 Section 2 of the Golden Bough, Volume 1, The Magikart and the Evolution of Kings, Volume 1 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information on how to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Chapter 2, Priestly Kings The two questions to be answered. The questions which we have set ourselves to answer are mainly two. First, why had Diana's priest at Nimai, the king of the wood, to slay his predecessor? Second, why before doing so, had he to pluck the branch of a certain tree, which the public opinion of the ancients identified with Virgil's Golden Bough? The two questions are to some extent distinct, and it will be convenient to consider them separately. We begin with the first, which, with the preliminary inquiries, will occupy this and several following volumes. In the last part of the book, I shall suggest an answer to the second question. The first point on which we fasten is the priest's title. Why was he called the king of the wood? Why was his office spoken of as a kingdom? Priestly Kings in Ancient Italy and Greece The union of a royal title with Priestly duties was common in Ancient Italy and Greece. At Rome and in other cities of Latium, there was a priest called the sacrificial king, or king of the sacred rites, and his wife bore the title of queen of the sacred rites. In Republican Athens, the second annual magistrate of the state was called the king and his wife the queen. The functions of both were religious. For example, the king superintended the celebration of the Ellusinian Mysteries, the Linnean Festival of Dionysus, and the torch races, which were held at several of the Great Athenian festivals. Moreover, he presided at the curious trials of animals and inanimate objects, which had caused the death of a human being. To him, in short, were assigned, in the words of Plato, the most solemn and most truly ancestral rites of the ancestral sacrifices. Many other Greek democracies had titled their kings, whose duties, so far as they are known, seemed to have been Priestly, and who ascended round the common hearth of the state. For example, in Kos, the king sacrificed to Hestia the goddess of the hearth, the equivalent of the Italian Vesta, and he received the hide of one leg of the victim, as his prerequisite. He might align the kings of whom there were several invited to banquets at the common hearth, those guests whom the state delighted to honor. In Chios, if any herdsman or shepherd drove his cows, his sheep, or his swine to pasture in a sacred grove, the first person who witnessed the transgression was bound to denounce the transgressor to the kings, under pain of incurring the wrath of the god, and what was perhaps even worse, of having to pay a fine to the offended deity. In the same island, the king was charged with the duty of pronouncing the public curses. A spiritual weapon of which much use was made by the ancients. Every eighth year, the king at Delphi took part in a quaint ceremony. He sat in public, distributing barley-meal and pulse to all who chose to apply for the bounty, whether citizens or strangers. Then an image of a girl was brought to him, and he slapped it with his shoe. After that, the president of the three aides, a college of women, devoted to the Augustic worship of Bacchus, carried away the image to a ravine, and they buried it with a rope around its neck. The ceremony was said to be an expiation for the death of a girl, who, in a time of famine, had been publicly buffeted by the king, and smote out of the insult had hanged to herself. In some cities, such as Megara, Agostina, and Pegae, the kingship was in any office, and the three years were dated by the king's names. The people of Praian appointed a young man king for the purpose of sacrificing a bull to Poseidon at the Pannonian Festival. Some Greek states had several of these titular kings, who held office simultaneously. Traditional origin of these priestly kings At Rome, the tradition was that the sacrificial king had been appointed after the abolition of the monarchy in order to offer the sacrifices which before had been offered by the kings. A similar view as to the origin of the priestly kings appears to have prevailed in Greece. In itself, the opinion is not improbable, as it is borne out by the example of Sparta, the only purely Greek state which retained the kingly form of government in historical times. For in Sparta, all state sacrifices were offered by the kings as descendants of the god. One of the two Sparan kings held the priesthood of Zeus, Lacer Daemon, the other the priesthood of heavenly Zeus. Sometimes the descendants of the old kings were allowed to retain the shadowy royalty after the real power had divided from them. Thus said Ephesus, the descendants of the onion kings who traced their pedigree to Kodos of Athens kept the title of king and certain privileges such as the right to occupy a seat of honor at their games and to wear a purple robe and carry a staff instead of a scepter and to preside at the rites of Lusinian dimeter. So it so ringed when the monarchy was abolished. The deposed king Betis was assigned certain domains and allowed to retain some priestly functions. Thus the classical evidence points to the conclusion that the prehistoric ages before the rise of the Republic and former government the various tribes and cities were ruled by kings who discharged priestly duties and probably enjoyed a sacred character as reputed descendants of deities. Priestly kings in various parts of the world This combination of priestly functions with royal authority is familiar to everyone. Asia Minor for example was the seat of various great religious capitals peopled by thousands of sacred slaves and ruled by Pontiffs as well as spiritual authority though the popes of medieval Rome such priests ridden cities were Zilla and Pessinus. Deutonic kings again in the old heathen days seemed to have stood in the position and to exercise the powers of high priests. The emperors of China offered public sacrifices the details of which are regulated by the ritual books. The king of Madagascar was high priest of the realm at the great festival of the new year when a bulk was sacrificed for the good of the kingdom and he stood over the sacrifice to offer prayer and thanksgiving while his attendants slaughtered the animal in the monarchial states which still maintain their dependence among the gallows of eastern Africa. The king sacrifices on the mountain tops and regulates the emulation of human victims and the dim light of tradition reveals a similar union of temporal and spiritual power of royal and priestly duties. In the kings of that delightful region of Central America whose ancient capital now buried under the rank growth is marked by the stately and mysterious ruins of Palangwe among the matter beels the king is high priest every year he offers sacrifices at the great and the little dance and also at the festival of the new fruits which ends the dances. On these occasions he prays to the spirits of his forefathers and likewise to his own spirit for it is from these higher powers that he expects every blessing. Divinity of Kings This last example is instructive because it shows that the king is something more than a priest. He prays not only to the spirits of his fathers but to his own spirit. He is clearly raised above the standard of mere humanity there is something divine about him. The Spartan King supposed to be attended by Castor and Pollux who were thought to manifest themselves in certain electric lights. Similarly he may suppose that the Spartan kings were thought not only to be descended from the great god Zeus but also to partake of his Holy Spirit. This is indeed indicated by a curious Spartan belief which has been recorded by Herodotus. The old historian tells us that formally both of the Spartan kings went forth with the army to battle and that in later times the rule was made that when one king marched out to fight the other should stay at home accordingly says Herodotus one of the kings remaining at home one of the Tindarids is left there too for Hithero both of them were invoked and followed the kings. The Tindarids are of course the heavenly twins Castor and Pollux the sons of Zeus and it should be remembered that the two Spartan kings themselves were believed to be descended from twins and hence may have been credited with the wondrous powers which superstition often turns to twins. The belief described by Herodotus plainly implies that one of the heavenly twins was supposed to be in constant attendance on each of their human kinsmen the two Spartan kings staying with them where they stayed and going with them wherever they went hence they were probably thought to aid the kings with their advice in time of need. Now Castor and Pollux are commonly represented as spearmen and they were constantly associated with their eyes but also with those lurid lights which in an atmosphere charged with electricity are sometimes seen to play around the masts of ships under a murky sky. Moreover similar lights were observed by the ancients