace of Gehenna shall be disclosed, and opposite it the paradise of delight.’ The judgment of the dead will last for about seven years and those who enjoy rest and delight will be few, those who suffer fire and torment many. God says that he will rejoice over the few who are saved and will not grieve over the great majority, who will be on

fire and burn hotly and perish. At which the horrified Ezra bursts out, like Bunyan centuries later, that the human race should lament but the animals be glad, because human consciousness must entail terror of the future. ‘For what does it profit us that we shall be preserved alive but cruelly tormented? For all who have been bom are involved in iniquities, and are full of sins and burdened with transgressions.’ God answers that he has been patient with human beings for longer than they have any right to expect and if they go astray when they have set on

the law and commandments to guide them, then they deserve to he punished. After death, the spirits of those who are evil wander about in a state of psychological anguish compounded of guilt, confusion, shame and fear, awareness that it is now too late to repent, the sight of the good rewarded and the dreadful anticipation of the agonies reserved for them in the last days. Ezra again protests in horror that this fate awaits most of mankind, but God says, ‘This is the meaning of the contest which every man who is born on earth shall wage, that if he is defeated he shall suffer but if he is victorious he shall receive .’ 16 .

3

The It is

a

Undying fearful

.

.

.

.

Worm

thing to fall

into the hands of the

living God. Hebrews 10:31

beginning, Christians found it difficult to reconcile God’s with God’s justice, not merely because Jesus and his first followers were Jews and inherited the dilemma, but because it is inherent in monotheism. The result is the tension between the figure of Christ as Saviour and the figure of Christ as Judge which is embedded in the Christian creed. The Jesus Christ who ‘for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven’ is the same Jesus Christ who shall ‘come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead’. In the From the

goodness

New Testament there is the Christ who is loving and merciful, and the Christ who separates the sheep from the goats and condemns the latter to ‘eternal punishment’ in ‘the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his

angels’. 17 As

Jews, the early Christians shared the Jewish expectation of the

coming of the Messiah in judgment and the punishment of the wicked in the fire of Gehenna. Hard sayings are attributed to Jesus in this connection. The image of burning rubbish is repeated from the Old Testament. ‘Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age. The Son of man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.’ ‘Wide is the gate and easy the way that leads to destruction and many there are who take it: narrow is the gate and hard the way that leads to life and few there are who find it.’ ‘I tell you, on the day of

judgement men will render account for every careless word they utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.’ Another text was later cited to justify the burning of

witches: ‘If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.’ 18 Of bandying of texts there is no end. These have not been picked out to suggest that Jesus or the authors of the gospels were monsters of cruelty. When he was close to his death, Jesus said, ‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself’, and there are other texts which mitigate the severity of the judgment. Most of the New Testament references either state or can be taken to imply, not the everlasting torture of the wicked but the more merciful, if scarcely welcome, punishment of annihilation: though this is not the sense in which they were taken during most of the subsequent history of Christianity. The early Christians were a small sect, struggling in a world which was largely hostile or indifferent to them and which had crucified their leader and inspiration. They believed that persecution set a seal of God’s approval on them and that their enemies would be punished. When Jesus sends his disciples out to preach the gospel and heal the sick and the possessed, to perform works of mercy, in fact, he says or is made to say by St Matthew that if any place will not receive them or listen to them, it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that place. When the sheep are divided from the goats, the distinction between the good who will enter eternal life and the bad who will endure eternal punishment in fire appears to be simply that the sheep are those who have helped and befriended Christians and the goats are those who have not. 19 The difficulty goes deeper than Christian resentment of hostility and indifference, as it earlier went deeper than Jewish hatred of oppressors. Judgment and punishment of some sort there must be, because if there is not, what becomes of the goodness of God in relation to the unfairness of life? How can God be good if the wrongs of this life are not righted in the next and, if they are not, what is there to stop people from doing evil for their own advantage? And more crucial still, if those who believe in Christ and those who do not all come to the same end, why be a Christian? The belief in Christ as Saviour implied that those who would not accept him must at least suffer the ‘pain of loss’, the agony of exclusion from the Divine Presence, which many modern Christians regard as the true torment of hell. ‘He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the

wrath of God rests upon him.’ 20 Christians at first expected the Second Coming of Christ

at

any

moment, but the

event

did

not

materialise, and the fear of God’s wrath

backsliding and sinfulness in the meantime. ‘And judges each one impartially according to his conduct deeds, yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.’ If we sin deliberately, after receiving the knowledge of the truth, ‘there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect ofjudgment and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries’. In this world a murderer is mercilessly executed on the evidence of two or three was

needed

to

prevent

if you invoke him who

witnesses. ‘How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God?... It is a fearful thing to

fall into the hands of the living God.’ 21 In Revelation, which was for centuries the most popular book in the Bible, the ‘fearful thing’ is abundantly and vigorously displayed. Whoever worships the Great Beast

shall drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up for ever and ever; and they have

no rest

day and night.

.

.

If the Beast stands for Rome and the

Emperors,

as

it

probably does,

then those condemned to this fate are the innumerable people in the ancient world who accepted the imperial cult. There are images, adopted from the Old Testament, of reaping the harvest with a sickle and trampling out the winepress of God’s rage, from which blood flows as high as a horse’s bridle. The rider on a white horse, wearing a robe dipped in blood, comes to smite the nations with a sword and rule them with a rod of iron. The Devil, the Beast and the false prophet are thrown alive into the lake of fire that bums with brimstone, where they will be tortured day and night for ever and ever. The legions of the dead are raised, to be judged by their deeds in life, and those condemned —the

cowardly,

the

faithless,

the

polluted, murderers, fornicators,

sorcerers,

idolaters and liars—are thrown into the lake of fire. This is the, ‘second death’, apparently meaning the death of the soul and implying annihilation, not eternal torment, though again this is not the way in which Christians generally understood it in the age of faith. 22 Luther said of Revelation that in it Christ is neither taught nor recognised. It can be interpreted more sympathetically, and G. B. Caird has suggested that its attitude to some of the evil forces whose fate it pictures is ‘very much that of the modern reader of science fiction,

who can contemplate with equanimity the liquidation of Mars-men with a ray gun, because they do not belong to the ordered structure of human existence’. 23 All the same, the overwhelming impression conveyed is of the few saved and the many destroyed, of a colossal explosion of pent-up fury let loose in a hurricane of vengeance, pestilence, famine, slaughter and ruin. The effect is awesome and terrifying. It is also pleasurably exciting, and Revelation has remained a standard source of imagery for those bent on the violent extirpation of everyone who did not agree with them—fanatic sectarians, lunatic fundamentalists, oppressed minorities and assorted intellectuals imbued with the fervour of righteous causes. For example: Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fatal lightning of his terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. At the end of the

hymn the coin is turned over to show the other

side:

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was horn, across the sea, With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me: As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on.

superfluous to add that Julia Ward Howe, the author of these stirring and popular lines, never went anywhere near the flesh and blood battles of the American Civil War and, far from dying to set anyone free, expired peacefully at her summer home in Rhode Island at the age of ninety-one. People have an appetite for apocalypses, for gigantic blood-streaked visions of slaughter and pain, and hell-fire preaching satisfies it. In 1769, preaching on salvation by faith at Sligo, Wesley found he was talking above the heads of his audience. So the following morning, ‘I suited myself to their capacity by preaching on “Where their worm dieth

It is almost

not, and the fire is not

quenched”. I had

The effect

was

that the

evening

for many

years.’ Similarly in congregation 1764, he delivered a sermon to ‘a very quiet and very stupid’ congregation which he seemed unable to reach. But a few days later he preached to them on the undying worm and the quenchless fire and, he said, was

such

as

not seen

before them the terror of the Lord, in the strongest manner I was able. It seemed to be the very thing they wanted. They not only

set

listened with the deepest attention, but appeared to be more affected than I had ever seen them by any discourse whatever. 24 As it eventually crystallised, the Christian belief was that after death the exceptionally wicked, including pagans who refused to accept the truth when it was shown them, went to hell and writhed there in ceaseless and unspeakable agony. Saints and martyrs went straight to heaven. The majority of ordinary, guilty hut not irredeemably evil Christians went to the intermediate state of purgatory, where punishment purged them of their sins in preparation for heaven. The pains of purgatory gradually became almost as appalling as those of hell itself. In effect, each soul was judged at death, and demons were believed to hover round the deathbed, trying to snatch the soul as it flew unsteadily from the mouth in the last breath, to carry it gleefully away to swell their stockpile of souls in hell. But it was also believed that at the end of the world the trumpet would sound, Christ would be seen coming in majesty on the clouds, and the dead would rise from their graves to be judged and sentenced. The inherent contradictions in these beliefs were never resolved. Protestants later rejected the doctrine of purgatory as unscriptural, but they kept hell in all its rigour. The medieval ‘dooms’ warned sinners and unbelievers of the last judgment and the horrors of hell from the walls of churches, where they were frequently placed above the west door, to be appropriately lighted by the red glow of the setting sun. They range from superb works in cathedrals, the products of the finest artistic talents of the age, to cruder but vivid examples in humble parish churches. So fiercely was the action of Christ as Judge displayed in these pictures that his quality of mercy had to be transferred to other figures, the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist or John the Divine, shown pleading with him for the dead. In the twelfth-century Last Judgment at Torcello the fire of hell issues in a blazing stream straight from the aureole of light surrounding the glorified Christ. At popular levels the pains of hell and purgatory were imagined largely in crudely physical terms and some of the early Fathers said that the body which was material to enable it

punished

in hell

to

burning

be made of some special suffering for ever. Some Christians, however, thought that the torments after death were psychological pangs and some that they would not go on for ever. In the fourth century St Basil said that most ordinary Christians believed that there was a time-limit to the suffering of the damned, though he thought go

on

must

and

them mistaken. The massive authority of St Augustine came down firmly against the opinion that the pains of hell are mental, not physical, or that it would be wrong of God to visit infinite punishment on finite acts. In the course of his argument, he stated with his accustomed clarity the tension between Saviour and Judge at the core of Christianity. The eternal fire of hell, he says, certainly means physical torture and the worm that dieth not probably does too, though it may be an image of psychological pangs. Far from eternal punishment being unjust, all mankind richly deserves it, because of original sin: condemnation upon all the stock of man, parent and from which none can ever be freed, but by the free and offspring, gracious mercy of God, which makes a separation of mankind, to show in some the power of grace, and in others the revenge of justice. Both of which could not be expressed upon all mankind, for if all had tasted of the punishments ofjustice, the grace and mercy of the Redeemer had had no place in any: and again, if all had been redeemed from death, there had been no object left for the manifestation of God’s justice. But now there are more so left than receivers of mercy, that so it might appear what was due unto all. 25 Hence

came

.

.

God’s mercy, however, was as much at the heart of Christianity as God’s justice, and some Christians obstinately went on wondering whether forgiveness might not prevail in the end, to the alarm of theologians determined to preserve the full rigour of hell as a deterrent. Augustine contradicted Christians of his time who thought that the saints might successfully intercede for the damned. In the thirteenth century Thomas of Cantimpré said that one of the joys of the saved sheep when they are separated from the wicked goats will be to see them being condemned to everlasting fire. Some ‘simple folk’, he says, wonder whether the saved might not be upset to see their relatives and friends condemned, but this is foolish, for the saved, ‘confirmed in their perpetual exultation, can be touched by no trouble or grief’. He goes

cite the improving example of Blessed Marie d’Oignies, who saw vision that her dead mother was damned and promptly ceased to mourn for her. 26 Christians naturally lacked the Jewish tendency to concentrate on the fate of nations and, ironically, a more humane interest in the fate of individuals stimulated a taste for devising appropriate tortures for different sinners, to make the punishment fit the crime. Descriptions on

in

to

a

of hell became

pervertedly

cruel and it is

impossible

to

avoid the

impression of an avid, lip-licking relish in imagining its horrors. The pattern was set in the second century by the Apocalypse of Peter, which with Christians. It describes how blasphemers are hung their offending tongues in hell while flames spring up underneath up by and bum them. Girls who lost their virginity before marriage are beaten and lacerated. Adulterous women are hung by the hair above boiling and bubbling mud. The wicked rich, with whom everyone always finds it peculiarly hard to sympathise, are rolled to and fro on sharp stones. The milk flowing from the breasts of mothers who murdered their children congeals and turns into animals which torture them, while the children, comfortably situated in a ‘place of delight’, stand and watch and cry out against them to God. 27 The simplest accounts of hell’s geography, in which it is an immense subterranean abyss of seething flame, hit on something close to geological truth. Far beneath the surface of the earth the rock substance is molten with heat: ‘We do in fact maintain our fragile lives on a wafer balanced between a hellish morass and unlimited space.’ 28 The Inferno of Dante is much more complicated, an inverted cone which has nine circles or layers, corresponding to the nine spheres of the heavens above. The deeper down you go, the greater is the degree of wickedness and the more terrible the punishment. The first four circles deal with the sins of lust, gluttony, avarice and prodigal waste. In the fifth those damned for the sin of anger tear each other to pieces, befouled with mud in the marsh of Styx, the principal river of the Greek and Roman underworld. Beyond Styx is the moated, iron-walled citadel of Dis, guarded by the three Furies, serpent-haired and smeared with blood, and the Gorgon. In the sixth circle heretics are roasted in fiery tombs. In the seventh and eighth various types of sin are punished, including

was

popular

violence, fraud, theft, suicide,

homosexuality, blasphemy, hypocrisy,

lying, witchcraft and

sorcery. The violent are parboiled in blood, suicides turn into trees whose leaves are tom and eaten by harpies, thieves are tormented by snakes. Here are the pits of Malebolge, where pimps and false lovers are flogged by demons, and flatterers are imersed in

excrement.

Finally, in the ninth and lowest circle of all, furthest from sunlight and the warmth of life and love, traitors are encased to their necks in ice in the frozen lake of Cocytus, another classical underworld river, the of lamentation, their tears of pain congealing over their cheeks like crystal vizors. In the heart and centre of this lowest depth of infamy, in ice to his breast, is the gigantic figure of Lucifer, treason

water

incarnate, emperor of all the realms of woe. As the evil counterpart of the Trinity, he has three faces, one red, one yellowish-white and one black. He has six huge bat-wings and icy tears flow from his six eyes. In his central mouth he gnaws the body of the arch-traitor Judas Iscariot, and flays the skin from his back with his claws. In his other mouths he mangles the bodies of Brutus and Cassius, the assassins of Julius Caesar. Tears and bloody froth run down over his chins. That hell is freezing cold as well as burning hot is one of the ways in which it unites opposites. Bede tells a story about a man from Northumbria, named Drycthelm, who fell ill and died but suddenly returned to life next morning, to the alarm of those weeping over his body. Sobered by the experience, he retired to lead a godly life in a monastery. He said that after dying he had been guided by a handsome man in a shining robe who led him in a north-easterly direction until they came to a broad valley. On one side, the left, the valley was dreadful with burning flames, on the other side there was a storm of whirling hail and snow. The valley was full of human souls which jumped from the torment of heat into the agony of cold and, when they could bear the cold no longer, back into the fire again. This valley was purgatory. To reach hell they went on to a place of thick darkness and hideous stench, where masses of flame rose from a great pit and fell back into it, carrying with them the souls of sinners, like sparks rising and falling in smoke. A crowd of demons were jeering at five souls while dragging them, howling and lamenting, into the burning gulf. Other demons with eyes aglow and foul flames spurting from their mouths and noses, threatened Drycthelm with their tongs, but he was saved by his guide, who took him on to show him the beautiful flower-filled meadow, radiant with light, where the good waited to enter the kingdom of heaven. Afterwards, when Drycthelm had returned to life and become a monk, people marvelled at his habit of standing motionless in icy streams in winter. He would say, ‘I have known it colder’ and ‘I have seen

greater

suffering’. 29

The idea that Gehenna combined the extremes of heat and cold was in Jewish speculation. There was also an undesirable icy afterworld in northern mythology. In the north men feared the darkness and corruption of the grave as much as anywhere else, but they also feared its bitter cold. Brave men killed in battle went to the warriors’ paradise of Valhalla, but those who died of disease or old age went to current

the freezing kingdom of the goddess Hel in the mist and darkness of Niflheim in the far north. There she had her hall, encircled by a high

wall with a great gate. A long road ran to Hel’s gate, through deep, dark valleys and crossing a bridge over a river. It was said that Hel was half black and half flesh-coloured, which made her easy to recognise. Her name is probably related to a word meaning ‘to cover’ and connected with the grave.

4

Darkness Visible The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. Milton, Paradise Lost

The fear of being devoured has an important place in descriptions of hell. The arch-sinner, deserving the most supremely horrible punishment in Christian theory, was Judas Iscariot. His punishment was to be eternally mangled in the Devil’s mouth, as he is in Dante and in various medieval paintings and carvings, including Giotto’s Last Judgment in Padua. But sinners in general were literally swallowed up by hell, which they entered through the mouth of a gigantic monster. The monster was sometimes a whale, gulping into its maw a jumbled plankton of sinners and demons, or sometimes a lion or a dragon, or an immense indescribable Thing. The convention was so well established that when artists were short of space, a pair of fanged jaws stood for the whole horror of hell. The image of hell-mouth, yawning for its prey, breathing fire and smoke, and roaring with a noise like the grunting of millions of hogs, tapped a deep spring of terror. It retained its vitality long enough for Tennyson to write of the Light Brigade charging ‘into the jaws of Death, into the mouth of Hell’. Robert Hughes sees it still gaping at us in debased form, ‘a red-nosed, gummy, toothy, papier-mâche mask, at the entrance of innumerable Luna Parks and Ghost western world’. 30 has a mouth in Sheol the Old Testament. ‘Like Sheol let us swallow them alive and whole,’ says Proverbs, ‘like those who go down to the

Trains

throughout the

pit.’ 31 The hell-beast whose mouth engulfs the damned in Christian imagery seems to be an amalgam of the mouth of Sheol, the whale which swallowed Jonah, the sea monster Leviathan, and the great red dragon and the Great Beast of Revelation. The whale is connected with hell in two ways. It was an emblem of the Devil’s lurking and murderous habits, because of the constantly repeated story of sailors mistaking a basking whale for an island, tying up to it and being

down to destruction when it dived. Also the three days and which nights Jonah spent in the belly of the ‘great fish’ were taken as an allegory of Christ’s descent into hell between the Crucifixion and

dragged

the Resurrection.

The hell-beast is both the Devil and a huge, devouring monster. In Sartor Resartus Carlyle described his own symptoms in what has been called ‘a psychotic state of mind, largely depressive, but partly schizophrenic'. All the people around him seemed to be lifeless automatons and he himself felt as solitary and savage as a tiger in the jungle. ‘To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility; it was one huge, dead immeasurable steam-engine, rolling on in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb.’ But at the same time he felt an intense fear of being devoured: ‘It seemed as if all things in the Heavens above and the Earth beneath, would hurt me; as if the Heavens and the Earth were but the boundless jaws of a devouring Monster, wherein I, palpitating, waited to be devoured.’ 32 The Christian picture of hell drew on psychological reality. It was affected hy, and itself affected, the peculiar mental experiences of ascetics, visionaries and people in disturbed states of mind: the same thing being equally true of the picture of heaven. Aldous Huxley pointed out that a common element of negative and terrifying visions is an experience of an appalling electric glare of intolerable light, like the glaring fire of hell. Another, as John Custance also described, is a feeling of restriction: It is worth remarking, that many of the punishments described in the various accounts of hell are punishments of pressure and constriction. Dante’s sinners are buried in mud, shut up in the trunks of trees, frozen solid in blocks of ice, crushed beneath stones. The Inferno is psychologically true. Many of its pains are experienced by schizophrenics, and by those who have taken mescalin or lysergic acid

under unfavourable conditions. 33

autobiography, completed in 1565, St Teresa of Avila recalled ‘how it pleased God to carry her in the spirit to a place in hell that she had deserved for her sins’. Constriction is a major element in her account of an experience so frightening that the memory of it sent her cold as she wrote about it, six years afterwards. It reads like a description of the experience of being bom, but in reverse, as if the child was being drawn into the womb and destroyed there, instead of being formed and given life, and it is hard to resist the impression that In her

she is describing a journey in the imagination into regions which celibate nun she regarded as loathsome and terrifying:

as a

like

or a

The

entrance

seemed

to me

a

very

long,

narrow

passage,

low, dark, and constricted furnace. The ground appeared to be covered with a filthy wet mud, which smelt abominably and contained

very

many wicked reptiles. At the end was a cavity the wall, and I found myself closely confined in it.

scooped out of

room to sit or lie down, the walls her. her and stifled Though there was no light, only profound pressed darkness, she could somehow see everything that brought pain to the sight:

In this

cavity, without enough

in

I felt

of

a

on

fire inside my soul, the nature of which is beyond my powers

and my physical tortures were intolerable . But this was nothing to my agony of soul, an oppression, a suffocation, and an affliction so agonizing, and accompanied by such a hopeless and distressing misery that no words I could find would adequately describe it. To say that it was as if my soul were being

description,

.

.

even

I could not see from my body is as nothing I seemed to feel burnt and dismemdered; myself being my torturer, but interior fire and and I repeat, that despair were the very worst of all. 34

continuously torn

...

old belief that just as there is no darkness in heaven, so there light in hell, and yet the damned can see. Hell-fire is ‘dark fire’, black but burning, according to St Basil: ‘Then conceive in your mind a deep pit, impenetrable darkness, fire that has no brightness, having all fire’s power of burning, but without any light . .' Another characteristic of hell, which again is something experienced in states of depression, was that though it was crowded, it was also, like dying, tormentingly lonely. The Verba Seniorum tells a story about one of the desert hermits, St Macarius, who found lying on the ground the head of a dead man which spoke to him and told him that in hell, ‘As far as the sky is distant from the earth, so deep is the fire beneath our feet and above our head. And standing in the midst of the fire, there is not one of us can see his neighbour face to face.’Whenever anyone on earth feels pity for the damned, for a moment they can look at each other, which consoles them a little. A Persian holy man named Artay Viraf experienced hell in a vision induced by hashish. It was ‘most dark and

It is

was an

no

.

stinking, most fearful and thankless, earth in the north: And

most

evil’, deep down beneath the

and an icy wind, dryness and stench such experienced on earth nor yet heard of. And as I went on further I saw the ghastly deeps of hell; like a most fearful pit it led down to an even narrower and more terrifying place. Its darkness was so thick that it could be grasped with the hand. Its stench was such that whoever breathed it in must needs stagger, tremble and fall. So narrow was it that none could stand up there. And all [who were there] thought, ‘I am alone’; and when only three days and nights have passed, they say: ‘Surely nine thousand years have passed by, yet they do not let me go.’ 35 as

so

I had

I

experienced cold

never

Hell is the

opposite of heaven, the negative pole of evil, agony, damnation despair. Heaven is radiant, peaceful, harmonious, joyful and beautiful with a loveliness transcending the beauties of the world we know. Hell is dark, raging, shrieking, pain-tom, filthy, ugly. The landscape and

of heaven is flat, calm and green. It has flowery meadows, sheltered gardens, delicious scents, clear streams and sparkling fountains. Hell is black, jagged, precipitous and barren, hideous with towering mountains and stark cliffs (a liking for wild mountain scenery is a comparatively modern taste), yawning gulfs, dismal valleys, tangled woods, putrid swamps, ooze and slime, rivers of blood and fire, grim towers and frowning battlements, all overcast with flames, smoke and stench. In the nineteenth century John Martin painted hell in terms of the scenery of the industrial revolution. Wolverhampton and the Black Country seemed to him the ideal of the infernal regions. Blake’s familiar line about ‘dark Satanic mills’ makes the same point, but the idea was not new. There is an infernal workshop in Hieronymus Bosch’s Seven Deadly Sins. Hell is the opposite of heaven in being chaotic instead of ordered and monstrous instead of beautiful. It is into Chaos that in Paradise Lost Satan and the rebel angels are hurled from heaven, a burning lake in the bottomless pit which becomes hell at the centre of the world, a ‘waste and wild’ place of ‘darkness visible’, fuming sulphur, and floods and whirlwinds of fire. Bordering the lake is a forlorn and dreary plain, ‘the seat of desolation’, also burning hot and lit by the livid flames of the lake. But though hell is chaos, it is an orderly chaos because attempts to describe it in detail necessarily import order and organisation into it. Total chaos is not describable at all. Hell is an enormous monster,

its carnivorous mouth to swallow the damned, and it is ruled and run by monsters, Satan and his satraps and their legions of lesser fiends. Their presence is the crowning horror endured by the damned, the infernal parody of the rapture of the presence of God which the saved experience in heaven. Hell is the ultimate and unsurpassable depth, the place furthest removed from sun and air and all the gentle warmth and beauty of life.

opening

Because it is ultimate depth, it can also be considered fundamental, basic, essential, the foundation of everything above it. The ninth and lowest circle of Dante’s inferno, which contains the Devil, is the centre

of the universe, and

so

The basic notions in

is the hell of Milton. As Karl Rahner says, our

usual concept of hell include

‘depth’,

something

the ‘background', ‘essential’ and one’. Thus we ‘radically something may man that when we think of hell we think of him entering suppose as establishing contact with the most intrinsic, unified, ultimate and deepest level of the reality of the world. 36

‘underneath’, something ‘intrinsic’, belonging

to

Chapter Seven

Evil and the Gods

If a god is to take a firm hold on men’s minds the attribute which he needs above all others is power. The decline of Christianity was assured once science had excluded God from the workings of the universe, which now became a machine that ran by itself. An honorific place might be reserved for God as Supreme Being, Universal Architect, First Cause, who designed the machine in the first place and set it running, but he no longer intervened in the world, to help or harm. Striking and unusual events and experiences formerly attributed to God or his adversary, the Devil, were now explained as the natural consequences of natural causes. As God receded into the distance, so did hell and heaven and Christianity’s central promise of a happy afterlife. The present Christian tendency to suspect divine power as immoral and to emphasise Christ as the principle of love is partly a consequence of the decline of belief and partly contributes to it. Men require a god

they

can

fear.

This does

not mean

supported by

that human

the divine.

They

beings do not want to be loved

do, because they

are

helpless

and and need

but because they are weak they need the love of a god who is strong, just as children need strength in their parents as well as affection. And yet if a god is powerful, he is bound to be dangerous. In his

loving,

Autobiography, John Stuart Mill explained that he had been brought up without any religious belief because his father ‘found it impossible believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness’. The elder Mill regarded religion as a great moral evil: to

combining

DOI: 10.4324/9781003363743-7

Evil and the Gods hundred times heard him say that all ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked, in a constantly increasing progression, that mankind have gone on adding trait after trait till they reached the most perfect conception of wickedness which the human mind can devise, and have called this God, and prostrated themselves before it. This ne plus ultra of wickedness he considered to be embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity. I have

a

The Christian doctrine that stuck in James Mill’s throat was that a loving God had created hell. His own suggestion of an evolution towards debasement, with the survival of the unfittest, is an interesting conceit, but the truth is that men have needed their gods to be both strong and good, and the two requirements are not easy to reconcile. Hence the desperate modern suggestions that God is dead or dying and that life’s machinery clatters on murderously by itself. Or perhaps God is alive and well and well-meaning, but hopelessly inefficient: as in H. G. Wells’s ‘All Aboard for Ararat’, in which God explains that when he made light he found to his embarrassment that he had created shadow as well. Alternatively, perhaps God is efficient but not well-meaning. Perhaps we are the victims of a God who is a sardonic joker and whimsical tyrant. It amuses him to watch us playing out the tragi-comedies of our lives. Or maybe he became bored with his own play long ago and left the theatre, abandoning the actors to the tender mercies of chance, as in Hardy’s ‘Nature’s Questioning’: Has

Vast

Imbecility, Mighty to build and blend But impotent to tend, Framed us in jest, and left us now some

to

hazardry?

The notion of an idle, absentee God is not new. Psalm 73 condemns the scoffers who say, ‘How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?’ And the frequency with which Old Testament writers insist that God rewards the good and punishes the wicked suggests the persistence of much solid experience implying the contrary. The tension between divine might and divine goodness may very well go back to the beginning of religion and is certainly very old. The pagan gods were as much entangled in it as the God of Christians has been, and beliefs about the evil actions of deities and spirits cluster like limpets on the rock of need for, and recognition of, power as well as benevolence in

the divine.

Evil and the Gods

question of recognition besides need because a fundamental element of religion is the perception of the ‘numinous’, a term coined by Rudolf Otto because, significantly, he could find no word for it in modern Western languages. Hebrew, Greek and Latin words for ‘holy’ and ‘sacred’ did not originally imply goodness. They referred to an experience or place or object which was overwhelmingly awesome and uncanny, which caused a reaction of mingled wonder, delight and dread. The numinous is not good or bad but enigmatic, mysterious and convincing. It leaves no doubt in the mind which experiences it of the presence of the divine and as well as beauty it contains fear. It is

1

a

Anger,

War and Madness

Thus it comes that religion and majesty and honour depend upon fear. But there is no fear where none is angry. Lactantius, On the Wrath of God The underworld powers and the rulers of darkness have well-stocked armouries of evil and menace, but so do the gods of the upper world, of light and the sky. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo, the noblest of the Olympians, god of beauty, healing, poetry, music, inspiration and philosophy, says that the reason he was born on the island of Delos was that when his mother’s time drew near no other land would receive her, because of the terror of the god. The dread aroused by Apollo is an essential element of the hymn’s heartfelt praise of him, and he was called ‘far-shooter’ because he inflicted plague on mortals by shooting arrows at them. In the Agamemnon Aeschylus derived the god’s name from apolluein, ‘to destroy’, and the same pun may be preserved in the Apollyon of Revelation and Pilgrim’s Progress. It would make no sense to call Apollo an evil god. Pagan deities generally cannot be labelled good or bad. They are both, because they are numinous and because they control the life-giving and the destroying aspects of nature. The storm which kills with lightning and terrifies with thunder brings the fertilising rain. The sun which gives the crops life in the spring withers them in summer. Nor do the elements discriminate between human beings on moral grounds. The rain falls on and the just the unjust. The gods are benevolent and hostile, merciful and cruel, as their purposes serve and the mood takes them. Strong to save

men

and swift to destroy, they embody power as men experience it and understand that the gods need humanity to serve them because

recognition. For one to command, another must obey. Three major religions have sprung from the worship of the God

power demands

of the Old Testament, who made the Covenant with the Israelites, the agreement that he would cherish them if they served him and no other. It is Zeus, says Hesiod, who raises men up and Zeus who casts them down, Zeus who makes men strong or weak, famous or obscure. 1 The Homeric gods were larger-than-life projections of the warrior aristocrats who believed in them—arbitrary, quick-tempered and a law unto themselves. But they could not escape from the demand for the divine to be moral as well as mighty. Homer and Hesiod were bitterly criticised by philosophers, including Plato, for attributing evil to the immortals and Zeus was slowly transformed into an abstract principle of Justice. In the process, ironically enough, he became a more frightening god than before, for he lost his earlier humanity. There is no word for ‘god-fearing’ in the Iliad, but there was later. The persistence of philosophers in attacking the belief that evil had its source in the divine shows how deep-rooted the belief was. The gods often help a man up when he is down, said the poet Archilocus, but they equally often knock him down when he is up, ‘and then the evils come, so that a man wanders homeless, destitute, at his wit’s end’. It was widely suspected that the gods were jealous of human happiness and success, and it was possible to conclude that they sported with men’s lives for the sheer heartless fun of it. The overwhelming might of the gods or fate or whatever forces move the pieces on the chessboard can induce this deep pessimism, or a stoical pride in endurance, or the advice to count your blessings. Very often a solution is found in saying that the ways of the divine are beyond human fathoming, with the express or implied hope that the gods would be seen to be good, despite all the evidence to the contrary, if only it were possible to understand them. The so-called ‘Babylonian Job’, written in the twelfth century

earlier,

says that what seems evil to a man may not seem evil of a god, full of mystery, who can understand it? How can mortals fathom the way of a god?’ The same attitude can be found in Sophocles, in the Old Testament and in Christianity. If God’s justice could be understood as just by human beings, Luther said, it would not be divine. Because God is ultimately incomprehensible, it necessarily follows that his justice is also incomprehensible. 2 The power or incomprehensible justice of gods is demonstrated by their proneness to violent discharges of energy, which cause death and B.C. or

to a

god. ‘The plan

damage

on

earth and which

are

represented

as

their anger.

They

explode tidal in

in

waves,

plague,

lightning, thunder, gales, earthquakes, eruptions, floods, or they manifest their displeasure more slowly and surely

dearth and famine. These fierce

explosions can be personally

if they were directed singly and specifically against you: as in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, when Tom is scared by a tremendous thunderstorm, with driving rain, awful claps of thunder and blinding sheets of lightning:

frightening,

as

He covered his head with the bedclothes and waited in a horror of suspense for his doom; for he had not the shadow of a doubt that all this hubbub was about him. He believed he had taxed the forbearance

this

of the powers above the result.

to

the

extremity of endurance

and that

was

The anger of the gods has provided a useful explanation of disasters which seemed difficult to account for otherwise. Most human beings do not believe in chance: things occur not by accident but by intent, and events which at a more sophisticated level are put down to chance are credited to gods and spirits. The explanation has the advantage of providing a method of defence. Attempts can be made to placate a furious god, but scarcely an irritable accident. Not only do supernatural powers wreak the havoc of their wrath directly on the earth, but they may also inspire the raging anger of men. The fear of human aggression is an element in the lore of dragons and monsters of chaos, and the Furies of the Greek underworld were connected with human revenge. Anger is one of the Seven Deadly Sins of Christian tradition and a leading characteristic of the Devil. Satan has come down onto the earth ‘in great wrath’ and he prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. He fastens on the angry impulses of human beings which give him a hold on them. Forgiveness, St Paul says, keeps Satan from gaining an advantage over us. ‘Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no 3 opportunity to the devil.’ Our own society lately is one of the few in which being furiously angry has been

regarded as virtuous and evidence of a humane concern

for others. Normally, consuming anger has been feared as supernatural, because of the intangible psychological force which emanates from someone in a fury. Many common phrases preserve the old idea that a man in a rage is on fire. We talk about the heat of battle, a flaming temper, burning or boiling rage, or the light of battle in a man’s eyes, and we expect red-headed people to have quick tempers because their

fiery. Similarly, when the heroes of the ancient world flew into a rage they were said to radiate light and heat. When Achilles goes berserk in the Iliad, he literally blazes with wrath. Light shines from his body and there is a golden mist round his head. His war-cry is as piercing as the call of a trumpet and when the Trojans hear it, their hair is

innards turn to water and even the horses scent something evil in the wind. It is the goddess Athene who makes Achilles blaze with light and who puts round his shoulders the aegis, the panic-striking cloak with which Zeus caused thunderstorms and which was perhaps originally a storm-cloud. A man alight with rage, in other words, is no longer entirely human. He is ‘beside himself’, we might say, and something awesome and supernatural has taken the place of his normal self. It is this which makes him so dangerous. In the Old Testament, when Samson goes berserk, it is the fierce energy of God that drives him. ‘And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon and killed thirty men of the town.’ Later, when the Philistines had bound him with ropes, the Spirit came mightily upon him again and he burst the ropes and slaughtered a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass. 4 A man can also be alight with desire and numerous phrases link desire as well as anger with flame, heat and electricity. There is a connection between sexual ardour and martial ardour, lust and bloodlust. The Roman god of war, Mars, was also a god of fertility and both the Near Eastern and the Celtic fertility goddesses were frequently goddesses of war and carnage as well. Passionate anger and desire have in common the sensation of being caught up in an irresistible tide of force that smashes down all barriers of morality, convention and restraint, and carries a man beyond his normal limitations because he is in the grip of a force far greater than himself, the joyous and terrible grip of a god. It was this characteristic of passion which made Christian theologians denounce it as peculiarly evil and demonic. The eye, which was long believed to emit powerful invisible rays, has an old connection with supernaturally inspired anger and desire.

When the great enchantress or the supremely desirable woman casts her glance on a man she projects a physically shattering force at him and he feels as if he had been struck by lightning. The fear of the baleful radiation of the evil eye is ancient and widespread. The light of battle in a warrior’s eye is the murderous ray of war-frenzy. One of the Egyptian Pyramid Texts says that before the beginning of the world ‘that fear did not exist that came into being through the Eye of Horus’.

Atum, who was the first of the gods in one of the Egyptian creation myths, had a single eye which was detachable and could be sent out on errands. This eye was an agent of his creative power, for mankind came into existence through the tears that flowed from it, and also of his wrath, on the analogy of the solitary life-giving and death-dealing eye that is the sun. Atum was identified with Re, the sun god, and there was a myth that when he grew old mankind plotted against him. In fury he sent his eye against them in the form of the goddess Hathor. She slaughtered people in heaps and if the god had not distracted her attention by getting her drunk, she would have depopulated the entire earth. Atum passed his authority on to Horus and a spell from one of the Coffin Texts says: ‘I am the all-seeing Eye of Horus, whose appearance strikes terror, Lady of Slaughter, Mighty One of Frightfulness.’ The eye is here the great fertility goddess in her terrible, destroying 5

aspect. The eye became a symbol of Satan, who was a leader of angels or stars, the eyes of the night sky. An old Tarot card shows the Devil as Argos, a monster of Greek mythology whose body was covered with eyes, and the peacock is connected with the Devil because of the ‘eyes’ on its spreading tail. In 1895 a Satanic chapel was discovered in the Palazzo Borghese in Rome. The room was hung in scarlet and black, and had at one end a huge tapestry of Lucifer Triumphant. ‘It was lit by electricity, so arranged as to glare from an enormous human eye fixed in the middle of the ceiling.’ 6 In modern magical symbolism the Devil is linked with the Hebrew letter ayin, which traditionally represents an eye, and with the ‘eyes’ of the sex organs, the sources of the and heat of desire. light All gods are frightful, but some are more frightful than others, especially gods who persistently promote violent passions in human beings. In the north Odin, like the Homeric deities, was believed to

inspire

an access

of

battle-energy

in

a

fighter,

or

to

sap it when it

suited him. The berserks were Odin’s men. He filled them with the savage joy in which they fought, unprotected by armour and with

superhuman strength. They

could blunt their

opponents’

weapons

by

said. They wore animal skins and went into staring them, battle howling like wolves, which ministered to an uneasy belief that they were a cross between beasts and men and could readily change shape. Because they were mad, berserks were not expected to conform to the laws that applied to everyone else and they were apparently sacred to the god. This has been true of madmen in many places, at

so

it

was

because their madness shows that they have the divine in them. Odin inspired not only bloodlust but other ecstatic states in which a man escapes from being himself, trance, poetic inspiration and drunkenness. His name is derived from an Old Norse adjective meaning ‘raging’, and the name of his Germanic equivalent, Wodan, from wut, which means wild excitement, intoxicated raving and rage. Adam of Bremen said in the eleventh century, ‘Woden, id est furor' (Woden, that is, mad fury). Odin was god of the dead and god of magic and wisdom, lord of the gallows and god of the hanged. Men were sacrificed to him by hanging, among other methods, and he hanged himself on the World Tree to gain mastery of the magic runes. He had only one eye, having given the other in exchange for water from the well of wisdom. He travelled the world as a tall, greying stranger, his single eye glittering under his broad-brimmed hat. When people tried to greet him they found that their words froze on their lips. Odin’s beasts were the wolf and the raven, which feed on corpses. One of his names was Evildoer and he delighted in war and quarrels, which he stirred up because he had an appetite for human lives. This was the cause of bitter feeling against him. Noble warriors went after death to form his war-band and feast with him in Valhalla. He needed to recruit as many of them as possible to defend the gods against the onslaught of the powers of chaos at the end of the world. Since he was the god of war, the changes and chances of battle inspired the conviction that he could never be trusted. His reputation for treachery was such that, according to a tenth-century poem, when King Hakon the Good of Norway died in 960 and was received with honour at Odin’s hall, he refused to hand in his weapons at the door because he did not trust the god. The brutal Eric Bloodaxe, who flouted the most sacred ties of kinship in murdering his own brothers, was assumed to stand high in Odin’s favour. The god promised Harald Wartooth of Denmark a charmed life in return for the souls of the men he killed in battle, and him how

to deploy his troops in wedge formation. But in the betrayed Harald to his death, as he betrayed Eric Bloodaxe and Sigmund the Volsung and all his favourite heroes. In his murderous

taught

end he

appetite

for human souls he resembles Satan.

