THE ARCANE PAGANISM OF CELESTINA

THE ARCANE PAGANISM OF CELESTINA: PLUTONIC MAGIC VERSUS SATANIC WITCHCRAFTIN TRAGICOMEDIA DE CALIXTO Y MELIBEA

Abstract
Magic and Witchcraft are two distinct and mutually exclusive esoteric pursuits, the one being ritualistic and the other religious. After defining each and tracing their histories, the distinction is applied to Tragicomedia de Calixto y Melibea in order to rectify the traditional conception of Celestina as a witch in the popular sense of a person who has made a pact with Satan and is thus empowered to affect human life through supernatural means. But Celestina’s “power” derives from a different source. Based upon the internal evidence of words and rites, Celestina is now revealed as a practitioner of Magic, the object of her incantations being the pagan Pluto and not the Christian Satan.

Magic and Witchcraft have two very different venues and are wholly distinct. The difference is quite marked, Magic being ceremonial and Witchcraft religious. In the former, the magician seeks personal empowerment through ritual practices prescribed in what came to be known as grimoires, among the most famous being the Clavicle (or Key) of Solomon,1 esoteric texts which contained invocations, Words of Power, patterns of circles to be inscribed on the ground with esoteric formulae, and descriptions of objects to be used in the conjuration, that would enable the individual to control the will of others or affect cosmic forces via the services of supernatural beings. As in the case of a Prospero,2 the magician uses but does not worship the supernatural entity called upon to serve.
Witchcraft, on the other hand, encompasses a variety of ancient worship traditions founded on the male and female principles in Nature.3 In Europe, these were deified as the Horned God (the Greek Pan, the Celtic Cernunnos, e.g.) and the Goddess (the Greek Diana and Hecate, the Anatolian-Roman Cybele, e.g.), whose symbol is the crescent Moon.4 They and the celebrants of their rites, as in Thessaly, predated Christianity by thousands of years. As it grew in influence, the Church largely ignored witches and their cult because Witchcraft was seen for what it was: the remnant of a non-hierarchical pagan religion which posed no threat. But in the later Middle Ages syncretism had confused classical and Christian concepts.5 Not least among these was the association of benevolent pagan deities with saints and the affiliation of gods deemed sinister with the Devil and his cohorts. Thus the positive aspects of the Goddess under her many guises were subsumed in the Virgin Mary, as her “Litany” reveals; the Horned God of the witches became associated with the Christian Satan, who soon was vested with the physical aspects – the goat’s horns, tail, and cloven hoofs
– of the satyr-god Pan. Such was the fate of the old deities before the might of the new religion.
The distinction between Magic and Witchcraft had been a clear one in antiquity. However, the long-established separation of the two also became blurred in the European Middle Ages with Christianity’s evolving view that all non-conforming systems of belief and ritual practices that it found to be noxious were under the aegis of Satan. Christianity saw fit to interpret both traditions as evil. Witchcraft came to be the term used for what is in fact the heretical practice of Satanism, which seeks to elevate (some say restore) the Lord of Darkness to the highest position in the pantheon, no doubt under the influence of Zoroastrian Dualism. The accepted idea became that the witch served the Christian personification of Evil, the Devil, to whom he or she had made a religious (albeit heretical) commitment through a professio tacita or a professio expressa.6 The medieval witch was believed to be in thrall to her deity, the Satan who rebelled against God; consequently, he or she had chosen to follow the path of heterodoxy and had to be punished as a heretic by the Holy Office of the Inquisition. It is due to this Satanic association that the King James Bible self-servingly exhorts English Christians: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18).7
Similarly, the search for knowledge (i.e., power) by magicians came to be associated by the Church with the Devil and it was held that the conjuror’s ability to alter the normal state of things came through a demonic pact, often signed in blood. The most notable of such cases is that of Faust.8 Such a crossover associating their practices with Satan through a demonic pact that empowered magician or witch to seek supernatural alliances not only erased the line between Magic and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, affecting subsequent conceptions of the two, but it forced both into the realm of Christian demonology. Thereafter, the confusion was uniform throughout society at all levels.
