Chapter Five
Magic is
Demon Power
Doctrinal considerations
Magic is Lucifer’s attempt to imitate the power of God to work miracles. More subtly and more dangerously, it is his attempt to imitate and thereby replace the Sacraments of the Church. St. Justin Martyr, in his First Apology, addressed to the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius, says:
‘After Christ’s Ascension into heaven, the devils put forward certain men who said that they themselves were gods; and they were not only not persecuted by you but even deemed worthy of honors. There was a Samaritan, Simon, a native of a village called Gitto, who in the reign of Claudius Caesar, and in our royal city of Rome, did mighty works of magic, by virtue of the art of the devils operating in him. He was considered a god, and as a god was honored by you with a statue, which statue was erected on the river Tiber, between the two bridges, and bore this inscription, in the language of Rome: “Simoni Deo Sancto” (To Simon the holy god). And almost all the Samaritans, and a few even of other nations, worship him, and acknowledge him as the first god; and a woman, Helena, who went about with him at that time, and had formerly been a prostitute, they say is the first idea generated by him. …’
St. Justin is here showing Simon to have been both a magician, working by devils, and a Gnostic, for the Gnostics, besides being magicians intent upon destroying the doctrine of creation as narrated in Genesis One, were obsessed with generational genealogies, or adaptations of the pagan theogonies – not unlike what both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien do in their popular works of fiction. One wonders just how fictional the fantasies were in the minds of these authors, especially Lewis who defends both his Narnia for grown-ups, his space trilogy, and his Narnian Chronicles for children, with long philosophical disquisitions.
But more of Lewis and Tolkien later. For now it is important to note that the great heresy of Gnosticism, really a false religion, besides being a huge frontal attack on the doctrine of’ Creation and the nature of God as Trinity, also claimed to have superior knowledge from which flowed the magical powers of their Magicians. These three tenets of the Gnostic religion are found in the Fantasy literature, most explicitly in the works of Lewis and Tolkien, but also in many others as will be illustrated later.
Saint Irenaeus also has much to say of Simon the Magician whom be calls “the father of all heretics” insisting more than once that “all these heretics, taking their rise from Simon, have introduced impious and irreligious doctrines into this life” that is of the world and the Church. St. Irenaeus explains how Simon approached St. Peter :
‘This Simon, then – who feigned faith, supposing that the Apostles themselves performed their cures by the art of magic, and not by the power of God; and with respect to their filling with the Holy Ghost, through the imposition of hands, those that believed in God through Him who was preached by them, namely, Christ Jesus – suspecting that even this was done by a kind of greater knowledge of magic, and offering money to the Apostles, thought he, too, might receive this power of bestowing the Holy Spirit on whomsoever he would – was addressed in these words by Peter: “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God can be purchased with money: thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter, for thy heart is not right in the sight of God; for I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.” He, then, not putting faith in God a whit the more, set himself eagerly to contend against the Apostles, in order that he himself might seem to be a wonderful being, and applied himself with still greater zeal to the study of the whole magic art, that he might the better bewilder and overpower multitudes of men.… and he taught that it was himself who appeared among the Jєωs as the Son, but descended in Samaria as the Father, while he came to other nations in the character of the Holy Spirit. He represented himself, in a word, as being the loftiest of all powers, that is, the Being who is the Father over all, and he allowed himself to be called by whatsoever title men were pleased to address him.’
Here in Simon the Magician we see, at least in germ, that attack upon the Most Blessed Trinity and Unity of God so fiercely defended by the early Fathers against these early heretics. For Simon was followed by Menander, also a Samaritan, who deceived many by his magical art and also by Marcion, a man of Pontus, who, by the aid of devils, persuaded many to believe in some other god greater than the Creator of Genesis One.
The entire ideology underlying all modern Fantasy literature is summed up by St. Irenaeus in these words:
‘These men falsify the oracles of God, and prove themselves evil interpreters of the good word of Revelation. They also overthrow the faith of many, by drawing them away, under pretence of superior knowledge, from Him Who founded and adorned the universe; as if, forsooth, they had something more excellent and sublime to reveal than God Who created the heaven and the earth, and all things that are therein.’ (Preface, Book I)
Today’s Modernists as well as the fabricators of fantasies, subject Divine Revelation (Scripture and Tradition) to what they esteem as the higher “superior knowledge” of the human sciences. They thus label themselves Neo-Gnostics.
