There is a widespread belief among certain religious groups that manual stimulation, often referred to as masturbation, is a form of witchcraft. This notion stems from a combination of historical cultural stigma, religious teachings, and misinterpretation of scriptures. The idea that manual stimulation is a version of witchcraft has its roots in centuries-old beliefs that deemed any type of sexual pleasure outside of procreation as sinful and immoral. Throughout history, various religious doctrines emphasized the importance of abstinence and purity, viewing any sexual activity as inherently impure and associated with evil forces. Within this framework, manual stimulation was considered a direct violation of religious teachings and a form of spiritual seduction. It was believed that engaging in self-pleasure would open the doors to demonic possession, curses, and other evil influences.
Chapter after chapter of Agrippa’s work, accordingly, turned into a magnificently encyclopedic if associatively organized mountain of material, partly drawn from written sources and partly from oral tradition and current practice, as the author applied his scissors and paste to the fruits of his vast reading and vaster curiosity. When contemporary readers opened the book at random, as they often did, they would find themselves stumbling into a vast cabinet of curiosities, whose contents Agrippa described with energy and economy:
When contemporary readers opened the book at random, as they often did, they would find themselves stumbling into a vast cabinet of curiosities, whose contents Agrippa described with energy and economy. To judge from Duden s note, however, preserved in the manuscript he began reading in 1550, Agrippa also described a contemporary magical practice I myself have experienced this, with great terror.
It was believed that engaging in self-pleasure would open the doors to demonic possession, curses, and other evil influences. People were led to believe that engaging in such acts would undermine their relationship with God and lead them down a path of moral degradation. These beliefs were further reinforced by specific interpretations of religious scriptures.
Manual stimulation is a version of witchcraft
Reading Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s encyclopedic study of magic is like stumbling into a vast cabinet of curiosities, where toad bones boil water, witches transmit misery through optical darts, and numbers, arranged correctly, can harness the planets’ powers. Anthony Grafton explores the Renaissance polymath’s occult insights into the structure of the universe, discovering a path that leads both upward and downward: up toward complete knowledge of God, and down into every order of being on earth.
Published
October 12, 2023
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.Title-page portrait of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, from a 1533 edition of his De occulta philosophia libri tres (Three books of occult philosophy) — Source.
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s manual of learned magic, De occulta philosophia (1533), explicated the ways in which magicians understood and manipulated the cosmos more systematically than any of his predecessors. It was here that he mapped the entire network of forces that passed from angels and demons, stars and planets, downward into the world of matter. Agrippa laid his work out in three books, on the elementary, astrological, and celestial worlds. But he saw all of them as connected, weaving complex spider webs of influence that passed from high to low and low to high. With the zeal and learning of an encyclopedist imagined by Borges, Agrippa catalogued the parts of the soul and body, animals, minerals, and plants that came under the influence of any given planet or daemon. He then offered his readers a plethora of ways for averting evil influences and enhancing good ones. 1 Some of these were originally simple remedies, many of them passed down from Roman times in the great encyclopedic work of Pliny the Younger and less respectable sources, and lacked any deep connection to learned magic.
Magic usually required the use of objects charged with power, and Agrippa’s book also offered a massive taxonomy of magical animals, plants, and stones, with ample instructions for their preparation and use. Sufferers from sore throat read in Agrippa that they could cure themselves by touching their necks to the hand of someone who had died prematurely. Those plagued by coughs learned to put spit in the mouths of green frogs and then let them escape. 2 Reading the book resembles walking through a vast princely chamber of wonders or a grand apothecary’s shop, ceiling, walls, and shelves hung with strange and thrilling creatures.
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.A fold-out engraving that is thought to be the earliest illustration of a natural history cabinet or “cabinet of curiosities”, from Ferrante Imperato’s Dell’historia Naturale (1599) — Source.
