Fig. 7. Fig. 8
Fig. 7. Fig. 8
That some remnants of phallicism may be traced even in Christianity, will be evident to the readers ofAnacalypsis, by Godfrey Higgins;Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, by Dr. Thomas Inman, andAncient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism Exposed and Explained, by the same author; the valuableRivers of Life, by Major-General Forlong; a little book onIdolomania, by "Investigator Abhorrens"; and another onThe Masculine Cross, by Sha Rocco (New York, 1874). The sign of the cross, certainly long pre-Christian in the Egyptian sign for life, is specially dealt with in the last two works. In fig. 7 we see the connection of the Egyptian tau with the Hermæ. Of fig. 8 General Forlong (Rivers of Life, vol i., p 65) says: "The Samaritan cross, which they stamped on their coins, was No. 1, but the Norseman preferred No. 2 (the circle and four stout arms of equal size and weight), and called it Tor's hammer. It is somewhat like No. 3, which the Greek Christians early adopted, though this is more decidedly phallic, and shows clearly the meaning so much insisted on by some writers as to all meeting in the centre."
The custom of eating fish on Friday (Dies Veneris) is considered a survival of the days when a peculiar sexual signification was given to the fish, which has such a prominent place in Christian symbolism. Fig. 9 illustrates the origin of the bishop's mitre.
Thevescica piscis, or fish's bladder (fig. 10), is a well-known ecclesiastical emblem of the virgin, often used in church windows, seals, etc. The symbol is equally known in India. Its real nature is shown in fig. 11, discovered by Layard at Nineveh, depicting its worshipper seated on a lotus. The vescica piscis is conspicuously displayed in fig. 12, copied from a Rosary of the Blessed Virgin, printed at Venice 1582, with the license from the Inquisition, in which the Holy Dove darts his ray, fecundating the Holy Virgin. Many instances of Christ in an elliptical aureole may be seen in Didron'sChristian Iconography, fig. 71, p. 281, vol. i. strikingly resembles our figure.
Fig. 9.; Fig. 10.; Fig. 11.
Fig. 9.; Fig. 10.; Fig. 11.
Fig. 12.
Fig. 12.
Among the many traces that the Jews were once savages I place the distinguishing mark of their race, circumcision. Many explanations have been given of this curious custom. The account, in Genesis xvii. that God commanded it to Abraham, at the ripe age of 99, critics agree was written after the exile—that is, thirteen hundred years after the death of the patriarch. Now, there is evidence from the Egyptian monuments that circumcision was known long before Abraham's time. This constrains Dr. Kitto to say, "God might have selected a practice already in use among other nations." If so, God must have had a curious taste and an uninventive mind. Why, having made people as they are, he should order his chosen race to be mutilated, must be a puzzle to the orthodox. Some writers have absurdly argued that the Egyptians borrowed from the Jews, whom they despised (see Genesis xliii. 32). Apart from the evidence of Herodotus and of monuments and mummies to the contrary, this view is never suggested in the Bible, but the testimony of the book of Joshua (v. 9) implies the reverse.
The narrative of the Lord's attempted assassination of Moses (Exodus iv. 24-26), which we shall shortly examine, has the most archaic complexion of any of the biblical references to circumcision, and from it Dr. T. K. Cheyne argues that the rite is of Arabian origin.* If instituted in the time of Abraham under the penalty of death, it is curious that Moses never circumcised his own son, nor saw to its performance in the wilderness for forty years, so that Joshua had personally to circumcise over a million males at Gilgal.
Let us now look at the various theories of the origin and purpose of circumcision. Rationalising Jews say it is of a sanatory character. This view, though found in Philo, may be dismissed as an after theory to meet a religious difficulty. Most Asiatic nations are uncircumcised. The Philistines did not practice the rite, nor did the Syrians in the time of Josephus. Even if in a few cases it might possibly be beneficial, that would be no sufficient reason for imposing it on a whole nation under penalty of death. The fact is, the rite is a religious one. Indeed, upon its retention the early controversy between Jews and Christians largely turned.
The view that it is an imposed mutilation of a subject race is suggested in Dr. Remondino'sHistory of Circumcision, and has the high authority of Herbert Spencer. He instances the trophy of foreskins taken by David as a dowry for Saul's daughter (1 Sam. xviii. 27), and that Hyrcanus having subdued the Idumeans, made them submit to circumcision. This, however, may have been a part of the policy of making them one with the Jewish race in being tributary to Jahveh. It is not easy to see how a mutilation imposed from without should ever become a part of the pride of race and be enjoined when all other mutilations were forbidden.
* Encyclopaedia Britannica, article "Circumcision."
