The Encyclopedia Of Demons And Demonology

268 Wickland, Dr. Carl A.
Views on Demons and Witches
Weyer rejected the Aristotelian view that demons did not
exist in reality. He believed in the Devil and his legions of
demons but did not believe that witches were empowered
by the Devil to harm humankind. Nor did he believe stories
of their flying through the air and attendance at SAB-
BATs in which the Devil was worshipped and babies were
eaten. He thought that belief in WITCHCRAFT was caused
by the Devil and that the church ironically served the
cause of the Devil by promoting belief in the evil power
of witches.
In De praestigiis daemonum, Weyer refuted the idea
of the demonic pact because there was no basis for it in
the Bible. He gave a rational analysis of reports of alleged
witch activity and concluded that most witches were deluded
and mentally disturbed old women, the outcasts of
society, who were fools, not heretics. Some might wish
harm on their neighbors but could not carry it out. If
harm occurred coincidentally, they believed, in their delusion,
that they had brought it about. He did believe that
some witches served Satan and did harm people, but not
through supernatural means. He urged the church to forgive
those who repented or, at most, to levy fines upon
them.
Weyer believed that demons could possess people;
however, he advocated ruling out all medical and
natural explanations and causes before looking for the
supernatural.
Weyer successfully discouraged witch hunting in
much of the Netherlands for a while but was forced out
by the Catholic governor, the duke of Alba. His book had
almost the opposite effect from the one he intended. He
was savagely denounced by critics such as Jean Bodin and
King JAMES VI AND I, both of whom favored the extermination
of witches. James’ authoring of his antiwitch
treatise, Daemonologie, was in response to the works by
Weyer and Scot. Bodin urged that copies of Weyer’s book
be burned. Others wrote books refuting Weyer, and these
helped to stimulate more witch hunts. Weyer himself was
accused of being a witch but was not formally charged.
However, his arguments did persuade many witch
hunters in Germany to consult physicians more often to
rule out medical causes.
FURTHER READING:
Ankarloo, Bengt, and Gustav Henningsen, eds. Early Modern
European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1990.
Russell, Jeffrey B. A History of Witchcraft. London: Thames &
Hudson, 1980.
Weyer, Johann. On Witchcraft (De praestigiis daemonum).
Abridged. Edited by Benjamin G. Kohl and H. C. Erik
Midelfort. Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 1998.
Wickland, Dr. Carl A. (1861–1945) Physician who
with the help of his medium wife, Anna, performed
EXORCISMs in cases of POSSESSION caused by dead people.
Using mild electronic current, Dr. Carl A. Wickland said
he could force a possessing spirit to leave its victim,
enter Anna’s body, and then finally depart forever.
A native of Sweden, Wickland emigrated to the United
States in 1881. He married Anna in 1896 and moved to
Chicago to study medicine at Durham Medical College.
After his graduation in 1900, he worked in private practice
before turning to psychiatry. He soon believed that
spirits played an unrecognized role in psychiatric problems
and illness and began research into this uncharted
area.
According to Wickland, a possessing spirit often does
not realize that its earthly form is dead. Wickland “enlightened”
the spirit and sent it on its way. If the spirit
resisted, Wickland called on “helper spirits” to keep the
possessing spirit in a so-called dungeon, out of the aura
(energy field) of the victim or Anna, until the spirit gave
up its selfish attitude and departed.
To facilitate the spirit’s entrance into Anna and eventual
departure, Wickland invented a static electricity machine
that transmitted low-voltage electric shock to the
patient, causing the possessing spirit great discomfort.
The device was a forerunner of low-voltage electric shock
treatment used in psychotherapy.
Wickland was not concerned with proving the identities
of the possessing spirits. Rather, he believed that they
seldom would provide evidential information because of
their allegedly confused states of mind. Some spoke only
in foreign tongues through his wife.
In 1918, the Wicklands moved to Los Angeles, where
Wickland founded the National Psychological Institute
for the treatment of obsession. The building is still standing
and is occupied by workers in the garment industry.
Wickland wrote of his experiences in Thirty Years
among the Dead (1924) and The Gateway of Understanding
(1934). Anna died in 1937, and, in the same year, the medium
Minnie M. Soule, prompting Wickland to go to England
to find a new mediumistic partner. He approached
Bertha Harris, a celebrated platform clairvoyant and
trance psychic, but she refused. The psychical research
establishment overlooked Wickland’s work, in part because
of he did not document information that could help
prove the identities of the possessing spirits.
FURTHER READING:
Rogo, D. Scott. The Infinite Boundary. New York: Dodd, Mead,
1987.
Wickland, Carl. Thirty Years among the Dead. 1924. Reprint,
N. Hollywood, Calif.: Newcastle Publishing, 1974.
Wild Hunt A retinue of the ghostly restless dead, who
ride through the sky on their phantom horses, accompanied
by their spectral DEMON hounds (see BLACK DOGS),
shrieking and making wild noises. The hounds and
horses are black, with hideous eyes. The Wild Hunt is
prominent in Celtic and Germanic folklore. The retinue
flies through the skies on pagan holidays associated with