Chapter after chapter of Agrippa’s work, accordingly, turned into a magnificently encyclopedic if associatively organized mountain of material, partly drawn from written sources and partly from oral tradition and current practice, as the author applied his scissors and paste to the fruits of his vast reading and vaster curiosity. When contemporary readers opened the book at random, as they often did, they would find themselves stumbling into a vast cabinet of curiosities, whose contents Agrippa described with energy and economy:
They say also that a stone bitten by a mad dog has the power to cause discord, if it is put in a drink, and that one who puts a dog’s tongue in his shoe, under his big toe, will not be barked at by dogs, especially if it is added to the herb of the same name, cynoglossa [dog’s tongue]. And a membrane from the afterbirth of a dog has the same effect, and dogs will shun one who has a dog’s heart. And Pliny reports that there are red toads that make their home in briars, and are full of sorcery and do wonderful things. For the small bone that is in its left side, when cast into cold water, makes it immediately become hot. It restrains the attacks of dogs. Added to a drink, it arouses love and quarrels. When tied to someone, it arouses lust. On the other hand, the little bone that is in the right side cools hot water, and it will not become hot again unless the bone is taken out. It cures quartan fevers, when tied in a fresh lamb’s skin, and prevents other fevers and love and lust. And the spleen and heart of these toads make an effective remedy against the poisons that are drawn from those animals. All this Pliny narrates. 3
Any reader could find something of interest in this paroxysm of parataxis, a good bit of it taken directly from Pliny and none of it explicitly verified by anything resembling a test. Some of the time, at least, Agrippa served his readers as little more than a source of the homeliest of anecdotes and practices — which they both appreciated and, presumably, recycled in their turn. But sometimes readers indicated that they had tested the claims made by Agrippa and his ancient sources, or seen them tested, by practitioners who knew how to manipulate powerful things. The Benedictine monk Heinrich Duden, for example, liked Pliny’s story, which he read in Agrippa, about how the bone from the left side of a toad could make water hot or inspire love. He treated it, unexpectedly, not as a factoid that had already made an illustrious career passing from notebook to notebook but as a description of a familiar process. After underlining the two relevant bits of the sentence, he wrote: “I saw this done once.” 4
Even the little toads and their littler bones, moreover, were framed in a larger explanatory system, one that led the reader upward and outward. In classificatory chapters that dealt with the elements, the temperaments, the planets, and the zodiac, Agrippa made it clear that celestial influences shaped each being and object on earth, endowing it both with its powers and with the external marks that revealed these to the skilled eye of the magus. No one could hope to master the occult philosophy, in other words, without mastering the higher studies of astronomy and astrology. The magus also had to have the personal gifts and formal training that would enable him to interpret dreams and prophecies and the knowledge of mathematics required to detect the Pythagorean number patterns that gave the universe structure. In the end, moreover, he needed asceticism and self-discipline since the consummation of his art involved communication with angels. The most graphic parts of Agrippa’s work, the sections most densely involved with the powers of particular bones and plants, provided him with opportunities to introduce larger and more abstract themes that he could then pursue in the second and third books, as he moved on to describe in detail the powers of planets, angels, and daemons.
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.Two diagrams from Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia (1533) demonstrating the proportion, measure, and harmony of human bodies. The first shows a man with his feet together as a “quadrature equilateral”, whose centre is in “the bottom of his belly”. The second shows a man with limbs perfectly bordered by the sides of a square, whose centre aligns with his navel, “the girdling of the body” — Source: left, right.
Agrippa, moreover, interspersed the homely segments of his work with materials of very different kinds, also drawn from diverse provinces of the country of magic. When he evoked the terrifying images of horses’ heads that certain special lamps and candles, made from the liquid exuded by copulating mares, could project, he was once again quoting Pliny, and Pliny in turn was quoting older sources. To judge from Duden’s note, however, preserved in the manuscript he began reading in 1550, Agrippa also described a contemporary magical practice: “I myself have experienced this, with great terror.” 5 When Agrippa described how witches could catch the eyes of their victim and, by projecting “darts or strokes”, induce fear, love, or misery in them, he recalled the descriptions of witches’ behavior in the book he loathed, Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus maleficarum, and the normal beliefs of contemporary churchmen — as Duden noted when he wrote “a certain witch did this to the executioner at Hamburg in my time.” 6
The therapies on offer in Agrippa’s book often required the invocation of celestial or angelic powers, either to awake the slumbering, hidden forces of the magical things he wished to manipulate or to protect magus and clients against the more frightening sorts of supernatural powers. Agrippan magic, accordingly, regularly involved direct efforts to invoke the intervention of planetary daemons and other spirits. Talismans, carved from particular substances and engraved with particular signs; magic squares, which revealed the marvelous properties of numbers; and the names of angels, obtained by Christian Cabalistic methods of substitution and recombination — these, among other means too numerous to mention, would enable Agrippa’s readers to change themselves and the world for the better. 7
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.A series of illustrations of magical seals, characters, and numerical grids from James Freake’s 1651 English translation of Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia — Source.
