Identifier: sciliteratur00jaco (find matches)
Title: Science and literature in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Year: 1878 (1870s)
Authors: Jacob, P. L., 1806-1884
Subjects: Middle Ages Renaissance Science, Medieval Literature, Medieval
Publisher: London : Bickers and Son
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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to the fancies of poets and novelists. The mysterious beings whom magicians
more readily called to their aid were the intermediary spirits who belonged
rather to the great family of demons. Amongst these may be mentioned the
estries, or demons of darkness, who hugged to suffocation the people whom
they met at night; the goblins, who made their presence felt by harmless

THE OCCULT SCIENCES. 233

antics ; the follets, viho led the traveller astray by false lights ; the luitons, or
lutins; and the metallic spirits, in whom it is easy to recognise the emana-
tions of inflammable gas which produce so many sudden explosions in the
mines, and which are known an fire-damp.
Demons, too, were the men-wolves and men-dogs, which were very
similar to the ogres, or ouigours, which really existed in the Mongolian hordes,
and whose terrible aspect caused them to bo the terror of the populations.
The loups-garous (Fig. 169), men whom a pact with the devil compelled
to assume the face of a wolf once a year, scoured the woods and fields,
Text Appearing After Image:
Fig. 169.—The Man-dog, the Man-wolf, the Man-hull, and the Man-pig.—After the Miniatures
in the "Livre des Merveilles du Monde."—Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century-. In the National Lihrary, Paris.

devouring the young children : like the vampires in Poland, the broucolaques
in Greece, and the white men in Provence, they thirsted after human blood.
Occult philosophy recognised, in addition, the existence of many other spirits
of a more inoffensive kind, whom it comprised under the generic name of
elementary spirits, because they inhabited the four elements: sylphs, in the
air; salamanders, in the fire ; gnomes, in the earth ; ondins, in the waters.
All the beings of the invisible world were subject to the influence or
dommation of magic, which always proceeded, though in different degrees,
from the works of the demon ; but in the Middle Ages there were various
sectaries of this infernal art. The enchanters, Ihe eharmrrs (male or female),

H H

234 THE OCCULT SCIENCES.

merele made use of magic words or verses for their charms or enchant-

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