rthily
honored. This evil has many names; it includes all dabbling in the
supernatural against the sanction of Church authority, and runs a whole
gamut of "isms" from fake trance-mediums to downright diabolical
possession.

The craft found favor with the pagans and flourished many years before
the Christian era. Wondrous things were wrought by the so-called
pythonic spirit; evidently outside the natural order, still more
evidently not by the agency of God, and of a certainty through the
secret workings of the "Old Boy" himself. It was called Necromancy, or
the Black Art. It had attractions for the Jews and they yielded to some
extent to the temptation of consulting the Python. For this reason
Moses condemned the evil as an abomination. These are his words, taken
from Deuteronomy:

"Neither let there be found among you any one that consulteth
soothsayers, or observeth dreams and omens; neither let there be any
wizard, nor charmer, nor any one that consulteth pythonic spirits or
fortune tellers, or that seeketh the truth from the dead. For the Lord
abhorreth all these things; and for these abominations He will destroy
them."

The Black Art had its votaries during the Middle Ages and kept the
Church busy warning the faithful against its dangers and its evils.
Even so great a name as that of Albert the Great has been associated
with the dark doings of the wizard, because, no doubt, of the marvelous
fruits of his genius and deep learning, which the ignorant believed
impossible to mere human agency. As witchcraft, it nourished during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The excesses to which it gave rise
caused severe laws to be enacted against it and stringent measures were
taken to suppress it. Many were put to death, sometimes after the most
cruel tortures. As is usually the case, the innocent suffered with the
guilty. The history of the early New England settlers makes good
reading on the subject.

Some people claim that the spiritism of to-day is only a revival of
old-time witchery and necromancy, that it is as prevalent now as it was
then, perhaps more prevalent. "Only," as Father Lambert remarks, "the
witch of to-day instead of going to the stake as formerly, goes about
as Madam So-and-So, and is duly advertised in our enlightened press as
the great and renowned seeress or clairvoyant, late from the court of
the Akoorid of Swat, more recently from the Sublime Porte, where she
was in consultation with the Sult