Magic and the Occult According to St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite

A painting in the Rila Monastery in Bulgaria, condemning witchcraft and traditional folk magic

CANON LXI

Those who consult soothsayers or so-called hecantontarchs of other such fortune-tellers in the hope of

learning from then whatever may be revealed to them, in accordance with what the Fathers had formerly

decided in regard to them, let them incur the canon of six years. The same penalty ought to be inflicted

also upon those who lead bears after them, or other such animals, for the purpose, of sport and harm of

the more simple-minded, and who tell the fortune, and, fate, and genealogy, and other such things to the

populace, in accordance with the rigmarole of delusion. As, for those who are called cloud-chasers and

enchanters and amuletics and soothsayers, if they persist in these professions, and refuse to change their

occupation and to eschew these pernicious acts and Greek practices, we decree that they be thrust out of

the Church altogether, in conformity with what the holy Canons also prescribe. For what communion has

light with darkness as the Apostle says; or what agreement, has a temple of God with idols? Or what

portion has a believer with an infidel? And what concord has Christ with Belial? (II Corinthians 6:15-

16).

INTERPRETATION

Christians must not affect any of those wicked things that the Greeks used to affect divination, that is to

say, and charms, and other similar things. On this account the present Canon decrees that those Christians

shall be compelled to abstain from the Mysteries for six years who consult soothsayers,63 and men

calling themselves hecantontarchs;64 and others of the kind, with a view to learning from them

whatever occult things they wish (in order to find money or other things they have lost, for instance), Just

as previous Fathers have canonically penalized them. It also in like manner with the above canonizes for

six years also those who drag bears,65 or other such animals along with them for sport and harm of

simple-minded persons; and also those who tell fortunes of men and what they are to get in the future, and

that they were born on a lucky or unlucky day and other such delusive sayings. Likewise it also canonizes

those persons who were called cloud-chasers66 and enchanters,67 and amuletics and

soothsayers. Accordingly, all of them are to receive this canon if they repent and abandon such ruinous,

devilish, and Greek practices. If, however, they persist in this wickedness and delusion, and do not give it

up, they are to be driven away from the Church of Christ altogether and are to be excluded from the

society of Christians, just as the divine Canons prescribe. For what communion has light with darkness, or

what union has the temple of God with the altar of idols or what concord has Christ with the Devil? as St.

Paul says? But we must note that the penalty provided by the present Canon is provided for laymen only,

as much as for those who perform such diabolical works and magic as we have enumerated above, as for

those who consult them. For any clergyman and persons in Holy Orders that should do such things would

surely and without fail be deposed, according to Balsamon and Zonaras.68

CONCORD

As regarding persons engaged in divination and following Greek practices,and bringing wizards69 to

their homes in order to discover the bewitchments certain persons may have cast a spell upon them, the

Fathers of the Synod in Ancyra canonizes them five years in their Canon XXIV, while Basil the Great

makes it six in his Canon LXXXIII, which this Synod followed mentioning as previous Fathers both him

and those in Ancyra. Canon XXXVI of Laodicea expressly thrusts out of the Church those who wear

amulets, and prohibits clergymen and priests from becoming wizards, or enchanters,70 or

mathematicians71 or astrologers, and from making amulets. It is mainly this Canon that the Synod is

referring to in saying In conformity with what the holy Canons also prescribe, but perhaps it is referring

also to the ones following. For Canon III of Nyssa decrees that those who go to fascinators and

soothsayers must be well questioned, and if it turns out they became pusillanimous as a result of being

forced by any unendurable necessity and were deluded by such men, they are to be more leniently dealt

with (or canonized), just as are those who have been induced by tortures to deny Christ. But if it be as a

result of their having flouted the faith of Christ and of their having failed to believe that Christ is a God

and well able to free them from every ill plight and calamity, they are to be canonized like those who

have voluntarily denied Christ, which is the same as saying, that they are not to commune throughout the

duration of their lifetime, unless at last they separate from the Church, and pray only by themselves alone,

as the same Gregory of Nyssa in his Canon II plainly states this. But also Canon VII of Basil also in

dealing likewise with those Christians who have sacrificed to idols and have consequently been separated

from the Church of Christians, penalizes sorcerers.72 The same Basil, on the other hand, in his Canon

LXV canonizes as willing murderers those who declaim about the fascination and sorcery which they

have practiced, and also those who give themselves to soothsayers in his Canon LXXII.