The secular, that is non-religious work which is arguably most representative of the confusion of Magic and Witchcraft, with the attendant misconception of demonic inspiration, in fifteenth-century Spanish literature is the Tragicomedia de Calixto y Melibea, attributed through as acrostic to Fernando de Rojas. The Celestina, as it is generally known after its central character, is a novelesque drama (dramatic novel, according to some) first published in 1499 (but probably composed before 1492)9 in sixteen acts as Comedia de Calixto y Melibea, with twenty-one acts in its 1502 version, wherein Calixto’s unbridled love for Melibea and later hers for him form the basis for the plot. Such love is defined in the Malleus Maleficarum: “Philocaption or inordinate love of one person for another can be caused in three ways. Sometimes it is due primarily to a lack of control over the eyes; sometimes to the temptation of devils; sometimes to the spells of necromancers and witches with the help of devils” (176). This process of philocaption10 is presented in terms of occult operations at the hands of Celestina, who brings about its illicit fruition and, ultimately, the tragic demise of the principal players.
These events are brought about by the machinations of Celestina. As Sempronio reveals to Calixto in the first act, the old crone possesses a broad range of natural talents and practices esoteric arts – “Días ha grandes que conozco, en fin de esta vecindad, una vieja barbuda que se dice Celestina, hechicera, astuta, sagaz en cuantas maldades hay” (59). In the same act, Pármeno adds his own description of her other doings, detailing how she takes in sewing, runs a house of ill repute, repairs the often lost virtue of supposed virgins, acts as a midwife and concocts all sorts of medicines, cosmetics and potions, all of her services being available at a price to a large and eager clientele from all social classes. Pármeno also refers to her as “un poquito hechicera” (68), to which he adds at the end of his description: “Y todo era burla y mentira” (71).
But Celestina is more than a mere alcahueta, a love broker who is “un poquito behcicera”. An informed, unbiased reading of her conjuration and statements pertinent to her arcane work reveals that she is a practitioner of the ancient arts of Magic who follows pagan traditions while acting the proper Christian. But although Celestina serves the needs of society quite openly, such is not the case with her occult operations. She may be thought of as a witch by those who, like Pármeno and Sempronio are incapable of properly defining her occult practices, but her rituals are centered on Magic and not on the popular misconception of Witchcraft as worship of Satan.11
The crafty Celestina may function in society under the guise of a devout Christina, but she has, in fact, no orthodox identity. This is proved beyond hearsay by her actions, most notably in the third act,12 where, in the privacy of her house, Celestina looks to gather the ingredients that she will require to perform her magical conjuration. Calling to Elicia, one of her prostitutes, who is with Sempronio, she bids her:
Pues sube presto al sobrado alto de la solana y baja acá el bote de aceite serpentino, que hallarás colgado del pedazo de la soga que traje del campo la otra noche cuando llovía y hacía oscuro. Y abre el arca de los lizos y hacia la mano derecha hallarás un papel escrito con sangre de murciélago, debajo de aquel ala de drago al que sacamos ayer las uñas. Mira no derrames el agua de mayo que me trajeron a confeccionar. . . . Entra en la camara de los ungüentos, y en la pelleja del gato negro, donde te mandé meter los ojos de la loba, le hallarás. Y baja la sangre del cabrón y unas poquitas de las barbas que tú le cortaste (109).
