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I recently watched a documentary on Discovery last Wednesday on witches being tried and burned on a stake in the Middle Ages. This made me recall the famous Mona Fandey case in Malaysia and another case in Tambunan which involved practices of the occult and the accused had caused the death of a woman who participated in a ‘religious ritual’ of some sort . Is it against the law to practice witchcraft and sorcery? Are there any penalties? With witchcraft on the rise worldwide and a revival in self styled practices should our law makers enact laws to prevent such unhealthy practices? Even the well known BEWITCHED TV series and movie starring Nicole Kidman and HARRY PORTER movies and books together with the popular CHARMED and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER tv serials seems to promote witchcraft albeit in a very subtle, exciting and harmless manner. Has the Devil been ever sued in Court?
ANGEL
LEX BORNEO:
What a spine chilling request. I had to burn the midnight oil into the wee hours of the morning this week to search for cases involving the Devil or his agents in Court.
LONDON 1944
The last known case on witchcraft in England was in 1944. It was known as The Crown vs Duncan, Homer, Jones & Brown. There were 3 judges in the Court of Criminal Appeal. There were 4 lawyers appearing in the appeal, 2 for the Crown and 2 for the Appellants. In the lower court the 4 appellants were found guilty of a conspiracy to contravene the Witchcraft Act 1735 under the charge that they ‘Conspired together and with other persons unknown to pretend to exercise or use a kind of conjuration to wit that through the agency of the said Helen Duncan spirits of deceased persons should appear to be present in fact in such place as the said Helen Duncan then was and that the said spirits were communicating with living persons then and there present.’ The appellants appealed against their conviction.
‘SHINY ECTOPLASM FROM THE MOUTH’
The appellant Duncan was a professional medium, who was engaged at a substantial fee to give a series of seances in a registered church or temple, as it was called, at 30, Connor Road, Portsmouth, maintained by the appellant Homer over a chemist’s shop which he had kept for many years. The appellant Jones, known as Mrs Homer, lived with him and had done so for some 25 years. The appellant Brown assisted Duncan and acted as her booking agent. The evidence for the prosecution was concerned with dates in December 1943, and January 1944 and evidence was given for the prosecution of the happenings on these dates at the church, and of the parts played by the appellants. After certain preliminaries, Duncan dressed in black was seated in a chair behind a curtain in a corner of the room. Homer and Jones sat near the front. The light was dim, being confined to a single red lamp at the back of the room. Duncan produced her spirit guide, who was called Albert, and he would say that he had a message for a person in a particular chair. Then, when the person indicated called out, there would appear in the dim light what was said to be the form of someone who claimed to be a friend or relative of one of those present. In some cases the material form was said to be that of a bird or an animal, such as a parrot or cat.
The prosecution case was that the whole performance was an elaborate pretence, a fraudulent performance, a mere imposition on human credulity. This was sought to be established by evidence of
(a) messages going to the wrong seat owing to a change of occupant taking place by a mistake unknown to any of the appellants;
(b) to messages purporting to come from relatives who had never existed;
(c) to the attempted seizure by a witness of a substance said to be ectoplasm emanating from Duncan, but which felt like cheesecloth, and which did not return to her as ectoplasm, but was caught away by someone among the congregation. Ectoplasm is substance supposed to be exuded from the body of a spiritualistic medium during a trance. For examples watch some of the old GHOSTBUSTER movies;
(d) to the fact that on one important occasion Duncan was said not to be seated in the chair behind the curtain, but to be standing between the curtain pushing a piece of white cloth down her front to the ground, a cloth which appeared to be a very flimsy substance like “butter muslin”, a thin fine cotton cloth.
WAS IT FOR REAL OR JUST PRETENCE?
It was a long trial towards the end of World War 2. 45 witnesses gave evidence for the defence denying that there were any elements of pretence or deception. The evidence was given in great detail on all the matters alleged by the prosecution to be fraudulent or indeed suspicious. In addition to the witnesses called for the defence who were present at the sittings the defence called no less than 26 witnesses who were not present, but who gave evidence about Mrs Duncan’s performances as a medium over a long period of years, expressing their belief in her genuineness and informing the jury of the mysteries of the spirit world, the nature of ectoplasm, and a variety of matters of that kind.
