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The Renaissance and/of Witchcraft

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Donald Nugent
Donald Nugent
Affiliation:
Associate professor of history in the University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky.
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These lines might well have been written by a denizen of the contemporary counter culture, though he might have respected “Divinity” only by eliminating it for “Government.” The lines can suggest various things. First, that there is an analogy to be made between the Renaissance and the contemporary world. Secondly, that a rejection of conventional learning—we discuss it under the rubric of irrelevance—can be a prelude to a revival of the occult. Thirdly, the utilization of this text can intimate that, for present purposes, the author may owe more to Herodotus than he does to Ranke, that is, more to history as art than to history as science. That, too, may be a sign of the times.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , March 1971 , pp. 69 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

References

1. The Making of a Counter Culture (Garden. City, N. Y.: Anchor Books, 1969), pp. 124–25. See especially chapter VIII: “Eyes of Flesh, Eyes of Flesh,” 239–68.Google Scholar

2. New Reformation: Notes of a Neolithic Conservative (New York: Bandom House, 1970), x–xi.Google Scholar

3. La cultura del Rinasdmento (Editori Laterza, 1967), p. 8.Google Scholar

4. Lettere, ed. Franco, Gaeta (Milan, 1961), p. 457.Google Scholar I am grateful to Professor A. William Salomone of the University of Rochester for this citation. It goes without saying that it would be vain to document such a large canvas. Support for some of this can be found in the celebrated address of William L. Langer, “The Next Assignment,” American Historical Review, 63 (January, 1958), especially 292–301. On the hedonist and mystic formula for such an age, consult Pitirim Sorokin, A., The Crisis of our Age (New York: E. P.Dutton and Co., Inc., 1957), p. 302.Google ScholarOn apocalypticism, consider Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophesy in the Late Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford of the Clarendon Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Katallagete: Be Reconciled, the whole issue of Fall, 1970; and Frank, Kermode, “The New Apocalyptists,” Partisan Review, 3 (Summer, 1966), 339–61.Google ScholarOn Jung, see his “Epilogue to Essays on Contemporary Events,” of 1932, in Civilization in Transition, trans. Hull, R. F. C., Collected Works of C. G. Jung (New York: Pantheon Books, 1964), x, 243.Google Scholar And on Petrarch see The Portable Renaissance Reader, ed. Ross, James Bruce and MeLanghlin, Mary Martin (New York: The Viking Press, 1958), pp. 120–22.Google Scholar

5. For example, Witchcraft and Sorcery: Selected Readings, ed. Max, Marwick (Middle sex: Penguin Books, 1970), pp. 47–48, 60, 238Google Scholar; Lucy, Mair, Witchcraft, (New York and Toronto: World University Library, 1969), p. 15.Google Scholar Pico della Mirandola went so far as to consider all paganism as diabolic. Walker, D. P., Spiritual and Demonic Magic From Ficino to Campanella (London: The Warburg Institute University, 1958), pp. 146–47.Google Scholar On the problem of the gods see also Nanert, Charles G., Agrippa and the Crisis of Renaissance Thought (University of Illinois Press, 1956), pp. 244ff.Google Scholar Nauert provides much help generally on the Renaissance and the occult. Cain was put in this pantheon after reading Ellul, Jacques, “Cain, the Theologian of 1969,” Katallagete: Be Reconciled (Winter, 1968–1969), 4–7.Google Scholar This view is supported by a contemporary Satanist. See Smith, Susy, Today's Witches (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1970), pp. 106–07.Google Scholar

6. For example, Anton, Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible (New York: Avon, 1969), p. 88Google Scholar, rejects white witches as wanting conviction: “ONE GOOD ORGASM WOULD PROBABLY KILL THEM!” Sybil, Leek, Diary of a Witch (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968), p. 173Google Scholar, dismisses black witches as “pseudo-covens.” Alex Sanders, now a white witch, allows both and has practiced both. See June, Johns, King of the Witches: The World of Alex Sanders (London: Peter Davies, 1969).Google Scholar

7. The Satanic Bible, p. 110.Google Scholar And for one of many illustrations of sex magic, see Richard, Cavendish, The Black Arts (London: Pan Books, Ltd., 1967), p. 279.Google Scholar Let me indicate that I have attempted to clear my mind on these and other subjects at better leisure in “The City of God Revisted,” Cross Currents (Summer, 1969), 241–55Google Scholar, and especially “The Future of Witchcraft,” The Month (London), scheduled for publication early in 1971.Google Scholar

8. For some support for these general views see Yates, Francis A., Giordano Bruno and the Hermetio Tradition (University of Chicago Press), pp. 11, 17–18, 126Google Scholar; Nauert, 223; Baroja, Julio Caro, The World of the Witches, trans. Glendening, O. N. V. (University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 44, 55–60Google Scholar; Trevor-Roper, H. R., “Witches and Witchcraft,” Encounter (05, 1967).Google Scholar

9. Zilboorg, Gregory M. D., The Medical Man and the Witch During the Renaissance (New York: Cooper Square Publishing, Inc., 1935), p. 63.Google Scholar

10. For some support, beyond Yates, passim, see Burckhardt, Jacob, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (New York: Mentor Book ed. 1961), pp. 363, 365, 373Google Scholar; and Nauret, 236.

