10 Of History’s Most Fascinating Sorcerers (Video)

(N.Morgan)  Throughout recorded history, there have been certain men who have claimed to possess super powers, or laying blessings and curses for anyone willing to pay. Swaying powers unseen unto one’s bidding is a tempting prospect. The world will always have its wizards. Did these men truly posses powers that were other worldly or were they merely delusional and suffering from Megalomania? Here we will get a glimpse into the top 10 Sorcerers/ Wizards of history.

10} Abe no Seimei

Abe no Seimei was the Japanese Merlin. However, unlike the European wizard, Seimei’s historical existence goes unchallenged. He served six different emperors as an omyodo, a yin-yang master. The court wizard oversaw matters of divination, protecting the Japanese emperor with rituals to banish evil spirits and illnesses. Legends and folktales ascribe to him all sorts of supernatural powers. The famous kabuki play Kuzunoha says he inherited his magical power from his mother, a white fox. He was said to possess second sight, which he used to identify demons. When the samurai Watanabe no Tsuna was said to cut off a demon’s arm, he brought the accursed item to Seimei to seal it away with a spell. The demon later tried to retrieve its limb but was unable to overcome Seimei’s magic. Legend says that Seimei met hosts of other demons in magical combat, defeating each of them with his vast repertoire of spells.

Legend also says that he was killed by a rival. In another play, rival Ashiya Doman secretly copies a text Seimei had been studying under a Chinese master wizard. With his stolen knowledge in hand, Doman challenges Seimei to a wizard battle and manages to kill him. Later, though, Seimei’s Chinese master arrives in Japan and resurrects his pupil with a ritual, allowing the reborn Seimei to defeat the rival wizard and reclaim his book.

9} The Sorcerer Of Trois-Freres

The Sorcerer is one name for an enigmatic cave painting found in the cavern known as ‘The Sanctuary’ at Trois-Frères, Ariège, France, made around 13,000 BC. The figure’s significance is unknown, but it is usually interpreted as some kind of great spirit or master of the animals. The unusual nature of The Sanctuary’s decoration may also reflect the practice of magical ceremonies in the chamber. In his sketches of the cave art, Henri Breuil drew a horned humanoid torso and the publication of this drawing in the 1920s influenced many subsequent theories about the figure. However, Breuil’s sketch has also come under criticism in recent years.A single prominent human figure is unusual in the cave paintings of the Upper Paleolithic, where the great majority of representations are of animals.

8} The Black Constable

Charleston, South Carolina has a long history of voodoo, and its deadliest voodoo sorcerer was named John Domingo. He was a peculiar-looking man—strong, unkempt, and often clad in an old Union Army coat. He wore a silver ring in the shape of a serpent that he claimed could raise the dead. This supposed necromancer used his undead to enforce his own brand of law, earning him the nickname “Black Constable.”It was said that sailors would buy wind from him to ensure a safe journey. He could also send storms their way if he felt offended. At the height of his power, it was said that the city’s citizens would seek him out to solve their legal troubles even before they went to the police. Despite his unrivaled clout, legend says that he met a sudden and mysterious end.

He had just apprehended two suspected robbers. Dragging them through the street, one in each hand, he compared himself to Jesus with a thief on either side. Except, thought Domingo, he himself was more powerful. According to the story, he then felt invisible fingers draw him up on his toes, choking the life out of him. He was thrown backward to the ground, aged and withered like an old cucumber. His dead body continued to wither away into nothing. Legends say his ghost can still be seen walking the streets.

7} Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel

Judah Loew ben Bezalel, widely known to scholars of Judaism as the Maharal of Prague, or simply The MaHaRaL, the Hebrew acronym of “Moreinu ha-Rav Loew,” (“Our Teacher, Rabbi Loew”) was an important Talmudic scholar, Jewish mystic, and philosopher who, for most of his life, served as a leading rabbi in the cities of Mikulov in Moravia and Prague in Bohemia. Within the world of Torah and Talmudic scholarship, he is known for his works on Jewish philosophy and Jewish mysticism and his work Gur Aryeh al HaTorah, a supercommentary on Rashi’s Torah commentary.

The Maharal is the subject of a nineteenth-century legend that he created The Golem of Prague, an animate being fashioned from clay. Rabbi Loew is buried at the Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague in Josefov, where his grave and intact tombstone can still be visited. His descendants’ surnames include Loewy, Loeb, Lowy, Oppenheimer, Pfaelzer,Lowenstein and Keim.

