Isis Unveiled 1, 354-61
These spirits are the invisible but too tangible magnetic vampires; the subjective daemons so well known to mediaeval ecstatics, nuns, and monks, to the "witches" made so famous in the Witch-Hammer; and to certain sensitive clairvoyants, according to their own confessions. They are the blood-daemons of Porphyry, the larvae and lemures of the ancients; the fiendish instruments which sent so many unfortunate and weak victims to the rack and stake. Origen held all the daemons which possessed the demoniacs mentioned in the New Testament to be human "spirits." It is because Moses knew so well what they were, and how terrible were the consequences to weak persons who yielded to their influence, that he enacted the cruel, murderous law against such would-be "witches"; but Jesus, full of justice and divine love to humanity, healed instead of killing them. Subsequently our clergy, the pretended exemplars of Christian principles, followed the law of Moses, and quietly ignored the law of Him whom they call their "one living God," by burning dozens of thousands of such pretended "witches."
Witch! mighty name, which in the past contained the promise of ignominious death; and in the present has but to be pronounced to raise a whirlwind of ridicule, a tornado of sarcasms! How is it then that there have always been men of intellect and learning, who never thought that it would disgrace their reputation for learning, or lower their dignity, to publicly affirm the possibility of such a thing as a "witch," in the correct acceptation of the word. One such fearless champion was Henry More, the learned scholar of Cambridge, of the seventeenth century. It is well worth our while to see how cleverly he handled the question.
The words witch and wizard, according to Dr. More, signify no more than a wise man or a wise woman. In the word wizard, it is plain at the very sight; and "the most plain and least operose deduction of the name witch, is from wit, whose derived adjective might be wittigh or wittich, and by contraction, afterwards witch; as the noun wit is from the verb to weet, which is, to know. So that a witch, thus far, is no more than a knowing woman; which answers exactly to the Latin word saga, according to that of Festus, sagae dictae anus quae multa sciunt."
This definition of the word appears to us the more plausible, as it exactly answers the evident meaning of the Slavonian-Russian names for witches and wizards. The former is called vyedma, and the latter vyedmak, both from the verb to know, vedat or vyedat; the root, moreover, being positively Sanscrit. "Veda," says MaxMuller, in his Lecture on the Vedas, "means originally knowing, or knowledge. Veda is the same word which appears in Greek [[oida]], I know [the digamma, vau being omitted], and in the English wise, wisdom, to wit."* Furthermore, the Sanscrit word vidma, answering to the German wir wissen, means literally "we know." It is a great pity that the eminent philologist, while giving in his lecture the Sanscrit, Greek, Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, and German comparative roots of this word, has neglected the Slavonian.
Another Russian appellation for witch and wizard, the former being purely Slavonian, is znahar and znaharka (feminine) from the same verb znat to know. Thus Dr. More's definition of the word, given in 1678, is perfectly correct, and coincides in every particular with modern philology. (354)
mecassephah, that
is, 'a witch, to live.' Which would be a law of extreme severity, or rather
cruelty, against a poor hocus-pocus for his tricks of legerdemain."
Thus, it is but the sixth
appellation, that of a consulter with familiar spirits or a witch, that had to
incur the greatest penalty of the law of Moses, for it is only a witch
which must not be suffered to live, while all the others are simply
enumerated as such with whom the people of Israel were forbidden to communicate
on account of their idolatry or rather religious views and learning chiefly.
This sixth word is 
, shoel aub, which
our English translation renders, "a consulter with familiar spirits";
but which the Septuagint translates, [[engastrimuthos]], one that has a
familiar spirit inside him, one possessed with the spirit of divination,
which was considered to be Python by the Greeks, and obh by the Hebrews,
the old serpent; in its esoteric meaning the spirit of concupiscence and matter;
which, according to the kabalists, is always an elementary human spirit
of the eighth sphere.
"Shut the door in the face of the daemon," says the Kabala, "and he will keep running away from you, as if you pursued him," which means, that you must not give a hold on you to such spirits of obsession by attracting them into an atmosphere of congenial sin.
These daemons seek to introduce themselves into the bodies of the simple-minded and idiots, and remain there until dislodged therefrom by a powerful and pure will. Jesus, Apollonius, and some of the apostles, had the power to cast out devils, by purifying the atmosphere within and without the patient, so as to force the unwelcome tenant to flight. Certain volatile salts are particularly obnoxious to them; and the effect of the chemicals used in a saucer, and placed under the bed by Mr. Varley, of London,† for the purpose of keeping away some disagreeable physical phenomena at night, are corroborative of this great truth. Pure or even simply inoffensive human spirits fear nothing, for having rid themselves of terrestrial matter, terrestrial compounds can affect them in no wise; such spirits are like a breath. Not so with the earth-bound souls and the nature-spirits.
† Mr. Cromwell F. Varley, the well-known electrician of the Atlantic Cable Company, communicates the result of his observations, in the course of a debate at the physical phenomena at night, are corroborative of this great truth. Pure or even simply inoffensive human spirits fear nothing, for having rid themselves of terrestrial matter, terrestrial compounds can affect them in no wise; such spirits are like a breath. Not so with the earth-bound souls and the nature-spirits. (356)
"The prodigy of re-percussion," says des Mousseaux, "occurs when a blow aimed at the spirit, visible or otherwise, of an absent living person, or at the phantom which represents him, strikes this person himself, at the same time, and in the very place at which the spectre or his double is touched! We must suppose, therefore, that the blow is re-percussed, and that it reaches, as if rebounding, from the image of the living person — his phantasmal* duplicate — the original, wherever he may be, in flesh and blood.
"Thus, for instance, an individual appears before me, or, remaining invisible, declares war, threatens, and causes me to be threatened with obsession. I strike at the place where I perceive his phantom, where I hear him moving, where I feel somebody, something which molests and resists me. I strike; the blood will appear sometimes on this place, and occasionally a scream may be heard; he is wounded — perhaps, dead! It is done, and I have explained the fact."†
† This phantom is called Scin Lecca. See Bulwer-Lytton's "Strange Story." (360)
"Notwithstanding that, at the moment I struck him, his presence in another place is authentically proved; . . . I saw — yes, I saw plainly the phantom hurt upon the cheek or shoulder, and this same wound is found precisely on the living person, re-percussed upon his cheek or shoulder. Thus, it becomes evident that the facts of re-percussion have an intimate connection with those of bi-location or duplication, either spiritual or corporeal."
Mr. Upham tells us that Abigail Hobbs, one of these girls, acknowledged that she had confederated with the Devil, who "came to her in the shape of a man," and commanded her to afflict the girls, bringing images made of wood in their likeness, with thorns for her to prick into the images, which she did; whereupon, the girls cried out that they were hurt by her."
* "SalemWitchcraft; With an Account of Salem Village," by C. W.Upham. (361)
† In the Strasbourg edition of his works (1603), Paracelsus writes of the wonderful magical power of man's spirit. "It is possible," he says, "that my spirit, without the help of the body, and through a fiery will alone, and without a sword, can stab and wound others. It is also possible that I can bring the spirit of my adversary into an image, and then double him up and lame him . . . the exertion of will is a great point in medicine. . . . Every imagination of man comes through the heart, for this is the sun of the microcosm, and out of the microcosm proceeds the imagination into the great world (universal ether) . . . the imagination of man is a seed which is material." (Our atomical modern scientists have proved it; see Babbage and Professor Jevons.) "Fixed thought is also a means to an end. The magical is a great concealed wisdom, and reason is a great public foolishness. No armor protects against magic, for it injures the inward spirit of life."