As her words make clear, Celestina’s pharmacopeia is replete with ingredients for hechicería, i.e., sorcery, as traditionally conceived.13 But perhaps more often than not, as will be the case here, the services she provides through her pharmacopeia are aided by her conjurations of supernatural forces. And such a magical operation as she is about to perform can be conducted only when she is alone. Thus, when Elicia takes Sempronio upstairs, Celestina proceeds to her task. Employing the concoctions she had sent Elicia to fetch, Celestina begins the thaumaturgic rite, a summoning of the being whose aid she will seek: not the Devil of Christian tradition but a deity out of classical Greek belief. Her conjuration is of Pluto, Lord of the classical Underworld:
Conjúrote, triste Plutón, señor de la profundidad infernal, emperador de la corte dañada, capitán soberbio de los condenados ángeles, señor de los sulfúreos fuegos que los hirvientes étnicos montes manan, gobernador y veedor de los tormentos y atormentadores de las pecadoras ánimas, regidor de las tres furias. Tesífone, Megera y Aleto; administrador de todas las cosas negras del reino de Stigia y Dite, con todas sus lagunas y sombras infernales, y litigioso caos: mantenedor de las volantes arpías, con toda la otra compañía de espantables, y pavorosas hidras; yo, Celestina, tu más conocida clientula, te conjuro por la virtud y fuerza de estas bermejas letras; por la sangre de aquella nocturna ave con que están escritas; por la gravedad de aquestos nombres y signos que en este papel se contienen; por la áspera ponzoña de las víboras de que este aceite fue hecho, con el cual unto este hilado, vengas sin tardanza a obedecer mi voluntad, y en ello te envuelvas y con ello estés sin un momento te partir, hasta que Melibea, con aparejada oporrtunidad que haya, lo compre y con ello de tal manera quede enredada que, cuanto más lo mirare, tanto más su corazón se ablande a conceder mi petición, y se le abras y lastimes de crudo y fuerte amor de Calixto, tanto que, despedida toda honestidad se descubra a mí y me galardone mis pasos y mensaje. Y esto hecho, pide y demanda de mí a tu voluntad (110).
Hers is both a conjuration and an exhortation. She addresses Pluto through a lengthy litany of titles that demonstrates the result of the syncretic process which integrates his pagan aspects and those later associated with the Christian Devil.14 But it is her command of a deity, something that a witch would neither have the audacity nor the power to undertake, that distinguishes the ritual as Magic.15 Her functioning as a magician can be seen in her empowerment by the use of a grimoire when she addresses Pluto “por la virtud y fuerza de estas bermejas letras” (110).
And if her final statement seems akin to a witch’s offering of herself to Satan, a comparison would be lame at best. Since Celestina is addressing a pagan rather than a Christian deity, there is no pledging of her soul to eternal damnation. The deity that Celestina deals with is the pagan Pluto not the Satan of Christianity, thus Celestina’s statement, in keeping with her tradition, is a formulaic offer of her services to Pluto – a quid-pro-quo. For her, there is no Christian damnation in the picture. Nor does her offering qualify as a professed demonic pact in the traditional sense of that entered into by Theophilus16 or by Faust17 because it has none of the heretical formulas or public acts of blasphemy (the osculum infame, trampling on the Cross, abjuring Baptism, the promissory document signed in blood, e.g.) that Christian tradition associates with such demonic deeds of gift. Nor are there any indications of rites of submission extraneous to the action of the Tragicomedia.18 Internal evidence discloses that Celestina the magician is learned enough in the magical arts to summon Pluto and to manipulate the chthonian deity by having him entwine himself in the thread intended for Melibea.19
Pluto, also referred to as Hades in antiquity,20 is the Olympian who with his brothers Zeus and Poseidon divided the kingdom of Kronos, their father, when they defeated him. Pluto/Hades, who then came to rule the earth and all within it, thereafter, with the complicity of Zeus, took the maiden Persephone/Kore while she was gathering flowers and by force made her his consort. Thus arose the seventh-century B.C.E. myth of Demeter’s search for her lost daughter and the agreement brokered by Zeus for Persephone’s return to her mother but only if the daughter spent a third of the year in the Underworld due to having eaten there a pomegranate offered by Pluto. Demeter, who had avenged herself by keeping the grain hidden so that it would not grow during her daughter’s absence, restored the earth’s productivity. The myth tied the death of the fields in winter to Persephone’s descent into the Underworld and the rebirth of nature to her residency in the land of the living each spring and summer. The fructification of the land, a cyclical process, was seen as a double rite of passage. The telluric myth was sanctified in the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Celestina’s desire is to promote Calixto’s cause by leading Melibea to her own rite of passage – deflowering –, aptly invoking the selfsame Pluto/Hades who had caused the death of Persephone’s virtue. And, to assure a satisfactory end to her demand of Pluto, the crone adds her own words of power to the formulaic invocation:
Si no lo haces con presto movimiento, tendrásme por capital enemiga; heriré con luz tus cárceles tristes y oscuras; acusaré cruelmente tus continuas mentiras; apremiaré con mis ásperas palabras tu horrible nombre. Y otra y otra vez te conjuro. Y así, confiando en mi mucho poder, me parto para allá con mi hilado, donde creo te llevo yo envuelto (110–111).
