Part 16

As Moses passed the greatest part of his life in Egypt, and as he could know little by personal experience of other nations, it may perhaps be inferred that generally when he warns the Israelites against prevailing superstitions, he has a particular eye to those observed in the country in which the posterity of Adam had so long resided. He makes frequent allusion, indeed, to the magical rites and idolatrous practices of the Canaanites; but in this case he appears to speak rather from the information he had acquired from others than from his own experience. Should this inference be admitted, we shall have reason for believing that both Witchcraft and Necromancy were known to the Egyptians; and that some days were considered lucky, and others unfavorable, for the prosecution of any important affair. A careful perusal of the Pentateuch, and a reference to the Greek Historians who have written on the affairs of Egypt, and whose works are necessary to elucidate many obscure allusions in the sacred text, will furnish the more curious reader with information on some minor points, which our limits, as a miscellaneous work, necessarily oblige us to omit.

JEWS.—We have hitherto had too much reason to complain of the paucity of information afforded by ancient writers on the magic of the Eastern nations; but when we come to consider that of the Jews, we no longer labour under so heavy a disadvantage. The Holy Scriptures, the works of native writers, and above all, the laborious researches of learned Christian commentators, furnish us with abundant materials, from which we shall select such as appear best adapted to give an intelligible, but necessarily brief, view of the subject.—Many Jewish Doctors assign to their magic a preposterous antiquity. They assert that it is of divine origin; that it was known to Adam and Abraham, both of whom were animated by the same soul; that the latter taught it by means of his concubines to his children; and that he wore round his neck a precious stone, the bare sight of which cured every disease, and which, after his death, God hung on the sun! But leaving these wild fables, we have sufficient authority for saying, that the Jews were at a very early period addicted to the magical arts. This propensity, which first originated in Egypt, was much increased by their subsequent intercourse with the inhabitants of Syria, and above all, with their Chaldean conquerors. Thus we read in the Book of Kings, that they used divination, and observed the cry of birds. Hence the frequent and awful denunciations employed by the inspired writers against the practisers of their forbidden arts.

Lightfoot has proved, that the Jews, after their return from Babylon, having entirely forsaken idolatry, and being no longer favoured with the gift of prophecy, gradually abandoned themselves, before the coming of our Saviour, to sorcery and divination. The Talmud, which they still regard with a reverence bordering on idolatry, abounds with instructions for the due observance of superstitious rites. After the destruction of their city and temple, many Israelitish impostors were highly esteemed for their pretended skill in magic. Under pretence of interpreting dreams, they met with daily opportunities of practising the most shameful frauds. Many Rabbins were quite as well versed in the school of Zoroaster as in that of Moses. They prescribed all kinds of conjuration, some for the cure of wounds, some against the dreaded bite of serpents, and others against thefts and enchantments. Like the Magi, they boasted that by means of their art they held an intercourse with superior beings. Thus Bath-kool, daughter of the voice, is the name given by them to the echo: they regarded it as an oracle, which in the second temple, was destined to supply the defect of the Urim and Thummim, the mysterious oracles of the first. Of Bath-kool many absurd stories are related. Thus when two Rabbins went to consult her concerning the fate of another Rabbin, Samuel, the Babylonian, they passed before a school, in which they heard a boy reading aloud, and Samuel died. (Sam. ch. xxv. v. 1.) On enquiry they subsequently found that the object of their anxiety was no longer an inhabitant of the earth; and thus a casual coincidence, of which no reasonable man would have been surprised, was confidently ascribed to the oracular powers of Bath-kool. Two other Rabbins, Jona and Josa, went to visit Acha in his sickness; as they proceeded on their way they said, “let us hear what sentence Bath-kool will pronounce on the fate of our brother.” Immediately they heard a voice, as if addressed by a woman to her neighbour—“the candle is going out; let not the light be extinguished in Israel.” (Lightfoot, vol. II. p. 267.) No more doubt was entertained that these words proceeded from Bath-kool, than that Elias now assists at the circumcision of every Jewish child.

