Raising Hell: A Concise History of the Black Arts and Those Who Dared to Practice Them

by Robert Masello

  The occult, in Agrippa’s view, was a science all its own, using the more traditional branches of knowledge in a new and different fashion. It employed physics, as it was then understood, to study the nature of things; mathematics to plot the movements of the planets and stars; theology to cast a light on the human soul and on the spiritual world inhabited by angels and demons.

  Furthermore, Agrippa believed that all things, animate or not, had a soul, or spiritual essence, and that all of these souls, such as they were, contributed to one vast oversoul. This, he believed, explained the miraculous properties he attributed to everything from garden herbs to precious stones; they contained powers that, however dormant, could be called forth and put to use by a sufficiently skilled magician. There were correspondences and harmonies between all sorts of things, which, if properly understood, could solve a whole host of problems and cure almost any illness.

  For instance, a woman who did not wish to become pregnant could prevent it by drinking a dose of mule urine every month. (Mules are sterile.)

  A man who wanted to become invisible could wear the stone known as heliotrope, as it reputedly conferred that power.

  Anyone suffering from a loss of sight was advised to procure a frog’s eye, as frogs have big eyes and can see even in the dark.

  Everything from the constellations to the commonest lump of coal was bound up in Agrippa’s great scheme: “The stars consist equally of the elements of the earthly bodies and therefore the ideas (powers and nature) attract each other. Influences only go forth through the help of the spirit but this spirit is diffused through the whole universe and is in full accord with the human spirit. Through the sympathy of similar and the antipathy of dissimilar things, all creation hangs together; the things of a particular world within itself, as well as the congenial things of another world.”

  It was up to the magus to comprehend, interpret, and manipulate this fantastically complicated web of life.

  AGRIPPA THE MAGICIAN

  For all his protestations to the contrary, Agrippa managed to cultivate a pretty fair reputation for black magic and sorcery. Although he claimed to be firmly on the side of the angels, throughout his lifetime he was dogged by reports that he had consorted with demons and used his powers for nefarious purposes—reports he didn’t go too far out of his way to quash. Some of these stories were later recycled by Goethe and attributed to his title character Faust.

  At many inns where Agrippa stayed, for instance, there were stories that he had paid his bill in perfectly good coins, which, once he’d checked out, turned to worthless shells.

  There was the magic mirror in which Agrippa could conjure up images and visions. The lonely Lord Surrey, it was said, had seen his lovely mistress, Geraldine, pining for him in this looking glass.

  And then there were all the reports that Agrippa had had contact with the dead; to please a crowd gathered by the elector of Saxony, he summoned the shade of the great orator Cicero, whose eloquence moved the members of the rapt audience to tears.

  He was also capable, it was said, of divination. By spinning a sieve on top of a pivot, he could ferret out guilt: Agrippa claimed to have used this method three times in his youth. “The first time,” he wrote, “was on the occasion of a theft that had been committed; the second on account of certain nets or snares of mine used for catching birds, which had been destroyed by some envious one; and the third time in order to find a lost dog which belonged to me and by which I set great store.” Although the system worked perfectly all three times, he claimed that he had given it up, anyway, “for fear lest the demon should entangle me in his snares.”

  This wouldn’t be the only time Agrippa reputedly stepped back from the brink. Everywhere he went, for instance, he was accompanied by a big black dog (in some accounts, two), which many claimed was his familiar (unholy helper). As legend has it, one day Agrippa decided he had fallen too deeply into the clutches of the Devil, and he ordered the demon dog to leave his side then and there. The dog, obedient to the last, ran downhill to the river Saône, hurled itself in, and disappeared.

  But the most famous story involved Agrippa’s student lodger, who waited until Agrippa went out one day, then wee-died the key to his workroom out of his unsuspecting wife. The student couldn’t wait to sit down at Agrippa’s desk and pore over the books of magic lying open all around. He was in the middle of one, reading the passages under his breath, when there was a knock at the door. The student didn’t answer, the knock came again—and the door was opened by a demon. “Why have you summoned me?” the demon asked, and when the terrified student couldn’t come up with an answer, the demon, furious at being called up for no purpose, and by a rank amateur to boot, leapt on the student and choked him to death.