to glitter in the darkness on the points of spears Pliny tells us that he had seen such lamb and flames on the spears of Roman sentinels as they paced their rounds by night in front of the camp. It is said that Cossacks riding ships on stormy nights perceived flickering of the same sort of their lance heads since therefore the divine brothers Castor and Pollux were believed to attend the Spartan kings. It seems not impossible that they may have been thought to accompany the march of a Spartan army in a visible form appearing to the all stricken soldiers in the twilight or the darkness either as stars in the sky or as the sheen of spears on earth. Perhaps the stories of the appearance of the heavenly twins in battle charging white stees at the head of the earthly cavalry may have originated in similar light sand to glitter in the gloning on a point here and there in the long hedge of leveled or ported spears. For any two riders on white horses whose spearheads happened to be touched by the mystic light might easily be taken for Castor and Pollux in person. If there is any truth in this conjecture we should conclude that the divine brothers were never seen in broad day but only at dusk or in the darkness of night. Now the most famous appearance was at the battle of Lake Regulus as to which we are expressly told that it was late in the evening of a summer day before the fighting was over. Such statements should not be likely dismissed as late inventions of a rhetorical historian. The memories of great battles lingered on among the peasantry of the neighborhood. The Divinity of Kings in Early Society But when we have said that the ancient kings were priests too, we are far from having exhausted the religious aspect of their office. In those days the Divinity that hedges a king was no empty form of speech but the expression of a so belief. Kings were revered, in many cases not merely as priests. That is, as intercessors between man and god but as gods themselves, they were able to bestow upon their subjects and worshipers those blessings which are common supposed to be beyond the reach of mortals of the Lord, have it all only by prayer and sacrifice offered to superhuman and invisible beings. Thus kings are often expected to give rain and sunshine in due season to make the crops grow and so on. Strange as this expectation appears to us it is quite of a peace with early modes of thought. A savage highly concedes the distinction common drawn by more advanced peoples between the natural and the supernatural. To whom the world is to a great extent by supernatural agents, that is by personal beings acting on impulses and motives like his own liable like him to be moved by appeals to their pity, their hopes and their fears. In a world so conceived he sees no limit to his power of influencing the course of nature to his own advantage. Prayers, promises or threats may secure him fine weather and abundant crop from the gods and if a god should happen, as he sometimes believes, to become incarnate of his own person, then he need appeal to no higher being. Either savage possesses in himself all the powers necessary, but further his own well-being and that of his fellow men. Sympathetic magic. This is one way in which the idea of a man god is reached. But there is another. Along with a view of the world as pervaded by spiritual forces, savage man has a different and probably still auto-conception in which we may detect a germ or a notion of natural law, or the view of nature as a series of events occurring in an invariable order without the intervention of personal agency. The germ of which I speak is involved in that sympathetic magic as it may be called, which plays a large part in most systems of superstition. In early society the king is frequently a magician as well as a priest. Indeed he appears to have often attained to power by virtue of his supposed proficiency in the black and white art. Hence in order to understand the evolution of the kingship and the sacred character with which the obvious is commonly been invested in the eyes of savages or barris peoples, it is essential to have some acquaintance with the principles of magic and to form some conception of the extraordinary hold which that ancient system of superstition has had on the human mind in all ages and all countries. Accordingly I propose to consider this subject in some detail. End of section 2 section 3 of the golden bell volume 1 part 1 the magic art of the evolution of kings volume 1 by James Fraser this is the LibriVox recording all the LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information on the volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recorded by Leon Harvey chapter 3 sympathetic magic part 1 the principles of magic the two principles of sympathetic magic are the law of similarity and a law of contact or contagion we analyse the principles of thought on which magic is based they will probably be found to resolve themselves into two first that like produces like or that in effect resembles as cause and second that things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other distance after the physical contact has been severed the former principle may be called the law of similarity the latter the law of contact or contagion from the first of these principles namely the law of similarity the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it from the second he infers that whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact with part of his body or not charms based on the law of similarity may be called homeopathic or imitative magic charms based on the law of contact or contagion may be called contagious magic to denote the first of these branches of magic the term homeopathic is perhaps preferable for the alternative term imitative or mimetic suggests that does not imply a conscious agent who imitates thereby limiting the scope of magic to narrowly for the same principles which the magician implies in the practice of his art are implicitly believed by him to regulate the operations of inanimate nature in other words it tassily assumes that the laws of similarity and contact are of universal application and are not limited to human actions in short magic is a superior system of natural law as well as a fallacious guide of contact it is a false science as well as an abortive art regarded as a system of natural law that is as a statement of the rules which determine the sequence of events throughout the world it may be called theoretical magic regarded as a set of precepts which human beings observe in order to compass their ends it may be called practical magic at the same time it is said to be born in mind that the primitive magician knows magic only on its practical side he never analyzes the mental processes on which his practice is based never reflects on the abstract principles in his actions with him as with the vast majority of men logic is implicit not explicit he reasons just as he digests his food in complete ignorance of the intellectual and physiological processes which are essential to the one operation and to the other in short to him magic is always an art never a science the very idea of science is lacking is undeveloped mind is for the philosophic student to trace the train of thought and utilize the magician's practice to draw out the few simple threads on which the tangled schemes composed to disengage the abstract principles from their concrete applications in short to discern the spirit of science behind the bastard art the two principles and misapplications of the association of ideas if my analysis of the magician's logic is correct as two great principles turn out to be merely two different misapplications association of ideas homeopathic magic is found on the association of ideas by similarity contagious magic is founded on the association of ideas by contiguity homeopathic magic commits the mistake of assuming that things which resemble each other are the same contagious magic commits the mistake of assuming that things which have once been in contact with each other are always in contact but in practice the two branches are often combined ought be more exact while homeopathic or imitated magic may be practiced by itself contagious magic will generally be found to involve an application of the homeopathic or imitated principle thus generally stated the two things may be a little difficult to grasp but they will readily become intelligible when they are illustrated by particular examples both trains of thought are in fact extremely simple and elementary it could hardly be otherwise since they're familiar in the concrete though certainly not in the abstract to the crude intelligence not only of the savage but of ignorant and dull-witted people everywhere both branches of magic homeopathic and the contagious may conveniently be comprehended under the general name of sympathetic magic since both assume that things act on each other at a distance through a secret sympathy the impulse being transmitted for one to the other by means of what we may conceive as a