William will not agree, however,[1179] with the books of magic and the masters of images and illusions that the starry heavens and even single planets are inhabited by spirits so that the circle of the moon has fifty ministering spirits and that there are also angels in the twelve signs of the zodiac. On the other hand, in an earlier chapter he makes the statement that he has never heard anywhere even in magic books of demons with power over celestial bodies.[1180] William is of the opinion that Aristotle was deceived by an evil spirit into boasting that a spirit had descended to him from the circle of Venus.[1181] William argues that the starry heavens are rational and able to regulate themselves and do not require any ministering angels; and on the other hand that the nobler spirits would not debase themselves by ministering to mere celestial bodies.[1182] William’s own theory is that demons dwell in the air about the earth and not in the planetary heavens. He also speaks in one passage of their especially frequenting deserts.[1183]

William also rejects[1184] some non-Christian assertions concerning fallen angels. One is the statement of the author of a book of sorcery, who claimed to have communed with spirits thirty years, to the effect that new spirits are created daily, and that there are twelve orders of them, and that every day a multitude of them fall and that they fall into different regions of the earth and there rule—some in deserts, some in woods, some in fountains and rivers, some in herbs and trees, some in gems and stones, which thus derive their marvel-working qualities from them. The other account rejected by William is a pretty story from Hermes to this effect.[1185] When two angels were criticizing mankind harshly for its sinfulness God incarnated them to see how much better they would do. Both promptly fell in love with a beautiful woman who would return their love only on condition that they renounce God. When they had done even this, God called them to heaven, reproved them for not having justified their criticism of sinful mankind, and told them to choose now their place of punishment. They selected the air, but later through the prayers of a prophet in Babylon were shut up in a cave to await their final punishment at the last judgment.

William of course makes the usual sharp Christian distinction between good spirits or angels and bad spirits or demons. It is the latter alone, rather than spiritual substances in general, whom he connects with magic, although naturally the magicians themselves often claim to employ good spirits. William is in doubt whether fauns and pygmies and some other monsters are demons or animals or men.[1186] He also lists satyrs, joculatores, incubi, succubi, nymphs, Lares, Penates and other old Latin names such as cloacina, Lucina, limitanus, priapus, genius, hymenus.[1187] He regards as a delusion the belief fostered by old-wives in demons who injure infants.[1188] Despite his mention of incubi and succubi and despite the verses of Scripture about the sons of God and the daughters of men and that woman ought to veil her head on account of the angels, he regards demons as incapable of sexual intercourse with human beings, but he thinks it possible that they may juggle with nature so as to produce the effects of sexual intercourse.[1189] He mentions the belief in a demon who comes to cellars at night in women’s clothing and bestows abundance and prosperity where food and drink is left uncovered for it to partake of, which it does without diminishing the quantity. “And they call her satia from satiety.”

What is the extent of the control over matter exercised by the demons in performing marvels? In discussing what demons can and cannot perform in the ways of marvels, William’s decisions seem rather arbitrary and capricious.[1190] He grants them superhuman powers of divination and says that it has been repeatedly proved that they know when invocations and sacrifices are made to them.[1191] But the apparitions which they produce are neither real objects nor images in the air but thoughts and pictures in the mind of the beholder.[1192] The armies of horsemen produced by necromancers leave no prints of hoofs behind them and their elaborate castles with gates, towers, walls, and citadel completely vanish without leaving a trace.[1193] This explains how enchanters and magicians can apparently cut horses in two, although William grants it not unlikely that there may be other ways of doing this for those “who know the marvellous occult virtues of many things.” William also discusses how demons can toss sticks and stones about, throw persons out of bed, and transport men or huge rocks for great distances when they have neither necks nor shoulders to carry them on.[1194] This is no more strange, he says, than the magnet’s ability to draw iron.[1195] He believes that the virtue of spiritual substances can overcome weight which holds bodies at rest and produce lightness which makes motion easy. It was thus that an angel transported one of the Hebrew prophets to Babylon by a lock of his hair. It is doubtful, however, if this last could have been accomplished save by divine aid. He doubts furthermore if horses could be generated as the frogs were by the Egyptian magicians of Pharaoh. The generation of frogs is a much easier and more rapid process. Also the wax lights which mysteriously appear in stables on the horses’ manes and tails would be easy for demons to make.[1196] But William disbelieves in such magic transformations as werwolves. His explanation is that the devil first made the man imagine himself a wolf and then caused a real wolf to appear and frighten people.[1197] Demons cannot make idols or images speak, but when the bodies of human beings are possessed by demons, they form voices after a fashion, although, as exorcists have assured him, in a raucous tone unlike the usual human voice, probably because the vocal chords respond but indifferently to demoniacal abuse of them.[1198]