Another aspect of Gnosticism is its emphasis upon genealogies. As St. Irenaeus notes:
‘… certain men have set the truth aside, and bring in lying words and vain genealogies, which, as the Apostle says, “minister questions rather than godly edifying which is in faith,” and by means of their craftily constructed plausibilities, draw away the minds of the inexperienced and take them captive. …’ (Preface, I)
The genealogies of the ancient Gnostics were elaborate amplifications of the old Greek and barbarian theogonies. Today’s Gnostics, the Evolutionists, radical atheists that they are, have seen fit to construct a new genealogy – that of molecule to man, emphasizing especially the progress of ape-primate to man. There is not a Fantasy tale today that fails to incorporate, in some way or another, this grand myth of evolution – a kind of perverse reversal of the ancient theogonies wherein man comes down from the gods rather than coming up from the animals. And in all of the Fantasy tales of the moderns, there is the disciple of Simon the Magician, from Merlyn of Arthurian legend to Shakespeare’s Prospero, Tolkien’s Gandalf and Harry Potter’s Professor Dumbledore.
Finally, it would be well to emphasize the difference between the miracles worked by God through His Saints and good Angels and the magical arts of the demons working through magicians, witches, sorcerers, etc.
St. Thomas insists that real miracles are the work of God alone, that “God alone can work miracles.” But it seems that God can delegate certain powers to the good Angels:
‘Some Angels are said to work miracles, either because God works miracles at their request, in the same way as holy men are said to work miracles, or because they exercise a kind of ministry in the miracles which take place; as in collecting the dust in the general resurrection, or by doing something of that kind.’
The demons, like the good angels, because of their superior natural knowledge of created laws and causes, may do works that seem to us miraculous because we do not know the causes or the laws being manipulated. St. Thomas says: “These things are called miracles, not in an absolute sense, but in reference to ourselves. In this way the magicians work miracles through the demons.…”
Werewolves
Moses and Aaron worked their miracles by God’s power and this is why Aaron’s rod devoured those of the Pharaoh’s magicians. But when the magicians tried to produce the flies as Aaron’s rod had done, they could not and were forced to admit that the Finger of God did the miracles of Moses and Aaron (Exodus 8:19), that is, they were real miracles worked by God whereas the enchantments of the magicians were done by demons with God’s permission.
St. Thomas explains that the enchantments of Pharaoh’s magicians were transformations that could be produced by certain natural powers that the demons could manipulate. There seem to be two classes of phenomena here:
(1) Those transmutations or transformations that actually occur in the physical material of the flesh, as in the operations of the Brazilian healer, Arigo, and:
(2) Those transformations that occur primarily in the imagination or perception of the mind. The Malleus Maleficarum has a long article on this very subject of which I will give the most salient conclusions:
‘… the devil can deceive the human fancy so that a man really seems to be an animal. … Therefore the devil can, by moving the inner perceptions and humors effect changes in the actions and faculties, physical, mental, and emotional, working by means of any physical organs whatsoever. … William of Paris tells of a certain man who thought that he was turned into a wolf ... which went about devouring children; and though the devil, having possessed a wolf, was really doing this, he erroneously thought that he was prowling about in his sleep. And he was for so long thus out of his senses that he was at last found lying in the wood raving. The devil delights in such things and caused the illusion of the pagans who believed that men and old women were changed into beasts. …’ (First Part, Question 10)
At the same time, we cannot underestimate the power of the devil over the secret workings of nature. As Fr Valentine Long says, the Devils are instant scientists, since, by their superior knowledge, they can see into the minutest processes of corporeal things. Who can fail to realize, with mounting horror, the demonic inspiration of the modern scientists who with truly diabolical irreverence, and the most brutal arrogance, probe the very genetic structure of the human cell and seek to manipulate its activities to inhuman ends. For it may well be asked: Did God ever intend for us to see into the deepest recesses of our bodies and to know how they work in order to bend their actions to human and even bestial purposes? Certainly not.
The power of the devils to effect these illusory transformations is borne out abundantly in the lives of the Saints who were tormented and tried by devils in various physical forms: as Angels of light or as horrifying animals. And we might well ask: if the good angels can take on human forms, as did the Archangel Raphael to guide the young Tobias, could not the demons, also, take on material forms in order to work their evil designs, as far as God permits?