  When Agrippa got back and found the body, he was immediately afraid that the murder would be pinned on him. But it didn’t take him long to figure out who’d really done it. He summoned the same demon to return to the study—only this time, the demon was given explicit orders by a master magician; he was told, in short, to revive the student and walk him up and down the town market for a short while, long enough for everyone to see him hale and hearty. The demon did it, then allowed the boy to fall over dead of an apparent heart attack. It was only on closer inspection of the body that the strangulation signs were seen. The people, in an outrage, chased Agrippa out of town.

  MAGIC CANDLES, MAGIC HANDS

  Although sorcerers all had their own favorite magical devices, there were a couple of items that were something like staples of their art. If they couldn’t manufacture these, they could hardly be expected to perform the more elaborate feats.

  One such standard was the Magic Candle, which was used to uncover hidden treasure. A recipe for making the candle was included in a book called Secrets merveilleux de la magie naturelle et cabalistique du Petit Albert, published in Cologne in 1722. (The book, quite popular with the sorcery crowd, was usually referred to as simply Le Petit Albert.) The candle was to be made of human tallow and wedged upright in a curved piece of hazel wood. (A diagram was included in the book.) If you then took the candle underground and lighted it there—presumably in a cave, burial vault, castle keep—it would sputter noisily and throw off a bright light whenever treasure happened to be buried nearby. The closer you got to the secret cache, the brighter the candle would burn; when you got right up to it, however, the candle would suddenly go out. That’s when you knew it was time to start digging.

  But there were some precautions to take. For one thing, it went without saying—though Le Petit Albert said it—you should keep several other candles or lanterns burning at all times so that you weren’t suddenly pitched into the dark. More important, if you thought there might be a chance the treasure was being guarded by the souls of the dead, these extra candles had to be made of wax alone and blessed. If you did run into some guardian spirits, it was wise to ask them if there was anything you could do “to help them to a place of untroubled rest.” Whatever they asked you to do, you were advised to do it, without fail.

  The Magic Candle usually had a companion piece in something called the Hand of Glory; together, they often occupied pride of place on a sorcerer’s mantel. But the Hand was used for far more nefarious purposes, as is evident from its preparation alone. The first thing you had to do was go to a gallows near a highway and cut off the hand—either one would do—of a hanged felon. Using a strip of the burial shroud to wring it dry of any remaining blood, you then put the hand into an earthenware pot, filled with a concoction of herbs and spices, and left it to marinate for two weeks. The next step was to take it out and expose it to bright sunlight until it was good and dry. If the weather wasn’t cooperating, it was permissible to heat it up in an oven, along with fern and vervain.

  What you had now was the perfect, if somewhat grisly, candlestick: if you stuck into it a candle made from the fat of a hanged man, mixed with virgin wax, sesame, and ponie (ponie is an obscure term, but it probably referred to horse dung)
, you could cast a spell over the inhabitants of any house you chose, rendering them motionless and insensible. The advantages to this—burglary chief among them—are pretty clear. For as long as the candle burned outside their house, the residents would be powerless to protect themselves or their possessions.

  According to one account, from the sixteenth-century demonologist Martin del Rio, a thief once lit the Hand of Glory outside a family’s home, but he was observed by a servant girl. While he was busy ransacking the house, she was desperately trying to put out the candle. First she tried blowing it out, to no avail. Then she doused it with water, which didn’t work; then she tried beer, which also didn’t work. Milk, for unknown reasons, did. The moment the candle was extinguished, the family awoke and caught the thief red-handed; the maid was, of course, rewarded for her bravery and quick thinking.

