Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1900: Vol. 56, Nov. 1899 to April, 1900Various
History
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1900: Vol. 56, Nov. 1899 to April, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
Still more sensational was the part played in this spicy comedy
by Miss Diana Vaughan, whom Taxil introduced to the public as a
descendant of the Rosicrucian alchemist and Oxford professor Thomas
Vaughan, and who was said to have in her possession a copy of the
written pact with Satan, signed by her ancestor on March 25, 1645.
The young lady claimed to have been born in Paris on February 29,
1874. The fact that there was no February 29th in the year 1874 would
make this date an impossible natal day for ordinary mortals, but a
person with Luciferian blood in her veins would naturally take no
note of the divisions of time as recorded in human calendars; for,
according to Taxil, her forbear was the goddess Astarte, who appeared
to Thomas Vaughan on a summer night in 1646, while he was sojourning
among the American Indians, in all her marvelous beauty, bringing
with her a bed surrounded with flames and attended by little demons
bearing flowers. She approached Vaughan and put a wedding ring on his
finger, and eleven days later gave birth to a daughter named Diana,
from whom the Miss Diana Vaughan in question traced her descent.
Several instances of similar commerce with incarnate demons are said
to have occurred in the history of her family, so that she inherited
a strong Satanic taint; even her own mother was guilty of the same
criminal conduct. Her inherited qualities were carefully fostered by
education, inasmuch as she was brought up by her father and uncle on
strictly Luciferian principles. One day, when her instructors were
praising Cain and Judas as ideals of excellence, she expressed some
doubt of the superior worthiness of the fratricide and venal traitor.
This dangerous unbelief was attributed to angelical possession, and
it was soon ascertained that the archangel Raphael was the cause of
the lapse from Luciferianism. Recourse was had to exorcism, the whole
process of which, as described by Taxil, is a clever travesty of the
ceremonial prescribed by the Romish Church for the expulsion of evil
spirits. The dance performed by the father and uncle on this occasion
consisted of the same saltatory movements that are executed by the
"procession of jumpers" every year at the grave of St. Willibord, in
Echternach, Luxemburg.[10] Devil's ointment took the place of holy oil,
and the exorcism ended with the sacrifice of a black hen; thereupon
"Raphael" went out of her, and simultaneously with his exit all the
panes of glass in the house were broken into fragments and fell to the
ground with a tremendous crash. The marvel is that bishops and priests
accepted this ridiculous story as an authentic and edifying narration,
instead of rejecting it with horror and disgust as a palpable burlesque
of their own approved methods of casting out demons, and particularly
of the _Exorcismus in Satanam et Angelos Apostatas_, composed by Leo
XIII and issued by him November 19, 1890. It is evident that Taxil had
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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