I incline to a view which, although in accord with early sociological conditions, I have never yet seen stated. It was suggested to me by the passage where Tacitus alludes to this custom among the Jews. It is that circumcision is of the nature of savage totem and tattoo marks—a device to distinguish the tribal division from other tribes, and to indicate those with whom the tribe might marry.* If, as has been suggested, the meaning of Genesis xxxiv. 14 is "one who is uncircumcised is as a woman to us," this view is confirmed. The Jewish abhorrence to mixed marriages and "the bed of the uncircumcised" is well known.
* What Tacitus says is, "They do not eat with strangers ormake marriages with them, and this nation, otherwise mostprone to debauchery, abstains from all strange women. Theyhave introduced circumcision in order to distinguishthemselves thereby."
The Hebrew distinguishing term for male—zachar, which also means record ormemorial—will agree with this view, as also with that of Dr. Trumbull, which associates circumcision with that of blood-covenanting. It seems evident from the narrative in Exodus iv., where Zipporah, after circumcising her son, says—not as generally understood to Moses—"A bloody husband art thou to me," but to Jahveh, "Thou art aKathanof blood"—i.e., one made akin by circumcision—that this idea of a blood-covenant became interwoven with the rite. It is to be noticed that in the covenant between God and the Jews women had no share.
Dr. Kuenen holds that circumcision is of the nature of a substitute for human sacrifice. No doubt the Jews had such sacrifices, and were familiar with the idea of substitution; but with this I rather connect the Passover observance. If a sacrifice, it was doubtless phallic—an offering to the god on whom the fruit of the womb depended; possibly a substitution for the barbarous rites by which the priests of Cybele were instituted for office. Ptolemy's Tetrabibles, speaking of the neighboring nations, says: "Many of them devote their genitals to their divinities." According to Gerald Massey, "it was a dedication of the first-fruits of the male at the shrine of the virgin mother and child, which was one way of passing the seed through the fire to Moloch."
Westrop and Wake (Phallicism in Ancient Religion, p. 37) say "Circumcision, in its inception, is a purely phallic rite, having for its aim the marking of that which from its associations is viewed with peculiar veneration, and it converts the two phases of this superstition which have for their object respectively theinstrumentof generation and theagent."
General Forlong, who maintains the phallic view, also holds that "truth compels us to attach an Aphrodisiacal character to the mutilations of this highly sensual Jewish race." This view will not be hastily rejected by those who know of the many strange devices resorted to by barbarous peoples. Some have believed that circumcision enhances fecundity.
With the exception of the two first views, which I dismiss as not explaining the religious and permanent character of the rite, all these views imply a special regard being paid to the emblem of generation. This is further confirmed by the manner of oath-taking customary among the ancient Jews. When Abraham swore his servant, he said, "Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh" (Gen. xxiv. 2). The same euphemism is used in the account of Jacob swearing Joseph (xlvii. 29), and the custom, which has lasted among Arabs until modern days, is also alluded to in the Hebrew of 1 Chronicles xxix. 24. The Latin testiculi seems to point to a similar custom. In the law that no uncircumcised or sexually-imperfect person might appear before the shrine of the Lord, we may see yet further evidence that Jewish worship was akin to the phallic rites of the nations around them.
And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the lord met him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said,
Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.So he let him go: then she said,A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision.—Exodus iv. 24-26.
Anyone who wishes to note the various shifts to which orthodox people will resort in their attempts to pass off the barbarous records of the Jews as God's holy word, should demand an explanation of the attempted assassination of Moses by Jehovah, as recorded in the above verses. Some commentators say that by the Lord is meant "the angel of the Lord," as if Jehovah was incapable of personally conducting so nefarious a piece of business. Bishop Patrick says "The Schechinah, I suppose, appeared to him—appeared with a drawn sword, perhaps, as he did to Balaam and David." Some say it was Moses's firstborn the Lord sought to kill. Some say it was at the child's feet the foreskin was cast, others at those of Moses, but the Targums of Jonathan and Jerusalem more properly represent that it was at the feet of God, in order to pacify him.
The story certainly presents some difficulties. Moses had just had one of his numerous interviews with Jehovah, who had told him to go back to Egypt, for all those are dead who sought his life. He is to tell Pharaoh that Israel is the Lord's firstborn, and that if Pharaoh will not let the Israelites go he will slay Pharaoh's firstborn. Then immediately follows this passage. Why this sudden change of conduct towards Moses, whose life Jehovah was apparently so anxious to save?
