Such, we are told, was the character of the pure and primitive magic,
as it was handed down from the founder of their religion. It was
called into action by the Jogees, men who, by an extraordinary merit
of whatever sort, had in a certain sense rendered themselves one with
the Deity. But the exercise of magical power was too tempting an
endowment, not in some cases to be liable to abuse. Even as we read of
the angels in heaven, that not all of them stood, and persevered in
their original sinlessness and integrity, so of the Jogees some,
partaking of the divine power, were also under the direction of a will
celestial and divine, while others, having derived, we must suppose, a
mighty and miraculous power from the gift of God, afterwards abused it
by applying it to capricious, or, as it should seem, to malignant
purposes. This appears to have been every where essential to the
history of magic. If those who were supposed to possess it in its
widest extent and most astonishing degree, had uniformly employed it
only in behalf of justice and virtue, they would indeed have been
regarded as benefactors, and been entitled to the reverence and love
of mankind. But the human mind is always prone to delight in the
terrible. No sooner did men entertain the idea of what was supernatural
and uncontrolable, than they began to fear it and to deprecate its
hostility. They apprehended they knew not what, of the dead returning
to life, of invisible beings armed with the power and intention of
executing mischief, and of human creatures endowed with the prerogative
of bringing down pestilence and slaughter, of dispensing wealth and
poverty, prosperity and calamity at their pleasure, of causing health
and life to waste away by insensible, but sure degrees, of producing
lingering torments, and death in its most fearful form. Accordingly it
appears that, as there were certain magicians who were as Gods
dispensing benefits to those who best deserved it, so there were
others, whose only principle of action was caprice, and against whose
malice no innocence and no degree of virtue would prove a defence. As
the former sort of magicians were styled _Jogees_, and were held
to be the deputies and instruments of infinite goodness, so the other
sort were named _Ku-Jogees_, that is, persons who possessing the
same species of ascendancy over the powers of nature, employed it only
in deeds of malice and wickedness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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