Magic & Occult in Germany
Germany : For early
German magic, see Teutons,
Magic as formulated and believed in by the Germans in the
Middle Ages, bears, along with traces of its unmistakable
derivation from the ancient Teutonic religion, the impress
of the influence wrought by the natural characteristics of
the country upon the mind of its inhabitants Deep forests,
gloomy mountains, limitless morasses, caverned rocks,
mysterious springs, all these helped to shape the weird
and terrible imagination which may be traced in Teutonic
mythology, and later in the darker and more repulsive
aspects of magic and witchcraft, which first arose in
Germany, and there obtained ready credence.
As the clash and strife of Teuton and Roman, of Christian
and Heathen have left indelible records in folk-lore and
history, so we may find them as surely in the magical
belief of the Middle Ages. The earlier monkish legends are
replete with accounts of magic and sorcery, indicating
plainly the process by which the ancient deities had
become evil and degraded upon the introduction of the
newer religion. Miracles are recounted, where these evil
ones are robbed of all power at the name of Christ, or
before some blessed relic, then chained and prisoned
beneath mountain, river and sea in eternal darkness,
whilst it was told how misfortune and death were the
unvarying rewards for those who still might follow the
outcast gods.
Again, the sites and periods of the great religious
festivals of the Teutons are perpetuated in those said to
be the place and time of the Witches' Sabbath and other
mysterious meetings and conclaves. Mountains especially
retained this character—as the Venusberg, the Horselberg,
and Blocksberg, now become the Devil's realm and abode of
the damned. Chapels and cathedrals were full of relics,
whose chief virtue was to exorcise the spirits of evil,
while the bells must be blessed, as ordained by the
Council of Cologne, in order that " demons might be
affrighted by their sound, calling Christians to prayers ;
and when they
GˆnniH
. J.U.I *L_.
fled, the persons of the faithful would be secure; that
tte destruction of lightnings and whirlwinds would be
avertrf. and the spirits of the storm defeated."
Storms were always held to be the work of the Deri, or the
conjuration of his followers. In their fury might be heard
the trampling of his infernal train above the tossing
forests or holy spires, and here is seen the
transformation Odin and his hosts had undergone. Another
instance of this is found when the Valkyries, the Choosers
of the Slaia. riding to places of battle, have become the
mediaeval witches riding astride broom-sticks, on their
missions of evi. Castles of flames, where the Devil holds
wild revel; conclaves of corpses revivified by evil
knowledge; unearthly growths, vitalized by hanged men's
souls, springing to fife beneath gallows and gibbets;
little men of the hiBs^ malicious spirits, with their caps
of mist and cloaks of invisibility; in these may be seen
the meeting of tte Heathen and Christian stories, and the
origins of that terrible belief in magic, and its train of
terror and death, which is one of the darkest mysteries of
the Middle Ages.
Witchcraft was at first derided as a delusion by men of
sense and education, and belief in it was actually
forbidden by some of the earlier councils. It was in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that it attained
prominence, helped greatly thereto by the fact that magic,
sorcery and witchcraft had now become a crime in the eyes
of the Church —a crime punishable by confiscation and
death. It may be truly said that the Holy Fathers and
Inquisitors first systematised and formulated Black Magic.
Under such authority, belief in it flourished, filling the
people with either an abject fear or unholy curiosity.
The motives for laying the charge of sorcery and
witchcraft at a person's door were, of course, many
besides that of care for the soul; for personal feuds,
political enmities, religious differences and treasury
needs found in this an unfailing and sure means of
achieving their infamous ends. However this might be, the
charges were hurled at high and low, and death thereby
reaped a plentiful harvest.
The famous Council of Constance began the years of terror
with its proscription of the doctrines of Wyclif and the
burning of John Huss and Jerome of Prague. At this time,
too, a work was published by one of the Inquisitors,
called the Formicariunt, a comprehensive list of the sins
against religion and in the fifth volume an exhaustive
account was given of that of sorcery. The list of crimes
accomplished by witches is detailed, such as second sight,
ability to read secrets and foretell events ; power to
cause diseases, death by lightning and destructive storms;
to transform themselves into beasts and birds; to bring
about illicit love, barrenness of living beings and crops;
their emnity against children and practice of devouring
them.
Papal bulls appeared for the appointment of Inquisitors,
who must not be interfered with by the civil authorities,
and the Emperor and reigning princes took such under their
protection. The persecutions rose to a ferocity
unparal-lelled in other countries, till the following
century, and hundreds were burned in the space of a few
years. Two Inquisitors of this time, Jacob Sprenger, and
Henricus Institor, compiled the famous Malleus Maleficarum,
a complete system of witchcraft, also a perfect method of
proving the innocent capable and guilty of any and every
crime. Yet it was meant partly as an apology—a pointing
out of the necessity for the extermination of such a horde
of evil-doers. At this time, too, appeared the bull of
Pope Innocent VIII., another comprehensive method and
process for trials and tortures.