Adam Clarke says the meaning is that the son of Moses had not been circumcised, and therefore Jehovah was about to have slain the child because not in covenant with him by circumcision, and thus he intended [after his usual brutal fashion] to punish the disobedience of the father by the death of the son. Zip-porah getting acquainted with the nature of the case, and the danger to which her firstborn was exposed, took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son. By this act the displeasure of the Lord was turned aside, and Zipporah considered herself as now allied to God because of this circumcision. Old Adam tries to gloss over the attempted assassination of Moses by pretending it was only a child's life that was in danger. But we beg the reader to notice that nochildis mentioned, but only a son whose age is unspecified. Dr. Clarke can hardly have read the treatise of John Frischl,De Circumcisione Zipporo, or he would surely have admitted that the person menaced with death was Moses, and not his son.
Other commentators say that Zipporah did not like the snipping business (although she seems to have understood it at once), and therefore addressed her husband opprobriously. Circumcision, we may remark, was anciently performed with stone. The Septuagint version records how the flints with which Joshua circumcised the people at Gilgal were buried in his grave.
A nice specimen of the modern Christian method of semi-rationalising may be found in Dr. Smith'sBible Dictionary, to which the clergy usually turn for help in regard to any difficulties in connection with the sacred fetish they call the word of God. Smith says:
"The most probable explanation seems to be, that at the caravanserai either Moses or Gershom was struck with what seemed to be a mortal illness. In some way, not apparent to us, this illness was connected by Zipporah with the fact that her son had not been circumcised. She instantly performed the rite, and threw the sharp instrument, stained with the fresh blood, at the feet of her husband, exclaiming in the agony of a mother's anxiety for the life of her child, 'A bloody husband thou art, to cause the death of my son.' Then when the recovery from the illness took place (whether of Moses or Gershom), she exclaims again, 'A bloody husband still thou art, but not so as to cause the child's death, but only to bring about his circumcision.'"
We have no hesitation in saying that this most approved explanation is the worst. In seeking to make the story rational, it utterly ignores the primitive ideas and customs by which alone this ancient fragment can be interpreted. One little fact is sufficient to refute it. The Jews never use the wordKhathan, improperly translated "husband," after marriage. The word may be interpreted spouse, betrothed or bridegroom, but not husband. The Revised Version, which always follows as closely as possible the Authorised Version, translates "a bridegroom of blood." But this makes it evident that Moses was not addressed, for no woman having a son calls her husband "bridegroom." We may now see the true meaning of the incident—that by the blood covenant of circumcision, Zipporah entered into kinship with Jehovah and thereby claimed his friendship instead of enmity. In ancient times only the good-will of those who recognise the family bond or ties of blood could be relied on. Herbert Spencer, in hisCeremonial Institutions, contends that bloody sacrifices arise "from the practice of establishing a sacred bond between living persons by partaking of each other's blood: the derived conception, being that those who give some of their blood to the ghost of a man just dead and lingering near, effect with it a union which on the one side implies submission, and on the other side friendliness."
Dr. T. K. Oheyne, in his article on Circumcision in theEncyclopaedia Britannica, takes the story of Moses at the inn as a proof that circumcision was of Arabic origin. He says; "Khathan meant originally not 'husband,' but 'a newly admitted member of the family.' So that 'a khathan of blood' meant one who has become akhathan, not by marriage, but by circumcision," a meaning confirmed by the derived sense of the Arabickhatana, "to circumcise"—circumcision being performed in Arabia at the age of puberty.
The English of the Catholic Douay version is not so good as the Authorised Version, but it brings us nearer the real meaning of the story. It runs thus:
"And when he was in his journey, in the inn, the Lord met him and would have killed him. Immediately Sephora took a very sharp stone, and circumcised the foreskin of her son, and touched his feet, and said: A bloody spouse art thou to me. And he let him go after she had said: A bloody spouse art thou unto me, because of the circumcision."
Here it is evidently the feet of the Lord that are touched, as was the ancient practice in rendering tribute, and we see that the foreskin was a propitiatory offering.
Dr. Trumbull in his interesting book on the Blood Covenant, says: "The Hebrew wordKhathanhas as its root idea, the binding through severing, the covenanting by blood; an idea that is in the marriage-rite, as the Orientals view it, and that is in the rite of circumcision also." Dr. Trumbull omits to say that the term is not used after marriage, and consequently that it must be taken as applied to the Lord. Zipporah, being already married, did not need to enter into the blood covenant with Moses, but with Jehovah, so that to her and hers the Lord might henceforth be friendly.
We do not make much of the inn. There were no public-houses between Midian and Egypt. Probably the reference is only to a resting-place or caravanserai. We would, therefore, render the passage thus:
The Lord met him [Moses] at a halting place and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a flint, and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it at [made it touch] his [the Lord's] feet, and she said: Surely a kinsman of blood [one newly bound through blood] art thou to me. So he [the Lord] let him [Moses] alone.