In the Fantasy literature, Magicians who, as St. Thomas says, work their “miracles” through the demons, exercise magical powers. And the Malleus, speaking of Witches, tells us even more emphatically those effects of magic:
‘… cannot be procured without resort to the power of the devil, and it is necessary that there should be made a contract with the devil, by which contract the witch truly and actually binds herself to be the servant of the devil and devotes herself to the devil, and this is not done in any dream or under any illusion, but she herself bodily and truly co-operates with, and conjoins herself to, the devil. For this indeed is the end of all witchcraft, whether it be the casting of spells by a look or by a formula of words or by some other charm, it is all of the devil, ...’ p.7
And the Malleus, again speaking of Witches and Magicians:
‘… that the works of witches can in some way be called miraculous, in so far as they exceed human knowledge, is clear from their very nature; for they are not done naturally. It is shown also by all the Doctors, especially St. Augustine in Book 83, where he says that by magic arts many miracles are wrought similar to those miracles that are done by the servants of God. And again in the same book he says that Magicians do miracles by private contract, good Christians by public justice, and bad Christians by the signs of public justice. And all this is explained as follows.
For there is a Divine Justice in the whole universe, just as there is a public law in the State. But the virtue of any creature has to do with the universe, as that of the private individual has to do with the State, Therefore inasmuch as good Christians work miracles by Divine Justice, they are said to work them by public justice. But the Magician, since he works through a pact entered into with the devil, is said to work by private contract for the works by means of the devil, who by his natural power can do things outside the order of created nature as known to us, through the virtue of a creature unknown to us; and it will be for us a miracle, although not actually so, since he cannot work outside the order of the whole of created nature, and through all the virtues of creatures unknown to us. For in this way only God is said to work miracles...’ (p.38)
‘Magic’ in the 20th Century
These principles explain how such seemingly miraculous events as those exhibited by men like Edgar Cayce and Brazilian José Pedro de Freitas, known as Arigo, can take place. Both men were obviously Magicians in the technical sense, though the term was never applied to them. Gary North, in his book Unholy Spirits gives us in detail the story of each of these modern day Merlyns. Most important to note is that each one of them made a pact with occult powers (Gary North calls it “occult bondage”) and both men insisted they wanted to do good in the world.
Edgar Cayce (l877-l945) was born in small-town Kentucky and his story is most complex. He was a devout reader of the Bible (at age thirteen he was on his twelfth reading of the Bible in its entirety) though he belonged to no particular denomination. However, he is a prime example of the Protestant principle of private interpretation, as he attempted, in later life, to reconcile his theosophical-Gnostic beliefs with the Scriptures.
As a child, he claimed to see “little people” and at thirteen he experienced a vision of a “lady with wings” who asked him what he wanted most (like the fairy-godmother of the Fairy Tale literature). He answered that he wanted to be of service to people. She granted his wish and thus the contract with the satanic power was sealed. Cayce began immediately to demonstrate a remarkable ability: always a poor student and especially an abysmal speller, even beaten by his father for his scholastic failures, he heard the lady’s voice say, “If you can sleep a little we can help you.” (Note the pronoun “we” for these lesser devils rarely work alone). Cayce put his spelling book behind his head, dozed for a while (probably a self-induced trance, or a type of self-hypnosis) and on awaking, knew every word in the book, including the page numbers and lines. This method was repeated with every schoolbook he had and the miracle, likewise, was repeated.
This was the beginning of his real ministry of healing. In 1900, he lost his voice. It was restored by a hypnotist but only while under hypnosis. This hypnotist, Dr. A. Layne, having a previous experience to go on, put Cayce into a trance and told him to diagnose his own problem:
‘Immediately, the fateful words came forth: “Yes, we can see the body.” The voice diagnosed the problem as insufficient circulation. Layne gave a suggestion that the body cure itself. Cayce’s neck grew pink, then bright red. Twenty minutes later, it became normal again. Layne told Cayce to wake up, and when he did, his voice had returned.’
And what North adds here is of the utmost significance, for it highlights the fact of Cayce’s dependence, a willing slavery, to the satanic power.
‘This was the beginning, not only of Cayce’s diagnostic ministry, but also of a lifetime of trouble with his voice. His biographers seldom refer to the fact that throughout the remainder of his life – 45 years – Cayce had recurring voice failures. He was completely dependent upon his trance state and its circulation stimulation to return his waking voice to normal. No one could give a physiological reason for the loss of his voice. Those familiar with demon possession would immediately recognize the cause: occult bondage. Cayce could not abandon the physical “readings” once they had begun. He was trapped.’
