Documentary: The History of Witchcraft

The Lancashire Witches (1848) by William Harrison Ainsworth

 William Harrison Ainsworth’s fictionalised account of the Pendle Witch trials, which occurred in his native Lancashire during the 16th century, adds a number of overtly supernatural elements. As a result, the novel had a significant impact on the traditional appearance of the witch in the popular imagination, including the trademark black clothes and pointed hat.

The novel is based on Thomas Potts’s The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster (1603), an edition of which had recently been edited by Ainsworth’s friend, the antiquary James Crossley. Crossley’s edition of Potts’s book is available to download here.

The illustrations on this page are by John Gilbert.

The Lancashire Witches [Kindle]

The Lancashire Witches [Epub]

The Lancashire Witches [PDF]

 http://gothictexts.wordpress.com/2014/01/10/the-lancashire-witches-1848-by-william-harrison-ainsworth/

Witches and wicked bodies in The British Museum

 

This exhibition will examine the portrayal of witches and witchcraft in art from the Renaissance to the end of the 19th century. It will feature prints and drawings by artists including Dürer, Goya, Delacroix, Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, alongside classical Greek vessels and Renaissance maiolica.

Efforts to understand and interpret seemingly malevolent deeds – as well apportion blame for them and elicit confessions through hideous acts of torture – have had a place in society since classical antiquity and Biblical times. Men, women and children have all been accused of sorcery. The magus, or wise practitioner of ‘natural magic’ or occult ‘sciences’, has traditionally been male, but the majority of those accused and punished for witchcraft, especially since the Reformation, have been women. They are shown as monstrous hags with devil-worshipping followers. They represent an inversion of a well-ordered society and the natural world.

The focus of the exhibition is on prints and drawings from the British Museum’s collection, alongside a few loans from the V&A, the Ashmolean, Tate Britain and the British Library. Witches fly on broomsticks or backwards on dragons or beasts, as in Albrecht Dürer’s Witch Riding backwards on a Goat of 1501, or Hans Baldung’s Witches’ Sabbath from 1510. They are often depicted within cave-like kitchens surrounded by demons, performing evil spells, or raising the dead within magic circles, as in the powerful work of Salvator Rosa, Jacques de Gheyn and Jan van der Velde.

Francisco de Goya turned the subject of witches into an art form all of its own, whereby grotesque women conducting hideous activities on animals and children were represented in strikingly beautiful aquatint etchings. Goya used them as a way of satirising divisive social, political and religious issues of his day. Witches were also shown as bewitching seductresses intent on ensnaring their male victims, seen in the wonderful etching by Giovanni Battista Castiglione of Circe, who turned Odysseus’ companions into beasts.

During the Romantic period, Henry Fuseli’s Weird Sisters from Macbeth influenced generations of theatre-goers, and illustrations of Goethe’s Faust were popularised by Eugène Delacroix. By the end of the 19th century, hideous old hags with distended breasts and snakes for hair were mostly replaced by sexualised and mysteriously exotic sirens of feminine evil, seen in the exhibition in the work of Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Odilon Redon.

The exhibition will also include several classical Greek vessels and examples of Renaissance maiolica to emphasise the importance of the subject in the decorative arts.

The exhibition will take place from the 25th September until the 11th January. The entrance is free.
For more information: http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/witches_and_wicked_bodies.aspx

Το Μalleus Maleficarum: To εγχειρίδιο της Ιεράς Εξετασης για τον Εντοπισμό των Μαγισσών και την Καταπολέμηση της Μαγείας.