Odin’s foster-brother was the trickster god Loki, wily, sly, spiteful, homosexual or bisexual, a thief and a cheat and an inveterate mischiefmaker. There is no evidence that anyone ever worshipped Loki, but he has an important part in many myths. He had a strong comic element in his character, but also a dark and evil side, which may have been

emphasised when Christianity spread into northern Europe, because in many ways he resembled Satan. Both were liars, slanderers and deceivers, both

were

sexually abnormal and made mischief, and Loki’s

part in inspiring the murder of Balder, the beautiful god for whom all creation wept, may have reminded Christians of the Devil’s part in the Crucifixion. It was said that the gods bound Loki in a cave with iron ropes made from the entrails of his own son. There he remains, causing earthquakes when he struggles in his bonds. But when Ragnarök draws near, he will break free and join the forces of evil against the gods. The bound Loki and the Greek Prometheus, tied to his rock, are probably both descended from old beliefs in the Caucasus about a chained giant

who causes earthquakes and will one day break loose and destroy the world. The bound Loki seems to have been identified with the bound Satan, fettered in hell. A horned figure on a cross fragment from Kirkby Stephen in Westmorland and the bound figure on the Gosforth Cross in Cumberland may represent Loki-Satan. The most frightful and the most alluring of the Greek gods was Dionysus, who like Odin and Wodan drove human beings mad and who was himself mad. ‘No single Greek god’, said W. F. Otto, ‘even approaches Dionysus in the horror of his epithets, which bear witness to a savagery that is absolutely without mercy.’ Saviour, benefactor, god of rapturous joy, he was also ‘the tearer of men’ and ‘the eater of raw flesh’. He was Lusios, ‘the Liberator’, the god who set men free of who released them from the themselves, prison of the normal, constricted, and sane and made them for a moment self, respectable divine. His worshippers, most of whom were women, went out at night onto the mountains, dancing and tossing their heads and crying out in rising excitement. Wearing fawnskins and ivy wreaths, they carried smoking torches and rods tipped with ivy or vine-leaves. Some held snakes in their hands or twined them in their hair. They were probably inspired with wine, which was one of the god’s gifts to mankind, and there are hints of sexual orgies. At the height of their maddened frenzy they tore animals to pieces alive and devoured them raw and bleeding. Earlier, the climax of the rites had probably been the rending and cannibal devouring of a man. The worshippers believed that they were eating the god himself and so becoming possessed of him, in a communion which has been called ‘a mixture of supreme exaltation and supreme repulsion: it is at once holy and horrible, fulfilment and uncleanness, a sacrament and a pollution’. 7 There is no reason to think that the cult of Dionysus survived into

clear parallels between his rites and believed to celebrate. Central to that the divine is achieved both is the belief through the letting loose in and of the ravening animal human nature the consequent reversal of all conventional standards. Common to both are wild dancing, drinking and sex, dressing in animal costumes and masks, flagellation, the mingling of exaltation and debasement, sacrament and pollution, the fact that the majority of worshippers were women, and the horror aroused by the rites in people of restrained and conservative temperament. The maenads were accused of stealing children and devouring them, and so were witches. The witches’ god, the Devil, was a leader of stars and in the Antigone of Sophocles Dionysus is hailed as leader of the dance of the stars and lord of the songs of night. The Devil was closely linked with the goat and one of the titles of Dionysus was Melanaigis, ‘he of the black goatskin’, though he was more often connected with the bull. The Devil had his home in hell and was the author of death. Dionysus was said to live in the underworld between his appearances on earth, and Heraclitus said that Dionysus was another name of Hades. Dionysus lives in the underworld of the mind and in his myths he takes a terrible vengeance on those who deny him. When Pentheus tried to prevent the women of Thebes from worshipping the god, Dionysus put it into his mind to disguise himself as a woman and spy on them. In their frenzy, led by his own mother, they tore him to pieces. The animal in human nature will out, and to repress it is to court a madness in which a man is torn to shreds by his own savage instincts. There are other stories of women who refused to recognise Dionysus being driven insane by the god and tearing their own children limb from limb, their suppressed impulses finally driving them to destroy what they most dearly loved. The gods whose great gift is escape from the human condition are the gods of madness. the Middle

Ages, but there

are

those which medieval witches

2

were

The Goat God For Nature,

green as she looks, rests everywhere on dread foundations, farther down; and Pan, to whose music the Nymphs cry in him that can drive all men distracted. Carlyle, The French Revolution

as

were we

dance,

has

a

Another Greek was

Pan. He

god with

was

a

the divine

disquieting influence on the human mind he-goat of Arcadia, a mountainous area in

the central Peloponnese where people lived by pasturing sheep and goats, and he had a goat’s horns, ears, legs and hooves. Pausanias says that close by the temple of ‘the Mistress’, the queen of the underworld whom the Arcadians worshipped more than any other deity, was a sanctuary of Pan, with a small image of the god: ‘And this Pan too, equally with the most powerful gods, can bring men’s prayers to accomplishment and repay the wicked as they deserve.’ A fire was kept burning by his image and never allowed to go out and it was said that in the old days the god had delivered oracles through a prophetess. 8 When his cult spread beyond Arcadia, some took him to be a universal god, ‘the All’, because pan means ‘all’ in Greek, but he was generally considered a primitive, rustic god, mainly concerned with the fertility of flocks. Lustful, vigorous and playful, he liked to play hauntingly on his reed-pipe and chase animals and nymphs on the hillsides. His symbol on some ancient coins is a hare, afterwards closely associated with witches. Pan had a distinctly sinister side to him. It was best to keep quiet in the middle of the day, still considered an uncanny time in Greece, because the god liked to sleep then. He was connected with mysterious and eerie sounds, such as make the scalp prickle, and it was said that, unable to seduce the nymph Echo, he drove the shepherds mad and they caught her and tore her to pieces, only her voice surviving. When a herd of animals suddenly took fright for no evident reason and stampeded, it was Pan who had scared them. He could inflict the same unreasoning and irresistible terror on human beings, especially in lonely and desolate places, hence ‘panic’. The goatish satyrs who formed part of the train of Dionysus were similar to Pan. They were spirits of the wild life of woods and hills, lecherous and mischievous, addicted to strong drink, dancing, revelling and sporting with nymphs. In Italy the satyrs were identified with the native wood spirits called fauns and Pan himself with the chief of them, Faunus, who caused nightmares and uncanny noises heard in the woods. how many people as children shared my own a shiver the first line of ‘The hear without Teddy Bears’ inability Picnic’: ‘If you go down in the woods today ...’ St Augustine said that the Celts in Gaul believed in similar spirits, which he called dusii. Homed deities, sometimes with animal ears and hooves, were important in Celtic religion and their horns were the mark of their virility and strength. They had the antlers of a stag or I

wonder, incidentally, to

the horns of a bull or a ram, and

were

connected with the serpent. The

horned god as Master of Animals was associated with animal and human increase and prosperity. Like Pan and Dionysus, and also like the Devil, he rarely had a consort. The Romans usually equated a god of this type with their own Mars or Mercury, but sometimes in forested areas they identified him as Silvanus, another woodland god similar to Faunus and Pan. In the wooded eastern region of Hadrian’s Wall the local god Cocidius, who further west was equated with Mars, was identified with Silvanus and represented as naked, phallic and horned. In the same way that the bound Loki could stand for the fettered Satan, so the horned god could be an image of the Devil, who had his own close connection with the serpent. There are some late representations of a Celtic horned or antlered god, dating from Christian times, which suggest that ‘the horned god is deliberately used as an essentially pagan figure, symbolic perhaps of Satan or Anti-Christ, rather than representing an overt effort to perpetuate a still-potent cult’. 9 The Devil’s best-known form, as part human and part goat, seems to have been drawn from Pan, the satyrs and similar spirits, but Pan was also identified with Christ or Moses. The famous story told by Plutarch, that in the time of the Emperor Tiberius the crew of a ship in the Ionian Sea heard a mysterious voice calling across the water, ‘Great Pan is dead’, prompted Eusebius to explain that Christ in his time on earth rid human life of demons of all kinds. A writer in the 1480s, however, recorded a different tradition, that the cry was heard at the moment of Christ’s death on the cross and announced the passing of the Lord of All. Pierre Daniel Huet, the learned Bishop of Avranches, eccentrically identified Pan with Moses in his Demonstratio Evangelica (1679), partly on the ground that both of them had horns. The notion that Moses had horns came from a mistranslation of Exodus and accounts for Michelangelo’s horned Moses. 10 Coleridge went to look at Michelangelo’s Moses and reflected on the

feelings which

may have suggested to the ancient Greeks ‘the mixture of the human and the brute form in the figure, by which they realized the idea of their mysterious Pan, as representing intelligence blended with a darker power, deeper, mightier, and more universal than the conscious intellect of man...'.In the nineteenth century there grew up a minor literary cult of Pan, fuelled by a dislike of both Christianity and

aching nostalgia for paganism and untamed countryside, and a preference for emotion over reason as a guide to truth, for the ‘darker power’, deeper and mightier than intellect, the wellspring of insight, intuition and inspiration far down in the mind. ‘I am glad to

industrialism,

an

hear that you do not neglect the rites of the true religion,’ Shelley wrote from Italy to his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg in 1821. ‘Your letter awakened my sleeping devotion, and the same evening I ascended alone the high mountain behind my house and raised a small turf-altar to the mountain-walking Pan.’11 Pan's modern literary career has been charted by Patricia Merivale in her book Pan the Goat-God. Different writers have seen him in many different lights. From the Christian side, in a famous poem, Elizabeth Barrett Browning recognised the blinding sweetness of the god of wild nature, but shrank from his destroying aspect:

doing, the great god Pan, by the river? Spreading ruin, and scattering ban, Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat What

was

he

Down in the reeds

With the

dragon-fly on the river.

Those of pagan and romantic inclination used the late classical intellectual interpretation of Pan as ‘All’, which had been taken up again by Renaissance humanists, to convey their sense of a dark element of dread at the foundations of reality. Robert Louis Stevenson, in an essay on ‘Pan’s Pipes’, saw in the god the fear of lightning, gale and flood, of all the destroying horror of nature: ‘The wise people who created for us the idea of Pan thought that of all fears the fear of him was the most terrible, since it embraces all.’ Pan for Stevenson was ‘Romance herself’ pitted against ‘the feint of explanation, nicknamed science’. 12 In stories by Saki and Arthur Machen, Pan takes a cruel and fearful revenge on those who scorn him, as in the Greek myths Dionysus did. Probably the most influential modern literary treatment of the god, in terms of its effect on several generations of parents and children, is the episode of ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. Rat and Mole are searching for a lost baby otter when they hear a distant, unearthly and beautiful piping. It draws them to an island: great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror—indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy—but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near. With difficulty he turned to Then

suddenly the

Mole felt

a

look

at

his friend, and

saw

him

at

his side, cowed, stricken, and

trembling violently. the Master of Animals, smiling at baby sleeping safely at his feet. Mole whispers to afraid?’ Rat Rat, ‘Are you says, ‘Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet—and yet—O, Mole, I am afraid.’ Pagan and romantic inclinations also came to the surface in the revival of magic, and a god who combined in the All the opposites of love and fear, creation and destruction, man and brute, the holy and the horrible, was bound to attract magicians. He could be identified with the Devil and also with the Goat of Mendes, a divine he-goat of ancient Egypt. The most beautiful women were selected to couple with it, and Herodotus identified it with Pan. This notorious animal was taken by the French occultist Eliphas Lévi to be the goat worshipped and coupled with at the witches’ sabbath and also Baphomet, the mysterious and sinister idol supposed to have been adored by the Knights Templar. He linked it with the Tarot card called the Devil. The Order of the Golden Dawn also connected Pan and the Mendes goat with the Devil of the Tarot pack, represented with a goat’s head and the wings of a bat and towering over two small human figures, one male and one female. It is obviously a symbol of evil, matter, sex and generation, the brute in human nature, man enslaved to his passions, but at a deeper level the Golden Dawn saw Pan as ‘Renovating Intelligence’, the ceaseless destruction and renewal of forms in nature. Aleister Crowley, who was trained in the Golden Dawn, was strongly attracted to Pan, whom he viewed in a highly Dionysiac light as the inspirer of lust, cruelty and divine madness. He hailed him in his ‘Hymn to Pan’, which was recited at his funeral service in Brighton in 1947, to the astonishment of visiting journalists. Crowley identified Pan-Dionysus and Baphomet with Satan, with himself, and with another deity of sinister repute, the Egyptian god Seth. 13 Seth, or Setekh or Set, seems originally to have been a god of southern Egypt, with his chief cult-centre at Ombos (modern Naqada) on the Nile near Luxor, where he was represented about 3500 B.C. as a peculiar animal with the body of a greyhound, a narrow curving snout, slanted eyes and a forked tail. He was later often shown with a dog’s head and associated with the crocodile and the hippopotamus. He apparently turned into a malevolent god because his followers were defeated by those of Horus, the falcon god, in the struggle which led Rat and Mole them, and the

see

the great otter

god,

to the uniting of the ‘two lands’ of Egypt, the north and the south. This political event was projected onto the divine plane, with Seth as the defeated enemy of Horus, and when the cult of Osiris developed and Horus was made the son of Osiris, Seth became the enemy of Osiris as well. Although he was worshipped in places on into Roman times, Seth was increasingly linked with evil, violence, discord and disease. He was the red god of the blinding and destroying heat of the desert, in opposition to Osiris, who was the source of fertility in the annual Nile flood. Confusingly, he could also be a god of storm and rain, the north wind and snow, like the Canaanite god Baal, with whom he was identified at one period, and he was god of night and darkness in opposition to Horus as lord of the day. He was the sterile sea into which Osiris as the life-giving Nile flowed out and was lost. In mythology Osiris was a man, a benevolent king of the distant past. He was murdered by Seth, his brother, who shut him in a wooden chest, which was sealed and thrown into the Nile. Isis, the sister and consort of Osiris, rescued the chest and Seth, out hunting by moonlight one night, found it and tore the corpse of Osiris into fourteen pieces which he scattered all over Egypt. Isis diligently reassembled the pieces, restored Osiris to life and conceived a son by him, Horus the child. Osiris became divine, the giver of fertility and the ruler of the underworld and the dead. He was a man who had turned into a god, who had experienced suffering and death and resurrection, who understood human existence and its sorrow and pain, and for thousands of years Egyptians ritually identified themselves with Osiris so that they too would find a life beyond death. The enemy who had murdered him was the power which threatened every man’s hope of immortality. While Horus was still a child, Seth attacked him in various noxious animal and insect forms and subjected him to a homosexual rape. Horus grew up determined to revenge his father’s murder. The two gods fought a long and vicious battle, during which Seth gouged out one of Horus’s eyes, which was later restored to him, and Horus tore out

Seth’s

testicles,

so

making

him barren. Horus

triumphed

and

was

confirmed as successor to his father by a tribunal of gods. Pictures of Horus on horseback fighting Seth in his crocodile form influenced the legend of St George and the dragon, and pictures of the infant Horus on his mother’s lap contributed to the Christian image of the Virgin and Child. The Greeks identified Osiris as Dionysus, the god who manifests himself in man, and Seth as Typhon, the dragon defeated by Zeus. Seth was

also identified with

swallow the earth, his enemies every night. at home and abroad were believed to be inspired by Seth, so that like the Devil later he was the principle of rebellion and anarchy, the antagonist of settled order. He also resembled the Devil in trying to deny man the blessed afterlife which could be achieved through the

Apophis,

the

monster

which tried

Because each Pharaoh was Horus

sun

to

on

Saviour.

The leaders of the Golden Dawn were profoundly influenced by the Egyptology of their day—Sir Wallis Budge’s books were on their recommended reading lists—and they romantically traced their Order’s spiritual ancestry back through the Rosicrucians to the Cabala, to Moses as the reputed founder of the Cabala, and so to ancient Egypt. In the death and resurrection of Osiris they saw a prototype of spiritual regeneration, the dying of the old man and the rising of the new, a human being becoming a god. In his enemy, Seth-Typhon, they saw evil opposing spiritual progress and yet being an essential element of it. It was Seth’s murder of Osiris that led to his resurrection and so demonstrated that ‘Evil helps forward the Good’. In the myth that Seth was forced to carry the risen Osiris on his back (which Aleister Crowley took to indicate that sodomy is conducive to spiritual advancement) they found a warrant for the belief that the brutish, evil side of human nature, properly used, is a source of strength. ‘The evil persona can be rendered as a great and strong, yet trained, animal whereupon the man rideth .’ This was a ‘dangerous secret’, to be concealed from the uninitiated. 14 Magic, in other words, seeks the elevation of the whole man, not man as angel or man as ravening brute, but man as both. The Golden Dawn linked Seth-Typhon with the ruthlessly destructive aspect of nature which is part of the cycle of life, death and life renewed on earth, and identified him with Satan and the great red dragon of the twelfth chapter of Revelation which attacks the star-crowned woman and her child, here equated with Isis and the child Horus. A German scholar named Diestel had suggested in 1860 that Seth and Satan were the same name. The seed of his theory fell on academically stony ground, though it has been pointed out that Leviathan .

.

and Behemoth, the two great monsters of the book ofJob which afterwards regarded as incarnations of the Devil, seem to be based on the crocodile and the hippopotamus, which were associated with the

were

15

evil Seth. Crowley, in any case, was delighted to accept the Golden Dawn’s identification and to construct the equation Satan Seth Saturn or Cronus = Pan, because he thrilled to all terrible, destroying =

=

and evil

He was a partisan of the Enemy, because of his own and temperament upbringing, his devouring appetites for sex, dirt, sins in general, his passionate hatred of Christianity and and scarlet drugs his conviction that his mission was to bring to an end what he called the Age of Osiris, to destroy Christianity and raise up Crowleyanity on its

gods.

corpse.

Crowley thought that the Enemy is associated with the goat because in the north the darkness of winter reaches its peak when the sun enters the goat-sign of Capricorn. The sun is then at its furthest point to the

Satan, was originally the god of the south, of the the murderous heat of desert. This had made the ancients consider him evil, but what he really displayed were:

south, and Seth,

the

or

qualities ofcourage, frankness, energy, pride, power, and triumph;

they are the words which express the creative and paternal will. Thus ‘the Devil’ is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes He is the Open Eye of the Exalted Sun, him Aegipan, the All before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes .

.

.

image of its God, the Light, 16 enlightening the mind. an

and

gives

it power

to utter

oracles,

Aegipan was a name of Pan, the goat-footed, and the Secret Eye is the phallic one. Crowley thought that this godhead should always be invoked facing north, the traditional direction of evil. * A god who in reality had far more to do with the Devil than Seth or Pan was Ahriman, the evil principle in Zoroastrianism, the personification of darkness, death and destruction. He was the Lie, the Evil Mind, enemy of Ohrmazd, the god of goodness and light. ‘Ahriman, slow in knowledge,’ says the Bundahisn, ‘whose will is to smite, was deep down in the darkness: [he was] and is, yet will not be. The will to smite is his all, and darkness is his place: some call it the Endless Darkness.’ 17 Deep in his darkness long ago Ahriman made demons of lust, greed, sloth, disease, pain, lies and deception, and with them he broke into the material world, where they destroy and corrupt and seduce men into their service, so as to entice human souls into their kingdom of hell in the north. But the material world and finite time had been made by Ohrmazd as a trap, to lure Ahriman from the eternal into the actual. Ahriman is caught in the trap, snared in the material and finite world, and in the end, when evil has the

Destroying Spirit, the twin-brother and

★ See

also the Appendix.

eaten up everything that it can, it will be left with nothing to feed on but itself. Then demon will turn on demon until Ahriman himself is destroyed, and after this all will be made new and the souls of men will inhabit immortal bodies to live with Ohrmazd for ever in happiness and peace. The Zoroastrian concept of a great evil god was probably a leading influence on the development of the Devil in Judaism, but comparatively little has been made of Ahriman in modern occultism, though Rudolf Steiner used his name for the matter and materialism in which the human spirit is enmeshed. This represents a Manichaean rather than a Zoroastrian view of matter. The essential Zoroastrian dualism is not between spirit and matter but between two great opposed spirits, the

Creator and the

Destroyer.

But

Zoroastrian

some

philosophers

were

uneasy about dualism. They said that there was a time before Ohrmazd and Ahriman came into being, when all that existed was the god Zurvan. Zurvan wanted a son and offered sacrifice to obtain one, but and suddenly he doubted whether a son would be born to him. The moment this misgiving arose in his mind, Ohrmazd and Ahriman were conceived within him, Ohrmazd because of his sacrifice and Ahriman because of his doubt. There was, in effect, a flaw in the original godhead and the birth of Ahriman from Zurvan’s doubt was the manifestation of a fundamental imperfection in the divine. Zurvan is a god that failed. 18

nothing happened

The

3

Grapes of Wrath The supreme evil, God.

Swinburne, Atalanta

in

Calydon

brought up go church or chapel and listen to passages of the Old Testament will need to be convinced that the Holy One of

No

one

Israel

was a

to

to

wrathful and violent

deity:

Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against his people, and he stretched out his hand against them and smote them, and the mountains quaked; and their corpses were as refuse in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger is not turned away and his hand is stretched out still.

appalling wrath reflects the burning rage aroused in his prophets misguided and impertinent persons who would not pay by to them. It also reflects Israel’s fierceness against her national attention God’s

those

fundamentally, it answers a demand for a deity of force. When Moses and the Israelites were in the overwhelming wilderness and God came down upon Mount Sinai, there was thunder and lightning and a thick cloud upon the mountain and the tremendous braying of a trumpet, that same blast which it was later believed would sound again at the end of the world on the Day of Wrath. ‘And Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire; and the smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain quaked greatly.’ The people were warned to stand well back from this colossal theophany, for if they went close to it, it would kill them. 19 The presence of Israel’s God was murderously dangerous, like some huge charge of electricity. When a man named Uzzah touched the ark, the portable wooden shrine in which God travelled, to steady it when it was in danger of falling, he was struck dead on the spot. When the Philistines captured the ark in battle, they took it to Ashdod and put it in the temple of their god, Dagon, but the force in the ark smashed Dagon’s statue. Its presence frightened the people of Ashdod and infected them with tumours and a plague of mice. They sent it away, but everywhere it went it had the same effect, until it arrived at Beth-shemesh, where seventy men who looked into it fell dead. The survivors, 20 very sensibly, returned it to the Israelites. The Old Testament God is not, of course, only a god of rage and violence. He is also merciful and benevolent, creator as well as destroyer, and he manifests himself as a still small voice as well as in fire and storm and earthquake. He is the Father of his people and this, in the Old Testament view, involves discipline as well as love. The strong right arm of the Almighty punishes his children but also supports and protects them, and this support itself involves him in violent action against their enemies. Yahweh seems to have been originally a god of war and the tribes which coalesced into the people of Israel took him as their divine patron for the invasion of Canaan. The Old Testament demonstrates the savagery with which they fought and which they represented as obedience to Yahweh’s orders. Once Canaan was conquered, however, many of them ignored Yahweh and worshipped their own tribal gods and many paid honours to the local Canaanite fertility deities, whose help was needed for settled agriculture. Enthusiasts for Yahweh regarded this as ungrateful treachery, hence his character in the Old Testament as a ‘jealous’ god. He forbids the worship of other gods and while he is merciful to those who love him, he visits the iniquity of the enemies. But

more

fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate him. 21 His jealousy is the other side of the coin of his zealousness for his people. Over and over again in the Old Testament the Israelites stray after other gods and Yahweh punishes them by exposing them to aggression and plunder, until they cry for his help and return to his service, when loyally and patiently once more he saves them. There is the same tension of opposites in him as in the later figure of Christ as both Saviour and Judge. Following this precedent, Christians have always been able to explain disagreeable events as God’s punishment of human wrongdoing. Chroniclers in the fourteenth century, for instance, were almost unanimous in accounting for the Black Death in this way. Mr Gladstone told his constituents in Midlothian in 1885 that he had committed a crime in ordering the invasion of Egypt and that the current vexations of the British situation there should be put down to divine retribution. William Bradford, who was one of the Pilgrim Fathers, includes in his reminiscences of the voyage of the Mayflower ‘a special example of God’s providence’. One of the sailors was a rude young man who swore at the seasick passengers and told them he hoped to throw half of them overboard before the journey was done. ‘But it pleased God, before they came half seas over, to smite the young man with a grievous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner, and so was himself the first to be thrown overboard.’ Long before, the Church historian Eusebius had turned the Jewish tradition of the punishing justice of God against the Jews themselves in attributing the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70 to divine vengeance on them for their treatment of Christ. 22 Militancy and jealousy remained dominant characteristics of the Christian God the Father. The Jewish concept of the holy war, fought for the purposes of, with the approval of, and indeed actually by God was inherited by both Christians and Muslims, who fought holy wars against each other and against assorted infidels and heretics in the belief that God would not tolerate deviationism. The Christian God is Lord of Hosts and all the Christian centuries have seen the ironic spectacle of prayers for victory ascending to the same God from the battle lines of both sides. The figure of the stout Puritan with Bible in one hand and sword in the other, ready to apply the cutting edge of text or blade to his and the Lord’s enemies as occasion required, became an admired stereotype. In 1849 Garibaldi instructed his chaplain to issue an order making the following prayer compulsory:

Oh God! Grant me the grace that I may put all the steel of my bayonet inside an Austrian, and not deign to pull the trigger but keep 23 my shot to kill a second Austrian at not more than ten paces. The Almighty had never been intended to be the god of everyone, but only the god of his chosen people, and who was chosen was a matter of human judgment. To each group of his worshippers, his triumphs over their enemies and his punishment of treachery in their own ranks were acts of righteousness, not of evil. The escape of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, for example, followed a succession of catastrophes which eventually convinced Pharaoh that he must let the people go. In Exodus these disasters are inflicted on the Egyptians by God, who deliberately stiffens Pharaoh’s resistance so that he can multiply the number of plagues and horrors as a way of making himself known. Before this he is so unknown that when he reveals himself to Moses, Moses has no idea who he is. God tells Moses that he has hardened Pharaoh’s heart, ‘that I may show these signs of mine’ and so that Moses can tell his son and grandson ‘how I have made sport of the Egyptians and what I have done among them; that you may know that I am the Lord’. Making sport of the Egyptians culminates in the murder of all their first-born children, so that ‘there was not a house where one 24 was not dead’. The Egyptians have seldom been favourably regarded in the Judaeo-Christian tradition and generations of Jewish and Christian congregations have listened to the story in Exodus without apparent discomfort. The idea of the divine inflicting sorrow and pain on men so that the tale of it will go down in song and story is also in Homer. In the Iliad Helen of Troy says that she has been plagued by Zeus ‘to figure in the songs of people yet unborn’, and a character in the Odyssey says that the gods caused the Trojan War, ‘weaving catastrophe into the pattern of events to make a song for future generations’. Great events which are dark and terrible are nevertheless great.25 There are various reactions to Yahweh’s ferocity in the Old Testament itself. If God is a storm-centre of gigantic force, it is natural that his energy should explode in lightning, thunder, earthquake, war and destruction. If God is seen in a more human light as the Father, then his violent outbursts of rage can he explained in terms of his duty to discipline and protect his children. Or if they cannot quite all be so explained, then that is because God is beyond human understanding and attempts to account for his behaviour are ultimately vain: ‘For my

are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord.’ 26 None of these complementary attitudes attempts to shift the responsibility for harm and suffering away from God himself and it is this feeling that the root of evil must finally be found in God which accounts for the relative unimportance of the Devil in Judaism as compared with Christianity. If in the last resort God is the source of

thoughts

evil, then there is

no

need of an Evil One.

only one god among many gods and his sphere of influence was limited. The Jews exiled to Babylon wondered how they could worship him outside his own country: ‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’ Jonah thought he could escape from the Lord by leaving the country. He proved to be mistaken, however, and once it was accepted that although there were other beings who could be called gods and were worshipped by other nations, there was only one true God, the creator and ruler of all things, then it logically followed that he must be responsible for the presence of evil in the world which he had made. ‘Does evil befall a city, unless the Lord has done it?’ and ‘Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and evil come?’ God says in Isaiah, ‘I am the Lord and there is no other. I Woe form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe to him who strives with his Maker, an earthen vessel with the potter !’ 27 ‘Shall we receive good at the hands of God,’ says Job in the same spirit, ‘and shall we not receive evil?’ The book of Job is about the difficulty of reconciling the reality of life with the justice of God. In the end the author is driven back to the concept of God as overwhelming might, which man can no more question than the pot can quarrel with the potter. The final crushing argument which he puts into God’s mouth, in language of great power and beauty, is to say to man, ‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?’ Have you commanded the morning since your days began, have you entered into the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep, can you send snow and ice, rain and thunder upon the earth to fructify and to destroy, can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion, have you an arm like God and can you thunder with a voice like his? And Job in reply can only abase himself. 28 All the same, the cruelty of some of God’s actions in the Old Testament caused disquiet and some Jewish writers found it difficult flatly to attribute evil to God. An avenue of escape from this difficulty was to At first Yahweh

was

...

assign

the direct

subordinate

responsibility for some cases of harm and suffering to spirits who carried out God’s orders. These spirits were

entirely under God’s thumb and did only what they were told, but they at least put God at one remove from human suffering and they made it possible eventually to conceive of an evil angel with a will of his own. In Exodus itself God’s responsibility for the slaughter of the Egyptian first-born is slightly hedged. Moses tells the Israelites that when God comes on his murderous mission he will pass over the houses of his own people and will not allow ‘the destroyer’ to enter them. Psalm 78, referring to the plagues of Egypt, describes God’s fierce anger, wrath, indignation and distress as ‘a company of destroying angels’. God’s rage is here being separated out from God himself and turned into a subordinate spirit. Like the Devil later, and like the pagan gods and spirits, the agents of the Almighty could cause damage by swaying people’s minds. The men of Shechem behaved treacherously to Abimelech because God had sent an evil spirit to them. It was an evil spirit from God which rushed upon Saul and drove him mad. When God wanted to lure the wicked King Ahab to his death in battle, he said to the host of heaven in attendance on him, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead?’ The host of heaven debated the matter inconclusively in the manner of committees, until one spirit volunteered to delude Ahab’s professional diviners into giving him the wrong advice. The fact that the spirit volunteered and also devised his own plan of action gives him a significant place in the development that led eventually to the Devil. 29 The

4

We

Origins

of Satan

live, all of us, lives which

are

strangely inconsequential.

It is

a

thing do something and have at least the logical satisfaction of a result, of a sequence. We are all of us causes looking for an effect. If the effect be a bad one, so much the better, for then our feelings of guilt will affirm what our sophisticated minds will try to deny: that we did it; that it happened and we did it. As Lucifer came rare

to

to

understand,

was nothing he could do if he wanted to claim authorship of an action, except what he did do.

there

the entire and sole And he fell.

David Slavitt, Rochelle,

or

Virtue Rewarded

popular belief there were numerous spirits which worked evil because they were carrying out God’s orders but because they were malevolent by nature. They were associated with disease, ruins, deserts

In Jewish not

and outdoor latrines, and with hyenas, and other dubious creatures. The accepted ostriches, owls, kites, goats all the Middle belief in Jewry through Ages was that God made these evil spirits, the shedim, late on the sixth day of creation. He only just had time to fashion their souls and the seventh day of rest began before he could provide them with bodies. There were other demons which did have bodies, the offspring of the shadowy shedim which copulated with Adam and Eve while they were separated after the birth of Abel. Or alternatively, they were spawned by Lilith and Naamah, two demonesses who lay with Adam before the creation of Eve. There were also the pagan gods, who had been worshipped by many Jews and by their neighbours, and who were turned into evil powers by the religion of Yahweh. They were also described as shedim and the Old Testament is full of denunciations of these abominable deities, who became the principal lieutenants of Satan in Christian demonology. Medieval Jews continued to believe that the heathen gods were evil powers, but little emphasis was placed on them. There is no sign in the earlier books of the Old Testament of the Devil of later speculation, the great potentate of evil and darkness. The name Satan was originally the Hebrew word for ‘opponent’ and was used without any diabolical connotation. The Philistines rejected David as an ally because they thought he might change sides in battle and become their satan, or adversary. Solomon was pleased to announce, prematurely as it turned out, that God had given him ‘neither adversary (satan) nor misfortune’. 30 The use of the word in this way suggests that the later figure of Satan does not derive from an early stage of Jewish religious history, before the worship of Yahweh had become established. The Devil is a by-product of the goodness of God and emerged from within the religion of Yahweh, primarily as a result of reluctance to attribute evil to God. The direct ancestor of the Devil is a being called ‘the satan’, who appears in the well known story at the beginning of the book of Job. He is one of the bene ha-elohim, or ‘sons of God’, the angels of God’s court. His ominous remark that he comes ‘from going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down in it’ suggests that he has some special and sinister interest in the world of men. He persuades God to test the loyalty of Job, a prosperous and pious desert sheik. Strip him of all his possessions, says the satan, and see how pious he is then, ‘he will curse thee to thy face’. God allows the satan to kill Job’s children and his servants and his cattle, but Job says no word of reand

waste

places, graveyards

proach. God points out to the satan that Job ‘still holds fast his integrity, although you moved me against him, to destroy him without cause’. The satan cynically replies that a man will give all that he has for his life, but ‘touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy

face’. So God allows the satan to inflict on Job a painful and repellent skin disease, but Job still remains faithful and in the end is richly rewarded.

