In fact, the last woman to be arrested under the 1735 Witchcraft Act in Britain was Spiritualist medium Helen Duncan in 1944. Summers spoke for many churchmen (even in the twenty-first century) when he declared: `Camouflage it how you will, Spiritualism and its kindred superstition ... [is not a] "new religion" . . . but the old Witchcraft' .117 The case of Mrs Duncan, which is complicated by evidence of the involvement of British Intelligence, unfortunately lies outside this investigation 1`8 but suffice it to say that Summers' righteous fulmination about the `superstition' and `charlatanism' of Spiritualism sits uncomfortably with one who accepts without question the authenticity of religious relics and the miracles of the saints.
Having examined the Church's genocide of the Cathars, and its three-century gender-genocide of the witches, it is time to turn to the men who are believed to have made a pact with the Devil, to have sold their souls for material gain and power. But, like the vast majority of the witches, are these also merely misunderstood and maligned?
CHAPTER FIVE
Pacts, Possession and Seance Rooms
While on the whole it was poor uneducated women rather than rich learned men who fell foul of the witch hunters, history abounds with tales - many of them near-apocryphal - about scholarly male sorcerers who sought to traffic with the Devil. But like the illiterate women, many of these men were caught up in a hysteria that engulfed the guilty and innocent alike, and with a dire inevitability they paid the ultimate price.
Undoubtedly, however, there were also serious seekers after all knowledge - most of it being forbidden by the authorities - whose craving for information took them into the murkiest of spiritual byways. These were often solitary men with a reputation for magic who were not above summoning the Devil himself in order to sign a pact in their own blood, one of the more colourful aspects of witchcraft and sorcery.
The pedigree of the pact is perhaps not as old as one might imagine, dating back to two stories that circulated among Christendom as late as the fifth and sixth centuries. The hugely influential Church Father, Saint Jerome, was responsible for the first, the story of Saint Basil, retold by Hincmar of Reims in the ninth century,' which goes like this: a man lusting after an attractive girl visits a sorcerer who arranges for him to make a pact with Satan - basically, the girl is his if he sells his soul. Emissaries of the Evil One duly appear and take him into the Presence. Satan asks in a blasphemous parody of the Christian baptism: `Do you believe in me?' Raging testosterone clearly obliterating common sense, the man responds eagerly: `Yes, I do believe.' He is then asked: `Do you renounce Christ?' He acquiesces: `I do renounce him'. But the Devil refuses to be duped, saying: `You Christians always come to me when you need help but then try to repent later, presuming on the mercy of Christ. I want you to sign up in writing.'
The deal is done and the girl falls helplessly for the newly fledged Satanist, seeking permission to marry him from her father. Unfortunately, as he has ambitions for her to enter a convent, he refuses. Before they embark upon a sinful liaison the young man comes to his senses and the story of the pact leaks out. In the nick of time, Saint Basil intervenes and the girl's honour remains unsullied.
The other influential pact story - which reached a huge audience across Europe over the course of 1,000 years, `fathering the Faust legend and indirectly influencing the Renaissance witch craze" - was that of Theophilus, a priest from Asia Minor who refused a bishopric only to suffer demotion at the hands of the incoming bishop. Furious at this unfair twist of fate, he consulted a Jewish sorcerer, who took him to a remote spot to meet the Devil. Theophilus agreed to enter Satan's service in return for his former position in the Church, signing a pact and kissing him as a token of his obeisance. Theophilus duly became rich and powerful, but ...
As everyone but the pact-signers themselves always seem to know, the deal can only ever end in the bitterest of tears. As agreed, demons turned up on the dot to claim the man's soul, although they were trounced. His terrified prayers had produced none other than the Virgin Mary, who fearlessly marched into Hell itself to retrieve the contract and return it to the sinner to be destroyed. The Virgin begged God for forgiveness for Theophilus, which was granted, and once again the Devil came out of the deal empty-handed.
However, while we would all no doubt congratulate the sinner on his lucky escape, the thought still occurs that it was the man, and not Satan, who proved himself a slippery customer - pact, what pact? Also, if the Devil is so cunning, why is he so often outsmarted by unremarkable mortals? It seems the trick is to sign the pact, enjoy all the advantages and then at the last moment appeal to the Virgin for help. And if Satan is so desperate for human souls, one would imagine he would at least create the illusion of a fabulously enticing end to the pact-signers' lives, instead of having the newcomers to Hell being seized by foul imps from the Pit.