6} St. Cyprian

Legend says that St. Cyprian was a magician of Antioch in league with the devil. At the request of an amorous young man, he conjured a demon to arouse the maiden Justina so that the youth could seduce her. Justina recognized the attack on her sanctity and defeated the demon by making the sign of the cross. His magic thwarted, Cyprian summoned the devil himself to tempt the maiden, but he was defeated in same manner. Disgusted that Satan could be beaten by a mere maiden, Cyprian cast off his sorcery and converted to Christianity. In time, he became the bishop of Antioch and was martyred for his faith.

The pair of Cyprian and Justina were declared saints and received their own feast day in the Catholic calendar. Historical records show no bishop of Antioch named Cyprian, however, and modern religious scholars now believe their existence to be suspect. In 1969, their feast day was dropped from the Roman Catholic Church’s calendar. Some traditionalists, including a monastery devoted to the pair, still celebrate them.

5} The Magician Of Marblehead

A resident of Little Harbor, Marblehead in Massachusetts, Edward “John” Dimond was feared as an alternately benevolent and malevolent sorcerer. He was born sometime around the Salem witch trials, and his eccentric behavior was likely tolerated due to the stigma against witchcraft accusations following the hysteria. Dimond was said to go into trances. His eyes would roll back in his head, and he would later come around feeling refreshed and with knowledge of future and distant events. The townsfolk and even local police sought him out to locate stolen items on occasion, a practice at which he apparently had great success. It’s theorized, though, that he could have just as easily located the items through deductive reasoning.

Darker legends say that he was a necromancer who dug up graves for his diabolical arts. According to stories, Dimond would go to the local cemetery during storms and cry into the wind, hailing distant ships at sea. When in a benevolent mood, his voice could be heard by captains thundering above storms, telling them the right course. Other times, when a captain ran afoul of Dimond, he would curse them and send storms to capsize their ships.

4} John Of Nottingham

John of Nottingham was a famous 14th century magician, said to have plotted to kill Edward II of England and Hugh Despenser the Younger in 1324 through witchcraft. By 1324, Edward II was ruling England with his royal favourite Hugh Despenser the Younger in an increasingly despotic manner. Although Edward had defeated his Lancastrian opponents in 1322, many of his enemies had escaped to France from where they still conspired against Despenser and him. Already during 1324 there had been an attempt to murder the pair, although the conspiracy had been foiled.

3} Michael Scot

Michael Scot was one of the most influential European intellectuals of the 13th century. Unfortunately for him, history remembers him as not a scholar but a sorcerer. Scot had a fascination with the occult and treated it with just as much enthusiasm as more orthodox subjects. He studied in Toledo, a Spanish city then under occupation by the Moors, translating many texts into Latin. In Scot’s time, any European with Middle Eastern learning would have been respected and even feared. But Scot also took to dressing in an Arab gown, fueling the belief that he was indeed a sorcerer. His occult knowledge won him the post of personal astrologer to the Holy Roman Emperor. He was also tutor to the pope, though he likely confined these lessons to more traditional subjects.

2} Roger Bolingbroke

Bolingbroke was the best known of the three scholars implicated in the “conspiracy” to bring about the death of King Henry. He was described as a ‘gret and konnyng man in astronomye’ and ‘renowned in all the world’. In October 1440 he and Thomas Southwell produced a horoscope for Eleanor Cobham which predicted the death of King Henry, an event, which, if it were to have happened, would have meant the Duke would have become King and Eleanor his Queen. Naturally, when the King was acquainted with this prediction he was not best pleased. The Kings Council charged Bolingbroke and Southwell, and another – John Home (or Hum), with conspiring to kill the King with necromancy. In addition to these scholars, a woman known as Margery Jourdemayne was also implicated. Jourdemayne was known as “The Witch of Eye” and was engaged in the conspiracy to provide spells and potions. She and Bolingbroke were the only two to be executed for their parts in the affair.

1} Edward Kelly

Sir Edward Kelley or Kelly, also known as Edward Talbot, was an ambiguous figure in English Renaissance occultism and self-declared spirit medium who worked with John Dee in his magical investigations. Besides the professed ability to summon spirits or angels in a “shew-stone” or mirror, which John Dee so valued, Kelley also claimed to possess the secret of transmuting base metals into gold, the goal of alchemy, as well as the supposed Philosopher’s Stone itself. Legends began to surround Kelley shortly after his death. His flamboyant biography, his relationships with Queen Elizabeth I’s royal magus Sir John Dee and the Emperor Rudolf II, his supposed ability to communicate with angels, and his possession of certain alchemical powders, have led to his relative notoriety among historians: this has made him (along with the German Faustus and Sir John Dee himself) one source for the folklorical image of the alchemist-medium-charlatan.

References:

Listverse

Wiki

More Stories Contributed By N. Morgan