11. Zilboorg, 61. Also cf. Erikson, Erik H., Young Man Luther: A Study in Psycho-analysis and History (New York: The Norton Library, 1962), p. 193.Google Scholar

12. Walker, 82–83. On the Free Spirit, Norman, Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millenium (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), pp. 152, 165, 189.Google Scholar

13. See the Malleus, ed. Montague Summers (London: The Hogarth Press, 1928), pp. 43 and 41–48 generally.Google Scholar

14. Zilboorg, , 165.Google Scholar

15. Caro Baroja, 101–02; on Essex county, MacFarlane, A. D. J., Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970), p. 160CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jules, Michelet, Satanism and Witchcraft, trans. Allinson, A. R. (London: Tanden, 1965), p. 9.Google Scholar And on the old priestesses, see Margaret, Alice Murray, The God of the Witches (London: Faber and Faber, 1931), e.g., pp. 145, 149.Google Scholar Let it be said that contemporary scholarly opinion is skeptical of many of Murray's theories.

16. To tie together some of these thoughts, the interview with Sanders was in London, July 8, 1970. Brown's study is his Life against Death: the Psychoanalytic Meaning of History (New York: Vintage Books, 1959), pp. 212–15Google Scholar, which is not to accept his association of Lutheranism and Manichaeism. For various thoughts see two well documented studies, MacFarlane, 186–88, 195, and Robert, Mandrou, Magistrats et sorciers en France au XVII siècle (Paris, Plon, 1968), pp. 93, 122–25, 152.Google Scholar On the “Protestant wind,” Johns, 126.

17. Allowed by Margaret Alice Murray herself, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1921), p. 16.Google Scholar Also see McFarlane, , 138–41, 201Google Scholar; and Mair, 197. Interestingly, what we know of the Free Spirit from their inquisitional enemies accords well with their own sources; Cohn, 150–51.

18. Witchcraft Today (London: Arrow Books, 1966), pp. 22, 155.Google Scholar Also see Mandrou, 120.

19. The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, ed. Robbins, R. H.. (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1959), pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

20. “Witches and Witchcraft,” Part II, Encounter (06, 1967), 30.Google Scholar

21. See his celebrated essay, “The Role of the Unconscious,” Selected Works, X, 3–28.

22. The Confessions of Aleister Crotcley: An Autohagiography (New York: Hill and Wang, 1969), pp. 838–39.Google Scholar

23. Wotan, Selected Works, X, especially 181–85.

24. Trans. Myers, Rollo (New York: Avon, 1968), pp. 204–206, 283.Google Scholar

25. Selected Works, X, 83, 214, 243.

26. Wallace, C. H., Witchcraft in the World Today (New York: Award Books, 1967), pp. 12, 29.Google Scholar Also see Cavendish 10; and Smith, 107, 127–28.

27. Henry, Ansgar Kelly, The Devil, Demonology and Witchcraft (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1968), p. 131Google Scholar and his reappraisal in Commonweal, (11 6, 1970), 146–49.Google Scholar

28. “Witch Power,” Motive (March–April), 77.

29. Lawrence, Schiller, The Killing of Sharon Tate (New York: Signet Books, 1969), p. 92, also see 94.Google Scholar

30. See, for example, Smith, 9–14.

31. For W.I.T.C.H., Motive, 77; for Waite, Pauwels and Bergier, 213.

32. Nick, Cohn, Rock, From the Beginning (New York: Stein and Day, 1969), pp. 172, 165–65.Google Scholar Also see Jonathan, Eisen, ed., Altamont: Death of Innocence in the Woodstock Nation (New York: Avon, 1970), pp. 23–24, 90.Google Scholar Jagger is continually treated as diabolic in this report. I am grateful to Miss Jan McKenzie, an undergraduate at the University of Kentucky, for some valuable counsel in this area.

33. MacFarlane, , 161Google Scholar; Johns, , 120–21, 96.Google Scholar

34. For some particulars, Zilboorg, , 141–45Google Scholar; Caro, Baroja, 107, 254.Google Scholar

35. Francis, Huxley, “Drugs,” Man Myth and Magic, 25 (1970), 713–14.Google Scholar

36. MacFarlane, , xv.Google Scholar

37. Quoted in Figgis, J. N., Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius, 1st. ed., 1907 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), p. 9.Google Scholar

38. Diary, 183.

39. Pauwels, and Bergier, , 57.Google Scholar