Daemonologie Quotes

KITTSCHER: There’s a theory that all magic is essentially demonic, that every ritual both summons and binds a demon’s powers. Have you never wondered why magic takes such a toll? Our brushes with the uncanny are encounters with these parasitic forces. The demon is feeding even if its powers are contained. The bigger the magic, the more powerful the demon. And the nexuses are little more than doorways through which demons may, for a brief time, pass. NOWNES: What you suggest is perverse in every way. KITTSCHER: But you do not say I am wrong. —Kittscher’s Daemonologie, 1933

Epi: There are two things which the learned have observed from the beginning, in the science of the heavenly creatures, the planets, stars, and such like. The one is their course and ordinary motions, which for that cause is called astronomy, which word is a compound of (nomos) and (asteron) that is to say, the law of the stars. And this art is indeed one of the members of the mathematics, and not only lawful, but most necessary and commendable. The other is called astrology, being compounded of (asteron) and (logos) which is to say, the word and preaching of the stars,

Now as to the magician’s part of the contact, it is in a word that thing, which I said before, the Devil hunts for in all men.

This word of sorcery is a Latin word, which is taken from casting of the lot and therefore he that uses it is called sortiarius a sorte. As to the word of witchcraft, it is nothing but a proper name given in our language. The cause wherefore they were called sortiary, proceeded of their practices seeming to come of lot or chance, such as the turning of the riddle, the knowing of the form of prayers, or such like tokens, if a person diseased would live or die. And in general, that name was given to them for using of such charms and freights as that craft teaches them.

Epi: Even by these three passions that are within ourselves. Curiosity in great imaginings, thrift of revenge for some tortes deeply apprehended, or greedy appetite of gear caused through great poverty. As to the first of these, curiosity, it is only the enticement of magicians or necromancers, and the other two are the allures of the sorcerers or witches, for that old and crafty serpent, being a spirit, he easily pays our affections, and so conforms himself thereto, do deceive us to our wrath.

King James is more famous today for his version of the Bible than for his belief in diabolical practices. But in 1597, more than a decade before the King James Bible was published, he wrote a treatise on demons and sorcery called Daemonologie, In Forme of a Dialogue. The king was obsessed with the occult, and with witches in particular, having flushed out a coven of at least 70 in 1590, when he was still known as King James VI of Scotland. The witches were tortured using devices like the “breast ripper”—which is exactly as horrific as it sounds—until they confessed. Eventually, some 4,000 people were burned at the stake in Scotland’s witch trials. In Daemonologie, the king wrote of his belief in cruentation as a way to mete out justice: In a secret murther, if the deade carcase be at any time thereafter handled by the murtherer, it will gush out of bloud, as if the bloud were crying out to the heaven for revenge of the murtherer, God having appoynted that secret super-naturall signe for tryall of that secret unnatural crime.*

(contra negantem principia non est disputandum

Contra negantem principia non est disputandum

Νεκρων & μαντεια,

secundum quid:

ex pacto

νομος & αστερων

αστερων & λογος

pars fortunæ.

Nam homo pictus, non est homo.

Nunquam faciendum est malum vt bonum inde eueniat.