As the tale of Theophilus spread, as Jeffrey Burton Russell notes, `it promoted anti-Semitism and the cult of Mary. More significant, it initiated the idea of the pact.'3 Similar legends did the rounds: such as the story of a student at St Andrews in Scotland who met a `minister' who assisted him in his academic work in return for a deal signed in blood. Even Sir Francis Drake was said to have used similar means with which to defeat the Spanish Armada. In discussing the farcical element in many of these tales, Russell tells the story of a knight
who promised to give the Devil his soul if ever he came to a town called Mouffle. The knight, confident that no such town existed, felt perfectly secure. The knight turned to the religious life, became a monk, and finally rose to the position of archbishop of Reims. Eventually he visited his home town, Ghent. There he became seriously ill and to his honor the devil appeared at his bedside to claim him - on the ground that the real, secret name of Ghent is Mouffle 4
The concept of a devilish pact became intimately involved in the demonization of Muslims, Jews and heretics - all of whom were seen as conscious agents of the Evil One. One Saracen figure was even known as Abisme, or `Hell'. The Muslims were accused of worshipping thousands of demons or idols - which is, of course, ludicrous for the most rigidly monotheistic religion in existence. Nevertheless, the ignorant slurs continued to take hold, seriously affecting the treatment of Muslims, Jews and `witches', all of whom were accused of killing and usually eating Christian babies. One myth, which was to prove very useful to Chief Inquisitor Torquemada, centred on the `Santo Niflo', the `Holy Child' allegedly ritually killed and disembowelled by Jews in order to cast a spell that would exterminate all Christians. It must have been true: after all, most Jews admitted it - under torture, that is.' A variation of witches-as-baby-slaughterers fable was to resurface horrifically in the Satanic ritual abuse hysteria that rampaged among fundamentalist social workers in the late twentieth century, doing untold damage to countless innocent families. (As in the case of the medieval accusations, the fact that no babies were actually missing and no pregnancies unaccounted for made not the tiniest dent in the zealots' mania.)
Mephistopheles laughs
The most famous demonic pact of all is of course that of Faust, or Dr Faustus, although fiction has long since largely obscured the little fact that might have been attached to the legend. However, it seems that there was a real Dr Faust, a rather unimpressive selfpublicist and charlatan, who - like the Simon Magus of legend - boasted he could out-perform the miracles of Christ. Among his `wonders' was the ability to produce edible game out of season, and even simply threatening a group of monks with the attentions of a poltergeist for serving him sour wine. (The latter was probably on an off-day.) A pathological braggart, he cheerfully spread rumours of his pact with the Devil, bolstering his reputation for the dark arts by announcing to a well-known local man,' `I surely thought you were my brother-in-law and therefore I looked at your feet to see whether long, curved claws projected from them.' Either supremely arrogant or possessed of a death wish, nevertheless all this satanic posturing merely succeeded in getting him expelled from the city of Ingostadt. He was lucky
. He died, `scandalously" in 1537, although probably not as the result of being torn to shreds by demons.
In the play by roistering Jacobean playwright Christopher Marlowe, The Tragicall History of Dr Faustus (1604), the eponymous anti-hero notoriously becomes an addict of arcane power, declaring "Tis magic, magic that hath ravished me'.
Undoubtedly, just as feeble-minded old women who lived on their own with a pet cat would invite mutterings of witchcraft - especially if in their senility they had become none too pleasant to their neighbours - similarly solitary men with a penchant for dusty books and scientific experiment would be seen as sorcerers. Given the popularity of the pact fables and the Faust dramas, the idea of having a real Satanist on the outskirts of your village would no doubt really be quite thrilling. Although it is impossible to know how many of these solo scholars were simply bookish and antisocial old men and what proportion were actually concerned with ritual magic, certain famous names were known to be involved with some very dark arts.
Marlowe's Faustus was described as `... falling to a devilish exercise/And glutted more with learning's golden gifts/He surfeits upon cursed necromancy'. Necromancy (from the Greek nekos, `dead' and manteria, 'divination')' or the conjuration of the dead in order to discover the secrets of past, present and - particularly - future, was a grisly business involving horrible and illegal rituals centred on the exhumation of corpses, in which many seekers after knowledge were said to indulge (although given the practical problems involved, not to mention the traumatic modus operandi, probably not many actually did).
Known as `the Black Art', necromancy can be either divination via ghosts - and, like it or not, some forms of Spiritualism did come within that category - or divination using actual corpses, which obviously involves desecrating graves. As a knowledgeable website notes, as a
universal practice of great antiquity, only the profoundly initiated, brave and single-minded magician has any chance of success in such a venture, always considered to be extremely dangerous, for not only is a pact with the Devil necessary, but it is thought that the "astral corpse" has an intense desire to live again and could, by absorbing life-energy from living creatures, prolong its life indefinitely, thus, unless he has taken adequate precautions, the magician might be in great danger.'
The mage and his assistant set up their magic circle in an appropriately emotive location such as a graveyard or blasted heath, on an astrologically propitious night, and call forth the dead, using the most powerful names of God. Woe betide them if they step from the protective circle, for then the temporarily animated corpse could tear them to pieces and destroy their souls. Even within the hallowed circle they have to be proof against nightmarish screaming and gibbering figures, decked out in rags of putrid skin, eye sockets flickering with a dim and hellish light.
Utterly abominated and proscribed in the Bible, as was all forms of communication with the dead - the classic case is the Witch of Endor10 - necromancy has had a long and chequered history, according to the differences in attitude of various cultures and generations.
