DEMONOLOGY.

“Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

Thou com’st in such a questionable shape—”

Hamlet.

Astr. Now from the holy records, from the creed of the Magus Zoroaster, from the Greek, and Roman, and other legends, how clear is the influence of ethereal beings, of angels and demons, on man’s life; and of the imparted power of exorcism! In allusion to this divine gift to Solomon, Josephus has the following story:—“God also enabled him to learn that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful and sanative to men. And this method is of great force unto this day, for I have seen a certain man of my own country, whose name was Eleazer, releasing people that were demoniacal in the presence of Vespasian, and his sons, and his captains, and the whole multitude of his soldiers. The manner of the cure was this. He put a ring, that had a root of one of those sorts mentioned by Solomon, to the nostrils of the demoniac, after which he drew out the demon through his nostrils; and when the man fell down immediately, he adjured him to return into him no more, making still mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations which he composed. And when Eleazer would persuade and demonstrate to the spectators that he had such a power, he set a little way off a cup or bason full of water, and commanded the demon, as he went out of the man, to overturn it, and thereby to let the spectators know that he had left the man.”

The gods of the Greeks and the Latins, the lares and lemures, or hearth-spirits, the pagan and the Christian elves, were ever held as delegated agents of the Deity, who worked, not by a fiat, but by an instrument. Such were the Cemies of the American islanders, and the Kitchi and Matchi Manitou of the Indians; and, if we consult Father Borri, we shall learn that in Cochin China Lucifer himself promenaded the streets in human shape.

Psellus records six kinds of devils; and the arrangements of Agrippa, and other theologians, enumerate nine sorts of evil spirits, as you may read in one of old Burton’s eccentric chapters.

The mythology of the Baghvat Geeta, the sacred record of the Hindoo theists, is based on the notion of good and evil spirits, the emblems of virtue and of vice under the will and power of Brahma. Indeed, the Hindoo mythology is but that of the classic in other words. Agnee, the god of fire, Varoon, the god of the ocean, Vayoo, the god of the wind, and Cama, the god of love, are but other names for Jupiter, and Neptune, and Œolus, and Cupid.

The creed of Zoroaster asserts a perpetual conflict between the good and evil deity, the types of religious knowledge and ignorance. The southern Asiatics are people of good principle, and the northern nations people of evil principle. And why may not the Persian thus coincide with Bacon himself, who in his book “De Dignitate,” confesses his belief in good and bad spirits, in charms, and prophecies, and the varieties of natural magic. Or is it inconsistent that the Hindoos should incarnate the malignant disease, small pox, in the person of the deity Mah-ry-umma, of whose lethal influence they lived in abject fear.

Ida. In the holy records, it is true, we read that demons were even permitted to enter the bodies of other beings, and that when they had so established a possession, by divine command they went out of those possessed, as, for sacred example, into the herd of the Gadarenes; that they were also commissioned, for the fulfilment of the inscrutable will of the Creator, to try the endurance of Job, and even to tempt the divinity of the Saviour, and that they were the immediate cause of madness and other sad afflictions.

I do fear, Astrophel, that there is much danger, now, in this embodying of a demon; and that we too often model our modern principles, on the proud presumption of still possessing that miraculous power of exorcism. With sorrow may I confess, that the holy truths of Scripture, so clearly evincing a special purpose, should have been ever warped, by worse than inquisitorial bigotry, into the motive for cruelties unparalleled. From the Scripture histories of demoniac possession have arisen the coercion and cruelties, which once marked with an indelible stain the records of our own madhouses; where chains and lashes, inflicted by the demons of science, have driven the moody wretch into a raving maniac, when a light hand and a smile would have brought back the angel reason to the mind.

Impersonation is the grand source of many similar errors. The demon, which, since the light of the Christian dispensation has brooded in man’s heart and mind, is his own base passion, which incites him to shut his eyes to this holy light, and follow deeds of evil; to be a slavish worshipper in the hall of Arimanes. With this profane homage, we court our evil passions, to betray and destroy the soul. And this is the interpretation of an allegory in the profane legends of the Talmud—that Lilis, the wife of Adam, ere the creation of Eve, brought forth none but demons; the origin, indeed, of moral evil.