kind of invisible ether postulated by modern science or a precisely similar purpose namely to explain how things can physically affect each other through a space which appears to be empty it may be convenient to tabulate as follows the branches of magic according to the laws of thought which underlie them a small table is displayed on the page with three branches sympathetic magic, law of symmetry homeopathic magic, law of similarity contagious magic law of contact I will now illustrate these two great branches of sympathetic magic by examples beginning with homeopathic magic Part 2 homeopathic or imitative magic magical images among the American Indians perhaps the most familiar application of the principle that like producers like is the attempt which has been made by many peoples in many ages to injure or destroy an enemy by injuring or destroying an image of him if that just as the image suffers so does a man and that when it perishes he must die a few instances out of many may be given to prove at once the wide diffusion of the practice over the world and its remarkable persistence throughout the ages but thousands of years ago it was known to the sorcerers of ancient India Babylon and Egypt as well as of Greece and Rome and at this day it is still resorted to by cunning and malignant savages in Australia, Africa and Scotland thus the North American Indians we are told believe that by drawing the figure of a person in sand ashes or clay or by considering any object as his body and then pricking it with a sharp stick or doing it any other injury they inflict a corresponding injury on the person represented for example when the old jeep boy Indian desires to work evil on anyone he makes a little wooden image of his enemy and runs a needle into its head or heart or he shoots an arrow into it believing that wherever the needle pierces or the arrow strikes the image his foe will the same instant be seized with a sharp pain in the corresponding part of his body but if he intends to kill the person outright he burns or buries the puppet uttering certain magic words as he does so so when a Kora Indian of Mexico wishes to kill a man he makes a figure of him out of burnt clay strips of cloth and so forth and then muttering incantations runs thorn through the head or stomach of the figure to make his victims suffer correspondingly sometimes a Kora Indian makes a more beneficial use of this sort of homeopathic magic when he wishes to multiply his flock saw herds he models a figure of the animal he wants in wax or clay or carves it from tough and deposits it in a cave of the mountains for these Indians believe that the mountains are masters of all riches including cattle and sheep for every cow, deer, dog or hen he wants the Indian has to sacrifice a corresponding image of the creature this may help us to understand the meaning of the figures of cattle, deer horses and pigs which were dedicated to Diana and Nimai there may have been offerings of farmers or huntsmen who hoped therefore to multiply the cattle of the game similarly when the tortoise of southern India desire to obtain more bufflers we offer silver images of these animals in the temples the Peruvian Indians modelled the images of fat mixed with grain to imitate the persons whom they disliked or feared and then burned the effigy on the road where the intended victim was to pass this they call burning his soul but they drew a delicate distinction between the kinds of materials to be used in the manufacture of these images according as the victim was an Indian or a culture that is a Spaniard to kill an Indian they employed maize the fat of a llama to kill a Spaniard and the fat of a pig cause viticulture to not eat llamas and preferred wheat to maize magical images among the Malays a Malay charm of the same sort is as follows take pairings of nails hair, eyebrow, spittle and so forth for your intended victim enough to represent every part of his person and then make them up into his likeness with wax from a deserted bee's comb scorch the figures slowly by holding it over a lamp every night for seven nights and say it is not wax that I am scorching it is the liver, heart and spleen of so and so that I scorch after the seventh time burn the figure and your victim will die this charm obviously combines the principles of homeopathic and contagious magic since the image which is made in the likeness of an enemy contains things which once were in contact with him namely his nails, hair and spittle another form of the Malay charm which resembles the Jeboi practice stool more closely when the corpse waxed from an empty bee's comb and of the length of a footstep then pierce the eye of the image and your enemy is blind pierce his stomach and he is sick pierce the head and his head aches pierce the breast and his breast will suffer if you would kill him outright transfix the image from the head downwards and shroud it as your water corpse pray over it as you were praying over the dead then bury it in the middle of a path where your victim will be sure to step over it in order that his blood is not I who am burying him it is Gabriel who is burying him thus the guilt of the murder will be laid on the shoulders of the Archangel Gabriel who is a great deal better able to bear it than you are. In Eastern Java an enemy may be killed by means of a likeness of him drawn on a piece of paper which is then incensed or buried in the ground. Among the Minang cowboys of Sumatra a man who is tormented by the passion of hate or by unrequited love will call in the help of a wizard in order to cause the object of his hate or love to suffer from a danger is also known as tingam. After giving the wizard the necessary instructions as the name, bodily form, dwelling and family of the person in question he makes a puppet which is supposed to resemble his intended victim and repairs with it to a wood where he hangs the image on a tree that stands quite by itself muttering a spell he then drives an instrument through the navel out of the puppet into the tree till the sap of the tree oozes through the hole thus made the instrument which inflicts the wound bears the same name, tingam as he also which is to be raised on the body of the victim and the using sap is believed to be his or her life spirit. Soon afterwards the person against whom the charm is directed begins to suffer from an ulcer which grows worse and worse till he dies unless a friend can procure a piece of the wood of the tree to which the image is attached. Magical images in Torres Strait and Borneo The sorcerers of Morbeg or Gervis Island in Torres Strait keep an assortment of effigies and stock ready to be operated on at the requirement of a customer some of the figures were of stone these were employed when short work was to be made of a man or woman others were wooden these gave the unhappy victim a little more rope only however to term at his prolonged sufferings by a painful death the mode of operation in the letter case was to put poison by means of a magical implement into a wooden image to which the name of the intended victim had been given next day the person aimed at wood, filled with chili then wasted way and die unless the same wizard who had wrought the charm would consent to undo it. If the sorcerer pulled off an arm or leg of the image the human victim felt pain in the corresponding limb of his body but if the sorcerer restored a severed arm or leg to the figure the man recovered another mode of compassing a man's ventura straights was to prick a wax energy of him or her with the spine of a stingray so when the man whose name had been given to the wax an image next went to fishing on the reef a stingray would sting him in the exact part of his body where the wax an image had been pierced or the sorcerer might hang the energy on the bow or tree and as a sway to and fro in the wind the person represented by it would fall sick however he would get well again if a friend of his couldn't do the magician do steady figure by sticking it firmly in the sandy bottom of the sea. When the lerons of Borneo wished to be revenged on an enemy they make a wooden image of him and leave it in the jungle as it decays he dies more elaborate is the proceeding adopted by the kenyays of Borneo in similar circumstances the operator retires with the image to a quiet spot on the riverbank and when a hawk appears in a certain part of the sky he kills a fowl some uses blood on the image and puts a bit of fat in the mouth of the figure saying put fat in his mouth. By that he means may his head be cut off hung up in an enemy's house and fed with fat in the usual way. He then strikes the breast of the image with a small wooden spear throws it into a pool of water reddened with red earth and afterwards takes it out and buries it in the ground. Magical images in Japan and China Ivernino of Japan desires to compass the destruction of an enemy he will make a lightness of him mad with mugwort or the gullida rose and bury it in the hole upside down under the trunk of a rotten tree with a prayer to a demon to carry off the