y, and lay
senseless during the time they imagined themselves in their bestial
transformation. The disease was almost uniformly complicated with
demonopathy, or the possession of witchcraft.

There seems no reason to doubt that lycanthropism was a disease as
constant in its character and as well defined in its symptoms as _delirium
tremens_, or any of the ordinary forms of mania. The evidences of its
existence are, however, considerably stronger than those of witchcraft;
for where on the one hand no credible witness ever saw a witch either at
the sabbath, or on her way to it, or on her return from it, there are not
wanting distinct proofs on oath, corroborated by admitted facts in
judicial proceedings, of persons afflicted with lycanthropy traversing the
woods on all-fours, and being found bloody from the recent slaughter both
of beasts and human victims; and in one of these cases, that of Jacques
Roulet, tried before the Parliament of Paris in 1598, the body of a newly
slain child, half mangled, and with all the marks of having been gnawed by
canine teeth, was found close to the place where the maniac was arrested.
It is worthy of remark that both lycanthropists and witches ascribed the
power of disembodying themselves to the use of ointments. Antiquity
furnishes no parallel to the horrors of these malignant and homicidal
manias. Their analogues may be found in the fabled styes of Circe, or in
the frenzied raptures of the Sybilline and Delphic priestesses; but the
extent, the variety, and the hideousness of the disease in modern times,
infinitely surpass all that was ever dreamt of in Pagan credulity. The
points of resemblance, however, are not yet exhausted.

"A chief sign of the divine afflatus," says Jamblichus, citing Porphyry,
"is, that he who induces the _numen_ into himself, sees the spirit
descending, and its quantity and quality. Also, he who receives the
_numen_ sees before the reception a certain likeness of a fire; sometimes,
also, this is beheld by the bystanders, both at the advent and the
departure of the god. By which sign, they who are skilful in these matters
discern, with perfect accuracy, what is the power of the numen, and what
its order, and what are the things concerning which it can give true
responses, and what it is competent to do.... Thus it is that the
excellence of this divine fire, and appearance, as it were, of ineffable
light, comes down upon, and fills, and dominates over the possessed