There were many other practices of a magical
and malevalant character that were based on using the power of evil spirits,
gods, or the power of the sender themselves. The purpose of these practices were
usually to curse others, or to protect oneself from a curse. A common example
of this throughout the mediterranean world is the practice of “the evil eye”.
The gesture of pointing with the finger and staring was regarded as maleficent
(Ogden p. 212). Below are a few examples of the evil eye from Biblical,
apocryphal, and historical sources:
Do not eat the bread of one having the evil eye, do
not desire their delicacies; for like a hair in the throat, so are they. “Eat
and drink!” they say to you; but they do not mean it. You will vomit up the
little you have eaten, and you will waste your pleasant words (Proverbs
23:6-8).
Remember that an evil eye is a bad thing. What has
been created more evil than the eye? Therefore it sheds tears from every face (Sirach
31:12-13).
When one looks at what is excellent with an envious
eye he fills the surrounding atmosphere with a pernicious quality, and
transmits his own envenomed exhalations into whatever is nearest to him
(Heliodorus (3rd c.) Thea.i.140).
Self-bewitchment is most frequently brought about by
the streams of particles reflected from sheets of water or other mirror-like
surfaces; these reflections rise like vapor and return to the beholder, so that
he is injured by the same means by which he has been injuring others (Plutarch,
Quaest. Conv. 682F).
Magic was not employed secretly by
individuals (as we would tend to imagine today), but was publicly used by
tribal leaders, kinship families, and kings in official activities for the
purpose of destroying others. Kings of Isreal made public displays of
divination, such as endowing magic powers to their arrows and shooting them
toward the enemy in order to curse them. Public curses were also solemnly
uttered against enemies before battles. These were believed to possess great
power. Local and larger gods were invoked for this purpose, but it was also
believed that individuals possessed the power to curse. David and Goliath
cursed each other before battle. The ultimate curse was called the herem. It
was a vow of total destruction on the enemy and everything he possessed, with
the malicious intent of leaving no spoil.
These practices and many others paint a
dark picture of the spiritual state of the time. The stifling, growing presence
of evil in the historical and New Testament times corresponds to, and is a real
manifestation of the terrible imbalance occurring in the spiritual world. All
historians describe the strange nature and preponderance of evil spirits before
the time of Christ, but do not address the cause of it. The long decline in the
religion of humanity, the over accumulation of hereditary evil, and the
resulting imbalance is the cause. In this imbalance evil spirits were able to
wreck havoc and possess people in a way that is not normally allowed by the
Lord’s divine order. There was a cruelty in the society that was commonplace.
Lets examine the nature and origin of these
evil spirits as Swedenborg describes them in the spiritual world. The worst of
these are called the genii, also known as naphelim, and anakim:
Those before the Flood who perished are in a certain
hell beneath the heel of the left foot. Shutting them in is a rock enveloped in
mist which is a projection of their dreadful delusions and persuasions, and by
which they are segregated from all other hells and kept apart from the world of
spirits. They are continually pressing to come up out of there but can never
get beyond the attempt to do so. For they are such that if they were to enter
the world of spirits with their dreadful delusions and with the choking and
toxic effects of their persuasions, they would deprive every spirit they met,
apart from good ones, of his ability to think. And if the Lord by His Coming in
the flesh had not freed the world of spirits of that abominable crew the human
race would have perished (AC 1266).
He further describes his personal
experience of the genii while being protected by the Lord and His angels:
Presently some were let out of that hell; but the
Lord made such a disposition by means of intermediate spirits and angels that
they could do me no harm.
Their persuasions are of such a nature that they
extinguish all truth and good, so that those into whom they flow can perceive
nothing whatever, and after that cannot think; and therefore the other spirits
were removed. When they began to flow in I fell asleep. Then while I slept they
flowed in by means of cupidities, and this with such violence that if awake I
could not have resisted them. In my sleep I was sensible of the vehemence of
it, which I cannot describe, save that I afterwards remembered that they tried
to kill me by a suffocating afflatus, which was like a terrible nightmare. (AC
1270).
One can imagine the havoc these spirits
cuased when given free riegn during the imbalance. This is why there was such a
paranoia and obsession amongst the people to rotect themselves against spirits
and the dead. In the present day possession is not allowed as it was back then.
In normal times it is a law of the Lord’s divine order that spirits cannot
compel people on earth to their will, which means they are not allowed to
possess. But this law was superceeded during the imbalance. It was an awful
situation to live in, but the people grew up in it and were used to it, and
didn’t know the difference.
We get a pictue of a practitioner of
magical arts that was common in the streets of the city in the book of acts
with a man called Simon.
For unclean spirits, crying with
loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them: and many taken with
palsies, and that were lame, were healed. And there was great
joy in that city. But there was a certain man, called Simon,
which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of
Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one: To whom they all gave
heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of
God. And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched
them with sorceries. But when they believed Philip preaching
the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they
were baptized, both men and women. Then Simon himself believed
also: and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip, and wondered,
beholding the miracles and signs which were done.
Simon is an example of the many magical
practitioners that practiced among the people, but apearantly he was one of the
better ones. He demonstrates the false leadership the people were seduced by,
particularly in that they thought his power came from God. The episode gives
the impression of a strange passivity the people operated under, which I think
is a function of the imbalance and resulting partial loss of freedom. In this
state there is a kind of niavita which I think results from being compelled by
evil as I described above. This scripture also demonstrates how easily the
people would have profaned in that it shows how inclined they were to magical
arts. Simon himself changes his mind very easily (though perhaps not very
deeply) when he sees the real work of Philip and Peter – implying he was run by
evil spirits like a puppet. He reminds me of the Wizard of OZ in that he is
dealing in deception and playing with evil, but he is not all bad in his heart.
When Peter shows up a moment later on the scene he deals with Simon with great
power and love. Simon sees Peter’s ability to heal the people of evil spirits,
and Simon proposes to pay Peter that he might have these powers. He rejects
this and assesses him severely and accurately, ‘your heart is not right with
God…I see you are poisoned by bitterness and bound by inequity’. Yet Peter does
not give up on him, but asks him to repent and pray, and there seems to hope
that Smon will come around.
In daily life the people lived normal
lives, receiving satisfaction and pleasure from their work, the enjoyment of
nature, relationships, business, and regular activities. But it was a time of
true apocalypse. The whole earth would have been gradually consumed in
darkness, and heaven too, if the Lord had not come. This was not the first time
that the universal church of humanity had come to an end, (another was the time
of the flood and Noah). How all the universe changed after the coming of the
Lord is a subject of great significance, and it will be described in part in a
section below.
Realizing why the Lord came, and the
darkness He faced, gives the observer of history and the Bible, key insight
into the life of Jesus. To understand redemption, we must understand what we
were redeemed from. Otherwise it is not possible to fully understand the mighty
work that Jesus acccomplished from his own power.
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