RELIGION AND THE DECLINE OF MAGIC, Keith Thomas, Penguin,
Harmondsworth, 1988 (1971)

Chapter One, "The Environment" (pp. 3-24), sets the scene in
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England, several times comparing
it to the developing countries in the Twentieth Century. There are
the high mortality rates, few doctors, little medical knowledge,
widespread disease, poor diet, great extremes of wealth and poverty,
dangers of fire, high consumption of alcohol, the introduction of
tea, coffee and tobacco and the prevalence of gambling.

Chapter Two, "The Magic of the Medieval Church" (pp. 27-57), states
that all primitive religion, including early Christianity, includes
the expectation of providing magical assistance. Saints were said to
be interceding only and such intercessions, thus, not guarantees.
There were holy relics, images, shrines, pilgrimages, a celibate
priesthood, sacraments, the mass, public processions in hard times,
such as during plagues and draughts. There is the Church's
encouragement of prayers or charms in obtaining herbs.

   The rural magicians of Tudor England did not invent their own
   charms; they inherited them from the medieval Church, and their
   formulae and rituals were largely derivative products of
   centuries of Catholic teaching. For, in addition to the prayers
   officially countenanced, there was a large undergrowth of
   semi-Christian charms which drew heavily on ecclesiastical
   formulae. p. 48

It is noted that many aspects of paganism (specific holy days and
sacred sites, for example) had been taken over by the Christian
Church.

Chapter Three, "The Impact of the Reformation" (pp. 58-89), notes
the opposition of Protestants to the magical aspects of Catholicism.
There were some differences among the various Protestant sects as to
how completely to toss out Catholic practises. Yet, the conditions
of life described in the first chapter continued to support
attitudes and practises of hopeful magical assistance.

Chapter Four, "Providence" (pp. 90-132), begins with Christian,
especially Protestant, denial of chance. Misfortune was understood
either as a just punishment or as a test, such as Job's. Portents
there were in the form of natural disasters, such prodigious scenes
as horsemen in the sky, comets, meteors, lightning, etc.
Unfortunately, disasters were often attributed to the shortcomings
of others and served as justification for intolerant persecution of
scapegoats. Widespread was the idea that wrongdoing, especially
sacrilege, brought retributive justice, even upon the descendants of
the malefactor.

Chapter Five, "Prayer and Prophecy" (pp. 133-178), begins with the
Christian's duty to ask God for both spiritual and material benefit.
Fasting often accompanied important prayers. People prayed for
divine guidance. The practise of opening the Bible at random for
divination was not approved, but widespread. Many sects of
Protestants emerged after 1640 which went in for faith healing and
miracles. The prophetic dreams of Christian holy ones are mentioned.
Prophetic utterances of other origins are treated and noted is the
avenue of prophecy to women such as Eleanor Davis to express their
views on scripture and public affairs, more legitimate opportunities
being restricted to men. Prophecy also tended to attract men from
the lower end of the social scale, including illiterates, likewise
excluded from more normal means of expounding scripture.

Chapter Six, "Religion and the People" (pp. 179-206), begins by
noting that the Church was not able to meet the needs of those
consulting wizards, that the Church reflected the class
consciousness of the outside world, that at mass the sexes were
separated and the poorer participants sat in the back, that Church
leaders were prominent figures in politics, that the Church provided
a social community which the minister could guide, soothing
disputes. Despite the legal insistence on attending mass, many poor
people stayed away. There were also those who had been
excommunicated. Many who did go seem largely to have found it a
burden and displayed disrespect in the church or afterwards.
Knowledge of Christianity, especially in remote areas, was not
extensive. Despite authoritarian efforts by Church officials,
including the burning of heretics, people did express sceptical,
worldly and atheistic views. Quite likely a sizeable proportion of
the population thought what they did not assert too outspokenly.

