Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft by Sir Walter Scott Book Review

Views: 612

Published 1830.

Do you believe in enchantments?

Is the presence of the creator working on supernatural levels?

Do you believe in angels?

Are you an angel?

Let the Holy Spirit move through us.
We are together. Only harmonizing, always resonant.
Pure thought. Righteous action. Perfect love.
🙏🏻

Sir Walter Scott informs us that the etymology of ‘witch’ is poisoner.

It is said that witches should not suffer to live. Exodus 22:18

I direct your attention to the Witch of Endor from the book of Samuel. She prophesied the destruction of the Israelites and death of Saul’s sons at the hands of the Philistines.

Sir Walter Scott instructs us on the correct way to reveal a witch: Strip their clothes and inspect every inch for the devil’s stigmata, a birth mark or liver spot that imps use to suckle energy. Trick or Treat!

He explains away all of the best ghost stories with matter-a-fact reasoning.

I see your shadow on a canopy of trees. As a phantom.

For no mere mortal
Can resist
The evil
Of
The Thriller!

Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft Sir Walter Scott Book Review

My highlights and annotations:

Chapter 1948: LETTER I.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.71%
Highlight: When the common feeling of danger, and the animating burst of enthusiasm, act on the feelings of many men at once, their minds hold a natural correspondence with each other, as it is said is the case with stringed instruments tuned to the same pitch, of which, when one is played, the chords of the others are supposed to vibrate in unison with the tones produced.
Notes: Simpatico vibrations.

Chapter 1948: LETTER I.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.71%
Highlight: The other instance of the infectious character of superstition occurs in a Scottish book, and there can be little doubt that it refers, in its first origin, to some uncommon appearance of the aurora borealis, or the northern lights, which do not appear to have been seen in Scotland so frequently as to be accounted a common and familiar atmospherical phenomenon, until the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Notes: Lights in sky.

Chapter 1948: LETTER I.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.72%
Highlight: All you that do not see, say nothing; for I persuade you it is matter of fact, and discernible to all that is not stone-blind.

Chapter 1948: LETTER I.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.78%
Highlight: primitive state of society, are naturally enough referred to the action of demons or disembodied spirits.
Notes: Humiliation face mask ritual.

Chapter 1948: LETTER I.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.79%
Highlight: Their sitting-room opened into an entrance-hall, rather fantastically fitted up with articles of armour, skins of wild animals, and the like.
Notes: Welcome to my sitting room.

Chapter 1949: LETTER II.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.83%
Highlight: in some sense the Gods of the Heathens might be accounted Demons
Notes: Heathmen set fire to their furze on the Fifth of November. <– I’m referencing a Thomas Hardy novel, Return of The Native, book review forthcoming. The heathmen really did set fire to their furze on the Fifth of November. 🔥

Chapter 1949: LETTER II.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.84%
Highlight: the epithet of sorceress and poisoner were almost synonymous.
Notes: Hebrew homework.

Chapter 1949: LETTER II.
Highlight
Chapter progress: 93.86%
Highlight: Witch of Endor, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Witch-of-Endor

Chapter 1949: LETTER II.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.88%
Highlight: We are indeed assured from the sacred writings, that the promise of the Deity to his chosen people, if they conducted themselves agreeably to the law which he had given, was, that the communication with the invisible world would be enlarged, so that in the fulness of his time he would pour out his spirit upon all flesh, when their sons and daughters should prophesy, their old men see visions, and their young men dream dreams. Such were the promises delivered to the Israelites by Joel, Ezekiel, and other holy seers, of which St. Peter, in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, hails the fulfilment in the mission of our Saviour.

Chapter 1949: LETTER II.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.88%
Highlight: under the name of witchcraft. What has been translated by that word seems little more than the art of a medicator of poisons,
Notes: Medicator of poisons. Witchcraft. Covid injectors.

Chapter 1949: LETTER II.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.9%
Highlight: There would, we presume to say, be a shocking inconsistency in supposing that false and deceitful prophecies and portents should be freely circulated by any demoniacal influence, deceiving men’s bodily organs, abusing their minds, and perverting their faith, while the true religion was left by its great Author devoid of every supernatural sign and token which, in the time of its Founder and His immediate disciples, attested and celebrated their inappreciable mission.
Notes: Show us, Lord.

