Supernatural

by Colin Wilson

  By 1680, it had struck the king that a full-scale scandal could lead to unforeseen results, since so many nobles were involved. He decided to suspend the Chambre Ardente. No noblemen—or women—were sentenced, but de la Reynie continued to arrest and torture fortune-tellers. 104 people were sentenced: 36 to death, others to slavery in the galleys or banishment. The chief result of the case was that fortune-tellers were banned by law, and witchcraft was declared to be a superstition. After that, people accused of witchcraft were sent to a madhouse, the Salpêtrière. In fact, a man was executed in Bordeaux in 1718 for causing a man to become impotent and his wife barren; but then, working ‘fancied acts of magic’ was still a hanging offence.

  Louis attempted to suppress all the evidence for the affair in 1709 by ordering all papers to be destroyed; but the official transcripts were overlooked.

  It seems incredible that, at the time Isaac Newton was writing the Principia, priests and ‘witches’ should be sacrificing babies at Black Masses. If we take the rational view of witchcraft—as a mediaeval superstition—it is virtually impossible to understand what they thought they were doing. Was it all, perhaps, a kind of escapism, a desire to indulge in ‘wickedness’ for the sake of excitement, like some of the modern witchcraft covens? The French aristocracy was decadent, but surely not decadent enough to indulge in the 17th century equivalent of ‘snuff movies’? The truth is obviously simpler: that Marie Bosse, Catherine Deshayes and La Voisin had learned witchcraft from their aunts or grandmothers—like Jehanne de Brigue—and were simply practising a traditional craft that had been handed down for centuries. And the aristocrats who patronised them did so because they knew that their ‘magic’ often worked. The witches themselves were sure it worked.

  That view offends modern common-sense. It offended my common-sense at the time I wrote The Occult. Yet in retrospect, I can see that I was not being quite entirely logical. For as early as 1964, in a book called Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs, I had cited a number of cases that seemed to show that African witchcraft really works. The travel writer Negley Farson, whom I knew well during the last ten years of his life, told me that on several occasions he had seen a Liberian witch-doctor conjure rain out of a clear sky. And a neighbour, Martin Delany, who had been the Managing Director of a large company in Nigeria, and himself possessed slight thaumaturgical gifts, had described to me how the local witch-doctor had promised that the heavy rain which had been falling for days would stop for two hours to allow a garden party to take place; the rain had stopped a few minutes before the party was due to start, and begun again a minute after it finished. The stoppage was confined to an area of approximately 10,000 sq. yds.

  This, of course, could have been some natural ability akin to ‘psychokinesis’—I have a book called The Power of the Mind by Rolf Alexander which has four photographs claiming to show how a large cloud was disintegrated by psychokinesis in eight minutes at Orillia, Ontario, on September 12, 1954. But the same explanation cannot be applied to another strange event described by Martin Delany, which I quote from his own account:

  ‘Having just returned from leave in Europe, I was informed by my European sawmill manager that an extraordinary incident had taken place in the sawmill a few days prior to my return. A hen, from a nearby compound, had flown straight into the large Brenta band-saw and was instantly cut to pieces by the blade of the saw, which revolves at about 10,000 revolutions per minute. The Nigerian mill-workers were very perturbed by this—they knew now that the ‘Iron God’ was angry and seeking blood and, unless blood was offered by the witch doctor to appease the ‘God’, then he would demand other victims. They therefore requested that the band-saw should be stopped until the necessary sacrifice had been made by the witch doctor.