The tone of Celestina’s words at the end of the third act gives a different cast to her role vis-a-vis Pluto. In threatening the Lord of the Underworld she is, in effect, showing the self-assurance of one who is in control (“confiando en mi mucho poder”). Celestina’s conjuration and subsequent attitude towards the deity she invokes show her in the guise of potent magician, not subservient witch.
In order to understand Celestina’s power and daring in this scene it is necessary to envision the setting for her incantations and the accoutrements that accompany them. Little or much can be made of the staging of the conjuration scene. The dramatist does not give stage directions to indicate how the scene is to be set – the reader knows only that the locale is Celestina’s house –, nor how the elements used in the conjuration are to be employed or manipulated – we know the things she employs but not their magical meaning in this context –, nor how the conjuration is to be intoned. Perhaps because the reader of his era knew how such things were done, Fernando de Rojas felt no need to explicate them in his text. In modern times, when the practices once called Magic or Witchcraft are no longer so intrinsically related to daily life, interpretative decisions as to how rituals in old works are to be performed on a stage are left up to the reader’s imagination or the director’s imperatives.
This conjuration scene should be imagined as a ritual of Magic – with robe, wand, grimoire, and magic circle (as distinguished from the paraphernalia of witchcraft employed by the Three Weird Sisters in Shakespeare’s Macbeth) – in order to give an informed reading of the scene and to extract from Celestina’s conjuration (her Words of Power) its full potential for theatrically.
Celestina’s is a subtle magic, neither showy nor pretentious but highly personal. She keeps the magical operations she performs private, discreetly avoiding calling on her supernatural connection when people are around. But when alone, she loosens the bonds of propriety and addresses Pluto with familiarity, showing her control over the deity by words that empower her. It is important, therefore, to convey her power and control over a supernatural being in visual, theatrical terms: through setting, lighting, costuming, props and ritualized action. Since the dramatist has not given stage directions to achieve this end, it is up to the reader to introduce the stage business necessary to elicit the full theatrically of the scene.
Once alone, Celestina would enter her secret chamber. Magical tradition has it that such were usually caves or other places set apart from prying eyes.21 Since Celestina is clearly in her house, it would be fitting that she have a secret entrance to her domain; this could be accessed by lifting some floorboards that give access to a subterranean chamber. Lighting a lantern, she would descend some rickety stairs (that provide appropriate creaking sounds), and enters the dark confines of her magical laboratory, a setting replete with ominous retorts, grimoires full of magical lore and incantations, and other tools of her magical trade. The area must be large enough to accommodate a magic circle, which is to be drawn on the floor each time a ritual is to be performed. But here there are to be none of the objects associated with witchcraft – the cauldron, the broomstick – those are things that belong in the upper world, that of her attic, where she had instructed Elicia to find the ingredients she required. This nether place is closer to the underground realm of Pluto and dedicated to Celestina’s magical operations, not to witchcraft.
Upon reaching the chamber, Celestina should regale her body with the trappings of her calling: she should don the robes of the magician, put on the headdress that vests the head with uncommon intuition, and grasp the wand or staff that will extend her power beyond her person into the dark realm of Pluto. This done, she must proceed to make the circle on the ground by standing at its intended center22 and tracing its circumference with her wand or staff, all the while murmuring a formulaic chant from one of her grimoires; once within the circle, she will be protected from the potential harm caused by a spirit brought unwillingly to her presence. It is only after these preparations that Celestina can proceed to vocalize the incantation that will evoke the Lord of the Underworld, Pluto. This is the central moment of the magical work and Celestina’s incantation must be performed with a heightened, hierophantic voice and ritualized gestures that such a daring action requires.
