Imaginary Sorcerers and Werewolves

The strangest effect of the force of imagination is the disordered fear of the appearance of spirits, of sorceries, of characters, of charms, of lycanthropes or werewolves, and generally of everything one imagines depends on the power of the demon.

There is nothing more terrible nor that frightens the mind more, or that produces deeper traces in the brain, than the idea of an invisible power that thinks only of harming us, and to which one cannot resist. All discourses that awaken this idea are always listened to with fear and curiosity. Men, attaching themselves to everything that is extraordinary, make a bizarre pleasure of telling these surprising and prodigious stories of the power and malice of sorcerers, to frighten others and to frighten themselves. Thus one should not be surprised if sorcerers are so common in certain countries, where belief in the sabbath is too deeply rooted; where all the most extravagant tales of sorceries are listened to as authentic histories; and where one burns as true sorcerers the mad and visionaries whose imagination has been disordered, at least as much by the recounting of these tales as by the corruption of their heart.

I know well that some people will find fault, that I attribute most sorceries to the force of imagination, because I know that men love to be given fear; that they become angry against those who wish to undeceive them; and that they resemble imaginary patients, who listen with respect and faithfully execute the prescriptions of doctors who prognosticate fatal accidents for them. Superstitions are not easily destroyed, and one does not attack them without finding a great number of defenders; and this inclination to believe blindly all the reveries of demonographers is produced and sustained by the same cause that makes the superstitious obstinate, as it is easy enough to prove. However this should not prevent me from describing in few words, as I believe, how such opinions establish themselves.

A shepherd in his sheepfold relates after supper to his wife and children the adventures of the sabbath. As his imagination is moderately heated by the vapors of wine, and he believes he has attended several times this imaginary assembly, he does not fail to speak of it in a strong and vivid manner. His natural eloquence, joined to the disposition of his whole family to hear speak of a subject so new and so terrible, must without doubt produce strange traces in weak imaginations, and it is not naturally possible that a wife and children should not remain all frightened, penetrated and convinced of what they hear him say. It is a husband, it is a father who speaks of what he has seen, of what he has done: he is loved and respected; why would one not believe him? This shepherd repeats it on different days. The imagination of the mother and children gradually receives deeper traces; they become accustomed to them, the fears pass, and the conviction remains; and finally curiosity takes them to go there.

They rub themselves with some drug for this purpose, they lie down: this disposition of their heart still heats their imagination, and the traces that the shepherd had formed in their brain open sufficiently to make them judge, in sleep, all the movements of the ceremony of which he had made them the description as present. They rise, they ask each other and tell each other what they have seen. They thus fortify the traces of their vision; and he who has the strongest imagination, persuading the others better, does not fail to regulate in a few nights the imaginary history of the sabbath. Behold then completed sorcerers that the shepherd has made; and they will one day make many others, if, having a strong and vivid imagination, fear does not prevent them from telling similar stories.

There have been found several times sorcerers of good faith, who said generally to everyone that they went to the sabbath; and who were so persuaded of it, that although several people watched them and assured them that they had not left their bed, they could not yield to their testimony.

Everyone knows that when one tells children stories of apparitions of spirits, they almost never fail to be frightened by them, and they cannot remain without light and company; because then their brain receiving no traces of some present object, that which the tale has formed in their brain reopens, and often even with enough force to represent before their eyes the spirits that have been depicted to them. However one does not tell them these stories as if they were true. One does not speak to them with the same air as if one were persuaded of them; and sometimes one does it in a rather cold and rather languid manner. One should not therefore be astonished that a man who believes he has been to the sabbath, and who consequently speaks of it with a firm tone and assured countenance, easily persuades some persons who listen to him with respect of all the circumstances he describes, and thus transmits into their imagination traces similar to those that deceive him.

When men speak to us, they engrave in our brain traces similar to those they have. When they have deep ones, they speak to us in a manner that engraves deep ones in us; for they cannot speak without rendering us in some way similar to them. Children in their mothers’ womb see only what their mothers see; and even when they have come into the world, they imagine few things of which their parents are not the cause: since even the wisest men conduct themselves rather by the imagination of others, that is to say by opinion and custom, than by the rules of reason. Thus in places where one burns sorcerers, one finds a great number; because, in places where they are condemned to fire, one truly believes that they are such, and this belief is fortified by the discourses held about it. Let one cease to punish them and treat them as mad; and one will see that with time they will no longer be sorcerers, because those who are such only by imagination, who certainly make up the greatest number, will recover from their errors.

It is indubitable that true sorcerers deserve death, and that even those who are so only by imagination should not be reputed as entirely innocent; since ordinarily they only persuade themselves that they are sorcerers because they are in a disposition of heart to go to the sabbath, and they have rubbed themselves with some drug to succeed in their unhappy design.

But in punishing indifferently all these criminals, common persuasion is fortified, sorcerers by imagination multiply, and thus an infinity of people are lost and damned. It is therefore with reason that several parliaments do not punish sorcerers; there are found many fewer in the lands under their jurisdiction; and envy, hatred and malice of the wicked cannot use this pretext to destroy the innocent.

The apprehension of werewolves, or men transformed into wolves, is another pleasant vision. A man, by a disordered effort of his imagination, falls into this madness, that he believes he becomes a wolf every night. This disorder of his mind does not fail to dispose him to do all the actions that wolves do, or that he has heard say they do. He therefore leaves his house at midnight, he runs through the streets, he throws himself on some child if he encounters one, he bites and mistreats him; and the stupid and superstitious people imagine that in effect this fanatic becomes a wolf; because this wretch believes it himself, and has said it in secret to some persons who could not keep it silent.

