SPIRIT OF SUPERSTITION

Evening Star, Issue 18159, 27 December 1922, Page 6

SPIRIT OF SUPERSTITION

CRUDEST FORMS ANALYSED. WITCH MANIA. (From the Melbourne ‘Age.’) The price of liberty is eternal vigihence. The familiar maxim is an applicable io mental as to personal and political liberty. Many material kingdoms have risen and nei-isbe;! ; intellectual kingdoms are liable to tho same process. Tho human mind is never to be entirely trusted. Despite free and compulsory education, despite the opportunity of voting at an occasional parliamentary election. there are hosts of minds ever ready to provide accommodation for the crudest forms of superstition. Recent decades have seen an extensive enlargement of the frontiers of human knowledge. Science has been passing from triumph to triumph. These might well seem to raise an insuperable barrier between man and his primitive beliefs. But evidently not. If only the direction be backward, ignorance will overlap anything, even the demonstrations of science. The intelli-

gent element in every community, therefore, must be vigilant in noting and opposing tho revival in subtle form of superstitions that many people imagine civilisation lias long since completely exorcised. To reach such enlightenment as he now enjoys, man has had to travel a long and murky way. The savage represents the scratch mark of the race. Living in ceaseless terror of malignant spirits and wrathful gods, he stands where our far-off fathers stood. Civilised man has advanced by slow and not always easy stages; ignorance has persistently obstructed. At every point in history you may find cunning .people making use of and profit out of credulous people. Every ago has had its own special manifestations of superstition. Until comparatively recently the most familiar corporeal link with the spirit world was the witch. We now affect to srnilo at the ignorance which invested her with supernatural powers. But it is well to remember that it was not until last century that we formally, and fax from actually got rid of her. Judges on the bench treated many a harmless old woman

with outrageous severity under the charge of witchery. No figure has become more closely in corpora ted with our fanciful art, our fairy tales, our soap advertisements than the quaint, bent old woman, with high-peaked hat, broomstick, cat, and cauldron. Her picture has been so persistently reproduced, people feel sure they could recognise a real witch at eight. Nothing is nowadays sacred to the scientific historian. The ancient witch, therefore, has been receiving his attention. Her position and alleged powers have been exhaustivelly investigated, with the result that a. strange story has been unfolded. It seems that the witch was no lonely woman, practising her black magic in secret. Witchery _ was really a powerful pre-Christian religion, which long survived the coming of Christianity. It prevailed in England; it ranged through Western Europe. It consisted of the worship of Diana, the goddess, whom the Epliesians on one occasion declared “ great.” Eyidcnco_of the existence of the “ witch religion ” is drawn from the records of the witch trials. From these it seems that the restriction of the title “ witch ” to a single sex is a comparatively modern feature. The witches were organised, like congregational churches, and were extreme ritualists. Their mass, in which the broad, wine, and candles were black, was earlier than the 'Christian mass, and probably influenced it. The cult was well organised, its ramifications were wide. Each district was independent, each district had a head named the “ Devil.” Under him were various officers; there is documentary proof that one devil had a’ chaplain, many devils had official pipers. Discipline was as severe as in most of the other ancient religions. At the assemblies of the witches, the devil commanded each to tell what wickedness he had committed; according to the heinonsness of it lie was honored and greeted with general applause. Those that had done no evil were beaten and punished. The witches dedicated their children to the devil as soon as they were born. Adults who desired admission to the witch community had to sign a. covenant with the devil in their blood. Out of this ceremony there arose almost invariably the superstition of contracting with the devil. The general belief was that the devil would guarantee ” a good time ” for seven years in return for a soul. There is proof that in Somerset, in 1664, a woman named Elizabeth Style declared the devil “ promised her money, and that she should live gallantly for twelve years if she would, with her blood, sign bis paper, which was to give her soul to him.” The terms occasionally varied, but, whatever the terms, the devil always gained in (he end. Tlie evidence at the trials discloses the existence of a religion in which a god, named the devil and incarnate in an individual, was worshipped with definite rites. In belief, Vitual, and organisation, it was as highly developed as that of any other cult in the world at that time. Occasionally the god or devil was a woman, but most frequently it was a man who, at the conventicles, disguised himself in the skins of various animals. On ordinary occasions he dressed plainly in the costume of the period and was indistinguishable from any other man of bis own rank or age. He was able, however, to make himself known by some unusual gesture, by a password, or by some token carried on his person. It was probable that initially the god or devil was not so regarded in the strict religious sense. The idea crept in as the religion began to decay. Originally the devil was no more than the medicine man, the rain-maker, the magic ■worker who figures in every primitive tribe. In whatever .community the superstitious spirit is permitted to exist there are sure to spring up persons, more astute and less honest (ban their fellow creatures, claiming to possess supernatural powers and endeavoring to exercise these powers for reward or for malice. |