The conjuration scene is larger than life and must be presented as such. It must be highly stylized through setting, lighting, and costuming, for it is ritual; the conjuration itself must be accompanied by sounds and music that enhance its supernatural nature; the presence of Pluto must be made manifest through ambience that suggests rather than defines – the deity must not be visible. . . . Brought together, elements of light and shadow, color and sound enhance a scene of inherent unreality – or antireality – which, in turn, heightens theatrically.
It is only fitting that Celestina the magician, not the witch of popular misconception, be given a proper interpretation during the one scene in La Tragicomedia de Calixto y Melibea in which she allows herself to be seen in the performance of her secret calling. The scene, properly staged (or imagined), would be one of high theatricalism.
Once these magical preparations and rites are over, Celestina proceeds to test her empowerment. Her first visit to Melibea takes place in the fourth act and the crone is encouraged by the virgin’s gracious reception. But later, when Melibea recognizes Celestina for what she is and rants against her for promoting Calixto’s cause, the alcahueta resorts once more to her sinister ally, calling Pluto in an aside: “¡En hora mala acá vine, si me falta mi conjuro! ¡Ea, pues! Bien sé a quien digo. ¡Ce, hermano, que se va todo a perder!” (128). Pluto is now addressed as “hermano”, again showing that she is dealing not with a deity whom she worships, but with one she is used to dealing with, her “hermano” in the practice of Magic. That she is pleased with Pluto’s final assistance can be seen at the start of the fifth act, when, having left Melibea’s walled garden retreat, Celestina soliloquizes:
¡Oh, diablo a quien yo conjuré! ¿Cómo cumpliste tu palabra en todo lo que te pedi? En cargo te soy. Así amansaste la cruel hembra con tu poder y diste tan oportuno lugar a mi habla cuando quise, con la ausencia de su madre. . . . ¡Oh serpentino aceite! ¡Oh blanco hilado! ¡Cómo os aparejasteis en mi favor! (140).23
Pluto having “got rid” of Melibea’s mother, Alisa, something that Celestina’s much-touted rhetorical skills could not have brought about,24 the old crone’s mutterings shows that even the experienced magician can be elated over the efficacy of her conjuration. In the eyes of Celestina, Pluto had accomplished the opportune exit of Melibea’s mother by causing the illness that called Alisa to her sister’s bedside. He did, indeed, give Celestina the opportunity that she had asked for towards the end of the third act, as she recognizes later in an aside: “Por aquí anda el diablo aparejando oportunidad, arreciando el mal a la otra” (118), using “diablo” not in the sense of identifying Pluto with the Christian personification of evil but as a usage of classical origin
– “diablo” (from the Latin diabolus and Late Greek diabolos) and “demonio” (from the Greek daimon). Such terms have been misread as supportive of Celestina’s involvement with the Christian Devil. At best they are employed in the sense of the popular parlance of the era, in the socioreligious context in which she lives, and in order to better communicate with the Christian audience or reader for whom the work is intended, Christians who did not believe in Pluto but knew with certainty that the Devil existed.
The total fulfillment of her Plutonic conjuration with the illicit sexual union of Calixto and Melibea through philocaption further attests to Celestina’s powers – both occult and psychological. She has served society well once more, as well as Pluto has served her: “Así amansaste la cruel hembra con tu poder” (Act V, 140). Despite her success, Celestina does not flaunt her magic; indeed, she does not mention it at all to others, preferring anonimity in this regard – keeping secret the most important element in her life. She appears to accept society’s stigma as witch rather than promote herself as one belonging to a non-Christian magical tradition. It may be that her decision is founded on practicality, for society needs the services of an alcahueta and an hechicera, both of whom are embodied in Celestina and publicly known. Her persona as magician, however, she chooses to keep private and therefore is not evident as are her other facets: indeed, in Tragicomedia de Calixto y Melibea there is only one ritual of Magic – the conjuration in the third act – and that may indicate that such practices are reserved for the most difficult cases – those that Celestina can only resolve through magical intervention.
