MAGIC, SORCERY AND WITCHCRAFT 

THE present lecture is to deal with three very important, and to a very large extent, much misunderstood subjects; namely, magic, sorcery and witchcraft. We shall endeavour to Place these three topics in their proper position, so far as we understand them; rescue them, where needs be, from misapprehension; and clear away some proportion, at least, of the rubbish that has been associated with them. 

To the average understanding there is something terrible in the associations that are connected with the terms, magic, witchcraft, or sorcery, and the uninstructed or uninformed shrink from all those who are supposed to be possessed of powers in any of these directions. This shrinking is the outcome, in nearly all cases, of ignorance, ignorance of the powers and forces that are utilised by those who are what might be called adepts in any of these departments; for generally people are ignorant of the fact that all that can be done by the witch, the magician, or the sorcerer are possibilities to everyone else, to the unfortunate so-called victim as well as to the so-called more fortunate master. 

The history of the world reveals the fact that the further we go back into the past, encountering the increasing ignorance of humanity in our backward progress, the more of superstition do we find; and as we recede from the positive knowledge and practical evidences possessed by man to-day in regard to the laws and principles of nature, the more and more does the world of life and action become peopled with subjective individualities; and, instead of the ordinary laws of nature, and the principles of being—as the man of science finds them to-day—we find genii, and devils, and strange, mysterious dwellers in the earth, in the clouds, in the winds, and in the spaces of the upper air. The further back we investigate these matters the grosser and grosser become these peculiarities, until they reach the age of barbarism; when they become so crude and devilish, as to fill our souls with loathing, as well as with wonder concerning how it was possible for men to accept such interpretations of the phenomena of nature. 

Yet you have only to remember that ignorance is the fruitful mother of error, and that unintelligent minds are the resting-places of all the bats and owls of superstition, to be at once placed in possession of the fact that the further you recede from the orderly facts of nature and retire into the chambers of speculation, the more certain is it you will lose law and order, and enter into that domain where fancy, superstition, and speculation run riot and hold high court, and seem to present a veritable witches’ Sabbath of riotous fancies. 

We do not wish you to understand us as arguing for a moment that the phenomena associated with magic, witchcraft or sorcery, are untrue, that is to say, that such things do not exist and such phenomena do not occur. This is not the impression we wish to convey to you; the impression we wish to place upon your mind, is that the aforesaid phenomena do exist and do occur, but that the cause of them and the interpretation of them, and the means by which they can be obtained, are not of the character hitherto associated with them. 

MAGIC-BLACK, WHITE AND RED 

Magic may be accepted as the supposed practice of the higher forces of the magician’s power; sorcery may be accepted as the lower manifestation of the like power; while witchcraft gives us the disorderly manifestation of sporadic spiritual phenomena transpiring among certain portions of the human family, who are to-day known as mediums, but whose powers are now under the more or less orderly control of spirits. Bearing distinctly in mind the superstition associated with what is now known as Spiritualism, in the earlier days of civilisation, you will be the better prepared to accept what we are now about to present for consideration. 

Magic has been divided into three forms, black, white and red, while some writers have added to it also the consideration of grey magic. But this distinction by colour only refers to the degree of moral quantity (or the lack of it) that may be involved in the operations concerned. The magician is supposed to be an individual, who, by certain training or hereditary descent, possesses a peculiar power and develops certain possibilities far beyond those possessed or developed by the majority of his fellows. Not only is he supposed to possess this power in himself, but this power is supposed to give him the ability to control certain orders of invisible beings; or, in other cases, to bring himself into harmony with certain orders of invisible beings; or, under certain other conditions, to entreat the assistance and bring down the presence of still more superior powers than either of those just referred to; while the lowest forms of magical exercise are supposed to embrace a control of the demons, sprites and spirits of this world—the lower classes of alleged subjective materio-spiritual entities. 

BEINGS ON MANY PLANES OF DEVELOPMENT 

Now here we have in the matter of magic three separate planes of operation. In the first place it might be inferred that the operations would all pertain to this world’s life, its selfish desires, its individual peculiarities and necessities, and most likely would belong to those matters which are dark, degrading, and possibly undesirable. Here then, we shall likely find all the superstitious forms of invoking and evoking, by weird and strange processes, these alleged spirits of earth, air, fire, water, etc. 

