Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/75

Rh have been from the infancy of culture, may be well shown by the permanence of the practice of holding at intervals such special ceremonies to expel them. In Siam the people first hunt the demons out of the houses, and then drive them with cannon-shots through the streets till they get them outside the walls into the forest. In Old Calabar they put puppets along the streets leading to the sea, to entice the demons into, and then at dead of night a sudden rush is made by the negroes with whips and torches to drive the spirits down into the sea. Not only do other barbaric regions, such as the South Sea Islands and Peru, furnish similar examples of the expulsion of demons, but it may still be seen among European peasantry. In Sweden, Easter-tide is the season for a general purging of the land from the evil spirits and trolls of the old heathendom ; and in many parts of Germany unseen witches are to this day driven out on Walpurgis- night with crack of whip and blast of horn. (See a collection of cases in Bastian and Hartmann, Zeitschrift fur Ethiwlogie, 1869, p. 189; also Hylten-Cavallius, Warend och Wirdarne, part i. p. 178). In these cases it is generally unfavourable influences which are considered as due to the demons. But favourable events are even by savages often recognized as due to the intervention of some kindly spirit, and especially to a guardian or patron demon, whose help accounts for what among ourselves is often not much more rationally considered to be &quot;luck.&quot; It is often a recognized ancestral soul which from natural affection undertakes this duty, as when a Tasrnanian has been known to account for escape from danger by the idea that his father s soul was still watching over him. But it need not bs so; and among the American Indians or West Africans, where each man lives in constant imaginary intercourse with his patron-spirit, talking with it, making it offerings, and trusting to its guidance in difficulty and protection from danger, this spirit may be revealed in a dream or vision, and is often connected with some object known as a &quot;medicine &quot;or &quot; fetish,&quot; but is seldom identified with any particular ghost. In Greek literature this idea is best exemplified by the lines of Menander on the good demon whom every man has from birth as his guide through the mysteries of life (ap. Clem. Alex., Stromat. v.) ; the most popularly known example is the so-called &quot; demon &quot; of Socrates, but he himself did not give such personal definiteness to the divine or daemonic influence (8aip.6vi.ov) which warned him by what he described as a voice or sign (see Zeller, Socrates, ch. 4). The primitive idea of the patron spirit is carried on in the Roman genius, whose name (even without the addition of &quot; natalis &quot;) indicates that it is born with the person whom it accompanies through life. Its place very closely corresponds to that occupied in modern folklore by the guardian angel. There are districts in France where a peasant meeting another, salutes not only the man, but his &quot; companion,&quot; the guardian angel who is supposed to be invisibly at his side. Among attendant and patron demons, as recognized in the general belief of mankind, a specially important class is formed by the familiar spirits who accompany sorcerers, giving them mysterious knowledge, uttering oracular responses through their voices, enabling them to perform wonderful feats, bringing them treasure or injuring their enemies, and doing other spiritual services for them. From the descriptions of sorcerers among the lower nations, it is at once evident that their supposed intercourse with demons is closely connected with the symptoms of disease- possession. Thus among the Zulus, &quot; the disease which precedes the power to divine &quot; is distinctly hysterical, the patient s morbid sensitiveness and intensely vivid imagina tion of sights and voices fitting well with his persuasion that he is under the control of some ancestral ghost. So well is this connection recognized among races like the Patagonians and rude tribes of Siberia, that children with an hereditary tendency to epilepsy are brought up to the profession of magicians. Where the sorcerer has not naturally such symptoms of possession by a controlling demon, he is apt to bring them on by violent dancing and beating drums, or by drugs, or to simulate them by mere knavery ; which latter is really the most convincing proof that the original notion of the demon of the magician did not arise from imposture, but from actual belief that the morbid excitement, hallucination, and raving consequent on mental disease were caused by spirits other than the man s own soul, in possession of his body. The primitive and savage theory of inspiration by another spirit getting inside the body is most materialistic, and cheating sorcerers accordingly use ventriloquism of the original kind, which (as its name implies) is supposed to be caused by the voice of a demon inside the body of the speaker, who really himself talks in a feigned human voice, or in squeaking or whistling tones thought suitable to the thin-bodied spirit-visitor. The familiar spirit may be a human ghost or some other demon, and may either be supposed to enter the man s body or only to come into his presence, which is somewhat the same difference as whether in disease the demon &quot; possesses &quot; or &quot; obsesses &quot; a patient, i.e., controls him from inside or outside. Thus the Greenland angekok, or sorcerer, is described as following his profession by the aid of a torngak, or familiar spirit (who may be an ancestral ghost), whom he summons by drumming, and with whom he is heard by the bystanders to carry on a conversation within the hut, obtaining information which enables him to advise as to the treatment of the sick, the prospect of good or bad weather, and the other topics of the business of a soothsayer. Passing over the intermediate space which divides the condition of savages from that of mediaeval or modern Europeans, we shall find, so far as the doctrine of familiar demons has survived, that it lias changed but little in principle. In the witch trials a favourite accusation was that of having a familiar demon. Sir Walter Scott s Demonology and Witchcraft contains among others the case of Bessie Dunlop, whose familiar was the ghost of one Thome Reid, killed at the battle of Pinkie (1547), who enabled her to give answers to such as consulted her about the ailments of human beings or cattle, or the recovery of things lost or stolen. This miserable woman, chiefly on her own confession, was as usual &quot; convict and burnt.&quot; Here the imagined demon was a human soul ; but other spirits thus attended sorcerers and diviners, such as the spirit called Hudhart, who enabled a certain Highland woman to prophesy as to the conspiracy to murder James I. of Scotland. Dissertations on the art of raising demons for the sorcerers service, and even the actual charms and ceremonies to be used, form a large part of the precepts of magical books. (See Ennemoser, His tory of Magic; Horst, Zauberbibliothek, and other works already cited.) Among the latest English books treating seriously of this &quot; black art &quot; is Sibly s Illustration of the Occult Sciences, of which a 10th edition, in 4to, bears date London, 1807. The statute of James I. of England enacts that all persons invoking any evil spirit, or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or re warding any evil spirit, should be guilty of felony, and suffer death. This was not repealed till the reign of George II. Educated public opinion has now risen above this level ; but popular credulity is still to be worked upon by much the same means as those employed by savage sorcerers profess ing intercourse with familiar spirits. At &quot; spiritualistic seances &quot; the convulsive and hysterical symptoms (pre tended or real) of the &quot; medium&quot; under the &quot; control &quot; of his &quot;guiding spirit &quot;.are much the same as those which 