But despite the successful conclusion of the Calixto – Melibea affair in their illicit union, Celestina’s achievement as intermediary and magician is marred by the deaths of the lovers and by the avarice of Calixto’s servants, who expect to share in the reward their master has given the crone. In act twelve, when Celestina reneges on her promise, Sempronio cannot restrain his ire and, egged on by Pármeno, attacks her with his sword. As he wounds her fatally, the servant shouts out her sentence of infernal damnation. Hedging her bets even at the end (or is she acting the Christian to the end?), Celestina screams for confession. But death has her in its grip and she dies at the hand of her former accomplice while Elicia looks on. Celestina expires before anyone can bring a priest to her side, or Pluto can rescue her.
Celestina conjured the pagan Pluto, Lord of the classical Underworld, but in the eyes of Sempronio her soul will dwell with the damned in Satan’s Hell. It is ironic that despite her craftiness in Magic, Celestina has no precognition of the tragic events her liaison with Pluto will cause, including betrayal by her god in abandoning her at the moment of mortal danger, as he had done with Doña Claudina. Or is it that the Lord of the Underworld has extracted a price for his magical services, calling in Celestina’s earlier offer at the end of her conjuration (“Y esto hecho, pide y demanda de mí a tu voluntad” (110), by claiming her for his nether kingdom?
Despite the Church’s misappropriation of ideas that by Rojas’ time had led to the conflation of Magic and Witchcraft, a reading of Tragicomedia de Calixto y Melibea informed by the fundamental distinctions between the two practices divulges the intent of the author(s) to present Celestina in two opposing ways – as the populace misinterprets her calling, i.e., seeing her as a worshipper of the Christina Devil, versus her secret identity as magician who calls upon the services of the pagan Pluto – the first through the statements of Sempronio, Pármeno and Melibea, and the second through Celestina’s words and actions in the conjuration scene (Act III) and in the revelations to Pármeno regarding her training at the side of Doña Claudina: “Pues entraba en un cerco mejor que yo y con más esfuerzo; aunque yo tenía harto buena fama, más que ahora” (176). The magic circle was the protective barrier used by magicians against potential harm by the otherwordly spirits they conjured. Further on, Celestina herself distinguishes what she and Doña Claudina did from the popular misconception termed witchcraft when she explains to Pármeno what took place one of the times his mother was arrested:
Y aun la una le levantaron que era bruja porque la hallaron de noche con unas candelillas cogiendo tierra de una encrucijada, y la tuvieron medio dia en una escalera en la plaza, puesto uno como rocadero pintado en la cabeza (178). . . . Y más que, según todos decían, a turto y sin razón y con falsos testigos y recios tormentos la hicieron aquella vez confesar lo que no era (179).
Like her mentor Doña Claudina, Celestina is taken by society for what she is not. But rather than a devotee of Satanic Witchcraft whose soul will pass into Hell, Celestina is a practitioner of Plutonic Magic and is thus exempt from the punishment meted out to Christian heretics. Instead, her afterlife will be spent in the Underworld under the rule of the selfsame Pluto she had conjured and threatened.
The Pennsylvania State University ROBERT LIMA N346 Burrowes Building University Park, PA 16802 USA
Notes
This magical treatise, although it purports to be from the time of the Hebrew king and contains much late Jewish lore, is of medieval origin, i.e. fourteenth or fifteenth century. Other famous grimoires are The Grimorium Verum (1517) and The Gerimoire of Pope Honorius (Rome, 1629). There is also the Lesser Key of Solomon or Legemeton, earliest texts of which date from the seventeenth century.
See Shakespeare’s The Tempest (c. 1611) and the Peter Greenaway – Sir John Gielgud film, Prospero’s Books, for aspects of Magic as empowerment through the use of grimoires. Faust too, before he signs the demonic pact, is drawn to the power-giving books that the magicians Valdes and Cornelius have brought for his instruction (Scene 1).
On the universality and forms of this type of worship, see Murray’s two books and that by Hughes. In the English-speaking world, the term “Wicca” is used to denote the religion of Witchcraft; its practitioners frequently refer to it as “The Craft”.
The Moon’s crescent is also symbolic of horns, as can be seen on the headband worn by the Goddess in many of her manifestations.
Christianity developed many of its tenets and dogmas from Judaic and other Middle Eastern religions, among them Zoroastrianism, with its central doctrine of dual powers of Light (Ahura Mazda) and Darkness (Ahriman), Mithraism, and Gnosticism.

