Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/222

204 MAGIC dom. Babylonian and Greek scientific and magical ideas has extended across Asia, even into China. The magic of this latter country is remarkable for its various and elaborate modes of divination. These may be obtained from mediums possessed by spirits, and giving oracles by speech or writing with the " descending pencil," as has lately been done by " spiritualists " in Europe. But higher authority is given to divination by throwing sacred lots, as the two wooden ka pwe, which fall with the flat or rounded side up. The results of such processes of divination, in them selves -meagre, may be brought to any required elaborate ness by the use of the " eight diagrams " obtained by combinations of the whole line ( ) and the broken line ( ). These, primarily interpreted as representing the male and the female principle (yang, yn), perfect and imperfect, heavenly and earthly, are referred by syste matic fancy to elements, qualities, tempers, &c., and inter preted in the celebrated Chinese classic book called the Y-king into a collection of oracular responses. 1 The feng-shui, or " wind-and-water " magic, is a system the practitioners of which regulate the building of houses and tombs by their local aspects ; it has of late come under the notice of Europeans from the unexpected impediments it has placed in their way when desirous of building or constructing railways on Chinese soil. 2 Magic in In the lower stages of civilization the distinction between Christen- religion and magic hardly appears, the functions of priest and sorcerer being still blended, as was long since pointed out by Meiners (Geschichte der Religionen, book xii.). As established religions were formed among nations of a higher grade, the separation became more distinct between the official rites of the priesthood and those practised by castes of magicians, rivalry often becoming serious between them. Thus in ancient Egypt there appear, on the one hand, the miracles worked by divinities under official sanc tion of the priesthood, and, on the other hand, the unlicensed proceedings of sorcerers, who indeed doubtless deserved ill of society by practices done by detestable means or for detestable ends, such as bewitching by hurtful demons, or administering love- potions. Here we come into view of the distinction still expressed by the terms " white magic " and " black magic." Laws were made against magic in these ancient times, but it must be remembered that then and for thousands of years later, the opposition to magic had seldom anything to do with the sceptical doubts of its reality which arose among the classic philosophers. Magic was none the less believed in for being hated and proscribed ; and when a soothsayer was looked upon as a false prophet the inference was, not that magic was unreal, but that this particular magician was pretending to supernatural power he did not possess. The Levitical law prohibits sorcery under penalty of death (Levit. xx. 27). Among the early Christians sorcery was recognized as illegal miracle ; and magic acts, such as turning men into beasts, calling up familiar demons, raising storms, &c., are mentioned, not in a sceptical spirit, but with reprobation. In the changed relations of the state to the church under Constantine, the laws against magic served the new purpose of proscribing the rites of the Greek and Roman religion, whose oracles, sacrifices, and auguries, once carried on under the highest public sanction, were put under the same ban with the low arts of the necromancer and the witch. 3 As Christianity extended its sway over Europe, the same antagonism con tinued, the church striving with considerable success to put down at once the old local religions, and the even older 1 See Mohl, Y-king ; Pauthier, Limes Sacres de V Orient. 8 See Eitel, Handbook of Chinese Buddhism ; Edkins, Folklore of China, p. 65. 3 For an excellent account of the classical and medieval history of magic see Maury, La Magie et I Astrologie. practices of witchcraft ; condemning Thor and Woden as demons, they punished their rites in common with those of the sorcerers who bewitched their neighbours, and turned themselves into wolves or cats. Thus gradually arose the legal persecution of witches, which went on through the Middle Ages under ecclesiastical sanction both Catholic and Protestant. The literature of the Middle Ages does not contribute many new elements to the study of magic, which was carried on under the old traditional systems. But it shows on the one hand how unbroken the faith of even the educated classes remained in the reality of magic, and on the other hand that its more respectable branches, such as astrology and alchemy, were largely followed, and indeed included in their scope much of the real science of the period (see the works of Thomas Aquinas, Gerbert, Roger Bacon, Cornelius Agrippa, &c.). The final fall of magic began with the revival of science in the 16th and 17th centuries, when the question whether the supposed effects of magic really take place or not was raised, and decided against it. In our day the occult sciences are rapidly dying out in the educated classes of the civilized world, though astro logy still has its votaries, and the communications in "spirit circles " by possessed mediums and spirit-writing are what would in old times have been classed as necro mancy. The magic which holds its place most firmly in Europe has come down by tradition in popular folk-lore, which is full of precepts for bewitching and averting witchcraft, and divining by omens. Among the practices which occur to everyone s mind are foretelling changes of the weather by the moon s quarters, taking omens from seeing magpies and hearing a dog howl at night, the fear of spilling salt, observation of the shroud in the candle and the stranger in the tea-cup, the girls listening to the cuckoo to tell how soon they will be married, pulling oft the row of leaves to settle what the lover s calling will be, and perhaps even compelling him to come by a pin stuck through the rushlight. Nor has the wizard forgotten how to cure inflammation with a " thunderbolt," generally an ancient stone or bronze hatchet dug up in the fields, nor how to punish an enemy by means of a heart stuck full of pins and hung in the chimney. These are but a few out of hundreds to be found in Brand s Popular Anti quities and the volumes published by the Folklore Society, or in the similar collections from every country of Europe. If any one wonders that popular magic still enjoys much credit in the peasant class, it should be remembered that even the educated world still shows a remarkable unreason ableness in connecting causes and effects. Thus the old magical belief survives that a loadstone, because it draws steel, will also draw out pain. Peasants may well carry a magnet in their trousers pocket against rheumatism when better-informed people will wear with as great con fidence a "galvanic belt," though any electrician will tell them it has not the power to hurt or cure a fly. One of the most favourable proofs of the changed public opinion in England is seen in the laws, where the penalties of the old statute against those who keep familiar demons are abolished, and the time-honoured charge has disap peared from the commission of the peace to inquire of all " inchantments, sorceries, art magic, trespasses, forestall- ings, regratings, &c." But persons pretending to exercise witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment, or conjuration, or under taking to tell fortunes or pretending by occult or crafty science to discover lost or stolen goods, may be imprisoned under 9 Geo. II. c. 5, or fortune-tellers dealt with as rogues and vagabonds under 5 Geo. IV. c. 83, or they may be prosecuted for obtaining money under false pretences. Looked at as a series of delusions, magic is distasteful to Origin of the modern mind, which, oncesatisfied of its practical futility, magic-

is ap f to discard it as folly unworthy of further notice.