These persecutions were intermittent throughout the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, breaking out again with
renewed vigour in the seventeenth century. It was
stimulated in this by the increasing strife between
Catholics and Protestants and the condition of the
country, devastated by wars, plague and famine, was an
ever-ready and fruitful source of charges that might be
brought against sorcery. Two cities, Bamberg and Wiirzburg
attained an unenviable fame for sanguinary trials and
number of victims. In the first-named city, Prince-Bishop
George II., and his suffragan, Frederic Forner, prosecuted
the holy inquisition with such energy that between the
years 1625 and 1630 nine hundred trials took place, six
hundred people being burned. Confessions of whatever the
holy fathers wished, were wrung from the victims under
extreme and merciless torture. Rich and poor, learned and
ignorant, were gathered into the toils, the number often
being so great that names were never taken and written
down, the prisoners being cited as No. i, 2, 3, and so on.
At Wurzburg, Lutheranism was gaining ground, and here
again the charge of sorcery was brought against its
followers. The bishop, Philip Adolph, who came to the see
in 1623, did not dare to openly prosecute them, so took
this means of punishing those unfaithful to the Church. In
Hauber's Bibliotheca Magica may be found a list of
twenty-nine burnings, covering a short period prior to
1629. Each burning consisted of several victims, the
numbers ranging from two up to ten or more. It is a
strange procession we see here, winding their way to death
through the flames and bitter smoke, a procession pathetic
and terrible. Old men and women, little girls and boys and
infants, all emissaries of the Evil One; noble ladies and
washerwomen ; vicars, canons, singers and minstrels ;
Bannach, a senator, " the fattest citizen in Wurzburg " ;
a very rich man, a keeper of the pot-house, the bishop's
own nephew and page, " the most beautiful girl in Wurzburg,"
a huckster, a blind girl, living beings beside the
decapitated dead—the procession is endless as the
conditions were various.
Strangely, it was at Wurzburg, in 1749, that the last
trial for witchcraft took place, that of Maiia Renata, of
the Convent of Unterzell. She was condemned on all the old
charges, of consorting with the Devil, bewitchments and
other infernal practices, and burned there in the month of
June, the last victim of cruel superstition.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, disbelief in
the truth of witchcraft and criticism of the wholesale
burnings began to be heard, though earlier than this, some
had dared to lift their voices against the injustice and
ignorance of it all. Cornelius Saos, a priest in Mainz,
had, before 1593, stated his doubt of the whole
proceedings, but suffered for his temerity. Johannes Wier,
physician to the Duke of Cleves, Thomas Erast, another
physician, Adam Tanner, a Bavarian Jesuit, and last, but
not least, Frederick Spree, also a Jesuit, who, more than
all helped to end the reign of terror and superstition.
Alchemy, the forerunner of modern chemistry, belonged in
those days to the realm of magic, and was therefore
Satanic in its derivation, and its followers liable to the
charge of sorcery and the penalty of death. In this
fraternity we find emperors and princes, often devoted to
the study themselves, or taking into their service
well-known practisers of the art, as when Joachim I. had
Johannes Trithemius as teacher of astrology and ''
defender of magic," and the Emperor Rudolph employing
Michael Maier as his physician.
Germany supplies a long roll of names famous for their
discoveries made in the name of magic, men who by their
seaich for knowledge and truth laid themselves open to
much terrible suspicion. Here we find Paracelsus,—that
inexplicable figure who in his search for the Elixir of
Life discovered laudanum, perhaps in some magical
distillation of black poppies at midnight hour; the great
Cornelius Agrippa; Basil Valentine, prior and chemist;
Henry Kuhfirath, physician and philosopher, and a train of
students, all tirelessly searching for the elusive
mysteries of life, the innermost secrets of nature.
These men were awesome figures to the ignorant mind.
Popular imagination was ever busy weaving strange tales
about their doings, such as infernal dealings and pacts
with the Devil. Such knowledge as the alchemists gained
could only be acquired by infernal means, and the soul of
the magician was often the price promised and inexorably
demanded by the Evil One. These myths and imaginings
centred themselves about one magician especially, and in
the Faust legend we may find embalmed the general attitude
and belief of the Middle Ages towards learning and any
attempt to extend the realm of knowledge.
The Alchemists were also mystics as their writings
abundantly testify, but most notable of all in this
department of occultism was Jacob Bohme, the son of
peasants, the inspired shoemaker.
