Shakespearean Magic

In THEY KNEW THE UNKNOWN (1971), parapsychologist Martin Ebon gives a good review of magic and witchcraft in the Shakespearean plays.  He describes a straight line that leads from the witchcraft phamphleteers of the fifteenth century to the Gothic novels of today.  He describes how Shakespeare gave dramatic form to the dreams, legends, claims and counter-claims of supernatural derring-do that abounded in his lifetime.  Ebon concludes, Shakespeare certainly studied the witchcraft literature, notably Reginald Scot's THE DISCOVERY OF WITCHCRAFT (Edinburgh, 1584).  "The lurid stories invented by the witfh hubnters, and in some cases accused or deluded witches themselves, were the horror fiction of the period, redolent with detqails of sexual aberration."

THE OCCULT REVIEW (London, 1921) ran an article on "Shakespeare and the Occult" noting many of his plays contain excursions into the realm of the supernatural, including ghosts, wtiches and sprites, that might shed light on the poet's own beliefs. In that era, belief in the occult was virtually universal, and the play are unintelligible without insight into that occult thinking.

Shakespeare is most specific in THE TEMPEST, where the protagonist Prospero is known to be based on Magus John Dee who claimed the "power of man's will over over inanimate matter," dramatizing that matter is only an illusion.  Prospero suceeds in controlling man and the elements because "he represents mind--the ultimaty on which the universe is based."

In "The Psychic World of William Shakespeare", the psychic content reflects the psychic world of Elizabethan England. Sherman Yellen noted Shakespeare believed in prophecy, witchcraft, astrology, magic and ghosts."  He calls him the first true psychic researcher, but that honor is better accorded to others, including Francis Bacon and John Dee or others of the European adepts.  

Richard III reflects "the dark, malign force of the supernatural in the history play," while A Midsummer Night's Dream offers the light, genial acceptance of those forces in a comedy. Only villians or misguided men attempt to ignore the supernatural at their peril, such as Edmund in King Lear, Iago in Othello, and Cassius in Julius Caesar. 

Hamlet dramatizes that the assertions of the ghost are correct and that supernatural predictions are part and parcel of accdeptance of one's fate, of predetermination.  Like modern ghosts, these Shakespearean wraiths are usually seen by only one person. He knew his audience were eager for psychic drama, such as the witches in Macbeth.

Dr. Jan Ehrenwald pointed out the telepathy in Macbeth in his article of the same title (1941). He notes the witches grasped Macbeth's repressed wish by telepathy, so their prophecy is a reflection of his own secret hopes and ambitions, and subconscious sinister designs -- intuitive insight.

Clearly, the Bard respected the supernatural.