Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/18

10 which this group fall are witchcraft, astrology, and that past body of superstitious practices and fancies which are connected with the subjects of fairies, amulets, plants, animals, medicine, weather, dreams, &c. &c.

On the first two sections of superstitions, namely, witchcraft and astrology, a note is required. Each of these represent what I may almost term a cult. The first, however, is a popular cult, the second is an academical cult. By a popular cult I mean a cult generated and fostered by popular belief and fancy, and owing its continuance to traditional influences. There is no great school of witchcraft. Yet the universal belief in it proclaims that it has inherent tendencies at a certain stage of human culture, or has obtained in the popular mind a common under-current of support, which would, if some superior power like Christianity or philosophy had allowed, have forced it to become the predominant belief of the people. Cases of witchcraft have occurred at almost all periods of our history, and in the Middle Ages it threatened to become a power in the land. Care must be taken, however, not to include under this head old superstitions which are carelessly spoken of as appertaining to "witchcraft." Witchcraft has become almost as generic a term as superstition or as folk-lore; but its proper place is where its name indicates, and students must be careful to keep intact this important subject, and neither confuse it with matters that do not properly belong to it nor hide other matters under its capacious wings to their deterioration. Witchcraft has to do with the personal "witch," male or female, who professed, or who, in the cases of witch legal trials, is alleged to profess, the possession of certain occult powers for good or evil upon man or animal. It is this personality which constitutes the very essence of witchcraft—there can be no witchcraft in the proper sense of the term unless there be a personal witch to perform or profess the craft. It is the belief in the occult powers of the personal witch that has made witchcraft such a power in the world at all times. The witch may perform a custom or ceremony, may prognosticate certain events, may go through some fantastic ritual or recite some dread incantation; and the custom or