But he was far from being a helpless victim! He willingly and emphatically embraced the most heretical of doctrines and his influence spread these demonic lies far and wide. The first to go was his belief in the Devil as a fallen Angel and Enemy of mankind. Because of this denial, he was able to claim that any good he accomplished by healing people, must and could only be from God. But from his readings, which often told of past lives, he came to accept the evil doctrine of re-incarnation. Cayce was at least in great measure responsible for the renewed modern interest in Atlantis. North says that about 30% of the life readings (all done in his trance state) dealt with the lost continent of Atlantis. Atlantis was real; it was a colony of Cainite demon worship. But Cayce saw it as an empire of beneficent powers.
North says that the doctrine of evolution is basic to Cayce’s theory of reincarnation, which posits endless incarnations to achieve some ultimate but unseen and unknown final good. Every person always has another chance, for neither Heaven nor Hell are realities. The ultimate is union with the All, the pervasive divinity that constitutes a pantheistic monism. All notion of God as a Person, much less Three Divine Persons in One Divine Nature, is denied and Christ is reduced to but one of many incarnations of the divine. Some of Cayce’s “readings” informed him that Judas Iscariot is still working out his salvation on earth! Every occult name and doctrine appears in these trance-communications of Edgar Cayce. A reading of North’s Chapter, “Edgar Cayce: From Diagnosis to Gnosis” will convince anyone that Edgar Cayce was certainly one of the most influential and complete Magicians of all times. North puts it this way:
‘As a representative of occultist philosophy, he is far more personal and believable than a Madame Blavatsky, more readable than Alice Bailey and the publications of her Lucis Trust. He shares most of the central ideas of the rival Gnostic-groups, but his work seems so human, and his modesty was so remarkable that the average middle-class humanist can hardly resist “the sleeping prophet”. They do not recognize the source of his revelations. …’
And the source of his revelations, of course, was Lucifer.
Even more spectacular is the case of Arigo, a Brazilian peasant who became, however, involved in Union politics. Again, the humanitarian motive is present. He was trapped by a voice and dream-visions which promised to cure him of terrible headaches. The voice identified itself as that of Dr. Adolpho Fritz, a German physician who had died in 1918. When Arigo capitulated to Dr. Fritz, promising to help him in his work, his headaches immediately ceased, beginning again only when he later temporarily agreed to discontinue the healings. But:
‘Like Edgar Cayce, Arigo was possessed; without becoming a healer, he could not avoid the headaches and dreams, just as Cayce could not maintain his voice. Arigo was trapped.’
When Arigo put up a sign outside his house that read: “In this house, we are all Catholics. Spiritism is a thing of the Devil,” his headaches returned, along with daytime blackouts. He had undergone exorcism by the Church in Brazil. But he could not be cured except by the pact with “Dr. Fritz” to continue his work of healing. And the healings, which continued from 1950 to 1970, are surely the most bizarre in all of occult literature.
The first occurred while Arigo still controlled the Union, as its president. A pro-labour politician [Bittencourt] was informed that he had lung cancer that required immediate surgery and he intended to return to the U.S.A. as soon as the campaign was over. He spent that night in the same hotel with Arigo. As he lay in his bed, Arigo entered his room:
‘He seemed to be in a trance. He was carrying a razor. Bittencourt blacked out. When he awoke the next morning, his pajama top was slashed, there was blood on both his chest and pajama top, and there was a neat incision on his rib cage. He got up, staggered to his closet to get dressed. He was in a state of shock. He went to Arigo and told him what he had seen. Then Arigo went into a state of shock. He had no memory of such a thing.’
Later, when x-rayed, the senator was told that all traces of the cancer were gone. He began to tell people what had happened to him, and the sick and wounded began streaming to the door of Arigo’s house. This continued for the next two decades.
Arigo’s usual method was to take a pocket knife or some other common, cutting instrument, jab it into the body of the sick person, usually the eye, twist it around violently, reach in and pull out the growth or whatever was the source of the trouble, seal up the flesh in a matter of seconds, without stitches, and send the patient away cured. There was no pain on the part of the patient, no fear, little bleeding – if there was, he would simply tell it to stop – and no scarring. These operations were witnessed by scores of physicians and even recorded on film. No one ever detected a single sign of fraud, manipulation or sleight-of-hand.