God’s behaviour in this tale shocked one Jewish Talmudic scholar deeply that he said, ‘If it were not in the Bible, one would not be allowed to say it’, 31 but the story had a profound effect on Christian beliefs about the Devil’s nature and powers. The satan is a malicious figure, and hostile, as his title ‘the enemy’ implies, and he may be in origin an aspect of God himself, the side of the divine nature which is suspicious and cruel. In the story as it stands, however, the satan is a separate and subordinate being and he seems to be performing a disagreeable but necessary duty. His function is to bring to the surface the wickedness inherent in men and accuse them to God. The satan in Job is not an attractive figure from man’s point of view and when he appears in a passage in Zechariah, written in the late sixth century B.C., he is not entirely pleasing to God either. The high priest Joshua stands before the angel of God, with the satan at his right hand to accuse him. The satan is evidently the official who prosecutes men before God’s court and God rebukes him for accusing a righteous man. 32 This is in marked contrast with the story in Job. In both stories, however, the satan, though not opposed to God, has a will of his own which differs from God’s. God takes pleasure in righteous men but the satan is determined to attack and expose them, and his zeal leads him to make accusations which are false. When the Old Testament was turned into Greek, ‘the satan’ was translated as diabolos, ‘accuser’, with the connotation of a lying accuser, a slanderer, and this is the word from which our ‘devil’ comes. The root from which the Devil grew is this concept of an implacable so

angel who accuses men to God. He searches out men’s inmost evil impulses and failings, and he is so hostile and so totally unable to believe in any human goodness that he makes false accusations when no true ones are to hand. An increasing reluctance to think that God could be the source of evil led to the transference of responsibility for it to the satan, sometimes but not always called Satan as a proper name. There is one dramatic example of the process in the Old Testament itself,

in the story of how

God,

angry with

Israel, put

into David’s

that he could then punish this crime killed 70,000 people. According to the by sending a pestilence which account of this in 2 Samuel, the slaughter was carried out by the angel of destruction and when God ‘repented of the evil’ he ordered the angel to stop. So immoral did God’s action seem later that when the story is told again in 1 Chronicles, it is Satan, not God, who puts the idea of numbering Israel into David’s mind. This is the only use of Satan as a proper name in the Old Testament. 33 Other Jewish authors also found the actions of God in some biblical stories so unedifying that they put them down to an evil angel instead. In the book of Jubilees, of the second century B.C., the satan of Job and Zechariah has become the chief of evil spirits. His personal name is Mastema, which means ‘hatred’ and is etymologically related to Satan. It is Mastema who tries to murder Moses on his way back to Egypt, an action mysteriously attributed to God in the Old Testament. It is Mastema, instead of God, who hardens Pharaoh’s heart and Mastema who slaughters the first-born of the Egyptians. In the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, of the same period as Jubilees, the evil power is called Beliar or the Prince of Deceit or Satan. He is now the enemy of God as well as the opponent of man. He is entirely evil, without any redeeming feature, utterly ‘worthless’ as the name Beliar implies. A clear-cut opposition between the forces of good and evil also appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls, where the evil power is the Angel of Darkness, whose personal name is usually Belial. This development in the last centuries B.C., like the beginnings of the Antichrist tradition, was influenced by the national misfortunes of the Jews. If God had not abandoned his chosen nation altogether, which mind the idea of taking

a

census so

not an agreeable thought, then the oppression of Israel by foreign powers must be the work of a great force of evil, as hostile to God as to God’s people. The emergence of the Devil was probably also influenced by Persian Zoroastrianism, for Palestine was part of the Persian Empire between the sixth and fourth centuries B.C. Satan resembles Ahriman in many ways. Like him he is the Evil One and the chief of evil spirits, like him he is the liar and the destroyer and the author of death, like him he is the enemy of God and seduces men from their allegiance to God, to clasp them to himself in agony in hell. But there are also important differences. Judaism and Christianity both preserved God’s omnipotence, in theology at least, if not always in popular belief. The Devil of Christian theology is not an independent god in his own right but a lesser power who can act only because God lets him. Nor is was

Satan in orthodox Christian theory the brother of God or Christ (though he is in certain unorthodox systems). And Ahriman was not the ruler of matter and the flesh, which in Zoroastrian theory were good and part of Ohrmazd’s realm, whereas in Christianity there has been a strong tendency to connect them with Satan—‘the world, the flesh and the Devil’. The satan who had earlier been a valuable and influential servant of

God had now become God’s enemy, the prince of darkness and the heart and centre of evil. Clearly he had fallen from grace and there were various explanations of how this had happened. One was that he had been jealous of Adam, either because in his pride he resented that a creature made of mud should be higher than himself or because he envied Adam the possession of Eve. Acting through the serpent, he led Adam and Eve astray in Eden and so brought death upon humanity. Many of the Jewish rabbis identified Satan with Sammael, the angel

of death. This great angel, highest of the guardians of the divine was jealous of Adam. He and many angels who followed him came down to earth and Sammael entered into the serpent, which at that time could talk, had hands and feet, and resembled a camel. Sammael successfully deceived Eve and so mankind forfeited immortality. God punished Sammael, or Satan, and his angels by expelling them from heaven. Some said that Sammael interfered in Eden because he lusted for Eve. He seduced her and fathered on her Cain, the first murderer. Another story of the fall of heavenly beings from grace is the tale of the Watchers, the germ of which appears in Genesis. The ‘sons of God’, of whom the satan is one in Job, desired the beautiful daughters of men and fathered children on them, and the result was the corruption of humanity. The fullest version of this story in its later form is given in 1 Enoch. Two hundred angels of the order of Watchers, led by Azazel, came down to earth on Mount Hermon and took themselves wives, though aware that they were committing ‘a great sin’. They taught human beings all sorts of arts and crafts, magic and enchantments, botany, astronomy and astrology, metal-working, the manufacture of armaments and the perfidious art of cosmetics. One of them, Gadreel, led Eve astray and taught men to use weapons, and another, Penemue, taught them how to write with ink and paper, ‘and thereby

throne,

eternity to eternity and until this day’. The sin of the Watchers lay in ‘becoming subject to Satan and leading astray those who dwell on the earth’. The implication, as in the story many sinned from

of Adam and Eve, is that ignorance is next to godliness, that knowledge corrupts. Because of the Watchers, in the European magical tradition the principal business of the fallen angels is to teach. To those who know how to master and control them they provide knowledge of arts and sciences and the

secrets

of the universe. Some modern

magicians

have

converted them into a board of educational supervisors. ‘Each country has its own group of “Watchers” and the normal magical evolution of any member of that country is within the sphere of that group.’ According to 1 Enoch, however, the intrusion of the angels into the human world brought evil and violence. Their children by the daughters of men were the giants, who devoured all living things indiscriminately until the whole earth was filled with wickedness and blood. God intervened and the angels were imprisoned to await the day of judgment. The giants were destroyed but evil spirits issued from their 34 corpses and have caused violence and trouble on earth ever since. The Watchers were presumably so named because they were stars, the eyes of the night sky, and the fall of the stars from heaven became an important part of the Devil’s mythical biography. Enoch sees the Watchers as stars, descending to earth. They are punished by seven archangels, who hurl them into a dark and horrible abyss. 35 One passage sympathetically suggests that the Watchers’ motive was not so much lust as a longing for family life, companionship and children, which men enjoy. But to later ages the point of the story was that evil and violence and forbidden arts came to earth through a crime against nature, the physical union of the angelic and divine with the mortal, which produced monsters—the giants. The legend provided a basis for the later Christian belief that demons could have sex with human beings, and in the Middle Ages monstrous births were popularly put down to such unions. A different account of the fall from grace was adopted by some early Christian writers, including St Augustine. Their scriptural authority was the famous diatribe in Isaiah, predicting the downfall of the King of Babylon: How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend unto heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

Yet thou shalt be brought down

to

hell,

to

the sides of the pit. 36

This was the foundation of what became the accepted Christian story of the Devil’s origins. He was a great archangel who in his insane pride attempted to make himself the equal of God and was expelled from heaven in punishment. Lucifer, ‘light-bearer’, was his name in Satan his name after his fall. A passage in Ezekiel, directed the against King of Tyre, was also taken to refer to Lucifer:

heaven,

Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thy covering thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground. 37 was

.

.

.

.

.

.

These passages in Isaiah and Ezekiel, and Psalm 82 as well, may have the same origin, a myth of the beautiful morning star who walked in Eden, blazing in jewels and light, and in the pride of his splendour attempted to rival God (though some authorities take the Ezekiel passage to refer to Adam). ‘Lucifer, son of the morning’ is in Hebrew Helel ben-Shahar, ‘day-star, son of the dawn’. Shahar is a figure of Canaanite mythology, son of the high god El. The morning star was identified as male in the ancient world and was called lucifer in Latin. The myth may have been based on the observation that the morning star, shining brightly, rises in the sky but before it can reach the heights it fades from view in the rays of the sun, suggesting that it attempts unsuccessfully to defy and rival the sun. There was a Canaanite myth that when the god Baal died, the god of the morning star, Athtar, was promoted to succeed him. But he made a poor substitute, for ‘his head does not reach to the canopy of the throne nor his feet to the footstool', and Baal eventually revived. But the original myth, whatever it was, was later forgotten and in early Christian imagery Christ is the 38 morning star, the bringer of light. By the first century A.D. Lucifer, Satan, the serpent of Eden and the Watchers had all been connected together, with the Watchers becoming Lucifer’s subordinate angels. The Slavonic Enoch says that the Watchers

conspired against God under the leadership of Satanail, or Satomail, who ‘conceived an impossible thought’, to set his throne above the clouds and rival God in power. God hurled the rebellious angels down from the heights of heaven into the earth’s atmosphere. Satanail seduced Eve in Eden and later three of the Watchers fathered the giants on human women. The generally accepted Christian account of the Devil and his angels followed along the same track and the main strands of the Christian concept are brought together in the twelfth chapter of Revelation, in the vision of the great red dragon in the sky whose lashing tail swept a third of the stars down onto the earth. There was war in heaven, Michael and his angels battling against the dragon and his angels. ‘And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.’ A voice in heaven rejoices over the downfall of ‘the accuser of our brethren’ and cries woe to the earth and the sea, ‘for the devil has come down to you in great wrath because he knows that his time is short’. Here are linked together the monstrous dragon Leviathan, the satan who accused men to God, the rebellion and banishment of Lucifer, the fallen angels or stars who are his followers, and the belief that Satan’s vengeful fury has been let loose on earth. Although the Devil emerged in Judaism, he had a far more important place in Christianity. Rabbinic teaching saw him mainly in the mould of the satan in Job. He was the seducer, accuser and destroyer, who lured men into sin, prosecuted them before God, and as the angel of death put an end to them. Or sometimes he was identified with both the angel of death and the yetser ha-ra, the inclination towards evil implanted by God in man, and it has been pointed out that it is only a step from this to a modern concept of Satan as ‘an inward spiritual and psychological disharmony in the very nature of man, making him his own adversary, his own seducer, the final moral agent of his own death’. In the Middle Ages the Satan ofJudaism was not the vivid and overwhelming Devil of Christianity: He

real

was

little

enough,

more

than

but whom

a

a shade whose impress on life was could hardly hope to identify from the about his person and activity. Satan

word,

one

vague colourless comments in medieval Jewish thought was little moral was the prevalence of sin. 39

.

more

than

an

.

allegory,

.

whose

Jews, like Christians, believed that the world

was inhabited by multitudes of demons. But the Jewish myriads spirits, including demons, though malicious and harmful, were more the creatures of God than his enemies. Most of them had been created as demons by God himself. Where Christians tended to see the world as the battlefield of great opposing forces of good and evil, Jews tended to see both good and evil as part of the divine ordering of the world. It seems quite likely that Freud’s analysis of the Devil was influenced by this Jewish attitude:

of

God is

exalted father, or yet again, a reproduction of the father as seen and met with in childhood.... It requires no great analytic insight to divine that God and the Devil were originally one and the same, a single figure which was later The split into two bearing opposed characteristics. father is thus the individual prototype of both God and the Devil. 40 a

father-substitute,

or,

more

correctly,

an

.

.

.

Fundamental to the broad contrast between Jewish and Christian attitudes to the Devil is the fact that Jews worshipped God the Father, the omnipotent master of all things, while Christians regarded as divine not only the Almighty but also his Son, who had become man, who had known suffering, who had been tempted by the Devil and crucified by the forces of evil. The emphasis on the suffering Jesus in later medieval Christian art and literature carried with it a corresponding emphasis on the fell power of evil in the world. But much earlier in the history of the Church the same essential element of the Christian faith had carried with it the same corollary. Christ had come to save men from the grip of sin, death and the Devil, into which Adam’s crime in Eden had plunged all mankind. If Satan’s power had not been so great that all men were helplessly enslaved to him, God need not have sent his Son to their rescue. Christianity therefore entailed a powerful Devil and to Christians Satan was the supreme Enemy of God and man, the fount and essence of all evil, the origin of all wrong. And since, as always, evil and wrong were everywhere apparent, the Enemy’s resources must be massive, his malice infinite, his subtlety unrivalled. Passages from Job about the titanic strength of Leviathan were constantly quoted as descriptions of the Devil. ‘Upon earth there is not his like, a creature without fear. He beholds everything that is high; he is king over all the sons of pride.’ 41 The myth of the fall of Lucifer suited the Christian tendency to exalt

the Devil’s status and was psychologically a more satisfactory explanation of the origin of evil than the story of the Watchers. Pride is a nobler fault than lust and the great archangel’s blazing ambition gave him a worthier motive than the desire for human women of the ‘sons of God’. It also suited the deep-rooted classical belief that pride not only goes before a fall but causes it: the Devil’s crime was hubris. And once Christianity had become the established religion of Europe, it suited the Devil’s role as the arch-rebel, bent on overturning all Christian and civilised values and bringing down in ruins the whole edifice of

society.

Chapter Eight

The Devil

men and a woman were tried in Zürich and found guilty of beating a girl of seventeen to death in an attempt to drive the Devil out of her. The girl, Bernadette Hasler, was suspected by members of a sect to which her family belonged of being in league with Satan. Under pressure from them she wrote a long account of how he came to visit her, all black and furry, and made love to her and promised that one day she would rule the world with him. On 14 May 1966 the six accused spent four hours trying to exorcise her. They beat her with walking sticks, a riding crop and a rubber truncheon, and made her eat her own excrement. She died of her injuries. 1 For generations of Europeans and Americans the Devil was a terrifying reality and fear of him was still very much alive in the nineteenth century. In 1824 Barbara Wilberforce wrote to her son Samuel, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, but at this time an undergraduate at Oxford:

In 1969 five

I am still far more anxious about your better part and when I pray for you, think of all the horrid temptations that surround a young man like you—pleasant to your young companions, and just at the age to be most in danger from simple compliance and the snares of the Evil One and his miserable agents which line too often at night all the paths of every Town and City.... Trust not in your own strength, remember our subtle, our crafty Enemy ever on the watch to allure and to destroy.... ...

Samuel Devil’s

Palmer, the painter, who

reality

died in 1881, had no doubt of the and believed that the agonising bouts of depression

DOI: 10.4324/9781003363743-8

The Devil from which he suffered were personal attacks on him by the Enemy. He had a great admiration for William Blake, but was shocked by the views expressed in Blake’s The Everlasting Gospel: he could find for them was that Blake, when the had been the victim of a deliberate plot by the writing poem, Devil who had cunningly misled him to state his opinions in such a

The

only explanation

way

as

to

lead the ignorant into error.

thought that the offending popular edition of Blake’s works. 2

Palmer

poem should be left

out

of any

The Devil is intellectually out of fashion now but belief in him is far from extinct, because he was for so long a vital element of Christianity, because he is one answer to the problem of evil and undeserved suffering in a world ruled by a God who is good, and because some

people’s experience convinces them of the existence of a great power of evil at work in the world. Dennis Wheatley, for instance, commenting on the wrongs and follies of our age, says that it is ‘the opening of the minds of thousands of people to the influence of the Powers of Darkness that has formed a cancer in society’. 3 Giovanni Papini, author of a book on The Devil published in 1953, listed among works inspired by Satan the Leviathan of Hobbes, Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Byron’s Manfred and Kafka’s The Trial. To many conservative Roman Catholics and Protestants the Devil remains the arch enemy of God and man. In 1972 the Pope referred to ‘the invisible presence’ of ‘an obscure enemy, the demon’ and went on to say that ‘the evil is not only a

spiritual deficiency but

efficiency, a live being, spiritual, perverted reality, mysterious and fearful’. so Today many people are sure, like Samuel Palmer, that they are under attack from evil spirits that the Churches have had to overhaul and perverter,

a

an

terrible

and extend the machinery of exorcism, which had largely fallen into disuse. A special committee of the Church of England reported in 1972 that exorcism was sometimes needed and should be provided. Cases of psychiatric patients convinced of the existence of a god of evil are quite common. One of Arthur Guirdham’s patients told him: ‘I believe in a God of creation and a God of destruction. These two forces are at their maximum capacity in Spring and Autumn.’ He later called them the energies of good and evil. As a boy he had been told at home that the Devil would get him if he did wrong. Another patient believed that this world is not ruled by God but by the Prince of Darkness, and that he himself had been seduced by the Devil, who

The Devil had corrupted him with material prosperity. Dualist attitudes of this kind have an old tradition behind them. 4 On the other side of the fence, the Devil is believed in and worshipped by a few small, obscure groups in Europe and North America. The best-known of them is the Church of Satan, with its headquarters in San Francisco. Founded in 1966, it attracted excited attention by celebrating Satanist weddings, baptisms and funerals in public, and was estimated in 1972 to have more than 9,000 members in the USA and abroad.5

1

Satan and the Mind Satan possesses great courage, incredible

wisdom, the

cunning, superhuman

prudence, an incomparable skill in veiling the most pernicious artifices under a specious disguise, and a malicious and infinite hatred towards the human

race,

most

acute

implacable

penetration,

consummate

and incurable.

Johann Weyer,

De

Praestigiis Daemonum

St Paul, believed that Jesus had come from the power of the Devil, they did not believe that Satan had been totally defeated. If he had, there would have been no reason for the continued existence of the Church. The Devil’s absolute grip on humanity had been broken, but he remained a formidable opponent. He hated God and all human beings, made in God’s image, and he longed to gather every human soul into his kingdom of hell, to despoil the divine likeness, to revenge himself for his fall, to deny men to God and God to men. He and his myriads of demons prowled everywhere, tempting and corrupting, exploiting every weakness and desire. However fair and pleasant some corner of life might be, just beneath the surface was an ants’ nest of crawling, purposeful, scaly activity, tunnelling and sapping. Demons entered

Although Christians, following

into the world

to rescue men

minds and drove them mad. They swarmed like flies round the soul. As the story of the Watchers secret workings of the universe, which turn their own destructive could to purposes. Crop failures, bad they weather, diseases of men and animals, sterility, infestations of insects might be their doing. Storms were caused by evil spirits in the air and

people’s

each man’s deathbed to seize showed, they understood the

the church bells were rung to drive them away. Any event could be put down to them if no preferable explanation was available.

an unduly black picture of a pall for centuries. Satan could arouse of terror hanging over Europe and people relied on the protection laughter and contempt as well as fear, of the Church against the machinations of evil in this life and on the hope that faith, repentance and the last rites would see them safely through in the end. Unlike so many of us, they at least had a heaven in view. But it was generally believed that supernatural evil was everywhere present and everywhere alert to strike. The fear was there, shown in the constant use of holy water and the sign of the cross against the possibility of harm and in the anxiety created, then as now, among Roman Catholics if a man was in danger of dying before he could receive the last rites of the Church. The power of the demonic and the menace of hell were kept vividly before peoples’ eyes. Just as the misfortunes of Israel had been blamed on great hostile forces of spiritual evil, so the early Christians, struggling in a world which persecuted or mocked or took no notice of them, which would not accept the truth they felt confident of possessing, believed that there was a gigantic supernatural conspiracy against them. ‘For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.’ This belief, which contributed to their confidence in hell, carried with it a conviction of the stupendous power of the Devil, whose fell hand the Christians saw behind the crucifixion of their leader and the hostility they encountered. They were told that ‘the whole world is in the power of the evil one’. He had tempted Jesus by showing him ‘all the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them’, which he had in his gift. He had entered into Judas and inspired him to betray Christ. He was, ‘the ruler of this world’, ‘the god of this world’ and ‘the prince of the power of the air’. 6

It is easy

to

exaggerate and

paint

The gods of the pagans were not imaginary beings in Christian eyes but real and hostile evil powers. St Paul asked the Corinthians to shun their worship because ‘what the pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God’. The Roman imperial cult was an engine of the Devil, its centres were cities where Satan had his throne, and Jews who would not let Christians remain under cover as members of their congregations but denounced them to the Roman authorities were synagogues of Satan. It was Satan, determined to perpetuate the worship of his lieutenants, who inspired pagans to persecute Christians and turn deaf ears to Christian teaching. This attitude was not confined to the very

earliest Christian centuries. Later on, when Christian missionaries penetrated at great personal risk into the pagan darkness of northern Europe, they told the benighted natives that their gods were really demons, and put down to the Evil One any failure to make converts. Writing in the eighth century of missionary work in the north of England, Bede said that ‘the god of this world blinded the minds of them which believed not’. 7 Besides directing the resistance to Christianity, the Devil inspired wrong thinking within the Christian flock itself, and as the new religion gained strength and Satan had a diminishing supply of pagans to influence, he switched the main direction of his attack to the stirring up of heresy. With the spread of the true faith and the slackening of persecution, says Eusebius, in language uncomfortably reminiscent of modern totalitarian propaganda, ‘the malignant spirit of iniquity, as the enemy of all truth, and always the most violent enemy to the salvation of men’, employed ‘wicked impostors’ as ‘abandoned instruments and minions of destruction’ who pretended to be Christians and led those they seduced to damnation. 8 The Devil continued to sow the weeds of deviationist thinking in later centuries. He stirred up the abominable heresy of witchcraft. He inspired, according to your point of view, the Pope or Luther or Calvin or whoever else’s opinions threatened your own.

Satan and his army of fiends might not be satisfied with tinkering with other people’s minds. They might inject dangerous thoughts and wicked impulses into your own. Christian preachers and writers said that millions of demons stalked the earth, busily luring people astray by putting evil notions into their heads. Origen said that ordinary Christians in his day believed that all sins were committed under the influence of demons and that if there was no Devil there would be no sin, a view which did not commend itself to theologians though it is easy to see its attractions. It was this ability to influence the mind which made the powers of darkness so formidable. When there was no concept of the unconscious mind it was natural to assume that thoughts and impulses coming from below the conscious threshold came from outside the mind altogether. They felt as if they did, after all: and people still say, ‘I wonder what put that into my head?’ The impression of an outside agency at work is particularly strong when impulses arising from the unconscious conflict with conscious attitudes, conventional moral rules and the dictates of conscience. Long before the coming of Christianity it had been believed, as in Agamemnon’s

apology, that impulses of this kind were put into the mind by gods and spirits, but all the pagan gods and spirits had now been classified as malevolent demons. Consequently Christians were liable to think that any sinful or disturbing thought mysteriously entering the mind might have been put there by the forces of darkness. In England down to the time of Queen Victoria the formal charge at an inquest on a suicide was that the deceased ‘not having God before his eyes, but being moved and seduced by the Devil, did murder himself’. The desert hermits of the fourth and fifth centuries were troubled by lustful and distracting thoughts which infiltrated their mental defences and which they regarded as demonic. The listless boredom which they sometimes felt in the heat of the midday sun they identified as the ‘noonday demon’ of Psalm 91, and one of them at a gathering of the brethren saw a host of little black demons running round, distracting

their minds from their devotions with impure and idle thoughts. They quite frequently saw visible demons mopping and mowing at them, presumably because their austerities stimulated hallucinations. The Devil attacked St Anthony, the most famous of them, by putting lustful ideas and worries about money into his mind and by appearing to him as a woman. When the saint went to live in an old tomb, crowds of demons appeared, raging at him and knocking him about so fiercely that he lost consciousness. He saw them in frightening animal forms, as lions, wolves, panthers, snakes and scorpions. Anthony’s biographer, St Athanasius, described these unwelcome visitors as ‘phantasms’, but he did not doubt that they were real in their own way and were sent by the Devil in his hatred of human goodness. ‘Now it is very easy’, he said, ‘for the Enemy to create apparitions and appearances of such a character that they shall be deemed real and actual objects.’ 9 This remained a basic ingredient of belief about the Devil ever afterwards. In 1303, for example, a Cistercian lay brother named Adam, who was in charge of a grange near Chevreuse, rode out on horseback

early one morning with one of his servants. Riding along, saying his prayers, he saw a big tree rushing swiftly towards him. His horse trembled with fear and the servant was so frightened that he could scarcely keep his feet. When the tree came near it seemed to be covered with hoar-frost and it gave off such a stench of corruption that Adam knew it was the Devil. Next he saw the Devil in human form, riding a little behind him, and then in the form of a very tall man with a slender neck, standing by the road. Adam struck at him with his sword, but it was as if he had struck a cloth hanging in the air. Then the

Devil appeared in a black monk’s robe, his two great eyes gleaming like polished copper cauldrons. Blows aimed at the fiend and orders to take himself off had no effect, but he rolled away in the form of a barrel when Adam made the sign of the cross. The narrative, in the Grandes Chroniques de Saint Denis, implies that what Adam saw was a succession of ‘phantasms’, or hallucinations, but also that they were genuine manifestations of the Evil One. 10 This story shows how the Devil could be spine-chillingly frightening at one moment and a figure of low comedy the next, rolling away as a barrel. He inspired both fear and contempt, fear of what he was and contempt as a way of mastering the fear. Hitler and the stormtrooper, the Jew, the Fascist hyena and the top-hatted emissary of Wall Street, the Red Menace and the Yellow Peril have inspired the same double reaction in the modern world. They have inherited the Devil’s old role as the Enemy, whose power is so vast, whose influence so all-pervading, that he can be blamed for anything and everything. The readiness to put all disquieting phenomena down to demons sometimes set a seal of approval on hysteria. Christina von Stommeln, a German visionary of the thirteenth century, was attacked from the age of fifteen by evil spirits which tempted her to suicide and also inflicted physical violence on her. Not content with driving into her flesh heated iron nails which she produced from under her clothes for bystanders to examine, they took her out at night, naked, and hung her upside down by her feet on a tree in the garden. The Devil visited her in the form of a spider and, more insidiously, in the form of trusted friends, who tried to persuade her not to overtax her strength in asceticism—for eighteen months she lived on nothing but ginger—or who told her ‘lies’. Perhaps they said ‘this is all nonsense’ and ‘pull

yourself together’. 11 Though some of those revered for their saintliness in the past would now

be considered suitable

cases

for treatment, there

are more

impressive

Avila, who was a person of notable examples. common sense and practical efficiency, says in her autobiography that the Devil interrupted her prayers by putting trivial nonsense into her St Teresa of

mind. ‘He turns the brain upside down and does what he likes with it’ and ‘sometimes it is as if the devils were playing ball with the soul’. Satan inspired her fits of bad temper and scolding and false humility. She saw him on one occasion. ‘A great flame seemed to issue from his body, which was intensely bright and cast no shadow. He said to me in a dreadful voice that I had indeed escaped his clutches, but that he would

still.’ Another time she saw beside her a hideous little his teeth. She found him not frightening but comic and threw holy water at him and he vanished. 12 Hallucinations are not necessarily delusions. The fact that a hallucination is a perception of something which is not physically there does not invariably mean that it is a perception of something which does not exist at all outside the mind. But where the boundaries lie between capture

Negro,

me

gnashing

and wishful thinking easy to establish. The distinctions were blurred for centuries by the lack of any concept of the unconscious mind and the tendency to

genuine psychic experience, delusion, fantasy is

not

give natural events supernatural explanations. Satan appeared several times to Elizabeth Barton, the young visionary known as the Holy Maid of Kent, who was executed for treason in 1534. Once, when she was in her room with friends, a deformed bird flew in, ‘fleeing and flickering about her’. They caught the bird and found it so horribly misshapen that they threw it out of the window. The Holy Maid was sure it was the Devil. 13 The Evil One was so skilful in counterfeiting appearances that it was always clear which supernatural occurrences were evil and which were good. St Goar in the seventh century once absent-mindedly hung his cloak on a sunbeam, which caused some people to look at him up askance, though it was finally decided that the miracle was evidence of his sanctity. Everybody except one close friend thought that St Teresa’s mystical experiences were inspired by Satan and it was not until she consulted a sympathetic Franciscan that St Teresa herself was quite sure that they were not diabolical. ‘Few Christian mytiscs have failed to warn their flocks against the raptures which the Evil One may cause, “for I tell thee truly, that the devil hath his contemplatives as God hath his”.’ 14 not

2

Possession and I feel the devil

Psychic

come

Powers

and go within

me as

if he

were

at

home.

Jean Joseph

Surin

Christian mystics have felt their minds and bodies invaded and filled of God, but others have known the terrifying sensations

by the radiance

of possession or obsession by evil forces, and it was cases of this kind which for hundreds of years provided the most alarming and convincing demonstrations of demonic power. In the famous case at Loudun in France in the 1630s, the nuns of a convent in the town were

believed

be

demons. People came from miles around the floor, heaving and wriggling, arching and rolling their bodies in convulsions. Their heads dangled as if their bowing necks were broken, their tongues lolled out, their eyes stared out of their distorted faces. They shrieked and raved, screamed abuse at God, Christ and the Virgin Mary, spat and swore at the cross and the priests who were exorcising them. They made lewd gestures, exposed themselves, issued lascivious invitations to the audience and kept up a flow of language so startlingly indecent that the more naïve spectators thought that this alone was proof that they were animated by evil spirits. Their whole, pattern of behaviour was so blatant a reversal of Christian and conventional standards that it was natural to put it down to the stormtroops of the Evil One. When a person behaves in a way which is dramatically unlike his usual self, a simple way of accounting for it is to say that he is not himself but someone or something else. A god or a spirit has entered him like a hand fitting itself into a glove, has temporarily displaced his personality and substituted its own. This assumption has been made all over the world to explain madness, battle frenzy and raging anger, religious ecstasy, poetic inspiration, states of wild, drunken, drug-induced or sexual excitement, and trance states. It has bitten deep into our everyday speech in such phrases as ‘he isn’t himself’ or ‘I wonder what has got into him’, which were originally meant literally. So were the words stroke, seizure and attack, to describe illness, because the old belief was that the patient had been struck down, seized or attacked by something evil from outside. Less drastic than full-scale possession is obsession, in which the alien intelligence stays outside its victim but persistently attempts to mould his thoughts and govern his actions. Belief in possession and obsession carries to an extreme the idea that any mysterious and dangerous impulse in the mind may have been put there by something external, and is a way of accounting for the experience of being hounded by impulses which feel alien to the conscious mind. In 1578, near Soissons, a woman named Catherine Darea beheaded two little girls, one of them to

to

watch them

possessed by on

her own daughter, with a sickle. She said that the Devil had appeared to her in the form of a dark man and ordered her to do it, giving her the sickle. She was promptly executed. In the 1770s the infant Sir Walter Scott had a nursemaid who felt persistently impelled by the Devil to cut the child’s throat with a pair of scissors. Fortunately this was discovered in time and she was sent to a lunatic asylum. In Germany in

1881

a man

the Devil

to

who suffered from epileptic fits was repeatedly urged by commit suicide and was finally driven by him to murder

a shining dog and heard his evil voice. Cases of people power is driving them to suicide or murder are not uncommon and, on a milder level, all sorts of minor obsessions, like a compulsion to wash your hands or count the spoons ten times a day, can cause uneasy suspicions about alien intelligences. a

boy.

He

saw

the Devil in the form of

convinced that

an

possession is very old. Prehistoric trepanned skulls may be by medicine-men to let a possessing spirit out of a patient’s mind by making a hole in his head. In the ancient world it was popularly believed that mental and physical diseases were spirits which invaded people’s bodies. This was particularly true of epilepsy, whose name means literally that the victim has been ‘seized on’. There are several accounts in the New Testament of Jesus expelling evil spirits from possessed patients, some of whom were evidently epileptics. As Nicholas Jacquier said in the fifteenth century, to doubt that the Devil and his demons could enter people’s bodies and cause madness and disease was to deviate from the truth of the gospels and the teaching of Christ. And on the face of it, the possession hypothesis made sense. A possessed person did behave as if an evil intelligence had seized hold of him. Sometimes it would speak through his mouth, giving its name and rank in the hierarchy of demons. When he was exorcised and it was Belief in

evidence of attempts

commanded to come out of him, it very often did and he recovered. This reinforced confidence in the whole system of belief of which possession was a part. Conversely, the fact that the belief was so firmly established caused people in disturbed, hysterical and highly suggestible states of mind to accept that they were possessed and to behave

accordingly. The

blasphemy, raving, swearing

contortions of the

possessed a

different

bad

and

filth, the convulsions and

enough, but cases in which a different personality spoke through the victim’s mouth gave a peculiarly frightening impression of the presence of an alien entity and have probably been the most effective single factor stimulating belief in spirit possession since the remote past. In 1830 in Germany, for example, a quiet respectable peasant woman in her middle thirties was suddenly seized by fits of convulsions during which she spoke in a voice not her own. She was sent to a doctor who, even at this late date, believed that she was possessed by an evil spirit. During her fits her own personality vanished and was replaced by a voice with

were

different

which shouted and raged and cursed God. The A second demon joined the first inside her and the two of them barked like dogs and mewed like cats. They flung her body about and swore and made horrible noises. 15 Cases like this are generally now explained in terms of multiple or split personality. Part of the patient’s personality has somehow become separated from the rest. It gives the impression of being, and genuinely regards itself as, a different person altogether. The possessed patient usually does not afterwards remember what happened, but there have been cases of people remaining conscious and aware of what is going on. The Loudun nuns were put in charge of a learned and ascetic Jesuit named Jean Joseph Surin, who set to work to cure them but soon became possessed himself. In May 1635 he wrote a letter to a friend which gives a puzzled but vivid description of the experience: woman

personality

grew

worse.

explain to you what happens within me during that time and how this spirit unites with mine without depriving me either of consciousness or liberty of soul, nevertheless making himself like

I

cannot

another me and as if I had two souls, one of which is dispossessed of its body and the use of its organs and stands aside watching the actions of the other which has entered into them. The two spirits fight in one and the same field which is the body, and the soul is as if divided. At the same time I feel a great peace under God’s good pleasure and, without knowing how it arises, an extreme rage and at the same time a great joy and sweetness, and aversion for him ...

...

I feel the state of damnation the other hand a wretchedness. and apprehend it, and feel myself as if transpierced by the arrows of despair in that stranger soul which seems to be mine, while the other soul which is full of confidence laughs at such feelings and is at full I feel the devil come and liberty to curse him who is the cause. 16 within me as if he were at home. go on

...

...

Surin remained severely ill for years, convinced that he was a lost soul, inevitably bound for hell. His Jesuit colleagues considered him hopelessly insane, but late in the 1650s he began to recover. He died in

1665. When modern trance-mediums speak in voices and with personalities unlike their own, the Spiritualist explanation is that the medium is temporarily possessed by a spirit from beyond the barrier of death. Some of the spirits which communicate through human beings are evil or mischievous and can cause damage. According to Allan Kardec,

a

French Spiritualist of the nineteenth century whose books have powerfully influenced modern Spiritist cults in South America: Of the number of dangers which the practice of Spiritism presents, in the front rank must be placed Obsession: that is, the dominion some spirits know how to take over certain persons. It is never done except by inferior spirits, who seek to govern; with good spirits we experience no restraint; they advise, combat the influence of the bad, and if they are not listened to, withdraw. The bad, on the contrary, attach themselves

to

those whom

they find exposed.

.

.

.

A hypocritical spirit may talk loudly of love of God, charity and humility, to mask his deceit. An evil spirit may paralyse a person’s will and make him act in spite of himself. ‘Moral imperfections’, Kardec 17 says, ‘give a footing to obsessing spirits.’ The unusual psychic abilities demonstrated by modern trance-mediums were also reported in some cases of possession in the ancient world and in the Middle Ages. At Cambrai in 1491, for instance, possessed nuns who had convulsive fits and barked like dogs also seemed to have a disconcerting capacity to predict the future. Nuns at Lille in 1613 spoke in languages previously unknown to them. In an outbreak at Paderborn in 1656 the possessed knew all languages, answered questions put to them in Hebrew, Latin and Greek, predicted the future and knew what was happening a great distance away. Francesco Maria Guazzo included in his book on witchcraft, Compendium Maleficarum (1608), a list of symptoms of demonic possession, some of which would now be regarded as possible examples of extrasensory

perception. It is a reliable indication of possession, he says, ‘when the sick man speaks in foreign tongues unknown to him, or understands others speaking in those tongues; or when, being but ignorant, the patients argue about high and difficult questions; or when discover hidden and long-forgotten matters, or future events, or of the inner conscience, such as the sins and imaginings of the bystanders’. It is a clear sign ‘when an ignorant man speaks literary and grammatical Latin, or if without knowledge of the art he sings musically or says something of which he could never have had any knowledge’. Guazzo also says that all diseases, mental and physical, can be caused by demons and that a ‘debased imagination’, especially in a dream, may betray the presence of a demon. 18 It is ironic that speaking in strange languages, and other paranormal abilities, had now become signs of an invading demon. In the early Church they had been considered

they the

secrets

signs of possession by the Holy Spirit and had played an important part in impressing pagans and making converts to Christianity. Poltergeist cases also contributed to belief in evil spirits. Richard Bovet’s Pandaemonium (1684) describes the alarming experiences of a young man at Spraiton in North Devon in 1682. His head was mysteriously pushed into a narrow space between a bedhead and the wall with such force that it took several

men to pull him out and he was bruised. A of metal, badly large piece propelled by some unknown him hit on the head. A agency, bandage removed itself from his arm and wound itself so tightly round his chest that it almost stopped him breathing, and his cravats several times attempted to strangle him. His periwigs were torn off his head or out of their boxes, and shredded to

bits. One of his shoelaces came out of his shoe of its own accord and flew across the room. Once he was plunged into a quagmire, where he was found singing and whistling ‘in a kind of Trance or ecstatic fit’. Other odd things happened. A large barrel of salt moved by itself from room to room, an iron flew up and roosted on a saucepan, two flitches of bacon moved themselves about in a disquietingly independent manner. Not surprisingly, the presence of an evil spirit was suspected and it was identified as the ghost of the young man’s stepmother. She was seen by the young man, two women and a child in the house, ‘sometimes in her own shape, sometimes in forms very horrid, now in and then like a monstrous Dog belching out fire, at another time .’ the shape of a Horse. How much reality, if any, lies behind all this it is now impossible to say, but similar experiences have been recorded frequently. Careful modern investigation of poltergeist cases suggests that they are sometimes genuine, not faked, and are caused unconsciously by somebody in the house in a disturbed state of mind, who is capable of mentally causing objects to move about and crockery to smash. The person is often a child or adolescent, and there was a child in the house at Spraiton. When there was a craze for table-tilting in the 1850s some people hastened to put the peculiar behaviour of the tables down to the Devil. A clergyman named Godfrey published two pamphlets in 1853, Table-moving Tested and Proved to be the Result of Satanic Agency and Table-turning, the Devil’s Modern Masterpiece. ‘The Rev. E. Gillson, of Bath, held by means of his table converse with a lost soul, who expected in the course of ten years to be hound with Satan and all his crew and cast into the abyss.’ Contemporary reviewers particularly enjoyed the fact that the lost soul had indicated that Satan’s headquarters were at ...

.

.

Rome. 19 More recently, there has been a similar outcry against ouija boards as channels of demonic influence. For all the growing scepticism of intellectuals, belief in possession

by evil spirits did not die out in less sophisticated circles. There was a horrible case in Ireland in 1894, known as the Clonmel Burning. A man named Michael Cleary lived with his young wife, Bridget, in a remote district of County Tipperary, north of the town of Clonmel. He began to suspect that his wife had been spirited away by the fairies and that the thing pretending to be Bridget Cleary was an evil spirit. He and some of the neighbours, including Bridget’s father, tortured the poor woman in a frantic effort to force the evil creature into admitting what it was, and they eventually burned her so badly that she died. Evidence was given that after her death Michael Cleary said, ‘Have you no faith? Did you not know that it was not my wife, she was too fine to be my wife, she was two inches taller than my wife.’ He was found guilty of manslaughter and sent to prison for twenty years. The case of Bernadette Hasler, murdered in 1966, shows that belief in demonic possession is still alive. Roman Catholic theologians have always been careful not to deny the possibility of genuine demonic possession and obsession in rare cases. Some writers have suggested that there is an evil spiritual component in all disease. For example, Heinrich Schlier says: No matter what physical or psychic causes it may have, illness also is due to a superior evil power. The incidence of illness may seem fortuitous to men, but it is due to the calculated action of the superior wicked power This superior power has its being, not only in the impairment of the body, but also in the confusion and ruin of the ....

spirit. There is an element of possession in spiritual or mental illness and in such maladies as epilepsy ‘that in a wider sense underlies all maladies’. 20 3

Enemy

in

Sight Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks

on,

And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread. Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner

Even in the Middle Ages,

most people never saw a demon in plain view unless they happened to be close to a possession case, but this did not weaken the argument for the reality of demons. On the contrary, it strengthened it. A famous Franciscan preacher, Berthold von Regensburg, told his audiences—he preached to hundreds in the open air—that multitudes of evil spirits devote their time and energy to setting snares for men:

But, Brother Berthold, thou sayest much to us of these devils and of their manifold guiles, and we never see a single devil with our eyes, nor hear we any, nor grasp, nor feel them. Lo, now! that is even the worst harm that they do thee; for didst thou see but once a single devil as he is, then thou wouldst surely never commit one sin

again.

