Magic witchcraft animal magnetism - andc. Author:James Braid Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: OBSERVATIONS ON J. C. COLQUHOUN'S HISTOEY OF MAGIC, Ac. A work iu two volumes has just issued from the press, entitled "An History of Magic, Witchcraft, an... more »d Animal Magnetism, by J. C. Colquhoun, Esq., author of ' Isis Revelata,' andc." The author has brought a flood of light to bear upon his subject, and has produced a book which will amply repay any one for its perusal, being agreeably and ably written, and embodying much matter which is both entertaining and instructive. Still there are some parts of the book which I must dissent from, both as to the matter and manner in which subjects are treated, and the inferences which the learned and ingenious author has drawn from certain premises. There is one topic, in particular, which Mr. Colquhoun has undertaken to discuss, which, in my humble opinion, had better have been left in a profound magnetic slumber,—and that is his attempt to prove that there is no reality in the belief in the mythos of the Devil—that there is no such personage as his Satanic Majesty—and that his existence is a mere allegory of Pagan or Zoroastric origin, borrowed by the Jews from that source, and introduced by them into the sacred scriptures. At pp. 258-9, Vol. I., Mr. C. says:— " We formerly observed that the actual existence of such a personage as the Devil was not originally a Jewish, but a Zoroastric notion—a chapter{Section 4Chaldean or Babylonish hallucination—which had been borrowed by that people (the Jews) and transferred into their religious code at or after their captivity and exile. Even the doctrine of good and bad angels, and their continual interference in the affairs of this sublunary sphere, appears to have been derived from the same source. Ideas of this nature, however, besides being unwarranted, are calculated to pervert r...« less