Like Cayce, but perhaps not to such an elaborated extent as to be found in the Cayce “readings,” Arigo, too, fell into heresy. North describes a contemporary movement in Brazil, Kardecism, from Alan Kardec, pseudonym of Leon Hyppolyte Denizart Revaill, a French spiritist (1803-1869), as providing a fertile environment for Arigo’s operations. Kardecism embraced such doctrines as Necromancy, Reincarnation, Plurality of Inhabited Worlds; it denied any distinction between the natural and the supernatural and thus, any need for Divine Grace; instead, there are the spirit-guides to help us. And finally, it held that although Jesus Christ is the greatest of all incarnated beings, He is but one of many.
Arigo was apparently affected by these pervasive heresies, but it is said that he wished to remain in good standing with the Catholic Church. In 1966, he openly stated: “All my family is Catholic. I am a spiritist. But, I believe that all religions take people to God.” By that time, says North, the Church and the civil authorities had ceased their efforts to stamp out his ministry. It certainly fell right in step with the ecuмenical efforts that were initiated worldwide with the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).
It was the 19th century French poet, Charles-Pierre Baudelaire who said: “The Devil’s deepest wile is to persuade us that he does not exist.” These examples of modern-day possession seem to prove that his “deepest wile” is to persuade us that he intends only our good, especially our temporal, earthly good. And this is the deceit behind the “good” Wizards and Witches of Fantasy literature.
Edgar Cayce’s diagnostic powers and visions prove that the demons can see into the body with X-ray vision and Arigo’s operations prove that they can manipulate the body’s systems in a manner that must be the supreme envy of physicians even with the highest technology available today. This power of the devils over matter also explains such phenomena as UFOs, abductions, all manner of transport, etc.
Predicting the Future
But there are still other aspects of angelic knowledge and power that come up in accounts of occult activity and re-appear in the Fantasy literature. These concern clairvoyance and knowledge of the future.
St. Thomas considers “Whether Angels Know the Future?” and the Objections are all very persuasive. In fact, they sound contemporary. For example, some men know future events; but Angels are mightier in knowledge than men… And Angels are above time, in aeviternity, therefore, the angelic mind can envision both past and future as presently evident.
St. Thomas answers these arguments first by a theological principle that to know future events is the exclusive sign of Divinity. In support he quotes Isaiah 41:23: “Show the things that are to come hereafter, and we shall know that ye are gods.” But he goes on to say that the future can be known in two ways:
(1) It can be known in its causes. Future events that proceed necessarily from their causes can be known by all. Thus, we have certain knowledge that the sun will rise tomorrow. (I would add, assuming only that if God so wills, for it is by His existential power alone that all natural laws operate.) St. Thomas continues: However, some effects proceed from their causes only in many or in most cases, that is, generally, but not necessarily and absolutely, and such contingencies as these are known only conjecturally. In this way, the doctor predicts the health or sickness of his patient.
And it is this manner of future knowledge that is conjecturally, that exists in the Angels, but by so much more than it does in us because the Angels understand the causes of things far more perfectly and more universally than we are able to do.
(2) The second way of knowing future events belongs to God alone. For God sees all things in His eternity which, being absolutely simple, that is with no parts, is present to all time and embraces all times and places.
The next article in the Summa is closely related to this one. St. Thomas asks: “Whether Angels Know Secret Thoughts?” Here, too, his answer rests on Scripture: “The heart is perverse above all things, and unsearchable: Who can know it? I am the Lord, Who search the heart.” (Jeremiah 17:9) Therefore, Angels cannot know the secrets of hearts.
Body Language
However, they are expert in reading body language. St. Thomas quotes St. Augustine: “demons sometimes with the greatest facility, learn man’s dispositions, not only when expressed in speech, but even when conceived in thought, when the soul expresses them by certain signs in the body, although it cannot be asserted how this is done.”
Reincarnation
In his Reply to Objection 3, St. Thomas gives us the theological principle that enables the demons to invent the past lives of people under hypnosis. Angels, St. Thomas says, can know corporeal things in the appetite and in the imagination of man and of animals. When man is concerned, the demons can know corporeal things in the imagination of man insofar as these are moved by the will and reason. In other words, demons can work on the imagination of a man when that man so wills. As we know, under hypnosis the will is completely given to the hypnotist who in such situations acts as a Medium or Magician. The novelist, Taylor Caldwell, admitted that she received the materials for her extraordinarily vivid historical fiction from such hypnotic states recalled. This is undoubtedly the source of the “past lives” of the reincarnationists.