The divinations of the Israelites were founded on the influence of the stars, and on the operations of spirits: that singular people did not, indeed, like the Chaldeans and Magi, regard the heavenly bodies as gods and genii; but they ascribed to them a great power over the actions and opinions of men. Hence the common proverb, ‘such a one may be thankful to his stars,’ when spoken of any person distinguished for his wealth, power, or wisdom. The mazzal-tool was the happy, and the mazzal-ra the malignant influence; and the fate of every one was supposed to be regulated by either one or the other. Like the notions from which their superstitious opinions were derived, the Jews constructed horoscopes, and predicted the fate of every one from his birth. Thus if any one were born under the dominion of the sun, it was prognosticated that he would be fair, generous, open-hearted, and capricious; under Venus, rich and wanton; under Mercury, witty, and of a retentive memory; under the Moon, sickly, and inconstant; under Saturn, unfortunate; under Jupiter, just, and under Mars, successful.

As to the spirits whose agency was so often employed in divination, we have full information from Manasseh, Ben Israel, and others. “Of wicked spirits,” says the author, “there are several varieties, of which some are intelligent and cunning, others ignorant and stupid. The former flying from one extent of the earth to the other, become acquainted with the general cause of human events, both past and present, and sometimes with those of the future. Hence many mortals conjure these spirits, by whose assistance they effect wonderful things. The books of the cabalists, and of some other writers, contain the names of the spirits usually invoked, and a particular account of the ceremonies are accompanied. If (continues the same author,) these spirits appear to one man alone, they portend no good; if to two persons together, they presage no evil: they were never known to appear to three mortals assembled together.”

The magical rites of the Jews were, and indeed are still, chiefly performed on various important occasions, as on the birth of a child, a marriage, &c. On such occasions the evil spirits are believed to be peculiarly active in their malignity, which can only be counteracted by certain enchantments. Thus Tobit, according to the directions of the angel Raphael, exorcised the demon Asmodeus, whom he compelled, by means of the perfume of the heart and liver of a fish, to fly into upper Egypt. (Tobit, ch. viii. v. 2 and 3.)

Josephus does not think magic so ancient as many writers of this nation do; he makes Solomon the first who practised an art which is so powerful against demons; and the knowledge of which, he asserts, was communicated to that prince by immediate inspiration. The latter, continues the weakly credulous historian, invented and transmitted to posterity in his writings, certain incantations, for the cure of diseases, and for the expulsion and perpetual banishment of wicked spirits from the bodies of the possessed. This mode of cure, he further observes, is very prevalent in our nation. It consisted, according to his description, in the use of a certain root, which was sealed up, and held under the nose of the person possessed; the name of Solomon, with the words prescribed by him, was then pronounced, and the demon forced immediately to retire. He does not even hesitate to assert, that he himself has been an eye-witness of such an effect produced on a person named Eleazar, in presence of the emperor Vespasian and his sons. Nor will this relation surprise us, when we consider the deep malignity entertained by a Jew to the Christian religion, and his ceaseless attempts to depreciate the miracles of our Saviour, by ascribing them to magical influence, and by representing them as easy of accomplishment to all acquainted with the occult sciences.

We should scarcely credit the account, were it not founded on unquestionable authority, that on the great day of propitiations, the Jews of the sixteenth century, in order to avert the angel of Samuel, endeavoured to appease him by presents. On that day, and on no other throughout the year, they believed that power was given him to accuse them before the judgment-seat of God. They aimed, therefore, to prevent their grand enemy from carrying accusations against them, by rendering it impossible for him to know the appointed day. For this purpose they used a somewhat singular stratagem; in reading the usual portion of the law, they were careful to leave out the beginning and the end,—an omission which the devil was by no means prepared to expect on so important an occasion. They entertained no doubt that their cunning, in this instance, had been more than a match for him.

The cabal is chiefly conversant with enchantments, which are effected by a certain number of characters. It gives directions how to select and combine some passages and proper names of Scripture, which are believed both to render supernatural beings visible, and to produce many wonderful and surprising effects. In this manner the Malcha-sheva, (the queen of Sheba who visited Solomon,) who has often been invoked, and as often made to appear. But the most famous wonders have been effected by the name of God. The sacred word Jehovah, is, when read with points, multiplied by the Jewish doctors into twelve, forty-two, and seventy-two letters, of which words are composed that are thought to possess miraculous energy. By these Moses slew the Egyptians; by these Israel was preserved from the destroying angel of the Wilderness; by these Elijah separated the waters of the river, to open a passage for himself and Elisha; and by these it has been daring and impiously asserted, that the Eternal Son of God cast out evil spirits. The name of the devil is likewise used in magical devices. The five Hebrew letters of which that name is composed, exactly constitute the number 364, one less than the days in the whole year. Now the Jews pretended, that owing to the wonderful virtue of the number comprised in the name of satan, he is prevented from accusing them for an equal number of days: hence the stratagem of which we have before spoken, for depriving him of the power to injure them on the only day in which that power is granted him.

