The Dominion. SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 1914. MAGIC: ANCIENT AND MODERN

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2132, 25 April 1914, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 1914. MAGIC: ANCIENT AND MODERN

That a' "Witches' League" should exist .in a, civilised country in the. twentieth century must b$ humiliating to a gefierati&n which 'is never, tired of boasting of its enlighf.cnmciife and of its superiority ttr all the ages that have gone before, The story of the trial of a number of women in Italy, as told in a cablegram which upoeared in Thk Domixiox a few days ago, comes as a startling revelation of the gullibility of the human mind. Wo aro told that- the members of the League claimed the power of finding hidden treasure and calling up the spirits of the dead; and the witches even undertook to induce demons to seize a brigand who had escaped from prison and give him a fide through tho air back to his cell. Of course they did not pretend to. work ail these wonders far nothing, especially when they jifisw that there were hundreds of dupes about willing to p-ay thousands of pounds for help and advice. People may say that this sort of thing might happen in some outlandish part of Italy, but ■that modern science and education ha ve long since banished superstition of this character from places where , civilisation and culture havo become established. Ono would liko to ae--1 cept this optimistic estimate of the progress of enlightenment, but there arc quite a number of undeniable facts which point tho. ether way. In Loudon, Berlin, Paris, and New. York humbug and quackery in almost every conceivable form thrive and prosper, and even in New Zealand fortune-tellers, clairvoyants, and other similar folk are consulted about various matters by all sorts and conditions of men and women-— especially women. The term witchcraft has so many unpleasant associations that no one in these days will admit having anything t-o do with it, but the same trado is still j carried on under less repulsive • names. There are numbers of peoplo in every civilised country who still i profess to be able to discover lost treasure and to summon the spirits-; of the departed, and there are hundreds who believe in them. They ■ may not claim the power of inducing demons to give escaped brigands an air trip back to prison, but it is common knowledge that there are magicians who have been able to convince sympathetic minds of' their ability to produce instantaneously birds and other "apports" from far distant parts of the world, and through closed doors. Magic has played an important part in the life of man ever since the dawn of human history, and though the form has changed tho thing still exists. The savage mind naturally concluded thai .illness or misfortune was caused by somemalignant being, and in looking for the evil-doer, suspicion was very apt to rest upon someone with a strange forbidding appearance and manner -~a witeb._ Such persons possibly liked making others afraid of them, and in. time began to take themselves seriously, thinking that they had only to speak the word and the thing would bo done. The method t>f magic _ seems to have been based on the simple idea that like produces ' like. From the experience that fire produced warmth, primitive nan iaay have jumped to the conclusion that whistling would make the wind blow. The witch of wizard utilised this harmless, if erroneous, reasoning for harmful asses: and they were able to pcru the common folk that when a magic worker made the gesture of striking, tho blow was actually struck and felt- by the victim., however far away he might be; or if the witeh made a figure of clay to represent the enemy and stabbed it, the person so represented would feel tl;ij pain. In this it is probable that the system of witchcraft and evil magic, in its various forms spread over tho face of the earth. Though these powers were made* uso of by other members of the. tribe, iho witches were hated as well as feared, and their _ calling was regarded as anti-social. A system of eoujater-magic grew up to undo ihoic evil work,. and they mxo often "smelled out" and put to death. Trials for witchcraft were quite caramon in England as late as the seventeenth century, and p&o celebrated witeh-B.ndei; named flopkins showed such an intimate knowledge of the. business that he was himself h'a uged for witchcraft, Tile last English trial for this offence was in V# 12, tho accused being «?»- vici<d but not executed, fcince thai

time witches hare been occasionally lynched, until comparatively recent years, Though magic in its uglier phases is now out. of date in British communities, it still survives in many harmless forms, There is a saying that i! you scratch a Russian you will find a Tartar, and this is one illustration of the fact that the veneer of civilisation and culture is rather thin, and underneath it ftiett and. women aro very like their primitive ancestors. One of the issues of t-he London Times which ar« rived by the last mail contains an article entitled "Golfers and Sympathetic Magic," in which the writer shows that pollers quite-uttccmscioiis-ly indulge in an interesting form of primitive ritual, arid the same remark applies to other games. An authoress of European reputation Was struck hy the fact that the watcher of a game of lawn tennis "'finds himself doing in sheer sj'iapa thy the thing lie wants done . . « raising an unoccupied kg to help the suspended ball oyer the net." This is an outcome of the instinctive idea that like produces like. The onlooker wishes tho hall to bo lifted over, and unconsciously lifts his leg to help it. It is an instance- of tiie survival of magic, A golfer acts in a. similar way, and tries to influence his hall by all sorts of gyrations. We are told that fine player "pirouettes in an agony of suspense on one foot while with the unemployed leg he ■ steers the ball now to the right and now to tho .left throughout its dci visus course," The eon tortious of ! the average bowler as he 'watches his. howl running to its destination are well taiowii. He instinctively acts as though the twisting erf bis leg or body will cause the bowl to move j in the same direction. Anyone who has watched the onlookers at a horse: race will see many interesting illus-' tratio&s of the same thing. Some interested spectator may be seen, raov-° ing his body as though bo were riding the horde he wants.to win, as if in that way he could help the animal on its journey, while another may whip himself, acting unconsciously on the primitive idea that, as like produces like, his action will have the same effect as the actual thrashing of tho horse. These unconscious superstitions show that, in spite of science and education, aijd ill the wonders- of civilisation, human nature is much the same in all ages and places, The things in which we re-elriblo our savage ancestors are probably much more numerous than those in winch we differ from thenn The ape and tiger in us die hard— we all know that; and when we think of the number of people who can be gulled hy tho most obvious humbug and fraud, we cannot help feeling that there is only too much truth in the saying that the donkey dies 'hardest of all. •