Kuenen considers the passage, in connection with the place where it is inserted, indicated that circumcision was a substitute for child sacrifice. Any way, it may safely be said that the mark which every Jew bears on his own body is a sign that his ancestry worshipped a deity who sought to assassinate Moses, and was only to be appeased by an offering of blood.
Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy, is usually credited with the introduction of the medical maxim,similta similibus ourantur—like things are cured by like. Those who would dispute his originality need not refer to the ancient saying familiar to all topers, of "taking a hair of the dog that bit you"; they may find the origin of the homoeopathic doctrine in the great source of all inspiration—the holy Bible.
The book of Numbers contains several recipes which would be invaluable if divine grace would enable us to re-discover and correctly employ them. There is, for instance, the holy water described in chap. v., the effects of which will enable any jealous husband to discover if his wife has been faithful to him or not, and in the case of her guilt enable him to dispense with the services of Sir James Hannen.
But perhaps the most curious prescription in the book is that recorded in the twenty-first chapter. The Israelites wandering about for forty years, without travelling forty miles, got tired of the heavenly manna with which the "universal provider" supplied them. They looked back on the fried fish, which they "did eat in Egypt freely," the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic, wherein the Jewish stomach delighteth, and they longed for a change of diet. Upon remonstrating with Moses, and stating their preference for Egyptian lentils rather than celestial mushrooms, the Lord of his tender mercy sent "fiery serpents" (the word is properly translated "seraphim"), and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. Then the people prayed Moses to intercede for them, saying, "We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against thee;" and Jahveh, in direct opposition to his own commandment, directed Moses to "make a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole, and it shall come to pass that every one that is bitten when he looketh upon it shall live." Moses accordingly made a serpent of brass, we presume from some of that stolen from the Egyptians, which had the desired effect. Instead of being but one monster more, the sight immediately cured the wounds, and these seraphim sent by the Lord, ashamed of being beaten by their brazen brother, skedaddled. Of course it may be contended that a seraph is neither in the likeness of anything in heaven above, in earth beneath, or in the water, or fire, under the earth, and that consequently Moses in no wise infringed the Decalogue.
Commentators have been puzzled to account for this evident relic of serpent worship in a religion so abhorrent of idolatry as that of the Jews. These gentry usually shut their eyes very close to the many evidences that the god-guided people were always falling into the idolatries of the surrounding nations. Now we know that the Babylonians, in common with all the great nations of antiquity, worshipped the serpent. It has been thought, indeed, that the name Baal is an abbreviation of Ob-el, "the serpent god." In the Apocryphal book of Bel and the Dragon, to be found in every Catholic Bible, it says (v. 23): "And in that same place there was a great dragon, which they of Babylon worshipped. And the king said unto Daniel, Wilt thou also say that this is of brass? Lo, he liveth, he eateth and drinketh, thou canst not say that he is no living god; therefore worship him." Serpent worship is indeed so widely spread, and of such great antiquity, that it has been conjectured to have sprung from the antipathy between our monkey ancestors and snakes. In this legend the brazen serpent is benevolent, but more usually that reptile represents the evil principle. Thus a story in the Zendavesta (which is clearly allied to, and may have suggested that in Genesis) says that Ahriman assumed a serpent's form in order to destroy the first of the human race, whom he accordingly poisoned. In the Saddu we read: "When you kill serpents you shall repeat the Zendavesta, whereby you will obtain great merit; for it is the same as if you had killed so many devils." It is curious that the serpent which is the evil genius of Genesis is the good genius in Numbers, and that Jesus himself is represented as comparing himself to it (John iii. 14). An early Christian sect, the Ophites, found serpent worshipping quite consistent with their Christianity.
It seems likely that this story of the brazen serpent having been made by Moses, was a priestly invention to account for its being an object of idolatry among the Jews, as we know from 2 Kings xviii. 4, it was worshipped down to the time of Hezekiah, that is 700 years after the time of Moses. Hezekiah, we are told, broke the brazen serpent in pieces, but it must have been miraculously joined again, for the identical article is still to be seen, for a consideration, in the Church of St. Ambrose at Milan. Some learned rabbis regard the brazen serpent as a talisman which Moses was enabled to prepare from his knowledge of astrology. Others say it was a form of amulet to be copied and worn as a charm against disease. Others again declare it was only set upin terrorem, as a man who has chastised his son hangs up the rod against the wall as a warning. Rationalising commentators have pretended that it was but an emblem of healing by the medical art, a sort of sign-post to a camp hospital, like the red cross flag over an ambulance. These altogether pervert the text, and miss the meaning of the passage. The resemblance of the object set up was of the essence of the cure, as may be seen in 1 Sam. vi. 5. In truth, the doctrine of like curing like, instead of being a modern discovery is a very ancient superstition. The old medical books are full of prescriptions, or rather charms, founded on this notion.* It is, indeed, one of the recognised principles in savage magic and medicine that things like each other, however superficially, affect each other in a mystic way, and possess identical properties. Thus in Melanesia, according to Mr. Codrington,** "a stone in the shape of a pig, of a bread fruit, of a yam, was a most valuable find," because it made pigs prolific, and fertilised bread, fruit trees, and yam plots.