They are here now, he goes on, here in this place in their thousands, hut so cunning that you do not see them: ‘For if ye saw them but once ye would never sin more, since they are so foul of form that, if we could but see one single devil as he is, all mankind would die of fear.’ 21 The mixture of disquiet and pleasurable thrill induced by a sermon like this can be imagined, and since Brother Berthold commanded large audiences it looks as if his teaching met a need. His argument is essentially the same as the doctrine of witch-hunters later, that the failure of demons to make themselves patently evident is the clinching proofof their terrible reality. As successful hell-fire preaching also indicates, there is in human nature a thick seam of readiness to believe in one’s own wickedness and in the existence of sinister, immensely powerful, invisible or disguised agents of evil. This readiness did not disappear with the decline of belief in the Devil. Satan and the demons were masters of disguise. Since it would have been counter-productive if they showed themselves as they really were, they made themselves counterfeit hut convincing bodies out of air, vapour, smoke or the fumes of fresh blood, in any shape that suited them. The Devil might appear as a handsome man or a beautiful woman provoke lust, or he would try to trap the unwary in the form of a priest, a merchant or one of the neighbours. As in Christina von Stommeln’s case, it was possible to get into a state of mind in which you doubted if your friends were really themselves. Satan was an impersonator of such brilliance that he was said to have appeared to in the form of Christ, and it was only a fortunate prompting St Martin of the Holy Spirit which enabled the saint to see through the deception: to

which the Evil One took himself off irritably, leaving behind him a revolting smell. Satan had a taste for pious conversation and theological argument. He and his minions knew all languages and always spoke to a prospective victim in his native tongue. According to the writers on witchcraft, however, demons had peculiar voices. They sounded harsh, or sometimes thin and penetrating, and were hard to understand because they spoke as if their mouths were in a barrel or a jar, with a hollow, muffled effect. The descriptions suggest someone speaking from behind a mask, presumably because the Devil of the witches was a man dressed up. Pictures of Satan do not seem to have been common until the twelfth century, when it became the custom to paint the Last Judgment and hell on the walls of churches. The Devil who presides over these infernos is sometimes a human figure with a certain dignity, but more often he is a hideous monster whose ugliness shows his spiritual corruption. In Taddeo di Bartolo’s fresco of hell, of the early fourteenth century, Satan is a colossal monster, basically human but with horns, three heads, and the legs and feet of a bird of prey. His three mouths chew on three sinners and he is excreting another. There is a similar figure, but even more grotesque and bestial, in Francesco Traini’s fresco in Pisa: his body is covered with what are possibly meant to be eyes. 22 The Devil’s three heads are an infernal parody of the Trinity. Being the rival of God, Satan is also God’s ape and imitates the divine glories. at

According to Cardinal Bérulle’s Traicté des Energumènes (1599), it is because he is the ape of God that it delights him to invade men’s bodies and possess them, incarnating himself in humanity in mimicry and mockery of Christ. Witch-hunters who were cultivated persons and had read the classics sometimes associated the three heads with those of Hecate. Quite often in or

art a

demon has

a

second face,

on

the abdomen

the backside, and witches confessed that the Devil they worshipped had a face on his hindquarters, which they kissed in homage

and abasement. The second face

was presumably meant to show that the centre of intelligence and attention in the fallen angels was as much in the lower organs as in the head. It may also have something to do with the connection made by Christian writers between evil and the number two, the first number to break away from and disrupt unity. The Devil’s horns and his cloven hoof are other marks of doubleness. The face on the hindquarters is an example of the strong anal emphasis in portrayals of the demonic. Satan is dedicated to turning

the whole world upside down and standing all decent values on their heads. He is therefore the lord of excrement and filth, which he and his worshippers delight in, and his presence is marked by disgusting stenches. Medieval Christian art represents the Evil One and the demons in an almost limitless variety of weird and grotesque forms. Just as the union of the fallen angels and mortal women produced monsters, so these nightmare beings are crimes against nature. There are demons with animal, semi-human or deformed anatomies, covered all over with fur or scales, balancing top-heavy heads on spindly bodies, equipped with bulging eyes and gaping mouths, horns, tails, wings, claws and talons, birds’ heads or beaks, with too many faces, arms, legs or other appendages, or with not enough. It is not possible to penetrate far into this jungle of images with any confidence. People at the time did not understand them. 23 The demonic is represented in animal or mixed animal and human form because of its bestial nature and its link with the animal impulses of man, but there was also an old tradition of portraying supernatural beings in a literally supernatural way, by joining together bits and pieces of different animals and combining animal and human ingredients. The art of the ancient world had its monsters and its partly human, partly animal spirits and when it was believed that the pagan spirits were demons, any picture of one could be taken as a portrait of an evil spirit. Medieval artists looked back to these pagan models, though they also allowed their own

fancy free rein.

The model which most powerfully influenced demonic iconography was the classical Pan or satyr, and their equivalents in western Europe, creatures half-human and half-goat, with horns, shaggy flanks, cloven hooves, slanted eyes and pointed ears. To this mixture one other essential ingredient had to be added—the wings of an angel. And since these were evil angels, the wings were not those of a bird that flies in the sunlight but of a bat which loves the dark and which not only

sleeps in the daytime hanging upside down.

but does

so,

in

thoroughly

diabolical

fashion,

Among the characteristics of Pan and the satyrs which made them suitable as old vessels into which the new wine of Christian demonology could be poured were their rapacious sexuality and their wildness, their hostility to settled and civilised order. Another was their goatishness. How and why the goat became the animal associated above all others with the Devil is not clear. Goats are firmly linked with evil in

the New Testament, in the judgment scene when the sheep and the goats, the good and the bad, are separated and the goats are packed off to hell. There are references in the Old Testament to hairy goat-demons, thought to copulate with human women, as the Watchers did and as demons were believed to do. The goat was notorious, like demons, for its lustfulness and its stench. Its pugnacity and the harm it did to crops and fields were also taken to link it with the angry and destructive 24

Enemy. The goat has

a devilish eye, and its cloven hoof became one of the main distinguishing marks of the demonic. Popular tradition had it that the Devil limped, as a result of the injury he received when he was flung out of heaven. It is interesting that in modern adventure stories and films a mutilated foot is a common mark of villainy. A club foot or a limp are sinister and in Treasure Island the phrase ‘a seafaring man

with a

one

leg’ has a menacing ring. If a creature’s body is flawed, this is

sign of the deformity of its whole nature.

The Devil had many other animal forms besides the goat, including those of a bull, cat, dog, cow, horse, sheep, pig or boar, bear, stag, ram, bird, hare, mouse, fly, spider, toad, fox or monkey. At the trial of Gilles de Rais, accused of Satanism and child-murder in 1440, evidence was given that a donkey’s head had been worshipped as an image of the Evil One, and there was talk of a blanket on which was painted a creature that looked like a dog walking. Whether in human or animal form, Satan was often black or dark, as befitted the Prince of Darkness. He was also frequently reported in mixed forms. An anonymous pamphlet of about 1460, based on the trials of witches at Lyons, says that their Master appeared to them as a cat or a bull and in many other animal shapes, and also in human form with horns and talons, fire spurting from his ears and a harsh, terrifying voice. The Devil might adopt any disguise, however eccentric. One Lorraine witch

him in the likeness of a crab and there is a report of him black water. Menace, in other words, is all around us. It lurks not only in the eye of the goat, the scuttling of a spider, the cruel talon and the articulated claw, but in even the most harmless and ordinary things. A cow or a sheep or a hare or a stagnant pool can suddenly stab the heart with terror. The Evil One mingles human and animal forms because he is supernatural, because he is a bestial angel, because his deepest appeal is to the animal in man, but his shape-changing is also a reflection of the evil that lies in ambush behind the most innocent of appearances. saw

manifesting himself as

4

The Devil and Witchcraft Sooner murder

an

infant in its cradle than

nurse

unacted desires. of Hell’

Blake, ‘Proverbs The Devil

was known from scripture to have power incomparably than greater any earthly force—‘upon earth there is not his like’—and he could cause all sorts of tangible physical harm, as well as spiritual

damage.

St

Augustine pointed

out

that when Satan

destroyed Job’s

and cattle with fire from heaven and killed Job’s children with a violent wind which blew the house down on top of them, these were not illusions but real disasters. The argument from Job’s case, which also showed that innocent people could be attacked by demons just as well as the wicked, was repeated by later writers, including Aquinas, who said that demons could not work miracles in the sense of events contrary to the order of nature. Only God could do that. But they could work ‘miracles’ in the sense of real events which passed all human understanding. As they could also impose convincing illusions on the human mind, there were few limits to what could be credited to them. This argument is important in the history of witchcraft because it meant that all the feats popularly attributed to witches, however improbable, could be accepted as true. There was little that witches could not do, because they were in league with Satan. They could kill people by magic. They could make men impotent and women barren. They could ruin harvests, blight men and crops and cattle with disease, steal the milk from cows. They could drive people mad by sending evil spirits into their bodies. They could turn themselves into hares or hedgehogs or balls of string or anything they liked. They could fly through the air, shrieking and cackling, mounted on demonic animals or broomsticks, wisps of straw, sieves or eggshells. The Malleus Maleficarum, or ‘Hammer of Witches’, first published in 1486 and the bible of witch-hunting, begins by earnestly refuting the opinion that witchcraft has no reality outside men’s minds. Some people sophisticatedly but mistakenly thought that demons existed servants

‘in the imagination of the ignorant and vulgar’ and that ‘the natural accidents which happen to a man he wrongly attributes to some supposed devil’. But this, the Malleus says, ‘is contrary to the true faith, which teaches us that certain angels fell from heaven and

only

are bound to acknowledge that by their very do nature they many wonderful things which we cannot do’. As case shows, Satan can and does cause death and destruction by Job’s are now

devils, and we can

lightning, fire, tempest, flood, dearth and disease. But not all harm occurs in this way. It may be caused by Satan and the demons, acting alone or in concert with witches and magicians, or it may be caused by angels acting on God’s orders, or it may happen in the ordinary course of

nature. 25

The effect of this argument

was

to

enable

one

to

say,

according to taste, that a harmful event was a sign of God’s displeasure, or evidence of the activity of demons and witches, or the effect of some ordinary natural cause. It therefore catered to the old and long-lived tendency, also common among primitive peoples outside Europe, to blame malevolent supernatural agencies for what more sophisticated natural causes and chance. far from Bordeaux, in 1453, there was an epidemic in which several children died. The people scented black magic at work and, against the wishes of the local authorities, seized various suspects and tortured them until five of them confessed. These

people put At

down

Marmande,

to

not

they burned. In 1456 late spring frosts which spoiled a promising crop in the vineyards near Metz were put down to sorcery. A boy of sixteen said he knew who had done it, and several suspects were arrested, including the supposed ringleader, who confessed and was burned. At Metz again, in 1481, heavy rain in June damaged the vines and nine women were executed for causing it by witchcraft, and yet again in five

twenty-eight people were executed for causing a cold and stormy The Malleus quotes another example from its authors’ own experience. In the diocese of Constance, on the German-Swiss border, a violent hailstorm severely damaged the crops. ‘This was brought to the notice of the Inquisition, since the people clamoured for an enquiry to be held; many beside all the townsmen being of the opinion that it was caused by witchcraft.’ Two suspects were quickly nosed out, and they confessed, one of them after only ‘the very gentlest questions, being suspended hardly clear of the ground by her thumbs’. 26 The Malleus laid down the main opening barrage of the great campaign 1488

summer.

against witchcraft which lasted for the next two hundred years. Ranging shots had been fired earlier, for it had been accepted for

centuries that witches existed and did harm. But witchcraft and the Devil had now been tied firmly together. A witch was no longer a semi-supernatural being, gifted with dangerous powers. A witch was a man or woman who was a worshipper and agent of Satan and drew supernatural power from him. This made it easier to deal with witches, but also made it easier for people to be witches. In the period of the massive persecutions thousands of unfortunate

and mostly innocent suspects were tortured and executed. The parallels with similar panics in modern times have often been commented on, and so has the abominable cruelty involved. At the end of his influential book Demonolatry (1595), Nicolas Remy says: For my part, who have been so long and continuously exercised in the examination of witches I have no hesitation in saying that are be to to they justly subjected every torture and put to death in the flames; both that they may expiate their crimes with a fitting punishment and that its very awfulness may serve as an example and ...

a

warning

to

others.

Remy had sent 900 people to their deaths in fifteen years and he did not confine his ruthlessness to adult suspects. Satan’s greed for souls is so insatiable, he says, that the children of witches are usually infected with the taint, and so he and other judges have sentenced the children ‘to be stripped and beaten with rods around the place where their parents were being burned alive’. 27 In their fear of the Devil and the violent attack which he and his legions of demons and witches were believed to have launched against the whole edifice of Christian civilisation and order, the witch-hunters magnified his powers to a ludicrous degree. Henri Boguet, an eminent

Burgundian lawyer, discussing in his Discours des Sorciers (1602) the ability of witches to move crops from one field to another, says that it is really their Master who does it, not by transferring the crops but by going the whole hog and transposing the fields themselves. Remy says that demons can raise up colossal mountains in the twinkling of an eye, cause rivers to run backwards, bring the skies tumbling round our ears, solidify fountains, raise the dead, extinguish the stars and turn the whole scheme of the universe upside down. He had read his classical authors and swallowed them whole. 28 People might well ask, and did, if Satan’s power was so great, what was there to prevent him from destroying the whole human race which he hated so viciously, and why had he not done so long ago? The answer was that God would not let him, and he could act only as God allowed, though it was not easy to find a satisfying solution to the problem of why God allowed him at all. It was agreed that God did not permit the Devil to injure those who prosecuted witches, for otherwise nobody would. The Malleus says that two other classes of people cannot be harmed by demons and witches, pious persons protected by their guardian angels, and those protected by holy water, the sign of the cross

symbols and devices of the Church. 29 This last category is particularly important because one of the major functions of the Church in the eyes of ordinary people was to defend them against demons, witches, ghosts and the whole mechanism of supernatural evil at work in the world. Keith Thomas has suggested, in Religion and the Decline of Magic, that the Protestant reformers in England, by contemptuously dismissing as mumbo-jumbo the traditional protective apparatus of the Church, shattered ordinary people’s principal bulwark against supernatural and other

evil and witchcraft, and so left them with no defence except to insist that witches be dealt with by the courts: hence the unprecedented witch-trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England. How this argument can be applied to the Continent, however, is not clear. The insistence on attributing all harm and misfortune to Satan and his agents probably increased the number of his would-be followers. If was really so powerful on earth, if he was lord and master of ambitions and the pleasures of the flesh, then there were advantages worldly in entering his service. The witch-hunting manuals recognise the Devil’s appeal to the disappointed and the unfortunate. Satan ‘takes men when they are alone and in despair because of hunger or some disaster which has befallen them’. 30 To the poor the Devil offers money, to the ambitious advancement, to the injured retribution, to the lustful

the Devil

the satisfaction of desire. People turn to him for revenge on hostile neighbours or unfaithful lovers. They turn to him in despair at hopeless poverty and intolerable misery, to right wrongs which God seems to tolerate. The evil and undeserved

suffering which

Satan

was

originally

needed to explain has now ironically become a motive for taking his side. People also turn to Satan (though the manuals naturally do not see it in quite this light) for release from the chains of Christian convention, to enjoy the close companionship of a secret group, to revel in feasting and dancing and unrestrained sex, to let loose savage impulses which

society locks up,

escape from being their ordinary humdrum respectable still turn to the Devil for these reasons today, and it People is likely that among the thousands of innocent victims falsely accused of witchcraft in the past there were a few who worshipped Satan in all reality. Anyone who did not already know how to go about it was amply supplied with information by the witch-trials. to

selves.

of witchcraft, in theory and probably in practice, was the Devil instead of God. The sentence passed on a group worshipping of witches at Avignon in 1582 leaves no doubt of what their central The

essence

offence was:

that you and your associates have denied God the creator of us all and the Most Holy Trinity our Maker, and that you have worshipped the devil, that ancient and implacable Enemy of the human You have vowed yourselves to him for ever, and have renounced race. .

.

.

your most Holy Baptism and your sponsors therein, together with your part in Paradise and the eternal heritage which our Lord Jesus Christ bought for you and the entire race of men by His death you were enabled to fly through the air at dead of night, an at hour fit for vilest criminals, and on stated days you were so .

.

.

carried and

transported by the Tempter himself;

and there in the

synagogue of witches, sorcerers, heretics, conjurers and devil-worshippers, you did kindle a foul fire and after many rejoicings, dancings, eating and drinking and lewd games in honour of your president Beelzebub the Prince of Devils in the shape and appearance of a deformed and hideous black goat, you did worship him in deed and word as very God and did call upon him under 31 the name of the true God and invoke his help. common

...

.

The

.

.

‘synagogue’ or witches’ sabbath, if some reality lies behind the confessions

extracted under torture and pressure, was a meeting to celebrate the Devil, the flesh and the human animal. There was feasting and frenzied dancing and a culminating orgy in which the worshippers were accused of committing every conceivable perversion with each other and with the Devil himself, who was presumably a man, the leader of the society, often dressed up in an animal or fantastic costume. The ancient and implacable Enemy, in the person of his human representative, was also honoured with formal obeisances and sacrifices and with the ‘obscene kiss’ on his anus, which is a mark of Satan’s lordship of the body, matter and dirt, and his reversal of conventional values. Many descriptions of the sabbath give candles an important place in the ritual. The worshippers lit them from a candle which the Devil held or which was fixed to one of his horns. The candles were then offered to him as a sign of homage and Lucifer, ‘light-bearer’. There are

this

may have recognised him as here and there of the Devil as lord of light as well as master of darkness. When St Teresa saw him, for instance, his body was intensely bright. A group of heretics executed at Orleans in 1022 were accused of worshipping the Devil, who appeared to them first as an Ethiopian or black man and then as an angel of light. It was well known, on the authority of St Paul, that Satan could disguise himself as an angel of light and it may have occurred to the act

traces

unregenerate that perhaps this was not a disguise. Heretics called Luciferans, discovered in Germany in the thirteenth century, were said to hold meetings at which they adored a black cat. Later, after a feast and a perverted orgy in the dark, the lamps were relit and the figure of a man emerged from a dark corner. They hailed him as Master. The upper part of his body shone like the sun, but from the hips down he was covered with fur like the cat. 32 The relighting of the lamps, bringing light into darkness, and the appearance of the shining man from the dark corner may be connected with the fact that these heretics believed that the Devil had created the heavenly bodies, the givers of light. It is also interesting that Cornutus, a Stoic philosopher of the first century A.D., trying to reconcile Pan as goat with Pan as ‘All’, said that his lower part was hairy and goatish to represent the earth and his upper part was like a man to show heaven and reason holding sway over the world; ‘intelligence blended with a darker power’, as Coleridge put it. Other writers elaborated on this notion and in 636 Isidore of Seville said that Pan’s lower body was hairy and filthy, to show his lordship of the earth and vegetation and wild beasts, while his upper body was heavenly, his horns standing for the rays of the sun, his skin for the stars, his reed-pipe for the harmony of the spheres. Medieval writers repeated this interpretation of Pan’s 33 anatomy and the Luciferans may have been aware of it. Witches were accused of perverting the Mass to the Devil’s service, and perhaps they did, especially after the accusation had become common currency. Witches at Brescia in 1480 were alleged to celebrate Mass in honour of their god, whose name was Lucibel. Paulus Grillandus, an Italian witch-judge writing in about 1525, said that witches held services for the Devil with candles and prayers. In a book published in Spain in 1529, Martin de Castanega, who regarded witchcraft as an exact inversion of Catholicism, said that the witches’ Mass copied the Catholic service but substituted ‘excrements’ for the Church’s sacraments. According to Florin de Raemond’s book, Antichrist (1597), on a witch-trial in Aquitaine in 1594, the celebrant wore a black with no cross on it. The host was a piece of turnip stained black cope and when it was elevated the witches cried, ‘Master, help us’. There was water in the chalice instead of wine, and the Devil sprinkled the congregation with urine as his version of holy water. This story had considerable influence, being repeated as authentic by del Rio, Boguet and Guazzo. Sinister tales circulated in the seventeenth century of celebrants in red robes adorned with a black goat rampant, of vestments

based

on

which was

a

defective cross with

and cracked chalices and

only three bars, of triangular hosts foul-smelling incense, of screams of ‘Beelzebub,

Beelzebub’ at the consecration and ‘His blood be upon us and upon our children’ when the congregation was sprinkled with wine from the chalice, of the Devil holding up a black host and saying, ‘This is my body’, and then elevating it by impaling it on one of his horns. Some witches apparently believed that the Devil was the equal of God and that he had created the earth, a dualist doctrine which had a long history behind it but which could also have been quite easily deduced from much Christian teaching and preaching. At Toulouse in 1335 an accused witch named Anne Marie de Georgel said she believed that God and the Devil were equal powers, God ruling the sky and the Devil the earth. They were locked in a conflict which would go on for ever, though at the moment, she thought, Satan had the upper hand. She said that after death the souls of Satan’s followers remained in the earth’s atmosphere and visited their old homes at night, trying to inspire in their relatives a desire to serve the Devil. Another woman, Catherine Delort, said much the same, except that she expected Antichrist to appear at any moment and destroy Christianity. 34 It looks as if the preaching of Antichrist in an effort to bring people to repentance could have quite the opposite effect. Whether the two women’s dualist beliefs were their own or were put into their mouths by the Inquisitors it is impossible to tell, but appearing in an area where the dualist Cathar heresy had reached its peak in the previous century, they strongly suggest Cathar influence. According to Martin del Rio in 1599, witches said grace at the sabbath in honour of Beelzebub, hailing him as ‘Creator, Giver and Preserver of all’. Silvain Nevillon, tried for witchcraft at Orleans in 1614, said: ‘We say to the Devil that we acknowledge him as our master, our god, our creator.’ At Northampton in 1612 a woman named Agnes Wilson, suspected of being a witch, was asked how many gods she recognised. She answered, two, God the Father and the Devil. When she said the Creed, she left out the words, ‘I believe in Jesus Christ’ and could not be induced to say them. Her daughter, also a suspect, refused to say, ‘I forsake the Devil and all his works’ and said instead, ‘I forsake God and all his works’. 35 The authors of the Malleus and the other witch-hunting textbooks complain fretfully of scepticism. They had to meet the objection that belief in witchcraft meant accepting that witches could do things that were impossible—flying through the air, for instance, or moving fields

cheerfully to and fro. To which they replied that witches did these things with the assistance of demons, who were not bound by human limitations. When impossibilities were reported of witches, this was not a ground for dismissing the reports but a reason for accepting them, because the performance of the impossible proved that demons were at

work. The argument

circular and in the end failed to convince. of modern science, a new way of looking at the was

With the development world and a new attitude to evidence, belief in witchcraft went steadily out of fashion in sophisticated circles. So in the end did belief in the Devil, though Satan’s position was not necessarily affected by scepticism about witchcraft. Johann Weyer, the sixteenth-century demonologist, thought that belief in witchcraft had been stimulated by Satan as a way of injuring humanity. Witches, he said, were deluded by the Devil into thinking that they caused any harm which befell people they intended to injure, and he appealed to the authorities to stop assisting Satan in his work of slaughter by persecuting witches. At Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, thirty-one people were condemned as witches, of whom nineteen were hanged. A reaction quickly set in, with a strong feeling that they had been condemned on inadequate evidence. In 1696 the twelve men who had been jurors at the trials four years before signed a confession of error, in which they explained that they had been misled by the Devil: We confess that we ourselves were not capable to understand, nor able to withstand, the mysterious delusions of the Powers of Darkness and Prince of the Air; but were, for want of knowledge in ourselves and better information from others, prevailed with to take up such evidence against the accused, as on further consideration and

better information lives of any. 36

we

justly

fear

was

insufficient for

touching

As long as the blame for wrong thinking could be shifted shoulders, he still had a role to play. 5

onto

the

Satan’s

Satanism We for a certainty are not the first Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled Their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed Whatever brute and blackguard made the world. A. E. Housman, Last Poems

Although

science seemed

to

make the Devil

redundant, because he was

no

needed

explain disasters, accidents and misfortunes, he not easily dispensed with. Not only do old ways of thinking die

longer

was

hard, but

to

explanation of the world in terms of impersonal forces does not suit everyone’s attitude to life and experience of it. The Devil and the witch remained figures of fear in many people’s minds, and still do. The Devil also had a continuing part to play for those who were attracted to him. William Beckford, for instance, the aesthete and eccentric who wrote a famous sensational novel, Vathek, about a power-mad Arab caliph who gave himself to the Devil, had his own romantic tendencies in the same direction. In 1780, Louisa Beckford, wife of his cousin, became his mistress and he told her that the pair of them were ‘the representatives of the Satanic Sovereign on earth’. She must spend a week with him at his country house he wrote, so that they could lie in wait for souls together. ‘William—my lovely infernal,’ she replied, Like another Lucifer you ‘how gloriously you write of iniquities. would tempt angels to forsake their cœlestial abode and sink with you into the black infernal gulph.’ Romney painted a portrait of Louisa sacrificing to the goddess of the underworld, and she wrote to her lovely infernal hoping that Lucifer ‘in the mystic shape of a goat’ might appear in person to acknowledge ‘the youthful victims you have sacrificed on his altars’. Beckford’s sacrifices were presumably erotic in nature, and his tastes were bisexual. Louisa wished that her own small 37 son was old enough to be ‘a little victim’. Satanism is more than a romantically sinister top-dressing on the soil of forbidden pleasures and secret perversities. The Devil could gain an impetus, paradoxically, from the scientific revolution, because it exiled God to the outskirts of the universe. If God was not powerful on earth, where could a strong and active deity be found by those who needed one? In the Enemy, was one answer, and modern Satanism is in part an attempt to fill the power vacuum created by God’s dethronement: an

.

hence the

constant

.

.

Satanist insistence

on

the weakness and

uselessness of God and Christ. When Apollyon jeers

at

Jesus, Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan puts into the Devil’s human partisans: by adopted argument to

in

Christian’s allegiance his mouth the

Thou countest his service better than mine, whereas he never came but yet from the place where he is to deliver any that served him as for me, how many times, as all the world very well knows, have I delivered, either by power, or fraud, those that have faithfully served me, from him and his. .

.

.

.

.

.

It

was

reported of the Lothian witches

in Scotland in 1678 that the

represented by ex-Presbyterian minister, preached to them ‘and most blasphemously mocked them, if they offered to trust in God

Devil,

an

who left them miserable in the world, and neither he nor his Son Jesus Christ ever appeared to them when they called on them, as he had, who would not cheat them’. Him they saw, he told them, but God they could not see: ‘And in mockery of Christ and his holy ordinance of the of his supper, he gives the sacrament to them, bidding them it and to drink it in remembrance of himself.’ 38 Accounts of the Black Mass in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries seethe and bubble with sacrilege and perversion in which God, Christ and the Virgin Mary are mocked and humiliated and defiled. In the description of a

sacrament eat

Satanic Mass in J. K.

Huysmans’s novel La Bas, published in

probably based

is cursed as an impostor, coward and do-nothing, redeem mankind and has not, who was to come

on

1891 and

fact, Jesus

who was to in glory and has not, who was to intercede for men with the Father and has not. In the Black Mass ritual of one of the present-day Satanist groups, Christ is again denounced as a do-nothing King and coward God, cursed as ‘the pig’ and ‘that nefarious foul-mouthed Jew’

again

and ‘that foul impostor’ who would deny the pleasures of Almighty Satan’s realm and condemn humanity to a life of piety and want, and he is ordered to vanish into the void of his empty heaven.

All this expresses the venomous hatred of Christianity which is an essential component of the Enemy’s worship, but the Devil’s attractions as a god stem largely from the dualistic tendencies in Christianity itself. Satan is supremely powerful on earth and the master of sensual pleasure and untamed desire because so many Christians thought him so. Theologians were not agreed about whether Lucifer rebelled against God originally because he wanted to be God’s equal or whether, knowing this to be impossible, he wanted to cut himself off from God and be the source of his own power and happiness. They all did agree, that he was not God’s equal but a subordinate being, who could act only as God allowed him. But at the same time, Christian insistence on the Devil’s titanic power and references to him as the god and prince of this world—John Knox was still using these terms in Scotland in the sixteenth century and Cotton Mather in Boston in the

however,

seventeenth—tended to create a dualistic attitude to Satan as virtually the independent rival of God and the lord of this world’s satisfactions. There was also an old dualist tradition stemming from the Manichees and the gnostic sects of the early centuries after Christ. The central

belief of this tradition is that the world is evil, matter is evil, and the human soul languishes in the prison-house of matter and the flesh. The good supreme God is far away and the world we know is ruled by evil powers. The brute and blackguard who made the world was identified by some of the Gnostics as the God of the Old Testament, who is described in Genesis as the creator and who is on this hypothesis a savage, vicious and vindictive deity. The effect of this identification is to stand the Old Testament on its head. Its heroes become villains and its villains heroes, including the serpent of Eden, who turns into a messenger sent by the good supreme God to open the eyes of the first man and woman to the evil nature of Yahweh’s creation. The Devil is now either a good angel, the enemy of Yahweh, or remains evil and is identified with Yahweh himself. The same argument turns conventional morality upside down as well, because the Ten Commandments and the laws and moral rules of society turn into the straitjacket which the evil creator devised to keep man under his control. Some Gnostics tried to free themselves from the tangles of this wicked world by strict austerity, but others thought that the way to escape from enslavement to evil was to break all the rules and conventions which evil had inspired. Some rejected the whole social and economic system as the creation of evil. Though Gnostics did not worship the Devil, their identification of God the Father as an evil deity and their other drastic reversals of Christian and conventional values seemed to more orthodox Christians to smell strongly of brimstone, and modern Satanists have looked back to them as a source of ideas and authority. A strikingly gnostic manifesto was issued a few years ago by an American group, the Our Lady of Endor Coven of the Ophite Cultus Sathanas. Our Lady of Endor is the celebrated witch or medium of the Old Testament and Gnostics who revered the serpent of Eden were called Ophites. According to the manifesto, Satanism is ‘the position opposed to the force that brought the cosmos into existence’ and is based on ‘the realization that the universe man’. It identifies Satan as the horned god supposedly in prehistoric cave-paintings, but reproves the portrayed modern witches for worshipping this god as a fertility deity and so falling into the error of devotion to matter. The forbidden knowledge which the serpent of Eden revealed to Adam and Eve was that there is a good God above and beyond the evil force which made the world. is

negative

to

Cain was the first Satanist priest, for Yahweh’s evil character was in gnostic theory shown by his approval of Abel’s blood sacrifice,

which he

preferred

to

Cain’s

offering of assorted

and

peaceable vegetables.

of Christianity, gnostic beliefs were kept alive by in the East and were eventually transmitted to western Europe. The Bogomils, who were flourishing in Bulgaria in the tenth century, played a leading role in this process. They identified the God of the Old Testament as Satan. They said that the good supreme God After the

obscure

triumph

sects

had two sons, Satanel and Michael. Satanel, the elder, rebelled in his wicked pride and he and his angels were ejected from the upper heavens. Satanel made the lower heavens and the earth and made Adam’s body, but could not give him life. He persuaded the good God to breathe a soul into Adam and then set out to corrupt and enslave humanity. He seduced Eve and fathered Cain on her and imposed himself on the deluded Jews as their god. When his younger brother, Michael, came to earth as Jesus, Satanel had him crucified but lost his limitless power and, as a sign of this, the last syllable of his name, el,

‘god’. The

Bogomils

Cathars,

who

sent

were so

missionaries to the West and influenced the strong in the south of France by the early thirteenth

century that an armed crusade was organised to destroy them. Like the Bogomils, the Cathars believed that matter is fundamentally evil and that the world was created by an evil god, Yahweh or Satan, who succeeded in imprisoning human souls in bodies of flesh and founded the Christian Church to keep man enslaved to him. They rejected all the Christian sacraments and disapproved of marriage and the procreation of children, which consigned more souls to imprisonment in bodies and had been ordained by the evil Yahweh—‘be fruitful and multiply’. Though their high adepts led strictly ascetic lives, some of them deliberately starving themselves to death in a rite known as the Endura, ordinary believers were encouraged to slake their lusts casually rather than marry and so solemnise sin. The Catholic Church, not surprisingly, concluded that people who denounced God the Father as evil, the heroes of the Old Testament as demons and the Church as an institution of Satan must be worshippers of the Devil. The Cathars did not worship the lord of this world, far from it, but their beliefs and the accusations made against them helped to form a pattern which real worshippers of Satan could adopt. Various other groups of Satanists, real or supposed, were ferreted out during the Middle Ages. 39 Luciferans in Germany in the thirteenth

century

were

accused of believing that the Devil had been

wrongfully

expelled from heaven. One day he would recover his rightful place there and his faithful human flock would join him there in eternal delight. Meanwhile they adored him on earth at secret, orgiastic meetings by night, murdered people as acceptable sacrifices to him and did everything they could to offend the Christian God. A group of heretics discovered in Austria in 1315 also believed that the fallen Lucifer and his angels would return in triumph to heaven one day, and when they met each other, they said, ‘May the injured Lucifer greet you’. In 1384 a sect was found in Germany believing that Lucifer was the brother of God, who had unjustly put him out of heaven by force. But the time would come when Lucifer would reconquer heaven, hurl God out of it and open the pearly gates to his human followers. After their children had been baptised in church and smeared with salt as a protection against demons, these heretics took care to rub the salt off. In 1387 a group in Lombardy were accused of believing that the Devil had created the visible world and was more powerful than God. They worshipped him in the form of a cat, whose hindquarters they kissed. Other buzzing nests of Satanism were smoked out in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But by this time the heavy artillery of persecution was being aimed mainly at the witches. The pattern of beliefs and practices associated with witchcraft was strongly influenced by the reversal of Christian and conventional values of the Cathars and other heretics. The same accusations made against them were now brought against witches. They worshipped the Devil, frequently in animal or grotesque form, at secret meetings. They renounced God, Christ and the Church. They desecrated the sacraments and the cross. They held licentious, perverted and cannibal orgies. If the accusations against them were fundamentally true, as in some cases they probably were, the witches were dualists who believed that Christians saw everything the wrong way round, and that the God of Christians was evil and his Enemy good. They seem to have been influenced by the old gnostic tradition of the evilness of God the Father and the sinister nature of the Bible and Christian morality, hut probably more forcefully by Christian dualism itself. If Satan had been exiled from heaven to earth, if he had become the god of this world and the ruler of earthly ambitions and fleshly delights, then he had attractions for those whose and appetites Christian society denied. This is the theme of the hopes of the pact with the Devil. In return for a man’s soul, stories popular Satan

promises

riches,

women,

worldly pleasures and rewards, power and status, youth and vigour, knowledge and intellectual mastery. him

It is because he is lord of this world that the Devil the bargain.

can

make and keep

Christian beliefs and practices also lie behind the Black Mass. From a popular point of view, a ceremony in which the divine is made present in bread and wine and then consumed, must inevitably appear to be a magical ritual of formidable power, and Christians used the Mass for practical magical purposes. Masses were said for good weather, to obtain children, for the sick, or to bless animals and fishing boats, which suggested that the ceremony contained inherent magic force. So did the doctrine that a priest could say Mass effectively even if he was in a state of sin, because he did not say it in his own person but in the person of Christ. The Mass seemed to have a power of its own, regardless of the purposes for which it was used and the spiritual condition of those who used it. As a result, it was sometimes put to sinister uses. A Church Council in the seventh century condemned priests who said Mass for the dead against a living man, intending to kill him. Giraldus Cambrensis, who died about 1220, said that priests were doing the same thing in his day, and a fifteenth-century work, Dives and Pauper, also complains about it. In 1455 the nuns of a convent at Wennigsen, near Hanover, chanted at the top of their voices the antiphon ‘In the midst of life we are in death’ as a murderous incantation against a group of ecclesiastical officials who had been sent to reform their Order. In 1500 the cathedral chapter of Cambrai said Masses against their bishop, with whom they were having a quarrel. In France in the 1670s numerous priests were convicted of using the Mass in evil magic and it was discovered that Madame de Montespan, mistress of Louis XIV, had employed the Mass combined with child-sacrifice in an attempt to retain her hold on the royal affections. From the use of the Mass in white magic came its use in black magic and its adoption by Satanists, who turned it into a ritual in honour of their Master, in which Christ was forced into the consecrated host by the inherent power of the ceremony there to be abused, shamed, punished and defeated. Satanism is not based on the worship of evil, but on the belief that what Christianity calls evil is really good. The Prince of Darkness is the

itself,

Bearer of Light. The Christian God is a false god and Christian a jail. Satanists condemn the Christian virtues of humility, self-denial, chastity, mercy, forgiveness, as the pallid and spineless ethics of a slave-mentality, and exalt against them pride, self-assertion, lust, greed, cruelty and revenge. They value the immediate satisfactions true

morality

of the

body and this world,

not

the distant prospect of dis-

faraway heaven. Man, they say, is an animal, violent, selfish, rapacious and dirty. Let him be so, and glory in it. The Church of Satan has noticed that ‘evil’ spelled diabolically embodied

spiritual

bliss in

a

backwards is ‘live’ and has rewritten the Golden Rule to read ‘Do unto others as they do unto you’. 40 Devil-worship and Black Masses are rare, as they have always been, because in practice few people want to reverse all conventional values. Modem Satanism has been far more a theoretical and literary phenomenon, or sometimes a cynically commercial one, than anything else. Its in the Devil is made image of man, man in revolt against the tyranny of God, the Church, society and whatever else constrains and restrains him. There was an old Christian tradition which pictured Satan and his angels, after their fall, lamenting their loss of heaven. This tradition did not approve of the fallen angels, but it did present them as having human reactions and therefore a certain dignity. The beliefs of some medieval heretics have the same quality. The injured Lucifer, unjustly expelled from heaven and one day to regain his rightful place there, has a humanity and appeal absent from the brutish monster who presides over hell in Christian art. The myth of Lucifer defiantly asserting himself against the whole structure of authority and web of circumstance which holds him down can strike a responsive chord in human hearts. It inspired a vision of him as a great romantic figure, as he is in the early books of Paradise Lost—the supreme rebel, self-willed and self-confident, fearless in the face of superior force, unhumbled in defeat, ‘hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky’ and yet so obdurate in his pride that when he surveys the terrible abyss to which he and his satraps have been exiled, he says, ‘Here at least we shall he free’: The Almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: Here we may reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition though in Hell: Better to

reign

in Hell than

serve

in Heaven.