6. See Lima, chapter III.
The translation is erroneous on two counts. First, the modern term “witch” is not what the Bible uses but how the translator chooses to interpret such terms as “necromancer”, “soothsayer”, “seer”, etc.; the true translation would be: “Thou shalt not permit a necromancer to live among you”. Second, by deleting “among you”, the translator has changed the import of the exhortation in the original and given Protestant witch-finders the authority to execute those deemed to have practiced what the authorities considered to be the worship of Satan. Yet again, the Bible was misused as a tool of power, in this case to purge undesirable elements from society.
For a discussion of the Faust tradition and its interpretations in dramatic literature, see Lima, chapter III.
The date of composition is obviously earlier, as ascertainable by Sempronio’s statement “Granada may be captured” (Act III, Scene 1). The official capitulation of Granada to King Fernando and Queen Isabel occurred on January 2, 1492, when they entered the Alhambra. The siege of Granada had taken eleven years.

10. See Armas on this subject.
The confusion is not so much in the text as in the way the text has been misinterpreted as regards the meanings of the terms “Magic” and “Witchcraft”. The vast majority of those who have studied the work use the terms interchangeably, unwittingly following the self-serving practice of the Church since the Middle Ages. Such is the case with Lida de Malkiel’s treatment of Magic in Tragicomedia de Calixto y Melibea as Devil-oriented. Even Russell, in an otherwise astute rendering of the topic, discusses Magic exclusively in the context of Satanism.
Numerologists may find significance in the conjuration occurring in Act III, for Three was a number of great import in the symbology of occultism, as a reading of Cirlot and Biedermann will verify.

13 On potions, cures, herbs and other elements employed by Celestina in her hechicerías, see Laza Palacios, especially the Glossary. Compare Celestina’s list with the ingredients used by the Weird Sisters in Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth (c. 1606).
14. Many of these titles are due to the process of syncretism which, by the fifteenth century, had taken characteristics of figures from classical antiquity and added them to those of Christian times. One such case pertinent here is that of the Christian Satan/Lucifer/Devil, who was personified with the goat’s horns, cloven hoofs and lascivi
ousness of Pan and given the place of Pluto/Hades as ruler of the Underworld, which came to be called Hell after the Nordic deity.
15. In Act VII, Celestina tells Pármeno that she learned her esoteric lessons from his mother, Doña Claudina, proceeding to laud her skills and detail their joint practices, including the use of the magician’s circle when conjuring the denizens of the supernatural world. Although such a circle is not referred to in Celestina’s conjuration in Act III, its presence may be implied since it was common knowledge that it was always used in such operations.
See Rutebeuf, Miracle de Théophile.
See Marlowe’s and Goethe’s treatments of the demonic pact.

Russell, following numerous critics (from Menéndez Pelayo and Bataillon to more recent writers), errs in two ways in referring to the attempted conquest of Melibea through philocaptio when he states that Celestina did so through the “pacto con el demonio hecho por Celestina” (243). In fact, there is no demonic pact of any kind in the Tragicomedia, only a verbal statement made by Celestina at the end of her conjuration, as would anyone to someone who has performed a service or done a favor; furthermore, there is no assent from the second party, for there is no Devil involved. Russell and others err also by referring to Pluto as “el diablo” or “el demonio”, which is an inexplicable transposition of the pagan god who rules the classical Underworld to the Devil, who rules the Christian Hell. There is no evidence in the text to warrant either interpretation.
Thread, according to the cabbalistic text known as the Sepher ha-Zohar (Book of Splendor, sometimes called Enlightenment) is a symbol of the connection between different planes; here, as the skein which Pluto inhabits, it ties the physical world of Melibea and the supernatural plane of the classical deity. The cabbalistic symbolism is particularly germane in the Spanish context because the Sepher ha-Zohar is a compilation by the thirteenth-century scholar Moses de León of the teachings on the Pentateuch by Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, a second-century Tanna. Also known as The Mildrash of Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, the Zohar circulated in manuscript form from the thirteenth century until its publicaton in 1558. The author(s) of the Tragicomedia de Calixto y Melibea may have read this text in manuscript. Russell (260) sees the coiled thread as a symbolic snake, making the association because he, like previous critics, sees Pluto as the Devil, whose original manifestation was as the Edenic serpent coiled around the Tree of Knowledge.