  ‘I refused their request for two reasons, firstly because an urgent export order for lumber had to be completed, and secondly because the sacrifice involved decapitating a puppy dog and sprinkling the blood over the machine, and this I was most reluctant to permit. In fact, I hoped that the whole thing was an isolated incident soon to be forgotten. Two days afterwards another hen flew into the band-saw. This caused consternation among the Nigerian workers, who again approached me, but I again refused. Four days after this incident the European manager was asked by the Nigerian foreman in my presence if he would come to the band-saw to adjust the saw-guides as the saw-blade was not cutting evenly; this adjustment was usually done by the manager. We watched as the very rigid drill, essential when adjustments or repairs were made to the band-saw, was carried out. The electricity was cut off at the mains and the starter switches were put in the ‘Off position. Then, and only then, was anyone permitted to commence work on the band-saw. I watched with interest, pleased to note that the drill had been faithfully carried out, and turned to leave the mill when suddenly, to my horror, I heard the first sounds which indicated that the saw had commenced to turn. Rushing to the band-saw I discovered that the manager’s hand had been badly cut by the saw-blade which had revolved possibly six or seven times. By now, the Nigerian staff were in a state of extreme fear, so I decided to close the mill for the rest of the day and sent for two European experts, one an electrician, the other a sawmiller. They examined the machine, the starter motors, the mains switches, checking in every possible way, only to state that everything was in perfect order and that it was utterly impossible for the band-saw to start up when the mains and starter motor switches were off. I confess that I was badly shaken by this last incident, but still refused to have the witch doctor in because of a natural repugnance to the particular form of sacrifice. I suggested finding blood for the sacrifice from a dead hen or the local meat market, but to this the witch doctor would not agree. The men were persuaded to return to work only by an offer of additional money and the assurance that the machine, etcetera, were in perfect order, having been checked by the European experts. There was a lull for about two weeks and everyone concerned was beginning to relax when with horrifying and brutal suddenness the ‘Iron God’ struck. The band-saw had just commenced to saw through a log, the 7-inch wide saw-blade was turning at maximum revolutions when without warning and for no known reason the saw-blade started to peel in a thin strip commencing at the rear. Within a second or so a tangled mass of peeled saw-blade burst out and struck the operator in the chest and face, inflicting serious wounds; in fact, he died before he could be carried out to the waiting estate car. Operators are never protected (i.e. caged in with protective mesh) with this type of saw as normally there is no need, the saws having adequate guards. A Mr Stenner of Stenners Ltd. of Tiverton said some time later that never before in his many years of manufacturing band-saws had he heard of such a thing occurring. So I finally gave way to the demands of the workmen, who would not have worked in the sawmill at any price until the witch doctor had made the sacrifice to the ‘Iron God’. The band-saw stopped operating two years ago, but during the eight years from the date of the operator’s death it functioned without hitch. The death of the operator was duly recorded in police records. It is interesting to note that when the United Africa Company opened their very large sawmill, costing several million pounds, at Sapele in Eastern Nigeria, the witch doctor was called in to make the appropriate sacrifice to the ‘Iron God’.’

  Martin Delany was not of the opinion that the witch doctor himself had caused these accidents by some form of ‘psychokinesis’—he described him as an amiable old gentleman. He believed that if the occurrences were not simply accidents, then they were caused by the fear of the natives somehow acting upon the saw—a form of negative psycho-kinesis.

  It seems clear that witchcraft is still a living force in Africa and that it has been witnessed by many balanced and level-headed western observers. In a book called Ju-ju in My Life, James H. Neal, former Chief Investigations Officer for the Government of Ghana, tells some baffling stories. His first acquaintance with African witchcraft occurred when he visited a port being built at Tema and was told that a certain small tree had defied
all efforts to move it. The most powerful bulldozers failed to tear it out of the ground. The African foreman explained that the tree was a Fetich—that it was inhabited by a spirit, and that the only way to move it was to ask the spirit to leave it for another tree. Finally, the Fetich Priest was called; he asked for three sheep, three bottles of gin, and a hundred pounds if he succeeded in moving the tree. The blood of the sheep was sprinkled round the base of the tree, then the gin; then the priest went into a semi-trance, and begged the spirit of the tree to vacate it for a better tree, on the grounds that the port would afford employment for many blacks. After various rituals, the priest announced that the spirit had agreed to leave. To Neal’s astonishment, a small team of men then had no difficulty in pulling the tree out of the ground with a rope . . .

  This story is interesting because it makes clear the place of ‘spirits’—often nature spirits—in witchcraft. This aspect, I am inclined to believe, is more important than anyone has given it credit for. It emerges again clearly in an episode in Laurens Van Der Post’s book The Lost World of the Kalahari, in which he describes how a guide offered to take him to a mysterious region called the Slippery Hills—the one condition being that there must be no killing of animals. Van Der Post forgot to tell the advance party, who shot a warthog; from then on, everything went wrong. The camera and tape recorder jammed continually, although they had given no trouble before, and the camera swivel failed. They were attacked by bees. Their guide warned them that the spirits were angry; when he tried to pray, some invisible force pulled him over backwards. Finally, he threaded a needle, placed it in his hand, then went into a semi-trance, staring at it. He began to speak to invisible presences, and told Van Der Post that the spirits would have killed him if they had not known that his intentions—in visiting the Slippery Hills—were pure. Van Der Post suggested that he wrote a letter of apology, which they all signed, and buried in a bottle at the foot of a sacred rock painting; from that moment, the ‘jinx’ went away. The guide remarked later that the spirits were now far less powerful than they used to be—once they would have killed on sight anyone who had approached so unceremoniously.