man's soul or to make his body rot away with the tree sometimes an anal woman will attempt to get rid of her husband in this fashion by wrapping up his head dress in the shape of a corpse and burying it deep in the ground while she buries a prayer that her husband may rot and die with the headdress. The Japanese themselves are familiar with similar modes of enchantment. In one of their ancient books we read of a rebellious minister who made figures of the heir to the throne with intent, no doubt to do him grievous bodily harm thereby and sometimes a woman who had been deserted by her lover will make a straw evergy of the faithless gallant and nail it to a sacred tree adjoining the gods to spare the tree and to visit the sacrilege on the traitor at a shrine in Compure this sort of pine tree started with nails which had been thus driven in for the purpose of doing people to death The Chinese are perfectly aware that you can harm a man by maltreating while cursing an image of him especially if you have taken care to write on it his name in horoscope This mode of venting spite on an enemy is said to be commonly practiced in China In Amoy such images roughly made of bamboo, splinters and paper are called substitutes of persons and may be bought very cheap for a cash or so a piece of any shop which sells paper articles for the use of the dead or the gods For the frugal Chinese are in the habit of palming off paper imitations of all kinds or valuables on the simple mighted ghosts and gods who take them in all good faith for the genuine articles As usual the victim suffers a hurt caught his body into the hurt done to his image Thus if you ran a nail or a needle into the eyes of the puppet your man will go more or less blind if you stick a pin in its stomach he will double up a stab in the heart of the effigy may kill him outright and in general the more you prick it and the louder you speak the spell the more certain is the effect To make assurance doubly sure it is desirable to impregnate the effigy so to say with the personal influence of the man by passing it clandestinely beforehand over him or hiding it unbeknown to him in his clothes under his bed If you do that he is quite sure to die sooner or later. Naturally these nefarious practices are no new thing in the Chinese Empire. There is a passage in the Chinese Book of Rewards and Penalties which illustrates their profiling and days gone by There under the rubric to hide an effigy of a man for the purpose of giving him the nightmare we read as follows This means hiding the carved wood effigy of a man somewhere with the intent to give him the nightmare. Kong Tung Cho having died suddenly sometime after he had succeeded to the most of treasurer he appeared in a dream to the governor of his district and said to him I have been the victim of an odious crime and I am come my lord to pray you to avenge me. My time to die and not yet come but my servants gave me the nightmare and I was choked in my sleep. If you will send sequelae some dauntless soldiers not one of the violets will escape you under the seventh tile or the roof of my house will be found my image carved of wood. Fetch it and punish the criminals next day the governor of the district had all the servants arrested and sure enough after some search they found under the fourth said tile the figure of a man in wood a foot high and bristling all over the nails bit by bit the wood changed in the flesh and uttered inarticulate cries when it was struck The governor of the district immediately reported to the prefect of the departure who condemned several of the servants to suffer the extreme rigor of the law Magical images in Australia When some of the aborigines of Victoria desired to destroy an enemy they would occasionally retire to a lonely spot and draw on the ground a rude likeness to the victim would sit around it and devote him to destruction with capitalistic ceremonies so dreaded was this incantation that men and women who learned that it had been directed against them have been known to pine away and die of fright on the Bloomfield river in Queensland the natives think they can do him a man a rough wooden effigy of him and burying it in the ground by painting his likeness on a bullrore and they believe that persons whose portraits are carved on a tree at Cape Bedford will waste away When the wife of a central Australian native has eloped from him and he cannot recover her the disc consulate husband repairs with some sympathising friends to a secluded spot where a man skilled in magic draws on the ground a rough fire supposed to represent the woman lying on her back played a piece of greenbuck which stands for her spiritual soul and added the men through many to her spirits which have been made for the purpose and charmed by singing over them this bark and effigy of the woman's spirit with the little spirit sticking in it is then thrown as far as possible in the direction in which she is supposed to have taken during the whole of the operation the men chant in a low voice the burden of their song being an invitation to the magic of the woman to go out and enter her body and dry up all her fat sooner or later often a good deal later her fat does dry up she dies and her spirit is seen in the sky in the form of a shooting star magical images in Burma and Africa in Burma a rejected lover sometimes resorts to a sorcerer and engages him to make a small image of the scornful fair one containing a piece of her clothes or something which she has been in the habit of wearing and also enter into the composition of the doll which is then hung up or thrown into the water as a consequence the girl is supposed to go mad in this last example as in the first of the Malay charms known as above homeopathic or imitative magic is violent with contagious magic in a strict sense of the word since the likeness of the victim contains something which has been in contact with her person a matabelle who wishes to avenge herself on an enemy makes a clear figure of him with a needle next time the man thus represented happens to engage in a fight he will be speared just as his energy was stabbed the orvambo of southwestern Africa believe that some people have the power of bewitching an absent person by gazing into a vessel full of water until his image appears to them in the water and they spit at the image and curse the man and that seals his fate magical images in ancient India the ancient books of the Hindus apply it to the use of similar enchantments among their remote ancestors to destroy his foe a man would fashion a figure of him in clay and transfix it with narrow which had been carved with a thorn and winged with nails feathers or he would mold the figure of wax and melt it in a fire sometimes evities of the soldiers horses, elephants and chariots of hostile army were modeled in dough and then poured in pieces again to destroy an enemy the magician would kill the wizard with words I am killing so and so smear it with blood, wrap it in a black cloth and having pronounced an incantation burn it another way was to grind up mustard into meal with which a figure was made of the person who was to be overcome or destroyed then having muttered certain spells to give efficiency to the right the enchanter chopped up the image anointed it with melted butter curds or some such thing and finally burnt it in a sacred pot the so called sanguine chapter of the calica puran that occurs the following passage on the autumnal maha navani or when the month is in a lunar mission skanda or bishakha let a figure be made either of barley meal or earth representing the person with whom the sacrificer is at variance and the head of the figure be struck off after the usual texts have been used the following text is to be used in evoking acts on the occasion effuse effuse blood be terrific be terrific seize destroy the love of hampika the head of his enemy magical images in modern india in modern india the practises described in these old books are still carried on with mere variations of detail the magician compounds the fatal image of us taken from 64 filthy places and mixed up with clippings of hair peering some nails, bits of leather and so on upon the brist of the image he writes a name of his enemy then appears it through and through within all or maims it in various ways hoping thus to maim or cure the object of his vengeance among the name paterius of malabar the figure representing the enemy to be destroyed is drawn on a small sheet of metal, gold by preference or which some mystic diagrams have also inscribed and then declares that the bodily injury or death of the person shall take place at a certain time out of that he wraps up a little sheet in another sheet or leaf of metal gold if possible and buries in a place where the victim is expected to pass sometimes instead of a small sheet of metal he buries a live frog or lizard enclosed in a coconut shell after sticking nails into its eyes and stomach at the same moment that the animal dies the person expires also among the mohammedans of north india the proceeding