         Το έτος 1484 ο Πάπας Ιννοκέντιος VIII εξέδωσε μια επιστολή σύμφωνα με την οποία επικύρωνε επίσημα το έργο των δυο Δομινικανών Ιεροεξεταστών, του Γιάκομπ Σπρένγκερ (1436-1495)και του Χάινριχ Κράμμερ (1440-1505),στους οποίους ανατέθηκε η καταστολή της διαφθοράς που προκαλούσαν οι μάγισσες. Αυτοί επιλέχθηκαν λόγω της ικανότητας και της ευφυΐας τους αλλά κυρίως λόγω της αφοσίωσης τους στο δόγμα.
         Έτσι το 1486 δημοσιεύτηκε το Μalleus  Maleficarum και μέσα στους επόμενους αιώνες έγινε το «όπλο κατά της βασκανίας» το βασικό κείμενο που εδραίωνε τον αξεδιάλυτο δεσμό ανάμεσα στη μαγεία και το γυναικείο φύλο. Αρχικά εκδόθηκε στη Γερμανία και γρήγορα μεταφράστηκε και εκδόθηκαν πάμπολλα αντίτυπα στην Ευρώπη και ειδικότερα στην Αγγλία. Οι επιπτώσεις του εγχειριδίου έγιναν ιδιαίτερα αισθητές στις διάσημες «δίκες μαγισσών» της Αμερικής για τουλάχιστον 200 χρόνια.
         Το Μalleus  Maleficarum είναι κοινώς γνωστό με τον τίτλο «Η σφύρα των μαγισσών»,αν και ο λατινικός τίτλος μεταφράζεται καλύτερα ως «η σφύρα της μαγγανείας», καθ’ ότι το Μalleus σημαίνει «κακοβουλία», «κακεντρέχεια», «μοχθηρία», «γοητεία» (γητεία). Ουσιαστικά αυτό το βιβλίο είναι ο νόμος με τον οποίο δικάζονταν οι μάγισσες κατά την Ιερά Εξέταση, αλλά και όσοι είχαν ανάμειξη με την τέχνη της μαγείας. Είναι σοφά μελετημένο και σχολαστικό έγγραφο στοιχείο που αποδεικνύει ασύλληπτο, φανατισμένο μισογυνισμό.
         Πιστεύεται πως η πραγματικός σκοπός του Πάπα, όταν εξέδωσε την επιστολή το 1484, ήταν να εξολοθρεύσει την Προτεσταντική αντίσταση και να εδραιώσει την απόφαση του Πάπα Αλεξάνδρου ΙV που είχε γίνει το 1258 σχετικά με το διωγμό των αιρετικών. Έτσι ,το Μalleus  Maleficarum εξαπλώθηκε σ’ όλη τη Γερμανία, την Αγγλία και την υπόλοιπη Ευρώπη, και τα καθολικά και προτεσταντικά δικαστήρια το υιοθέτησαν πολύ σύντομα. Μέσα σε ένα χρονικό διάστημα 135 ετών βρισκόταν στην 34η έκδοση του και είχε ξεπεράσει όλα τα βιβλία εκτός της Βίβλου.
       Η εποχή ήταν η πιο κατάλληλη, σαν από δαιμονική σύμπτωση η τυπογραφία έκανε το ξεκίνημα της και έτσι η αναγνωστική ύλη κάλυπτε ένα όλο και μεγαλύτερο πεδίο, η Ευρώπη κατακλυζόταν από θρησκευτικές αντιθέσεις, διαμάχες και ίντριγκες, και όλα αυτά μέσα σε ένα κλίμα όπου οι βασιλείς και οι βασίλισσες της τότε εξουσίας δέχονταν καθημερινά απειλές για τη ζωή τους και οι φόνοι αυτών ήταν οι πιο συνηθισμένες εγκληματικές πράξεις.
        Οι πληροφορίες για τη δράση και το ιστορικό των Κράμμερ και Σπρένγκερ δεν είναι ολοκληρωμένες. Γνωρίζουμε όμως ότι και οι δυο υπήρξαν ηγούμενοι Δομινικανού Τάγματος αλλά παρ’ όλα αυτά όταν έφτασαν στη Γερμανία με τη σφραγίδα του Πάπα, έλαβαν ψυχρότατη υποδοχή, χαρακτηριζόμενοι ως δυσάρεστες προσωπικότητες και δεν ήταν λίγοι οι πάστορες που τους εκδίωξαν, επικαλούμενοι εκκλησιαστική επικήρυξη περί Ιεροεξεταστών που υπεξαιρούσαν χρήματα για προσωπικές τους ανέσεις. Και οι δυο άντρες αργότερα ανακαλύφθηκε ότι ενεπλέκονταν σε πάσης φύσεως παρανομίες.