According to Bernstein, who is using Burkert, Greek Religion (200) as his source, “In Hesiod there can be no confusion between Hades and Pluto, yet as time wore on, these figures fused: Hades as lord of the dead became associated with the earth as storehouse of seed; Pluto as a personification of Plenty (that is seed and produce in an agricultural society) took on attributes of rulership” (39). Bernstein goes on to say: “The Homeric Hymn to Demeter helps explain this overlap between the underworld as grave (necropolis, city of the dead, catacomb) and granary, the connection between the inner earth and the fertility of its surface, the relationship of Hades/Pluto, Persephone, and Hecate” (39).
See the numerous plays listed under the “Cave of Salamanca” motif in Lima, “Drama of the Occult: A Bibliography of Spanish and Latin American Plays”, Dark Prisms, p. 160.
In some traditions, the magician draws the circle while standing outside its confines, leaving a “gate” through which to enter; this opening is closed once the magician is inside.
Other editions have variants in punctuation and spelling, as in this part of the text. Criado de Val renders it: “¡O diablo a quien yo conjuré; cómo cumpliste tu palabra en todo lo que te pedí! En cargo te soi. Assí amansaste la cruel hembra con tu poder i diste tan oportuno lugar a mi habla cuanto quise, con la ausencia de la madre. . . . ¡O serpentino azeite! ¡O blanco hilado! ¡Cómo os aparejastes todos en mi favor!” (119). Martín de Riquer (291) has the same punctuation but uses “Oh” instead of “O”.
It has become fashionable of late to consider Celestina less an hechicera than a rhetorician, promoters of this view seeing the seduction of Melibea to the life of sin as the result of the crone’s art of persuasion through words rather than as the outcome of her art in

arcane operations. While it is self-evident that Celestina is a gifted verbalizer on behalf of Calixto’s passion as well as a masterly user of indirection and intrigue, the modern interest in the rhetorical devices she employs in winning over Melibea’s sympathy to the suitor’s plight are now being put forward as the real (some say sole) reason for her success in opening the damsel to seducton. Among others who hold this interpretation: Charles F. Fraker, “Declamation and the Celestina”. Celestinesca Vol. IX, No. 2 (1985), pp. 47–64 and “Rhetoric in the Celestina: Another Look”. In Karl Hermann Korner and Dietrich Briesemeister (Eds.), Aureum Saeculum Hispanum. Beitrage su Texten des Siglo de Oro (Weisbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983), pp. 81–90; Edward H. Friedman, “Rhetoric at Work: Celestina, Melibea and the Pursuasive Arts”. In Ivy A. Corfis and Joseph T. Snow (Eds.), Fernando de Rojas and “Celestina”: Approaching the Fifth Centenary (Madison: The Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, Ltd., 1993), pp. 359–370; Otis Handy, “The Rhetorical and Psychological Defloration of Melibea”. Celestinesca, Vol. VII, No. 1 (1983), pp. 17–27; Erica Morgan, “Rhetorical Technique in the Persuasion of Melibea”. Celestinesca, Vol. III, No. 2 (1979), pp. 7–18; Olga Lucía Valbuena, “Sorceresses, Love Magic, and the Inquisition of Linguistic Sorcery in Celestina”. PMLA, Vol. CIX, No. 2 (March 1994), pp. 207–224. It must not be forgotten, however, that Rojas’ work has to be considered first and foremost in the context of its own period, wherein supernatural operations by magician or witch were held to be efficacious by the majority of the populace on all social levels, as witnessed by the scope of the Inquisition in Catholic Europe and the Americans, as well as that of the subsequent Witchcraft Panic that gripped much of Protestant Europe and the English colonies in the New World. The fact is that in the context of the work, Celestina herself attributes her powers to a supernatural agency while her employer and his lackeys – not to mention the entire populace which has dealt with her – believe her to be able to affect the natural world through unnatural rites.
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