During the Thirty Years' War many wild preachers, seers
and fanatics appeared, exhorting and prophesying. No doubt
the condition of the country contributed towards producing
these states of hallucination and hysteria, and in
contrast to the terror, misfortune and sorrow on all sides
we have accounts of ecstatics absorbed in supernatural
visions. Anna Fleischer of Freiburg was such an one, as
was Christiana Poniatowitzsch, who journeying throughout
Bohemia and Germany related her visions and prophesied. At
the end of the seventeenth century the old tenets of magic
were undergoing a gradual change. Alchemy began to
separate itself from them, and became merged in the
science of chemistry. The residue of the magical beliefs
formed their protagonists in members of all kinds of
secret societies, many of which were founded on those of
the Middle Ages. Freemasonry—whose beginnings are
attributed by some to a certain guild of masons banded
together for the building of Strasburg Cathedral, but by
other authorities to Rosicrucianism—formed the basis and
pattern for many other secret societies.
In the eighteenth century these flourished exceedingly.
Occultism became rampant. We hear of Frederick William
working with Steinert in a house specially built for
evocations ; of Schroepfer, proprietor of a cafe with his
nwgic punch and circles for raising the spirits of the
dead ; of Lavater with two spirits at his command ; of the
Mopses, a society whose rites of initiation were those of
the Templars and Witches' Sabbath in a mild and civilized
form ; and of Carl Sand, the mystical fanatic who killed
Kotzebue.
The Illuminati, whose teachings, spreading to France, did
so much towards bringing about the many violent changes
there, were banded together as a society by Adam Weishaupt
and fostered by Baron voa Knigge, a student of occultism.
The object of this society is said to have originally been
that of circumventing the Jesuits, but in its development
it absorbed mysticism and supernaturalism, finally
becoming political and revolutionary as it applied its
philosophies to civil and religious life. Though it was
disbanded and broken up in 1784 its influence was
incalculable and widespread in its effects for long
afterwards.
Many other names occur, coming under the category of
mysticism : Jiing Stilling, seer, prophet and healer ;
Anton Mesmer, the discoverer and apostle of animal
magnetism; the Marquis de Puysegur, magnetist and
spiritualist; Madame von Krudener, preacher of peace and
clemency to monarchs and princes; Zschokke the mystical
seer, and Dr. Justinus Kerner, believer in magnetism and
historian of those two famous cases of possession and
mediumship, the •' Maid of Orlach " and the " Seeress of
Prevorst."
Early in the nineteenth century occurred the remarkable
cures said to be affected by Prince Hohenlohe, a dignitary
of the Church. He was led to believe in the power of
healing through the influence of a peasant named Martin
Michel. Most of these cures took place at Wiirzburg, the
scenes of former sanguinary witch-burnings, and it is said
that upwards of four hundred people, deaf, dumb, blind and
paralytic were cured by the power of fervent prayer.
About this time also occurred the famous case of "
stigmata " in the person of the ecstatic, Katherine
Emerick, the nun of Dulmen. The remarkable features were
the appearance of a bloody cross encircling the head;
marks of wounds in hands, feet and side, and crosses on
the breast, with frequent bleedings therefrom. This
persisted for many years and the case is mentioned by
several notable men of the time.
In nineteenth century Occultism we find, as in the earlier
periods, stories of hauntings and doings of mischievous
sprites existing beside learned disquisitions by educated
men; as that on the " fourth dimension in space " by
Zollner in his Transcendental Physics, and another on the
luminous emanations from material objects in Baron von
Reichenbach's treatise on the Od or Odylic Force; thus
betraying an unmistakeable likeness to its precursor, the
magic of the Middle Ages.
Spiritualism. The movement of modern spiritualism, which
left such a deep impress on America, France and England,
affected Germany in a much less degree. But it would be
indeed surprising if the country which gave so great
attention to magnetism, wherein somnambules and
clairvoyants were so plentiful, the country of seers and
mystics, did not interest itself in the wide-spread
phenomena of spiritualism. And investigators there were in
Germany, though we have no record of any in the period
immediately following the Rochester Rappings. Fichte
declared for the facts of spiritualism; Hartmann, also,
the author of the Philosophy of the Unconscious, desired
to give the phenomena a definite place in philosophy. Carl
du Prel, in his Philosophy of Mysticism, points to
spiritualistic manifestations as evidence of a
subconscious region in the human mind. Du Prel also
founded a monthly magazine, The Sphinx, devoted to the
interests of spiritualism, and Aksakoff, the well-known
Russian spiritualist, published the results of his
researches in Germany, and in the German language, because
he was not permitted to publish them in Russian. Another
philosophic exponent of the spiritualistic doctrine was
Baron Hellenbach, who founded on its tenets a distinct
hypothesis of his own— namely, that no change of world, or
•' sphere," occurs at birth or death, but merely a change
in the mode of perception. So much for the philosophical
attitude towards the phenomena. The popular view-point was
doubtless more influenced by the performances of the
mediums who from time to time found their way to Germany.
The most important of these was Henry Slade, who sought
refuge in that country from his English persecutors. His
remarkable manifestations in Germany, under the
observation of Zollner the astronomer, left nothing to be
desired from a spiritualistic point of view.
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