As I have suggested, it is even possible that Jesus' own movement engaged in a variation of necromancy, if indeed, as the evidence may suggest, they seized the head of the Baptist in order to enslave his soul for purposes of divination. It may not be how the modern mind works, but such necromantic practices have a long pedigree.
Wooed, showered with all the glittering prizes of material and intellectual life, the anti-hero of Dr Faustus is of course doomed to be ultimately betrayed by the Evil One. But the story of his flight from all that is good and holy was also a colourful morality tale guaranteed to give the groundlings rip-roaring, not to say occasionally terrifying, entertainment.
The Faust of the great German poet and philosopher (and onetime sorcerer) Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) is somewhat subtler. He has to battle to maintain his place centre stage against the wit and charm of a particularly charismatic Mephistopheles, who says to God:
The last line merely makes explicit what churchgoers must have long suspected, however guiltily: judging from the dour and pompous Old Testament, Yahweh does appear to have lost his sense of humour, if indeed he ever had one to lose. The wryly amusing Mephistopheles possesses an instant appeal particularly to a modern, Anglo-Saxon audience to whom a talent to amuse and the expectation to be amused is almost everything. A sense of humour - more particularly a sense of the absurd - is now seen as the epitome of civilization, the antidote to fanaticism and bigotry, the gift that marks humans out from the beasts, and often the one light in a grim and bleak life. Yahweh smacks rather too much of a boring head teacher pontificating about rules and regulations while the whole school sniggers over a private joke: to use a Dickensian analogy he is the ramrod straight, and downright sinister, coldhearted Mr Murdstone against the mercurial, funny and irreverent Sam Weller.
Goethe's Mephistopheles - although he has his dark moments - is a brilliant member of the irreverent tradition that had already produced a long line of capering anti-Establishment court jesters and had yet to include the likes of Mel Brooks, the Monty Pythons and Eddie Izzard. With God apparently choosing to present himself as a sort of unsmiling and ranting Taliban, who can blame those who prefer to be entertained and even informed by masters of the subversive art of humour? Surely of all human activities and talents, humour is the most truly Luciferan, with intellectual enquiry - particularly science - a close second, as we shall see.
The dynamic between the truly Satanic and the Luciferan can be see in the horrifying story of the woman arrested for witchcraft, having sex with the Devil and all manner of puerile nonsense, who laughed.'2 She could hardly imagine anything more ludicrous than her being a practising Satanist: but very soon she had been `persuaded' to `confess' to anything and everything the truly Satanic Inquisitors demanded of her. She had been a breath of fresh air in the foetid witch-dungeon until devoured by the Terror, and although we do not know her name, we can still sing her praises.
Like Milton's Satan, Goethe's representative of Evil is also sexy, roguish and attractive: as women have long known and nice guys suspected, bad boys possess a powerful but elusive allure. With a casual and flippant air Mephistopheles announces that he merely observes `the plaguey state of men', finding `it boring to torment them', but nevertheless actively seeks out the rather priggish and unappealing Faust. In a brilliantly astute line, Mephistopheles notes that the human, desperate to attain knowledge and assuage his craving for he knows not what, already `serves me in a bewildered way'. Satan's emissary seeks to make Faust lick up dust, `Just like the snake, my celebrated cousin'. (Mephistopheles also murmurs `Omniscient? No, not I; but well-informed.')
Faust, it seems, was already halfway to Hell, being maddened with the frustrations of academic life that promises so much and delivers so little. Like many another solitary thinker and lost soul, he cries: `Who is my guide? What shall I shun?/Or what imperious urge obey? . . .' Desperate to attain and achieve intellectually and spiritually he muses on where exactly any progress would take him, asking tormentedly: `Shall I then rank with gods?'
Sorcerers sought to command gods to do their bidding or fought to achieve a sort of illusory godhood for themselves, only maintained by the toughest of personal battles and doomed to an ignominious end. On the other hand, Gnostics and mystics realized that every individual is already potentially divine, believing that this inner deity will only truly blossom with profound spiritual honesty, dedication to the true ideals of divinity, and the harnessing of ecstasy. Faust overlooked the fact of his own godhood in seeking to exert power over the gods; a true recipe for disaster.
Yet Faust was only half of the story: in a literal sense he was `possessed' by Mephistopheles - but only when he was ready for the pact. In other words, like many examples of apparent demonic possession, Faust is flooded with evil only when he invites it in. In the world of the occult it is said that `like attracts like', and this is the true meaning of the satanic pact. Give yourself up to a
harsh and unforgiving god or bigoted mores and that is what will possess you to the neglect of everything that is brighter and better: your mind and soul will be as narrowly confined and implosively consuming as the source you have espoused. Let in the bright spark of the Luciferan principle, and it will know no bounds, for it is essentially about enhancing, expanding and making sense of human potential.
The Secret History of Lucifer: And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code Page 20