If it were easy to form in the brain the traces that persuade men that they have become wolves, and if one could run through the streets and do all the ravages that these miserable werewolves do without having the brain entirely overturned, as it is easy to go to the sabbath in one’s bed and without waking, these fine stories of transformations of men into wolves would not fail to produce their effect like those of the sabbath, and we would have as many werewolves as we have sorcerers. But the persuasion of being transformed into a wolf supposes an overturning of the brain much more difficult to produce than that of a man who believes only that he goes to the sabbath, that is to say who believes he sees at night things that do not exist, and who, being awakened, cannot distinguish his dreams from the thoughts he had during the day.

It is a rather ordinary thing for certain persons to have at night dreams vivid enough to remember them exactly when awakened, although the subject of their dream is not in itself very terrible. Thus it is not difficult for people to persuade themselves that they have been to the sabbath; for it suffices, for that, that their brain preserves the traces that are made there during sleep.

The principal reason that prevents us from taking our dreams for realities is that we cannot link our dreams with the things we have done while awake; for we recognize by this that they are only dreams. Now, sorcerers by imagination cannot recognize by this whether their sabbath is a dream; for one goes to the sabbath only at night, and what happens in the sabbath cannot be linked with the other actions of the day. Thus it is morally impossible to undeceive them by that means. And it is not even necessary that the things these pretended sorcerers believe they have seen at the sabbath maintain a natural order among themselves; for they appear all the more real the more extravagance and confusion there is in their sequence. It suffices therefore, to deceive them, that the ideas of the things of the sabbath be vivid and frightening; which cannot fail, if one considers that they represent new and extraordinary things.

But for a man to imagine that he is a rooster, goat, wolf, ox, such a great disorder of imagination is needed that this cannot be ordinary; although these overturnings of mind sometimes happen, either by divine punishment, as Scripture reports of Nebuchadnezzar, or by a natural transport of melancholy to the brain, as one finds examples of in medical authors.

Although I am persuaded that true sorcerers are very rare, that the sabbath is only a dream, and that the parliaments that dismiss accusations of sorceries are the most equitable, I do not however doubt that there could be sorcerers, charms, spells, etc., and that the demon sometimes exercises his malice on men by a particular permission of a superior power. But Holy Scripture teaches us that the kingdom of Satan is destroyed; that the angel of heaven has chained the demon and imprisoned him in the abysses, from which he will not come out until the end of the world; that Jesus Christ has despoiled this strong armed man, and that the time has come when the prince of this world is cast out of the world.

He had reigned until the coming of the Savior, and he even reigns still, if one wishes, in places where the Savior is not known; but he has no right nor any power over those who are regenerated in Jesus Christ: he cannot even tempt them, if God does not permit it; and if God permits it, it is because they can overcome him. It is therefore to do too much honor to the devil to report stories as marks of his power, as some new demonographers do, since these stories render him formidable to weak minds.

One must despise demons as one despises executioners; for it is before God alone that one must tremble. It is His power alone that must be feared. One must apprehend His judgments and His anger, and not irritate Him by contempt for His laws and His Gospel. One should be in respect when He speaks or when men speak to us of Him. But when men speak to us of the power of the demon, it is a ridiculous weakness to be frightened and troubled. Our trouble does honor to our enemy. He loves to be respected and feared, and his pride is satisfied when our mind abases itself before him.

Conclusion of the First Two Books

It is time to finish this second book and to point out, by the things that have been said in this book and in the preceding one, that all the thoughts that the soul has through the body, or by dependence on the body, are all for the body; that they are all false or obscure; that they serve only to unite us to sensible goods and to everything that can procure them for us; and that this union engages us in infinite errors and in very great miseries, although we do not always feel these miseries, just as we do not know the errors that have caused them. Here is the most remarkable example.

The union we had with our mothers in their womb, which is the closest we can have with men, has caused us the greatest evils, namely, sin and concupiscence, which are the origin of all our miseries. It was nevertheless necessary, for the formation of our body, that this union be as close as it was.

To this union, which was broken by our birth, another succeeded, by which children hold to their parents and their nurses. This second union was not as close as the first, and thus it did us less harm; it only led us to believe and wish to imitate our parents and nurses in all things. It is visible that this second union was still necessary to us, not like the first, for the formation of our body, but for its preservation, to know all the things that could be useful to it, and to dispose the body to the movements necessary to acquire them.

Finally, the union we still presently have with all men does not fail to do us much harm, although it is not as close, because it is less necessary for the preservation of our body; for it is because of this union that we live by opinion, that we esteem and love everything that is loved and esteemed in the world, despite the remorse of our conscience and the true ideas we have of things. I do not speak here of the union we have with the mind of other men, for one can say that we receive some instruction from it; I speak only of the sensible union that is between our imagination and the air and manner of those who speak to us. This is how all the thoughts we have, by dependence on the body, are all false and all the more dangerous for our soul as they are more useful to our body.

Thus let us try to deliver ourselves little by little from the illusions of our senses, from the visions of our imagination, and from the impression that the imagination of other men makes on our mind. Let us carefully reject all the confused ideas we have by the dependence in which we are on our body, and admit only the clear and evident ideas that the mind receives by the union it necessarily has with the Word, or the wisdom and eternal truth, as we shall explain in the following book, which is on understanding or pure mind.

Ancient state of this book with a perfected presentation and an incomplete text.