  The notion of elemental spirits—inhabiting trees or hills—strikes the western mind as totally preposterous. Yet it was not always so. In Ireland—even in Cornwall, where I live—there is still a great deal of belief in fairies and nature spirits in remote country areas. In the 1920s, a psychic named Geoffrey Hodson specialised in describing elementals and nature spirits, and his book about them—entitled, rather off-puttingly, Fairies at Work and Play was taken seriously by many people involved in psychical research. (Hodson himself was a Theosophist.) Here is a typical description of what he calls a ‘nature deva’, encountered in June 1922 when climbing in the Lake District:

  ‘After a scramble of several hundred feet up a rocky glen we turned out to one side, on to the open fell where it faces a high crag. Immediately on reaching the open we became aware, with startling suddenness, of the presence of a great nature-deva, who appeared to be partly within the hillside.

  ‘My first impression was of a huge, brilliant crimson bat-like thing, which fixed a pair of burning eyes upon me.

  ‘The form was not concentrated into the true human shape, but was somehow spread out like a bat with a human face and eyes, and with wings outstretched on the mountain-side. As soon as it felt itself to be observed it flashed into its proper shape, as if to confront us, fixed its piercing eyes upon us, and then sank into the hillside and disappeared. When first seen its aura must have covered several hundred feet of space . . .’

  We find such notions absurd; but they would be accepted by most primitive peoples. From the Eskimos to the Ainus of Northern Japan, from the Orochon of Siberia to the Indians of Tierra del Fuego, the shaman is the intermediary between this world and the world of spirits. A man became a shaman through painful ordeals, both physical and spiritual. An Eskimo shaman told the Danish explorer Rasmussen: ‘I could see and hear in a totally different way. I had gained my enlightenment, the shaman’s light of brain and body, and this in such a manner that it was not only I who could see through the darkness of life, but the same bright light also shone out from me, imperceptible to human beings, but visible to all spirits of earth and sky and sea, and these now came to me as my helping spirits.’ The idea of being able to see the world of the spirits ‘of earth and sky and sea’ can be found in all shamanistic religions.

  This curious oneness with nature enables the shaman or witchdoctor to exert his power over animals. In The Occult I have quoted that amazing passage from Sir Arthur Grimble’s book Pattern of Islands, describing how a ‘porpoise caller’ withdrew into his hut for several hours, where he went into a trance; in this trance, apparently, his spirit went out to sea and summoned the porpoises. Finally, he rushed out of the hut calling ‘They come, they come’. And to Grimble’s astonishment, they did come. The villagers waded into the sea and stood breast deep and hundreds of porpoises swam slowly into the beach, apparently in a state of hypnosis, allowing themselves to be beaten to death.

  Ross Salmon, a British explorer who spent much of the 1960s and 70s in search of the ‘lost world of the Incas’, has described in a book called My Quest For El Dorado a ceremony among the Callawaya Indians of northern Bolivia which reveals this same intimacy between man and nature. A girl named Wakchu had been accused of being unfaithful to her husband during his absence, and the village elders decided that she would be ‘tried’ by the condor, the sacred bird of the village, which was believed to embody the spirit of a famous hero. Ross Salmon was given permission to film the whole ceremony. He described, in a television interview accompanying his film, his incredulity at the idea that the priests could summon a condor—a shy bird, which he had never seen at close quarters. Wakchu was tied to a pole at the top of the cliff, wearing only a loincloth, and the three priests began a ceremony to call the condor, supported by a chorus of women. For half an hour, nothing happened, and Salmon became convinced it was a waste of time. Then, to his amazement, an enormous condor flew overhead, together with two females. It landed near Wakchu, strutted around for a while, then ran towards her and pointed its beak at her throat. The villagers murmured ‘Guilty’. One of the camera crew threw a stone at the bird, which flew off. Wakchu committed suicide a few days later by throwing herself from a cliff. She evidently accepted the judgement of the condor.1

