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| Via Newspapers.com |
If, for some strange reason, you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll know that I periodically post old news items about that liveliest of creatures, the goat. This one probably tops them all. From the “York Dispatch,” June 18, 1932:
WERNIGERODE, Saxony, Germany, June 18.--A scrawny billy-goat smeared with blood and honey and the scrapings of church bells, but still a billy-goat, bore mute evidence here, today that modern psychic research had won round one against the witches on "the Brocken," Germany's magic mountain.Goats, I have noted, possess an uncanny ability to get people to make utter fools of themselves.
At an eerie ceremony, in the cold and clammy fogs on top of the mountain, last night, the billy-goat failed to change into a man, although modern British and German psychic researchers faithfully carried out the old witches formula, supposed to achieve that result.
Round two takes place tonight, however, in the same setting, made famous in Goethe’s "Faust.” and in German witchcraft lore. What happened last night was this:
The experimenters, headed by Harry Price, London psychic expert, trooped up the sides of "the Brocken" leading the billy-goat and carrying an ancient witches formula, in manuscript, brought from the archives of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, London.
With them was Miss Gloria Gordon of England, for the formula called for a maiden "pure of heart,” and Miss Gordon said she guessed she was "as well qualified as any girl nowadays" for the part.
Atop the mountain, they anointed the goat with the blood, the honey and the scrapings of church bells. They used the proper pine to light a fire, described a circle of the proper size and uttered every one of the Latin incantations stipulated.
The goat then was led into the circle by a silver cord. A white sheet was thrown over him. More prescribed abracadabra was intoned. Then, in a weird monotone, expert Price boomed "one!” He continued booming until he reached "ten!” with proper pauses.
While a hundred or so spectators, huddled in overcoats, looked on in breathless silence, Miss Gordon, the maiden pure in heart, jerked off the white sheet.
But no handsome young man stepped out to greet her. Instead, there stood the same be-smeared billy-goat, shivering in the cold.
The witches had failed, and everybody applauded, for that is what they set out to prove. As Dr. Erich Bohn, a German scholar interested in the experiment, said:
"It is far from our expectation to summon witches and spirits. Nevertheless there is no reason why these ancient recipes and rituals should be merely cast aside, for it is the business of science to reject nothing so long as the method it employs is a scientific one."
The scientists will beard the spirits on the spot again tonight. But all the debunking in the world won't change "The Brocken” for its neighbors. When ominous blue-black clouds pour over the top and the wind swoops down the valleys in a frenzy, uprooting mammoth firs and screeching around the eaves, it’s creepy story time in the little timbered houses of the mountain dwellers and probably always will be.
The billy-goat was all right this morning but Gloria Gordon, the "maiden pure of heart,” was confined to her bed with a severe cold, contracted in the raw night wind on the magic mountain.
Gloria, a pretty blonde with wavy bobbed hair, broke down and confessed that she was really Urta Bohn, daughter of a Breslau attorney. "Dad wanted to avoid publicity,” she said.
Several of the spectators at last night's experiment were rubbing sore eyes today from the fumes of the powder flares, which, they said were more diabolical than any medieval witches incense.
Ah, but they entered into the thing in the wrong spirit: they expected it to fail...
ReplyDeleteI does work but only if the goat is willing.
ReplyDeleteI’m not surprised to see that Harry Price, the Peter Venkman of his age, was a key player in this risible publicity stunt.
ReplyDeleteJohn Bellen’s comment raises an interesting question about what magic actually claims to be. Does it claim, like science, to be a description of how the physical world actually works? If so, a genuine spell should work for anybody who follows the correct procedure regardless of whether they believe in it or not, because it would be a process for manipulating an objective reality that exists independently of human beliefs.
If success depends on belief, what is the power that is activated by belief? If a goat could be turned into a man by the power of a magician’s belief then the physical world could be altered by the power of will alone. If that was possible, we would all be ruled by witches or wizards who could turn anything into anything else by uttering a few special words (and it would be literally true rather than a metaphor, before anybody adds any comments about modern politics).
If belief cannot activate a reality-changing power within the believer then it could only function as an appeal to a supernatural force which could alter reality, i.e. some form of deity. In that case, magic and the belief in magic could only be understood in the context of religious beliefs and would only work for people who had done whatever was required to gain the favour of their deity. Magic would just be another name for a miracle, and therefore inherently unpredictable.
Of course, the simplest explanation is that it doesn’t work at all.
James Thurber (maybe most famous for his story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," and related to fellow writer O. Henry) mentions portions of this article in his piece "The Black Magic of Barney Haller" (August 1932), which suggests that he read at least one Pennsylvania newspaper, The York Dispatch.
ReplyDelete