* See Myths in Medicine and Old Time Doctors, by Alfred C.Garratt, M.D.** Journal Anthropological Institute, February, 1881.
In Scotland, too, "stones were called by the names of the limbs they resembled, as 'eye-stanes, head-stane.'" A patient washed the affected part of his body, and rubbed it well with the stone corresponding. In precisely the same way the mandrake* root, being thought to resemble the human body, was supposed to be of wondrous medical efficacy, and was credited with human and super-human powers.** The method of cure, when the Philistines were smitten with emerods and mice, was to make images of the same (1 Sam. vi. 5), and the same idea was found in the well-known superstition of sorcerers making "a waxen man" to represent an enemy, injuries to the waxen figure being supposed to affect the person represented.
* Gregor, Folk-lore of North-East Counties, p. 40.** See the paper on "Moly and Mandragora," in A. Lang'sCustom and Myth; 1884.
Many curious customs and superstitions may be traced to this belief. In old medical works one may still read that to eat of a lion's heart is a specific to ensure courage, while other organs and certain bulbous plants are a remedy for sterility. The virtue of all the ancient aphrodisiacs resided in their shape. This notion, which largely affected the early history of medicine, is known as the doctrine of signatures.
Certain plants and other natural objects were believed to be so marked or stamped that they presented visibly the indications of the diseases, or diseased organs, for which they were specifics; these were their signatures. Hence a large portion of the ancient art of medicine consisted in ascertaining what plants were analogous to the symptoms of disease, or to the organ diseased. To this doctrine we owe some popular names of plants, such as eye-bright, liver-wort, spleen-wort, etc. The mandrake, from its supposed resemblance to the human form, was credited with marvellous powers, and anyone who will take the trouble to inquire into the folk-lore concerning plants and disease will find that much depends upon the appearance of the remedy.
One of the most curious peculiarities of Christianity is its doctrine of a God crucified for sinners. So strange, so repugnant to reason as such a doctrine is, it was quite consonant to the thoughts of those who held the belief in salvation by similars. If Paul said, since by man came death by man came also the resurrection of the dead, the development of the doctrine necessitated that if it is God who damns it is also God who saves. Any casual reader of Paul must have been struck by the antithesis which he constantly draws between the law and the Gospel, works and faith, the fall of man, and the redemption through "the second Adam." The very phrase "second Adam" implies this doctrine, which is summed up in the statement that "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us" (Gal. iii. 13).
God, in order to redeem man, had to take on sinful flesh and be himself the curse in order to be the cure. Hence we read in theTeaching of the Twelve Apostles, chap. xvi., that "they who endure in their faith shall be saved by the very curse." Thus may we understand that which modern Christians find so difficult of explanation, viz., that the whole Christian world for the first thousand years from St. Justin to St. Anselm believed that Christ paid the ransom for sinners to the Devil, their natural owner. Christ in order to become the Savior had to become the curse, had to die and had to descend to hell, though of course, being God, he could not stay there. Hence his being likened to the brazen serpent, that remnant of early Jewish fetichism which was smashed by Hezekiah (2 Kings xviii. 4). John makes Jesus himself teach that "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness [as a cure for serpent bites] even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life."
So Irenæus says (bk. iv., chap. 2), "men can be saved in no other way from the old wound of the serpent than by believing in him, who in the likeness of sinful flesh, is lifted up from the earth on the tree of martyrdom, and draws all things to himself and vivified the dead." That is, Christ was made sinful flesh to be the curse itself, just as the innocent brass appeared a serpent, because the form of the curse was necessary to the cure. Paul dwells on the passage of the law "Cursed is he that hangeth on a tree," with the very object of showing that Christ, cursed under the law, was a blessing under his glad tidings. The Fathers were never tired of saying that man was lost by a tree (in Eden) and saved by a tree (on Calvary), that as the curse came in child-birth* and thorns, so the world was saved by the birth of Christ and his crown of thorns. Justin says, "As the curse came by a Virgin, so by a Virgin the salvation," and this antithesis between Eve and Mary has been carried on by Catholic writers down to our own day.
