Satan, thus postulated into
existence by the brain of a monkish logician, whom history knows as
witches." _The Literature of Witchcraft_, BURR.

Witchcraft in its generic sense is as old as human history. It has
written its name in the oldest of human records. In all ages and among
all peoples it has taken firm hold on the fears, convictions and
consciences of men. Anchored in credulity and superstition, in the dread
and love of mystery, in the hard and fast theologic doctrines and
teachings of diabolism, and under the ban of the law from its beginning,
it has borne a baleful fruitage in the lives of the learned and the
unlearned, the wise and the simple.

King and prophet, prelate and priest, jurist and lawmaker, prince and
peasant, scholars and men of affairs have felt and dreaded its subtle
power, and sought relief in code and commandment, bull and anathema,
decree and statute--entailing even the penalty of death--and all in vain
until in the march of the races to a higher civilization, the centuries
enthroned faith in the place of fear, wisdom in the place of ignorance,
and sanity in the seat of delusion.

In its earlier historic conception witchcraft and its demonstrations
centered in the claim of power to produce certain effects, "things
beyond the course of nature," from supernatural causes, and under this
general term all its occult manifestations were classified with magic
and sorcery, until the time came when the Devil was identified and
acknowledged both in church and state as the originator and sponsor of
the mystery, sin and crime--the sole father of the Satanic compacts with
men and women, and the law both canonical and civil took cognizance of
his malevolent activities.

In the Acropolis mound at Susa in ancient Elam, in the winter of 1901-2,
there was brought to light by the French expedition in charge of the
eminent savant, M. de Morgan, one of the most remarkable memorials of
early civilization ever recovered from the buried cities of the Orient.

It is a monolith--a stele of black diorite--bearing in bas-relief a
likeness of Hammurabi (the Amrephel of the Old Testament; Genesis xiv, 1),
and the sixth king of the first Babylonian dynasty, who reigned
about 2250 B.C.; and there is also carved upon it, in archaic script in
black letter cuneiform--used long after the cursive writing was
invented--the longest Babylonian record discovered to this day,--the
oldest body of laws in existence and the bas