Innumerable are the devices contained in the Cabal for averting possible evils, as the plague, disease, and sudden death. But we see no necessity, nor even utility, in prosecuting the subject further. We have said enough to convince the reader of the gross superstition and abominable practice of those who, even in their present state of degradation and infamy, have the arrogance to style themselves God’s peculiar people,—as so many lights to enlighten the Gentiles.

PREDICTION.

Prophecy, Divination, or foretelling future events, either by divine Revelation, by art and human invention, or by conjecture.—See Divination, page 142.

Few great moral or political revolutions have occurred which have not had their accompanying prognostic; and men of a philosophic cast of mind, in the midst of their retirement, freed from the delusions of parties and of sects, while they are withdrawn from their conflicting interests, have rarely been confounded by the astonishment which overwhelms those who, absorbed in active life, are the mere creatures of sensation, agitated by the shadows of truth, the unsubstantial appearances of things. Intellectual nations are advancing in an eternal circle of events and passions which succeed each other, and the last is necessarily connected with its antecedent: the solitary force of some fortuitous incident only can interrupt this concatinated progress of human affairs. That every great event has been accompanied by a presage or prognostic, has been observed by Lord Bacon. “The shepherds of the people should understand the prognostics of state tempests; hollow blasts of wind, seemingly at a distance, and secret swellings of the sea, often precede a storm.” Such were the prognostics discerned by the politic Bishop Williams, in Charles the First’s time, who clearly foresaw and predicted the final success of the puritanic party in our country: attentive to his own security, he abandoned the government and sided with the rising opposition, at a moment when such a change in the public administration was by no means apparent. (See Rushworth, vol. i. p. 420.)

Dugdale, our contemplative antiquary, in the spirit of foresight, must have anticipated the scene which was approaching in 1641, in the destruction of our ancient monuments in cathedral churches. He hurried on his itinerant labours of taking draughts and transcribing inscriptions, as he says, “to preserve them for future and better times.” It is to the prescient spirit of Dugdale that posterity is indebted for the ancient monuments of England, which bear the marks of the haste, as well as the zeal, which have perpetuated them. Sir Thomas More was no less prescient in his views; for when his son Roper was observing to him that the Catholic religion, under the “Defender of the Faith,” was in a most flourishing state, the answer of More was an evidence of political foresight:—“True it is, son Roper! and yet I pray God that we may not live to see the day that we would gladly be at league and competition with heretics, to let them have their churches quietly to themselves, so that they would be contented to let us have ours quietly to ourselves.” The minds of men of great political sagacity were at that moment, unquestionably, full of obscure indications of the approaching change. Erasmus, when before the tomb of Becket, at Canterbury, observing it loaded with a vast profusion of jewels, wished that those had been distributed among the poor, and that the shrine had only been adorned with boughs and flowers:—“For,” said he, “those who have heaped up all this mass of treasure, will one day be plundered, and fall a prey to those who are in power.” A prediction literally fulfilled about twenty years after it was made. The fall of the religious houses was predicted by an unknown author, (see Visions of Pier’s Ploughman,) who wrote in the reign of Edward the Third. The event, in fact, with which we are all well acquainted, was realized two hundred years afterwards, by our Henry VIII. Sir Walter Raleigh foresaw the consequences of the separatists and the sectaries in the National Church, which occurred about the year 1530. His memorable words are, “Time will even bring it to pass, if it were not resisted, that God would be turned out of churches into barns, and from thence again into the fields and mountains, and under hedges. All order of discipline and church government, left to newness of opinion, and men’s fancies, and as many kinds of religion spring up as there are parish churches within England.” Tacitus also foresaw the calamities which so long desolated Europe on the fall of the Roman empire, in a work written five hundred years before the event! In that sublime anticipation of the future, he observed, “When the Romans shall be hunted out from those countries which they have conquered, what will then happen? The revolted people, freed from their master-oppressor, will not be able to subsist without destroying their neighbours, and the most cruel wars will exist among all these nations.” Solon, at Athens, contemplating on the port and citadel of Munychia, suddenly exclaimed, “how blind is man to futurity! could the Athenians foresee what mischief this will do, they would even eat it with their own teeth, to get rid of it.” A prediction verified more than two hundred years afterwards! Thales desired to be buried in an obscure quarter of Milesia, observing that that very spot would in time be the forum. Charlemagne, in his old age, observing from the window of a castle a Norman descent on his coast, tears started in the eyes of the aged monarch. He predicted, that since they dared to threaten his dominions while he was yet living, what would they do when he should be no more! A melancholy prediction of their subsequent incursions, and of the protracted calamities of the French nation during a whole century.