* Notice too 1 Tim. 15, where women are said to be saved bychild birth, their curse.
As the Christian doctrine of salvation through the blood of Christ has certainly no more foundation in fact than the efficacy of liver-wort in liver diseases, we suggest it may have no better foundation than the ancient superstition of salvation by similars.
"New Presbyter," says Milton, "is but old priest writ large." Old priest, it may be said, is but older sorcerer in disguise. In early times religion and magic were intimately associated; indeed, it may be said they were one and the same. The earliest religion being the belief in spirits, the earliest worship is an attempt to influence or propitiate them by means that can only be described as magical; the belief in spirits and in magic both being founded on dreams. Medicine men and sorcerers were the first priests. Herbert Spencer says (Principles of Sociology, sec. 589): "A satisfactory distinction between priests and medicine men is difficult to find. Both are concerned with supernatural agents, which in their original form are ghosts; and their ways of dealing with these supernatural agents are so variously mingled, that at the outset no clear classification can be made." Among the Patagonians the same men officiate in the "threefold capacity of priests, magicians and doctors"; and among the North American Indians the functions of "sorcerer, prophet, physician, exorciser, priest, and rain doctor" are united.
Everywhere we find the priests are magicians. Their authority rests on imagined and dreaded power.
They are supposed by their spells and incantations to have power over nature, or rather the spirits supposed to preside over it. Hence they became the rulers of the people. The modern priest, who is supposed by muttering a formula to change the nature of consecrated elements or by his prayers to bring blessings on the people, betrays his lineal descent from the primitive rain-makers and sorcerers of savagery.
The Bible is full of magic and sorcery. Its heroes are magicians, from Jahveh Elohim, who puts Adam into a sleep and then makes woman from his rib, to Jesus who casts out devils and cures blindness with clay and spittle, and whose followers perform similar works by the power of his name. The most esteemed persons among the Jews were magicians. Pious Jacob cheats his uncle by a species of magic with peeled rods. Joseph not only tells fortunes by interpreting dreams but has a divining cup (Gen. xliv. 5), doubtless similar to the magic bowls used to the present day in Egypt, in which, as described by Lane in hisModern Egyptians, a boy looks and pretends to see images of the future in water.
The fourth chapter of Exodus gives the initiation of Moses into the magician's art by Jahveh, the great adept, who changes the rod of Moses into a serpent and back again into a rod; suddenly makes his hand leprous, and as suddenly restores it. Moses and Aaron show themselves superior magicians to those at the court of Pharaoh, who, when Aaron cast down his magic rod and it became a serpent, did in like manner with their rods, which also became serpents, though Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods (Exodus vii. 11,12). Upon this passage the learned Methodist commentator, Dr. Adam Clarke, writing at an age when the belief in witchcraft was almost extinct, after remarking that such feats evidently required something more than jugglery, observes: "How much more rational at once to allow that these magicians had familiar spirits who could assume all shapes, change the appearance of the subjects on which they operated, or suddenly convey one thing away and substitute another in its place."
Aaron also used his rod to changeallthe water into blood, a feat which the Egyptian magicians also contrived to perform—we presume with the aid of spirits. If you believe in spirits, there is no end to the supposition of what they might do. The magic rod of Moses is used to divide the water of the Red Sea, so that the children went through the midst of the sea on dry ground (Ex. xiv. 16), and to draw water from a rock (Num. xx. 8). Aaron's rod blossoms miraculously to show the superiority of the tribe of Levi (Num. xvii. 8).
The Urim and Thummin of Aaron's breastplate were also magical articles used in divination (see Num. xxviii. 21; 1 Sam. xxiii. 9, and xxx. 7, 8). Casting lots was another method of divination often referred to in the Bible. Prov. xvi. 31, says "The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is with the Lord." It was because "when Saul inquired of Jahveh, Jahveh answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets" (1 Sam. xxviii. 6), that he resorted to the witch of Endor. The ephod and holy plate (Ex. xxviii.), and the phylacteries worn as frontlets between the eyes (Deut. vi. 8), were magical amulets. Modern Arabs wear scraps of the Koran in a similar way. The holy oil (Ex. xxx.) and the water of jealousy (Num. v.) were magical, as was also the brazen serpent, adored down to the days of Hezekiah. The great Wizard's ark was also endowed with magical powers, bringing with it victory and punishing those who infringed its tabu; it was taken into battle. His sanctuary was also called an oracle where the priest "inquired of the Lord" (2 Sam. xvi. 23; 1 Kings vi. 16).