There are many popular stories which bear a moral to this end: that the evil spirit is powerless over the heart, if it be not encouraged and invited; and, alas! the alluring masque under which evil looks on us, is often but too certain to charm us to its influence, or we are too thoughtless to beware the danger. Thus the disguised enchanter enters into the palace of the Sultan Mesnar, (in “The Tales of the Genii,”) and thus the gentle Christabel of Coleridge leads the false Geraldine over that threshold, which she could not cross without the help of confiding and unsuspecting innocence.

Cast. The crones of retired villages have not yet yielded their belief in fairy influence.

Among the low Irish it is believed that (as the nympholepts of old who had looked upon Pan, sealed an early doom), the paralytic is fairy-struck; and superstition has inspired them with a belief in the influence of the evil eye or glamourie, especially in the vicinity of Blackwater.

I remember, when our wanderings among the Wicklow mountains led us through the dark glen of the Dargle, the implicit faith of the Irish women in the charm of amulets and talismans. Like the fabled glance of the basilisk, the evil eye is bestowed on some unhappy beings from their very birth; nay, the spell infests the cabin in which they herd. To avert this fatal influence from the children, a charm is suspended around their necks, which when blessed by the priest is called a “gospel.”

When a happy or evil star shines at a birth, it is the eye of a cherub or a demon, smiling or frowning on the destiny of the babe; and when happiness or misery predominates in a life, it is a minister of good or ill that blesses or inflicts. There is one beautiful scrap of this mythology—the thrill of holy joy which the Irish mother feels when her infant smiles in its sleep; for she knows it is a holy angel whispering in its ear.

In our own island they are often celebrated as the very pinks of hospitality.

In Cornish history, we read how Anne Jeffries was fed for six months by the small green people. And in yonder forest of Dean, (as writeth Gervase, the Imperial Chancellor, in his “Otia Imperialia,”) “In a grovy lawn there is a little mount, rising in a point to the height of a man, on which knights and other hunters are used to ascend, when fatigued with heat and thirst, to seek some relief for their wants. The nature of the place and of the business is, however, such, that whoever ascends the mount must leave his companions and go quite alone. When alone, he was to say, as if speaking to some other person, ‘I thirst,’ and immediately there would appear a cup-bearer in an elegant dress, with a cheerful countenance, bearing in his outstretched hand a large horn, adorned with gold and gems, as was the custom among the most ancient English. In the cup, nectar of an unknown but most delicious flavour was presented; and when it was drunk, all heat and weariness fled from the glowing body, so that one would be thought ready to undertake toil, instead of having toiled. Moreover, when the nectar was taken, the servant presented a towel to the drinker to wipe his mouth with, and then, having performed his office, he waited neither for recompense for his services, nor for questions, nor inquiry.”

This frequent and daily action had, for a very long period, of old times taken place among the ancient people, till one day a knight of that city, when out hunting, went thither, and having called for drink, and gotten the horn, did not, as was the custom, and as in good manners he should have done, return it to the cup-bearer, but kept it for his own use. But the illustrious Earl of Gloucester, when he learned the truth of the matter, condemned the robber to death, and presented the horn to the most excellent king, Henry the Elder; lest he should be thought to have approved of such wickedness, if he had added the rapine of another to the store of his private property.

But the fairies might rue their kindness, if you frowned so darkly on them, Astrophel. They would fear the influence of your spells, for there is blight and mildew in that glance. At the banquet of the fairies, if the eye of the seer but look on them, the romance is instantly at an end: the nymphs of beauty are changed into withered carles and crones, and the splendour of Elfin-land is turned to dust and ashes.

Ida. As a set-off against the virtues of your fairies, Castaly, you forget there was a propensity to mischief. They were rather fond, like the Daoine Shi, of stealing unchristened babes, and of chopping and changing these innocents, thence called changelings. On this fable your own Shakspere has wrought the quarrel of Oberon and Titania: —

“A lovely boy, stol’n from an Indian king;

She never had so sweet a changeling.”

I am willing, dearest, that the poet shall make a good market of these fictions; but superstitious ignorance may make a sad and cruel work of it, even among your romantic Irish peasantry.

A few months since, on the demesne of Heywood (as we learn from the “Tipperary Constitution”), the death of a child, six years old, was accomplished with a wantonness of purpose almost incredible. Little Mahony was afflicted with spinal disease, and, like many other deformed children, possessed the gift,—in this case the fatal gift,—of acute intellect. For this quality, it was decided that he was not the son of his reputed father, but a fairy changeling. After a solemn convocation, it was decreed that the elfin should be scared away: and the mode of effecting this was, by holding the child on a hot shovel, and then pumping cold water on his head! This had the effect of extorting a confession of his imposture, and a promise to send back the real Johnny Mahony; but ere he could return to elfland and perform this promise, he died. But who is he sitting at your ear, Castaly?