William is sure that demons cannot be imprisoned against their will in material bodies, whether rings, gems, mirrors, or glass phials such as Solomon is said to have shut them up in.[1199] William argues that if a man died in a huge corked bottle his soul would be able to get out. William, however, believes his Bible when it tells him of demons shut up in men whom “they vex with innumerable tortures,” or in swine or in lakes,[1200] although he declares that he does not adduce the case of demons in swine because it is recorded in the Bible but because it is attested by the experience of many. And he declares that even to his day demons give most certain indication of their presence in lakes when stones are thrown in or they are provoked by some other movement or sound.[1201] He states, however, that many medical men deny that human beings are possessed by demons and attribute the seizures and agitations to fumes and vapors.[1202] Many skilled doctors also dispute the existence of the nocturnal demon called ephialtes and attribute the oppressive feeling to action of the heart and not to the weight of a demon. In this instance William is inclined to agree with the physicians.[1203] William holds that it is useless to strike at demons when they appear before you, for you merely beat the air, as many experiments have shown.[1204] But he believes that demons can be punished not only by material hell fire but by contact with the other three elements, air, earth and water.

Demons feel any affront offered or indignity done them very keenly so that saints have often routed them by a volley of spit. William is also inclined to accept the “ancient opinion among the Romans” that human urine dissolves works of magic.[1205] Furthermore there are several natural objects which have the occult virtue of driving away demons, a peony suspended from the neck—Galen’s old remedy for the epileptic boy—or the top of the heart of a certain fish placed on the coals. If it is asked how it is that these proud spiritual substances are thus subject to the virtues of physical bodies, William can only answer that it is probably in consequence of their fall, which also subjected them to hell fire. William’s logic simply reduces to this, that God can do anything He pleases with demons while men can do nothing with them against the demons’ wills and without imperiling their own souls.

William is as credulous concerning the marvelous powers attributed to herbs, gems and animals, and as anxious to find some plausible explanation of their validity, as he was sceptical in regard to images, characters and words. We encounter once more in his pages many of the stock examples of natural marvels which we have met again and again in previous writers and shall find in many writers after him. He rhapsodizes concerning the power of the magnet and mentions its three species according to Hermes (Mercurius).[1206] He tells of the phoenix, of the masculine and feminine palms, and of theriac.[1207] Indeed, the magnet, the palms, and the story of the hazel rod told below are all introduced while William is supposedly discussing divine providence. In more than one passage he tells—perhaps directly from Pliny—of the stupefaction produced by the torpedo in persons who touch it only with a long stick, of the little echinus or remora which stops great ships, or of the powers of lion and basilisk, and of the gem heliotrope which aided by the virtue of the herb of the same name renders one invisible.[1208] For this assertion concerning heliotrope, however, which Pliny stigmatized as an example of the magicians’ impudence,[1209] William cites the writings of experimenters.

On the other hand, a passage in William’s work concerning the property of a hazel rod was repeated within a few years by at least three writers: Albertus Magnus, John of St. Amand, and Roger Bacon. William relates that men say that if the rod is split in two lengthwise the halves will approach one another again of their own accord and reunite.[1210] Deceivers attribute this to the virtue of certain words which they utter, but it is by virtue and sense of nature.

William regards the occult virtue of things on this earth as so certain that he uses it to argue that the stars too must possess great powers.[1211] This is attested “from the operations of the virtues of other things, both animals and parts of them, also herbs, medicines, and stones.”[1212] Of medicines he especially recommends the empirica to the reader’s consideration.[1213] The virtues of herbs have been proved to be very numerous and very marvelous.[1214] As for animals, after describing the virtues of the basilisk, William adds, “and when you have heard similar and maybe greater things concerning the occult virtues of other animals, you will not marvel at these.” Among many medicines which prolong life he believes that the flesh of snakes has great renovating virtue,[1215] and among medicines supposed to produce visions and revelations he names the eye of an Indian tortoise and the heart of the hoopoe,[1216] which are thought to clear the soul of noxious vapors in sleep and pave the way for illuminations. William suggests that these substances may horrify one so as to shock the soul free from the body. He even mentions a medicine the smoke from which in the room in which one is sleeping will free the soul from the body so that it emerges into the region of light and the luminosity of the Creator.[1217] And in the case of the little fish which binds ships so that they cannot move, he holds it indubitable that this cannot possibly be done by any bodily virtue which it possesses and must be by some spiritual virtue which exists in its soul.[1218] This reminds him of the power of the human imagination as shown in the case of the man who cast down a camel by merely imagining its fall.[1219]