The teraphim were also magical, as we learn from Ezek. xxi. 21, where the word is translated "images." The prophet Hosea, one of the very earliest of the Old Testament writers (about 740), announced as a misfortune that "the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim." Laban, although a believer in Elohim, calls the teraphim "his gods" (Genesis xxxi. 29, 30), and so does Micah (Judges xviii. 18-24). The latter chapter shows that the teraphim were worshipped and served by the descendants of Moses down to the time of David (see Revised Version). David's wife Michal kept one in the house (1 Sam. xix. 13). It was evidently a fetish in human shape. How comes it, then, one may ask, that divination and sorcery are denounced in Deuteronomy xviii.? The answer is simple. The Deutoronomic law was first found in the time of Josiah, B.C. 641 (see 2 Kings xxii. 8-11), and there is abundant evidence it was not known before that time. Josiah, as we learn from 2 Kings xxiii. 24, put away "the familiar spirits, and the wizards and the teraphim and the idols," as Hezekiah (b.c. 726) had destroyed the brazen serpent. Not only had Jezebel practised witchcraft (2 Kings ix. 22), but Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, "dealt with a familiar spirit and with wizards" (2 Chron. xxxiii. 6). These, it may be said, were wicked persons.
Yet another piece of evidence is derived from the fact thatNashon, the chief of the tribe of Judah and one of the ancestry of the blessed Savior, signifies "enchanter." Zechariah (b.c. 580) shows the great advance made from the time of Hosea by declaring that "the teraphim have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie, and have told false dreams" (x. 2).
Samuel, like other early priests, was ruler and weather doctor, Elijah was a corpse restorer and rain com-peller. Elisha not only inherited his mantle, but also raised the dead and multiplied food. His very bones proved magical. Jesus Christ was a great wonderworker or magician, casting out devils, turning water into wine, healing diseases even by the touch of his magical robe, and finally levitating from earth.
The charge brought against Jesus by the Jews was that he had stolen the sacred Word and by it wrought miracles. We read in the Gospels that Jesus "cast out spirits with his word" (Matt. viii. 16). Jesus promised that in hisnamehis disciples should cast out devils, and Peter declared that his name healed the lame (Acts iii. 16). When the Jews asked, "By what power, or by what name have we done this" (Acts iv. 7), Peter answered, "By the name of Jesus Christ." Paul says, "God hath... given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and in earth and under the earth" (Philip ii. 9, 10).
Any careful reader of the Bible must have been struck with the frequency with which "the name of the Lord" is mentioned, and the care not to profane that name. "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain" is the second commandment, and Christians still speak of God "in a bondsman's key with bated breath and whispering humbleness," for no better reason than this old superstition. In Leviticus xxiv. 11 and 16, the word translated by us "blasphemeth" was by the Jews rendered "pronounces," so that the son of the Israelitish woman was stoned to death for pronouncing the ineffable name of J.H.V.H. The Talmud say "He who attempts to pronounce it shall have no part in the world to come." Once a year only, on the day of Atonement, was the high priest allowed to whisper the word, even as at the present day "the word" is whispered in Masonic lodges. The Hebrew Jehovah dates only from the Massoretic invention of points. When the Rabbis began to insert the vowel-points they had lost the true pronunciation of the sacred name. To the letters J. H. V. H. they put the vowels of Edonai or Adonai,lordormaster, the name which in their prayers they substitute for Jahveh. Moses wanted to know the name of the god of the burning bush. He was put off with the formula I am that I am. Jahveh having lost his name has become "I was but am not." When Jacob wrestled with the god, angel, or ghost, he demanded his name. The wary angel did not comply (Gen. xxxii. 29.) So the father of Samson begs the angel to say what is his name. "And the angel of the Lord said unto him, why asketh thou thus after my name seeing it issecret" (Judges xiii. 18). All this superstition can be traced to the belief that to know the names of persons was to acquire power over them.
In process of time the priest displaces the sorcerer, while still retaining certain of his functions. The gods of a displaced religion are regarded as devils and their worship as sorcery. Much of the persecution of witchcraft which went on in the ages when Christianity was dominant was really the extirpation of the surviving rites of Paganism. It is curious that it is always the more savage races that are believed to have the greatest magical powers. Dr. E. B. Tylor says: "In the Middle Ages the name of Finn was, as it still remains among seafaring men, equivalent to that of sorcerer, while Lapland witches had a European celebrity as practitioners of the black art. Ages after the Finns had risen in the social scale, the Lapps retained much of their old half-savage habit of life, and with it naturally their witchcraft, so that even the magic-gifted Finns revered the occult powers of a people more barbarous than themselves."