Startling stories are told you of occult gatherings where, under mysterious oaths in magical circles, with peculiar odours, with strange and curious symbols, with many peculiar personal preparations, you are introduced to that magic chamber where these mysterious entities are, and by such processes they are brought to you and made your servants. But fearful oaths of silence are imposed upon you and you are forbidden for your life to step outside of the charmed circle wherein you have been placed for safety. We have very little hesitation in saying that while the phenomena are perfectly true, the interpretation of them is decidedly erroneous, and that this phase of magic is strictly possible of interpretation in accordance with the ordinary laws of life, both in nature and yourself. 

When we step out of this lower circle of operation into the intermediate, where the magician is more on a level with the spiritual intelligences he invokes, then we leave the lower orders of alleged quasi-spiritual entities outside, we come out of the spirits of the earth, the water, and air, witches, and what not, and come into the class of spiritual intelligences who are really disembodied intelligences, the people who have lived in this world, or alleged intelligences who have never lived in this world, but who in either case are intelligent, rational personalities. They may be appealed to for comfort and for aid, but are supposed to be more or less in harmony with, and under the influence of, those magicians who call them. In the higher planes there is so much that you are already acquainted with in spiritual communications that but very little explanation is necessary from us on that point. You appeal to the highest spiritual intelligences, you ask them to come to you, you desire their presence, and you invoke their aid and counsel; and you do this as Spiritualists, to-day, as it has been done in the world for thousands of years past. 

A SANE AND NATURAL PROCESS 

Now, to show you how clearly all this may be properly interpreted and a true fight cast upon it, let us call your attention to sundry facts that you, as Spiritualists, are practically familiar with. In the formation of your spiritual circles you have all the elements that the magician has in the formation of his mystic circle; but you do not bum incense, you do not mix magical compounds and set fire to them, you do not draw a circle upon the ground and mark signs therein, you do not feel that you are going to draw up bell to minister to your evil needs or make sprites, gnomes, or fairies obey you, or go out of the earthly life yourself, or call down the great ones of the world beyond and command them to be your ministers; but, instead, you feel you are forming a circle for the purpose of the evolution of spiritual phenomena. You are virtually and practically embodying and obeying all that magicians have been able to do in the past; and the real result of circle-holding, when scientifically attended to, is a reduction of the magic of antiquity to the orderly and lawful expression of spiritual phenomena in modern times, neither more nor less. 

Then you will ask us why are these incantations necessary? Why these mystic surroundings? Why this gloom? and why this wonderful personal preparation? They are all indicative of certain essential laws and principles that, when better observed in the fight of an intelligent understanding of to-day, will always assure your spiritual circle a far greater measure of success than would be the case by ignoring them. There can be no harm, and possibly much good, in the preparation for attending such circles by bodily purity, both in the outer person and inward character, in the cultivation of meditation, spiritual aspiration, and of the finer and better graces of nature. There can be no harm in being purer outwardly, inwardly, physically, mentally, and spiritually; no harm in your assembling in a room especially charged with the vitalic forces of those who are to constitute the “magic,” or spirit circle; no harm to prepare and form the conditions by which you can supply force and power which the intelligences on the other side can use; no harm in opening these circles in unity of mind and harmony of purpose, which enables the invisible intelligences to enter into your presence; no harm in aspiring for the highest and the best to hold communication with you; no harm in having pleasant and comfortable surroundings, and due consideration to the solemnity of the deep relationship between the two worlds, of which you distinctly partake. 

There can be nothing objectionable, we repeat, in all this; because much good may come from it. In obeying these requirements faithfully, then, you will in these modern times be in harmony with the character of your present civilisation, and in accordance with the exigencies of your own necessities, you will reproduce the essential and really valuable part of magical services and incantations; but you will not have the spirits of the earth, the air, the water, or the fire, or any such entities, though you may draw down by these preparations and processes wise and intelligent spirits who have once lived in human life, who shall counsel with you, and perhaps under certain conditions be able to attract to you certain cunning workers in psychological forces, who can do strange things, create lights which float around you, etherealize forms and figures which float before you, make strange sounds, move bodies, entrance the members of the circle, and do a hundred and one things you have heard of in magical circles in olden times. 

MAGICIANS IMPOSE ON IGNORANCE 

Here you will see you are dealing with the outer fringe of so-called magic. There is, it is asserted, beyond this, a section deeper and greater, wherein the individual magician can command the service of the invisible forces; nay, some even go a stage further and say that the subtle forces of nature are and can be brought under the control of the will of man, and that there are people in the world to-day who can play with the forces of being so that they can send this thing and that thing upon you or to you, and in a hundred ways manifest their superiority to the laws of nature! We deny the postulate entirely. 

