Yet in reality the grotesque remedies which Margoliouth attributes to Christian superstition appear to have been partly derived from Jewish sources. The author of a further article on Magic in Hastings' _Encyclopædia_ goes on to say that the magical formulæ handed down in Latin in ancient medical writings and used by the monks were mainly of Eastern origin, derived from Babylonish, Egyptian, and Jewish magic. The monks therefore "played merely an intermediate rôle."[234] Indeed, if we turn to the Talmud we shall find cures recommended no less absurd than those which Margoliouth derides. For example: The eggs of a grasshopper as a remedy for toothache, the tooth of a fox as a remedy for sleep, viz. the tooth of a live fox to prevent sleep and of a dead one to cause sleep, the nail from the gallows where a man was hanged, as a remedy for swelling.[235] A strongly "pro-Semite" writer quotes a number of Jewish medical writings of the eighteenth century, republished as late as the end of the nineteenth, which show the persistence of these magical formulæ amongst the Jews. Most of these are too loathsome to transcribe; but some of the more innocuous are as follows: "For epilepsy kill a cock and let it putrefy." "In order to protect yourself from all evils, gird yourself with the rope with which a criminal has been hung." Blood of different kinds also plays an important part: "Fox's blood and wolf's blood are good for stone in the bladder, ram's blood for colic, weasel blood for scrofula," etc.--these to be externally applied.[236] But to return to Satanism. Whoever were the secret inspirers of magical and diabolical practices during the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the evidence of the existence of Satanism during this long period is overwhelming and rests on the actual facts of history. Details quite as extravagant and revolting as those contained in the works of Eliphas Lévi[237] or in Huysmans's _Là-bas_ are given in documentary form by Margaret Alice Murray in her singularly passionless work relating principally to the witches of Scotland.[238] The cult of evil is a reality--by whatever means we may seek to explain it. Eliphas Lévi, whilst denying the existence of Satan "as a superior personality and power," admits this fundamental truth: "Evil exists; it is impossible to doubt it. We can do good or evil. There are beings who knowingly and voluntarily do evil."[239] There are also beings who love evil. Lévi has admirably described the spirit that animates such beings in his definition of black magic: