Research source

Having decided, very early in his earthly career, to acknowledge a supernatural world, Man promptly set to work…

Date of account: Published 1908
Source: The book of witches
Reference: The book of witches · selected passage 51
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

Having decided, very early in his earthly career, to acknowledge a supernatural world, Man promptly set to work to people it after his own image

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

Having decided, very early in his earthly career, to acknowledge a supernatural world, Man promptly set to work to people it after his own image. One not providing scope for his quickening imagination, he added another to it, supplementing the heavenly by the infernal, good by evil--if, indeed, as is more probable, he did not rather deduce good out of evil. But just as there are many stages between high noon and midnight, so to the world he saw and those he imagined he added yet others which should act as their connecting links. Between the divine and the human he placed the semi-divine, between the human and the infernal the half-human. He mated God with Man and both with Devil, and dowered them with a numerous family, God-Man, Man-Devil, God-Devil, and so on, until the possibilities of his earlier imagination were exhausted. Each has his own world--and the stars cannot rival them in number; each world has its cities and its nations, differing in all things save one--that all alike feel, act, think, after the manner of mankind.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This is a historical account assembled under the reporting and publishing conventions of its period. It may preserve testimony, hearsay, retelling and editorial interpretation together.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

A modern comparison can identify recurring descriptions and possible explanations, but the account is not treated as independently verified evidence merely because it appeared in print.

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