is as follows a dollar made of earth taken from a grave or from a place where bodies are cremated and some sentences of the Quran are read backwards over 21 small wooden pigs these pigs the operator next strikes into various parts of the body of the image which is afterwards shrouded like a corpse carried to a graveyard and buried in the name of the enemy whom it is intended to endure the man it is believed to fail after the ceremony a slightly different form of the charm is observed by the Bham Margi a very degraded sect of Hindus in the north-west provinces to kill an enemy they make an image of flower or earth and stick braces into the breast, navel and throat while pigs are thrust into the eyes hands and feet as if it were not enough they nest construct an image of Barreva or Doga holding a three-pronged fork in her hand as opposed to the evergy of the person to whom mischief is meant, the fork penetrates his breast to injure a person a singali sorcerer will procure a lock of his intended victim's hair a pairing of his nails or a thread of his garment then he fashions an image of him and thrust nails made of five metals into the joints all these he buries where the unfortunate man is likely to pass no sooner has he done so than the victim falls ill with swelling or stiffness of joints sensations in the body or disfigurements of the mouth, legs and arms magical images among the Arabs of North Africa similar enchantments are brought by the Muslim peoples of North Africa thus an Arabic treatise on magic directs that if you wish to deprive a man of the use of his limbs you should make a wax an image of him and aggrave his name and his mother's name with a knife or to the handle must be made of the same wax then smite the limb of the image which answers to the particular limb of the man which you desire to disable at the same moment the limb of flesh and blood will be paralysed, the following is another extract of the same treatise to injure the eyes of an enemy take your taper, fashion it into the likeness of him whom you would harm write on it the seven signs along with the name of your enemy and the name of his mother and gouge out the two eyes of the figure with two points then put it in a pot with quick lime or which you must throw with a little man and bury the hole near the fire the fire will make your victim to shriek and will hurt his eyes so that he will see nothing and that the pain will cause him to utter cries of distress but do not prolong the operation more than seven days for it would die and you would have to answer for it day or the last judgment if you wish to heal him withdraw the figure and throw it into water he will recover with God's leave magical images in ancient Egypt and Babylon nowhere perhaps were the magic arts more carefully cultivated nowhere did they enjoy greater esteem or exercise a deeper influence on the national life than the land of the pharaohs little wonder therefore that the practice of enchantment by means of images was familiar to the wizards of Egypt a drop of a man's blood some clippings of his hair or pairings of his nails a rag of the garment which he had worn suffice to give a sorcerer complete power orem these relics of his person the magician needed into a lump of wax which he moulded into the likeness and dressed up the fashion of his intended victim who was then at the mercy of his tormentor if the image was exposed to the fire the person whom he represented straight away fell into a burning fever if it was stabbed with a knife he felt the pain of the wound thus for instance a certain superintendent of the king's cattle was once prosecuted in an Egyptian court of law for having made figures of men and women in wax thereby causing paralysis of their limbs and on the groovy bodily harm he had somehow obtained a book of magic which contained the spells and directions how to act in reciting them armed with his powerful instrument the rogue had shut himself up in a secret chamber and then proceeded to cast spells over the people of his town an ancient Babylonia also it was a common practice to make an image of clay, pitch, honey, fat or other soft material in the likeness of an enemy and to injure or kill him by burning burying or otherwise ill-treating it thus in a hymn to the fire god nascul we read those who have made images of me reproducing my features who have taken away my breath toward my hairs who have rent my clothes have hindered my feet from treading the dust may the fire god the strong one break their charm magical images in Babylon in Egypt and overthrow of demons both in Babylon and in Egypt this ancient tool of superstition so baneful enhanced the mischievous element was also pressed into the service of religion and turned to glorious account for the confusion and overthrow of demons in Babylonian incantation we meet with a long list of able spirits those ever to ease were burnt by the magician in the hope that as images melted in the fire so that the fiends themselves then disappear every night when the sun god Ra sank down to his home in the glowing west he was assailed by hosts of demons under the leadership of the archfiend a pepai all night long he fought them and sometimes by day the powers of darkness set up clouds even into the blue Egyptian sky to obscure against light and weaken his power to aid the sun god in his daily struggle a ceremony was daily performed in his temple at Thebes a figure of his foe represented as a crocodile with the hideous face or serpent with many coils was made of wax and not at the demons name was written in green ink wrapped in a papyrus case on which another likeness of a pepai had been drawn in green ink the figure was then tied up with black hair spat upon, hacked with a stone knife and cast on the ground the other priests trod on it with his left foot again and again and then burned it in a fire made of a certain plant or grass when a pepai had thus been effectively disposed of wax and avages of each of his principal demons and of their fathers, mothers and children were made and burned in the same way the service accompanied by the recitation of certain prescribed spells was repeated not merely morning, noon or night but whenever a storm was raging or heavy rain had set in all black clouds were stealing across the sky to hide the sun's bright disc the fiends of darkness, clouds and rain felt the injuries inflicted on their images as if they had been done to themselves they passed away at least for a time and a beneficent sun god shone out triumphant once more magical images in Scotland from the azure sky the stately fanes and the solemn ritual of ancient Egypt we have to travel far in space and time to the misty mountains and the humble cottages of the Scottish Highlands of today but at our journey's end we shall find our ignorant countrymen seeking to attain the same end by the same means and unhappily with the same malignity as the egyptian of old to kill a person whom he hates a modern highlander will still make a rude clay image of him called a corp-cluar or corp-creed clay body stick it full of pins, nails and broken bits of glass and then place it in a running stream with its head to the current as every pin is thrust into the figure an incantation is uttered and the person represented feels a pain in the corresponding parts of his body if the intention is to make him die a lingering death the operator is careful to stick no pins into the region of the heart whereas he thrusts them into the region to the brilly if he desires to rid himself of his enemy at once and as the clay puppet crumbles away into the running water so the victim's body is believed to waste away and turned to clay in islay the spell spoken over the corp-crey when it is ready to receive the pins there is as follows from behind you are like a ram with an old fleece and as the pins are being thrust in a longing incantation mispronounced beginning as you waste away may she waste away as this wounds you made wound her sometimes we are told the evergy is set before a blazing fire on our door which has been taken off its hinges there it is toasted and turned to make the human victim worth in agony the corp-crey is reported to have been employed in the late years in the countries of Inverness, Ross and Sutherland a specimen from Inverness Shire may be seen in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford it is remarkable however that in the Highlands this form of magic has no power over man who has lost any of his members for example the Ross Shire witches the figure of Donald of the year they could not destroy him because he had not lost an ear in battle a similar form of witchcraft known as burying the sheaf seems still to linger in Ireland among the dwellers of the bog of Ardee the person who works the child goes first to a chapel and says certain prayers with his back to the altar and then he takes a sheath of wheat which he fastens into the likeness of a human body sticking pins in the joints to the stems and according to one account shaping a heart of plated straw this sheaf he buries in the