ghosts; and the stone anachitis makes images of the gods 

 appear." 



This prince of occult philosophers gave minute details for 

 invoking good and evil spirits and ingenuously explained 

 why men conjure with demons rather than with angelic 

 spirits; he wrote: "Good Angels seldom appear being only 

 attendant on the commands of God, and not vouchsafing to 

 become known save to upright and holy men ; but evil spirits 

 submit themselves more willingly to the invocations of men, 

 falsely assuming to themselves and counterfeiting Divinity, 

 always ready to deceive, and delighting to be adored and 

 worshipped." 



Professional necromancers pretended to possess the power 

 of conferring with the spirits of dead persons, and controlling 

 the weather, raising storms at will; they sold potions and 

 philtres enabling the owner to understand the language of 

 birds, to secure love of fair women,. to transform their enemies 

 into cattle, (even as Nebuchadnezzar became an ox), and to 

 impart the power of the dreaded "evil eye"; to obtain the 

 disgusting ingredients of these draughts and pills they were 

 accused of strangling infants, of robbing cemeteries of their 

 corpses ; they were believed to compound poisonous powders 

 for criminal purposes; and they were always thought to 

 have entered into suicidal compacts with Satan. 



Popular belief peopled the earth with hobgoblins, the fire 

 with salamanders, the air with fiends and the water with 

 river and lake spirits. Children were terrified by their nurses 

 with stories of "an ugly devil having horns on his head, fire 

 in his mouth, and a tail in his breech, eyes like a bason, 

 fangs like a dog, claws like a bear, a skin like a nigger, and 

 a voyce roaring like a lion." And young children were so 

 affrighted with "bul-beggars, spirits, witches, urchins, elves, 

 hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, syrens, Kit-with-the-can- 



172 