      Επίσης είχαν ένα πλούσιο συγγραφικό έργο και ειδικότερα ο Κράμμερ το 1485 συνέγραψε ένα σαφές εγχειρίδιο μαγείας όπου αργότερα περιλήφθηκε στο Μalleus Maleficarum. Ο ίδιος είχε αρχικά διοριστεί Ιεροεξεταστής το 1474 στις επαρχίες Τύρολο, Βοημία, Σάλσμπουργκ και Μοραβία, όπου με δόλο κατηγορούσε ανθρώπους για μαγεία και τους βασάνιζε μέχρι θανάτου. Ο Επίσκοπος του Μπρίξτεν ερεύνησε την υπόθεση και τελικά τον εκδίωξε. Ενώ για τον Σπρένγκερ είχε ειπωθεί ο εξής χαρακτηρισμός «είναι ένας επικίνδυνος και κακόβουλος φανατικός, που εντρυφεί μ’ ευχαρίστηση στο παράλογο και ακόμη περισσότερο στο αισθησιακό».
     Ήδη από τον 13ο αιώνα, η Ευρώπη είχε καταληφθεί από την εμμονή του φόβου της μαγείας. Αυτή η παράνοια κράτησε συνολικά τέσσερις ολόκληρους αιώνες, δηλαδή έως και το τέλος του 17ου αιώνα. Λόγω του ότι η απόκρυφη τέχνη της μαγείας ήταν κάτι σκοτεινό και ασαφές για τους ανθρώπους του Μεσαίωνα, οι ερμηνείες για το φαινόμενο διέφεραν από τόπο σε τόπο. Έτσι προκλήθηκε μια γενική σύγχυση μέσα σ’ ένα κλίμα υποψίας και ανεξέλεγκτων φαντασιώσεων που με την πάροδο του χρόνου εξελίχθηκαν σε μια κοινή παράνοια. Ώσπου το 1486 εκδίδεται το  Μalleus  Maleficarum για να βάλει ένα τέλος στην αποδιοργάνωση της σκέψης εκατομμυρίων φοβισμένων ανθρώπων και να αποσαφηνίσει επιτέλους τα νοήματα και τα χαρακτηριστικά της μαγείας, να ξεκαθαρίσει την εικόνα της «μάγισσας», ώστε οι κατηγορίες να είναι νόμιμες και οι ποινές-νομικά και θεολογικά-δικαιολογήσιμες και βάσιμες!
    Πρόκειται λοιπόν για ένα έργο πολύ ιδιόμορφο, που θεωρείται το πιο σημαντικό στο φαινόμενο της μαγείας και στην ουσία είναι ένας οδηγός για κάθε Ιεροεξεταστή, θεολόγο και γενικά προς κάθε πολέμιο της μαγείας, του σατανισμού και των παράξενων φαινόμενων που αυτός προκαλεί. Ένα εγχειρίδιο πάνω στις μαγικές γνώσεις, πάνω στις εκδηλώσεις και τα χαρακτηριστικά τους και στους τρόπους με τους οποίους πρέπει να τις αντιμετωπίζει ο ιερέας και ο θεολόγος της εποχής. Επιπλέον, μας παρουσιάζει όχι μόνο τον τρόπο με τον οποίο κοιτούσαν τις μάγισσες οι ‘θεοσεβούμενοι’ άνθρωποι του Μεσαίωνα, αλλά και τους τρόπους με τους οποίους δρούσαν και λειτουργούσαν οι μάγισσες, δείχνοντας πως οι περισσότεροι Ιεροεξεταστές ήταν πολύ πιο ενημερωμένοι πάνω στα θέματα της μαγείας από τους περισσότερους που την ασκούσαν.
     Μέσα από αυτό το πρίσμα, γίνεται φανερό ότι το κυνήγι που ξεκίνησε ενάντια στις μάγισσες δεν ήταν απλά μια «μαζική υστερία» όπως έχει χαρακτηριστεί από τους ιστορικούς, αλλά βασίστηκε πάνω σε πολύ εξειδικευμένες παρατηρήσεις από πολύ μορφωμένους ανθρώπους, προθέσεις που καταδεικνύουν πως αυτοί οι άνθρωποι πίστευαν ότι συμμετείχαν σε ένα μυστικό «παγκόσμιο πόλεμο» εναντίον των δαιμόνων που εισέβαλλαν στην καθημερινή πραγματικότητα με ποικίλους τρόπους.

