Holy water, the
sign of the cross, firelight, spittle, bread, salt, objects of
iron, herbs, amulets, and incantations were
used to protect villagers from these entities, but not
everyone shunned the Devil. Devil worship began as a way
of obtaining a better lot in life.
Grimoires, books of magical spells,
were used to temporarily control a demon. By uttering nine mystic
names:
Eheieh, lod, Tetragrammaton Elohim, El, Elohim Gibor, Eloah
V a-Daath, El Adonai Tzabaoth, Elohim Tzabaoth, and
Shaddai, one ritual assured the control of Satan. The devil
could be dismissed with the words: "I am pleased and
contented with thee, Prince Lucifer, for the moment. Leave
thou in peace now, and go in quiet and without trouble. Do
not forget our pact or I shall blast thee with my wand.
Amen.¹9
There is an English legend that
described how the actor Edward Alleyn, after invoking Mephistopheles
during a
seventeenth-century performance of Marlowe's Dr. Faustus,
discovered a real devil reeking of brimstone upon the stage.
This experience impelled him to abandon the theater once
and for all and to embark upon good works, which included
the founding of Dulwich College.(power20)
Pacts with the Devil were assumed
to be the case when an individual experienced an inexplicable attainment
of
fortune and fame. Satan, or a subordinate, signed this pact
and sealed the deal with sexual intercourse. Following this
rendezvous, the witch became a slave to the Devil for the
remainder of her short life.
I mentioned before that all cases
of insanity were attributed to some form of insult by negative
forces. The
devil can inflict diseases on the body and can take
possession of it. He can chain up the reason and disorder
the senses. He can create a frantic infatuation of love in
the mind and an equally fierce obsession of hatred. He can
create all manner of delusions that, though hallucinatory,
are fully convincing to the unfortunate victim.
Psychic attack by demons conjured
up by black magicians resulted in symptoms such as extreme fear,
anxiety, and
distress of mind, and also bruises on the body-sometimes
in the shape of a goat's hoof or an ace of clubs-disgusting
smells, especially of rotting flesh, smears of slime,
inexplicable outbreaks of fire, and the phenomena associated
with poltergeists, which until comparatively recently were
assumed to be evil spirits.
It was during the victim's dream
state that most of these demonic attacks occurred. In addition
to hallucinations
and nightmares, these demons also appeared in the form
of sinister noises, slime and blood, balls of light, and
pungent stenches.
Dion Fortune quotes the case of
a man who tried to use a magic square but failed to perform the
ritual correctly.
He began to suffer from feelings of terror at night, and eventually
saw the creature which was obsessing him. "Its
eyes were closed and it was bearded, with long flowing
hair. It seemed a blind force slowly waking to activity." One
night he saw a red snake uncoiling itself from under his
bed and was so frightened that he jumped out of the window
to escape it. The next time he saw the bearded creature,
its long locks of hair had turned into the heads of snakes.(power21)
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