Spells, Witchcraft, Magick Spells & Rituals

Perhaps the first fact which sounds one which approaches the study of this subject is the universality and the antiquity astonishing of the demonology, of a certain belief in the existence of the demons or the spirits of evil, and of a consequent recourse to the incantations or with others practise magic. There are some things which opened out in the past and for a long time disappeared from the face of the ground; and there are others whose the origin recorded can be traced in comparatively modern times, and it is not any surprise to note that they always open out. There is belief and practical, still, which seems to be confined with certain grounds and races of the men, or with a certain particular stage of social culture. But there is something which immediately belongs to the old world and new, and proves to open out among most largely the various races, and seems to be also same character with the wild practices of the savages and the improvements of the traditional or modern culture. Its antiquity can be seen not only obviousness of the ancient monuments, but owing to the fact that however the remoter past is still present with us in the races which remain, because one can indicate, in the primitive and prehistoric state. And perhaps even among these coarse races, apparently innocent of all what savours of science and the culture, us can find a belief in bad spirits, and some attempts with the propitiate they and avoid their anger, or fix their favour and helps. This belief in the spirits, goods and bad, is generally associated one or other of two spread and the primitive forms of religious worship -- and consequently some modern folklorists and mythologists are carried out to allot its origin one or the other to the personification of the forces of nature -- in what much found a “key with all mythologies” -- or with the animism, or a belief in the powerful activity of the hearts of deaths, which thus were called and adored. On this last theory all the spirits at the beginning were designed of as being the hearts of the died men, and starting from this indigenous animism one gradually developed the various refined systems of mythology, the demonology, and the angelology. But here it is well to distinguish the facts themselves and the theory conceived for their interpretation. It is a fact that these coarse forms of worship are found among the primitive people. But the way in which they started and the reasons for the first prehistoric admirers are and must remain subjects of conjecture. Same manner, with regard to the posterior phases, it is a fact that the these the primitive belief and practices have some devices with posterior and more refined ethnic systems in common.

A certain idea of the antiquity of the demonology and magic practices could be collected notifications in the bible or in traditional literature, not to say anything the argument which could be drawn from the universality as of the these belief and practical. But more obviously seizing was always highlighted by the deciphering of the wedge-shaped hiéroglyphes which opened a manner being studied of the rich literature of Babylon and Assyria. Consequently of the their bearing one on the problems of the biblical history, the attention was drawn obviously of the monuments for subjects such as cosmology, the tradition of the flood, or the relations of Assyria and Babylon and the people of Israel. And probably less interest was taken in the belief and the religious practices of the Assyrians themselves. In this question of demonology, however, one can say that some of the Assyrian monuments have a special importance. Certain wedge-shaped texts which more particularly are described like “monk”, it proves that without counting that the public and official worship of the “twelve large gods” and their divinities subordinates, the Assyrians had more crowned and more secret religion, a religion of mystery and the magic and sorcery. These “religious” texts, moreover, as well as a mass of the inscriptions talismanic on cylinders and amulets, prove the presence of an excessively rich demonology. Below largest and little of gods there was a vast spirit crowd, some of them good and beneficial and some of them bad and harmful. And these spirits were described and classified with a precision which carries out some to compare arrangement with that of the choruses and the orders of our own hierarchy angelica. The antiquity and the importance of this secret religion, with its magic and incantations of the good spirits or the bad demons, can be collected owing to the fact that by order of King Assurbanipal his scribers made with several copies of a great magic work according to a specimen which had been preserved of a remote antiquity in the sacerdotal school of Erech in Chaldea. This work was composed of three books, the first of which is entirely devoted to the incantations, the conspiracies, and the imprécations against the bad spirits. These wedge-shaped books, it must remember, are really written on clay tablets. And each compressed these first book which is descended to us from the ends with the title, “No of tablet. - bad spirits”. The ideogram which is returned here like kullulu -- “cursed” or “badly” -- the force also is read like limuttu -- “disastrous”. Without counting that known by the generic name of the udukku -- “spirit” -- a demon is called more distinctly ecimmu, or the maskimmu. A special class of these spirits was the sedu, or the divine bull, which is represented in the well-known figure of a so common bull man-directed on the Assyrian monuments. This name, it can notice, is probably the source of Hebrew for the demon. The Assyrian sedu admittedly was generally a beneficial or guardian spirit. But it is hardly an obstacle with derivation, because the good spirits of a nation were often regarded as the evil by the men of the rival races.