In a curious treatise on “Divination,” or the knowledge of future events, Cicero has preserved a complete account of the state contrivances practised by the Roman government, to instil among the people those hopes and fears by which they regulated public opinion. The Pagan creed, now become obsolete and ridiculous, has occasioned this treatise to be rarely consulted; it remains, however, as a chapter in the history of man!

There appears to be something in minds which take in extensive views of human nature, which serves them as a kind of Divination, and the consciousness of this faculty has been asserted by some. Cicero appeals to Atticus how he had always judged of the affairs of the republic as a good diviner; and that its overthrow had happened, as he had foreseen, fourteen years before. (Ep. ad Att. lib. 10, ep. 4.)

Cicero had not only predicted what had happened in his own times, but also what occurred long after, according to Cornelius Nepos. The philosopher, indeed, affects no secret revelation, nor visionary second-sight;—he honestly tells us, that that art had been acquired merely by study, and the administration of public affairs, while he reminds his friend of several remarkable instances of his successful predictions. “I do not,” says Cicero, “divine human events by the arts practised by the augurs; but I use other signs.” Cicero then expresses himself with the guarded obscurity of a philosopher who could not openly ridicule the prevailing superstitions, although the nature of his “signs” are perfectly comprehensible, when in the great pending events of the rival conflicts of Pompey and Cæsar, he shewed the means he used for his purpose: “On one side I consider the humour and genius of Cæsar, and on the other, the condition and manner of civil wars.” (Ep. ad. Att. lib. 6, ep. 6.) In a word, the political diviner, by his experience of the personal character, anticipated the actions of the individual. Others, too, have asserted the possession of this faculty. Du Vard, an eminent chancellor of France, imagined the faculty to be intuitive with him; from observations made by his own experience. “Born,” says he, “with constitutional infirmity, a mind and body but ill adapted to be laborious, with a most treacherous memory, enjoying no gift of nature, yet able at all times to exercise a sagacity so great that I do not know, since I have reached manhood, that any thing of importance has happened to the state, to the public, or to myself in particular, which I had not foreseen.” The same faculty appears to be described by a remarkable expression employed by Thucidides, in his character of Themistocles, of which the following is a close translation. “By a species of sagacity peculiarly his own, for which he was in no degree indebted either to early education or after study, he was supereminently happy in forming a prompt judgment in matters that admitted but little time for deliberation; at the same time that he far surpassed all his deductions of the future from the PAST; or was the best guesser of the future from the past.”

Should this faculty of moral and political prediction be ever considered as a science, it may be furnished with a denomination, for the writer of the life of Thomas Brown, prefixed to his works, in claiming the honour for that philosopher, calls it the “Stochastic,” a term derived from the Greek and from Archery, meaning to “shoot at the mark.”

Aristotle, who collected all the curious knowledge of his times, has preserved some remarkable opinions on the art of divination. In detailing the various subterfuges practised by the pretended diviners of the present day, he reveals the secret principle by which one of them regulated his predictions. He frankly declared that the FUTURE being always very obscure, while the PAST was easy to know, his predictions had never the future view; for he decided from the PAST, as it appeared in human affairs, which, however, he concealed from the multitude. (Arist. Rhetoric, lib. vii. c. 5.)