  There was, however, a kind of home security system you could install to ward off anyone using the Hand of Glory. During the dog days of summer (generally reckoned From July 3 to August 11), you had only to prepare an unguent from three ingredients—the gall of a black cat, the blood of a screech owl, and the fat of a white hen—and then smear it over the thresholds, window frames, chimney stack, and any other place that someone might use to get into the house. Once the unguent was down, the house was impenetrable to anyone attempting to use the Hand of Glory.

  CURSES AND INCANTATIONS

  The resourceful sorcerer always had at hand a variety of spells, culled from his manuals and his own experiments, with which he could achieve his desired aims. Sometimes these aims were indeed diabolical—raising the dead, conjuring demons—but sometimes they were more mundane, such as predicting a needed change in the weather or helping a “client” to find a lost object. Selling their services, sorcerers could be called upon to inflict a curse or remove one, to do evil or ward it off. In a way, they were something like brokers, making money off the transaction whichever way it went. An unscrupulous sorcerer

  (never very hard to find) could even cast a curse on someone, rendering him impotent or his fields barren or his prospects ruined, and then offer to put things right again—for a fee.

  It might be thought of as an early form of the protection racket.

  If someone was truly unlucky, he might find himself caught between two competing sorcerers, one laying a curse on him and the other trying to get it off. Setting things straight could cost the patient a pretty penny.

  And then, on occasion, sorcerers found themselves in direct conflict with each other, testing their powers against a member of their own secret fraternity. In a celebrated case recounted by Olaus Magnus in his Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (1555), a magician named Gilbert challenged his master, a powerful sorcerer named Catillum, who responded by imprisoning Gilbert in an underground cavern, where he was “shackled by two wooden bars inscribed with certain Gothic and runic characters in such manner that he could not move his limbs.” According to the legend, Gilbert would remain a prisoner there until another sorcerer, one even more powerful than Catillum, could break the spell.

  Sorcerers also tended to specialize, to some extent based on where they lived. Those who lived near the sea, for instance, were often called on to do something about things like winds and currents. They were asked to speed some ships on their way, and sink others, to stir up tempests or calm the turbulent waves. In seafaring nations, particularly the Scandinavian countries, sorcerers did a lively trade selling favorable winds; it was thought possible, for example, to tie up the winds in a knotted rope. A ship’s captain could buy such a rope, and when he needed a gentle west-southwesterly breeze, he had only to undo the top knot; for a strong northerly wind, the second; for a terrible storm, the third. (That third knot, presumably, was seldom untied.) In Scotland, the wives of sailors thought they could conjure up favorable winds on their own; stealing into a chapel after the regular service had been performed, they blew the dust on the floor in the direction that their husbands’ ships were traveling.

  Witch brewing up a storm. From Olaus Magnus’ Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, Rome, 1555.*

  Magicians who lived inland were called on to do everything from improving the crops to sweetening the milk of the herdsman’s cows. In times of plague, they could be accused of having caused the epidemic—or they could be begged to eradicate it. In times of war, they could be asked to inflict curses on the enemy—or heal the wounds of their compatriots. Sorcerers were thought capable of stanching the flow of blood from a wound or magically removing a bullet or arrowhead. They could start a fire, and they could put one out. They could be, at once, the most dreaded foe or most prized ally. To stay on the safe side, it was always wise to give them a wide berth and a polite tip of the hat.

  Especially as they often had unpleasant friends that they could call upon.

  Thomas Aquinas, in his Sententiae, declared in no uncertain terms that “magicians perform miracles through personal contracts made with demons.” If that wasn’t clear enough, Ebenezer Sibly, author of The New and Complete Illustration of the Occult Sciences (1787), warned his own readers that while sorcerers and witches could call upon all sorts of spirits and apparitions, there were three types in particular that were most likely to do the magicians’ bidding.