Of much in manners one of the most remarkable démonologies that is presented in Avesta, the crowned book of the religion of Mazdean de Zoroaster. In this ancient religion, that with the difference of that of the Assyrians, always exists in the community of Parsee, the war between light and the darkness, good and badly inherits a greater prominence. The surplus against good God, Ahura Mazda, with its hierarchy of the holy spirits, there is arranged the dark kingdom of the demons, or the daevas, under Anro Mainyus (Ahriman), the cruel bad spirit, the demon of the demons (Daevanam Daeva), which never makes the war against faithful Ahura Mazda and its servants such as Zoroaster. It can notice that the name of Daeva is an example of this change of a good to a bad direction which is seen in the case of the Greek daimon word. For the original significance of the word “one polishes”, and it comes from a primitive Aryan division of root, which is the same the source of Greek Zeus and the Latin deus. But while these words, like the deva of Sanskrit, maintain the good significance, the daeva came to mean “bad spirit”. There is at least a coincidence, if no major significance, in the fact that, whereas the word in its original direction was synonymous with Lucifer, it now came to more or less even mean as the devil. There is also a curious coincidence in the similarity in the noise between the daeva, the modern lotissor of Persan, and the devil of word. Looking at the similarity in the noise and the significance, one would be tried to indicate that they must have a common origin, but for the fact that we know with certainty that the devil of word comes from the diabolus (twin wheels -- the diaballein) and cannot have any connection with the root of Persan or Sanskrit.