  Another account of life among South American Indians conveys this same sense of intimacy with nature. Wizard of the Upper Amazon by F. Bruce Lamb tells the story of Manuel Córdova-Rios, who was kidnapped by the Amahuaca Indians of the Amazon, and who lived among them for many years. Much of their ‘magic’ was involved with hunting, and apparently worked. Rios witnessed a method of luring pigs. It was important for the hunters to kill the sow who led a band of pigs. Then her head was buried in a hole, facing the opposite direction from which the hunters were travelling. The hole was filled in while the hunters sang chants to the spirits of the forest. If this was done correctly, the pigs would continue to pass over this spot at regular intervals, in the circuit of their territory.

  It also seems that the Amahuaca Indians are capable of group telepathy as well as of this kind of direct contact with nature. Clearly, their modes of perception are more ‘right-brain’ than ours. But since we now know that our left-brain perception has been developed by the pressures of civilisation, and that the being who lives in the right is virtually a stranger, there is less reason for dismissing these stories of primitive empathy with nature as old wives’ tales.

  It now becomes possible to understand the ceremonies performed by our Cro-Magnon ancestors before setting out on hunting expeditions, and those cave paintings of shamans performing ritual dances and wearing the skins of animals. The purpose is not simply to locate the herd of animals to be hunted the next day (shamans should be regarded as mediums rather than magicians), but to somehow lure it to a place where the hunters can find it, as Grimble’s porpoise-caller lured t
he porpoises.

  Recent research has demonstrated fairly convincingly that circles of standing stones like Stonehenge and Avebury were intended as solar and lunar calendars. The discoveries of ‘ley hunters’ like John Michell seem to suggest that there were also temples for the performance of fertility rituals. But I remain convinced that if we are to understand the real purpose of the standing stones, we have to put ourselves into the state of mind of the Callawayas or Amahuacas, and understand that the ancient priests were probably shamans who went into a trance and conversed with nature spirits, asking them to guarantee the abundance of the harvest.

  Once we begin to understand this, we can also understand the origins of ‘witchcraft’. A shaman who has the power to converse with ‘spirits’ to ask them to bless his tribe may also make use of them to revenge himself on an enemy. In The Occult, I have described the theory advanced by anthropologist Ivar Lissner about why our ancestors suddenly ceased to make images of human beings. They reasoned that if ‘magic’ could be used to destroy a reindeer or bear, it could also be used to destroy another human being. So the making of images became taboo—or something carried out in secret by ‘black’ magicians—those who would later be called ‘followers of the left hand path’. (It is significant that our ancestors equated the left with the sinister—sinister in Latin means left—while right was synonymous with goodness; they were clearly aware that the two aspects of the human mind are separate, but had no means of knowing that the right half of the brain governs the left half of the body and vice versa.)

  Neal’s Ju-ju in My Life describes his own gradual conversion to belief in the malevolent power of witch-doctors—in this case, through unpleasant personal experience. When, as chief investigations officer for the Government of Ghana, Neal caused the arrest of a man who had been extorting bribes, he found that he was the target for a ju-ju attack. It began with the disappearance of small personal items of clothing—as in the case of David St Clair. One day he found the seat of his car scattered with a black powder; his chauffeur carefully brushed it off, and urinated in it to destroy its power. Then, one night, Neal became feverish, and experienced pains from head to foot. He felt he was going to die. Suddenly, he found himself outside his body, looking down at himself on the bed. He passed through the bedroom wall, and seemed to be travelling at great speed, when suddenly he seemed to receive a message that it was not yet his time to die; he passed back into his room, and into his body. After this he spent three weeks in hospital suffering from an illness that the doctors were unable to diagnose. An African police inspector told him he was being subjected to a ju-ju attack. More black powder was scattered in his car. One night, lying in bed, he felt invisible creatures with long snouts attacking his solar plexus and draining his vitality. A witch-doctor who was called in described in detail two men who were responsible for the attacks—giving an accurate description of two men involved in the bribery case. Finally, after a ceremony performed by a Muslim holy man—who surrounded the house with a wall of protection—Neal slowly recovered. The white doctor who tended him agreed that he had been victim of a ju-ju attack.