Chapter 1949: LETTER II.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.9%
Highlight: Little benefit could arise from attaining the exact knowledge of the manner in which the apostate Jews practised unlawful charms or auguries.
Notes: Pentagram church.

Chapter 1949: LETTER II.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.91%
Highlight: annihilating or transferring to their own dairies the produce of herds; spreading pestilence among cattle, infecting and blighting children; and, in a word, doing more evil than the heart of man might be supposed capable of conceiving, by means far beyond mere human power to accomplish.

Chapter 1949: LETTER II.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.92%
Highlight: cloven foot, or, as the Germans term it, horse’s foot, bat wings, saucer eyes, locks like serpents, and tail like a dragon.
Notes: Demon smoothie.

Chapter 1949: LETTER II.
Highlight
Chapter progress: 93.92%
Highlight: Ben Jonson’s play, “The Devil is an Ass.”

Chapter 1949: LETTER II.
Highlight
Chapter progress: 93.92%
Highlight: Pan — to whose talents for inspiring terror we owe the word panic

Chapter 1949: LETTER II.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.93%
Highlight: In so much, that parents, out of zeal, often dedicated their children to the gods, and educated them accordingly,
Notes: Techno space religion.

Chapter 1949: LETTER II.
Highlight
Chapter progress: 93.93%
Highlight: Reverend Cotton Mather, in his Magnalia, book
Notes: https://www.libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=E8481946B3BF99B71861231757AFD029

Chapter 1949: LETTER II.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.94%
Highlight: it occurred to the settlers that the heathen Indians and Roman Catholic Frenchmen were particularly favoured by the demons, who sometimes adopted their appearance, and showed themselves in their likeness, to the great annoyance of the colonists.
Notes: lol

Chapter 1950: LETTER III.
Highlight
Chapter progress: 93.96%
Highlight: rural nymph, Phidyle,

Chapter 1950: LETTER III.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.96%
Highlight: it condemns the ars mathematica (for the most mystic and uncertain of all sciences, real or pretended, at that time held the title which now distinguishes the most exact
Notes: Old codex from Constantine forbids magic of math!

Chapter 1950: LETTER III.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.97%
Highlight: This custom was universal in Rome, where it was observed as keeping in memory the rape of the Sabines, and that it was by a show of violence towards the females that the object of peopling the city was attained.
Notes: Carrying bride over threshold.

Chapter 1950: LETTER III.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.98%
Highlight: The ancients have given us as a maxim, that it is only bad women who marry in that month.

Notes: May.

Chapter 1950: LETTER III.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.98%
Highlight: Above all, it must not be forgotten that these frightful sorceresses possessed the power of transforming themselves and others into animals, which are used in their degree of quadrupeds, or in whatever other laborious occupation belongs to the transformed state.
Notes: LION

Chapter 1950: LETTER III.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 93.99%
Highlight: the possession of magical knowledge was an especial attribute of Odin himself; and to intrude themselves upon a deity, and compel him to instruct them in what they desired to know, was accounted not an act of impiety, but of gallantry and high courage,
Notes: By the power of gray skull, I have the power.

Chapter 1950: LETTER III.
Highlight
Chapter progress: 93.99%
Highlight: the glamour, or deceptio visus,
Notes: Any extraordinary instance of deception to the sight, occasioned by the effects of atmospheric media. deceptio visus,

Chapter 1950: LETTER III.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.02%
Highlight: The champion was now victor; and, according to the law of arms, took possession of the female and the baggage.
Notes: Finders keepers.

Chapter 1950: LETTER III.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.04%
Highlight: But as this source of the mythology of the Middle Ages must necessarily comprehend some account of the fairy folk, to whom much of it must be referred, it is necessary to make a pause before we enter upon the mystic and marvellous connexion supposed to exist between the impenitent kingdom of Satan and those merry dancers by moonlight.
Notes: Looking into fairies.

Chapter 1951: LETTER IV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.04%
Highlight: Diis campestribus,

Notes: group of female deities associated with the countryside.

Chapter 1951: LETTER IV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.04%
Highlight: The altar is preserved at Drygrange,
Notes: Sylvanus

Chapter 1951: LETTER IV.
Highlight
Chapter progress: 94.04%
Highlight: Conjectures on the derivation of the word Fairy.