  Sorcerer selling a bag of wind (tied up in three knots of a rope). From Olaus Magnus’ Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, Rome, 1555.*

  First, according to Sibly, there were the astral spirits, who haunted mountaintops and deep, dark forests, ancient ruins, and any spot where someone had been killed. Then there were the igneous spirits, of a “middle vegetative nature,” but “obsequious to the kingdom of darkness.” These monstrous creatures, with a naturally nasty turn of mind, were particularly receptive to skillful conjurers. Last, there were the terrine spirits, who seemed to have an innate hatred of mankind. Maybe it was because of where they lived. Confined to the “hiatus or chasms of the earth,” caves and mines and tunnels, they were simply chafing at the bit to cut loose and create some real mayhem. Some of their attacks were recorded in a treatise entitled De Animantibus Subterraneis (On Subterranean Hauntings) in 1549 by a German metallurgist named Georgius Agricola.

  According to Agricola, the workers in a mine called the Rosy Crown, in the district of Saxony, were suddenly surprised by a dreadful apparition, a “Spirit in the similitude and likeness of a horse, snorting and snuffling most fiendishly with a pestilent blast.” Its breath was so noxious that a dozen miners died on the spot, while the others scrambled up to safety, screaming in terror. And despite the fact that the mine was rich with ore, no one would ever go back down again to dig it. In Schneeberg, Saxony, the mine of St. George was also haunted by a terrine spirit, but this one took the shape of a man in a big, black cowl. When the miners encountered him, he grabbed hold of one of them and hurled him at the roof of the mine. By the time he came down, bruised and battered, the others had already taken their leave.

  Witches brewing up a hailstorm. From the title page of Ulrich Molitor’s De Ianijs et phitonicis mulierbus, printed by Cornelius de Zierikzee, Cologne, 1489.*

  But all of these spirits, in the view of Sibly, existed in a state of “continual horror and despair” themselves. “That they are materially vexed and scorched in flames of fire,” Sibly wrote, “is only a figurative idea, adapted to our external senses, for their substance is spiritual, and their essence too subtile for any external torment. The endless source of all their misery is in themselves, and stands continually before them, so that they can never enjoy any rest, being absent from the presence of God; which torment is greater to them than all the tortures of this world combined together.”

  The conjurers who called upon them, for whatever purpose, ran the risk of sharing their fate.

  LOVE AND DEATH

  Human nature being what it is, there were two areas that the sorcerer was most often called on to explore—one was love, the other death. And he had at his disposal a whole raft of potions and philters, talismans
and incantations.

  When it came to winning a woman’s love, there were easy methods—and there were hard. Among the easier ways of winning her heart, there was what might be called the horoscope ploy. As outlined in an eighteenth-century French manuscript now in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, “To gain the love of a girl or a woman, you must pretend to cast her horoscope—that is to say, when she shall be married—and must make her look right into your eyes. When you are both in the same position you are to repeat the words, ‘Kafe, Kasita non Kafela et publia filii omnibus suis.’ These words said, you may command the female and she will obey you in all you desire.”

  Want something even easier? Rub the juice of the vervain plant on your hands, then touch the one you love.

  Or try touching her hand while saying, "Bestarberto corrumpit viscera ejus mulieris” ("Bestarberto entices the inward parts of the woman").

  If the simpler methods aren’t working, you can always resort to a philter, a love-inducing potion made from wine mixed with assorted herbs and drugs. In the tragedy of Tristan and Iseult, a philter that Iseult’s mother had planned for King Mark to drink is actually consumed by Tristan and Iseult—who wind up paying for the mistake with their lives. In Richard Wagner’s Gotterdämmerung, Siegfried’s affections are diverted from Brünnhilde to Gutrune after he quaffs a magic philter. The recipe for such a philter is included in a seventeenth-century manuscript called the Zekerboni, written by a self-styled “Cabbalistic philosopher” named Pietro Mora: it requires “the heart of a dove, the liver of a sparrow, the womb of a swallow, the kidney of a hare,” all reduced to an “impalpable powder,” and added to an equal portion of the manufacturer’s own blood. The blood, too, must be dried to a powder. If a dose of this concoction is then slipped into the intended’s wine, “marvellous success will follow.”