When we turn of Avesta to the crowned books of the Jews, i.e. in canonical Scripture, we are struck by the absence of a refined demonology of this type of Persan and Assyrians. There is much, indeed, about the angels of the lord, the host centres of the sky, the seraphim and the cherubim, and other spirits which are held before the throne or the minister with the men. But the mention of the bad spirits is comparatively light. Not that their existence is ignored, because us to have temptation by the snake, in which the Jews as well as of the Christians identify the work of the bad spirit. In work, still, Satan appears as the tempter and an indicter of the man right; in the kings it is him which encourages David to assassinate the prophet; in Zacharias it is seen in its office of indicter. A bad spirit comes on the false prophets. Saul is afflicted or apparently had, by a bad spirit. The activity of the demon in magic arts is indicated in the work worked by the magicians of the Pharaon, and in the laws of Levitical counters magicians or of the witches. The scapegoat is sent in the desert to Azazael, which is supposed by certain being a demon (see the ATONEMENT, the DAY OF), and to this can be added a remarkable passage in Isaias which seems to encourage the common belief that the demons remain in the places of reject: “And the demons and the monsters will meet, and the hairy ones will cry one with the other outside, there the hath the laid down lamia, and found the rest for itself” (Isaïe 34:14). It is true that Hebrew returned here by “demons” can simply want to say the savage animals. But on the one hand, Hebrew who is returned very literally as the “hairy one” is the “demons” translated by Targum and Peshitta, and is supposed to mean deity formed by similar goat's milk cheese in the Greek pan. And the “lamia” represents original Lilith, a spirit of the night which in the legend hébreue is the wife of demon of Adam. A later development of the demonology of the old will is seen in the book of Tobias, that however not included in Canon Jew was written in Hebrew or chaldéen, and a version in the last language was recovered among some rabbinical writings. Here we have the Asmodeus demon which plays the role assigned with the demons in many démonologies and ethnic people-legends. It was identified by some good authorities with Aeshmo Daeva of Avesta; but Whitehouse doubts this identification and prefers the alternative etymology hébreue. In any event Asmodeus became a figure ahead in posterior demonology hébreue, and some strange tales informed on him in Talmud are completely in the vein “of Thousand and One Nights”. The rabbinical demonology of Talmud and Midrashim is very far from the reserve and the sobriety of the canonical writings for this subject. Some modern criticisms allot this rich growth of demonology among the Jews to the effects of the captivity, and regard it as the result of the Babylonian influence or Persian. But however in its abundance and development it can support formal resemblance with these external systems, does not seem any reason there to regard it as simply a case of appropriation of the doctrines from abroad. For when we come to compare them more narrowly, we can spout out to estimate that the Jewish demonology is distinctive of its clean, and should rather be considered while a consequence of belief and ideas which were present in the spirit of the selected people before they came into contact with the Persan ones and Babylonians. It is certainly significant that, instead of borrowing from the legends and the abundant doctrines ready with their hand in the foreign systems, the rabbinical demonologists sought their starting point in a certain text of their own scriptures and drew ahead all which they wanted by means of their subtle and clever methods of interpretation. Thus the above-mentioned text of Isaias provided, under the name of Lilith, mysterious a female spirit of night which apparently lived in the afflicted places, and immediately they made him the wife of demon of Adam and the mother of the demons. But from where, it can ask, had these exhibitors of the text crowned any guarantee for saying that our first father contracted a marriage mixed with a being of another race and generated children other than the human one? They simply took the text of the genesis, v: “And Adam lived the a hundred and thirty years, and produced of a son with his own image and similarity”. These report/ratio/report/ratio clarifies that they indicated, implies simply that the precedent currently it had produced wire which was not with its own image and similarity; to pour clean its of course of other of one of assistance of gathering of the founded one of weight of the trade of needs for for owes of it of this some, the spirit a wife of demon of with, to pour the demons of of mother to become. Humanity among trade unions of one of opinions of This and the pagan familiar one of mythology and demonology of in had order of one of beings of for a long time of device different from the summer one, and, currently obvious of serums of like, Christians discovered mine of commentators of ministers of some pour the genesis of in it, VI, 2, sons of God “men of of of indicates who girls of wives of of themselves of carried of Ontario”. Demons Jewish of of astonishing of multitude of was of a characteristic of demonology. Man all of each of accounts of of According to a wire side of on of the thousands of them. The air is full with them, and, of since they were the causes of various diseases, it were good that the men should keep a certain guard on their mouths for fear, swallowing a demon, they could be afflicted with a certain fatal disease.

Throughout the ages of medium the external systems of the demonology among ancient civilizations of the east continued their course, and can always prove to open out in the house of their origin or other grounds. In certain Origenist the theologists of the great period scholastic were determining and elucidating the public about the angels and of the devils and continued to practise black arts of the magic, and sorcery, and to deal with the devil. During the time concerned about the Rebirth and reform there seems to have been a rebirth of old superstitions and practices bad and the strange of truths or supposed facts professors of black arts and by the credulous and cruel persecutors who sought to remove them. In the new age of the revolution and the diffusion of the practical ideas and exact methods of science one has it at the beginning thought by much that these medieval superstitions would pass quickly far. When the men, materialized by the growth of the richness and comforts of civilization, and lit by science and of new philosophies, could faith rare lucky find to believe in the religion, it could y have part for the belief in the doctrines of the demons like dream. Men educated marvelled with the belief of their fathers, with their faith in the phantoms, and the demons, and the black magic, but felt him impossible to take any serious interest for the subject in their age of explanation. However there makes some was motionless illusion from abroad in the naive faith of the first rationalists, who tenderly liked that they had found the key with all knowledge and that there was no thing in the sky or of ground beyond the extension of their science and philosophy. And most of the hundred last years history of forms a curious comment on these claims proud. For far from disappearing from the face from the ground, most of the old occultism was restored with a new strength, and took to the new form in modern Spiritism at the same time, of the philosophers, historians, and of the men of science were carried out to carry out a serious study of the history of the demonology and occultism inside after ages or in other grounds, in order to include/understand its true significance.