Chapter 1951: LETTER IV.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.07%
Highlight: transporting him through the air to a city at some forty miles’ distance,
Notes: Forty mile town. Eric Johnson.

Chapter 1952: LETTER V.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.19%
Highlight: epidemic terror of witches
Notes: Great stories about elves and fairies.

Chapter 1953: LETTER VI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.25%
Highlight: they have so frayd us with bull-beggars, spirits, witches, urchins, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, Pans, faunes, sylvans, Kitt-with-the-candlestick, tritons, centaurs, dwarfs, giants, imps, calcars, conjurers, nymphs, changelings, incubus, Robin Goodfellow, the spoorn, the man-in-the-oak, the hellwain, the fire-drake, the puckle, Tom Thumb, Hobgoblin, Tom Tumbler, Boneless, and such other bugbears, that we are afraid of our own shadows,
Notes: Great list of sylvan creatures.

Chapter 1953: LETTER VI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.26%
Highlight: These superstitions have already survived their best and most useful purpose, having been embalmed in the poetry of Milton and of Shakespeare, as well as writers only inferior to these great names.
Notes: The fairies live.

Chapter 1953: LETTER VI.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.27%
Highlight: Will you not believe in witches? the Scriptures aver their existence;
Notes: Witch of Endor.

Chapter 1953: LETTER VI.
Highlight
Chapter progress: 94.27%
Highlight: Each advance in natural knowledge teaches us that it is the pleasure of the Creator to govern the world by the laws which he has imposed, and which are not in our times interrupted or suspended.

Chapter 1954: LETTER VII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.3%
Highlight: approbation,
Notes: Approval or praise.

Chapter 1954: LETTER VII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.32%
Highlight: morbid affections of mind which depend on the imagination
Notes: Pandemic hoax

Chapter 1954: LETTER VII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.32%
Highlight: this impious practice seem to have increased the disease,
Notes: Everyone who got covid vaccine tested positive for covid.

Chapter 1954: LETTER VII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.32%
Highlight: fortifying the kingdom of Satan
Notes: BDSM ritual to science.

Chapter 1954: LETTER VII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.36%
Highlight: who in this case were both actors and witnesses.
Notes: False flag crisis actors.

Chapter 1954: LETTER VII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.36%
Highlight: the temptation of attracting attention, the pleasure of enjoying importance, the desire to escape from an unpleasing task, or accomplish a holiday, will at any time overcome the sentiment of truth, so weak is it within them.

Chapter 1955: LETTER VIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.39%
Highlight: It is, therefore, in tracing, this part of Demonology, with its accompanying circumstances, that we have the best chance of obtaining an accurate view of our subject.

Notes: English witch trials.

Chapter 1955: LETTER VIII.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.47%
Highlight: recusants,
Notes: A person who refuses to submit or comply.

Chapter 1956: LETTER IX.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.58%
Highlight: it is fortunate the Enemy is but seldom permitted to bribe so high (as ÂŁ15 Scots); for were this the case, he might find few men or women capable of resisting his munificence.
Notes: Pharma rep handjobs, collusion, covid extortion.

Chapter 1956: LETTER IX.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.58%
Highlight: The tree near the front of an ancient castle was called the Covine tree, probably because the lord received his company there.

Notes: See u there.

Chapter 1956: LETTER IX.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.61%
Highlight: One celebrated mode of detecting witches and torturing them at the same time, to draw forth confession, was by running pins into their body, on pretence of discovering the devil’s stigma, or mark, which was said to be inflicted by him upon all his vassals, and to be insensible to pain.

Chapter 1956: LETTER IX.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.62%
Highlight: One summer’s day, on a green hill-side, the devil appeared to him in shape of a grave “Mediciner,” addressing him thus roundly, “Sandie, you have too long followed my trade without acknowledging me for a master. You must now enlist with me and become my servant, and I will teach you your trade better.” Hatteraick consented to the proposal, and we shall let the Rev. Mr. George Sinclair tell the rest of the tale.

Notes: Devil’s advocate.

Chapter 1956: LETTER IX.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.64%
Highlight: but we are authorized to believe that the period of supernatural interference has long passed away, and that the great Creator is content to execute his purposes by the operation of those laws which influence the general course of nature.
Notes: Scrying screen techno talisman.