Cast. Sir, is this fair? You have played the eaves-dropper. Why come you here?

Ev. To counsel you to silence on these mysteries, sweetest Castaly: remember the fate of Master Kirke, of Aberfoyle, for his dabbling in elfin matters, which you may read in Sir Walter’s “Demonology.” Yet I will not flout all your fayrie legends; there may be innocent illusions, that carry with them somewhat of morality and retribution,—seeing that there are good and bad spirits, which reward and punish mortality. But, in sooth, I never think of fairyland, without remembering that good Sir Walter, as sheriff of Selkirkshire, once took the deposition of a shepherd, who affirmed that he saw the good neighbours sitting under a hill-side: when, lo! it was proved that these were the puppets of a showman, stolen and left there by some Scotch mechanics. And, better still, the story of the Mermaid of Caithness, as related to Sir Humphrey Davy, and recorded in his “Salmonia;”—the mermaids, as I take it, being nearly allied to the Nereid, or Sea-fairy, and the reality of one about as true as that of the other.

Nature is wild and beautiful enough, without these false creations. Read her truth, fair lady, and leave the fables to the fairies. There is not a ripple or a stone that is not replete with scientific interest, and yields not a study that both ennobles and delights the mind.

The doublings, or horse-shoes, of this Wye, or Vaga as the Romans named it, within its circle of rocks, so exquisitely fringed with green and purple lichens (like the Danube, round the castle of Hayenbach in the gloomy gorge of Schlagen, or the Crook of Lune, in Westmoreland, and many others), illustrate at once the nature of the stratification on the earth’s surface; even the varied tints of these mountain streams may read the student a practic lesson in geology.

From the lime-rock springs the azure-blue, as the Glaslyn stream, at Beddgelert, the Rhone, and the Traun in Styria; from the chalk ripples the grey water of the Dee and the Arve; from the clay hills the stream comes down yellow, as “the Derwent’s amber wave;” and where the peat-mosses abound, especially in the autumnal flood, the stream is of a rich and dark sienna brown, as the Conway, and the Mawddach, in Merioneth; or even of transparent black, as the Elain, which flows down through the white schist rocks of Cardiganshire.

Cast. And is there wisdom, Evelyn, in thus

“Flying from Nature to study her laws,

And dulling delight by exploring the cause?”

I do fear that this analytic study of nature destroys the romance of life which flings around us its rainbow beauty.

Oh, for those halcyon days of infancy, when every thought was a promise; when hope, the dream of waking men, was lost in its fulfilment; and even fear itself was a thrill of romance!

Behold yon silver moon! it is, to the poet’s eye, an orb of unsullied beauty, and the planets and their satellites glitter like diamond studs in the firmament. Yet shift but the lens of the star-gazer, and lo! dark and murky spots instantly shadow o’er its purity; nay, have I not read that one deep astronomer, Fraüenhofer, has discovered mountains and cities; and another, Sir John Herschell, the laying down of rail-roads in the moon? So the optics of Gulliver magnified the court beauties of Brobdignag into monsters, and the auburn tresses of a maid of honour into a coil of dusty ropes!

Ev. A truce, fair Castaly. If science discovers defects, does it not unfold new beauties, a new world of animated atoms, endowed with faculties and passions as influential as our own? Nay, science has thrown even a poetry around the blue mould of a cheese-crust; and in the bloom of the peach the microscope has shown forth a treasury of flowers, and gigantic forests, in the depths of which the roving animalcule finds as secure an ambush as the lion and the tiger within the gloomy jungles of Hindostan. In a drop of liquid crystal the water-wolf chases his wounded victim, till it is changed to crimson with its blood. Ehrenberg has seen monads in fluid the 24,000th part of an inch in size; and in one drop of water 500,000,000 creatures—the population of the globe! I hope, Castaly, you will not, like the Brahmin, break your microscope, because it unfolds to you these wonders of the water.