Chapter Seven, "Magical Healing" (pp. 209-251), begins with the
prevalance of healers, the assertions by many when accused that they
were simply using Christian prayers to cure, sometimes written out
and worn by the sick person or animal. There is the use of Hebrew
names of God, other names, the burning of a paper containing a
formula. There was examination of a sick person's belt or girdle to
determine the influence of fairies, other uses of the belt or
girdle, boiling of urine, use of herbs and the existence within
contemporary medicine of many characteristics and practises (such as
correspondences, salving weapons, etc.) today considered
unscientific.

The king's touch (for scrofula, likely from infected milk) and other
swellings, blisters, tumours, etc. originated with Edward the
Confessor and had a ceremony drawn up at the time of Henry VII.
Edward I touched more than a thousand people a year and Charles II a
total of ninety thousand. Queen Anne was the last monarch to use the
royal touch to cure.

   This did not mean, hoever, that there was a total cessation in
   popular demand. Some people now went abroad in search of a cure
   from the exiled Stuarts, who were glad to fill the vacuum created
   by the scruples of the Hanoverians and their advisers. At home
   there was still a brisk traffic in the touch pieces given to the
   sufferer at the royal ceremony, and subsequently worn round the
   neck as a souvenir or a protective amulet. An eighteenth-century
   cunning man in Yorkshire is known to have prescribed as a cure
   for the King's Evil a glass of water in which thirteen King
   Charles I farthings had been previously boiled. At Ashburnham,
   Kent, a relic of Charles I was preserved in the church and
   visited by sufferers from scrofula as late as 1860. p. 229

The royal touch until Mary's reign, inclusive, was also held to cure
epilepsy. Others claimed to cure by touch, but faced prosecution as
witches. Seventh sons were believed able to heal by touch. The Irish
healer Greatrakes is introduced. Placebos are considered and the
factor of belief in effecting cures.

Chapter Eight, "Cunning Men and Popular Magic" (pp. 252-300), begins
with the retrieval of lost or stolen articles. There were various
simple methods (sieve and shears, key and book, paper in clay in
water, etc.) to identify which of a list of suspects had stolen an
object. Mention is made of medieval methods of ascertaining guilt,
ordeal by trial, though sometimes the trial was very easy to do,
except for the psychological strain. Discussed is natural philosophy
and the three kinds of magic:

   natural magic, concerned to exploit the occult properties of the
   elemental world; celestial magic, involving the influence of the
   stars; and ceremonial magic, an appeal for aid to spiritual
   beings. p. 265

Correspondences, the basis of palmistry, of reading faces, of the
specific medicinal focus of different herbs, of astrology, etc., are
mentioned. The intellectual contributions of such thinkers as Ficino
della Mirandola, Agrippa and Paracelsus are mentioned. England's
John Dee and Robert Fludd are presented, as well as the Continent's
Casaubon advancing in 1614 chronological awareness of the relatively
recent dating of Hermetic manuscripts, i.e. that they are C.E., not
B.C.E. products. By the mid Seventeenth Century, English scholars
were beginning to perceive reality from mechanistic rather than from
animistic viewpoints. The point is made that village wizards drew
their practise largely from oral tradition that went back centuries,
that these magicians were largely independent of the intellectual
magicians and their writings, though some Sixteenth Century
intellectuals had seriously investigated popular magic, seeking to
understand its principles.

Books were used in ritual magic, the summoning of spirits. Metal
sigils there were to help gamblers, those seeking romance and
political success.

   Other sigils brought immunity in battle, made their wearer
   invisible, kept off vermin and gave protection against
   lightning; and there was magic to put out fires, make children
   sleep and avoid drunkenness. p. 275

Besides such sigils and charms, magic users dealt in aphrodisiacs,
the location of missing persons, and finding buried treasure. There
is reference to books, with diagrams, on palmistry and the reading
of faces, to texts calculating the numerical value of personal names
or the results of tosses of dice. Some divined from frogs croaking,
others from heated grain and still others from tossing coffee
grounds. Mention is made of the diviners role in confirming a
client's already decided upon course of action. A wizard could have
general knowledge of a community, could obtain specific knowledge
about clients, including by listening to waiting room chatter, could
even perform the functions of a panderer to foster predictions.
Wizards were numerous, perhaps at least one to a village,
notwithstanding some harsh laws against the use of magic. However,
the law seems usually to have been applied only in cases of harmful
or black magic. Many cunning folk did so on a part time basis being
employed, often in trades.