With regard to moral predictions on individuals, many have discovered the future character. The revolutionary predisposition of Cardinal Retz, even in his youth, was detected by the sagacity of Cardinal Mazarine. He then wrote a history of the conspiracy of Fresco, with such vehement admiration of his hero, that the Italian politician, after its perusal, predicted that the young author would be one of the most turbulent spirits of the age! The father of Marshal Biron, even amid the glory of his son, discovered the cloud which, invisible to others, was to obscure it. The father, indeed, well knew the fiery passions of his son. “Biron,” said the domestic Seer, “I advise thee, when peace takes place, to go and plant cabbages in thy garden, otherwise I warn thee thou wilt lose thy head upon the scaffold!”

Lorenzo de Medici had studied the temper of his son Piero; for we are informed by Guicciardini that he had often complained to his most intimate friends that “he foresaw the imprudence and arrogance of his son would occasion the ruin of his family.”

There is a singular prediction of James the first, of the evils likely to ensue from Laud’s violence, in a conversation given by Hacket, which the King held with Archbishop Williams. When the King was hard pressed to promote Laud, he gave his reasons why he intended to “keep Laud back from all place of rule and authority, because I find he hath a restless spirit, and cannot see when matters are well, but loves to toss and change, and to bring things to a pitch of reformation floating in his own brain, which endangers the stedfastness of that which is in a good pass. I speak not at random; he hath made himself known to me to be such a one.” James then relates the circumstances to which he alludes; and at length, when still pursued by the Archbishop, then the organ of Buckingham, as usual, this King’s good nature too easily yielded; he did not, however, without closing with this prediction: “Then take him to you! but on my soul you will repent it!”

The future character of Cromwell was apparent to two of our great politicians. “This coarse, unpromising man,” observed Lord Falkland, pointing to Cromwell, “will be the first person in the kingdom if the nation comes to blows!” And Archbishop Williams told Charles the First confidentially, that “There was that in Cromwell which foreboded something dangerous, and wished his Majesty would either win him over to him, or get him taken off!”

The incomparable character of Buonaparte, given by the Marquis of Wellesley, predicted his fall when highest in his power. “His eagerness of power,” says this great Statesman, “is so inordinate; his jealousy of independence so fierce; his keenness of appetite so feverish, in all that touches his ambition, even in the most trifling things, that he must plunge into dreadful difficulties. He is one of an order of minds that by nature make for themselves great reverses.”

After the commencement of the French Revolution, Lord Mansfield was once asked when it would end? His Lordship replied, “It is an event without precedent, and therefore without prognostic.” The fact is, however, that it had both; as our own history, in the reign of Charles the First, had furnished us with a precedent; and the prognostics were so plentiful, that a volume of passages might be collected from various writers who had foretold it.

There is a production, which does honour to the political sagacity, as well as to his knowledge of human nature, thrown out by Bishop Butler in a Sermon before the House of Lords, in 1741; he calculated that the unreligious spirit would produce, some time or other, political disorders, similar to those which, in the 17th century, had arisen from religious fanaticism. “Is there no danger,” he observed, “that all this may raise somewhat like that levelling spirit, upon Atheistical principles, which in the last age prevailed upon enthusiastic ones? Not to speak of the possibility that different sorts of people may unite in it upon these contrary principles!” All this has literally been accomplished!

If a prediction be raised on facts which our own prejudice induce us to infer will exist, it must be chimerical. The Monk Carron announces in his Chronicle, printed in 1532, that the world was about ending, as well as his Chronicle of it; that the Turkish Empire would not last many years; that after the death of Charles V. the Empire of Germany would be torn to pieces by the Germans themselves. This Monk will no longer pass for a prophet; he belongs to that class of Chroniclers who write to humour their own prejudices, like a certain Lady-prophetess who, in 1811, predicted that grass was to grow in Cheapside about this time!

Even when the event does not always justify the prediction, the predictor may not have been the less correct in his principles of divination. The catastrophe of human life, and the turn of great events, often turn out accidental. Marshal Biron, whom we have noticed, might have ascended the throne instead of the scaffold; Cromwell and De Retz might have become only the favourite generals, or the ministers of their Sovereigns. Fortuitous events are not included within the reach of human prescience; such must be consigned to those vulgar superstitions which presume to discover the issue of human events, without pretending to any human knowledge. In the science of the Philosopher there is nothing supernatural.