ordering
Force, recognised as present in the natural world, and the human mind
seems ever prone to believe such Power to have affinity to human nature
and to be, so to speak, open to a bargain. The fetish priest, the rain
doctor, the medicine-man, the Hindu yogi, the Persian Mage, the medieval
saint, and countless miracle-workers in every age, have ever believed
themselves to be, whether by force of will, or by ecstatic
contemplation, or by potent charms, in communion with the great Spirit
of Nature, or with mighty cosmic influences--with Powers of Light or of
Darkness; with Oromasdes or Arimanes, Brahma or Siva, Jehovah or Baal;
with Zoroastrian Devs, Persian Genii, guardian angels or attendant
demons; with the Virgin Queen of heaven--whether as Selene, Astarte,
Hecate, or the Madonna; with the Prince of the powers of this
world--with or without his horns and his cloven foot.

Not only among the heathen--the orientals and Egyptians--but also among
the Chosen People we find the priests attesting their favour with the
Deity, and asserting the truth of their religion, by what we may call
orthodox magic. We all remember how Aaron's rod, in the form of an
orthodox snake, swallowed up the unorthodox rod-snakes of the Egyptian
sorcerers, and how Elijah attested the power of the true God by calling
down fire from heaven in his contest with the priests of the Sun-god
Baal. King Solomon too was for many ages credited with magic powers and
was regarded in medieval times as the great authority in matters of
wizardry.

Among the Greeks, although mysteries and witches played no small part in
the old religion and survived long in popular superstition, magic was
thrust into the background by the poetic and philosophic Hellenic
imagination. The powers of Nature were incorporated in the grand and
beautiful human forms of the Olympian gods, or in the dread shapes of
the Infernal deities. But even among those of the Greeks who were raised
far above the ordinary superstitions of the populace we find many traces
of mysticism and magic, as for example in connexion with oracles, with
divine healing, with the efficacy of images and other sacred objects,
and especially in connexion with Orphic and other Mysteries. And, while
for the most part Greek philosophy was rather imaginative than mystic,
still we encounter the genuine mystic element in such Greek sages as
Empedocles and Pythagoras, both of whom assumed the priestly character
and seem