Our observation is extended, our experience has been widespread, for we have had an opportunity of investigating the so-called magic of the Oriental life, to which we belong; and we unhesitatingly affirm to you that when you divest magic of all its superfluous elements and bring it down to its basic facts and laws, you will find that all these enlarged statements are either thoughtless or wilful exaggeration. If you investigate you will find that the alleged performers of occult things avoid giving any public statement, that they shelter themselves behind vows of secrecy, and refer only to the results of the powers which they say they possess; and if you bear this clearly in mind, then half the glory and three-fourths of the mystery associated with magic in the past will flee away forever. 

You may refer to the so-called occult and mystic orders of the East, of India, Persia and Egypt, and other lands, and in every case when you refer to the magi of the past you will always find them as we have just stated, when not teachers pure and simple; you will find that the adept has been trained in a certain course of practical philosophy in regard to man’s mental, psychological and spiritual powers, and that this knowledge is “expressed in symbols and veiled in allegory;” but when you penetrate the symbol and interpret the allegory, you will have the same kind of knowledge that you, as Spiritualists, may be familiar with today, the same kinds of facts that Spiritualists may be familiar with in this age. But to those who are not within the secret orders, who are not adepts, and who are kept in the dark, these matters are exaggerated in importance and character. Examine the matter closely and you will find that it all comes down to the laws of nature and the powers of man, coupled with man’s insatiable desire to gain knowledge, and the contempt which learning and experience too frequently feel for ignorance and lack of progress. 

MAN’S INNATE POWERS AND NATURE’S POTENCIES 

“But stories have been told us,” you Will Say, “of most marvellous things. We have heard of the magicians of India, and others, who have done strange things. Now are not these magicians?” Yes, and no. There is in man a power to use all beneath him or upon a level with him to the extent of his ability, but the extent of his ability is the governing proposition; he cannot go beyond that. The power of the will, governed by the enlightened soul and intelligence, can accomplish in many cases that which seems most remarkable to those who have not been so trained. The ordinary conjurer can do things with his hands that seem to surprise you beyond all expression, and you think he must be really endowed with magical powers; but he tells you that he simply does all these things by the quickness of the hand, and so defies the seeing of the eye; and likewise you will find that some of these “occult” stories have their foundation in the deftness of the hands rather than the exhibition of magical powers. 

SORCERY, SUGGESTION OR HYPNOTISM 

When we have to deal with the effects magic is said to produce upon other people, we have to consider the sorcerer. Let us turn our attention to the operations of the sorcerer for the “evoking” of spirits, “the casting of spells,” “the giving of life and the bestowing of health”; the individual who claims to do this and that for you, who has a monopoly of influence, who can give you half the world if necessary, or aid you to accomplish some great purpose. Do you believe such things? Do you believe that one individual, made like yourselves, organised and constituted like yourselves, having powers that you possess, has been permitted by the Almighty intelligence to exercise such powers while here in this world, and arbitrarily interfere with all the laws and purposes of nature and God? 

If so, you believe things that are supremely silly, altogether beneath contempt, when viewed in the light of experience and the known laws and principles of the universe. The effects produced by the sorcerer, in three-fourths of cases, depend upon the fact of the victim’s knowing that the power of the sorcerer is being exercised against him. If you take that simple element out of the proposition, the power of the sorcerer, is reduced in the same proportion. 

When the power of the sorcerer effects a result without the victim knowing what is being directed against him, you can then put it down that a mesmeric or psychical power is being directed by the sorcerer towards the person. Take out these two elements, and sorcery becomes impossible. But, of course you are far too intelligent to believe in such a thing as evoking his Satanic Majesty, you have discarded all such opinion; and if you once empty the Christian hells, you might as well empty all hells beside, and just as well discard all the other devils, for they are of the same general family. 

Here, then, we stand. All this question of “sorcery,” supposed to be associated with the lower races of mankind, is but a blind and indefinite searching after the spiritual powers which you all possess, is one of the expressions of spiritual growth, just as the exercise of magic is one of the expressions of psychological growth, of the power to use the psychological elements of your nature; they are indications of what man is going to do and become by and by, indications all upon the lowest plane of individual development, and when bereft of the superstitions that surround them, they are resolved into the simple facts of nature that in your larger experience you are familiar with to-day. 

