Welsh Journals

DEMONOLOGY AND WITCHCRAFT. THE belief in I)emons or Spirits is a feature common to all primitive religions, and bears witness to the efforts made universally to solve the mystery of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness. Ancient systems of philosophy tried not only to account for their existence and formulate their gradations, but also to assign to each their office in the scheme of Nature's economy till each tree and stream, each tribe and occupation, each phaze of human life in peace and war, in sickness and in health, each convulsion of nature in earth and air, had its own presiding Demon or Spirit given them. From the simple dualism of Ahriman and Hormuzd in the creed of Zoroaster, to the elaborate organization of Æons in the Gnostic philosophy and to the idol-worship and ietichism of the savage, there runs the common thread of demonology. Civilisation has not eradicated it, Christianity has not destroyed it, for it rests on a foundation of fact and truth. The Old Testament Revelation admits, and the New Testament Revelation confirms it abundantly but it places it in its true relation to God and man. It tells us that the Good Spirits or Angels watch and guard our path, and the Evil Spirits or Demons can do us no real harm (Ephesians vi,, 12). But the dread has, nevertheless, still lingered on, even in Christian lands, embodied in its weirdest form in the belief in Witchcraft. Witchcraft has been defined as-- The practice of witches; a supernatural power which persons were formerly supposed to obtain by entering into a compact with the devil. The compact was sometimes express, whether oral or written, when the witch abjured God and Christ and dedicated herself wholly to the Evil one;