Chapter Nine, "Magic and Religion" (pp. 301-332), begins with the
opposition of the Church to magic from the early history of the
Church down the centuries. There is the fundamentalist
identification of all supernatural manifestations not attributed to
God as the handiwork of Satan. Hence, even beneficial healing, etc.
was perceived as demonic, though in practise ecclesiastical courts
did not trouble much with white magic. Church courts also had
relatively mild penalties for those who failed to produce the
required four to eight witnesses of their innocence.

   Clad in a white sheet, carrying a wand, and placarded with the
   details of his offence, the hapless sorcerer was undoubtedly
   subjected to a great deal of public humiliation, a penalty which
   was felt even more keenly in the tightly knit society of those
   days than it would be now. But in the process he was getting a
   good deal of free advertisement, and when it was all over he
   might well resume his practice. p. 313

The ordinary people perceived the goodness there was in beneficial
magic, whatever the efforts of clergymen, apt to see cunning men
and women as competitors. Of course, some of the clergy were
interested in magic or felt it quite acceptable to consult wizards
when church property was stolen. Many, especially mainstream
Protestants, opposed magic. Catholic clergy with their own Church
magic were apt to oppose the rival magician energetically. Mystical
sects of Protestantism provided some soil for qabalism and
Hermeticism. Eventually, Protestant concepts of hard work and
natural, rather than praeter-natural, efficacy altered the
intellectual environment and magic declined.

Chapter Ten, "Astrology: Its Practice and Extent" (pp. 335-382),
begins with the intellectually absorbing nature of the subject, its
division into four main branches (general predictions, nativities,
elections or propitious times for making significant choices and
horaries or answering any question on the basis of the time it was
asked) and the great sparsity of English written astrological
material in the hundred and fifty years or more preceeding John Dee,
although English astrologers had been writing in the Middle Ages. A
number of prominent Englishmen and their astrologers are named. The
almanacs, more popular than the Bible, are discussed. Popular
beliefs in lucky and unlucky days, in the beneficial influence of
the waxing moon and the superstitious reactions to the solar eclipse
of March 29, 1652 are outlined.

There are the attributions of astrologers to royal courts back into
Anglo-Saxon times, private practice from the Fifteenth Century, John
Dee, widespread practice throughout the country, the significance of
London, the Society of Astrologers, in existence with more than
forty members in 1649, "a full decade before the formation of the
Royal Society" (p. 361) and the importance of William Lilly (1602 to
1681) and his circle. Lilly's casebooks and those of Simon Forman
(1552-1611), John Booker (1603-1667) evidence at one to two thousand
consultations a year each, generally on retrieving missing items,
persons (including some escaped from jail) and ships.

   The notebooks of Lilly and his colleagues contain the names of
   scores of ships inquired after by their owners, or by relatives
   of the crew. The astrologers chose appropriate days for launching
   a ship or beginning a voyage, and gave advice to many sailors
   pondering the dangers of an ocean voyage to Barbados, Virginia or
   Morocco. They offered reassurance to nervous passengers, worried
   about the risk of drowning, and to businessmen wondering whether
   to take shares out in a particular ship, or uneasy about the
   reasons for its delay. p. 367

Questions included many concerning business and the market, marital
prospects, some about professional opportunities, gambling, one
wondering whether she should remain chaste while her husband was
away, a number involving politics, participation in the Civil War
and the course of the war, cures from disease and even whether a
cured patient would pay his physician, possible pregnancies, sex of
expected offspring, survival of mothers from childbirth, hidden
treasures, even the philosopher's stone. The variety of social
classes from which clients came is mentioned, as well as the
financial earnings of some astrologers.