WITCHCRAFT—THE ACTION OF MIND ON MIND 

We now come to the question of witchcraft. You have been bewitched by a laughing eye, a merry voice, a twist of the hair, a turn of the face, a charming manner—oh! by these you have been bewitched beyond all power to resist; a spell has been cast over you which you have felt for years afterwards, and you have thanked God for such bedevilment, for it brought you all the happiness you had in life! 

Here you have the secret of witchcraft, the influence of one individual upon another. It may be laudable and good, or disgraceful and injurious; it may kindle into action the higher and better parts, or arouse all the lower and baser elements of you—may make you akin to the very angels themselves, or forge chains which shall bind you down to the lowest elements of sensuous life. 

Work out the problem on that line. All the witchery and bewitching resolves itself into psychological influences; the hypnotist makes his subject believe that a cold coin is red hot, that a gentleman’s walking-stick is the embodiment of the evil one, and by a thousand different things bewitches the intelligence and faculties and judgment of his subject, who, for the time being, is under a spell that compels him to do whatsoever the controlling mind desires or demands him to do; but the time was when these things were not understood, when those who were capable of exercising an influence upon other people were called “witches”, were looked upon as devilish, and, mayhap, have paid for it by being roasted alive, as a burnt offering to heaven, as, indeed many were so treated. So, then, when we take witchcraft in this light, think of how many thousands of your fellow-creatures in this world had suffered pains and penalties because they possessed powers which God himself gave them; for the exercise of attributes with which you are familiar to-day, and which pass unchallenged in the community at large. 

ALL HUMAN POWERS ARE NATURAL 

Magic, sorcery and witchcraft, then, in this light, bring themselves in line and harmony with the laws of nature and the possibilities of man; they are “uncanny” subjects only when you fail to understand what they involve; they are dreadful and horrible things to deal with when you are led into them blindfolded, and introduced to them in the dark; but when they come out to you in the bright light of day, when old associations fall from them, they stand out as prophecies of the powers that you are today personally acquainted with. 

We take magic, then, in another form just for the moment, involving in this one term now the entire series of definitions that we have been dealing with; we will take it under the word occultism, and here we find the exoteric and esoteric side of the question. You are asked to believe there is a secret side to knowledge that is only for those who are fitted to receive it; that there must be a special order, a special class of people to receive the secret wisdom of God, and that only these favoured persons are entitled to receive His divine knowledge; that outwardly it must be presented in symbols and allegories, and the common multitude who are not prepared to receive these things must be content to receive what the adepts and magi see fit to dispense to them. 

Three-fourths of this talk about modern Theosophy, and the presentation of it in this land, is only pandering to the most vicious element of the intelligence of the nineteenth century. Theosophy may tell you that there are only a special few who may pass the mystic portals, or lift the sacred veils and pass beneath them so that they stand before the inner shrines; while all you who are of the common clay outside must be content to hear but the echo of the music within, or receive it in symbol and allegory, from those who have passed into adeptship beyond, as they may choose to give it to you. Tear down such trashy doctrines, dispel all such murky clouds. Be not deceived by such specious statements; they are the towers that selfishness and superstition erect to make something that may belong to all seem special and peculiar, and pertaining to a class alone. God’s eternal universe knows no common people and no great people. 

In the essential soul of man are the everlasting principles of God, and those who are willing and those who are able, no matter what their creed, their race or colour, have an inalienable right to the pursuit of truth, as well as the pursuit of happiness. 

SNOBBERY BORN OF CONCEIT 

Therefore we say that all these pretentious claims about occultism, Theosophy, or the mystical developments of supernatural power are the claims of the ignorant, the deluded, or the charlatan. People are deluded and deceived by such pretensions, they not knowing all the points we have presented for consideration. Our purpose in these remarks is to inform them and bring them face to face with the fact, that whenever truth is divided in two, and half of it belongs to the “initiates,” and the other half to those of the outer world, then we say that danger and difficulty he in the pathway of the investigator; and one of the greatest dangers is a specious self-righteousness which causes its subjects to say, “Stand aside; I am holier than thou.” This is what you wish to avoid; there must be none of the “I am holier than thou” in the pursuit and application of truth for the advancement of yourselves and the well-being of your fellows. 