Mario Praz, in The Romantic Agony, has explored the influence of Milton’s Satan on romantic writing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Schiller said of Paradise Lost that in reading it we automatically take the side of the loser and even the mildest reader is for a moment transformed into a fallen angel. Blake made the famous comment, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: ‘The reason Milton wrote in

fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.’ Shelley, who burned with impatience for the dissolution of Christianity and wished he was Antichrist, thought Milton’s Satan morally far the superior of Milton’s God. Byron liked to imagine himself a fallen being, expelled from heaven and wandering the earth accursed. The fact that he had a deformed foot probably helped, though at a deeper level, in Praz’s phrase, ‘It was in transgression that Byron found his own life-rhythm’. 41 Witchcraft was romanticised in the same spirit: ‘Tis the Eve of St George, a dark wild night, the pale moon can but struggle through the thick massing clouds. The witches are abroad, and hurtle swiftly aloft, a hideous covey, borne headlong on the skirling blast. In delirious tones they are yelling foul mysterious words as they go: ‘Har! Har! Har! Altri! Altri!’ To some peak of the Brocken or lonely Cevennes they haste, to the orgies of the

Sabbat, the infernal Sacraments, the dance of Acheron, the sweet and fearful

fantasy of evil.

.

.

.

42

The same intellectual developments which made the Devil and the witch redundant ate away at belief in God as well, and Wesley’s conviction that to disbelieve in witchcraft was virtually to discard the Bible altogether was closer to the mark than is always recognised. If Satan and his covens were no longer needed to explain events, neither was God. Romantics condemned Christianity as the religion of a false god, which had fettered men’s instincts in a despotic and unnatural morality. Belief in the individual’s overriding right to fulfilment, a new attack on the injustices of society, and a deep and magical distrust of reason and preference for feeling, imagination and inspiration as guides to truth, led to what would have been generally regarded not so long before as a

diabolically inspired justification of evil. ‘All virtue is born from a false principle’,

says Count Bressac in de

Sade’s Justine: What is virtue if it cannot prevent the tyranny of the strong over the or the rich over the poor, or those who are in power over those who are not in power? Filled with the will for power, the voices of and lo, the most virtue forge irons in which to chain men despicable creature, the most awkward lout, the worst charlatan that has ever appeared in history—behold him a leader—behold him

weak,

.

.

.

a

paragon of virtue. Behold all his

become

holy dogmas,

ravings consecrated, all his lies mysteries!

all his idiotic tricks,

the voluptuousness of pain and destruction, Sade the evilness of the world, the meretricious worthlessness proclaimed of Christ, the falseness of morals. Another character in Justine, the bandit In books

chief,

celebrating

says:

The poor must suffer! It is one of nature’s laws. Their existence is necessary to create prosperity. This truth makes tyrants and exploiters possible. Nature wills it thus. When her secret workings make us do evil it is because evil is necessary to her scheme. Let no one be frightened or hindered if his soul forces him to evil. Let him commit crimes without regrets as soon as he feels the necessity! It is resisting such an urge that men act against nature.

only by

century has gained further impetus from ‘decadent’ nineteenth-century literature and its enthusiasm for scarlet sins and purple passions, from Baudelaire and Swinburne, from the rebellion against Victorian bourgeois morality, especially in relation to sex, from the continued romantic loathing of Christianity and nostalgia for paganism. Swinburne expressed his feelings about the Christian faith of the poetess Christina Rossetti, in a letter to her brother William:

Practising

Satanism in

our

own

Good Satan! what a fearful warning against the criminal lunacy of theolatry! It is horrible to think of such a woman—and of so many otherwise noble and beautiful natures—spiritually infected and envenomed by the infernal and putrefying virus of the Galilean

serpent! 43 Crowley, who greatly admired Swinburne and used Swinburne's poetry in his magical rituals, grew up against this background and welcomed its pagan pantheism and its detestation of Christianity, which his own narrow upbringing among the Plymouth Brethren had already implanted in him. Going rather further than Shelley, he decided Aleister

that he himself was Antichrist and the Great Beast of Revelation and that his mission was to destroy Christianity and plant the new religion of Crowleyanity on its grave. In 1916 he awarded himself the title of Magus after solemnly baptising a toad as Jesus of Nazareth and crucifying it, reviling it in its agonies as ‘the slave god’. Crowley in

turn is the spiritual ancestor of contemporary groups which share his hatred of the Galilean serpent and his sweet and fearful fantasy of evil. ‘I used to wonder at and pity the people who sell their souls to the Devil,’ Madame Blavatsky told W. B. Yeats, ‘but now I only pity them. They do it to have somebody on their side.’ 44

Chapter Nine

The Side of the Left

In 1968

building a new road in County Donegal in Ireland downed to fell a tree which stood in the road’s path, because known to belong to ‘the little people’. Attempts to persuade men

tools and refused it

was

another contractor to cut the tree down failed for the same reason and in the end the local council decided to leave the tree alone and re-route the road. Throughout most of history most people have believed that beside its human and animal population the world is thronged by multitudes of spirits. Many of them may be helpful or harmful in different moods and circumstances, but some are feared as unfailingly vicious and malevolent. They cause death, disease, insanity, sterility, pollution, fire and storm, nightmares and unreasoning terror. They supply an explanation of undeserved misfortune and suffering. They account for the stealthy penetration of evil ideas and impulses into the mind. They are the cause of poltergeist disturbances, extra-sensory perception, and outbursts of else hysteria, anything personality, upsetting multiple and mysterious for which no preferred explanation is available. A good deal of blame can be lumped on their shoulders which might otherwise be turned self-destructively inwards or against the fabric of society itself. Hobgoblins, witches and assorted bogles also come in handy for scaring children and teaching them to be good. Reginald Scot, an author of the sixteenth century who shared Charles Dickens’s opinion that belief in evil spirits could be put down to the baleful influence of nursery maids and child-minders, gave a long list of frightening beings of which, he said, people were made so terrified in childhood as to be afraid of their own shadows. The list includes the Devil with horns and

DOI: 10.4324/9781003363743-9

The Side

of the Left

tail, witches, hags, elves, satyrs, fauns and other wood spirits, the little mischievous fairies called urchins, centaurs, dwarfs, giants, imps, nymphs, changelings, the incubus, Robin Goodfellow, the mare, the man in the oak, the hell-wain which carted sinners off to the next world, the hobgoblin and something called Boneless. Ruth Tongue, the folklorist, recalled that as a child she was told that Bloody Bones lived in a dark cupboard under the stairs. If you peeped in through a crack you could catch a glimpse of him lurking there, with the blood running down his face, crouched on a heap of naughty children’s bones. If you looked at him through the keyhole he would get you. 1 Creatures like this provide an outlet for rich and lurid fantasy and a in gruesome invention. So did the demons of medieval art. Another example is a thing called the Nuckelavee, which comes from the Lowlands of Scotland. The Nuckelavee lived in the sea but could also move about on land, riding a horse of hideous aspect. Some said

delight

that the horse and rider were joined together like a centaur. The of huge size and had an enormous head, like a man’s but with a projecting piggish snout, which rolled unsteadily about on its shoulders as if it might fall off. It had no hair and no skin and if you saw it, you would see the thick sinews moving and stretching in its raw red flesh and the tar-black blood flowing in its yellow veins. It hated humankind and never rested from doing them harm. If the crops were blighted, if there was a drought, if an epidemic struck men or beasts, if the cattle strayed and fell over the cliffs, it was the Nuckelavee’s doing. 2 Evil spirits have various origins. Some are the dead or their keepers. Some are gods and goddesses who have come down in the world. Some are nature spirits, connected with trees, hills, lakes, clouds, or with the elements of fire, air, earth and water. Some are fallen angels, diseased with pride or lust. Some may contain a lingering memory of old races and peoples vanished long ago. Some are the creations of philosophers monster was

and others of rustics. But some are simply malignant and horrible things which crouch in the shadows and corners and on the borders of life. The age-old belief in hostile spirits is not fully accounted for by putting them in pigeonholes according to their social functions and historic

origins.

Behind it is

an

uncalculated and universal human

experience—the recognition of an evil presence, like the sense of something following you silently along a lonely road, when you know that you must not run from it and you must not look back to make sure it is not there, because if you do either, you will acknowledge it and let it in on you.

The Side 1

of the Left

Lords of the Threshold Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Lewis Carroll, Through the

Looking-Glass

The Greek word daimon turned into our ‘demon’ under Christian influence because the Church condemned the pagan gods and spirits as evil powers. Earlier it was a vague term for any supernatural being, which might be good or bad or a mixture of both. Anything strange, incomprehensible and unexpected, including stray thoughts arising in the mind from below the conscious threshold, could be put down to ‘some god’ or ‘some daimon’. It was also believed that each man was accompanied through life by a daimon which was responsible for his good and bad luck, for all those things that happened to him that were not explicable by ordinary cause and effect. There were similar beliefs in northern Europe, where each man had his guardian fetch or double, and the Norse word fylgja, ‘fetch’, also meant ‘luck’ and ‘fortune’. In the late pagan Mediterranean world philosophers peopled the earth and its atmosphere with myriads of daimones, intermediate beings between gods and men. Some of them were good and made the crops and herds fertile or carried prayers from human beings to the gods and warnings and advice in the other direction. Others were evil and caused damage and misfortune on earth and stirred up wars, quarrels, rage and criminal passions in men. This picture of a world of spirit-forces was inherited

by Christianity. All actions have attendant dangers—even sitting still induces cramp —and where we ruefully deduce from the accident statistics that it may be even more dangerous to stay at home than go out, people who did not believe in accidents thought that evil spirits were attracted to any human activity. Generally, the times of maximum vulnerability are when you start to do anything and when you finish it. For centuries builders performed special rites when laying foundations and topping out, which still survive in attenuated form. Even so, a new house might dangerous that the owner would pay needy or reckless live in it for him for a while. to people evil Similarly, gathers round the childbed and the deathbed, the start line and finishing post of life, round a wedding at which two people leave their own families to begin a new one, and round ploughing and harvesting, the opening and closing of an agricultural cycle. All this is part of a deep feeling that crossing a threshold or boundary of any

be considered so

kind is

another,

dangerous, whether it involves moving from one place to from one period of time to another, or from one type of

activity or condition to another. The place or state from which you begin is comparatively safe, and so is the new place or state to which you move, once you are settled in it, but the journey across the noman's-land between them is fraught with peril. During it you are temporarily out of place. You have broken one order of things and not

yet established another, and so you are the magnet and prey of the evil powers of disorder. The same principle operates in many children’s games and in baseball and cricket, in which a player is safe in certain recognised areas but at risk when he moves between them. The threshold of a house is by long tradition an uncanny place, where the realms of indoors and outdoors meet, and a new bride has to be lifted over it. Medieval Jews considered it not merely polite but an essential precaution to go with a traveller on his way out of a village, when he crossed the boundary from the settled community to the noman's-land outside, and to watch him out of sight. Our own custom of visitors out of our houses may have in its background something seeing more than formal courtesy. Another example is the surviving superstition that if you leave your house and find you have forgotten something, you must not casually go back in for it. You should either get it handed out to you through a window, but not the door, or if you have to return indoors yourself, you should sit down and pretend to have finished your journey, presently setting out again as if anew. Otherwise, you are out of place, which brings bad luck. In the Highlands of Scotland there was a strong reluctance to be the one to cut the last sheaf of corn at harvest-time. Whoever did cut it was expected to suffer. His crops would fail and he would have to feed all through the winter the evil spirit of famine, an old hag named the Cailleach: he might in fact find himself housing a real old woman who was homeless and had nowhere to go. Midday and midnight are boundaries which are traditionally uncanny and demon-haunted. So is twilight, which is the fairy time. It is best not to die at twilight, if possible, because you may be carried off by the fairies. Dawn, on the other hand, is generally a blessed time and witches, fairies and evil beings of the night are routed by the crowing of the cocks. In 1566 a man named John Walsh, of Netherbury in Dorset, was accused of consorting with malignant fairies. He said there were three kinds of fairies, the white, the green and the black, of which the black were the worst. When he wanted to speak to them he

prehistoric barrows at midnight or between twelve and midday. Quarterdays and the time of the full moon are also suitable for having dealings with fairies and so are other demarcation days in the year, May Day, Lammas and Hallowe’en. There is a close connection between evil and dirt, which again has to do with boundaries because, as Mary Douglas has pointed out, dirt is ‘matter out of place’. 3 Anything regarded as dirty is spiritually as well as physically noxious. A common Jewish term for demons was ‘spirits of uncleanness’ and they were believed to swarm at privies and rubbish heaps and among ruins, which are the ‘dirt’ or detritus left over from former occupation. Unwashed hands were contaminated by evil spirits which polluted food they touched and made people ill, diseases themselves being demons in Jewish tradition, taken into the body with the food. Christians also constantly talked of sin as ‘impurity’ and demons as unclean beings. ‘Bog’, which is an old word for an evil spirit, is also slang for a latrine and demonologists made the same link. Nicolas Remy has a chapter on the filthiness of demons in which he explains why it is right to call Satan the unclean spirit: went to

certain

one at

as all his actions and purposes and character that we should consider this name to be aptly applied to him; but also because he takes immoderate delight in external filth and uncleanness. For often he makes his abode in dead bodies; and if he occupies a living body, or even if he forms himself a body out of the air or a condensation of vapours, his presence therein is always betrayed by some notably foul and noisome stench. Most often, indeed, he dwells in those parts of the body which, like the bilge of ships, harbour the excremental waste of the body. 4

It is

not

only because the Devil is,

show, impure

in his

nature

Cleanliness is next to godliness because dirtiness is demonic, a principle which still induces in many who are not obviously religious a holy horror of dirt. On the other hand, some saintly Christians of the past were noted for their dirtiness. Bede remarks approvingly of St Cuthbert, for instance, that he kept his boots on for a year at a time, only taking them off for the Washing of the Feet in church each Maundy A very holy person might be singularly dirty, not only because in his concentration on spiritual things he paid no heed to his body, but also perhaps because his sanctity was proof against ‘matter

Thursday. 5 out

of place’

as

ordinary people’s was not.

Harpies, or ‘tearers’, of Greek legend were supernatural birdwomen, closely associated with dirt. They preyed on the old and blind King Phineus, swooping down and snatching his food, and whatever scraps they left they fouled with their droppings, so that he lived in the middle of a disgusting stench and he himself was caked with dirt. Virgil describes the Harpies in the Aeneid as ‘birds with girls’ countenances, and a disgusting outflow from their bellies’. Their feet are clawed, they utter horrid screams and their faces are pale with loathsome hunger. They seem to have been modelled on carrion-eating birds, or possibly The

on

the Indian fruit-bat. 6

2

The

Hierarchy of Hell dost thou see them On the holy ground, How the troops of Midian Prowl and prowl around?

Christian,

Hymns Ancient and Modern In the Middle Ages evil spirits were thought to be at large in the world in enormous profusion. It was deduced from Revelation that a third of the heavenly host had fallen with Lucifer. Estimates varied, but according to some authorities there were originally 399,920,004 angels

altogether, so that the total of fallen angels was 133,306,668. In some possession cases staggering numbers of demons were believed to be infesting the victim. At Vienna in 1583 priests succeeded in expelling 12,652 evil spirits from a girl of sixteen. Her grandmother, aged seventy, was burned alive after being found guilty of causing the possession by witchcraft and keeping demons about the place in the form of flies in bottles. In 1610 it was discovered that Sister Madeleine de la Palud of the Ursuline convent at Aix-en-Provence was possessed by a full legion of demons, 6,666 of them, headed by Beelzebub, Leviathan, Baalberith, Asmodeus and Astaroth. It was recognised that some demons were more powerful than others, so much so that exorcists who encountered obstinate minor demons which they could not dislodge from a possessed patient would order Lucifer and other great princes of darkness to discipline their tiresome

subordinates. Similarly, the grimoires, or textbooks of magic, advise the magician to threaten a disobedient demon with the anger of his superior. The generally accepted classification of angels, worked out by Pseudo-Dionysius in about 500, was a system of nine orders divided into three

hierarchies, the

nine orders corresponding to the nine spheres of the first heavens. The hierarchy consisted of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, the second of the Dominations, Virtues and Powers, the third of the Principalities, Archangels and Angels (though later authors sometimes

varied the order). Some demonologists classified the fallen angels in the same way. Sebastien Michaelis, the Inquisitor of Avignon who was called in as a consultant in the Aix possession case, thought that the leaders of all the nine orders of angels had followed Lucifer, who is now chained in hell and commands his forces from there. Beelzebub and Leviathan, the demons of pride and heresy, ranked next to Lucifer among the Seraphim and the fourth seraph was Michael, the highest angel to resist Lucifer. Asmodeus, the demon of lust, was also a seraph.

Baalberith, the inspirer of murder and blasphemy, was the leader of the Cherubim. Astaroth, the lord of sloth, was the first of the Thrones, and Belias, the demon of arrogance and folly, of the Virtues. 7 On the other hand, Alphonsus de Spina, writing in the fifteenth century, said that these names belong to the Devil himself in his different aspects. He is called Lucifer as the chief of the fallen angels and the tempter of both Adam and Christ, Diabolus for pride, Satan as the Enemy, Demonium for iniquity, Leviathan for avarice, Asmodeus for lust, Behemoth for gluttony, Belial as the unbridled one, Beelzebub as the lord of flies. De Spina divided the lesser demons into ten categories according to their special functions, including fates, poltergeists, incubi, nightmares, and those that have dealings with witches. He thought that each man is accompanied through life by a demon who tempts him and an angel who guards him, and similarly each town and castle has its guardian angel and attendant demon. Grouping evil spirits by their functions was another way of trying to bring order into demonology, and they were sometimes classified in terms of the Seven Deadly Sins. The list in Peter Binsfeld’s Tractatus (1589) has Lucifer as the demon of pride, Mammon of avarice, Asmodeus of lechery, Satan of anger, Beelzebub of gluttony, Leviathan of envy, and Belphegor of sloth. Each of these potentates ofsin has a host of subordinate spirits at his command. 8 of classifying even the most and different authors give them different names and functions and put them in varying order of rank. Lucifer and Satan, who ought to be the same being, are sometimes two separate beings. Nor is he, or they, always at the head of the infernal hierarchy. There is an early catalogue of demons in the Testament of Solomon, dating from before 400 A.D. Their chieftain is Beelzeboul and their names come from There

was

no

single accepted system

important demons,

and Assyrian sources. A later different list of names, including gives and Asmodeus and identifies the four ruling Asteroth, Mahoumet, the who afterwards under cardinal points, reappear frequently spirits of names. The later textbooks other lists of various magical supply spirits, most of whose names are weird and bizarre. Some of them can be traced back to Graeco-Egyptian gnosticism and magic, Neo-platonist speculation or the Jewish Cabala, but many are of unknown origin. The difficulty of identifying them is increased by the fact that their names might be deliberately altered or accidentally mangled by successive authors. For example, the Roman god of the underworld, Pluto, turns up in a sixteenth-century magical text as Bludohn.

Jewish, Greek, Egyptian, Babylonian version of the Testament

The

most

striking thing

a

about the lists is that

they generally

do

not

include the great pagan gods. Pluto, Proserpine, Eurynomus and Nergal could be brought in from the classical and Mesopotamian underworlds, but Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, Osiris, Horus, Odin, Thor and other major deities of paganism are usually conspicuous by their absence. The Greek and Roman deities played a different role in medieval and Renaissance Europe, in astrology and as cosmic principles or symbols. In the north Odin and Thor were identified as Satan in disguise. But when it came to naming the Devil’s subordinates, rather than his

impersonations, they were found mainly in the same background from which the Devil himself came, among the evil spiritual powers of the Bible, Jewish traditions, the Cabala and gnostic teaching. For the learned demonologists and the writers on ritual magic, which involved the summoning and control of spirit-forces, the gods and spirits of pagan Europe were not independent entities but masks of the fallen angels who had rebelled against God the Father. Many of the leading demons were originally the gods castigated in the Old Testament as rivals and enemies of Yahweh because many Jews strayed after them. This made them suitable candidates for high office in Satan’s service. So did the fact that King Solomon had taken an unhealthy interest in them, for he had a legendary reputation as a supremely powerful magician and master of evil spirits. Astaroth is a good example of Christian demonology’s lack of understanding of the pagan pantheons. This prince of darkness was originally the great goddess worshipped in Mesopotamia as Ishtar and named Astarte by the Greeks. She was too popular in Palestine for the liking of the Old Testament writers, who called her Ashtoreth, combining

her name with the Hebrew word bosheth, ‘shame’,

as a comment

her sacred prostitutes and the sensuality of her rites. She turned into male demon, said to have atrociously bad breath, and the connection with sex and fertility seems to have been lost in medieval demonology. Milton identifies Astaroth in Paradise Lost as ‘Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns’, and in the 1670s Madame de Montespan sacrificed children to Astaroth and Asmodeus, ‘princes of amity’, in her attempt to retain her hold on Louis XIV’s affections. But Francis Barrett’s The Magus, a magical textbook published in 1801 and based on the earlier grimoires, betrays no inkling of Astaroth’s past. The most important god to be transformed into a demon was Baal, the principal deity in the fertility cult of the Canaanites. The prophets of Baal were defeated by Elijah in the famous and spectacular magical battle on Mount Carmel and the god is fiercely denounced in the Old Testament. Lesser local gods in Syria and Palestine were called Baals as ‘lords’ of their own areas or of special spheres of interest. Baal Berith, was a god who presided over agreements, and Baalberith, Berit, Berith and Beherit all have a place in the later demonology. Berit, for instance, was seen in the form of a purple flame by Catherine Delort, tried as a witch at Toulouse in 1335. Other gods condemned in the Old Testament who turned into lieutenants of Satan include the Phoenician Moloch, Dagon of the Philistines, Milcom, the idol of the Ammonites, Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and Tammuz, the lover of Ishtar. Father Surin discovered while treating the possessed nuns of Loudun that the ruling powers of hell were a trinity of Lucifer, Beelzebub and Leviathan, the last of these being the infernal counterpart of the Holy Spirit, the false Comforter, the bringer of desolation. The same trio are the first three fallen angels in Paradise Lost. Leviathan, the great dragon of the Old Testament, needs no introduction. Beelzebub was the prince of demons in Jewish popular belief at the time of Christ and is so described in the gospels, which accounts for his later prominence in demonology, magic and witchcraft as head of the infernal hierarchy or as second only to Satan, sometimes with the implication that he is the demonic rival and parody of Christ. He was originally Baal Zebul, god of the Philistine city of Ekron and connected in some way with flies. It is from him that the Devil takes his title of Lord of the Flies, which swarm to feast on corruption and which were long believed to on

a

be

generated by rotting corpses. Asmodeus comes from Jewish folklore and in some Jewish tales, as Ashmedai, he is the king of evil spirits. He is probably derived from

Aeshma Daeva, a violent Persian

storm spirit, but the story in the book in which he is in love with the heroine and murders her linked him firmly with lust in the minds of demonologists,

Tobit, husbands, Belial, the demon of lies, of

is another

Jewish chieftain of evil, leader of

the forces of darkness in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Wicked people are sometimes called ‘sons of Belial’ in the Old Testament, and the name is probably a contraction of Hebrew beli yaal, ‘without worth’, or

alternatively ‘without yoke’, hence references

to him as ‘the unbridled one’. Mammon, the demon of avarice, comes from an Aramaic word for wealth or profit and turned into a demon because Jesus said that men could not serve God and mammon.

The Devil's best-known satraps came from the Bible and Jewish and on the other side the great archangels in command of

traditions,

the armies of heaven were also ofJewish origin, but besides them there innumerable lesser spirits. Some were good and some evil, but many were intermediate. They could be classified by the four elements, the four cardinal points, the seven planets and days of the week, the twelve signs of the zodiac and its 360 degrees, and the hours of day and night, with the implication that a spiritual organisation underlies the world of appearances and the arrangement, divisions and boundaries of matter, space and time. These spirits continue the tradition of the swarming daimones of Mediterranean philosophy. Many of them have little or no individual character and are often nothing more than a name artificially chosen or constructed to fit into the system. But there were also the nature spirits, household spirits, fairies and bogies of folk belief, who are far less abstract. Demonologists viewed them too through their own spectacles as demons of the Christian variety and many of them became minor imps. There seems to have been a tendency for fairies to grow smaller in size as their power shrank. But some were not easily reduced and the magic world of faerie continued to exist inside its own mysterious borders, not in heaven nor in hell, not fully were

assimilated

to

the world of demons and

not

quite coinciding

with the

world of men either.

3

Faery Lands

Forlorn

‘But do not despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know.’ J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

The mimsy, gauzy fairies of modern literary invention are saccharinely idealised children. The old land of faerie had an abiding terror in its loveliness, ‘beauty that is an enchantment and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords’.9 Faerie means the state of being enchanted or bewitched, held in a glamour, a deeply alluring and profoundly dangerous condition. When Thomas the Rhymer in the ballad saw the ‘bright lady’, dressed in green and riding by the Eildon Tree, he knelt down on the ground and hailed her as Mary, Queen of Heaven. This both flattered and amused her, for in fact she was the Queen of Elfland, and she gave him an entirely unvirginal kiss and cast an enchantment on him that bound him to her service for seven years. She took him with her, riding as swift as the wind, till came to the they edge of the land of the living and she showed him the three roads that lead out of the world of men. One runs to heaven, one to hell, and one to fair Elfland, where there is no sun, no moon and no stars, and where a mortal must not speak or he will never escape again. Fairies come in all sizes and temperaments, from the tall and lordly fays of the medieval romances and the great enchantresses who are close to being goddesses, to small household, field and flower spirits. All of them are dangerous if offended, but some are generally kindly and helpful, some are mischievous and addicted to practical joking, some are of distinctly uncertain temper and some are downright malignant. The principal Germanic and Scandinavian fairies are the elves, and the Prose Edda distinguishes between two types of elf. The light elves are fairer than the sun to look on and they live in the lovely realm of Alfheim, or Elf-world, but the dark elves, who are blacker than pitch and live down in the earth, are another matter. This may be a distinction between what were originally two different aspects of the same beings, beautiful and good because they promoted fertility but black and sinister because they were the dead. The life-giving sun could be called ‘ray of the elves’ and in Sweden people used to sacrifice to the elves at the beginning of winter, apparently for fertility. On the other hand, the word elf is etymologically the same as modern German alp, ‘nightmare', and although there was an Old English word meaning ‘beautiful as an elf’ there was also the word aelfsiden, ‘nightmare’. The Christian author of Beowulf classes elves with giants and monsters as evil beings, descended from Cain, and it was widely believed that elves and fairies caused disease. Various ailments, including inflammation of the eyes,

sudden lameness and the stitch,

were

attributed

to

elf-shot,

arrows

fired at the sufferers by elves, and elves were also thought responsible for hiccoughs. 10 There are close connections between the fairies and the dead. In Wales the King of Fairies, Gwynn ap Nudd, was also Lord of the Dead. In an Irish story, a young man foolishly stayed out of doors on Hallowe'en and met a troop of fairies. They greeted him merrily, but if he kept his eye steadily on any one of them he saw that it was a neighbour who had died. They shrieked with laughter when he recognised them and crowded round him, trying to pull him into their dance, until he lost consciousness. When he came to, it was morning, he was lying inside a stone circle and his arms were black and blue with the marks of fingers. The Dark Tower of Elfland in the story of Child Roland seems to be the otherworld of the dead. Child Roland went there to rescue his sister and his two older brothers, and came to a circular green hill with terraces running round it. He entered the hill by going widdershins, which is the uncanny direction, to the left and against the course of the sun. Inside it was twilight and the air was warm and soft like an evening in May. He came to a great hall with towering pillars of gold and silver, covered with diamonds and jewels, lit by a single immense carbuncle hanging from the roof and shedding as mild a radiance as the setting sun. Child Roland forced the Elf King to restore his dead brothers to life and free his sister from the spell that held her. The underground hall and its treasures, the evening light, the dead brothers, the fact that the hero is warned on no account to eat or drink anything in Elfland, and possibly the mention of May, suggest the land of the dead. 11 In his Itinerary Through Wales, Giraldus Cambrensis told the story of a priest named Elidor who, when he was a boy of twelve, ran away from home. He had nothing to eat with him and after two days without little men, who led him along a dark path underground beautiful country of rivers and meadows, woods and plains, without sun, moon or stars. The people there were fair and small, with long, luxuriant hair. They disapproved of human beings as a lying, inconstant, ambitious race and, a curious comment from a Christian priest, ‘they had no form of public worship, being strict lovers and reverers, as it seems, of truth’. Their country was rich in gold and Elidor confirmed their opinion of mankind by stealing a golden ball and running off home with it. As a result he could never find his way back to the wonderland again, and even as a grown man he used to shed tears at the memory of it. 12 The absence of sun, moon food he

saw

to

a

two

and

have something to do with the peculiar nature of time in fairyland, which runs much faster than mortal time or seems to be suspended altogether. If dead men tell no tales, they also tell no time, or perhaps fairy time is like the time of reverie and dreaming which is often out of kilter with waking clocks. The fairies are not simply identical with the dead, however, nor is it always clear that people in fairyland are properly dead. As in Child Roland’s case, there are many stories of someone going into a fairy hill and finding there humans thought to have died, but actually carried off by the fairies and still rescuable from what seems to be an enchantment rather than death; though often, if they are rescued, their vitality has been drained away and they do not last long. Robert Kirk, the great authority on Scots fairy lore in the seventeenth century, was found lying dead on a fairy hill and it was believed that the fairies had taken him away and left a changeling body in his place. If you die at twilight, when it is neither day or night, you may find yourself in fairyland where you are not exactly either living or dead. Sometimes people dying before their time, who are known to be a restless folk, are believed to become fairies. In Protestant countries fairyland could succeed to the old role of purgatory as the home of the dead who were not good enough for heaven but not bad enough for hell, but it could alternatively be the Christian limbo, the home of the pagan dead. The Roman Catholic doctrine was that virtuous pagans who had lived before the time of Christ lingered in a special area on the border of the afterworld, where they were not tormented but were excluded from the Divine Presence. In Wales there was a popular belief that the fairies were the spirits of the Druids who died before the coming of Christ: they could not go to heaven, not being Christians, but were too good to be sent to hell. In Cornwall the pixies were frequently explained as the souls of the old prehistoric inhabitants of the country, and elsewhere there are connections between fairies and prehistoric monuments, stone circles and stars may

burial mounds. The fairies

particularly likely to steal children not theology babies dying unbaptised were

were

yet christened, and in Christian

to limbo. also closely connected with demons and witches. The official Christian view made them demons and the lines of demarcation between the dead, evil spirits and witches are blurred in any case. The fact that Christian methods of defence were used against the malice of fairies tended to assimilate them to demons. The name of Jesus was

again consigned Fairies

are

powerful against them, or alternatively they could be dangerously offended by Christian charms: miners in Cornwall preferred not to make the sign of the cross underground. Like demons and witches, the fairies caused disease and other misfortunes, and they played on human desires and imposed convincing illusions on human minds. They lay with men and women in the night and were linked with the nightmare. They shared with witches the activities of flying by night, sinister dancing, stealing babies, taking animal form, and magically draining the milk from cows. Some of them had a greedy thirst for human blood. In the Isle of Man it was believed that if you failed to put water out for the fairies at night they would suck your blood while you slept. In Scotland there were the baobhan sith, vampire fairies resembling the liliths, lamias, striges and estries of Continental Europe. Four men on a hunting expedition in a lonely part of Ross encountered the baobhan sith, so the story went, and only one survived to tell the tale. Sheltering in a deserted hut for the night, they wished they had their sweethearts with them and instantly four pretty girls came in, dressed in green. One of the men sang while the others danced with the girls, but after a time he saw that drops of blood were spattering on the floor. Terrified, he ran outside and hid. In the morning he found the bodies of his friends in the hut, drained dry of blood. 13 The categories of fairy, enchantress, witch, nightmare, bloodsucker and child-scarer melt into each other. The word ‘hag’ has been used to mean: an ugly old woman; an ugly old witch; a goddess or enchantress in her form as a hideous crone; a female evil spirit; a ghost; a nightmare —‘hag-ridden’ originally meaning to be afflicted by the nightmare; a witch who sucks children’s blood by night; or an uncanny light said to be visible at night on horses’ manes and human hair. It has also been applied to the classical Furies and Harpies. To this day in the isolated north-western area of Rumania, where a child is never left alone in a room and the farm horses wear red to keep evil spirits off, there is uneasiness about Fata Padourii, the Girl of the Woods, who like Pan is responsible for eerie sounds in the forest. The young shepherds are warned to keep quiet, stay still and make the sign of the cross if they hear her, and on no account to look back over their shoulders at her. Fata Padourii steals unguarded children and carries off sheep, and there is a story of how, angry with a shepherd, she came to his hut one night in the form of a beautiful girl and killed him with love. She is also the witch in the local version of the story of Hansel and Gretel. 14 The cannibal witch in Hansel and Gretel operates a stickily alluring

a house made of gingerbread and sugar, which is an of the cruel that in stories for children turns something example fancy innocently attractive into a hideous trap, but also fits into the theme of the menace which in the world of faerie lurks behind pleasing appearances. Like Fata Padourii, witches of this type are often far more than nursery bogies. The Russian folk-tale witch Baba Yaga, who cooks and eats children, flies through the air in an iron kettle, stirring up storms, and in one story three horsemen belong to her, who are night, day and the sun. She lives in a clearing in the forest, in a rotating hut which whirls round and round on fowls’ legs. The hut is surrounded by a fence made of human bones and skulls. The doorways are feet, the bolts are hands and the lock is a mouth with sharp teeth. Baba Yaga is an enchantress, ogress, witch and monster. She has stone teeth and breasts, wooden legs, and a huge blue-veined nose, and can readily change shape, turning herself into a giant sow or an alluring but murderous apple orchard. One reason which was given for the fairies habit of stealing children was that they had to send some of their number to hell every year, or every seventh year, and they preferred to pay this tithe to Lucifer with human captives when they could. The tithe implies that they were the Devil’s subjects. In Norwegian, Scottish and Irish folklore the fairies are sometimes identified as the fallen angels, cast down from heaven to earth, a notion which was current in the Shetlands in the 1950s. In a rhyme from the Isle of Barra, recorded in the nineteenth century, the fairies say:

child-snare,

Not of the seed of Adam are we, Nor is Abraham our father; But of the seed of the Proud Angel Driven forth from heaven. 15 A Manx prayer against fairies is: ‘God preserve me from the children of pride.’ But more often in folk belief the fairies are not out-and-out demons but intermediate beings, too bad to be among God’s angels but not wicked enough for Satan’s armies. Robert Kirk decided that fairies are ‘of a middle nature betwixt man and Angel, as were daemons thought to be of old’, and there is an Irish tradition that the fairies are those of the fallen angels who were more deluded than positively evil. As they were tumbling down from heaven the Son mercifully held up his hand and prevented them from going to hell. The worst of them, fell into caves and mineshafts on earth and became called

fly-the-lights,

gnomes. Others fell into the sea, where they live as mermaids and water spirits, others into woods and others landed near the homes of men and are household fairies. In this and similar traditions a bridge is built between the fallen angels of Christian theory and the elementals, who were originally pagan nature spirits. In the fifth century A.D. the pagan philosopher Proclus classified the daimones in five groups, four of them connected with the elements of fire, air, earth and water, and a fifth category

which lived underground. Michael Psellus, a Byzantine writer of the eleventh century, added a sixth group, the lucifugi or ‘fly-the-lights’. Western authors used the same classification and Guazzo, for example, lists six types of demon. The spirits of fire live in the upper air and have no dealings with men. The air spirits cause storms. Those of the earth set traps for people in the woods or lurk in the fields and lead wayfarers astray at night, and some of them delight to live in secret with men, these being incubi and poltergeists, and possibly the household fairies. Water spirits are fierce and treacherous, causing storms at sea, wrecking ships and drowning people, and frequently appearing in female form because they live in a soft element. The spirits which live underground most dangerous of all, attacking miners and treasure-hunters, causing earthquakes, fires and winds. The fly-the-lights, who naturally are never seen in the daytime, are totally inscrutable and beyond human understanding, ‘being all dark within, and shaken with icy passions; malicious, restless and perturbed’. 16

are

the

and

These elementals are the medieval and modern survivals of the old nature is alive as men are, that spirits live in every field and

belief that

tree, stream and hill, cloud and boulder. Guazzo condemned them all as evil demons, though other writers of the period allowed that some of

them might be kindly or no worse than mischievous, as they were in folk belief. The spirits of fire, air, earth and water were eventually named salamanders, sylphs, gnomes and undines. Most fairies tended to be classified as sylphs, which was a stage in their debasement into little

gauze-winged sprites. A French theologian and demonologist of the early seventeenth century, Sinistrari, suggested, as Kirk did independently, that there were beings of a middle nature between men and angels. He called them demons in the old sense of daimones, spirits which might be good or bad. They had bodies of fire, air, earth or water. The fiery and airy ones were the Watchers who came down to earth and mated with the daughters of men. Similarly in the nineteenth century, Cardinal New-

considered that besides the good angels and the evil demons there middle class of spirits, ‘neither in heaven, nor in hell; partially fallen, capricious, wayward; noble or crafty, benevolent or malicious as the case might be’. They inspired groups, nations and races: man

was a

Hence the action of bodies

politic and associations, which is so different from that of the individuals who compose them. Hence the character and the instinct of states and governments, of religious communities and communions. I thought they were inhabited by unseen

intelligences.

In 1837 he Watchers:

The

wrote to

a

friend

identifying

these

intelligences

with the

of the Fathers hold that, though Satan fell from the the fell before the deluge, falling in love with the beginning, Angels of men. This has daughters lately come across me as a remarkable solution of a notion which I cannot help holding that there are a with deal of in with beings great good them, yet great defects, who are the of certain institutions. Take England, animating principles with many high virtues, and yet a low Catholicism. It seems to me that John Bull is a spirit neither of heaven nor hell. 17 mass

.

.

.

.

.

4

Animals,

.

.

.

.

