Article 12

Let it be unlawful to publish, read, or retain books in which sortilege, divination, magic, evocation of spirits, and other superstitions of this kind are taught or commended.

What sortilege is

77. 1. Sortilege is divination by lots, or that which is exercised by inspecting how some action succeeds, done by you for the end of obtaining an indication: as if, with this intention, you throw dice, observe what occurs by opening a book at that place which chance has offered, set forth unequal straws, etc. Cf. St. Thomas, 2a 2ae, q. 95, art. 3.

Divination

2. Divination designates that kind of superstitions by which someone, by the help of the demon, expressly or tacitly (if you seriously use an inept means), invokes, wishes to know contingent and freely future things, or other things hidden and inaccessible to himself. Hither therefore come praestigia, pythons, oneiromancy, geomancy, haruspices, auguries, etc.

Magic

3. Magic rather embraces those superstitions by which marvelous effects are sought (on account of the satisfaction of vain curiosity): various changes of bodies, etc.

Evocation of spirits?

4. Evocation of spirits, namely of souls separated from the body. For if you should expressly wish a demon to appear, there is divination which they call praestigium. Moreover, concerning that evocation B. P. write:¹ "It is established by faith that God does not wish the souls of the dead to be evoked by men ... This is the certain doctrine of the Church."

To this pertains the recent response of the Holy Office,² by which there is reprobated the practice of someone who, while protesting that he rejected every commerce with the demon, nevertheless was attempting to evoke the very souls of the dead.

Superstitions of this kind

5. And other superstitions of this kind. Therefore they will be those which tend to this: that hidden things be disclosed, marvelous things be accomplished, commerce be entered into with spirits or separated souls. Sufficiently and more than sufficiently our modern spiritism is touched by this article.

When they are taught

6. They are taught, or are handed down as if an art: not indeed the art of simulating them (for they mostly consist in frauds), but the art of exercising them, although the writer is conscious of the vanity of the means.

Are commended?

7. They are commended, not if the facts of "spiritism," etc., are merely reported.

Notable matter is required

8. On account of the reason made in explaining article 11, it is necessary that those superstitious arts be either taught or commended sufficiently diffusely.

What of hypnotism and magnetic phenomena, as they say?

9. But what of the various arts of modern hypnotism or magnetism?

Deliberately we have abstained from these names, by which many too easily suppose superstitious arts, although that moral canon had to be recalled: in doubt, the matter must be presumed to pertain to the natural order, that is, to the secondary causes of this world.

First of all, concerning medical hypnotism, which is practiced even by Catholic physicians, no question can be raised.

Its use does not transcend the natural order, and, with due cautions, is most honorable. Cf. Theol. mor.

As to other phenomena, several already (for example, the simple motion of tables) have a natural and sufficiently open explanation in spontaneous impulses, "suggestions" of the imagination, and so forth. Concerning some, if all fraud is absent, the explanation appears less easy and perhaps still escapes us. Therefore cautiously, and only if a proportionate cause has manifestly failed, will you pronounce that there is superstition objectively.³

And so, as pertains to our matter:

a) Scientific books about hypnotism and magnetic phenomena are by no means affected by the present article.

b) Books which strive to offer fodder of this kind to popular curiosity, although they are often harmful, nevertheless cannot in themselves, or commonly, be ascribed to superstitious books.

What of books of pagans

10. On account of a similar reason, on account of which heretics of the more ancient age, whose heresies have become almost harmless, can already be frequented at least by the learned, books of the more ancient pagans which treat of divinations foreign to present-day use seem also immune from positive reprobation.

¹ Tr. 6, s. 1, n. 99.

² March 30-April 1, 1898.

³ For subjective persuasion can differ by defect or excess from the objective reason of the matter. Here, however, the persuasion or intention of the writer is not observed.