Chapter 1956: LETTER IX.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.66%
Highlight: withershinns, that is, in reverse of the motion of the sun.
Notes: Anti ecliptic.

Chapter 1956: LETTER IX.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.66%
Highlight: philtre
Notes: Love potion.

Chapter 1956: LETTER IX.
Highlight
Chapter progress: 94.68%
Highlight: the devil appeared to the company in the shape of a handsome black lap-dog,

Chapter 1956: LETTER IX.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.68%
Highlight: spaeman,
Notes: Soothsayer.

Chapter 1956: LETTER IX.
Highlight
Chapter progress: 94.71%
Highlight: he could not pray with the same warmth and fluency of expression unless when he had in his hand a stick of peculiar shape and appearance, which he generally walked with. It was noticed, in short, that when this stick was taken from him, his wit and talent appeared to forsake him.

Chapter 1956: LETTER IX.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.73%
Highlight: the last sentence of death for witchcraft which was ever passed in Scotland.
Notes: 1722 Gregorian.

Chapter 1957: LETTER X.
Highlight
Chapter progress: 94.75%
Highlight: astrology, the queen of mystic sciences, who flattered those who confided in her that the planets and stars in their spheres figure forth and influence the fate of the creatures of mortality, and that a sage acquainted with her lore could predict, with some approach to certainty, the events of any man’s career, his chance of success in life or in marriage, his advance in favour of the great, or answer any other horary questions, as they were termed, which he might be anxious to propound, provided always he could supply the exact moment of his birth.

Chapter 1957: LETTER X.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.76%
Highlight: The wisest men have been cheated by the idea that some supernatural influence upheld and guided them; and from the time of Wallenstein to that of Buonaparte, ambition and success have placed confidence in the species of fatalism inspired by a belief of the influence of their own star.
Notes: Don’t hide your light under a bushel.

Chapter 1957: LETTER X.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.76%
Highlight: the most opposite possible to exact science.
Notes: Face mask humiliation extortion scam.

Chapter 1957: LETTER X.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.77%
Highlight: Philomath,
Notes: Astrologer.

Chapter 1957: LETTER X.
Highlight
Chapter progress: 94.77%
Highlight: necromancy — that is, unlawful or black magic

Chapter 1957: LETTER X.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.77%
Highlight: If I am rightly informed, the distinction of a banshie is only allowed to families of the pure Milesian stock, and is never ascribed to any descendant of the proudest Norman or boldest Saxon who followed the banner of Earl Strongbow, much less to adventurers of later date who have obtained settlements in the Green Isle.

Notes: Hehe.

Chapter 1957: LETTER X.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.78%
Highlight: We are far, therefore, from averring that such tales are necessarily false.
Notes: Ghost stories.

Chapter 1957: LETTER X.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.79%
Highlight: the wisest men cannot rise in all things above the general ignorance of their age.
Notes: Harrumph harrumph.

Chapter 1957: LETTER X.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.8%
Highlight: There is, indeed, an unwillingness very closely to examine such subjects, for the secret fund of superstition in every man’s bosom is gratified by believing them to be true, or at least induces him to abstain from challenging them as false.
Notes: My love for you is TRUE!

Chapter 1957: LETTER X.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.88%
Highlight: when he saw before him in the moonlight a pale female form standing upon the very wall which surrounded the cemetery.

Chapter 1957: LETTER X.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.9%
Highlight: the devil had no permission from God to take them away.
Notes: Saints

Chapter 1957: LETTER X.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.92%
Highlight: In a word, I experienced sensations which, though not remarkable either for timidity or superstition, did not fail to affect me to the point of being disagreeable, while they were mingled at the same time with a strange and indescribable kind of pleasure, the recollection of which affords me gratification at this moment.

Notes: The experience.

Chapter 1957: LETTER X.
Highlight
Chapter progress: 94.93%
Highlight: the mind is not at all times equally ready to be moved.

Chapter 1957: LETTER X.
Annotation
Chapter progress: 94.93%
Highlight: The sailors have a proverb that every man in his lifetime must eat a peck of impurity; and it seems yet more clear that every generation of the human race must swallow a certain measure of nonsense.
Notes: We have inherited lies.

Leave a comment