Demonologia : $b or, natural knowledge revealed; being an exposé of ancient and modern superstitions, credulity, fanaticism, enthusiasm, & imposture, as connected with the doctrine, caballa, and jargon, of amulets, apparitions, astrology, charms, demonology, devils, divination, dreams, deuteroscopia, effluvia, fatalism, fate, friars, ghosts, gipsies, hell, hypocrites, incantations, inquisition, jugglers, legends, magic, magicians, miracles, monks, nymphs, oracles, physiognomy, purgatory, predestForsyth, J. S.
History
Demonologia : $b or, natural knowledge revealed; being an exposé of ancient and modern superstitions, credulity, fanaticism, enthusiasm, & imposture, as connected with the doctrine, caballa, and jargon, of amulets, apparitions, astrology, charms, demonology, devils, divination, dreams, deuteroscopia, effluvia, fatalism, fate, friars, ghosts, gipsies, hell, hypocrites, incantations, inquisition, jugglers, legends, magic, magicians, miracles, monks, nymphs, oracles, physiognomy, purgatory, predest
Forsyth, J. S.
Demonology; Superstition; Witchcraft
“The fourth word is מכשף _mecasseph_, which our English translators
render, a witch; for which I have no quarrel with them, unless they
should so understand it that it must exclude others from being so in
that sense I have defined, which is impossible they should. But this, as
the foregoing, is but another term of the same thing; that is, of a
witch in general, but so called here from the prestigious imposing on
the sight of beholders. Buxtorf tells us, that Aben Ezra defines those
to be מכשפים [mecassephim] _qui mutant et transformant res naturales
ad aspectum oculi_. Not as jugglers and hocus-pocusses, as Webster would
ridiculously insinuate, but so as I understood the thing in the second
name; for these are but several names of a witch, who may have several
more properties than one name intimates. Whence it is no wonder that
translators render not them always alike. But so many names are reckoned
up here in this clause of the law of Moses, that, as in our common law,
the sense may be more sure, and leave no room to evasion. And that here
this name is not from any tricks of legerdemain as in common jugglers
that delude the sight of the people at a market or fair, but that it is
the name of such as raise magical spectres to deceive men’s sight, and
so are most certainly witches, is plain from Exod. chap. xxii, v. 18,
‘Thou shalt not suffer,’ מכשפה _mecassephah_, that is, ‘a witch, to
live.’ Which would be a law of extreme severity, or rather cruelty,
against a poor hocus-pocus for his tricks of legerdemain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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