Chapter Eleven, "Astrology: Its Social and Intellectual Role" (pp.
383-424), begins with the unequalled intellectual appeal of the
all-embracing astrological system. It reminds the modern urban
reader that artificial lighting in pre-industrial times meant moving
about by torchlight and people were more conscious of the moon then.
Prevailing medical theory of excessive heat, cold, wetness or
dryness naturally connected health to the weather, also directly
influencing harvest, well-being and the stability of the state. The
heavens obviously influenced the weather. The error of astrological
predictions could be explained by the fact that it was not
predestination but probability the astrologer forecast, and other
factors, including human free will could significantly contribute to
the outcome. Ambiguous were many predictions, a feature mocked by
such satire as POOR ROBIN and Jonathan Swift's. Another factor,
allowing astrologers to take credit for unpublished predictions
prior to 1695, was the existence until then of government
censorship. So, it was asserted that many astrologers had predicted
the great fire of London, only to be censored.

God's miraculous doings, miscalculations and the provision of
clients with desired, though mathematically incorrect, results are
listed as additional reasons for unfulfilled predictions.
Astrologers also played a publicity role in political disputes,
national and international, each side having its own astrological
advocacy. There were potential dangers for astrologers active in
political disputes. The topic of the ruler's death was especially
sensitive, even illegal. Also, staying on good terms with one's
neighbours was often a healthy idea. A mob stormed Dee's residence
in 1583 in his absence, and, "John Lambs, despite the patronage of
the Duke of Buckingham and the protection of a bodyguard, was stoned
to death in a London street." p. 412

Reasons for the decline of astrology include: telescopes uncovering
unseen celestial bodies and sunspots, determination that comets are
higher than the moon and could return, hence, the distinction
between earth below and influential fixed stars above was discarded.
Some details are provided of prominent thinkers, largely in the
Seventeenth Century, and their rejection of concepts of astrological
influences on human health, etc.

Chapter Twelve, "Astrology and Religion" (pp. 425-458), begins with
the opposition of Christian clergymen to alternative explanations
for happenings deemed the consequences of divine providence. The
countering point that the stars could be seen as only a secondary
cause created by the Prime Mover was offset by theoretical
suppression of human free will by astral predetermination. However,
astrologers underlined the inclination, rather than compulsion, of
the stars and the clerical opposition received likely owed much to
the view astrologers were competitors of the clergy. Puritan clergy
were especially vociferous in denouncing astrology and a number of
these opponents of astrology are named on page 436. Most
objectionable to fundamentalist types was the assertion that
astrology could calculate a liklihood of salvation. Nevertheless,
many such Protestants during the Civil War and the Commonwealth
consulted astrologers.

   There is much additional evidence for the link between astrology
   and sectarianism. Nicholas Gretton was both astrologer and leader
   of a sectarian group. The Fifth Monarchist, John Spittlehouse,
   praised astrology as the princess of the sciences, and Lilly as
   'the prince of astrologers'. The Ranter and ex-Leveller, Laurence
   Clarkson, took up the practice of astrology in 1650; and the
   Digger, Gerrard Winstanley, recommended that the subject be
   taught in his Utopia. p. 445

Others are named on succeeding pages. These are followed by a
listing of Anglican clergymen who practised astrology and some who
consulted astrologers. There is the expressed fear from the time
that regarding the stars as providing influences upon mortals could
cause humans to begin, or to renew, the worship of the stars as
gods.

Chapter Thirteen, "Ancient Prophecies" (pp. 461-514), begins with
the images in Geoffrey of Monmouth, the pictorial prophecy,
acronyms, etc. There were many written prophecies, often alleged to
being published from an old manuscript and often attributed to, or
extracted from the authentic writings of, historical figures, long
deceased. Merlin prophecies were popular and those of Thomas Rhymer.
Specific prophecies could be republished a number of times with
altering attributions. Some were obviously of erroneous attribution,
such as the one to a Jesuit from a generation preceeding the
existence of Jesuits. Although Bacon scorned prophecies, there were
torrents of them, notwithstanding vigorous royal opposition to
political predictions, often seized on by rebellious subjects. Some
enumeration of these is provided, reign by reign. King Arthur,
Cadwalader and other sleeping heroes are examined. Edward VI is one
who was impersonated after his death.