Victorian Spirit Photography and Early Ghost Movies

How Hermes Trismegistus Warped the History of Philosophy, Or Why Nobody Reads Plotinus Today

Hermes Trismegistus: Image of Hermes on the Floor of the Cathedral of Sienna (1215-1263). Hermes, a mythical Egyptian-Greek figure, basically managed to mess up the history of philosophy.

A radical assertion: Plotinus is a essential, even liberatory, important thinker that we start to need reading seriously again. If we want to understand Leibniz and Spinoza, who I think are crucial to understanding our networked age, and point the path beyond Cartesian-Kantian individualism in philosophy, then all roads lead back to Plotinus. Really.

I realize this is not a common set of assertions. And there’s many reasons why Plotinus isn’t generally high on anyone’s reading list these days, not to mention those of us who study philosophy. So in what follows, I’ll explain my sense of why he vanished, why it might be hard to at first see how radical he is, why we need to rediscover him, and how to do so.
Usually the reason why nobody reads Plotinus today is that they get a quote here or there, and it seems so terrible or far fetched, and seems to justify the general story about him. I’ll explain why this quotation problem exists, but first, I want to describe the general story it tends to support. The standard take on Plotinus is that he’s an irrationalist mystic in Platonic clothing, and that he turns Plato’s rigorous thought into little more than new-agey mystical nonsense of a quasi-pan/monotheistic sort. What’s more, Plotinus and his school began the deification of Plato, and even believed in various forms of magic, mixing this with their philosophy, in the process setting the progress of rational inquiry back such that it took nearly a thousand years to once again separate science and philosophy from alchemy, and nearly as long to separate Plato and Aristotle from his school’s many influential yet distorting misreadings of them. And as for his possible uses today, as a thinker of ‘the One,’ isn’t Plotinus the perfect example of the sort of totalizing philosophy so many of us have been taught to react to with little more than horror?!
Turns out, Plotinus has been seriously misread. But to explain why will involve a story of mishaps that is often as strange as it is funny.
Some Cases of Mistaken Identity, Mixed with Hidden Doctrines
To start with, Plotinus’ massive major work, The Enneads, had it’s widest readership for nearly a thousand years after the fall of Rome by means of it’s Arabic translation, in which it was called The Theology of Aristotle. Oops. And while it is unclear precisely who did the translating, paraphrasing, and misattributing, some believe it was within the circle of Al-Kindi (for more, see the lengthy article on this here).
So that’s the first problem. What’s more, however, the highly systematic, massively proto-Spinozist tract, really a proto-Ethics if there ever was one, in which Proclus geometricized Plotinus (and threw a few of his own ideas in as well), known later in Latin as the famed Liber de Causis (‘Book of Causes’), was also attributed to Aristotle when it was translated into Arabic, and then into Latin.
And this helps to explain both why Neoplatonism seems to vanish from the scene even as its ideas seemed to be everywhere, as well as why the Arabic and early medieval interpretations of Plato and Aristotle seems so damn odd. Because everyone seemed to think that the works of Plotinus, Proclus, and Aristotle were written by the same guy. For those who know these texts, just imagine trying to read those together assuming they were all coming from the same mind. Yikes.
But there’s more, and this helps explain why Plotinus gets a really bad rap as a terrible reader of Plato and Aristotle, one that fundamentally distorts them. It was widely assumed in the Hellenistic world that Plato didn’t put all his teachings in this writings, that he had a ‘secret doctrine’ which was largely mystical, and hence, that his texts had to be read allegorically for clues of this deeper tradition that tied him back into the Pythagorean tradition more firmly than would be apparent on the surface. Much of the justification for this was a passage in Aristotle in which he mentions that Plato had an unwritten teaching of this nature.
What’s more, in the nearly thousand years of reading of Aristotle and Plato, Hellenistic scholars found various ways of defeating Aristotle’s criticisms of Plato, and in the words of many critics, ‘folding’ Aristotle’s insights into Plato. And Plato and Aristotle were generally read as two sides of one approach, Aristotle leading the way with logic and the physical world, Plato for the spiritual and transcendental (for a great summary of all this, see Gerson and Dillon’s excellent and short introduction to Neoplatonic Philosophy: Introductory Readings). The result was an oral and written tradition  melding Plato and Aristotle such that they represented two aspects of a larger, Pythagoreanized synthesis. Which is why the often selective reading of Plato and Aristotle used to justify the implicit and oral ‘secret teachings’ of Plato, assumed hidden in allegorized form, became simply taken for granted at this time, and wasn’t an odd quirk of Plotinus and his school.