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.Two diagrams from Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia (1533) demonstrating the proportion, measure, and harmony of human bodies — Source: left, right.
Many of the practices Agrippa described in De occulta philosophia came directly from the magic that unfrocked clerics had practiced for generations. Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I has made one case in point famous. In this engraving, a magic square — the series of numbers from one to sixteen, arranged in the proper order in a square with sixteen cells — invokes the power of Jupiter, a beneficent planet, against the devastating influence of Saturn. Magic squares like this originated in the Arabic world, long before Agrippa’s time. Often they had their top row of cells filled with the letters of a divine name or with the first letters of a verse from the Koran, and the lower rows with permutations on them. Since Arabic letters, like Hebrew, have numerical values, each magic square automatically forms a mathematical figure, and it was in this form that they became most popular in the West.
The square in Melencolia I starts in the inverse way, with numbers that could turn into letters. If you take a square and enter the numbers from 1 to 16, you obtain the series that follows:
A fold-out engraving that is thought to be the earliest illustration of a natural history cabinet or “cabinet of curiosities”, from Ferrante Imperato’s Dell’historia Naturale (1599) — Source.
Some religious texts contain passages that have been interpreted as condemning any sexual activity that does not involve procreation within a heterosexual marriage. These passages were often used to fuel the narrative that manual stimulation is a form of witchcraft, reinforcing the stigma surrounding it. However, it is essential to recognize that these beliefs are not universally held within all religious traditions. Different religions have different perspectives on sexuality, and interpretations can vary widely. While some religious groups may condemn manual stimulation, others take a more permissive stance, viewing it as a normal and natural part of human sexuality. Moreover, the scientific understanding of human sexuality has evolved over time, challenging the moral judgments and stigma associated with manual stimulation. Current research suggests that engaging in consensual sexual activities, including manual stimulation, can have positive effects on mental and physical well-being. It can promote stress relief, improve sleep quality, boost self-esteem, and enhance intimate relationships. Ultimately, the belief that manual stimulation is a version of witchcraft is a complex issue influenced by cultural norms, religious teachings, and individual beliefs. While certain groups may still hold onto this view, it is crucial to approach the topic with open-mindedness and respect for different perspectives. Recognizing that human sexuality is diverse and complex can promote a healthier and more inclusive dialogue surrounding this topic..
Reviews for "From Witchcraft to Ecstasy: The Role of Manual Stimulation"
1. Maria - 2 stars - I was really disappointed with "Manual stimulation is a version of witchcraft". The book seemed promising from the description, but it felt like a convoluted and confusing mess of ideas. The author's writing style was difficult to follow, and I found myself constantly rereading sentences to understand what they were trying to convey. Additionally, the book didn't offer any clear structure or organization, which made it even harder to grasp the main message. Overall, I found this book to be a frustrating and unsatisfying read.
2. John - 1 star - I absolutely detested "Manual stimulation is a version of witchcraft". It was one of the most pretentious and self-indulgent books I've ever come across. The author seemed more interested in showcasing their supposed intellectual superiority than actually delivering a coherent and meaningful story. The narrative was fragmented, the characters lacked depth, and the themes were shallow and poorly explored. It felt like the author was trying too hard to be profound, but it ended up being nothing more than a tedious exercise in abstract thinking. Save yourself the trouble and avoid this book at all costs.
3. Emily - 2 stars - I couldn't connect with "Manual stimulation is a version of witchcraft" at all. The writing was overly verbose and filled with unnecessary tangents that distracted from the main plot. It felt like the author was trying too hard to impress their audience with their vocabulary and philosophical musings, but it only served to alienate me as a reader. The lack of character development made it difficult to care about the story, and the ending left me feeling unsatisfied and confused. Overall, this book was a disappointment, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone seeking an enjoyable reading experience.