devil's name near the house of his enemy her will it is supposed gradually pine away at the sheaf decays dying when it finally decomposes if the enchander desires his foe to perish speedily he buries the sheath in wet ground where it will soon mold away but if on the other hand his wish that his victim should linger in pain he chooses a dry spot where dear composition will be slow however in Scotland, as in Babylon and Egypt the destruction of an image has also been employed for the discomfiture of fiends when Shetland fishermen wish to disenchant their boat they row it out to sea before sunrise and as the day is dawning they paint a waxing figure in the boat where the skipper exclaims go hence Satan magical images to procure offspring in America and Africa of homeopathic or imitative magic working by means of images has commonly been practised for the spiteful purpose of putting obnoxious people out of the world it is also though far more rarely been employed with a benevolent intention of helping others into it in other words, it has been used to facilitate childbirth and to procure offspring for barren women thus among the eskimos of barren straight a barren woman deserves of having a son who commonly makes or causes her husband to make a small doll like image over which he performs certain secret rites and the woman is directed to sleep with it under her pillow amongst the many ceremonies which the Thompson Indian girl of British Columbia had followed to perform a puberty was the following she had to run four times in the morning carrying two small stones which had been obtained from underneath the water these were put in her bosom as she ran, they slipped down between her body and her clothes and fell to the ground while she ran she prayed to the dawn that when she should be with the child she might be delivered there easily as she had been delivered of these stones similarly among the Haida Indians and the Queen Charlotte Islands a pregnant woman would let round stones eels, chips or other small objects slipped down over abdomen for the sake of facilitating her delivery among the Nishimand Indians of California when a woman is childless her female friends sometimes make out of grass a rude image of the baby and tied in a small basket after the Indian fashion some day when the woman is from home they lay this grass baby in her hut on finding it she holds it to her breast pretends to nurse it and sings at lullabies this is done as a charm to make her conceive we call Indians in Mexico a wife then a certain mother who is a goddess of conception and childbirth and lives in a cave near Santa Caterina a woman desires of offspring deposits in this cave a doll made of a cotton cloth to represent the baby in which her heart is set after a while she goes back to the cave puts the doll under her cradle and soon afterwards is supposed to be pregnant with a light content Indian women of Peru used to wrap up stones like babies and leave them at the foot of a large stone revered for this purpose along the Macatissas a calf retripe in South Africa a travel observed woman carefully tending a doll made out of cord adorned with necklaces of glass beads and heavily weighted with iron ore on enquiry he learned that she had been directed by the medicine man to do this as a means of tending a child among the basaltos childless wise made rude effigies of clay and given the name of some to tell her a deity they treat these dolls as if they were real children and besieged the divinity to whom they have dedicated them to grant them the power of conception in Anno a district of West Africa women may often be seen carrying wooden dolls strapped like babies while their backs has a cure for sterility in Japan when a marriage is unfruitful the old women of the neighborhood come to the house and go through a pritance delivering the wife of a child the infant is represented by a doll the marriage had a household called whose image was in the form of an infant the image was very carefully made generally life-sized adorned with the family jewels barren women nursed it and dressed it in the most endearing terms in order to become mothers magical images to procure offspring in the eastern archival legal among the bates of Sumatra a barren woman who would become a mother will make a wooden image of a child and hold it in her lap believing that this would lead to the fulfillment of her wish in the bay bar when a woman desires to have a child she invites a man who is himself the father of a large family to pray on her behalf to the spirit of the son a doll is made of red cotton which the woman clasps in her hands if she would suckle it and the father of many children takes a foul and holds it by the legs to the woman's head saying oh a pillow make use of the foul let fall, let descend a child I perceive you, I entreat you let a child fall and descend into my hands and on my lap then he asks the woman has the child come and she answers yes it is sucking already after that the man holds the foul on her husband's head and mumbles some formal words lastly the bird is killed and laid together with some battle for the rest of sacrifice when the ceremony is over word goes about in the village that the woman has been brought to bed and her friends come and congratulate her here the pretense that a child has been born is a purely magical right designed to secure by means of imitational mimicry that a child really shall be born but an attempt is made to add to the efficiency of the right by means of prayer and sacrifice to put it otherwise magic is here, blend with the woman in Sabay one of the islands in Taurus streets a similar custom and purely magical character is observed without any religious alloy here when a woman is pregnant all the other women assemble the husband's sister makes an image of a male child and places it before the pregnant woman after his image is nursed until the birth of the child in order to ensure that the baby shall be a boy to secure a male offspring a woman will have no organ of generation which he then passes to another woman who is born none but boys this is clear his imitative magic in a slightly different form in the seventh month for woman's pregnancy common people in java observe a ceremony which is purely designed to facilitate the real birth by mimicking it husband and wife repair to Warwell or to the bank of a neighbouring river the upper part of the woman's body is bare but young banana leaves fastened under her arms a small opening where the fold is left in the leaves in front through this opening or fold in the leaves on his wife's body the husband lets fall from above her weaver shuttle an old woman receives the shuttle as it falls takes it up in her arms and dandles it as if it were a baby same oh what a dear little child oh what a beautiful little child then the husband lets an egg slip through the fold and when it lies on the ground the after-boof he takes his sword and cuts through the banana leaf at the place of the fold obviously as if it were severing the navel stream persons of high rank in java observe the ceremony after a fashion in which the real meaning of the ride is somewhat obscured the pregnant woman is cloved in a long robe which her husband kneeling before her servers with the stroke of his sword from button to top then he throws his sword on the ground and runs away as fast as he can according to another account the woman is wrapped around with a white thread her husband cuts it with his sword throws away an oblong white cord that is a foul's egg to the ground rolls along a young coconut on which the figures of a man and woman have been painted and so departs in haste among some of the dax of Borneo when a woman is in her labor a wizard is called in who is used to facilitate the delivery of in a rational manner by manipulating the body of the sufferer who exerts himself to attain the same end by a means which we should regard as wholly irrational he in fact pretends to be the expectant mother a large stone attached to his stomach by a cloth wrapped around his body represents the child of the worm and following the directions shadow dream by his colleague on the real scene of operations removes this maple leaf baby about on his body in exact imitation of the movements of the real baby till the infant is born simulation of birth at adoption and after supposed death the same principle of make-believe so due to children has led other people to employ a simulation of birth as a form of adoption even as a murder is storming a supposed dead person of life if you pretend to give birth to a boy or even to a great bearded man who has not a drop of your blood in his veins then the eyes of primitive law and philosophy the boy or man is really your son to all intents and purposes thus Dodoris tells us that in his own day the same mode of adopting children was practiced by the barbarians at the present time it is said to be still in use in Bulgaria and among the Bosnian Turks a woman will take a boy whom she intends to adopt and push or pull him through a close even afterwards