Plotinus was, however, the first to put these ideas in treatise format. While he’s certainly known to be quite original in his own views, his take on Plato and Aristotle seems to have been pretty standard for the readers of these texts at the time. In all this, Aristotle was reconfigured as a semi-wayward Platonist, and Plato as a quasi-Pythagorean mystic. Those who leaned to the Aristotle side tend to be called Peripatetics (for the way those in the Lyceum supposedely liked to walk when they taught), while those who leaned to the more mystical side were Neoplatonists or even Neopythagoreans. But in fact, all of these had what ultimately would be considered Neoplatonistic traits today, due to the wide influence of the notion that Plato’s unwritten, secret teaching, of largely Pythagorean cast, was the frame in which both Plato and Aristotle were to be read. It is a grand synthesis of all these models that Plotinus puts forward in his Enneads, even though it’s unclear the extent to which the massively disorganized sets of treatises and notes were reshaped by his student Porphyry when put into the shape we have today. And it is this text, and those inspired by it, such as Proclus’ systematized version of Plotinus’ views,  which then went on to exert such a massive if often unacknowledged influence on both Christian and Islamic philosophy.
And this is why you end up with all these strange doctrines being imputed to Aristotle and Plato during this time. Plato ends up being used for largely Pythagorean aims through the Latin Rennaissance up to and including into the Enlightenment. Which helps explain why a lot of bad readings of Aristotle and Plato are laid at the feet of Plotinus and his school, which in all actuality isn’t quite Platonic or Aristotelian at all, but rather, some new, strange thing that simply use Plato and Aristotle to create something completely different, really a mystical Neopythagoreanism mixed with all of the above, with some late Roman influences like Stoicism and Epicureanism thrown in for good measure.
But it only gets stranger.
How A Mythical Figure Wrecked Havoc With the History of Philosophy
Up until around the 1600′s, all the Greeks were read, within not only the Christian tradition, but often in the Islamic tradition as well, within the larger context of Hermeticism. In fact, it’s not until around the 1600′s that it was proven that the so-called Corpus Hermeticum was not one of the most ancient books ever written, but actually written around the same time as Plotinus and other Neoplatonists composed their primary works. And we don’t even know who wrote the Corpus today, yet this text (really a collection but often treated as a unit), was so widely understood as more ancient than the dialogues of Plato, that Cosimo de Medici on his deathbed famously had Marcello Ficino stop his new translations of Plato’s dialogues from the Greek, so that the could translate for him instead the newly acquired works of the Corpus. It wasn’t until Isaac Casaubon came along, a few years before Descartes wrote his Meditations, that a strong argument was made to disprove the authenticity and dating of the Corpus, as well as the faulty reading of the Ancient Greeks and others based around it.
According to the books of the Corpus, the works of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and all the Greeks were the inheritors of a secret wisdom, which could only be put in riddles to protect its knowledge from the masses, and which was bequeathed to the ancient Greeks by Pythagorus. What’s more, Pythagorus himself supposedly studied in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and it was supposedly in Egypt where he learned these deep truths, as did Moses, who passed them down to the Jews, which is why the Ancient Greeks and Jews eventually produced montheistic philosophies that overcame the polytheistic tendencies of their people. Pythagorus and Moses were taught this deep monotheism by descendents of the most ancient sage, Hermes Trismegistus, often depicted as the origin of the Greek god Hermes, and either as a student of the Egyptian god of writing named Thoth, or sometimes even Thoth himself. From Thoth/Hermes to Hermes Trismegistus to Moses to Pythagorus, the order sometimes shifts around in the Hermetic tradition, but the basic idea of a deeply philosophical, mystically mathematical monotheism comes to be in something like this fashion (and for more on this, see Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s excellent The Western Esoteric Tradition: A Historical Introduction, along with the classic works of Frances Yates).
In hindsight, it seems obvious that the Corpus was a book influenced by Neoplatonism, mixed with the religious ideas of late Hellenism. Causabon simply pointed out that there were parts of the Corpus that couldn’t have been quite so ancient, because they were anachronistic, and dated the text in the Hellenistic period. But up until this point, Thoth, Hermes, Moses, Pythagorus, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and all the Greeks were most often seen as avatars of what was generally called the prisca philosophia, the ‘perenial philosophy’ of which monotheism, astrology, number and geometry worship, and Neoplatonic synthesis were all a part. That these figures were all sides of the same larger tradition, with many branches leading off into specific philosophies and monotheisms, was simply widely accepted as fact.
All of which helps explain a bit of why it may be difficult get a sense of why these texts seem so strange today. Rather than simply descry this context as a terrible misunderstanding, we need to understand the impact this all had on the history of philosophy. To read Plotinus today is also to disentangle him from all this, and attempt to get a sense of his texts within yet also beyond this very odd reception.
http://networkologies.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/