CONJURING EVIL SPIRITS? OR WILL ANY SPIRITS DO?
In the appeal the convicted Appellants argued that there was no evidence of any acts by the appellants constituted an offence under the Witchcraft Act 1735, and that the judge in the lower court had wrongly concluded that a pretence to hold conversation with spirits of deceased persons constituted an offence under that Act. The argument was that the proper reasoning was that only a pretence to hold conversation with wicked and evil spirits was forbidden by s 4 of the Act of 1735. The conspiracy of which the appellants were found guilty was a conspiracy to contravene the Witchcraft Act 1735, s 4, and the material words in the charge were: ‘To pretend to exercise or use a kind of conjuration to wit that through the agency of the said Helen Duncan spirits of deceased persons should appear to be present in fact in such place as the said Helen Duncan then was in, and that the said spirits were communicating with living persons then and there present.’
THE MEANING OF ‘CONJURATION’ – DOES THE SPIRIT HAVE TO BE EVIL?
To “pretend to exercise or use any kind of... conjuration” were the words of the statute 9 of King George II, and it is important to look at the history of this matter. Statute 33 of King Henry VIII, used the words “conjuration of spirits” with no reference to evil spirits at all. That Act was replaced by the statute 5 of Queen Elizabeth I. This statute spoke of “the wicked offences of conjurations and invocations of evil spirits” which were made felonies by the statute of King Henry, but in fact the words “evil spirits” do not occur in the statute of King Henry VIII at all. That statute merely speaks of the practice of “invocations and conjurations of spirits.”
The next statute dealing with this matter was the statute 1 of King James I, which spoke of the “conjuration of any evil and wicked spirit.” The statute was a characteristic example of the attitude of James I to this practice. Finally, the statute 9 of King George II, speaks of “conjuration” without reference to spirits, or evil and wicked spirits, but simply “any kind of conjuration.”
TRAFFICKING IN ANY SPRITIS AND NOT JUST EVIL SPIRITS
The point submitted by counsel for the convicted Appellants is that the word “conjuration” in the statute of George II has only one meaning, and that meaning has been well defined and crystallised in law. He said it bears the meaning in the language of Cowell’s Interpreter (a publication of 1672) as contained in the following passage: “It is especially used for such as have personal conference with the Devil or Evil Spirits.”
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the word “conjuration” was commonly used with reference to traffic with spirits. In those centuries the minds of men were greatly concerned with the evils which they believed arose from such conference, and as a result of the teaching of the church, based possibly upon passages in the Bible, all such spirits were regarded as, and were apt to be described as, evil spirits. Conjuration of these evil spirits was an offence, it was said, against God and religion and was usually linked with witchcraft, enchantment, invocation and sorcery, the punishment for which, as for heresy, was burning in early times.
“Conjuration” was not a word which was to be taken to mean only “conjuration of evil and wicked spirits.” The Oxford English Dictionary had examples of its use in different ages right down to modern times. Another book known as the Coke’s Institutes associated the word “conjuration” of spirits with the word “invocation” of spirits and seem to suggest that the two words have the same meaning. The learned author quotes the case of King Saul from the First Book of Chronicles in the Bible: “So Saul died for his transgression and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit to inquire of it and inquired not of the Lord.” A “familiar spirit” does not have to be evil. The Court of Appeal found that the words “any kind of conjuration” in statute 9 of King George II, cannot be limited in its application. The offence described in the statute is the pretence to exercise or use “any kind of conjuration.” Secondly, it appeared plain to the Court of Appeal that with the abolition of the felonies of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration, the minds of men were making an advance (????). According to the Court of Appeal these things were no longer believed in (????) , but the statute of George II did not go the length of allowing anyone to make the pretence of engaging in converse with spirits, not being evil spirits. According to the Court such a distinction would raise an issue of fact incapable of determination and based on no intelligible principle of law or religion. The law part I can understand. The religious part???? What was aimed at, as shown by the language of the statute itself, was that ignorant persons should not be deluded or defrauded by the pretence to exercise or use any kind of conjuration. The reference to “evil spirits” was omitted, and the words “any kind of’ were added, and these words are wide enough to cover the conspiracy alleged, which the Lower Court had found to be proved in this case.