To the virtues of gems William alludes a number of times. He recounts how the sapphire of its own motion springs into a diseased human eye and cleanses it of its noxious humors.[1220] He also finds it asserted that the emerald attracts riches to its owner and that the topaz checks the passions of avarice, cupidity, luxury, and evil desire. He endeavors to explain how it may be possible for the stone heliotrope to render one invisible; as the power of the stone turns the brightness of the sunlight to a ruby shade, so it may be that the potency of its color prevents the spectators from discerning at all the color of the man who wears it, just as it is said that a musical instrument strung with snake-skin drowns the sound of all other instruments.[1221]

Some of the virtues ascribed to natural objects William finds almost too marvelous for belief, but then strengthens his faith by recollecting some others which are more marvelous still, as the following passage will illustrate.[1222] The experimenters have put in their books the marvelous statement that the presence of a serpent or of a reed containing some quicksilver affects sorcerers and magicians so that their juggleries and incantations are of no avail. William, who it will be recalled had elsewhere denied the ability of a magic figure to stop a mill-wheel, is also inclined to question whether serpents or quicksilver have any power over evil spirits and incantations. But then he remembers that the experimenters also assert that a crab hung in mid-air keeps moles who move underground out of the field and that the herb peony drives devils out of demoniacs. Since the peony has many virtues necessary for men and demons hate men, William thinks it likely that they hate the herb too, and flee from it, when it is suspended about one’s neck. And in one of the books of the Hebrews it is expressly stated that one of the holy angels said that the top of the heart of a certain fish placed on live coals would drive any kind of demon out of men or women. This book is received as authentic by both Hebrews and Christians, and William also regards an archangel as a good authority. This being established, he sees no reason why a snake may not have power over demons too. He recalls too the ancient belief among the Romans that human urine dissolves all works of magic; the manifest fact that jasper drives away snakes and that eagles place it in their nests for this reason; and that the gem achates or agate taken powdered in drink causes the unchaste to vomit. In Great Britain they test the morals of boys and girls by this experiment. This property of the agate causes William to marvel much, for he sees no connection between stones and virginity. However, if the agate is incompatible with unchastity, what wonder if quicksilver will not tolerate the working of magic in its presence?

It has been made evident that William accepts very extreme powers in natural objects and that with such resources the possibilities of his natural magic should be well-nigh unlimited. If he does not quite believe in all these marvels, he does not definitely deny them, and evidently enjoys repeating them.

William states that the proper meaning of divination is imitation of the deity, but that the term is usually not applied to the revelations made by good spirits and prophets but to the revelation of hidden things, especially the future, by evil spirits.[1223] For he also affirms that divination is not a human art but a matter of revelation. The medical prognostications of physicians, although they may seem occult to other men, are based on experience of their art and astronomers are not called diviners but men of learning. While William may deny that the diviner is an artifex, he has to admit that some diviners use tools or materials and so give their predictions the appearance of being based upon some art.

Of this type is the practice of predicting the future by gazing upon polished and reflecting surfaces which are rubbed with oil to increase their lucidity.[1224] Among the substances employed are mirrors, two-edged swords, children’s finger-nails, egg shells, and ivory handles. Usually a boy or a virgin is employed to gaze thereupon, and sometimes exorcisms, adjurations, and observance of times are added. William affirms that many experiences have demonstrated that only one boy out of seven or ten sees anything therein, and he is of the opinion that the whole apparatus simply conceals “the impiety of diabolical sacrifices.” Some ancient sages, nevertheless, notably Plato, have thought that the soul of the gazer is thrown back upon itself by the luminosity of the object seen and then exercises its latent powers of natural divination. We sometimes see such revelations by the irradiation of spiritual light in the insane, the very ill, dreamers, and those in whom because of great fright or care the mind is abstracted from the body.[1225] William therefore finally concludes that the theory of the philosophers as to divination by inspection of lucid bodies “is undoubtedly possible,” but he still maintains that demons are often involved.