The same writer continues*: "Among the early Christians, sorcery was recognised as illegal miracle; and magic arts, such as turning men into beasts, calling up familiar demons, raising storms, etc., are mentioned, not in a sceptical spirit, but with reprobation. In the changed relations of the state to the church under Constantine, the laws against magic served the new purpose of proscribing the rites of the Greek and Roman religion, whose oracles, sacrifices and auguries, once carried on under the highest public sanction, were put under the same ban with the low arts of the necromancer and the witch. As Christianity extended its sway over Europe, the same antagonism continued, the church striving with considerable success to put down at once the old local religions, and the even older practices of witchcraft; condemning Thor and Woden as demons, they punished their rites in common with those of the sorceresses who bewitched their neighbors and turned themselves into wolves or cats. Thus gradually arose the legal persecution of witches which went on through the Middle Ages under ecclesiastical sanction both Catholic and Protestant."
* Encyclopedia Britannica, article "Magic."
But the religion of Christendom contained scarcely less elements of magical practices than that of Paganism. In the early Christian Church a considerable section of its ministry was devoted to the casting out of devils. Regulations concerning the same were contained in the canons of the Church of England. The magical power of giving absolution and remission of sins is still claimed in our national Church. Throughout the course of Christianity, indeed, magical effects have been ascribed to religious rites and consecrated objects.
Viktor Rydberg, the Swedish author of an interesting work onThe Magic of the Middle Ages, says (p. 85): "Every monastery has its master magician, who sellsagni Dei, conception billets, magic incense, salt and tapers which have been consecrated on Candlemas Day, palms consecrated on Palm Sunday, flowers besprinkled with holy water on Ascension Day, and many other appliances belonging to the great magical apparatus of the Church."
Bells are consecrated to this day, because they were supposed to have a magical effect in warding off demons. Their efficacy for this purpose is specifically asserted by St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest doctor of the Church, who lays it down that the changeableness of the weather is owing to the constant conflict between good and bad spirits.
Baptism is another magical process. There are people still in England who think harm will come to a child if it is not christened. In Christian baptism we have the magical invocation of certain names, those of the ever-blessed Trinity. The names of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, were used as spells to ward off demons. The process is supposed to have a magical efficacy, and is as much in the nature of a charm as making the sign of the cross with holy water, or the unction with holy oil, as a preparation for death. So important was it considered that the saving water should prevent demoniac power, that holy squirts were used to bring magical liquid in contact with the child before it saw the light!
The doctrine of salvation through blood is nothing but a survival of the faith in magic. Volumes might be written on the belief in the magical efficacy of blood as a sacrifice, a cementer of kinship, and a means of evoking protecting spirits. Blood baths for the cure of certain diseases were used in Egypt and mediæval Europe. Longfellow alludes to this superstition in hisGolden Legend:
The only remedy that remainsIs the blood that flows from a maiden's veins,Who of her own free will shall die,And give her life as the price of yours!This is the strangest of all cures,And one I think, you will never try.
The changing of the bread and wine of the Christian sacrament into the body and blood of God is evidently a piece of magic, dependent on the priestly magical formula. The affinities of the Christian communion with savage superstition are so many that they deserve to be treated in a separate article. Meanwhile let it be noticed that priests lay much stress upon the Blessed Sacrament, for it is this which invests them with magical functions and the awe and reverence consequent upon belief therein.
Formulated prayers are of the nature of magical spells or invocations. A prayer-book is a collection of spells for fine weather, rain, or other blessings. The Catholic soldier takes care to be armed with a blessed scapular to guard off stray bullets, or, in the event of the worst coming, to waft his soul into heaven. The Protestant smiles at this superstition, but mutters a prayer for the self-same purpose. In essence the procedure is the same. The earliest known Egyptian and Chaldean psalms and hymns are spells against sorcery or the influence of evil spirits, just as the invocation taught to Christian children—
Matthew, Mark, Luke And JohnBless The Bed That I Lie On.
The belief in magic, though it shows a survival in Theosophy, as ghost belief does in Spiritism, is dying slowly; and with it, in the long run, must die those religious doctrines and practices founded upon it. No magic can endure scientific scrutiny. Almost expelled from the physical world, it takes refuge in the domain of psychology; but there, too, it is being gradually ousted, though it still affords a profitable area for charlantanry.
Lucian has a story how Pancrates, wanting a servant, took a door-bar and pronounced over it magical words, whereon he stood up, brought him water, turned a spit, and did all the other tasks of a slave. What is this, asks Emerson, but a prophecy of the progress of art? Moses striking water from the rock was inferior to Sir Hugh Middleton bringing a water supply to London.
Jesus walking on the water was nothing to crossing the Atlantic by steam. The only true magic is that of science, which is a conquest of the human mind, and not a phantasy of superstition.