Often Why? Or How? Not so often Whether?Is it bad luck to
walk under a ladder? Why is it bad luck to walk under a ladder? Because the twit who is busy at the top may drop his pot of paint.
Why did that apple fall from the tree? That turned out to be a very useful question indeed.
But at the same time as Newton was feverishly working out the answer
(F= Gm1x m2)/r2
and forgetting to eat his breakfast, not far away an artist was up a ladder decorating
a parish church with the signs of the Zodiac.
What an interesting time that was, the two centuries between the accession of Henry VIII and the death of Queen Anne. England began that time Catholic and, because of Henry VIII's
soaring testosterone levels and Anne Boleyn's reluctance, ended it Protestant, while Henry, that fat old hypocrite, still prided himself on his papal title of Defender of the Faith.
Henry dissolved the hugely rich monasteries,
sold their lands and grabbed their treasure to get gold to rattle in his depleted and over-borrowed accounts. The Church of England priests could now marry and have official children. The marvellous mumbo-jumbo of the Latin
Mass had been replaced by ordinary English everybody could (sort of) understand.The old priests' powers had been much diminished. They were derived from his ability to read, not only English but Latin, and his knowledge of his
village gained from compulsory Catholic Confession. And two other systems of Magic gained and then lost strength.
The older system had always been around in the villages. Witches and warlocks were nothing new. But in those
centuries there were cunning men (and women) everywhere. They provided inexpensive insurance against calamity. They made your dreams come true (well, sometimes). They could tell you why your crop had failed, and how to get a son.
All for the price you and I might pay for a lottery ticket.
Witchcraft was definitely sinful. It offered a magical alternative to Christian prayer, detracted from the power of the priest, and not only that, it was thought to be
capable of actually doing harm to your neighbour by making special arrangements with the Devil, a skill not associated with the priesthood.
What were their professional tools, hidden in a musty corner of the cottage, in the same
years as the Enlightenment was being discussd in the drawing-room and over the dining table at the Manor?
The witches' broomstick, that ancient jet-ski of the skies, was no longer in use in the sixteenth century. Conjuring up
spirits was a popular practice, and it needed quite standard and innocent religious techniques such as fasting, prayer, holy water and candles, often combined with less acceptable devices like swords, sceptres and wands, and even
metallic bands. The methods of procedure recorded in books of magic are often sensibly described as experiments. If successful, a spirit making an appearance, a route to riches or love or power might be available. The success rate
was often improved by the presence of an intelligent and well-rehearsed child as a scryer, whose innocent eyes could see things beyond the range of more corrupted vision.
To carry a charm was popular, a good selling line. Anne
Bodenham, a cunning woman sold a customer a charm which, once worn, "he need not fear what money he owed, for no bailiff could take hold or meddle with him." At a higher level, Adam Squire, Master of Balliol College at
Oxford from 1571 to 80, was alleged to have sold gamblers a spirit which assured success at dice.
But it was long after that accusation that no less a priest than the Catholic Bishop of Quimper had, in 1620, in the hope of
extinguishing a dangerous fire, thrown into it the powerful Christian charm of an Agnus Dei (a cake of wax with the figure of a lamb holding a flag or cross and serving as an emblem of Christ).
To find a stolen sheep or
some hens or a cloak a sieve and a pair of shears were needed, but to see the face of the man you would marry, a magic mirror, misted with your breath, was more useful. It was seldom that an unwanted face appeared. The
Key-in-the-Book was a common method of getting the name of a thief. A large key was placed at a significant page in the Bible and the names of suspects written on separate small pieces of paper. These were rolled up and inserted,
one by one, into the hole in the key. The guilty name caused the book to "wag" and fall out of the hand of its holder. The cunning man, in preliminary conversation, would have gained clues as to the most misfavoured
suspect and naturally the book would be in his wise hands.
It was not thought necessary to explain how these magical procedures actually worked, nor did many enquire. And as for the rapid growth in belief in astrology in those
centuries, astronomers had explained the rotation of the earth as well as its orbit around the sun, and educated people, as well as sailors and fishermen, knew that the moon caused the tides. So why should not the nearby planets
and stars have effects on the earth and its inhabitants?
Especially when the King and his generals and politicians were known to call for professional visits from astrologers and even to make appointments for consultations in
astrologers' expensive consulting rooms. It was not thought strange that a baby born at 12.01 a..m. would have a character quite different from the same baby if he had popped out 15 minutes earlier. In any case the astrologers
excused themselves in advance, pointing out that the influence of the stars was just that, an influence, not a certain bet.
Nevertheless astrologers claimed they had gone to enormous trouble with their calculations, except when
they made prognostications which were absurdly wrong, when it was possible for them to claim they were themselves suffering from a fever at the time and therefore unable to spend twenty extra hours in advanced mathematics.
The
eclipse of the sun on 29th. March 1652 provided an opportunity for entrepreneurs to sell nostrums to ward off its ill effects on health, and the rich fled from London. But in the end it was rather a fine day, not a single dynasty
fell, and this rare conjunction of sun, moon and earth in a straight line had no discernible astrological effects.
I am happy to report, and hope thereby to balance well with Mr. Connell, that more recent reports from Africa tell
us that African diviners still use similar methods of divination, in which the signs allow the practitioner to use his skill and common sense to conclude with an answer satisfactory to the expectations of his customer or patient.
In a slightly different field, I hope myself sometimes to achieve such success.