Elements of the Gothic Novel

The gothic novel was invented almost single-handedly by Horace Walpole, whose The Castle of Otranto (1764) contains essentially all the elements that constitute the genre. Walpole's novel was imitated not only in the eighteenth century and not only in the novel form, but it has influenced the novel, the short story, poetry, and even film making up to the present day.

Gothic elements include the following:

1. Setting in a castle. The action takes place in and around an old castle, sometimes seemingly abandoned, sometimes occupied. The castle often contains secret passages, trap doors, secret rooms, dark or hidden staircases, and possibly ruined sections. The castle may be near or connected to caves, which lend their own haunting flavor with their branchings, claustrophobia, and mystery. (Translated into modern filmmaking, the setting might be in an old house or mansion--or even a new house--where unusual camera angles, sustained close ups during movement, and darkness or shadows create the same sense of claustrophobia and entrapment.) 2. An atmosphere of mystery and suspense. The work is pervaded by a threatening feeling, a fear enhanced by the unknown. Often the plot itself is built around a mystery, such as unknown parentage, a disappearance, or some other inexplicable event. Elements 3, 4, and 5 below contribute to this atmosphere. (Again, in modern filmmaking, the inexplicable events are often murders.)
3. An ancient prophecy is connected with the castle or its inhabitants (either former or present). The prophecy is usually obscure, partial, or confusing. "What could it mean?" In more watered down modern examples, this may amount to merely a legend: "It's said that the ghost of old man Krebs still wanders these halls."
4. Omens, portents, visions. A character may have a disturbing dream vision, or some phenomenon may be seen as a portent of coming events. For example, if the statue of the lord of the manor falls over, it may portend his death. In modern fiction, a character might see something (a shadowy figure stabbing another shadowy figure) and think that it was a dream. This might be thought of as an "imitation vision."
5. Supernatural or otherwise inexplicable events. Dramatic, amazing events occur, such as ghosts or giants walking, or inanimate objects (such as a suit of armor or painting) coming to life. In some works, the events are ultimately given a natural explanation, while in others the events are truly supernatural.
6. High, even overwrought emotion. The narration may be highly sentimental, and the characters are often overcome by anger, sorrow, surprise, and especially, terror. Characters suffer from raw nerves and a feeling of impending doom. Crying and emotional speeches are frequent. Breathlessness and panic are common. In the filmed gothic, screaming is common.
7. Women in distress. As an appeal to the pathos and sympathy of the reader, the female characters often face events that leave them fainting, terrified, screaming, and/or sobbing. A lonely, pensive, and oppressed heroine is often the central figure of the novel, so her sufferings are even more pronounced and the focus of attention. The women suffer all the more because they are often abandoned, left alone (either on purpose or by accident), and have no protector at times.
8. Women threatened by a powerful, impulsive, tyrannical male. One or more male characters has the power, as king, lord of the manor, father, or guardian, to demand that one or more of the female characters do something intolerable. The woman may be commanded to marry someone she does not love (it may even be the powerful male himself), or commit a crime.