it is said that in his own day the same mode of adopting children will take him through a close even afterwards he is regarded as her very son and inherits the whole property of his adoptive parents among the barbarians of Saruak when a woman desires to adopt a grown-up man or woman a great many people assemble and have a feast the adopting mother seated in public on a raised and covered seat allows the adopted person to crawl from behind between her legs as soon as he appears in front he is stroked with the sweet-centered blossoms then the adopting mother and the adopted son or daughter waddle to the end of the house and back again in front of all the spectators the diet established between the two by this graphic imitation of childbirth is very strict an offense committed against an adopted child is reckoned more heinous than one committed against a real child in Central Africa the Bahima practice adoption the male relatives always take charge of a brother's children when a man dies his brother takes an inch older than the deceased and raises them one by one in his wife's lap then he binds around her waist a thong used for tying the legs of restive cows during milking just as his done-up childbirth the children are then brought up with his own family the ancient Greece any man who has been supposed erroneously to be dead and for whom in his absence funeral rites had been performed was treated as debt to society till he had gone through the form of being born again he was passed through a woman's lap then washed, dressed well in clothes and put out to nurse not until this ceremony had been punctually performed might he mix freely with living folk in ancient India under similar circumstances a supposed dead man had to pass the first night after his return in a tub filled with a mixture of fat and water there he sat with doubled up fists and without uttering a syllable like a child in the womb while over him were performed all the sacraments that were warned to be celebrated over a pregnant woman next morning he got out of the tub and went through once more all the other sacraments he had fallen apart taken off on his youth up in particular he married a wife or espoused his old one over again with due solemnity simulation of birth the manley akikuyu amongst the akikuyu of the British East Africa every member of the tribe with a male or female has to go through a pretense of being born again the age at which the ceremonies performed arise with the ability of the father to provide the koto shape which is required for the due observance of the right but it seems that the new birth generally takes place when a child is about 10 years old or younger if a child's father or mother is dead a man or woman acts as proxy on the occasion and in such a case a woman is therefore regarded by the child as its own mother a koto shape is killed in the afternoon and the stomach and intestines are reserved the ceremony takes place at evening in a hut, none but women are allowed to be present a circular piece of the goat's skin or sheep's skin is passed over one shoulder and under the other arm of the child who is to be born again and the animal's stomach is similarly passed over the child's other shoulder and under its other arm the mother or the woman who acts as mother sits on a hide on the floor with the child between her knees the sheep's or goat's gut is passed around her and brought in front of the child she grows as if in labour another woman cuts the gut as if it were the navel string and the child imitates the cry of a newborn infant until a lad has thus been born again in mimicry he may not assist at the disposal of his father's body after death nor help to carry him out into the wilds to breathe his last formally, the ceremony of the new birth was combined with the ceremony of circumcision but the two are now kept separate in origin we may suppose that this curious pretense of being born again is being rigorously formed part of the initiatory ruts through which every kikuyu lad and every kikuyu girl had to pass before he or she was recognized as a full grown member of the tribe for in many parts of the world a simulation of death and resurrection has been enacted by candidates in such occasions as well as on a mission to the membership of certain secret societies the intention of the mock birth or mock resurrection is not clear but we may conjecture that it is designed on the principles of homeopathic or imitative magic either to impart to the candidate the powers of a ghost or to enable him to be reborn again into the world whenever he shall have died in good earnest magical images to procure love magical images have often been employed for the amiable purpose of winning love thus to shoot an arrow into the heart of the clay image was an ancient hindu mode of securing a woman's affection only the bow string must be of him the shaft of the arrow must be of black ala wood it's plerman al's feather and it's barb a thorn no doubt the wound inflicted on the heart of the clay image was supposed to make a corresponding impression on a woman's heart among the chip away indians there used to be a few young men or women who had not little images of the persons whose love they wished to win they pricked the hearts of the images and inserted magical powders into the punctures while they addressed the effigies by the names of the persons who they represented being them required their affection ancient witches and wizards melted wax in the fire in order to make the hearts of their sweet hearts to melt of love and as the wound of love may be inflicted by an image so by an image it may be healed how they can be done is told behind in a poem based on the experience of one of his own school fellows it is called the pilgrimage to Kevlar and describes how sick people offer waxen models of their alien members to the virgin married Kevlar in order that she may heal them at their infirmities in the poem a lover wasting away for love and sorrow at the death of sweet heart offers to the virgin the waxen model of a heart with a prayer that she would heal his heartache such customs still commonly observed in some parts of catholic europe are interesting because they show how the magic comes to be incorporated with religion the molding of wax images of alien members is in its origin purely magical the prayer to the virgin or to a saint is purely religious the combination of the two is accrued a pathetic attempt to turn both magic and religion to account for the benefit of the sufferer magical images to maintain domestic harmony the natives of New Caledonia make use of evergies to maintain or restore harmony between husband and wife two spindle shaped bundles one representing the man and the other the woman and tied firmly together to symbolise and ensure the enmity of the couple they are made up of various parts together with some threads from the woman's girdle and a piece of the man's looping a bone needle forms the axis of each the talisman is meant to render the union of the spouses indissoluble and is carefully traded by them both if, nevertheless, a domestic gyre should unfortunately take place the husband repairs to the family burying ground with the precious back there he lights a fire with the wood of a particular kind she emigrates the talisman sprinkles it with water from a prescribed source waves it round his head and stirs the needle with the bundle which represents himself he says I changed the heart of this woman that she may love me if the wife still remains obsturate he ties a sugar cane to the bundle and presents it to her through a third person as the sugar cane she feels her love for her husband revive on the other side she has the right to operate in like manner on the bundle which represents herself always provided that she does not go into the burying ground which is strictly forbidden to women homeopathic magic in medicine another benefit use of homeopathic magic is to heal or prevent sickness in ancient Greece when a man died of dropsy his children were made to sit with their feet in water until the body was burned this was supposed to prevent the disease from attacking them similarly on the principle of water to water among the natives of the hills near Rajamahal in India the body of a person who has died of dropsy is thrown into a river they think that if the corpse were buried the disorder would return and carry off other people homeopathic treatment of jaundice the ancient hindu is performed a lavish ceremony based on homeopathic magic for the cure of jaundice its main drift was to banish the yellow color to yellow creatures and yellow things such as the sun to which it properly belongs and to procure for the patient a healthy red color from a living, vigorous source namely a red bull with the attention embraced restarted the falling spell after the sun shall go thy heartache and thy jaundice in the color of the red bull do we envelope thee we envelope thee in red tints unto long life may this person go unscathed and be free of yellow color the cow's divinity is Rohini they who, one