Note 1 — VIII.—WITCHCRAFT AND DEMONOLOGY.

It is especially noteworthy that the hatred of witches and wizards cherished in the West does not seem to exist in China. Those reputed to possess magic powers are regarded with dread, but it is rare to hear of any of them coming to untimely end by mob violence. The more educated literati ridicule the implicit belief placed in their pretensions by the unlettered mob, but take no part in exciting it to violence, and the feeling is abundantly evidenced by the tone adopted in popular novels wherein witchcraft often plays a conspicuous part. Besides those who make a living as professed exorcists, the members of two trades—builders and plasterers—fall under a suspicion of similarly unholy proclivities. Witchcraft has always been deemed a communicable art in China. In the Supplement to the History of the Genii we read: “Yang Tʻung Yew when a child met a Tauist priest who taught him the art of invocation and gave him a celestial writing of the three August Ones, by which he could command and subject all ghost shên, none of them failing to answer him instantly. Yang went down to the ninth depth of the earth to seek for the ghost of a royal concubine amongst the ghost shên in that quarter.” Indeed the power of summoning demons is a conventional portion of Chinese supernatural tales. Thus, in a recently published translation of a popular novel entitled The Thunder Peak Pagoda,1 we find the heroine and her servant (both originally serpents) consulting together as to how they shall raise money:—