Lust
Furthermore, it should be emphasized that the knowledge of the demons, as opposed to that of the good Angels, is limited to the things of nature. The demons are prevented by their state of mortal sin, from that knowledge which renders the good Angels supremely happy: the knowledge whereby they see God and all things in Him. For this reason, the demons expend all of their intellectual power and energy (which is tremendous) in probing the secrets of nature and revealing to mankind those things which are most likely to attack his Faith and bring him down to Hell by playing on his evil passions, especially the lust for power and money. It might be added, too, that sins of impurity are most useful to the demons for the fact that they weaken man’s will and reason, thus making him that much more vulnerable to the higher sins of pride, lust for power and greed. In fact, the Malleus goes so far as to state categorically that “All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable.” Much more could be said about this, especially in connection with the modern feminist movement.
The modern feminist movement is not at all unrelated to the subject of demonic powers. There is the very relevant question of Genesis 6:2-4 which raises the problem of demonic intercourse with women. Can Angels copulate with human beings? First one must decide exactly who the “Sons of God” of Genesis 6:4 were. The majority of theologians believe them to have been apostate descendants of Seth and Enos, godly sons of Adam. The sons of Cain, on the contrary, were termed “children of men.” The offspring of the impious union of the Godly with the ungodly were “giants, mighty men of old, men of renown.” The Hebrew word is Nephilim, The note in the Haydock Bible has this:
‘Some copies of the Septuagint having the angels of God [instead of Sons of God] induced some of the ancients [notably St. Justin Martyr and a doubtful work of St. Clement of Alexandria] to suppose that these spiritual beings (to whom by another mistake, they attributed a sort of aerial body) had commerce with women, as the pagans derived the heroes from a mortal and a god. But this matter, which is borrowed from the [apocryphal] book of Henoch, is quite exploded.’
St. Justin may well have been mistaken about the Nephilim, but I suggest he was right on track about the heroes of paganism. Speaking of these children of the demonic intercourse, he says:
‘... they afterwards subdued the human race to themselves, partly by magical writings, and partly by fears and the punishments they occasioned, and partly by teaching them to offer sacrifices, and incense, and libations, of which things they stood in need after they were enslaved by lustful passions; and among men they sowed murders, wars, adulteries, intemperate deeds, and all wickedness. Whence also the poets and mythologists, not knowing that it was the angels and these demons who had been begotten by them that did these thing to men, and women, and cities, and nations, which they related, ascribed them to God Himself, and to those who were accounted to be His very offspring, and to the offspring of those who were called his brothers, Neptune and Pluto, and to the children again of these their offspring. For whatever name each of the angels had given to himself and his children, by that name they called them.
Surely this is as good as any other account to be given of the origin of the Greek and earlier gods and goddesses.
But as to the possibility or impossibility of fallen angels having intercourse with women, St. Thomas says that while the bodies assumed by angelic spirits for purposes of communicating with human beings are real bodies, the angels cannot exercise the functions of a living body because their nature is entirely spiritual; it does not, therefore, exercise the functions of a physical body by assuming its form to its own form, for such would be impossible, as spirit and matter cannot merge into one form. But the assumed bodily form is moved accidentally by the angelic form. In Summa I, St Thomas quotes St. Augustine and includes his own solution to the problem:
‘As Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xv.): Many persons affirm that they have had the experience, or have heard from such as have experienced it, that the Satyrs and Fauns, whom this common folk call incubi, have often presented themselves before women, and have sought and procured intercourse with them. Hence it is folly to deny it. But God’s holy angels could not fall in such fashion before the deluge. Hence by the Sons of God are to be understood the sons of Seth, who were good, while by the daughters of men the Scripture designates those who sprang from the race of Cain. Nor is it to be wondered at that giants should be born of them, for they were not all giants, albeit there were many more before than after the deluge.’ (Question 51, article 3 and Reply to Objection 6)
St. Thomas continues:
‘Still if some are occasionally begotten from demons, it is not from the seed of such demons, nor from their assumed bodies, but from the seed of men, taken for the purpose; as when the demon assumes first the form of a woman, and afterwards that of a man; just as they take the seed of other things for other generating purposes, as Augustine says (De Trin. Iii.), so that the person born is not the child of a demon, but of a man.’