Then, by the power of the telescope, we roam into other systems —

“World beyond world in infinite extent,

Profusely scattered o’er the blue expanse,”

and orbs so remote as to reduce to a mere span the distance between us and the Georgium Sidus; and revel in all the gorgeous splendour of rings, and moons, and nebulæ, the poetry of heaven.

Is there not an exquisite romance in the closing of the barometrical blossoms; of the white convolvulus, and the anagallis or scarlet pimpernel; of the sun-flower, and the leaves of the Dionæa and mimosa?

Is there not poetry in the delicate nautilus, with its arms dropped for oars; in the velella and purple physalia expanding their membranous sails; and the beautiful fish-lizard, the Proteus of transparent alabaster, found in the wondrous cavern of Maddalena, among the Styrian mountains; and even in the Stalactytes of Antiparos, as glittering as the gems and crystal pillars of Aladdin’s palace? Are not these more beautiful because they are true, and better to be read than all the impersonations of mythology, or that voluptuous romance which would endow a flower with the fervour of sense and passion?

Ida. I have ever wondered that a scholar, like Darwin, should have so wasted time with his “Loves of the Plants.” For the study of nature and the discoveries of science are ever vain, if they lift not the heart in adoration. The insect, that fans the sunbeam with its golden wing, or even the flower that opes its dewy eyes to the light, are unconscious worshippers of the Divine Being.

The Epicurean, who weeps for a decaying body, but mourns not for a lost soul, will enjoy these beauties of nature with a heart faithful to his creed, that pleasure is the only good; but the Christian feels that, when he chips a stone, or culls a flower, he touches that which comes fresh from the hand of its Creator.

How full is nature, too, of mute instruction! the simplest incident is a lesson, if we will but learn it. You see that fading blossom floating on the surface of the stream. That inanimate type of decaying beauty shows, to the reflective mind, that even in the summer of life the flower of existence will lose its youthful lustre, and float down the stream of time into the depths of eternity.

But tell me, Evelyn, may not the influence of that science that magnifies the lights of heaven (created to rule day and night) into habitable worlds, weaken the influence of faith in holy writ?

May we not fear that, like the Promethean Preadamites of Shelley, the Cain of Byron, the fabled beings of Ovid, and the mythology of Milton, will be the vaunted discoveries of the geologist, in controversion of the Mosaic records, of the creation and the deluge; proving the wisdom of Bacon, that to associate natural philosophy with sacred cosmogony, will lead to heretical opinions? Indeed, I remember in the Zendavesta of Zoroaster, the chronicle of the Magian religion (supposed to be a piracy from the book of Genesis), the sun IS created before light.

Ev. Fear not this, fair Ida. Rather believe with Bouget, that philosophy and natural theology mutually confirm each other. The latter teaches us that which it is our duty to believe; the former to believe more firmly. And Lord Bacon himself, in his “Cogitata et Visa,” deems natural philosophy “the surest antidote of superstition, and the food of religious faith.”

The belief in existence of a preadamite world, presumes not to controvert the Mosaic record of the development of the globe, the creation of Adam, or the fall of man. Modern geology has peopled this preadamite world with saurians, or lizards, a race of beings not concerned in the punishment of that delinquency. Of the existence of these creatures there is no doubt; the discovery of their fossil remains, without a vestige of the human skeleton, marks the period of their destruction, and that the crust of the globe enveloping these relics, might have been reduced to that chaos when “the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep;” and from which our beautiful world was fashioned by a fiat.

The truth of holy Scripture is too clear even to be disturbed by a sophist. You may recollect that Julian, the apostate, contemplated the reconstruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, in order to confute the prophecies; but Julian failed, and misfortune was the lot of all who were leagued in the impiety.

As to natural laws, think me not so profane as to cite such as the superstitious alchemyst, Paracelsus, in proof of their use in the working of a miracle; who says that “devils and witches raise storms by throwing up alum and saltpetre into the air, which comes down as rain-drops!”

And it were reversing this solemn argument were I to confess the doctrines of the Illuminaten, who, taught by Jacob Boehmen, and the mysticisms of his “Theosophia Revelata,” explained all nature’s laws by warping texts of Scripture to their purpose. Yet it is clear that even the miracles of the prophets may have been sometimes influenced by established laws. Elisha raised the Shunamite’s son by placing mouth to mouth, as if by inhalation.

Believe not then, fair Ida, that philosophy is set in array against religion, when the student of nature endeavours to explain her phenomena by physical laws, for those laws the great Creator himself hath made.