63. ASTROLOGY, SOOTHSAYING, FORTUNE-TELLING

Soothsayers are persons who have consecrated themselves to demons and who are supposed to be able

to foresee future events by looking in the palm of the hand or into a bowl of water, or by sacrifices and

other deceptive arts and signs.

Hence the thirteenth ordinance of the law prescribes that anyone making forbidden sacrifices or, in other

words, divining by means thereof, shall be punished like a murderer; and furthermore that anyone paying

that person or putting him up to do these things shall be exiled and his property shall be confiscated in

accordance with Chapter 23 of Book IX of the Code.

64. HECTONARCH OLDEST OF SOOTHSAYERS

Hecantonarchs was the name given to the wisest and oldest of soothsayers, and they were regarded with

greater respect than the others.

65. DRAGGING BEARS, BASKANIAI OR EVIL EYE

Those who used to drag along bears hung dyed cords from the head and all the body of these animals, and

cutting off hairs of the bears they would give these together with dyed cords to people to use as amulets to

ward off diseases and what is called in English the evil eye, or in Greek baskaniai of eyes. Others had

snakes in their bosoms and worked magic charms by means of them.

66. CLOUD-CHASERS

Cloud-chasers was the designation of those who used to observe the shapes of clouds especially about

the time of sunset, and to foretell the future in accordance with those shapes.

For instance, if they saw clouds shaped like men with swords in their hands, they would predict that a war

was to occur, and other such nonsense. The name cloud-chasers could also have been given to those

who with the collaboration of demons were wont to drive clouds away so as to prevent them from raining

or hailing upon one region and compelling them to do so on another region.

67. ENCHANTERS MIXED RELIGION WITH MAGIC

Enchanters were those who used to interlard their invocations of demons with the Psalms of David, the

names of saints, and even with the name of our Maiden Theotokos; in regard to those enchanters divine

Chrysostom says that even though they name the name of the Holy Trinity, or that of saints, or make the

sign of the Cross, Christians mast shun them and turn away from them.

And again the same saint says in his Sermon on Statues says: Are you not ashamed, O Christian, to bring

into your home old women that are drunk and out of their mind, though you assert that those old women

say nothing but the name of God? And for this reason indeed you ought to shun them, namely, because

they, although being old Christian women, employ the name of Christ wrongly, and do the works of the

Greeks; for even the demons used to say the name of Christ true enough, but they themselves were

demons and were bad, on which account Christ gagged them and drove them out.

68. AMULETICS

Those called amuletics comprised not only those who made amulets, winding them with silk threads

and inscribing them with invocations of demons, but also those who bought them from the makers of

them and hung them round their neck in order to have a preventive of every evil.

69. PRIESTS BEWARE OF THESE DIABOLIC THINGS

For this reason those priests, too, ought to be deposed who read to sick persons what is called the paper

of Jalu; and those, too, who take pitch candles and, going into mountains and valleys, light them and

read the Solomonic, or rather to say, Diabolic, Bible, or other invocations, and the names of demons and

thereby excommunicate and execrate their enemies, and cause either them themselves to die or their

cattle, horses, and other animals to die, or to sustain some outer serious loss or damage.

On this account such books, too-including, I mean, the Solomonic, and the paper of Jalu, and the Words

of Thunder, and the Words of Lightning, and the Book of Days, and in general all magical and

curious books ought to be destroyed by the local judge, as Book VIII of the law, Title I, ordinance 35 (in

Photios Title IX, Chapter 25) prescribes, and be burned up, just as at Ephesus believers burnt books on

magic which were valued at fifty thousand pieces of silver (Acts 19:18). The penalties provided in this

Canon ought to be inflicted also on those old hags who divine with barley, or with broad beans, or by

dumping coal, or by yawning, or by strangling infants, or who are snatched up in the air by demons and

go from region to region, like that wizard named Heliodorus and like those named Cynops in Patmus and

Simon. The same applies to those shepherds who put some little bone in the feet of sheep, or of goats, in

order to make them grow fast and augment their flock The same applies to those who pass their children

through rigols. Speaking generally, all sorcerers and witches, and all men and women who go to sorcerers

and witches, if they all repent, are to receive the penalty prescribed by the present Canon; if, on the other

hand they persist in this diabolic delusion, they are to be driven away from the Church of the Christians

altogether as being a portion of Satan, and not of Christ. Note that divine Chrysostom (Homily 3 on I

Thessalonians) says: Those who fall sick and refuse to be enchanted or to have their illness alleviated

with incantations and bindings, but, instead, prove brave and remain patient, receive the halo of

martyrdom like martyrs.