William also tells us of an ancient Latin magician who believed that the soul of an immaculate boy who had been slain by violence would have knowledge of past, present and future.[1226] He therefore murdered a boy, and then went insane himself and imagined that he heard responses from the boy’s soul. This was surely the work of demons. Other ancient philosophers blinded boys or themselves in order to increase the power of the soul in divination.[1227] William further mentions the old-wives of his own time who still persisted in divination and interpreting dreams and could not be made to desist even by beatings.[1228] He states that these old women still cherished the superstition of the augurs that if you find a bird’s nest with the mother bird and little ones or the eggs, and preserve it intact, all will go well with you, while if you harm it or separate any bird or egg from it you will encounter ill fortune.[1229]

William has much to say in his various works of the heavens and the stars, and he rarely overlooks an opportunity to have a tilt with the astrologers. Most of his statements and arguments had been often employed before, however, and he also repeats himself a great deal, and his long-drawn scholastic listing and rebutting of supposed reasons pro and con at times becomes insufferably tedious. We shall therefore compress his treatment to a very small space compared to that which it occupies in his own works and words.

William states that Plato and Aristotle, Boethius, Hermes Trismegistus, and Avicenna, all believed the stars to be divine animals whose souls were as superior to ours, as their celestial bodies are.[1230] Since these philosophers regarded the stars as nobler, wiser, and more powerful than mortals, they made them guardians and guides of humanity, and distributed all earthly objects under their rule. Such doctrines William recalls examining when he was young in the books of judicial astrology and the volumes of magicians and sorcerers, from whom he would appear to distinguish the above-named philosophers none too carefully. He indeed explicitly classes “Plato and Aristotle and their followers” with “those who believe in judgments of the stars.”[1231] He also tells us that Plato regarded the entire universe as one divine animal, and that his followers regarded the tides as the breathing of this world animal; but that Aristotle and his school included only what is above the moon or even only the heaven of the fixed stars.[1232] Avicenna, too, called the heaven an animal obedient to God.

William himself is inclined to think that the divisions and diversities of the nine spheres militate against their being animated by a single soul; and he rejects the theory that the world soul is composed of number and musical consonance.[1233] But he leaves Christians free, if they will, to believe with the Aristotelians and many Italian philosophers that the superior world is either one or many animals, that the heavens are either animated or rational.[1234] In this he sees no peril to the Faith; but hitherto Hebrew and Christian doctrine has not explored such matters, and Christians have been too absorbed in saving men’s souls to note whether the heavens had souls or no. It would indeed be strange if William denied the starry heavens some sort of soul or souls when he has attributed one to a sea-fish like the echinus.[1235] But he declares that “it is manifest that human souls are nobler than those which they put in heavenly bodies.” And he warns against the wicked error of identifying the Holy Spirit with the world soul. We have noted elsewhere his hostility to the theory of astrological necromancy that the heavens and stars are full of ministering spirits. He also contraverts the Aristotelian doctrines that there are as many intelligences moving the heavenly bodies as there are celestial motions and that the heavens love superior intelligences and strive to become assimilated to these.[1236]

Like most Christian apologists William adopts the argument that the stars, if rational, would not cause evils and misfortunes such as astrologers predict, and seems to think that all the evil in the world can be charged to the account of human perversity or the imperfections inherent in the matter of our inferior world, and that for these two sources of ill neither God nor the stars should be held responsible.[1237] He recognizes, it is true, that someone may argue that these evils exist by the will of the Creator, whose will is nevertheless always good, but he does not seem to see that the same reasoning may be applied to the rule of the stars. He seems to regard as a new discovery of his own and a point hitherto unrecognized by astrologers, the argument that ineptitude on the part of inferior matter receiving the force of the stars may account for many effects apparently due to the heavens. But in thinking this argument novel he is much mistaken. Really his only point here against astrologers is that some of them are careless in their phraseology and speak of the stars as causing evil, which he regards as blasphemy of Him who created the stars. “And all blasphemy against the Creator,” continues William in a truculent and intolerant tone which reveals the spirit of the medieval inquisition, “is an impiety to be exterminated with fire and sword.”