PRETENDING TO CONJURE IS AS BAD AS ACTUALLY CONJURING?
The only matter to be decided by the Court was whether there was a pretence or not. The prosecution did not have to prove that spirits of deceased persons could not be called forth or materialised or embodied in a particular form. Their task was much more limited and prosaic; it was to prove, if they could, that the appellants had been guilty of conspiring to pretend that they could do these things, and, therefore, of conspiring to pretend that they could exercise a kind of conjuration to do these things. The Court of Appeal found the appellants guilty of the conspiracy charged and all of their appeals were dismissed.
SINGAPORE 1986
Adrian Lim was 39 years old. He started regular working life with Rediffusion, a broadcasting company, and worked as a wireman for three years during which he acquired the knowledge required to use (as he later did) electricity for shock treatments. After that job, he became a bill collector in the same company for the next 11 years.. Towards the latter part of his working life as a bill collector he became progressively involved in black magic and occult practices. In 1973 he met a woman charlatan by the name of Susan. Through her Adrian Lim practised as a medium and exploited many dance hostesses and prostitutes for financial gain and sexual pleasures.
On 11 June 1977 Adrian Lim married Miss X. They continued to prey on the gullible with Adrian Lim practising as a medium in the course of which he sold charmed perfumes, amulets, dispensed demadon (Roche 30) capsules or applied electric shocks on their victims purportedly to drive away the devil from the victims. At the same time, Adrian Lim managed to deceive Miss X into accepting the ruse that because of his alleged heart ailment he needed to be rejuvenated by having sex with girls below his age. Miss X even brainwashed her own sister to sleep with him.
Miss Y also sought treatment from Adrian Lim. He feigned a trance and claimed that the spirits wanted her to be his ‘holy’ wife. Eventually, Miss Y succumbed to his trickery and lived with him. At that time, Miss Y was already married to Loh Ngak Hua. To get him out of the way, Adrian Lim managed to win the confidence of Loh Ngak Hua to submit himself to the electric shock treatment as Loh, suffering from headaches, had asked him to cure him. On 7 January 1980 whilst administering the electric shock treatment to both Miss Y and her husband he gave him a fatal voltage and killed him. Adrian Lim told Miss Y that her husband was killed by her stronger spirit which had left her and had entered Loh Ngak Hua.
In September 1980 Miss X came to know a beautician, one Lucy Lau, who sold her cosmetics and gave her facial treatment. Having learnt that Lucy Lau loved her deceased grandmother very much Adrian Lim, aided and abetted by Miss X, managed to deceive her into believing that if she wanted her grandmother’s spirit to reside in her she had to learn to chant some prayers and to sleep with Adrian Lim. On the first occasion, she was given a drink which she was told was ‘holy’ water but which in fact contained some Roche 30 pills. She became drowsy and Adrian Lim seduced her. Thereafter, she was seduced a few more times.
At about 3pm on 24 January 1981 Miss X lured a little girl Agnes Ng Siew Hock from a playground near a church in Toa Payoh Estate to the flat. The little girl was drugged with Roche tablets and was sexually abused by Adrian Lim. All three accused drowned her. Before they drowned her, Agnes Ng’s finger was pierced and all three sipped the blood. At about midnight they put her body in a travelling bag and left the dead body near a lift in a block of flats nearby.
After the killing of Agnes Ng Siew Hock, Adrian Lim instructed Miss Y to abduct a boy. At about 2pm on 6 February 1981 Miss Y lured Ghazali bin Marzuki from the Clementi Housing Estate to the flat where he was drugged, gagged and tied. They drowned him at about 8pm that night and dumped his body at a playfield near his flat at about 1am the following morning. Before killing the boy, Adrian Lim again went through the ritual of drawing blood from the boy by means of a syringe and drank it from a glass. Miss X and Miss Y scooped the blood from the glass and licked the blood.
….TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