The Malleus, after discussing the whole subject in great detail, concludes:
‘… when it is said that devils cannot give life, because that flows formally from the soul, it is true; but materially life springs from the semen, and an Incubus devil can, with God’s permission, accomplish this by coition. And the semen does not so much spring from him, as it is another man’s semen received by him for this purpose ... For the devil is Succubus to a man, and becomes Incubus to a woman,
Now it may be asked, of whom is a child so born the son? It is clear that he is not the son of the devil, but of the man whose semen was received. But when it is urged that, just as in the works of Nature, so there is no superfluity in the works of angels, that is granted; but when it is inferred that the devil can receive and inject the semen invisibly, this also is true; but he prefers to perform this visibly as a Succubus and an Incubus, that by such filthiness he may infect body and soul of all humanity, that is, of both woman and man, there being, as it were, actual bodily contact. ... ‘ (p. 26)
Therefore we make three propositions. First, that the foulest venereal acts are performed by such devils, not for the sake of delectation, but for the pollution of the souls and bodies of those to whom they act as Succubi and Incubi. Second, that through such action complete conception and generation by women can take place, inasmuch as they can deposit human semen in the suitable place of a woman’s womb where there is already a corresponding substance. In the same way they can also collect the seeds of other things for the working of other effects. Third, that in the begetting of such children only the local motion is to be attributed to devils, and not the actual begetting, which arises not from the power of the devil or of the body which he assumes, but from the virtue of him whose semen it was; wherefore the child is the son not of the devil, but of some man.’
Unnatural Reproduction
Who can fail to see, with horror, that this is precisely what is happening in the reproductive technology of in vitro fertilization, cloning, surrogate motherhood, artificial insemination, and who knows what other diabolical activities that go on in the so-called fertility clinics? Here the physicians are the medium-Magicians who perform their sorceries with the help of invisible but nonetheless real demons.
The Catholic Mind
The legendary Merlyn, tutor of King Arthur, was said by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century, repeating what Nennius had said in the 9th, to have been the son of a Devil and a virtuous maiden. This alone, to the medieva1 mind, could account for his magical powers. The point is that the medieval mind, being Catholic, clearly recognized the demonic source of all magical powers, for there are only two sources of events that take place above or outside the ordinary workings of nature: the miracles worked by God through His Saints and His good Angels, and the “signs and wonders” worked by Lucifer and his Devils through mediums such as Magicians, Witches, Wizards, Sorcerers, etc. We have already named two of these Magicians in modern times, real ones, not fictional: Edgar Cayce and Arigo. There are many, many more. Those that occur in fiction, especially that of Fantasy literature, most of which is targeted at children, are representative of the diabolical reality that goes unnamed and for the most part, unbelieved.
Clairvoyants
There may be a third source for preternatural powers and events, entirely natural but quite unusual. Some people, mostly women, have a gift of clairvoyance or premonition of imminent events. Alois Wiesinger, O.C.S.O., in his book Occult Phenomena In the Light of Theology explains such powers as vestiges of the State of Innocence in certain gifted individuals. But all hinges on the purpose of the agent, angelic, demonic or human. And outside of an evident pact or contract with occult powers, such as are evident in the cases of Edgar Cayce and Arigo, only God can judge the ultimate source of unusual and seemingly miraculous powers.
The Good Witch
Even as late as Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (written 1470, published 1485), Merlyn is a rather sorry figure and definitely the son of a demon. But in 1946, British novelist and scholar C. S. Lewis published the final volume of his space trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. He brings Merlyn back to life after fifteen hundred years as a very earthy Druid who several times vehemently denies the demonic fatherhood that has been attributed to him over the centuries. Lewis calls him Merlinus Ambrosius, thereby indicating that his real father was King Arthur’s Uncle Ambrosius. In 1968-1970, British novelist Mary Stewart published her Arthurian trilogy, The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills and The Last Enchantment wherein she makes Merlyn the main character. Here, too, he is the son of Ambrosius and his magical powers have their source in his own remarkable humanity ennobled by royalty.
All of which adds, in an incalculable way, to the Luciferian deceit of “good” magic, of “good” Magicians and “good” Witches. The real source of magical power is more and more concealed and disguised, both in reality and in fiction, as Lucifer, by means of heretical Theosophy and Neo-Gnosticism, continues to attack the Faith of Catholics and gain more and more souls for Hell.
I will keep the chapter on J. J. Tolkien for the next posting.