William raises certain difficulties in regard to astrological technique only to answer them himself. And he grants that fixed stars which seem close together may really be separated by vast distances and so have very different virtue. And he cannot deny “many marvelous and occult virtues” in celestial bodies, when he admits “so many and so great occult virtues” in terrestrial bodies. Indeed all philosophers agree that the virtues of the stars far surpass even those of precious stones. The variations in the heat of the sun, while its course continues constant, seem to William a sure indication that the other planets and fixed stars participate in influencing our world.

While William was not unwilling to concede souls or reason to the stars, he believes that it is perilous for Christians to regard the souls of the heavens as “governors of inferior things and especially of human affairs.”[1238] Those who hold that man’s actions are caused of necessity by the motion of the sky and the positions of the stars, ruin, in his opinion, the foundations of law and morality.[1239] “Against that error, one ought not so much to dispute with arguments as fight with fire and sword.” Some have argued that because stars and lights were created before vegetation, animal life, and human beings, they are causes of these others, both generating and regulating them.[1240] In favor of this contention so much has been written that it can scarcely be read, says William, and the stars do give much aid in generation and in conservation of generated things, but not so much as the astrologers think.[1241] They should not be consulted even as signs—rather than causes—in human concerns.[1242] In our sublunar world their power extends only to the four elements and four humors and only to such animals composed of these as lack free will and obey natural necessity. Thus William really excludes only human free will and intellect from sidereal control,[1243] and he admits that “the multitude and populace from want of intelligence and other evil dispositions lives almost after the manner of brutes,” following natural impulse to a great extent, so that astrologers may predict popular agitations and mob uprisings with a fair degree of accuracy, but should not predict concerning individuals. Even in the case of individuals, however, he does not deny that natural virtues and vices are attributable to the stars, such vices, for instance, as irascibility, levity, and lubricity, which medical authorities ascribe not to moral fault but physical constitution.[1244] William would limit the influence of the stars not only by individual freedom of the will but by the power of prayer.[1245] He does not believe the decrees of fate so fixed and the laws of nature so unchangeable that God’s wrath may not be placated by prayer, and freedom from any threatening evil obtained from His goodness. Belief in the power of the stars and belief in the power of prayers: which is the more superstitious, which the more nearly scientific? Or which belief has led to progress in science?

William complains that “Ptolemy and Haly and other astronomers” have attributed original sin and all its consequences to the constellations and hours of nativity, in that they have presumed to write books of horoscopes and nativities.[1246] He feels it “necessary to say something against that insanity” because of the great reputation such famous writers have among the “simple and stupid multitude” which regards them as profound sages and sublime prophets. Into William’s particular arguments against the art of casting nativities, which much resemble the arguments of Augustine and John of Salisbury, we will not go. Elsewhere he also attacks the practice of interrogations.[1247] He also strongly objects to the books which he says astrologers have written on discovering men’s secret thoughts through the significations of the stars.[1248]

William has much to say against astrological images, but his attitude has already been partially indicated in stating his attitude towards images, figures, and characters in general. He declares that belief in astrological images “derogates more from the honor and glory of the Creator than the error which attributes such virtue to the stars and luminaries themselves.” It seems to him “a strange and quite intolerable error to think that stars which cannot help themselves can bestow such gifts as invincibility, social graces, temperance or chastity.”[1249] Yet elsewhere we have heard him mention with seeming complaisance the bestowal of riches and checking of evil passions by emeralds and topazes. His best argument as against figures and characters in general is that such lifeless bodies cannot produce intellectual and moral effects in living human beings, especially when the engraved gems are, as is usual, hidden away somewhere, or buried underground.

William condemns as error the association of the world’s leading religions with the planets, as Judaism with Saturn, Islam with Venus, and Christianity with the sun.[1250] The stars, he declares, are subject to religion, not religion to the stars, and Joshua made even the sun and moon stand still. William is candid enough to recognize that the seven-branched candlestick in the Jewish tabernacle designated the seven planets, but elsewhere states that the Mosaic Law forbade observation of the stars.[1251] William also considers the doctrine of the magnus annus or Platonic year, that after 36,000 solar years history will repeat itself down to the minutest detail owing to the recurrence of the former series of positions of the constellations.[1252] Since this has the support of men of great reputation, he lists various arguments advanced in its favor and rebuts them in detail.

William believes that comets appear in the sky and in the air “as signs of slaughters and other great events in the world.” He mentions “the universal belief” that they foretell the deaths of kings and political changes.[1253] But he asserts that the star announcing Christ’s birth was not of this sort and that the darkness at the time of the Crucifixion was not due to an ordinary eclipse.