longer an incongruous collection of
popular superstitions and scientific observations. It became a reversed
religion: its nocturnal rites were the dreadful liturgy of the infernal
powers. There was no miracle the experienced magician might not expect to
perform with the aid of the demons, providing he know how to master them;
he would invent any atrocity in his desire to gain the favor of the evil
divinities whom crime gratified and suffering pleased. Hence the number of
impious practices performed in the dark, practices the horror of which is
equaled only by their absurdity: preparing beverages that disturbed the
senses and impaired the intellect; mixing subtle poisons extracted from
demoniac plants and corpses already in a state of putridity;[78] immolating
children in order to read the future in their quivering entrails or to
conjure up ghosts. All the satanic refinement that a perverted imagination
in a state of insanity could conceive[79] pleased the malicious evil
spirits; the more odious the monstrosity, the more assured was its
efficacy. These abominable practices were sternly suppressed by the Roman
government. Whereas, in the case of an astrologer who had committed an open
transgression, the law was satisfied with expelling him from Rome--whither
he generally soon returned,--the magician was put in the same class with
murderers and poisoners, and was subjected to the very severest punishment.
He was nailed to the cross or thrown to the wild beasts. Not only the
practice of the profession, but even the simple fact of possessing works of
sorcery made any one subject to prosecution.[80] {192}

However, there are ways of reaching an agreement with the police, and in
this case custom was stronger than law. The intermittent rigor of imperial
edicts had no more power to destroy an inveterate superstition than the
Christian polemics had to cure it. It was a recognition of its strength
when state and church united to fight it. Neither reached the root of the
evil, for they did not deny the reality of the power wielded by the
sorcerers. As long as it was admitted that malicious spirits constantly
interfered in human affairs, and that there were secret means enabling the
operator to dominate those spirits or to share in their power, magic was
indestructible. It appealed to too many human passions to remain unheard.
If, on the one hand, the desire of penetrating the mysteries of the future,
the fear of unknown misfortunes,