Magic and Witchcraft

Description

Magic and Witchcraft

For a grand error, and such alone can at any time essentially affect the opinions of mankind in
general, is ever the imitation or caricature of some grand truth. From one soil spring originally
the tree which yields good fruit and the plant which[Pg iv] distils deadly poison. The very
discernment of the causes of error is a step towards the discovery of its opposite. The
bewilderments of the mind of man, when fully analysed, afford a clue to the course of its
movements from the right track, or at least enable us to detect the point at which began the
original separation between Truth and Error. Alchemy led, by no very circuitous route, to the
science of chemistry; the adoption of false gods by the majority of the human race rendered
necessary the dispensations of the Jewish and Christian schemes; and the corruption of true
reverence for the Good, the Beautiful, and the Holy, was the parent of those arts, which, under
the several appellations of Magic, Witchcraft, Sorcery, etc., drew their professors at first and the
multitude afterwards to put faith in the evil, the deformed, and the impure. Magic and Witchcraft
are little more than the religious instincts of mankind, first inverted, then polluted, and finally,
like all corrupted matter, impregnated with the germs of a corrupt vitality.