SCG Daily – The Folklore of Magic #8

Yesterday, we looked at the complex system of magical beliefs held by the English upper classes in the 16th century. These beliefs were, for their time, scientific and based upon the work of Europe’s top physicians, physicists, and chemists. For example, Tycho Brahe, like all other astronomers of his day, was also an astrologist, and Paracelsus mixed his medicine and biology with alchemy and a systematic approach to the spiritual realm. Even today, much of modern-day spiritualist doctrine rests upon Paracelsus’ works, the works which popularized the idea of elemental beings such as gnomes and sylphs, neither of which had belonged to prior folk belief.

For the Northern European peasantry, however, matters were different. Even the name “Paracelsus” speaks of a learned world; translated from the Latin, it means Above-Celsus (Celsus being a renowned Roman physician of the 2nd century) and was a name that Paracelsus gave himself in order to show how far he had advanced in the study of medicine. When a peasant possessed psychic powers, it was rarely because he or she had forced a demon into slavery by use of magic words. Interest by the British upper classes (that is, those who were literate and could write the books that we use as evidence today) in the supernatural beliefs of the lower classes did not really begin in earnest until the latter half of the 17th century. By this point, the heyday of alchemy and spirit-summoning had long since passed. Nonetheless and perhaps ironically by modern standards, those who had the most interest in the supernatural were, once again, scientists.

Today, it may be difficult to imagine preachers and scientists working together, but in the late 1600s, these two most educated strata of British society were united by the fear that faith in Christianity was under threat. In retrospect, “under threat” seems like an exaggeration, yet it was at this time that the first glimmerings of popular atheism appeared in England, and while atheism could not be said to have been widespread, it was hip among the young, influential literary types. Very scary indeed.

In order to combat this trend, some of England’s leading scientists began a two-pronged struggle: They would both attempt to discover the laws of nature and try to document the existence of the supernatural. The idea was that, once mankind was certain just what did and did not occur naturally, it would be clear that strange phenomena like ghosts, witches, and fairies were, in fact, supernatural. Because, from a learned position, ghosts, witches, and fairies were all creations of Satan, proof of their existence would prove the existence of Satan, and proof of the existence of Satan would prove the existence of God.

Already in the late 1600s though, many educated people were beginning to find the stories that went around about witches and ghosts difficult to believe. Among other things, there had been a number of notorious cases of fraud. So it was that a group of English and Scottish scientists began investigating the phenomenon of second sight in Scotland. Although second sight (or seership) was not unknown in England, it was far more common — and commonly believed — in Scotland. Unlike the aristocratic spirit manipulators of the previous century and the peasant witches who had practiced their trade for time immemorial, those with second sight received no benefit from their gifts. Indeed, they often believed themselves cursed.

Generally, Scottish second sight can be described in the following manner: The seer sees physical realities from the future intruding into the present, either symbolically or concretely. For example, if a sailor is going to drown in the future, the seer will often see him not as he is in the present but as he will be, dripping wet. Usually, a seer could not see into his or her own future and could do nothing to prevent the experiencing of these often grisly prophecies. Some seers claimed to only prophesize sad and unfortunate events while others witnessed both the sad and the glad.

Scottish faith in seership was nearly universal. Lord Reay, writing to the famous diarist, Samuel Pepys (later to become convinced of second sight’s reality), in 1699 says, “The people are so much perswaded of the trueth of it [second sight] in the highlands and Isles That one would be More Laught at, for not believing it there Than affirmeing it elsewhere.” So far as scientists were concerned, one of the advantages to researching second sight over witchcraft and fairies was that whereas both witches and fairies interacted primarily with commoners, second sight seemed to be status-blind. Anyone could have second sight. Also, when a rich, respected man’s servant saw a fairy, the gentleman had no proof of it, but when a servant had second sight, the gentleman could judge for himself on the basis of the accuracy of the seer’s predictions. In Scotland, belief was truly spread across the classes. It was, perhaps with some truth, thought that evidence from the aristocracy was of greater value than that from the peasantry.

The following texts are added as an appendix to this SCG Daily Article. In other words, you don’t have to read them.

Skål!

Adam Grydehøj
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Appendix: Primary Sources

All of these texts are taken from Michael Hunter’s The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science and Second Sight in Late Seventeenth-Century Scotland. This is not the only book that covers this subject, but it is far and away the most complete I have come across.

1) George Sinclair, Satan’s Invisible World Discovered, 1685, pp.215-6:

“It is not improbable that such preternatural knowledge [second sight] comes first by a compact with the Devil and is derived downward by succession to their posterity, many of such I suppose, are innocent, and have this Sight against their will and inclination.”

Note: This was a popular means of accounting for second sight. It permitted both seership to be diabolic in origin and those who were seers to be innocent of any sin connected with it.

2) Robert Boyle’s notes on his interview with Lord Tarbat, 3 October 1678 (Royal Society Boyle Papers 39, fols. 216-17):

“As his Lo[ordship] travilled one winter in the remoter part of Scotland, Whilest the English forces were in that contrey; he was meet with by a gentleman whom he named to me, who had an estate thereabouts and was urgently pressed by him to take a lodging assureing his Lo[rdship] that ther was no English troopers quartered there nor had been for divers dayes before[.] My Lo[rd] hereupon goeing home with him pretty late found a good fire made in a great chimney, att some distance from which were placed divers plain wooden chairs, with arms and very near one another, in one of these sate down and perceiveing that of two men that were sitting att the same fire befor he came in and were strangers to him bot friends to his landlord, one looked very steadfastly att him, he suspecting some thinge, desired to know the reason why he did so where upon the other told him that he advised him to leave the place he sate in, and being asked why, he replyed, becaus I see in the nixt chair that is just by you a dead man with head hanging carelessly backward, and yet his hatt upon it, the blood runs from him, one of his arms hangs broken ower one of the Arms of the chair and one of his legs is broken too. This being spoken by a man that was said to have the gift of the 2d sight some what startled my relator, bot being then convinced of such things as afterwards he came to be, he removed not from his seat bot spent some tyme in discoursing with the gentleman that gave him the advise till they were interrupted by a great noise they heard att the door att which the Landlo[lord] went forth followed by this 2d sighted man, who found that the noise was made by some English troopers that were comeing to quarter there and presently after brought in with them one of their number whom they were fain to carry, and my Lo[rd] Tarbot who would not seem to be affrayd of them having not quited his seat bot only stood up att their comeing in they made choice of the nixt chair, as being near to the fire to sett down in it that seem’d to be newly dead for he was yet bleeding and when they had set him down his head upon which his hat that (it seemed) had been pulled ower his forehead to keep it on the faster hung backwards ower the back of the Chair, one of his Arms being broken hung dangling on one side of the chair and his Leg one the other side was found to be broken too; so that his posture was the very same that the 2d sighted man had a little before described as if he had seen him as perfectly as the rest of the companie did. this unlucky man was a trooper who marching with the rest of the company in the dark and frosty night towards this house had the ill fortune to have his horse fall under him, in a place where there were divers pieces of solid Ice by which together with [the] fall one of his Arms and the opposite leg were broken, and he being taken up not far from the house, was carried in for dead, tho he were [not] dead bot in a and by the help of Aqua vitæ and rubbing and such other ordinary means was after a while brought to himselfe.”