The story of these stupid and blasphemous beliefs would be unworthy of resurrection were it not that they are of great anthropological value and that they throw clearer light on ancient tribal ritual. All fotemic and religious ceremonies are a baffling tangle, but, in the mutilations of the witches and in the designs imposed on the bodies of initiates, there can be traced some identity with the disfiguring and tattooing practised by elementary races in areas of the earth tho width of the globe apart. The modern conception of the witch is a legacy from medieval limes. The witch religion was then crumbling, though it continued to have vitality long after many people thought it extinct. Indeed, as lute as the sixteenth century so many Christian priests were followers of the witch religion that inquisitors of that period wore greatly exercised in their minds as to how to deal with the offenders. It was not until the final stages that the religion found its representatives! only in an old woman hero and there. And, because at one time it was probably true that such old women clung to tho dying faith, superstition further distorted, the religion and accused every undefended old woman of practising it. Out of such ignorance arose the unspeakable horrors of the witch persecutions. For these horrors there was no excuse; but it may be suggested in extenuation that they did not express merely the baseless madness of the mob. The word “ witch " and all it stood for had a historical basis. The witch was in ten thou-1 sand instances falsely accused and un-! justly martyred. But in as far as she was! mistaken for one who practised a religion ! that had become dreaded, the action of frenzied ignorance was to be expected. Witchery as an organised religious belief had become abhorrent to the mass of men and women. It had been no figment of the imagination. Once it had been intensely real, and the, new generations 1 lived in terror of anyone suspected of j still practising ii. Witch religion and witch persecution! are alike matters of history now. Butt IJie jrqet did not show great knowledge of

human nature when he told ’men and women to “ let the dead past bury its dead.” That is just what the dead past persistently refuses to do. The human mind is an incomprehensible instrument; it is capable of the most amazing reactions and revolutions. That, any ancient superstition, such as devil worship and witchery, could ever again find acceptance with humanity, seems incredible. Yet, if history is any guide, nothing is more probable. Superstitions resemble. female dress fashions. They go out and come in with similar regularity, and with some slight readjustment of detail to create an impression of novelty. Anil, if one generation recoils from some preposterous belief, it is only that some succeeding generation may resume it with greater earnestness. Tlie intellect seems to have no part ,in the process. It is purely emotional, hysterical. The causes are much more occult than any science of the occult.

For all its loud-voiced scepticism probably no generation has been more credulous than this. Devil worship is now left Co the occasional night club whose members are eager to be thought daring. But all the ignoble company of mediums, clairvoyants, and crystal gazers are merely the lineal descendants of the medieval witches.

Only a few months ago an English judge sent to gaol a woman who had been terrorising a whole countryside with her pretence of possessing a witch’s power. Persons, presumably sane, had paid the woman hundreds of pounds to avert fire, to cure sickness, to deliver cattle from disease. All that in these days of science and popular education! The dismal conclusion seems to be that evidently botii are powerless against the spirit of superstition.