Shall we, then, people the mystic temples of the past with the living thoughts of the present? Shall we take to them our circles and our shrines? Shall we again illumine their sacred altars? Shall we fill their chambers with odours and perfumes? Must we as initiates be put through trying ordeals, invoke the powers of the lower, middle, and upper realms of nature ere we can enjoy the blessings of our Spiritualism? These are questions Spiritualists might well ask of the supporters of magic in their midst to-day. 

And shall we, with the light and guidance of modern psychology, indulge in the wild orgies of sorcery or witchcraft? Or shall we turn aside from the old practices, remove the curtains, turn up the lights, put away the paraphernalia, and come down to the plain, simple truth, that the phenomenal aspects of modern Spiritualism reproduce all the essential principles of the magic, witchcraft and sorcery of the past? The same powers are involved, the same forces are used, the same conditions are required, the same intelligences are operating; and the more you investigate the realms of nature by the light of science and experience, the less and less room you will find for the devils and genii of antiquity. 

Magic, witchcraft and sorcery, when thus analysed and interpreted, bring you at last only face to face with possibilities in nature, in harmony with her laws, in accordance with the possibilities of yourself, and in strict accordance with the abilities of operating spirits, who return into the mortal sphere and produce all the marvels that are alleged to have been performed in former times. 

PRETENCE HAS THRIVED ON IGNORANCE 

It may be said in presenting this modern and practical interpretation of the three themes we have joined together, that we have ignored the existence of the great brotherhoods of the past. Nothing of the kind. We do not, since we are perfectly aware of their existence; but all they can present, all that they can do, is simply done in accordance with the laws of nature; and no man in any case can transcend the laws of nature, but in every case, no matter how startling the statement may be, the result has been accomplished in harmony with the laws of nature and the possibilities of man. 

Therefore, shall you waste the precious moments of mortal life in digging up the past when its facts are now living in your midst? Why turn to the years agone, why unearth the mysteries of psychological phenomena in bygone ages, when greater wisdom is manifested and greater things are actually transpiring in your midst to-day, and that, too, in the light of scientific fact and experience, and in accordance with the highest methods of investigation? We will take the spiritual phenomena of the last forty years in connection with Modern Spiritualism, and boldly challenge the magical records of antiquity to produce anything equally satisfactory to the intelligence of to-day. 

Clearly, then, the past may be left alone; let the dead past bury its dead, and let the living present be concerned in developing the life that is, in an understanding of the latent powers of mind and body, brain and soul. By a proper understanding of the laws and principles connecting the two worlds in harmony and unity, far greater marvels are revealed to you. You learn that a spirit can lift a solid article and transport it from one end of the room to the other; carry a message from one locality to another, carry your goodwill or evil will to some person you love or dislike; that it can produce a bodily form, as well as reveal the mysteries of passing from the mortal existence. All these things are possible and do occur, and they occur because of the laws of nature. All that has been done by man in the past, and all that has been gained, you can do and you can gain; because every human being the wide world over is built upon the same lines of general organisation, principle, and purpose. 

A CLEAN LIFE AND UNDERSTANDING MIND ARE THE KEYS TO POWER 

We leave the topic to your consideration, and urge you to accept this in conclusion; that the cultivation of the highest spirituality, the development of the noblest morality, the building up and strengthening of your will to its strongest point, living a cleanly and virtuous life, are the surest safeguards against the attacks of all kinds of sorcery and magic, of all sorts of witchcraft; that the facts of knowledge intelligently directed shall in deed make you a magician through the forces of your nature for the accomplishment of many strange things; that even as the chemist manipulating his compounds produces miracles, and seems to be a very magician juggling with fluids and materials, so you, like the chemist, using laws and principles and proper agents, can be a marvellous magician in the psychological departments, also, while you are living here on earth. 

Live, then, so your knowledge can be usefully applied for the benefit of your fellows and the cultivation of your own natures, and banish superstition and ignorance from the world for ever; for knowledge is the glorious sunlight shining into and dispelling the darkness and the bats and owls so long residing there hie them away to more congenial quarters where the sunlight does not shine so strong. May those bats and owls the world has called magic, witchcraft and sorcery flee away to more appropriate abodes of shadow in other less-illumined parts of the world than that in which you reside; and in place of “witchcraft, sorcery and magic,” put the understanding of the psychological possibilities of man and being, which, when applied to the needs of life, bless humanity, enlarge the field of human vision and knowledge, lift man up into communion and action with the higher orders of spiritual intelligence, who are always willing to help you forward and onward in your progress through mortality to the brighter realms that be beyond.