And against Jews (Discourse 5) he says thus: And you, if you firmly decline incantations and sorceries

and spells and die from the disease, you are consummate martyr, because notwithstanding that others

promised a cure with piety, you preferred death with piety. Novel 65 of Leo the Wise, too, says that

whoever appears with completeness to produce magic effects, whether it be for the cure of bodily

disease, or for the prevention of damage to fruits, shall be chastised with the mose severe punishment and

be given the penalty received by traitors aganst the Emperor.

70. WIZARDS

Wizards are those who invoke demons that are in a way beneficent, and this in spite of the fact that they

themselves are fiendish and maleficent.

71. ENCHANTERS, SNAKE CHARMERS

Enchanters is the name applied to those who lure demons into whatever things they will with some

incantations and invocations; and those who bind wild beasts, such as wolves, etc., (by a spell of some

kind) in order to prevent them from eating their cattle when they are outside at night or those who grasp

snakes in their hands and cause them not to bite. The name enchanters is also bestowed upon those who

bind married couples with diabolic art and witchery. Oh, the thrice-accursed! Oh, the villains! Oh, the

frenzied before God!

Woe and great sorrow to those who engage in such a Satanic craftiness. Ah, and the wretches do not

realize what a dreadful punishment awaits them as their inheritance because of their becoming the cause

of an honorable marriage being dishonored, and of a married couple hating each other and becoming

separated for all time thereafter, whom God had joined together. Some persons recommend that those

couples who are about to be wedded, in order to remain unharmed by any such binding (or spell), should

first confess all their sins, fast, and partake of the divine mysteries, and afterwards get married, as we

have said. Some order that the bridegroom carry on his person the volume of the four holy Gospels when

they are being married.

And experience has shown the efficacy of faith in many persons. For, according to divine Chrysostom,

wherever there is (an Orthodox edition of) the Gospel, the Devil does not dare to approach, accordingly, it

is an ancient custom for women and young children to hang Gospels round their neck by which they

obtain great protection (Homily 32 on the Gospel according to St. John, page 686 of the second volume,

Verse 5; and Homily 19 on Statues, page 594 of the sixth volume, Verse 35). As regards enchanters and

conjuring ventriloquists God says that they are to be stoned (Leviticus 20:27): Any man or woman

whoever becomes a ventriloquist or an enchanter shall both of them surely be put to death. They shall

stone them with stones. They are guilty.

72. MATHEMATICIANS.

Mathematicians appear to have been the same as astrologers, as may be inferred from the words of

Zonaras and of Blastaris. But they were not any of those who rightly use the four main branches of

mathematics, namely, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy, and who investigate their natural

propositions, but, instead, those who monstrously insist that the movements made by the free will of

human beings are steered and governed by the motion of the heavenly bodies, and the attribute altogether

the passions and impulses of human beings to the stars, and represent the occurrences in the life of human

beings to be dependent on the different configuration of the luminaries and stars, while divining with the

co-operation of demons by means of the stars whatever things gods assign to stars; and, speaking in

general, those who employ mathematics in a curious way.

73. SORCERERS

The word sorcerers designates those who by magical art prepare poisonous drinks either in order to put

somebody to death or to muddle his brain or to allure him to their love; which drinks women are

especially wont to employ as a means of drawing men into love. Such women are canonized as

murderesses twenty years that is to say, according to Canon VIII of Basil the Great. Book XLVII, Title

III, ordinance 2 provides that anyone is to be chastised as a murderer that makes such philter (a potion to

arouse passion) in order to kill anybody, or who sells it or has it in his possession. Those men or those

women who prepare philters in order to incite anybody to love are to be exiled and their property is to be

made authentic (i.e., turned over to the lord paramount having jurisdiction). And see in the Nomicon of

Photios, Title IX, Chapter 25.

76. ST. SYMEON METAPHRASTES (TRANSLATOR)

For this reason we Easterners owe St. Symeon Metaphrastes an acknowledgment of special thanks

(acknowledged as I am told, also by the Westerners), who with great industry wrote the lives of the holy

Martyrs and of the Devout Ones, after ridding them of every lie and adulteration, and going in person to

various places and collecting some accounts from what he saw with his own eyes, and some from reliable

information.

Orthodox church near Targoviste, Romania