Considered is the psychological impact of confiedent belief in
prophecies and the deliberate fabrication of prophecies for the
furtherance of political aims. Sometimes prophecies presented
ancestral approval, however spurious, for innovation. More rigorous
scholarly criticism challenged prophecies. Awareness advanced
concerning historical changes.

   Not until the later eighteenth century did English
   theatre-audiences expect actors to be dressed in period costume.
   Yet from the sixteenth century European scholars had begun to
   apply standards of historical criticism to the study of feudal
   law, and to appreciate that customs and jurisprudence were bound
   up with the society of which they formed part, and not to be
   isolated and appropriated for a different context. It was in the
   sixteenth century also that an awareness of the difference
   between present and past styles began to show itself in English
   art. In the following century John Aubrey pioneered the
   chronological study of the evolution of English medieval
   architecture. The period also saw the development of palaeography
   and allied means of precisely dating historical documents and
   identifying fogeries. p. 509

Linguistic evidence, such as the mid Seventeenth Century appearance
of the word 'anachronism' and the sparsity of proverbs emerging from
mercantile pursuits, is offered as support for the more modern
viewpoint that the ancestors could not have foreseen the quite
different conditions of their descendants.

The section on Witchcraft begins with a bibliographical note (pp.
517-518) stating the large quantity of inadequate material on the
topic, praising the scholarship of Ewen and Notestein and the value
of Briggs and Rosen.

Having already treated beneficial uses of Magic, the author here
examines believed harmful practises. He notes the additional element
of the pact with the devil. Theologians deemed witchcraft a capital
offence as heretical allegiance to God's archenemy. However, law and 
court records confirm English witches generally were tried for 
harmful activity.

The concept of familiar is stated as particularly English. An 
estimate of less than 1,000 English witches were executed between
1559 and 1736.

The concept of the devil and his powers is presented. On p. 564
ironic examples of people signing a pact to become an impressive
preacher and famed for virtue are mentioned. Possession and 
exorcism are mentioned. Clerics, even lay people, could curse
malefactors. Popular belief granted efficacy to other curses. The
abused and powerless turned to magical practitioners for such
retribution.

Other techniques (fasting, use of dolls) are discusses. Margaret
Murray's thesis of organized paganism is rejected and the point
reiterated that witches were executed not for belief, but for
causing harm. Voluntary confessions were scarce. Modern 
experience includes that of false confessions and the psychology
behind them. Rural life did not allow privacy; social conformity
was much expected.

Modern medicine understands occurrances previously attributed to
witchcraft. False accusations were deliberately made. A high 
level of proof was not considered necessary. Often denial of 
basic assistance allegedly led the one denied to act magically
against the uncharitable.

From the late 18th Century, belief in and prosecution for 
witchcraft declined. Belief in an orderly universe and in future
scientific knowledge contributed to this decline. Parliament
repealed the Witchcraft Act in 1736.

People also believed in ghosts, fairies, lucky and unlucky days
and a number of other superstitions. There were interconnections
among various magical beliefs. Scepticism can be traced back to
Classical times. Its increasing influence from the late 18th 
Century may not fully be explainable by advancing science. 

As the above demonstrates, this is a very impressive study. One 
interesting observation about the work is the author's
reiterated assertion that his subject matter has no modern value 
beyond historical interest, an assertion cast into doubt by the 
extent of the growth of New Age and Neopagan movements in the
intervening decades.

Michael McKenny September 2003 C.E. and December 3, 2007 C.E.


Solarguard Pagan



Solarguard Homepage