Moreover, the writings of men primarily devoted to science continued through the sixteenth and on into the seventeenth century to contain much the same occult theories that Michael Scot, Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus had accepted and discussed. Jerome Cardan, one of the most prominent men of his time in mathematics and medicine — indeed, the discoverer of new processes in the former science — nevertheless believed in a strong attraction and sympathy between the heavenly bodies and our own, cast horoscopes and wrote on judicial astrology. In his Arithmetic he treated of the marvelous properties of certain numbers; in other writings he credulously discussed demons, ghosts, incantations, divination and chiromancy. His thirteen books on metoposcopy explain how to tell a person’s character, ability and destiny by a minute examination of the lines on different portions of the body and by warts. He owned a selenite which he believed prevented sleep and a jacinth to which he attributed an opposite influence.[41]
The vagaries of Paracelsus are notorious, and yet he was far more than a mere quack. Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) was a faithful follower of experimental method. He saw that the science of the stars could amount to little unless based on a mass of correct observations, and was one of. the first to devote his life to that foundation of patient and systematic drudgery on which the great structure of modern science is being reared. His painstaking endeavor to have accurate instruments and his care to make allowance for possible error were the marks, rare enough in those days, of the true scientist. Yet he made many an astrological prognostication, and was, as his biographer puts it, “a perfect son of the sixteenth century, believing the universe to be woven together by mysterious connecting threads which the contemplation of the stars or of the elements of nature might unravel, and thereby lift the veil of the future.”[42] He also dabbled in alchemy, believed in relations of occult sympathy between “the ethereal and elementary worlds,” and filled his mind with the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus, Geber, Arnald of Villanova, Raymond Lullius, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus.
Finally, even Francis Bacon, famed as the draughtsman of the chart which henceforth guided explorers in the domain of science, thought that there was considerable value in physiognomy and the interpretation of natural dreams, though the superstition and phantasies of later ages had debased those subjects;[43] and in divination if not “conducted by blind authority.”[44] He said that by a reformed astrology one might predict plagues, famines, wars, seditions, sects, great human migrations and “all great disturbances or innovations in both natural and civil affairs.”[45]
Such are the beliefs which for a long time pervaded the thought and learning of Europe; beliefs of the widespread acceptance of which we have noted but a few striking illustrations. They constitute a varied and formidable class of convictions. There was the notion that from such things as the marks upon one’s body, or from one’s dreams, or from peals of thunder, flight of birds, entrails of sacrificial victims and the movements of the stars, we can foretell the future. There was the assumption that certain precious stones, certain plants and trees and fountains, certain animals or parts of animals have strange and wonderful virtues. There was the idea that man, too, possesses marvelous powers to the extent that he can fascinate and bewitch his fellows. Nor should we forget the attribution to the heavenly bodies of an enormous influence over minerals and vegetation, over human health and character, over national constitutions and customs, even over religious movements. We find this notion of occult virtue extended to things without physical reality: to words, to numbers, to written characters and formulae. It is applied to certain actions and ways of doing things: to “ligatures and suspensions,” for instance. Then there was the belief that wonders may be wrought by the aid of demons, and that incantations, suffumigations, and the like are of great value in invoking spirits. Finally, there was a vague general notion that not only are the ethereal and elementary worlds joined by occult sympathy, but that all parts of the universe are somehow mystically connected, and that perhaps a single magic key may be discovered by which we may become masters of the entire universe.
How shall we classify these beliefs? What shall we call them? What is their meaning, what their origin and cause? As for classification, it is easy to suggest names which partially apply to some of these notions, or adequately characterize them individually. The art of signatures, oneiromancy, augury, divination, astrology, alchemy, the Cabala, sorcery, and necromancy are some designations which at once come to mind. But no one of them is at all adequate as a class name for all these beliefs and the practices which they involve, taken together. Are not these notions, nevertheless, closely allied; is there not an intimate relation between them all? And is not “magic” a term which will include them all and denote the general subject, the philosophy and the art, of which they all are branches?
True, many of the holders of the beliefs above enumerated declaimed against “magic.” [46] But sometimes fear of being accused of magic was their very reason for so doing. Bede had such a fear when he treated of divination by thunder. Roger Bacon took suspicious care to insist that his theories had nothing to do with magic, which he declared was for the most part a mere pretense and could bring marvels to pass only by diabolical assistance.[47] The writer of the Speculum Astronomi-ae — probably Albertus Magnus — found it necessary to write a treatise to distinguish books of necromancy from works on “astronomy,” i. e., astrology.[48] Coming to a later age, we find Agrippa frankly owning his trust in magic, and including under it, in his three books of Occult Philosophy, practically all the beliefs that we have mentioned. For him magic embraced the fields of nature, mathematics and theology. Indeed, men of his day and of the century following displayed a tendency to stretch the term to include true science. He himself called magic “the acme of all philosophy.” Giovanni Battista della Porta (1540–1615), not it is true without considerable justification, called his encyclopedic work on nature Natural Magic.[49] Lord Bacon chose to understand magic “in its ancient and honorable significance” among the Persians as “a sublimer wisdom or a knowledge of universal nature.” He said that as physics, investigating efficient and material causes, produced mechanics, so metaphysics, studying into forms, produced magic.[50]
Apparently, then, magic has a broad significance and a long history. The word itself takes us back to the Magi of ancient Persia; the thing it represents is older yet. It will form the theme of our next chapter, where we shall discuss its history and its meaning, and then the particular significance of those beliefs accepted by men of learning which have been enumerated in the present chapter.
CHAPTER II
Magic: Its Origins and Relations to Science
To men of the past — how long ago does not at present matter — magic meant far more than the performance for their amusement of clever tricks, which however puzzling they knew well enough were based upon illusion and deception. There was a real magic for them.
This faith in the reality of magic was not, moreover, merely the outcome of men’s belief in the existence of evil spirits, in the power of those spirits to work changes in matter or to predict the future, and in man’s power to gain their services. We sometimes speak of magic and necromancy as if they were identical, and mediaeval writers often did the same thing, but such is not the case. If we but consider the meaning of the word “magic” when used as an adjective, we perceive that thus to restrict its scope as a noun is incorrect. What is a magic cloak, for instance? It is simply a cloak possessing properties which cloaks in general do not possess and which we are surprised to find in cloaks. Most cloaks keep us warm or improve our personal appearance; this cloak makes us invulnerable and invisible. A demon or a fairy may have endowed the cloak with these extraordinary qualities, but that is a secondary consideration. What makes the garment a magic cloak is the fact that it has such properties, no matter where or how it got them. Or what is a magic change? Is it merely a change wrought by spirits good or evil? By no means.
41
For Cardan, see the "biography in two volumes by Henry Morley, London, 1854, and that in one volume by W. G. Waters, London. 1898.
42
J. L. E. Dreyer,
47
Bridges,
48
Similarly Roger Bacon, in his