Demons and Witches

I have known some horses and a good many more pigs who I believe harbored evil intent in their hearts. I will go further and say that all cats are wicked, though often useful. Who has not seen Satan in their sly faces? Charles Portis, True Grit

Fairies, elementals, demons and witches are entangled not only with each other but with the animal world. All of them may take animal form, and some animals in any case are not what they appear to be. It is prudent, for instance, to be kind to a stray cat that chances by and give it a saucer of milk, for it may be a creature of power and it is best to stand well with it. Birds, snakes, hares, toads and weasels are also frequently not what they seem, but any animal may be either a magical creature

in its

own

were

right

or

something supernatural

widely believed

in

disguise.

be a fairy race, sometimes explained as those of the fallen angels who fell into the sea when they expelled from heaven. In the Highlands of Scotland, if you see a

Seals have been

to

horse feeding

quietly beside a loch

or

waiting helpfully at a ford across

a stream, it may be a kelpie. If you are unwise enough to climb on its back you will stick to it and it will carry you down into deep water, tear you to pieces and gobble you up. When several people want to ride on a kelpie it accommodatingly lengthens its back to make room for them all. It will also take the form of a man to enjoy the love of human women, when it can he told by the sand or weed in its hair, or it may disguise itself as a woman and beg hospitality, hoping to be put to bed with the daughters of the house, whose blood it will drink in the

A kelpie is cold-blooded, like a fish, and dislikes cooked food. be killed, and if it is it dissolves into a puddle of water. It is the spirit which accounts for accidental drownings in rivers and lakes, but like many other supernatural entities its hunger is sexual as well as murderous. Sometimes the kelpie is shown in a kindlier light. It carries off a girl because it longs for a wife and family life, as the Watchers of legend did, and when it has her safe it treats her gently. There are similar tales in which a mermaid falls in love with a man and draws him to her, but he drowns because he cannot live in her element. Fairylands and the realms of enchantresses generally have the same quality of being on a different plane, in which a mortal either dies or is drained of his vitality.

night. It

can

There

are

dangerous

water elementals

everywhere

in

Europe,

including

the Germanic nixies, which are freshwater mermaids and mermen. They are green all over and have fishtails, but they show themselves as grey horses and in attractive human shape to lure and drown the unwary. The belief in sea and river spirits longing for prey accounts for the superstition that it is dangerous to cheat them by rescuing someone from drowning, which was reported to be still firmly established in the west of Ireland as late as 1926. A writer in 1901 gave several examples from his own experience in the Orkneys and Shetlands: One

Orkney

man

flatly refused

to

take his boat

out to a

drowning

man, and removed the oars so as to make certain that no one else could do so. Another boatman was known to have passed a drowning woman without paying any attention to her; and in a third case of this kind, three men stood and watched a neighbour drown, and then walked calmly home. Similar instances have been recorded

elsewhere, though happily Satan and his demons

not

within very

frequently appeared

recent as

years.

18

animals and Nicolas

Remy explained that they would take whatever shape was convenient. To follow its human master about without arousing comment a demon would be a dog, to carry a witch to the sabbath a horse, to frighten people a bear, to slaughter flocks a wolf. To whisper secrets in a witch’s ear when others were present it would be a fly, to be worshipped it would gladly be a goat, and to creep into houses by night it would be a cat, cats being peculiarly demonic beasts. ‘The Demons assume this form so easily and naturally that they can hardly be distinguished or recognised, unless it be that they are wilder and more savage than is usual in domestic cats. .’19 Witches themselves also changed shape, into to animals and men, or into cats to prowl wolves devour turning There were innumerable stories of people wounding a cat, a by night. a wolf some and finding next day the same or other creature bitch, the a witch. on of body injury Demons sometimes had animal names. Boguet began his Discours des Sorciers with an account of a little girl of eight, Louise Maillat, who in the summer of 1598 ‘was struck helpless in all her limbs so that she had to go on all fours; also she kept twisting her mouth about in a very strange manner’. When weeks went by and she got no better, her father and mother decided that she must be possessed and took her to .

.

be exorcised. It was discovered that five demons had entered her body, their names being Wolf, Cat, Dog, Jolly and Griffon. Louise said that they had been sent into her by a witch named Françoise Secretain, who confessed to the crime and also admitted that the Devil had lain with her in the forms of a dog, a cat and a fowl. She was additionally accused of having turned herself into a wolf, but she would say nothing of that. The Middle Ages inherited the belief in shape-changing from the old pagan world and no doubt from the older prehistoric world beyond that. Gods and spirits had human, animal and many other forms. Heroes, shamans, magicians and witches were partly animals and birds, could understand their languages and exercise power over them, and turn themselves into them like actors changing costume. Ordinary

people

were

less

gifted,

but

they

too

had animal

natures

and

magic

broke through the harriers of appearances. Primitive practices of putting on an animal’s skin and imitating it with such a frenzy of thrusting imagination as to feel one had become the animal and acquired its nature and qualities again implied that the boundaries between men, animals and spirits were fluid. Customs of this kind survived into the Middle Ages. On the first ofJanuary in northern Europe, for example,

people disguised themselves in animal pelts, horns and masks, in what were originally fertility rites, and a baffled comment by Caesarius of Arles in the sixth century shows that they could consider themselves genuinely transformed into animals: ‘What rational person could believe that he would find men of sound mind who would wish to change themselves into a stag or other wild beast?’ 20 Witches were among those who made the attempt and some of the shape-shifting exploits they confessed to are probably reports of imitating and feeling oneself becoming an animal. A person’s spiritual and intellectual components, though normally invisible, might have animal form. In the north a man’s fetch or double could be seen by other people in dreams or by second sight. It would usually be an animal or a woman, and which animal it was depended on the observer’s opinion of its owner. The fetch of a brave man might be a bear, of an enemy a wolf, of a cunning and vicious man a fox. Fetches also took bird form, as eagles, swans or hawks. Wolves and other ferocious animals seen in dreams were sometimes called manna hugir, men’s ‘minds’ or ‘thoughts’, and it is a cardinal principle of magic that an enemy can be injured by directing thought against him. Witches are described turning themselves into animals or birds to harm their victims in classical authors and in the Icelandic sagas, in which they also control spirits in animal form, normally invisible except to the clairvoyant, which are sent out to gather information or attack enemies. This was later a staple ingredient of popular beliefs about witches in England, and has lasted ever since. In Huntingdonshire in 1646, for instance, Frances Moore confessed that she had been given a white cat by a witch named Goodwife Weed, who told her that if she denied God and pricked herself to make the blood run, whoever she cursed and sent the cat to would soon die. She experimented on a man she had a grudge against, cursing him and sending the cat to him, and he died within eight days. A few years ago a British witch told me how she had dealt with a neighbour who had slandered her: ‘I sent my cat to him.’ When I asked what the result had been, she said it made him impotent for a month. 21 The typical English witch of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had

more familiar spirits, imps or mommets, which were in human but much more often in animal form. occasionally They could and were sent out to attack the witch’s victims, as if they they speak were her hostile The familiar be a cat or a dog or a thoughts. might a or it be more unusual a a chicken, might pet, ferret, toad, a hedgehog, one

or

a crow

wasp,

or a

or

blackbird,

a

it might be a butterfly or a The witch fed it on her own grotesque.

rat or a mouse, or

something totally

blood, which implies the formation of a close bond of identity between them, though familiars were quite often passed from one person to another. Some of these supposed imps were presumably real domestic pets, but many sound imaginary and some are clearly so. In a few cases witches said they were forced to keep their familiars busily at work doing harm because otherwise they themselves suffered physical or psychological pain, as if the familiar was the witch’s malice conceived as a semi-independent creature that could turn on her and hound her. Elizabeth Francis of Hatfield Peverel in Essex, tried in 1566, was taught witchcraft by her grandmother, who gave her a white-spotted cat named Satan, which spoke in a strange hollow voice and which she fed on her blood. She eventually passed it on to another witch, Agnes Waterhouse, who also used it to wreak harm on her neighbours and rewarded its successes with a chicken and a drop of her blood. When she needed the wool on which it slept in its basket, she turned it into a toad by praying in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Ursula Kemp of St Osyth in Essex, accused in 1582 of bewitching three women to death, confessed to owning four familiars, two male and two female, which appeared as a grey cat, a black cat, a black toad and a black lamb. The first pair were for killing people and the second pair for inflicting lameness and disease on human victims and killing cattle. She said she had seen one of Elizabeth Bennet’s familiars and it looked like a ferret. Elizabeth Bennet herself said she had two familiars, one black like a dog and the other red like a lion. Alice Manfield had four imps in the form of black cats, two toms and two females, whose names were Robin, Jack, William and Puppet or Mamet. These witches also tended to give their familiars a nice soft bed of wool to lie

on. 22

The black cat has become the stock animal companion and other selt of the witch in the popular stereotype and cats are by old tradition eerie

They prowl stealthily at night, seeking what they may devour, make spine-chilling noises in the dark and they have uncanny eyes they and the enchantress’s power of fascination, of holding a victim helplessly spellbound. Their watchful cruelty, their patient and gloating a mouse or a bird, and their with solitary self-centred inscrutability play factors in their link with Satan and the custom of showing all are probably a cat sitting thoughtfully at the feet ofJudas Iscariot in paintings of creatures.

the Last Supper. There is a persistent belief that cats suck the breath of people asleep and kill babies in this way, which connects them with witches and evil spirits of similar habit. An Edinburgh witch named Isabel Grierson, executed in 1607, was accused of turning herself into a cat and breaking into a neighbour’s house, accompanied by a pestiferous rabble of other cats and by Satan himself in the likeness of a black man. In 1922 Dion Fortune founded the Fraternity of the Inner Light with Moina Mathers, sister of the philosopher Henri Bergson and widow of MacGregor Mathers, the head of the Order of the Golden Dawn. As usually happens in occult groups, the leaders soon fell out and Dion Fortune believed that Mrs Mathers had launched a magical attack against her. She found herself in an increasingly odd and uneasy state of mind. A sense of being menaced crept over her and she began to see brief hallucinatory flashes of evil faces. Next the neighbourhood became mysteriously infested with black cats, which were not hallucinations. The caretaker of the house next door pushed hunches of them off his doorstep with a broom, the street swarmed with them, and it seemed impossible anywhere in London to get away from the penetrating reek of tom-cats. Then one day Dion Fortune saw a huge tabby, twice the size of a tiger, coming down the stairs. She eventually engaged in a battle of wills with Moina Mathers on the astral plane, the plane of imagination. She was successful, but when she returned to normal consciousness she found that from neck to waist she was covered with scratches, as if she had been clawed by a gigantic cat. 23 Besides cats which are demons or witches in disguise, there are tales of fairy cats and cat-monsters. According to a Norse story, written down about 1300, a Dane named Asbjorn and his crew sailed to an island off the northern coast of Norway to kill a giant who lived there. ‘He was a huge troll and a man-eater. his mother, however, was even worse to deal with—she was a coal-black she-cat, and as big as the sacred oxen, which are the biggest.’ When the cat came upon them, fire seemed to be burning in her mouth and nostrils, ‘nor were her eyes pleasant’. She killed twenty of them and the rest ran to their ship and sailed hastily .

away.

.

24

The wolf is another predator of evil repute, associated with sinister carnivorous villain of Little Red Riding Hood and other stories for children. Wolves again are active at night and howl eerily in the darkness, and some of them may not be real wolves but evil spirits, witches or werewolves, human beings temporarily in wolf

enchantments, the

form. The berserks went into battle in wolfskins and howling like wolves, and the werewolf tradition has been bolstered by cases of a type of madness in which the patient believes he is a wolf and behaves like one. The basis of the peculiar horror of the wolf seems to be that, like its cousin the dog, it ate the flesh of men killed in war. There are constant references in the northern sagas to wolves and ravens feasting on the slain and Odin, the god of war and battle-madness, kept two pet wolves, named Ravener and Greed, and two ravens which flew out over the world every day and returned to report on events. Their names were Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory, and they were the god’s questing intelligence ranging over land and sea in the same way that shamans and witches sent spirits in animal form out to gather news. But the ravens also belonged to Odin in his capacity as god of the dead, as corpse-eaters, and poets apparently drew the implication that his thought was frequently murderous, for a battle could be called ‘Huginn’s feast’ and blood ‘Huginn’s sea’ or ‘the raven’s drink’. Like the dragon, the raven was used as a war emblem. William the Conqueror fought at Hastings under a raven banner. also the bird of the trio of Irish war goddesses known collectively individually as the Morrigan, who appeared as ravens or crows on battlefields to glut themselves on the dead, and sometimes as ravens or to hags predict disaster in war. Other names for them were ‘raven’, Macha, ‘crow’, and Nemain, ‘frenzy’. When the hero Badb, Cuchulain shouted his terrible war-cry it was the Badb who struck the enemy with such panic that some of them died of fright, as in the Iliad the goddess Athene gave the berserk Achilles his terror-striking force. The Irish sounded trumpets in battle to imitate the cries of ravens The

raven was or

and invoke the goddesses, and the heads of dead warriors were offered them. They were highly sexed, connected with fertility as well as war, and so prone to seduce heroes that the Badb was identified with the classical lamia. Women fought in battle among the Celts and were possessed of powerful magic. The war goddesses closely resemble the

to

Valkyries and giant battle-women of Germanic and Scandinavian belief in their predictions of impending bloodbaths and their ability to he at one moment a beautiful woman and at another a repulsive crone or monster, and like them perhaps, they may be ultimately descended from priestesses. The Badb is described in her hag form in one story as a

big-mouthed black swift sooty

her left eye. She

wore a

squinting with dingy cloak. Dark as the back of

woman, lame and

threadbare

a stag-beetle was every joint of her, from the top of her head to the ground. Her filleted grey hair fell back over her shoulder. She leant her shoulder against the door-post and began prophesying evil to the

host, and to

utter

ill words.

.

.

.

25

There were huge and evil otherworld ravens in Irish tradition, which came and perched ominously in trees, uttering blood-curdling shrieks. Omens were drawn from the behaviour and cries of ravens, crows and other birds. In later folk belief in Celtic areas and elsewhere in Europe ravens are predominantly sinister, and often connected with the dead, though this might cause a fondness for them on occasion. Soon after the death of George I in 1727 his elderly German mistress, the Duchess of Kendal, was visited by a large black bird, apparently a raven or a crow. She believed it was her royal lover’s soul and cherished it

tenderly. The Celtic tradition of the divine

hag

lies in the

background

of

many of the enchantresses, loathly damsels, witches and otherworldly females of later folk belief, legend and romance. The Badb in her

day might be

seen at a

ford, washing the bloodstained clothes and

weapons of men soon to die in battle, and in Irish and Scottish folklore the Washer at the Ford does the same thing. In Scotland she is grotesquely ugly, with only one nostril, a large projecting front tooth and webbed feet. The Welsh hag Gwrach y Rhibyn, a crone dressed in black who is seen splashing in a pool and whose cry is an omen of death or disaster, may have the same origin, and the clustering of eerie beings at river-crossings, incidentally, is another example of the

dangerousness of boundaries and thresholds. The curious carved figures of leering naked hags with exaggerated sex organs, found on churches in Ireland and elsewhere in the British Isles and called sheelaghna-gigs, 26 may also be based on the divine crone. One of the Morrigan’s descendants is Morgan le Fay, the great enchantress of the Arthurian

legends, to

still called

a

the Morgans, the

goddess by some medieval authors, who is related amorous sea

and drown their victims.

aspect

as a

hideous

fairies of Breton folklore which love

Christian writers took Morgan’s reveal her true character and her close but she resisted such simple categorisation

Many

crone to

relationship with the Devil, and retained something of her original double nature, enchantingly beautiful and revoltingly ugly, bountiful and murderous, goddess and nightmare. Though she plots against the Round Table and sets traps for its heroes, it is she who comes gently to Arthur at the end of his

life

on

5 The

earth,

to

take him

Kingdom

to

Avalon for the

healing

of his wounds.

of the Shells

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and

Evil. Good is the passive that springing from Energy.

obeys

Reason. Evil is the active

Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

spirits, elementals, vampires, werewolves and hobgoblins remain vigorously alive in modern magic. In 1900 a violent row came to

Evil

the boil in the Order of the Golden Dawn, when a group of influential members rebelled against MacGregor Mathers, the Visible Head of the Order: it had several invisible heads as well, with whom only Mathers communicated. Mathers, who was living in Paris at the time, sent his disciple Aleister Crowley to London to deal with the situation. The appearance of this sinister figure on the scene worried the rebels and they directed hostile magical currents against him, or so he said. He knew they had done so because his rubber raincoat burst spontaneously into flames and he found himself in a furious temper for no reason, so much so that horses ran away in fear at the sight of him. In Paris, meanwhile, Mathers baptised a number of dried peas with the names of the rebels and spent an afternoon shaking the peas fiercely in a sieve while summoning up the forces of Beelzebub and Seth-Typhon, commanding them to fall upon his enemies and throw them into discord and confusion. Mathers should have been pleased with the results, as the rebels began quarrelling with each other almost at once, but the effects were not drastic enough for Crowley, who afterwards complained that the dried peas which Mathers rattled in his sieve proved to have been only the ideas in his own head. 27 Later, Mathers and Crowley fell out and fought a magical battle

against each other, or so Crowley again reported. Mathers smote Crowley’s bloodhounds from afar with a current of evil which struck them dead and made his servants ill. Crowley retaliated by summoning the great demon Beelzebub and his forty-nine attendant demons and

packing

them off to chastise Mathers in Paris. Descriptions of them were recorded by Crowley’s wife, Rose, who saw them clairvoyantly. ‘Nimorup, a stunted dwarf with large head and ears. His lips are greeny

bronze and slobbery. Nominon, a large red spongy jelly-fish with one greenish luminous spot like a nasty mess. Holastri, an enormous pink bug.’ 28 Crowley said that the assaults on him now ceased. What other effects the demons’ attentions had on Mathers are not recorded, though when he died in 1918, ostensibly of influenza, there were those who believed that Crowley had murdered him by magic. The names of Beelzebub's infernal retainers come from The Sacred Magic of Abhramelin the Mage, a grimoire which Mathers translated into English and by which both he and Crowley were deeply impressed. The teaching of Abramelin is that the fallen spirits of darkness have been condemned to serve the initiates of magic, defined by Mathers as ‘the science of the control of the secret forces of nature’. All ordinary material phenomena are produced by these demons, working under the orders of the good spirits, the angels of light, but they persistently attempt to escape from the angels’ control and to bring men into subjection to them. Man is half-way between the angelic and the demonic, and each man goes through life accompanied by his own guardian angel and malevolent demon. By following Abramelin’s instructions, the adept of magic can unite himself with his guardian angel. He can then command and control all the demons, the four great princes of the evil of the world, who are Lucifer, Leviathan, Satan and Belial, with their eight lieutenants, who include Astaroth, Asmodeus and Beelzebub, and their hordes of subordinates. Whatever the Sacred Magic may have intended originally, from a modern magical point of view the angels and demons are factors within the magician himself. His guardian angel is his true self and the demons are the evil, brutish and disorderly elements of his own inner being which tempt and corrupt and strive to take control of him. Once he has become his true self, he can master and make use of these elements, but those who have practised Abramelin magic insist that

dabbling in it is extremely dangerous. It involves arousing from their lairs in the depths forces which the conscious mind may be unable to subdue. The magician may be carried helplessly away in the grip of his own most abominable impulses, or the consequences may be even more drastic, for Mathers said that to summon up such a fearful potency as Beelzebub without taking the proper ritual precautions would be likely to result in the death of the magician on the spot, the symptoms resembling those of epilepsy, apoplexy or strangulation. 29 A demon, from this point of view, can be a stray thought arising in the mind and interfering with concentration, just as the desert hermits

diagnosed

it. Or

on a more

important level

than the

merely bothersome,

it may be a complex which causes trouble, or any unsatisfactory trait, such as laziness or pessimism, which hinders the achievement of a goal. Or it may be something more formidable still, a driving force of power-hunger, hatred, cruelty, greed or lust. Carlyle said, in Sartor Resartus: ‘In every the wisest Soul lies

a whole world of infernal The magician, Crowley said, ‘discovers himself imprisoned in a distorted Nature of Iniquity; and his task is to disentangle it’. It is always easy to call up the demons, for they are always calling you. ‘You have only to step down to their level and fraternize with them. They will then tear you to pieces at their leisure.’ The demons must be tamed, ‘every magician must firmly extend his empire to the depths of hell’ and once broken in to saddle and bridle they will bear their rider well. 30

Madness,

an

authentic

On the other

hand,

Demon-Empire.’

the demons

are

also

frequently spoken

of in

a

traditional way, as forces outside human beings, and all sorts of sinister entities are believed to roam the world. For practical purposes, magicians say, it is convenient to assume that spirits, good and evil, exist independently of human beings, in the same way that in practice we assume that other people exist independently of ourselves. They behave as if they do, in both cases. If gods, angels, demons or intelligences of some sort do exist outside the mind, they have their counterparts inside it, and it is through these counterparts that they can be controlled. The magical attempt to master them has a rough parallel in psychoanalysis, in the attempt to bring the contents of the unconscious into the conscious mind and there make one’s peace with them. Jung said that Christ’s descent into hell to ransom the dead has as its psychological equivalent the journey into the unconscious to release the prisoners chained there. But magic and psychoanalysis are not the same thing, and the magician hopes to dominate the real or illusory world outside him, as well as himself. Magic depends heavily on concentrated imagination and will-power. more

a walk through a field of sheep and a ram’, and myself immediately all the going imagine W. B. Yeats was so came after him. impressed by this bounding sheep exploit that he tried hard half a dozen times to excite a cat by imagining a mouse in front of its nose. Anna Kingsford, founder of the Hermetic Society, who was a fierce opponent of vivisection and took lessons in magic from Mathers, set out to murder, by ill-wishing them, two French scientists who had conducted cruel experiments on animals,

Mathers

said, ‘I

once

am

took

a

to

friend for

and believed she had succeeded. She also put a curse on Pasteur and though he did not die, she was pleased that he did fall seriously ill.

Many people who are not magicians have wondered uncomfortably whether emotion can have a direct, telepathic effect on the person at whom it is aimed. Charlotte Shaw, for instance, Bernard Shaw’s wife, wrote to T. E. Lawrence about her mother’s death: ‘It is really awful to think how glad I was. I sometimes still wonder whether my constant longing for her death had anything to do with killing her.’ John Cowper Powys, the novelist, was convinced by experience that he unconsciously exercised a kind of ‘evil eye’ which harmed people who had injured him, and Strindberg believed that he had made two of his children ill by sheer force of concentration. 31 In magical theory a powerful projection of will against a victim may take visible form in a hallucination. Dion Fortune said that she once unintentionally created a werewolf in this way. She was in bed, half asleep and brooding over her resentment against someone who had injured her. The thought of casting off all restraint and going berserk came into her mind, and then the thought of Fenrir, the monstrous evil wolf of Norse mythology. ‘Immediately I felt a curious drawingout sensation from my solar plexus, and there materialised beside me on the bed a large wolf.’ When she moved, it snarled at her and she had to muster all her courage to speak sharply to it and push it off the bed. It went meekly enough, turned from a wolf into a dog and vanished through the wall in the northern comer of the room, but next morning someone else in the house reported dreaming of wolves and waking in the night to see the eyes of a wild animal glowing in the dark. 32 An artificial elemental of this kind is constructed by forming a clear mental picture of it and pouring into it the magician’s own destroying hatred and malevolence with such force and vividness as to bring it to life. It can then be mentally launched against an enemy. It will usually be in animal prey

on

or

mixed animal and human

shape,

and it is believed

the victim’s mind. The effects of its attack

are

said

to

to

range from inexplicable uneasiness and anxiety or comparatively minor but unpleasant psychosomatic symptoms to terrifying nightmares and

breakdown

or even more damaging consequences, against someone who is unusually sensitive. Cases do occur every now and again of people believing that a magical attack has been made on them, fearing it and suffering the symptoms of it in all reality, though this does not prove the existence

hallucinations,

nervous

especially

of anything

if it is directed

beyond the victim’s fear and its psychological and physical

effects. Similarly in the past, it seems clear that there were people who feared that a reputed witch was angry with them, believed in her powers and suffered real psychosomatic damage, whether an attack had actually been attempted or not. This would naturally reinforce belief in magic and witchcraft, and the artificial elemental, embodying hostility in animal or grotesque form, is the modern equivalent of the old witches’ familiar. Besides the

there

deliberately

manufactured horrors of

magical theory,

the nature spirits, fairies and bogies, also classified as elementals, whose reality is made of people’s belief in them over centuries. Some of them are good, some bad, some neutral. The bad ones are dangerous and may fasten on a person’s mind, obsessing him and draining energy from him. These beings of imagination belong to the astral plane, which contains all the gods, spirits and monsters of human belief. There are also evil ghosts, unable to sever their ties with the material world, which seize on people and feed on their vitality, and the astral corpses which may be used by elementals to prey on the are

living.

Magical attitudes to evil draw extensively on the Cabala and the gnostic systems, which find the ultimate origin of evil in God. In gnosticism evil is the result of a lapse or fall of part of the divine nature. There is the same principle in the Zoroastrian myth of the birth of Ahriman from Zurvan’s doubt. The orthodox Christian view, however, held God innocent of the entry of evil into the world through Lucifer’s rebellion and Adam’s fall, and Christ was also regarded as stainlessly good. But some unorthodox Christian systems have made Christ and Lucifer brothers, equally sons of God, which comes nearer to the magical view that something of the divine nature itself went into exile when the Devil was hurled down from heaven. strong tendency in Judaism to feel that the Almighty ultimately be responsible for the existence of evil as well as good. The Bahir, a curious Hebrew book which appeared in the south of France about 1180, flatly and startlingly states that evil is part of God, quoting the passage in Jeremiah which connected evil with the north: ‘. . there is in God a principle that is called “Evil”, and it lies in the north of God, for it is written: “Out of the north evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land. ."’ And it goes on to say that ‘the tohu is in the north, and tohu means precisely the evil that confuses men until they sin, and it is the source of all man’s evil impulses'. Tohu and bohu are the words translated ‘without form and void’ There

was a

must

.

.

in the second

verse

and darkness

was

of Genesis: ‘The earth was without form and void, upon the face of the deep.’ The ‘deep’ is tehom, a Hebrew word akin to Tiamat, the name of the Babylonian chaos monster, and tohu wa-bohu, meaning in effect, ‘non-existent’, was a traditional phrase for the primeval chaos. Evil in the Bahir, apparently, is both a principle in God and the chaos, the ‘nothing’, from which the material world was made. 33 The Cabala is complicated and difficult, and has been interpreted by modern occultists in ways which, to put it mildly, do not always rejoice the hearts of scholars of Jewish mysticism. The principal work of the earlier Cabala is the massive Zohar, or ‘Book of Splendour’, the bulk of which was written in Spain in the late thirteenth century. The Zohar connects the origin of evil with one characteristic of God, his aspect of stem judgment, his terrible destroying wrath, which is called his left hand. Stern judgment is in itself a holy and necessary quality of the divine, but it needs to be balanced and tempered by the opposite divine quality of mercy, God’s right hand. But when the divine makes itself manifest in the world, the stern judgment of God is not tempered by his mercy. It bursts out in measureless force and separates itself from the quality of mercy. In doing this it breaks away from God altogether and becomes the root of evil, the dark kingdom of Satan and the fire of hell. There is the same tension here between the opposites of divine power and divine love, the same difficulty in reconciling them, as there is at the heart of all religion, as there is in Christianity between Christ as Saviour and Judge, and in the picture of the flames of hell issuing from the radiance of Christ in glory. Jacob Boehme, the great seventeenth-century German mystic, who influenced Blake, taught a similar doctrine. There are two great opposites in the divine, wrath and love, and it is in the first of these that there exists God’s colossal life-creating energy. The opposites together form a unity, but when God makes himself manifest they become separated, necessarily, because all manifestation depends on opposites: ‘In yes and no all things subsist.’ The root of evil is the separation of yes from no, of divine wrath or energy from its opposite of love, and the two principles are separate and in conflict in the world and in

man.

The forces of evil in the Cabala

are the kelippot, or ‘shells’, the waste products of the divine organism. The Old Testament had connected evil metaphorically with rubbish and likened God’s punishment of the wicked to the burning of stubble or thorns. The Christian hell

continued to be a place where rubbish was burned, and the Devil and the powers of evil were linked with excrement. Eleazar of Worms, a German-Jewish author of the twelfth century who saw man as the rope in a tug-of-war between God and Satan, called the forces of opposition to God ‘weeds’, and found a reference to them in the ‘thorns and thistles’ which God condemned the ground to grow because of Adam’s sin. The Zohar again calls evil a waste product, kelippah, the ‘husk’ or ‘skin’ or ‘shell’, the worthless detritus of an organism. It does so because its position is gnostic: Evil is

its very nature independent of man; it is woven into the of the world, or rather into the existence of God. It is this thought which leads the Zohar to interpret evil as a sort of residue

by

texture

or refuse of the hidden life’s organic process. This peculiar idea, in itself an audacious consequence of interpreting God as a living organism, has found frequent expression in a variety of similes. Even as the tree cannot exist without its bark, or the human body without shedding ‘unclean blood’, so, too, all that is demonic has its root somewhere in the mystery of God. Evil is indeed something which has its ordained place, but in itself it is dead, it comes to life only because a ray of light, however faint, from the holiness of God falls upon it or because it is nourished and quickened by the sin of man; by itself it is simply the dead residue of the process of life. A spark of God’s life burns even in Sammael, the personification of evil, the ‘other’ or ‘left side’. 34 .

.

.

It was an old idea that imperfect worlds existed and were destroyed before the present one, and according to the Zohar these were worlds activated only by God’s quality of stem judgment, which failed because they were, so to speak, top-heavy with wrath untempered by the divine mercy. These worlds were identified with the Kings of Edom listed in Genesis, where they are said to have ruled before there was a king in Israel. Blake called their reign ‘the dominion of Edom’, the rule of unbalanced force which fails because ‘without Contraries is no progression’. From a modern magical point of view they are the powers of chaos in the mind, the anarchic impulses which hold sway over the personality before the true self develops—before there is a king in Israel. In the sixteenth century Isaac Luria, the brilliant visionary who originated what became the dominant form of the Cabala, turned the myth of the destruction of the Edomite kings into a new myth of ‘the breaking of the vessels’. When the light of the

flowed out into primeval space, the force of it shattered the ‘vessels’ which were meant to contain it and some sparks of the light fell into the depths and activated chaos. Luria apparently thought that in this catastrophe the godhead purged itself of its own evil potential, which again was part of its aspect of stem judgment. After the breaking of the vessels the evil potential became actual in the realm of the kelippot, which now had a separate existence. He likened the process to what happens when a baby is born, when the coming into being of a new organism is accompanied by the extrusion of waste products, ‘the dross of the primordial kings’ in Luria’s system. Other Cabalists of his school said that the powers of evil developed from the broken fragments of the ‘vessels’, which sank down into the ‘depth of the great abyss’, where evil has its home. 35 What modern occultists have drawn from all this is that the 'shells' are forces of evil existing in the godhead, which were expelled from the divine organism as waste products, to purge the godhead of evil and to make its potential evil actual, manifest and so conquerable. This is the process which the magician attempts to apply to the evil elements in his own nature. They are summoned from their lair in the depths into consciousness, there to be mastered. They originate in a discharge of energy which breaks its banks and overflows, as it were, because it is not balanced and held in check by an opposite force, and which constitutes the tohu wa-bohu, the primeval chaos of Genesis, the terrible abyss existing in the deepest levels of the world and man. The evil spirits and monsters of human belief are personifications of different types and categories of this anarchic evil. Into their realm over the centuries have been poured the uncontrolled vicious impulses and imaginings of human minds, so that the kingdom of the shells is a colossal sink of iniquity, a huge reservoir of dross and filth, kept amply supplied and alive by further flows of evil and unbalanced force emanating from mankind. Here again, as so often in the past, the stronghold of evil is found in chaos, in the realm of anarchy and madness in each human being and in the world at large. But the Cabala can also be used to support the conclusion that both good and evil are ultimately aspects of the divine. They are manifestations of the same force, two sides of one coin, flowers and weeds which spring from the same soil. In an unfinished novel in which J. F. C. Fuller described his occult training and his experiences as a temporary disciple of Crowley, the narrator is instructed in the Cabala and taught that:

godhead

Jehovah is but a synonym of Satan, sometimes called Light and sometimes the Prince of Darkness. This

the Prince of is the awful and cryptogram; for

of the Qabalah hidden away in cipher the unpurified and the uninitiated its knowledge means anarchy and death, yet to us order and wisdom. On the opposite page of his manuscript Fuller wrote ‘Jehovah Satan’, and the equation evidently pleased him. Academic authorities on the Cabala would be unlikely to agree that this is its supreme secret, but the gnostic identification appealed to the hatred of Christianity of Crowley and his followers. Most people, the novel goes on, are dualists: secret

to

=

It is the universal religion and its worshippers see a definite cleavage between light and darkness and pronounce this thing to be good and that thing evil. They love one God and they fear another and the result is discord.

If God is

to grasp this idea a difference, be conceived: ‘In fact evil must be created to render God visible.’ But the truth is that good and evil are veils of a greater reality which transcends them. In magic the universe and man are made of opposites and progress comes through balancing and reconciling them in a higher unity. Evil is the product of a situation in which a force is not balanced and tempered by its opposite. ‘Unbalanced Severity is cruelty and oppression,' the Golden Dawn taught, ‘unbalanced Mercy is but weakness and would permit Evil to exist unchecked.’36 Good and evil, light and darkness, love and hate, attraction and repulsion, pleasure and pain, and all the opposites have their place and value in the scheme of things, and the whole man must experience and master them all. He does this not by trying to banish his ‘demons’ into outer darkness or keep them securely caged up, but by reconciling his good and evil selves in the unity of his true, higher self. In this process the evil self has a crucial part to play. A spark of God’s life burns even in Sammael, and crops grow the better for manure. The kingdom of the shells contains an unused surplus of the gigantic energy of the divine. Evil is in Blake’s phrase ‘the active springing from Energy’. The animal driving forces deep in human nature are the beasts that, tamed to saddle and bridle, bear their rider well. Magic is a power-hungry pursuit and the obvious problem, in theory and frequently in practice, is that finding a positive value in a

postulated as a unity, then in order

disunity,

must

put a seal of approval on the worst of human impulses. All the same, the attitude has something to be said for it, not as a method of explaining evil away by pretending that it is something else, which ultimately will not do, but as a method of trying to deal with it which goes far beyond the confines of magical practice into more elevated philosophies, and eventually into the simple, homely advice to make the best of things. This may be difficult or impossible to do, but better to try and fail than not to try. The stoical pagan conviction that all experience has value, that in the last resort it is better to be alive and suffering than in oblivion, is perhaps the strongest and noblest defence that men have devised for remaining undefeated by the evil of the

evil

can

world.

Appendix

Satan, Seth and the Yezidis

Apparent support for the identification of Satan and Seth has been found in The Two Babylons, or the Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife, by a clergyman named Alexander Hislop. First published in 1916, it has been frequently reprinted. (I am grateful to Mr Kenneth Grant for kindly directing me to this curious book.) Hislop’s argument, briefly, is that St Irenaeus was right in the second century in interpreting 666, the number of the Great Beast of Revelation, as Teitan, which is the Greek form of Titan. Teitan, he says, is clearly the Chaldean form of Sheitan, because Hebrew ‘sh’ or ‘s’ frequently turns into ‘t’ in Chaldean, and Sheitan ‘is the very name by which Satan has been called from time immemorial by the Devil-worshippers of Kurdistan; and from Armenia or Kurdistan, this Devil-worship embodied in the Chaldean Mysteries came westward to Asia Minor, and thence to Etruria and Rome’. In the Chaldean system, Teitan was Typhon, a dragon like the Great Beast of Revelation, and we know that Typhon was identified with Seth. However, Hesiod’s account of the Titans, or ‘sons of heaven’ (sons of Uranus), shows that they were cursed by their father and cast down to hell, this being a double of the story of the fall of the Devil and his angels. We can therefore confidently identify with Satan not only Seth but Cronus or Saturn, the leader of the Titans, as well (ibid., pp. 275-6,

295). Hislop's Devil-god of the Chaldean Mysteries is a figment of his own imagination. His Devil-worshippers of Kurdistan are the Yezidis, an Arab religious sect who attracted excited attention in the nineteenth century because they were erroneously supposed to worship the power

Satan, Seth and the Yezidis of evil, Shaitan, which is the Muslim name of Satan, whom they adored in the form of a peacock. Aleister Crowley naturally shared this misconception and approvingly brought the Yezidis into his own system. He wanted to spell the Devil as Shaitan, for one thing because it enabled him to begin the Enemy’s name with the Hebrew letter shin, which in cabalistic tradition is the letter of the Holy Spirit; and for another because something else beginning with ‘sh’ attracted him.

Notes

Chapter

One

In the

Beginning

Ecclesiastes 2:11; 9:11; Job 5:7; Isaiah 40:6-7; Iliad, bk 24, Penguin edn, p. 451. (Bible quotations are taken from the Revised Standard Version, except where otherwise indicated.) 2 James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 78. 3 Brandon, Creation Legends, pp. 48-9. 4 Revelation 21:4. 5 Gauld, ‘Haunting of Abbey House, Cambridge’. 1

6 7

Heraclitus, fragment 102, quoted in Evil, p. 201; Plotinus, Enneads, 1.8.3, quoted in Hick, Evil and the God ofLove, p. 46. Habakkuk 3:8; Psalm 104:7-8; Job 38:8-11; Revelation 21:1; Owst, Literature and Pulpit, p. 68.

77; Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk 1; Apollonius, bk 4, Penguin edn, p. 165. 9 Isaiah 27:1; Driver, Canaanite Myths, p. 103; Ezekiel 29:3; Psalm 87:4; Isaiah 30:7. 10 Job, ch. 41; Revelation, ch. 12; Farrer, Revelation, p. 143f. 11 See Frazer, Golden Bough, abridged edn, pp. 126f, 137, and Gaster, Thespis, 8

Heidel, Babylonian Genesis, p.

Voyage of the Argo,

p. 248f. 12

13 14

Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic, p. 257; Simpson, Folklore of Sussex, p. 38f. Zaehner, Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism, p. 34. See G. Widengren, ‘The Principle of Evil in the Eastern Religions’, in Evil, p. 28f.

15

Garmondsway et al., Beowulf and its Analogues, p. 59f, and see the Penguin by David Wright. See Ross, Pagan Celtic Britain, pp. 150f, 344f; Davidson, Gods and Myths of

edn 16

Northern Europe, p. 159f. 17 Daniel 7:7; 8:10; 11:31-12:1.

18 Mark 13:3-27; Matthew 24:1-31; Luke 21:5-28. 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26

Thessalonians 2:3-10; cf. John 5:43. Jung, Aion, p. 42. 1 John 2:18; 4:2-3; 2 John 7. Cohn, Pursuit of the Millennium, p. 35. Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, pp. 33, 124, 180-1; Rogerson, Millions Now Living Will Never Die, pp. 22-3, 55. See Webb, Occult Liberation, ch. 3. Ecclesiasticus 25:24. Genesis 6:5; 8:21; 2 Baruch 54:19, quoted in Williams, Ideas of the Fall, 2

p. 78. 27 28 29

Augustine, City of God, 13:14. Huxley, Devils ofLoudun, pp. 27-8; Williams, Ideas of the Fall, p. 430. See Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 354; Rahner, Theology of Death,

pp.

41-2, 57. 30 31

Dickens, ‘Nurse’s Stories’, in The Uncommercial Traveller. Avery, Nineteenth-Century Children, pp. 51f.

32 See Jersild, Child

Psychology,

pp. 332-6;

Piaget, Play,

Dreams and Imitation,

pp. 177-9. 33 See Woolf, 34

Opie,

Chapter

English Mystery Plays, pp. 254-5, and cf. Luke 22:64. Children's Games, pp. 106-8, 304f, 342. Death and the Dead

Two

Heywood in Toynbee et al., Man's Concern with Death, p. 186. Avery, Nineteenth-Century Children, p. 215. 3 Beowulf, Penguin edn, p. 50; for the memorial to Prince, see Jones, Design for Death, p. 195. 4 See Gauld, ‘A Series of “Drop In” Communicators’. 5 Jack Goody, in Man, Myth and Magic, vol. 1, pp. 376-7. 6 Hole, ed., Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, p. 127. 7 Hill, Return from the Dead, p. 42; Loomis, Paris in the Terror, pp. 316-7. 8 Hall, New Light on Old Ghosts, p. 81; Ebon, ed., True Experiences with 1

Rosalind

2

Ghosts, pp. 74f. 9 Owen, Journey from Obscurity, vol. 1, p. 50. 10 Lloyd, Dorset Elizabethans, pp. 112f. 11

Plato, Phaedo,

12

Winner, Occult Wisdom, p. 73. Leadbeater, Astral Plane, pp. 76-7. Powell, Astral Body, p. 51. Ecclesiastes 12:6. Breasted, Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, p. 169. Man, Myth and Magic, vol. 4, p. 1618.

13 14 15 16 17

81C.

18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28

Heidel, Babylonian Genesis, pp. 122f, 147f, but cf. Kirk, Myth, pp. 124-5. Heidel, Gilgamesh Epic, pp. 11, 70, 91-2. Herodotus, bk 1, Penguin edn, pp. 23-4; Iliad, bk 18, Penguin edn, p. 351. Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, p. 64. Garmondsway et al., Beowulf and its Analogues, pp. 341-5. Dewar, The Unlocked Secret, pp. 98f, 158f. Frazer, Golden Bough, abridged edn, p. 634. Otto, Dionysus, p. 137; cf. Guthrie, The Greeks and their Gods, p. 146. Seznec, Survival of the Pagan Gods, pp. 101, 103. Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, p. 156. Nohl, Black Death, p. 150.

29 Boase, Death in the Middle Ages, p. 97. 30 See Brandon, Creation Legends, ch. 4. 31 Augustine, Sermo suppositus, quoted in

Jung, Symbols of Transformation,

41

p. 269. Wisdom of Solomon 1:13; 2:24. 1 Corinthians 15:24-6, 36-8; Matthew 22:30. Summers, Vampire in Europe, pp. 151f. Ibid pp. 229f. King, ed., Astral Projection, Ritual Magic and Alchemy, pp. 26-7. Crowley, Confessions, pp. 335-7. Fortune, Psychic Self-Defence, pp. 56-62; see also Wilson, Occult, pp. 445f. See W. G. Roll, ‘Poltergeists’, in Encyclopedia ofthe Unexplained, pp. 199f. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 5:2. 2 Kings 9:36-7; Iliad, bk 22, Penguin edn, pp. 398-9.

42

Dale-Green, Dog, p.

32 33 34 35

36 37

38 39 40

.,

Chapter Three 1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8

2319.

Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, pp. 11-12. Iliad, bk 19; for this and what follows, see Dodds, op. cit pp. 3f. Pausanias 1.33.2; Graves, Greek Myths, vol. 1, pp. 125-6. Solon, quoted in Grant, Myths of the Greeks and Romans, p. 168; Joshua, ch. .,

7;

11

Fate

Njal’s Saga, 41. Collingwood, Idea of History, p. 50; Man, Myth and Magic, vol. 6, p. E. F. Watling’s translation, in Electra and Other Plays, Penguin edn. Freud, General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, pp. 184, 291.

Job 21:17-19; Jeremiah

31:29; Ezekiel 18:2.

Edda, Young trans., p. 44; for the ‘weird sisters’, see Briggs, Anatomy ofPuck, pp. 236-7, Branston, Lost Gods ofEngland, pp. 62-3. Garmondsway et al., Beowulf and its Analogues, p. 269; Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North, pp. 221f. Beowulf, Penguin edn, pp. 40, 67f; for the Nibelungenlied, see A. T. Hatto’s comments in the Penguin edn, pp. 342-3.

9 Prose 10

52.

12

Onians, Origins

ofEuropean Thought,

p. 331.

Gray Falcon, vol. i, pp. 54-5. Suetonius, ‘Tiberius’, 69; Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3.16.1, quoted Brandon, Man and His Destiny, p. 178. See Popper, Open Society, vol. 1, pp. 11-17.

13 West, Black Lamb and 14

in

15 16 Ibid ., vol. 2, p. 73. 17 Quoted in Palmer, Twelve Who 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28

Ruled, pp. 275f. Bullock, Hitler, pp. 336-7. Cecil, Myth of the Master Race, pp. 93-4; Huxley, Knowledge, Morality and Destiny, p. 223. Trevor-Roper, Last Days of Hitler, pp. 85f; Bullock, Hitler, pp. 702-3.

quoted in Cumont, Astrology and Religion, p. 87. Seznec, Survival of the Pagan Gods, pp. 53-4. Howe, Urania’s Children, pp. 88f. Seznec, op. cit p. 48. Coulton, Life in the Middle Ages, vol. 1, pp. 33-4. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 31. A Priest to the Temple, quoted in Thomas, op. cit p. 78. See Jahoda, Psychology of Superstition, pp. 139-40. De anima mantissa,

.,

.,

Chapter Four Darkness and Night Owen, Journey from

Nicolson, Helen’s Tower, p. 30. Bede, History, 2:13; Beowulf, Penguin edn, pp. 9, 43. Earliest English Poems, p. 72; for the cap of darkness, see Onians, Origins of European Thought, pp. 424-5.

3 4

Obscurity,

vol. 3, pp. 14-15.

1 2

5 Psalm 23:4; Job 3:9; 10:20-2; Zechariah 14:7; John 8:12; Brendan’, 28 (in Lives of the Saints).

‘Voyage of St.

6 See Vermes, Dead Sea Scrolls, ch. 4. 7 Allegro, Dead Sea Scrolls, p. 127. 8 9 10 11 12

13 14

3:19; 1 John 1:5; 2 Corinthians 6:14-15; Didache, 1-5, Epistle of Barnabas, 18 (both in Early Christian Writings). Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, pp. 384-5; Odyssey, bk 1, Penguin edn, p. 25. Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, p. 217. Quoted in Mirrlees, Fly in Amber, p. 26, and cf. Ecclesiastes 11:3. Isaiah 14:13; Jeremiah 1:14; Jung, Aion, p. 100. Jung, Symbols of Transformation, p. 183, Psychology and Alchemy, p. 32. Armstrong, Folklore ofBirds, pp. 217f; Hole, ed., Encyclopaedia ofSuperstitions,

John

P. 301. 15 Petronius,

Satyricon, 63; Augustine, City of God, 21:6, quoting Virgil, Aeneid,

bk 4, ll. 487f. 16

Euripides, Medea,

Gilbert

Murray trans.,

p. 23.

17 18

Apollonius, Voyage of the Argo, bk 3, Penguin edn, Baroja, World of Witches, p. 30; Evil, p. 112.

pp. 136, 141.

19 Isaiah 34:14. 20 21 22

Ovid, Fasti, vi. 131. Guirdham, Obsession, pp. 56-64. Lea, Materials, vol. 1, pp. 178-80, 185-6; Russell, Witchcraft Ages, pp. 76f and Appendix.

23 Lea, op. cit vol. 1, pp. 173-4. 24 Genesis 6:1-4; Augustine, City

in the Middle

.

25

Examen, ch. 26

of God,

Thorndike, History of Magic, vol.

2,

15:23.

p. 299; Russell,

op.cit., p. 207; Boguet,

12.

Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Supersition,

pp. 51-4.

27 Yeats, Autobiographies, p. 346; Grant, Magical 28 Walker, Sex and the Supernatural, pp. 52-3.

Revival, p.

Guirdham, Obsession, p. 15. 30 De Becker, Understanding of Dreams, pp. 96-100, Monsieur Descartes (1691).

28.

29

31

Iliad, bks 2, 22, Penguin edn, pp. Irrational, ch. 4.

40, 402;

see

quoting

Baillet’s Vie de

also Dodds, The Greeks and the

32 Genesis 20:3-7; Job 4:12-15.

Chapter Five 1 2

The Powers Below

Brandon, Judgment of the Dead, pp. 34, Budge, Egyptian Religion, pp. 138-40. Heidel, Gilgamesh Epic, pp. 132-6.

3 4 Ibid ., pp. 119-28; Kramer, Sumerian 5 Pausanias 10.28.7.

42.

Mythology,

pp. 83-96.

Hesiod, Theogony, West edn, p. 193. Virgil, Aeneid, bk 6. Hesiod, Works and Days, l. 465. Ibid l. 153; Iliad, bk 20, Penguin edn, p. 367; Pausanias 5.20.3, 6.25.2. Gardner, Witchcraft Today, pp. 44-6; see also Farrar, What Witches Do,

6 See 7 8 9 10

.,

p.

100

and Appendix

1.

also Guthrie, The Greeks and their Gods, 223-31. 12 Herodotus 7.133; Pausanias 6.6.4, 9.38.1; for other references, see Dietrich, Death, Fate and the Gods, pp. 35f. 13 Willetts, Cretan Cults and Festivals, pp. 197-8; Iliad, bk 9, Penguin edn, pp. 172-7. 14 Aeschylus, Eumenides in The Oresteian Trilogy, Penguin edn, p. 153. 15 Lucan, Pharsalia, bk 6, Penguin edn, pp. 145-6. 16 Hesiod, Works and Days, l. 42. 17 Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, p. 156. 11

Pausanias 9.39.1;

see

18 Burrows, What Mean these Stones?, sect. 180. 19 Genesis 6:1-7; Ezekiel 32:27; 1 Enoch 7:3-6; Graves and Patai, Hebrew

24

Myths, p. 100. Odyssey, bk 9; Kirk, Myth, pp. 162-71. Briggs, Dictionary ofBritish Folk-Tales, pt A, vol. 1, p. 325. Halliwell, Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales, p. 65. Geoffrey of Monmouth, History, x.3; Malory, Morte d’Arthur, v.5. Avery, Nineteenth-Century Children, p. 52.

25 26

Evil, p.

20 21 22

23

Pilkington,

Shamrock and Spear, pp. 40-55.

100.

27 Frazer, Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, vol. 2, pp. 495-6; Swire, The Highlands and Their Legends, p. 28. 28

Briggs, Dictionary ofBritish Folk-Tales, pt

A, vol. 1, p. 183; Edgar’s lines are

in 29 30

King Lear, 111. iv. Briggs, Fairies in Tradition andLiterature, p. 66; King Harald’s Saga, 80, See Davidson, ‘Weland the Smith’.

Chapter 1

Six

81.

Hell

John Custance, Wisdom, Madness and Folly (1951), p. 78, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, p. 94; see also James, Varieties of Religious Experience, lectures 6 and

2

Hughes,

7. Heaven and Hell in Western Art, p. 35.

3

Wood, The Burning Heart, pp. 278-9; Battiscombe, Keble, p.

4

Nineteenth-Century Children, pp. 87, 212. On this subject, see Walker, Decline of Hell. Owst, Literature and Pulpit, pp. 293-4.

5 6

Caird, Revelation, p. 253; Genesis 3:19; Isaiah 29:4. 7 Ecclesiastes 9:4-10. 8 2 Maccabees 12:39-45; on this whole subject, see Brandon, Dead, ch.

270;

Avery,

Judgment of the

3.

1 Enoch 61:1-63:12. Ibid 53:1-54:2. 11 Ibid 22:1-14. 12 Genesis 19:24-8; Psalm 11:6; Ezekiel 38:22; Isaiah 33:12-14; Malachi 4:1. 13 Isaiah 66:24; Judith 16:7; Mark 9:48; see also Luke 17:29; Jude 7. 14 Stewart, Rabbinic Theology, pp. 146f; Graves and Patai, Hebrew Myths,

9

10

.

.

p. 36. 15 See Walker, Decline 16 2 Esdras, ch. 7.

ofHell, pp. 29f.

17 Matthew 25:31-46, and see Brandon, Judgment ofthe Dead, p. 98. 18 Matthew 13:40-2; 7:13-14; 12:36-7; John 15:6, cf. Remy, Demonolatry, 3:12.

19

John

12:32,

see

also Matthew 12:31-2; Luke 12:47-8; Matthew 10:15,

see

also 11:20-4. 20

John

3:36.

Peter 1:17; Hebrews 10:26-31.

21

1

22

Revelation, chs 14, 19, 20, Caird, Revelation, p. 258.

23 24 25 26 27 28

21.

The Burning Heart, pp. Augustine, City of God, 21:12. Coulton, Life in the Middle Ages, vol. 1, p. 109. Brandon, Judgment of the Dead, pp. 116-17.

Wesley’s Journal, quoted in Wood,

29

Hawkes, A Land, p. Bede, History, 5:13.

30

Hughes,

31 Proverbs 32 See

272-3.

19.

Heaven and Hell in Western Art, p. 175. 1:12.

Huxley, Heaven and Hell, Appendix

8.

33 Ibid ., p. 109. 34 Life of St Teresa, ch. 32. 35 St Basil, Homily on Psalm 33, quoted in Jung, Aion, p. 129; Waddell, Desert Fathers, p. 181; Zaehner, Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism, p. 307.

36 Rahner,

Theology of Death,

Chapter Seven 1 2

3 4 5 6

p. 72.

Evil and the Gods

Hesiod, Works and Days, ll. 1f. Grant, Myths of the Greeks and Romans, p. 59; Snaith, Job, p. 23; Otto, Idea of the Holy, p. 101. Revelation 12:12; 1 Peter 5:8:2 Corinthians 2:10-11; Ephesians 4:26-7. Iliad, bk 18; Judges 14:19:15:14. Brandon, Creation Legends, p. 16; Clark, Myth and Symbol, p. 221. Summers, Witchcraft and Black Magic, pp. 293-4. Otto, Dionysus, p. 113; Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, p. 277.

7 8 Pausanias 8.37.11.

Celtic Britain, p. 144. Goat-God, pp. 12-13, 41-2. Merivale, Biographia Literaria, ch. 21, quoted in Merivale, op.cit., p. 49; Shelley’s letter is quoted in Fuller, Shelley, p. 292 and Merivale, p. 64. Quoted in Merivale, op.cit., pp. 98, 113. Herodotus 2:45; Regardie, Golden Dawn, vol. 2, pp. 182-4; Crowley, Magick, pp. 125-7. Regardie, op.cit., vol. 1, p. 218. See Kluger, Satan in the Old Testament, pp. 83f. Crowley, Magick, p. 173. Zaehner, Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism, p. 248.

9 Ross, 10 11

12

13 14 15 16 17

Pagan

Pan the

18 R. C.

Zaehner,

in Man,

Myth

and

Magic,

vol. vii, p. 3107.

19 Isaiah 5:25; Exodus 19:18.

Samuel 6:6-7; Exodus 20:3-6.

20 2 21 22

23

1

Samuel, chs. 4-6.

Bradford, History of the

Plymouth Settlement,

History, 3:5. Quoted in Hibbert, Garibaldi and His Enemies,

p. 62; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical p. 68.

24 Exodus 11:1, 12:30. 25 Iliad, bk 6; 26 Isaiah 55:8.

Odyssey,

bk 8;

see

also Bowra, Landmarks, pp. 72-3.

27 Psalm 137:4; Jonah 1:3; Amos 3:6; Lamentations 3:38; Isaiah 45:6-9. 28 Job 2:10, and chs 38-42. 29 Exodus 12:23; Psalm 78:49; Judges 9:23;

Samuel 29:4;

1

Samuel 18:10;

32:17; Kings 31 Kluger, Satan in the Old Testament, pp. 81-2. 32 Zechariah 3:1-5. 30

Deuteronomy

1

1

1

Kings 22:19f.

5:4.

Samuel, ch 24; 1 Chronicles 21:1. Genesis 6:1-7; 1 Enoch, chs 6-16, 54, 69; Butler, The Magician, p. 60. 34 35 1 Enoch, chs 86-88. 36 Isaiah 14:12-15, Authorised Version. 37 Ezekiel 28:13-17, Authorised Version. 38 Gray, Canaanites, p. 136; 2 Peter 1:19; Revelation 22:16. 39 Stewart, Rabbinic Theology, p. 88; Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic, p. 35. 40 Quoted in Bakan, Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition, p. 219. 33

2

41

Job 41:33-4.

Chapter Eight

The Devil

Time, 7 February 1969. Newsome, Parting ofFriends, p. 28; Cecil, Visionary and Dreamer, p. 115. 3 Wheatley, The Devil and All His Works, p. 291. 4 Guirdham, Obsession, pp. 91, 176. 5 Freedland, Occult Explosion, pp. 148-9. 6 Ephesians 6:12; 1 John 5:19; Matthew 4:8; Luke 4:6; John 13:2, 27; John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; 2 Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 2:2. 7 1 Corinthians 10:14-20; Revelation, ch. 2; Bede, History, 2:9, quoting 2 Corinthians 4:4. 8 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 4:7. 9 Man, Myth and Magic, vol. 1, p. 95. 10 Coulton, Life in the Middle Ages, vol. 1, pp. 157f. 11 Ibid vol. 1, pp. 143f. 12 Life of St Teresa, chs 32, 33. 13 Neame, Holy Maid of Kent, pp. 150-1. 1

2

.,

14 The Cloud

p. 67;

see

of Unknowing, quoted in Zaehner, Mysticism, Sacred and Profane, of Religious Experience, p. 385.

also James, Varieties

15 Oesterreich, Possession, p. 10. 16 Ibid ., pp. 51-2; on the whole

subject of possession, see Sargant, The Mind Possessed. 17 Kardec, Book on Mediums, pp. 308-23. 18 Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, 3:2. 19 Gauld, Founders ofPsychical Research, p. 68. 20 Schlier, Principalities and Powers, p. 22. 21 Coulton, Life in the Middle Ages, vol. 3, p. 63. 22 See Hughes, Heaven and Hell in Western Art, pp. 33, 154. 23 See St Bernard’s remarks, quoted in Male, Gothic Image, pp. 48-9. 24 Matthew 25:31-46; Remy, Demonolatry, 1:23. 25 Malleus Maleficarum, Pt 1, Qu. 1, and cf. Pt 2, Qu. 1, ch. 15. 26 Lea, Materials, vol. 1, pp. 252-6; Malleus, Pt 2, Qu. 1, ch. 15. 27 28 29 30

Remy, Demonolatry, 2:2. Boguet, Examen, ch. 34; Remy, op.cit., Malleus, Pt 2, Qu. 1. Boguet, op. cit ch. 8.

3:1.

.,

Compendium Maleficarum, Pneumalogie (1587).

31 Guazzo, 32 Lea,

Materials, vol.

1,

p. 201;

2

2:15,

quoting

Corinthians 11:4;

Sebastien Michaelis,

Baroja,

World

of Witches,

pp. 76-7.

39

Merivale, Pan the Goat-God, pp. 9-10. Baroja, op. cit pp. 84-6; Lea, op. cit vol. 1, pp. 231-2. Baroja, op. cit pp. 120-1; Murray, Witch-Cult in Western Europe, p. 247; Ewen, Witchcraft and Demonianism, p. 212. Robbins, Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, p. 448. See Quennell, Romantic England, pp. 22-8. Murray, op.cit pp. 149-50. Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, pp. 178, 180; Lea, op.cit vol. 1, p.203.

40

LaVey,

33 See 34 35

36 37

38

.,

.,

.,

.,

.,

Satanic

Bible, p.

51.

41 Praz, Romantic Agony, p. 72. 42 See Summers, History of Witchcraft, p. 2. 43 Quoted in Panter-Downes, At the Pities, p. 161. 44 See Symonds, Great Beast, pp. 202-5; Yeats, Autobiographies, p. 179.

Chapter Nine The Side Briggs,

Fairies in Tradition and Literature, p. 57.

1

See

2

Ibid p. 56.

3

Douglas, Purity and Danger, Remy, Demonolatry, 1:10.

4

of the Left

.,

p. 40.

5 6

of Cuthbert, ch. 18 (in Lives of the Saints). Apollonius, Voyage of the Argo, bk 2; Virgil, Aeneid,

Bede, Life

bk 3,

Penguin edn,

pp. 81f. 7 Boguct, Examen, ch. 6; Robbins, Encyclopedia 8 Lea, Materials, vol. 1, p. 285f., vol. 2, p. 580. 9 Tolkien, Tree and Leaf, p. 11. 10

11

Edda, Young North, pp. 230f.

Prose

trans., p. 46;

of Witchcraft, p.

129.

Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the

Fairies in Tradition and Literature, p. 15; Folk-Tales, pt A, vol. 1, pp. 180f.

Briggs,

Briggs, Dictionary of British

12

Giraldus Cambrensis, Bohn edn, pp. 390-1.

13

Briggs, Anatomy ofPuck, p. 219. Summers, ‘Living Legends in Romania’. Briggs, Fairies in Tradition and Literature, p. 144; see also Sanderson, ‘Prospect

14 15

of Fairyland’. 16 Guazzo,

Compendium Maleficarum,

1:18.

17 Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, pp. 50-1. 18 Hole, ed, Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, pp. 141-2. 19 20 21

Remy, Demonolatry, 1:23. Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, p. 58. See Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North; Newall, ed., The Witch

Figure,

22

23 24 25 26 27

ch.

Ewen,

Witchcraft and Demonianism,

p. 309. Ewen, op.cit., pp. 144f, 156f. Fortune, Psychic Self-Defence, pp. 152-6. Garmondsway et al., Beowulf and its Analogues, pp. 316-17. Ross, Pagan Celtic Britain, p. 248. See Newall, ed., The Witch Figure, ch. 8. King, Ritual Magic in England, pp. 71-2; Howe, Magicians 2;

of the

Golden

Dawn, pp. 223, 231.

33

Crowley, Confessions, p. 408. Magic, introd. p. xxxvii. Crowley, Magick, pp. 264n, 297. Yeats, Autobiographies, p. 185; Webb, Flight from Reason, pp. 231-2; Knightley and Simpson, Secret Lives, p. 258; Wilson, Occult, pp. 51, 96. Fortune, Psychic Self-Defence, pp. 52f. Scholem, Kabbalah and its Symbolism, p. 92; Jeremiah 1:14; Genesis 1:2.

34

Scholem, Major Trends, pp. 238-9; for the thorns and thistles,

28

29 Sacred 30 31 32

3:18. 35 Genesis 36:31;

36

Regardie,

Scholem, Major Trends, p. 267.

Golden Dawn, vol. 2, p. 37.

see

Genesis

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Autobiographies

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Index

Abaddon,

angels, 52

185 190 234 5 238 243 245 254 255 ; of death, see death; of darkness, 89 186 ; of

142

abomination of desolation, 18 19

,

,

Abraham, as giant,

128

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

205 , 225 , 260

Achilles, 1 37 46 64 65 berserk, 166 251 Actaeon, ghost of, 122 ,

,

,

,

,

70 , 108 ;

53 5 , 99 -

-

,

,

3,

12 ,

221 , 222 ,

235 , 243 ,

,

,

,

,

Agamemnon, 15 his apology, 70 14 ,

89

,

,

,

,

71 , 72 , 108 , 94 , 197 8

177 8 , 186 7 , 257 -

-

anger: human, 107 124 146 154 165 8 201 231 235 251 255 256 7 ; of the dead, 38 122 123 ; of gods, 125 164 5 167 168 (see also God, wrath of ); of giants, 128 ; of the Devil, 165 190 210 animals: and evil, 2 4 9 14 31 43 ,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

-

,

,

-

,

,

,

familiars;

,

,

,

monsters;

,

;

crocodile;

dog; flies; goat; hare; hedgehog; hyena; rat; scorpion; seals; snake; spider; toad; whale; wolf); nature

of man, see man

50 , 116

Anthony, St, 198

129

Antichrist, 17

124

Alexander of Aphrodisias, 79 Alexander the Great, 18 77 Am-mut, 112 ,

,

witchcraft;

and see ape; bat; birds; cat;

Anthesteria,

55 , 92 , 126

,

-

,

animal

Alberich, 136

alchemy, Alcyoneus,

122

-

,

,

70 , 82 , 106 , 112 , 113 , 158 , 170 , 247 8 (see also demons; Devil;

163

Alecto,

,

,

,

,

Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The, 165 Aeneid, see Virgil Aeschylus, 38 70 72 108 123 131

Ahriman,

113 , 144 , 148 , 183 ,

,

45

,

,

,

186 188 212 ; ‘sons of God’, 184 187 192 ; guardian angel, 213 235 254 ; fallen angels, see demons; Watchers

,

257 , 259

Adapa,

,

-

24 , 25- 8, 46, 105 , 184 , 187 , 188 ,

-

100 ,

189 190 191 ,

2

-

,

,

,

,

Adam and Eve,

,

punishment,

-

,

120 ,

,

Abramelin magic, 254 abyss, bottomless pit, 11 14 20 24 116 17 142 159 88 110 111 ,

110,

,

-

24 , 172 , 186 , 217 , 227

Antigone, 37 Antiochus IV Epiphanes, 18 93 143 Anubis, 63 ,

,

Index ape, 58 208 Apollo, 69 123 163 236 Apollonius of Rhodes, 10 91 Apollyon, 142 163 219 Apophis, 9 176 Aquinas, St Thomas, 81 103 109

75 , 96, 102 , 136 , 166 , 167 8, 179 , 180 1 , 187 , 201 , 251 2 -

,

,

,

-

,

Baudelaire, 227 beagle, 63

,

,

,

,

,

147 ,

,

,

211

,

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

,

atmospheres,

,

,

,

Beowulf, 15

-

,

-

,

Beherit, see Baalberith Belial, Beliar, Belias, 89

,

uncanny, 3 , 4 , 39 , 41 ,

43 4 -

Atropos, 73 6 , 24 , 25 , 27 , 54 , 93 , 97 , 103 , 147 , 153 , 171 , 188 , 211

Azazel, 187

Azhi, 15

-

,

,

,

,

,

175 ,

189 ;

as

,

,

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

100 1 , -

243 , 247 , 248 9 -

49 , 91 4 , 99 , 114 , 198 ; and 33 , 52 , 80 , 88 , 96 7 , 112 , 113 , 116 , 117 , 122 , 156 , 158 , 159 , 180 , 239 , 251 , 252 ; and the Devil, -

,

-

52 80 180 ,

,

91 , 216 17, 220 , -

225 6 , 253 , -

224 ,

90 , 159 , 194 ,

211 ,

258 259 261 ,

,

Blavatsky, Madame, 228 blood-suckers,

,

also

10 11 101 174 184 208 209 ; and the dead, 37 45 95 6 112 113 114 116 252 ; and witches,

Blake, William,

Barrett, Francis, 237 ,

209 ,

Black Shuck, 62

Baphomet, 174 ,

(see

225

-

barrows, 14 15 16 136 Barton, Elizabeth, 200 Basil, St, 152 158

112 , 200 ,

monsters; nightjar; ostrich; owl; raven; Seven Whistlers); of prey,

see Devil Black Death, Black Mass,

237

,

,

234 , 245 , 247 , 248

210 ,

black, 32 death, ,

17 , 74 , 87, 240

birds, 16 , 25 , 65, 99 ,

97 ,

-

90 , 186 ,

Berit, Berith, see Baalberith berserk, 166 167 8 251 256

,

Augustine, St,

Baal, 8 9 11 18 demon, 237 Baalberith, 234 235 Baba, 112 Baba Yaga, 243 Badb, the, 251 2 Bahir, 257 banshee, 95 baobhan sith, 242

,

Belphegor, 235

,

,

,

235 , 238 , 254

-

,

,

,

,

236 237 8

235 ,

254

,

,

Behemoth, 176 235

133 , 136 , 252

Astaroth, 234 235 236 7 254 Astarte, 236 237 astral body, astral plane, 41 5 55 57 58 9 105 112 250 257 astrology, 79 82 89 114 187 236 Athene, 46 127 129 130 166 251 Athtar, 189 ,

,

253 , 254

,

empusa; ,

233 , 241

see

baobhan sith;

hag; lamia; Lilith; owl;

vampire

Bloody Bones, 230 Bludohn, 236

,

91 , 95 , 155 , 174 , 209 , 234 ; Batman,

128

battle,

Beckford, Louisa and William, 219 Bede, 87 155 197 233 Beelzebub, 215 217 234 235 237 ,

Armilos, 21 Arthur, King, 96 Asmodeus, 234

bat,

-

body,

evilness of,

139 , 187 , 215 ,

gods and spirits of, 46

-

7 , 73 ,

20 ,

52 3 , 54 , 92 ,

221 , 222 ,

Boehme, Jacob, 258

-

259

Index

bogies, nursery, see children

centaurs,

Bogomils, Boguet, Henri, 104 213 boiling pot, 12 93 137

Cerberus,

222

,

,

chance, unreality of,

,

Bombo, 98 Boneless, 230 Book ofthe Dead, 112 borders, boundaries,

231 , 246 ;

5, 14 , 16 , 62 ,

80 230 231 4 252 ; and the dead, 36 8 40 41 42 45 62 ,

,

-

,

,

,

,

,

Bosch, Hieronymus,

241

,

6 , 7 24 , 88 , 111, 112 , 116 , 140 , 159 , 168 , 257 8, 259 ,

2,

-

-

-

-

of

the Light Brigade, 156

bottomless pit, see abyss boundaries, see borders

Charlemagne, 96

Bovet, Richard, 205

Charon, 37 116 Chemosh, 237

Charlotte of Mexico, ,

Bradford, William, 180 Brandon, S. G. F., 53 breaking of the vessels, 259 60 Brendan, St, 88 91 2 brimstone, 20 140 146 150 Brodie-Innes, J. W., 58

1 , 4 , 145 , 154 , 181 , 210 , 213 , 224 , 232 , 237 ; and bogies, 5, 28 , 29 32 , 56, 86 7 , 99 101 , 106 7 ,

-

Bromyard, John, 141 Browning, E. B., 173 Bunyan, John, 138 142 ,

Byron, 55

133 ,

,

,

,

,

,

221 2 , -

,

,

16

21

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

cat, 19 , 29 , 83 , 91 , 95 , 203 ,

210 ,

216 ,

-

237 , 249 , 257 ,

and hell, 140

223 121 ,

124 , 132 ,

-

Church of Satan, 195 225 clairvoyance, see psychic abilities class warfare: and

223 , 245 , 247 , 248 50 116 , 117 ,

,

;

20 ,

-

133 , 134 , 136 , 243

,

-

195 , 196 , 201 , 202 , 208 , 219 20 , 222 , 223 , 224 , 226 7 , 227 8 , 235 ,

points, spirits of, 236 238 Carlyle, Thomas, 157 170 255

caves, 14 ,

,

,

88 9 , 90 , 113 , 145 , 161 , 191 , 215 , 217 , 238 , 241 , 243 , 253 ; and Antichrist,

,

105

cardinal

222 ,

,

and hell, judgment, 19 146 148 50 151 152 153 157 180 258 ; and vampires, 57 ; and Pan, 172 ; and demons, the Devil, 187 189 191

177

,

,

,

-

,

-

,

17 , 19 ,

candles, and the Devil, 215 cannibalism, see devouring

Cathars, 217

-

poltergeist cases, 205 Child Roland, 91 135 240 241 Christ, 26 27 31 2 51 54 55 82

150 18 , 19 , 20

Canon Episcopi, 102 Capone, Al, 22

,

,

superstitions,

-

239

Capricorn,

239 , 241 , 242 , 243 ;

83 5 ; and obsession, 101 , 201 2 , 247 ; and giants, 128 , 130 ; and

Caird, G. B.,

Caligula,

250 ,

-

,

147 , 163 , 219

,

,

,

242 3 ,

fears, classified, 30 1 ; and death, 33 4 ; and inherited guilt, see guilt; and fairies, 74 82 230

-

,

229 30 ,

-

-

-

Cabala, 51 176 236 257 61 Cailleach, 232 Cain, 87 96 100 124 187 ,

170 ,

-

257 ;

86 , 194 , 226

,

-

-

-

,

,

22

126

,

children,

-

,

212 ,

,

125 , 260 ; and human enemies, 7 , 9 , 11 , 14 16 , 17 24 , 165 , 176

charge

159

165

101 ,

also fate

see

changeling, 230 chaos,

-

,

116 , 230

62 , 126

Cerne Abbas giant, 128

216 , 247

,

10 ,

-

giants,

1

Clifford, Mrs W. K., 30 Clonmel Burning, 206

131 , 134 ;

Clotho, 73

primeval, angel of,

cloven hoof, 208 209 210 Clytemnestra, 38 71 72 108 coach, phantom, 96 7 230 Cocteau, Jean, 68 70 ,

,

,

,

97 9 ,

,

-

110, 172 , 206 , 216 ,

comets, 21

conflict of generations, theme of, 8

,

-

111, 115 ; maltreatment of corpse, 32 , 37 , 60 2 , 97 , 168 , 251 ; surviving in graves, tombs, 16 , 44 5,

lights, 44

-

cosmetics, evil of, 187 9,

,

,

16 17 , 33 , 34 7 , 46, 47 , 57 , 60 , 61 , -

,

125 , 129

crocodile,

-

-

,

,

collective unconscious, 31 94 Collingwood, R. G., 66

2,

witches, Ahriman,

226 ; and

,

,

corpse

-

,

177 ; prince of, see Devil dead, the, 3 32 34 45 46 53 55 63 213 230 (see also battle; Hades; Spiritualism); land of, see astral plane; hell; underworld; judgment of, see judgment; disposal of,

-

Coleridge,

87 8 ; cap of, 88 ; 186 ; and

101 ,

-

,

10 ,

89

-

174 , 175 ,

10 , 11 , 112 ,

176

136 ; ghosts, 3 , 56 7 , 115 , 45 4 , 5, 8, 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 37 , 38 , 39, 49 , 53 , 62 , 94 , 101 , 106 , 122 , 126 , 156 , 205 , 242 , 257 ; earthbound, 121 2 ,

-

-

-

Cromwell, Oliver, 60 Cronus, 80 124 7 130 176 263 crossroads, 56 60 98 Crowley, Aleister, 58 105 121 174 176 7 227 8 253 4 255 260 261 264 Cuchulain, 64 136 251 -

,

,

,

,

,

,

-

-

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

Cupid,

-

-

-

,

-

,

restless, 35 , 37 8, 40 5, 53 , 60 7 , 98, 102 , 115 16 , 9 , , 87, 95 55 -

,

-

117 , 148 , 217 , 241 , 257 ; annihilation of, 113 , 116 , 149 , 150 ; ambivalent

attitudes to, 35 7 116 ; vengeance of, 38 40 1 72 123 ; and fertility, 16 48 49 50 1 55 74 118 119 20 121 ; and dreams, 108 ; and giants, 135 136 7 ; and fairies, see fairies Dead Sea Scrolls, 89 90 186 238 -

,

,

see Eros

-

,

curlew, 96

,

,

-

,

curses, 122 ,

248

,

,

,

,

-

,

,

Cyclopes, 130

,

-

,

Custance, John, 138 157 131

,

,

-

,

death,

Dagon, 179

,

237

Dan, tribe of, 21 93 ,

dancing: evil, 92

, 170 , 214 , 215 , 240 , 242 ; dance of death, 52

Dante, 117 141 154 156 darkness: night, 3 17 19 24 31 86 110 111 132 163 175 182 ,

,

,

157 , 160

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

194 , 230 , 241 , 243 ,

,

254 , 261

-

Hades; hell; underworld); origin of, 3 24 25 8 45 6 53 5 ; and dark, shadow, 1 33 46 48 87 -

-

,

,

-

,

,

,

,

,

,

88 , 91 , 92 , 93 , 111, 112 ,

,

also black ); and

-

,

,

5, 9 , 10 , 32 , 33 63 , 64, 67, 68 , 73 , 74 , 114 , 116 , 164 , 190 , 195 , 196 , 224 , 229 , 261 (see also battle; 1,

(see

also dreams; Hecate;

incubus; nightmare; twilight); creatures of, 3 , 4 , 39 , 44 , 87, 94 106 , 232 , 244 , -

249 , 250 ; of underworld, hell, 9 , 42 , 46, 62 , 88 9 , 93 , 111, 112 , 113 , 115 , 116 , 117 , 118 , 123 , 139 , 140 , -

141 , 145 , 146 , 155 , 156 , 158 , 159 ;

,

,

176

(see

26 , 34 6 ,

sleep,

-

42 , 87, 88 , 126 , 144 ; of the 51 , 54 , 55 ; and sex,

rebirth,

see

sex;

9 , 35 , 48 52 , 60 -

-

1,

kiss, and 92 ,

136 7 175 176 ; angel or spirit of, 46 47 54 187 190 259 261 ; and the Devil, 12 17 54 5 119

21 ,

-

-

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

170 , 186 , 187 , 190 , 191 ; as dragon, 16 17 ; as skeleton, 52 3 ; dance of, -

-

52 ; omens of, 62 , 63 , 65 , 80 , 83 , 95 6 , 107 , 109 10 , 252 ; hounds of, -

63

-

96

,

of,

97 ; eye

,

167 ;

114 ,

devouring, see devouring Demeter, 118 119 ,

,

122 ,

,

237 126

,

,

(see );

-

230 , 231 , 236 7 ; fallen

-

angels,

-

20 ,

259 60 ;

191 ,

-

habitations of, 9 23 43 93 4 105 183 4 233 ; and animals, birds, 20 92 95 101 198 203 209 10 245 246 51 253 4 257 ; in human -

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

-

,

,

-

,

,

,

,

-

,

-

,

form,

,

2 198 207 208 248 ; voices of, 208 210 249 ; and disasters, 7 8 96 7 195

209

-

91

22 ,

,

,

,

,

211

-

,

,

14 , 217 18 , 230 , 254 -

223 , 229 30 , 246, 247 , 249 ; horns, 169 , 171 2 , 208 , 210, 215 , 217 ,

20 ,

-

229 ; and serpent, see snake; as dragon, 12 , 13 , 15 , 17 , 20 , 142 , 176 , 190 ; in grotesque form, 6 ,

221 ,

198 9

29 ,

208 ,

-

,

attacking

209 ;

17 , 19 , 22 , 60 , 155 , 169 , 196 7, 201 , 208 , 213 ; power of, in Christianity, 19 , 24 , 26 , 28 ,

Christianity, -

55 , 182 , 185 , 186 7 , 190 2 , 194 , 195 6 , 199 , 213 ; lord of this -

-

-

and the flesh,

matter

12 ,

214 , 215 , 217 , 220 , 222 , 223 4 , 233 , 259 ; and hell, 12 , 20 , 144 5 , -

,

(see

-

148

195 ,

57 , 132 , 162 , 186 , 195 , 213 , 223 4 , 228 ; and death, see death; and

,

6 , 207 ,

211 ,

,

4 , 41 ,

194 ,

234 ; and

,

138 , 139 , 140 , 141 , 145 , 152 , 154 , 155 , 156 , 160 ; protection against, 82 3 , 196 , 200 , 213 14 , 223 , 241 2 ; in modernmagical theory, 254 7 depth, evilness of, 111, 160 , 177 ; see -

-

-

-

also abyss De

-

-

dreams, punishing the dead, 116

,

-

91 , 95 , 156 , 172 , 174 , 193 , 200 , 202 , 208 , 209 10 , 215 ,

150 , 154 5, 156 , 157 , 159 , 160 , 169 , 170 , 176 , 186 , 189 , 195 , 208 , 235 ; desire for souls, 28 , 29 ,

possession by, 108 9 ;

,

90 , 174 , 187 , 195 , 196 , 197 , 209 ,

-

-

,

,

world,

also storm); and disease, see disease; and sin, 177 195 197 8 199 ; 200

,

,

-

,

199 ,

,

,

-

10 ,

,

-

199 ,

origins of,

188 ,

-

-

,

215 , 216 , 217 , 218 , 224 , 261 ; in human form, 91 , 172 , 198 , 199 , 201 , 207 8 , 220 , 250 ; and animals,

,

10 ,

-

182 4 ,

225 , 245 , 257 ;

210 ,

birds,

24 , 25 , 27 , 90 , 139 , 148 , 159 , 160 , 167, 208 , 211 , 219 , 222 , 223 , 225 , 230 , 234 8, 243 4 , 254 (see also 177 ,

222 ,

,

,

-

80 , 81 , 184 , 196 7 , 198 , 209

other

220 ,

2,

-

-

-

-

191

-

,

also elementals; incubus; nightmare classifications of, 234 8 244 5 ; pagan gods and spirits, 15

Watchers);

24 , 25 , 26 , 91 , 93 , 188 90 , -

230 , 232

222 ,

-

12 , 20 ,

,

demons, 3 , 8 , 23 , 28 , 56, 62 , 94 , 101 113 , 172 , 178 ,

-

and Ahriman, 14 177 8 186 7 ; and blackness, darkness, 32 90 91 3 155 184 187 193 194 201

del Rio, Martin, 216 , 217

Delort, Catherine, 217

235 8, 243 , 254 ; origin and early history of, 182 90 ; rebellion of,

-

,

-

disorder, disasters,

12 , 17 , 161 , 192 , 195 , 208 9 , 211 14 , 218 19 , 226 ; possession by, 4 , 57 ,

176

-

202 203 208 ; influence the mind, 23 101 102 183 194 196 200 201 2 205 6 218 ; responsible for sin, 25 28 55 74 91 92 165 197 199 ; and sex, 26

193 , 196 ,

,

,

on

,

-

110, 111 -

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

91 , 167 , 169 , 174 , 187 , 193 , 207 , 209 , 214 , 215 , 216 , 219 , 220 , 223 ; and the eye, 167, 177 , 208 ; and

,

pagan gods, 96 168 169 170 172

-

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

-

,

,

-

,

,

Descartes, 107 8 desert, 9 14 105 146 175 177 183 4 ; desert hermits, 91 158 198 254 5 Devil, the, 3 24 54 138 193 228 ,

,

-

,

Quincey,

-

-

,

,

,

,

,

,

98 126 131 134 137 142 174 ,

174 , 176 , 177 , 196 , 197 , 209 10 , 216 , 221 , 252 , 263 4 ; in witchcraft, -

-

see

witchcraft; worship of, 19

91 ,

,

99 , 167 , 195 , 208 , 210 , 214 17, 218 28 ; as aspect of God, 185 , 191 , 261 ; brother of God or Christ, -

-

223 , 257 ; as light-bearer, 199 , 215 16 , 224 (see also Lucifer ); in Cabala, 258 , 259

187

,

222 ,

-

devouring, theme of, 14

,

29 , 96,

112 ,

127 , 246 ; and hell, 12 , 155 , 156 7 , 160 ; and witches, 29 , 30 , 32 , 99 , -

101 , 102 ,

170 , 223 , 243 ; 30 , 127 37 , 188 , 250 ; 17 , 37 , 46, 47 , 62 3 , 112 112 ,

105 ,

and giants, and death, 126 ,

-

-

-

142 ,

156

and

168 ;

,

-

Dionysus,

,

,

,

,

,

,

double, 231 248 ,

Dracula, 57 dragon, 8

-

156

142 ,

17 , 24 , 29 , 93 , 112 , 237 ; and St George,

10

,

,

175 ; and the

Devil, see Devil; and human aggression, 14 16 165 ; and Antichrist, 17 ; 12

-

13 ,

-

,

and giants, 135 136 Drake, Sir Francis, 96 ndreams, 18 42 69 79 83 88 94 103 105 106 10 116 204 248 256 ; see also nightmare ,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

14 15 , 23 , 87, 89 90 , 177 8, 186 7 , 217 , 220 4 , 261 ; in Christianity, -

-

19 , 24 , 90 , 191 171 ,

-

,

172 , 173 , 174 , 175 excrement, 18 , 50 , 91 , 98, 99 ,

217 ,

-

-

-

169 70

157 ,

201

,

dualism,

30 , 75 , 229

127 ,

,

-

,

-

-

,

Douglas, Mary, 233

,

50 ,

,

256 ; death-hounds, 63 96 97 ; and the Devil, 91 202 210

158 9

,

Dickens, Charles, 29 Diestel, L., 176 dinosaurs, 10 128

,

drug-induced experiences, 110

Dionysus, 169 70 Diana, 97 98 102 ,

,

203 , 204 , 205 , 247 , 248 , 249 , 251 ,

-

2,

194 5, -

223

220 ,

dusii, 103 171 ,

dirt,

139 , 141 , 154 , 177 , 184 , 193 , 208 9 , 215 , 216 , 233 4 , 258 9 -

-

-

Dis, 119 154 disasters (drought, fire, flood, plague, etc.), 5 7 14 66 7 132 164 5 229 231 ; see also chance; demons; ,

-

-

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

Devil; disease; earthquakes; eruptions; God; gods; order; storm disease, 1 5 7 21 116 155 (see also Black Death; madness); and ,

gods,

,

,

,

,

163 165 175 ; and God, 179 180 181 186 ; and the dead, 115 ; and evil spirits, 183 185 195 201 202 204 206 211 45 , 114 ,

122 ,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

212 ,

,

,

,

,

,

,

229 , 230 , 233 , 239 40 , 242 , -

249 ; and magic, 253 256 ,

disir, 74

Dodds, E. R., 69

dog,

8,

10 ,

earthquakes,

7 , 19 , 125 , 130 , 165 ,

169 179 181 244 Edom, Kings of, 21 259 60 ,

,

,

-

,

elementals,

43 , 57 8, 230 , 238 , 244 , -

245 253 256 7 elements, spirits of, see elementals Eleusinian Mysteries, 48 55 119 20 -

,

,

-

,

elf, 43 87 105 Eliot, T. S., 72 ,

,

,

,

135 , 230 , 239 40

,

123

-

Elysion, Elysium, 115

117 , 125

,

empusa, 56 100 Enuma elish, 7 8 9 11 125 ,

-

,

Ereshkigal, Erichtho,

,

,

114

125

Erinna of Telos, 30 98 Erinyes, see Furies Eros, 51 52 ,

,

35 , 37 , 61 3 , 83 , 86 , 88 , -

eruptions, 7

,

11 ,

14 , 129 , 165

weapon of God, 179 ; disasters; dragon; hell

etheric body, 44 58 ,

Ethiopians, Etna, Mt,

91

flies, 97 116 195

130

11 ,

Eumenides,

215

2,

-

,

,

Forest Lawn cemetery, 52 Formosus, Pope, 61

172 , 180 , 197

Eve, see Adam and Eve evil: as unreal, negative

good’, of

5 6 , 24 , 262 ; -

spiritual

260 , 261

waste

‘lesser element

or as

2,

progress,

2 ; as

-

27 , 176 ,

product,

146

,

148 149 258 60 ; see also dirt evil eye, see eye ‘evil inclination’, the, 27 190 excrement, see dirt ,

,

,

-

,

103 ,

10 , 191 -

,

,

,

123 4 ,

122 ,

-

,

,

210 ,

,

,

extra-sensory perception, see psychic abilities eye, supernatural force of, 99 114 -

-

Fuller, J. F. C., 58 260 1 Furies, the, 70 72 117 154 , 165 242

,

166 7, 168 , 177 , 208 ,

Fortune, Dion, 58 9 250 256 Frazer, J. G., 49 Freemasonry, 23 48 Freud, Freudian theory, 68 109

-

,

4 , 210 , 226 , 251 ,

252

,

2,

234 , 247 ; lord

210 ,

,

also

,

Euripides, 97 123 Eurynomus, 116 236 Eusebius,

,

of, 235 237 foot, deformity of,

123

see

,

256

Gabriel Hounds, 96 Gardner, Gerald, 120 Garibaldi, 180

-

1

Garm, 62 46 , 32 , 43 , 74 , 82 , 229 , 230 , 239

fairies,

-

252 3 , 257 ; and the -

95 ,

dead,

49 ,

and 105 239 ; and demons, 239 41 ;

232 3 ,

135 ,

-

nightmare,

-

,

206 , 238 , 241

2,

-

fallen angels, see demons; Watchers false prophet, the, 19 20 150 ,

,

,

-

,

providence; superstitions);

ambivalent

attitudes to, 64 5 69 74 80 81 3 ; and history, 79 -

,

,

76 76 8 79 Fates, the, 73 5 88 124 235 Father Time, 127 fauns, Faunus, 103 104 171 , 172 -

,

,

-

,

,

-

,

,

-

-

-

the dead, 135 136 7 Gilgamesh, 46 142 Giraldus Cambrensis, 224 240 -

,

,

,

Gladstone,

139 , 180

,

,

170 4 ,

sheep

and goats,

210 ;

and Pan,

,

209 ,

177 ,

-

,

female,

47 , 132 , 135 6 , 243 , 251 ; primitiveness of, 128 9 , 130 , 132 ; and

,

216 ; and the

10 172 , 174 , 177 , 184 , 209 , 216 of , 219 , 247 ; Mendes, 215 ,

demonic,

230

fetch, 231 248 ,

fig, 50

,

29 , 30 , 87, 124 , 127 37 , 169 ,

,

,

,

,

Goar, St, 200 goat, 10 91 170 ; 148 149 153

-

,

-

188 , 190 , 230 , 239 , 250 ;

,

-

,

-

Geoffrey of Monmouth, 133 George, St, 12 13 175 226 giants,

familiars, 101 248 9 257 Fata Padourii, 242 243 fate, 3 64 85 164 (see also astrology; ,

145 7 , 148 , 155

ghosts, see dead, the

243 4

-

Gehenna, Gello, 30

174

53 Fingal’s Cave, 128 -

1,

fire, of anger, 165

-

God: responsible for evil, 3 19 24 5 54 71 87 8 89 90 161 2 178-

.

-

6 ; of desire, 166 ;

,

,

,

-

-

,

,

,

,

,

Guirdham, Arthur, 101 186 ;

83 185 overwhelming power of, 9 10 11 179 181 182 ; and fate, 66 7 69 74 76 81 83 (see also providence); and dreams, 83 108 9 ; wrath of, 89 144 146 ,

,

-

,

,

,

,

106 7 , 194 -

,

Gwrach y Rhibyn, 252

Gwynn ap Nudd, 240

-

,

,

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

,

180

-

1

gnostic tradition,

191 ; in 257 61

221

-

,

,

3,

-

and evil, 2 3 7 8 19 43 70 71 161 78 181 201 (see also names of individual deities); and death, 45 46 163 (see also battle ); and madness, see madness; and ,

,

,

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

,

,

fate, 67 71 75 79 ; as demons, see demons, Devil Goebbels, 79 Goethe, 2 Gog and Magog, 20 21 golden age, golden race, 2 3 6 17 -

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

,

Golden Dawn, Order of the, 57 8 105 174 176 250 253 261 Gomorrah, 90 146 149 goose, 96 Gorgon, 15 98 116 154

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

Hecate, 62 3 97 8

Great Beast, 14 , 263

20

-

-

-

,

hedgehog, 211

,

248

Hel, 155 6 hell, 12 29 -

60 , , 34 , 45 , 97 , 126 , 137 , 138 161 , 162 , 177 , 189 , 195 , 196 , -

,

208 ,

225 ,

mouth of,

230 , 238 , 239 , 241 ; 116 , 156 , 160 ; fire

12 ,

33 , 66 , 89, 138 , 139 , 140 ,

20 ,

144 59 , 258 ;

cold,

147 , 155 , 157 ,

psychological

-

pain of loss, 138 149 241 ; other torments of, 89 113 116 117 139 141 146 147 153 60 ; as deterrent, 140 153 196 ; disposal of rubbish, 146 148 149 258 9 ; landscape of, 154 5 159 ; centre of world, 154 159 160 ; tithe to, 243 Hera, 100 127 129 Heraclitus, 5 76 7 124 170 Herbert, George, 83 Hermes, 63 126 Herod, 96 Herodotus, 46 174 ,

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

3 , 150 , 156 , 227 ,

-

129

,

,

Grendel, 74 87 Guazzo, Francesco Maria, 104 204 ,

,

-

,

,

,

216 244

,

,

,

143 ,

,

-

,

-

123 ,

Hegel, 77

,

,

72 3 , 127 , also original sin

122 ,

,

,

see

102 ,

-

of dragons, 14 15 ; of giants,

guilt, hereditary,

,

126 , 208

255 ;

,

,

,

states, 42 , 110, 138 9 , 152 , 153 , 157 8, 207 ,

,

,

,

,

159 ; and

,

Grahame, Kenneth, 173 Grant, Kenneth, 263 grapes of wrath, 150 151 178

180 ;

,

,

-

-

greed,

,

-

of,

26 126 130 ,

Hallowe’en, 49 116 240 Hansel and Gretel, 242 3 ‘Happy Families’, 30 Hardy, Thomas, 66 162 hare, 4 171 210 211 245 Harpies, 100 116 154 234 242 Hasler, Bernadette, 193 206 Hathor, 167 ,

gods, the: ,

-

,

-

,

-

242

incomprehensibility of,

2 ; and war, 166 179 maker of demons, 184

;

170

122 ,

-

-

-

-

-

88 , 118 19 ,

,

3 , 47 , 58 , 97 , 100 1 , 105 , 123 , 135 6 , 230 , 232 , 251 3 ; types of,

-

179 80 ; 164 , 181

Hades, 62

hag,

150 , 151 , 178 9 , 181 , 183 , 212 , 258 60 ; and hell, 138 , 145 , 146 , 147 8, 149 , 150 , 153 , 154 , 157 , 162 ; and the Covenant, 164 ,

,

,

,

,

Jesus, see Christ

Hesiod, 73 88 116, 124 164 Highgate Cemetery, 59 Hill, Rowland, 140 Hislop, Alexander, 263 Hitler, 18 22 199 ; and fate, 64 ,

,

,

,

Jews, 22 ,

Hobbes, 7 194 ,

Holda, Holle, Hulda,

105 ,

,

,

,

64 69 70 75 88 94 118 122 163 4 166 181 251 ; and the dead, 37 46 62 115 16 141 2,

-

-

,

,

,

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

,

104 , 154 , 168 , 175 ,

homosexuality,

,

20 , 21 ,

220

62

,

, 104 157 , 182

Joyce, James, 139 Judas Iscariot, 155 156 196 249 Judas Maccabaeus, 143 judgment of the dead, 19 20 ,

Homer, Homeric religion, 15 76 92 108 130 ; and fate, the gods, 1

-

Johnson, Dr, 33

Jonah, 156

79 , 81

evil, 19

23 , 96, 180 , 196 , 199 ,

Jezebel, 23 77 8, -

,

,

associated with

,

,

,

,

93 ,

13 , 144 5, 146 , 147 50 , 152 , 153 , 179 , 185 , 188 , 208 112

-

-

-

Julius Caesar, 77 95 109 Jung, C. G. and Jungian theory, ,

,

19 ,

31 , 94 , 255

219

horns, see Devil Horus, 166 167 174 176 236 Howe, Julia Ward, 151 ,

,

Hrungnir,

,

,

Kabbalah, see Cabala Kafka, 194 Kardec, Allan, 203 4

132

hubris, 71 74 78 192 Hughes, Robert, 139 156 Huxley, Aldous, 27 157 ,

-

,

,

kelpie, 246

,

Kingsford, Anna, 255

,

Kirk, Robert, 241 Kitchener, 61

Sir Julian, 78

Huxley, Huysmans, J. K., 105 hyena, jackal, 62 184

6,

-

220

,

6

-

243

Knatchbull-Hugessen, Edward, 133 Knights Templar, 174 knowledge, evilness of, 25 53 187 8 Knox, John, 220

,

-

,

Iliad, see Homer Incubo, 103 incubus and succubus,

Knucker, the,

42 , 99 103 6 , 107 8 , 188 , 230 , 235 , 244 -

101 ,

Kore,

,

13 14 -

Persephone

see

-

-

initiation, 48, 51 , 99 , 119

Ishtar, 114 15 121 236 7 Isles of the Blest, 115 126

Lachesis, 73 lamia, 56 100

ivy, 50

Last Judgment,

-

-

,

,

,

Jack

the

giant-killer,

127 , 131 , 134 ,

135

jackal, see hyena James, William, 2 Jason, 16 98 ,

Jehovah’s Witnesses, 23 Jersild, A. T., 31

-

,

1 , 102 , see

242 , 251

judgment

Lawrence, D. H., 50 laxative against evil, 50 Leadbeater, C. W., 42

left, uncanny direction, 22

,

107 , 240 ,

258 259 letters to the dead, 45 Lévi, Eliphas, 174 ,

Leviathan,

11

-

12 ,

17 , 93 , 156 , 176 ,

190 , 191 , 234 , 235 , 237 , 254

librarian, dreaming of, 109 lies, evil of, 1 20 89 150 169 185 186 ; and Ahriman, 14 15 177 ,

,

,

,

,

,

,

animal

woman

99

-

100 ,

101 ,

105 , 184 ,

102 ,

242

Manning, Cardinal, 21 Marduk, 7

Locke, 140 Loki, 168 9 172 Long Man of Wilmington,

mare, see

,

,

80

,

237 , 243 , 254 , 257 ;

see

also Devil

Mathers:

MacGregor,

105 ,

253 4 , 255 ; Moina, 250 matter, evilness of, 178 , 187 ,

-

,

108 , 109 , 115 ,

-

,

Mastema, 186 Mather, Cotton, 220

,

,

,

229 , 231

Medea, 97 98 mediums, 41 203 ,

,

4,

221

-

Melville, Herman, 7 73 75 Merivale, Patricia, 173 mermaids, mermen, 10 244 246

-

,

104 , 150 , 164 , 197

,

,

mid-day, Mab, 105 Machen, Arthur, 173 madness, 109 110 ,

,

251 , 260

111,

,

,

,

,

,

-

-

,

217

Malory, Thomas, 133 Mammon, 235 238 ,

Milcom, 237 Mill, James and John Stuart, 161 Milton, John, 117 156 159 ,

,

-

,

2

160 ,

225 , 226 , 237

modern witchcraft movement, witchcraft

see

Moirai, 73 Moloch, 237 monsters, 3 , 4 5, 13 , 28 , 30 , 86 , 106 ,

God, 183 Mahdi, the, 61 Mahoumet, 236

Maleficarum,

,

uncanny time, 171 , 198 ,

232

(see also possession); inspired by gods and spirits, 41 71 96 195 201 202 229 255 ; and Hecate, 98 ; and the Furies, 123 ; and Odin, Woden, 167 8 ; and Dionysus, 169 70 ; and Pan, 171 174 ; and ,

221 , 222

Megaira, 124

Lucretius, 116 Luria, Isaac, 259 60

Malleus

250 ,

-

Luciferans, 216 222 3 luck, 1 5 79 82 5 95

,

,

Mass -

,

-

-

Luther,

astrology,

,

1

,

154 5 , 188 , 189 , 190 , 192 3, 215 16, 219 , 220 , 223 , 225 , ,

2,

-

,

Lucibel, 216 Lucifer, 93 99

,

10

Martin, John, 159 Mary, Queen of Scots, 22 61 93 Mass, the, 216 224 ; see also Black

203

Lucan, 125

234 235

8, 9 ,

Mars, 166 172 236 ; in

128

Loomis, Stanley, 38 Lorna Doone, 39

,

,

nightmare

Margaret, St, 12

-

1,

of man,

nature

112 ,

Little Red Riding Hood, 250

-

-

142 , 170 , 174 , 176 , 215 , 225 , 254 , 255 , 261

70 , 94 , 99 , 105 ,

limbo, 241

Loudun, nuns of, 200

3 , 24 8 ,

-

-

);

186

Lilith,

-

53 4 , 127 , 138 9 , 147 8, 153 , 185 , 190 , 257 , 259 , 260 (see also anger; -

-

,

responsible for evil, 2

man:

-

125 , 167 , 209 , 230 , 239 , 246, 250

(see also Antichrist; dragon; giants; 211

-

12 ,

213 ,

Great Beast); of chaos, 6 , 7 , 8 , 10 , 18 , 111, 112 , 165 , 258 ; and the sea,

10 ,

11 , 112

-

18 ; of

hell, underworld,

15 , 116 17 , 142 , 145 , -

225 ; in the 257 , 259 260 Madame de, 224 , 237

156 7 159 6o 208 -

-

,

,

mind, 6 ,

,

112 ,

Montespan,

,

the, in witchcraft, 97 Morgan le Fay, 252 3

moon,

-

9,

120

as evil direction, 18 92 4 146 159 171 188 257

north,

-

,

,

,

,

,

,

Nuckelavee, 230 numinous, the, 163

-

Mormo, 30 98 ,

morning star, 93 189 Morrigan, the, 251 3 ,

-

-

Moses, 176 179 181 183 186 ; and Pan, 172 Mot, 9 ,

,

,

obsession, see possession Odin, 96 167 8 169 236

,

multiple personality, 202

,

,

,

Oedipus, 68

177 178 187 old age, 26 80 88 116 126 155 Onians, R. B., 74 5 Ophite Cultus Sathanas, 221 Opie, Iona and Peter, 32 83 4 ,

,

Mussolini, 22

251

71 , 72 , 73

,

Ohrmazd, 89

,

4 , 229

-

,

Odyssey, see Homer ,

,

,

,

,

-

myrtle, 50

-

,

order, importance of, 2

Naamah, 184

Napoleon 1, 22

,

125 , 130 , 132 , 140 , 159 , 209 , 232 ;

30 , 64

Napoleon III, 22 narcissus, 119 nature, 101

,

120

,

of, and evil powers,

course

195 ,

199 ,

211

229 , 230 , 244 , 246 ;

-

see

218 19 ,

14,

-

also chance;

disasters; witchcraft Negroes, and the demonic,

91

2,

94 ,

Nergal, 114

Origen, 197

original sin, 27

-

8, 53 4 , 73 , 127 , 153 -

Osiris, 175 6 177 236 ostrich, 184 Otto, Rudolf, 163 -

,

,

ouija boards, 4

236

,

see

Otto, W. F., 50 169

88

,

see also chaos; reversal Order of the Golden Dawn, Golden Dawn

,

-

200

Nemesis, 71

7 , 67 8, 111, -

,

Ovid,

Nero, 18 19 20 Newman, Cardinal, 23 24 244 5 Newton, 140 Nibelungenlied, 74 136

10 ,

,

35 , 41 , 206

100

51 ,

-

,

Owen, Harold, 40 86 94 owl, 95 100 1 184

,

,

,

-

,

-

,

,

,

Nicolson, Harold, Nider

86

Paasikivi, J. K., ghost of, 40 pact with the Devil, 223 4 228 Palmer, Samuel, 193 4

John, 104

night, see darkness Nightingale, Florence, 138

-

,

-

Pamphile, 100

nightjar, 95 96 ,

nightmare, 105 ,

106

3 , 29 , 35 , 94 , 98, -

10 ,

-

246

Njal’s Saga, 65 75 Norns, 74 ,

-

3,

114 , 138 , 171 , 229 ,

230 , 235 , 239 , 242 , 252 ; terror, 86 , 106 7 nixies,

102

night

Pan, 103 170 4 176 7 209 216 242 Papini, Giovanni, 194 Paradise Lost, see Milton parapsychology, see psychic abilities -

-

,

,

,

Patroclus, ghost of, 37 Paul, St, 55 60 90 165 ,

215

,

,

,

,

,

195 , 196 ,

Pausanias, 71

118 ,

,

121 ,

purgatory, 42 45 116 117 152 155

125 , 171

,

Pavlov Institute, 110

peacock, 167

Pusey, E. B.,

264

,

Persephone, Proserpine, 98 122 ,

,

,

,

,

,

241

139

119 21 , -

,

125 , 127 , 236

Ragnarök, 67

Phlegethon, 117 Piaget, J., 31

,

131 , 168 , 169

Picatrix, 80

Rahab, 11 Rahner, Karl, 28

Pilchard, Thomas, 41 Pilgrim’s Progress, see Bunyan

rat, 29 30 , 249 raven, 47 , 82 , 168 , 251 , 252

160

,

-

distrust of, 172 173 226

pine, 50

reason,

Piozzi, Mrs, 104 plague, see Black Death; disease

Regensburg, Berthold von, 207 Remy, Nicolas, 213 233 246 7 reversal of natural order, accepted -

,

Plato, 41 , 42 , 116 , 127 , 164 Plotinus, 5, 6

standards, 95 98 ,

poltergeist, 59

Polyphemus,

119 , ,

122 ,

126 , 236

,

215 ,

130 , 131

Pompey, 18 Popper, Sir Karl, 76 possession and obsession, -

,

,

,

,

,

,

-

,

-

,

,

221

,

208 9 , 213 , -

4 , 224 8 -

-

Robespierre, 77 3 , 123 , 166 ,

167 8 169 70 201 202 229 257 (see also thought); demonic, 4 149 193 5 196 200 6 207 208 211 234 247 ; by the dead, 41 42 203 4 257 (seealso vampire); and -

,

201 ,

,

Rhodes, Cecil, 1 Richard, François, 57

120

,

99 , 109 , 126 , 157

,

the Devil, 192

205 , 229 , 235 , 244

pomegranate, 119

,

,

also Black Mass); and witchcraft, 97 101 109 170 215 ; and

(see

plover, 96 Pluto, Pluton,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

-

,

witchcraft, 101 247 Powell, Vavasor, 138 ,

Robin Goodfellow, 230 Roll, W. G.,59 Rosenberg, Alfred, 78 Ruskin, 95 Russell, Charles Taze, 23 Russell, J. B., 92 Rutherford, J. B., 23

Powys, John Cowper, 256 Sacred Magic see Abramelin

Praz, Mario, 225 226 Priam, 62 priests, uncanny, 82 83 Prometheus, 131 169 Prose Edda, 74 88 239 Proserpine, see Persephone ,

Sade, Marquis de, 226 Saki, 173 Salem witch-case, 218 Sammael, 54 187 259

,

,

,

,

,

providence, 66 , 74 , 76, 77 8, 79 80 , 81 , 83 , 90 , 142 , 180 -

psychic abilities,

-

5, 31 , 43 4 , 59 , 79 , -

229 248 (see also mediums; ouija boards; poltergeist; tabletilting and ghosts, 39 41 42 43 62 ; and possession, 204 6

200 ,

,

);

,

-

of Abramelin,

,

,

,

,

Samson, 166 Satan, see Devil Satanism, 218 28 ; worship of -

227

,

,

261

see

also Devil,

Saturn, 126 7 170 263 ; in astrology, -

,

80

-

1,

126

Satyricon, 97

,

satyrs, 43 103 104 105 171 172 ,

,

,

,

,

,

209 , 230

198 227 245 ; and dragon, 10 11 12 16 ; and the Devil, 12 25 55 172 187 189 190 221 Sodom, 146 149 Solon, 46 72 ‘sons of God’, see angels ,

,

,

Schiller, 225

,

,

,

Scorpio, 12 scorpion, 8

,

198

,

Scot, Reginald, 229

Sophocles, 37

sea, 7 , 8 , 9 10 , 11, 14 , 17 , 19 , 20 , 24 ,

spider, 199 210 spinning, weaving, motif of, 74

-

46 67 125 144 146 175 190 230 244 245 246 ,

,

,

,

,

,

split

245

,

67 8 70 164 170 -

,

,

,

,

,

Spiritualism, 35

,

,

seals, 10

,

,

Scott, Sir Walter, 201

,

,

,

10 , 11, 113 ,

,

,

,

,

-

5, 76

41 , 203 4 -

,

personality,

multiplepersonality

see

serpent, see snake

Stalin, 22

Seth, 9 , 11 , 14 , 174 7 , 253 , 263 Seven Whistlers, 95 6 -

stars,

-

and dragon, 13 14 15 ; and Eden story, 25 6 27 53 4 187 ; and the Devil, see Devil; and

sex:

,

,

-

-

death,

,

,

,

37 , 47 52 , 53 4 , 55 , 56, -

-

251 252 (see also and vampire); night, 87 99 102 3 (see also incubus); and witches, see witchcraft; and fall of angels, see Watchers; and giants, 127 129 131 2 133 134 135 ; and anger, 166 201 ; and Pan, Seth, 171 176 177 ; and demons, 195 201 209 and fairies, 242 246 119

21 ,

122 ,

-

,

-

,

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

,

,

,

10 ;

,

,

,

91 , 93 , 94 , 115 , 162 ,

shadow, 38 48 ,

,

61

78 91 105 135 Shaw, G. B., 24 ; Charlotte, 256 shedim, 184 ,

,

,

20 ,

,

,

Stommeln, Christina von, 199 , 207 storm, and the gods, 8, 125 , 163 , 165 , 166 , 173 , 175 ; and God, 146 , 151 , 179 , 181 , 182 ; and dragon, 11 , 14 ; and evil spirits, 93 96 7 195 -

,

,

212 ,

Strindberg, 256 Styx, 37 125 154 succubus, see incubus ,

,

suffering, see undeserved suffering ,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

sylphs, 244 Sylvester II, Pope, 104

-

,

table-tilting, 205

10

52 3 , 106 -

8, 9 ,

,

229 , 238 , 243 , 244

,

,

,

,

-

-

121 ,

18 ,

,

,

,

shells, the, 258 61 Sheol, 142 5 156 Sherwood, Mrs, 140 Silvanus, 172 Sinistrari, 244 skeleton, smiths, 136 snake, serpent, 2

,

210

,

,

sheelagh-na-gig, 252 Shelley, 173 226 227 ,

12 ,

167 170 188 190 196 Steiner, Rudolf, 178 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 94 173 19 ,

,

Shakespeare, 74

113 ,

,

the Devil’s followers,

suicide, 42 56 60 80 98 117 154 198 199 202 Superman, 128 superstitions, 36 66 82 5 108 232 246 Surin, Jean Joseph, 200 203 237 Swinburne, 45 178 227

199 , 229

sirens,

as

10 ,

46 52 98 ,

,

,

123 , 127 , 154 , 169 , 171 ,

6

-

Tammuz, 237 Tarot pack, 79 , 167 , 174 Tartarus, 88 , 116 , 117 , 123 , 124 , 125 , 129

123 , 125 , 141 , 143 5 ; and

‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic, The’, 171

-

136 7 undeserved

Tennyson, 156 Teresa, St, 138 157 8 199 -

,

200 ,

,

215

-

,

Tertullian, 26 83 109 Testament ofSolomon, 235 6 Theosophical Society, the, 23 Thomas, Keith, 214

suffering, problem of,

1,

28 , 67, 72 3 , 80 , 141 , 143 , 147 , 149 , 182 , 194 , 214 , 229 -

,

-

Ungern-Sternberg, Roman, 22

43

,

unknown, fear of the,

Thomas the Rhymer, 239

Thor,

giants,

-

3 , 31 , 45 , 87,

111

urchins, 230

131 , 132 , 236

thought: inspired by gods spirits, 20 23 41 69 70 89

and

, , 91 , 197 8, 218 , 229 , 231 , 242 , -

,

183

,

,

-

,

Valkyries, 46

-

254 5 (see also Devil; madness; possession); directed against

vampire,

enemies,

Virgil, 83

-

248 9

43 ,

251 ,

-

,

253 ,

7 , 75 , 96,

102 ,

251

101 ,

4 , 42 , 53 , 55 9 , -

242 ,

253 97 , 110, 116 17 , 124 , 234 -

,

255 7 -

threshold, see borders Thunderbore, 134 Tiamat, 7 8 9 ,

,

Tisiphone,

,

10 ,

124

Titans, the, 124 7 see also Cronus

129 , 131 , 263 ;

-

toad,

battle; chaos, and human enemies; disasters; Mars Washer at the Ford, 252 war, see

258 ,

195 , 209 ,

19 58 138 141 210 227 245 248 249 Tolkien, J. R. R., 91 238 ,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

Tolstoy, 2 22 Tongue, Ruth, 230 Topheth, 145 treasure, guardians of, 11

12 ,

,

15 , 16 ,

twilight, 232 240 241 Typhon, 11 175 176 253

,

,

Weyer, Johann, 195 whale, 11 156 7

Wheatley, Dennis,

,

,

Webster, Nesta, 23 Weland the Smith, 136 Wells, H. G., 162 werewolf, 250 1 253 256 Wesley, John, 110 138 139 151 226 West, Rebecca, 75 ,

,

218

,

,

194

whimbrel, 96 widgeon, 96 Wilberforce, Barbara and Samuel,

,

,

,

-

,

,

,

,

,

Trencoss, 134 137 trolls, 43 132 136 250 Trophonius, oracle of, 121 ,

-

-

,

-

,

187 90 230 244 5 246 129 ,

103 ,

,

132 3 , 134 7 , 240 , 244

,

210 ,

-

,

-

Watchers, the,

263

193

Wild Edric, 96 Wild Hunt, 63 96 7 102 105 Wilson, William Carus, 34 -

,

underworld, the,

3 , 9 , 88 9 , -

111

27 ,

-

1 (see also Hades; hell ); gods and powers of, 38 50 63 72 97 98 111 27 142 145 163 165 170 171 175 219 230 236 ; and the grave, 111 113

141 5, -

155 6 ,

240

-

-

-

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

,

155 6 ; -

punishment

,

,

,

,

.

,

,

in, 116 , 117 ,

,

,

Wind, E., 51 witchcraft, witches, 56

60 , 75 , 82 , 94 , 97 9 , 148 9 , 154 , 170 , 211 18 , 221 , 226 , 232 , 257 ; types of witch, ,

-

97 , 252 ;

101 ,

-

-

105 , 135 6 , -

212 ,

242 3 , -

and demons, the Devil, 19

,

91 , 99 , 210 , 211

104 , 170 , 197 , 208 , 18 , 223 , 234 , 235 , 241 2 ,

102 , -

-

250 ; and natural causes, 7 , 211 12 , 213 , 217 18 ; and animals, birds, -

-

100 1 ,

49 , 91 , 95 , 97 ,

-

170 , 171 ,

210 , 211 ,

215 , 223 , 242 , 243 , 247 ,

250 , 251

(see

also familiars); and

woman, evilness

of,

26 , 30 , 31 , 99 ,

also hag; witchcraft work, evilness of, 3 26 126 130 worm, the undying, 139 146 147 101

;

see

,

,

,

,

,

,

151 , 153

wreath, 50

writing, evil art of, 187

children,

30 , 31 , 32 , 99 , 101 , 102 , 105 , 106 , 170 , 229 30 , 242 3 ; and -

cannibalism,

-

and

devouring ;

see

sex, 97 , 99 , 100 1 , 104 , 166 , 170 , -

214 15 , 223 , 226 , 242 , 247 ; -

nightriding,

49 , 97 , 99 , 102 , 105 , 211 , 226 , 242 ; goddess of, 62 3 , 215 , 97 9 , 102 , 105 , 120 1 ; in Macbeth,

Yahweh, see God Yeats, W. B., 95 105 228 255 ,

,

,

yetser ha-ra, 27 190 Yezidis, 263 4 ,

-

-

-

-

the world upside down, see reversal; modern witchcraft 74 , 91 ;

turning

movement, 4 , 49 50 , 97 , 99 , -

-

,

32 , 47 , 62 ,

168 , 169

,

,

-

,

,

,

,

100 , 108 , 119 , , , , 126 , 127 , 130 , 166 , 175 ,

124 5 , 181 ; and

,

167 253 256

122 , 1,

,

,

,

Zohar, 258 259 zombies, 102 ,

67 86 168 198 247 248 250

wolf,

,

-

fate, 67 69 70 72 164 ; of the underworld, 118 122

120 1 , 221

Wodan, Woden, 96 Wode, 96

Zagreus, 127 Zeus, 11 18 51 88

,

,

Zurvan, 178 257 ,

,