over, are themselves red Rohini in their every form and every strength we do envelope thee into the parrots, into the thrush do we put thy jaundice and furthermore into the yellow wagtail do we put thy jaundice while he uttered these words the priest, in order to infuse the rosy hue of health into the shallow patient gave him water to sip he poured water over the animal's back and made the sick man drink it he seated him on the skin of a red bull and tied a piece of the skin to him in order to improve his color by thoroughly eradicating the yellow taint he proceeded thus he first dobbed him from head to foot in a yellow porridge made of turmeric or kurukuma, a yellow plant set him on a bed tied three yellow birds to wit a parrot, a thrush and a yellow wagtail by means of a yellow string to the foot of the bed then pouring water over the patient he washed off the yellow porridge with no doubt the jaundice from him to the birds after that, by way of giving a final bloom to his complexion he took some hairs of a red bull wrapped them in gold leaf and glued them to the patient's skin the agents held that if a person suffering from jaundice looked sharply had a stone and curlew and the bird looked steadily at him he was cured of the disease such as the nature, says Blutark such as the tip of the creature that draws out and receives a melody which issues like a stream through the eyesight so well recognized among bird fanciers was this valuable property of the stone and curlew that when they had one of these birds for sale they kept it carefully covered as the jaundice person should look at it and be cured for nothing the virtue of the bird laid not in its color but in its large golden eye which, if it do not pass for a tuft of yellow lichen is the first thing that strikes the soldier as a bird cower to escape observation on the sandy flinstring surface of the ground which it loves to haunt and with which its drab plumage blends so well that only a practice eye can easily detect it thus the yellow eye of the bird drew out the yellow jaundice plenty tells of another or perhaps the same bird to which the Greeks gave their name of jaundice because if a jaundice man saw it the disease left him and slowed the bird he mentions also a stone which is supposed to cure a jaundice because it's hue resembled that of a jaundice skin in modern Greece jaundice goes by the name of the golden disease and very naturally it can be healed by gold to effect a perfect cure all that you have to do is this take a piece of gold best of all an English sovereign since English gold is the purest and put it in a measure of wine expose a wine with the gold to the stars for three nights then drink three glasses of it daily till it is used up by that time the jaundice will be quite washed up your system the cure is in a stricter sense the word a sovereign wine a wind cure for jaundice like the modern Greek one it's a drink a glass of water in which a gold coin has been left overnight a remedy based on the principle of contraries is to look steadily at pitch or other black substances in south russia a Jewish remedy for jaundice is to wear golden bracelets here the great homeopathic principle is clearly the same as in the preceding cases though its application is different homeopathic treatment of st. Anthony's fire in Germany yellow terms gold coins, gold rings, saffron and other yellow things are still esteemed remedies for jaundice just as a stick of red sealing wax carried on the person cures a red eruption of popularly known as st. Anthony's fire or the blood stone with its blood red spots another popular remedy in Germany for the red st. Anthony's fire and also for bleeding is supplied by the common crossbills in this bird after the first molt the difference between the sexes is shown by the hands inclined to yellowish green while the cocks becoming diversified by orange yellow and red the plumage finally deepening into a rich crimson red varied in places by a flame colour the smallest reflection may convince us that these gorgeous pews must be endowed with very valuable medical properties accordingly in some parts of Bavaria Saxony and Bohemia people keep crossbills in cages in order that the red bills may draw the red st. Anthony's fire and the information of favour to themselves and so relieve the human patient homeopathic virtue of crossbills often in a peasant's cottage you may see the red bird in its cage hanging beside a sick bed and drawing to itself the hectic flesh from the chicks of the hot and restless patient who lies tossing under the blankets after the dried body of a crossbill has only to be placed on a wound to stop the bleeding at once is not the colour only of the feathers which produce its accentuary effect the peculiar shape of the bill which gives the bird its English and German name is a contributory cause for the horny sheaths of the bill cross each other obliquely and this formation undoubtably enables the bird to draw diseases to itself more readily than a beak of the common shape could possibly do curious observers have even remarked that when the upper bill crosses the lower to the right the bird will attract the diseases of men whereas if the upper bill crosses the lower to the left it will attract the diseases of women but I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this particular observation however that may be certain it is that no fire will break out an house where a crossbill is kept in a cage neither will lightning strike the dwelling and this immunity can only be ascribed to the protective colouring of the bird the red hue of its plummet serving to ward off the red lightning and to nip a red conflagration in the bud however the poor bird seldom lives to old age nor could this reasonably be expected of a creature which has to endure so much vicarious suffering it generally falls a victim to one rather of the melodies of which it has relieved our ailing humanity the causes which have given the crossbill the world's remarkable colour and the peculiar shape of its bill have escaped many naturalists but they are familiar to children in Germany the truth is that when Jesus Christ hung on the cross a flight of crossbills fluttered around him and tugged with their bills at the nails in his hands and feet to draw them out till their feathers which were grey before were all bedabbled with blood and their beaks which have been straight were twisted already so red have been their feathers from that day to this another cure prescribed in Germany for St. Anthony's fire is to rub the patient with ashes from a house that has been burned down or it is easy to see that as the fire died out in the house so St. Anthony's fire will die out in that man the shrew mouse and the shrew ash a curious application of homeopathic magic to the cure of disease is founded on the old English superstition that if a shrew mouse runs over a beast be it a horse, cow or sheep the animal suffers cruelly and may lose use of its limb against this accident the farmer used to keep a shrew ash at hand as a remedy a shrew ash was prepared thus a deep hole was bored into the tree and a shrew mouse was thrust in alive and plugged in probably with some incantations which had been forgotten homeopathic prescriptions to make their grow an Asian Indian cure for a scanty crop of hair was to pour a solution of certain plants over the head of the patient this has to be done by a doctor who was dressed in black and had eaten black food and the ceremony must be performed in the early morning while the stars were fading in the sky and before the black cows had risen calling from their nests the exact virtue of these plants has escaped our knowledge but we can highly doubt that they were dark and hairy so the black clothes the doctor used black food and the swarthy hue of the crows unquestionably combined to abuse a crop of black hair on the patient's head a more disagreeable means of attracting the same man is adopted by some of the tribes of central Australia to promote the growth of a boy's hair a man with flowing locks buts used scalp as hard as he can being urged there too by his friends who sit around watching him at his task while the sufferer howls aloud in pain clearly on the principle of capillary attraction if I may say so he thus imparts of his own mature abundance to the scarcity of his useful friend various homeopathic remedies one of the great merits of homeopathic magic is that it enables the cure to be performed on the person of the doctor instead of that of his victim who is thus relieved of all trouble and inconvenience while he sees his medical man which befall him homeopathic cures for example the peasants of Peche in France labour under the impression that a prolonged fit of vomiting is brought about by the patient's stomach becoming unhooked as they call it and so falling down accordingly a practitioner is called in to restore the organ to his proper place after hearing the symptoms he at once throws himself into the most horrible contortions for the purpose of unhooking his own stomach having succeeded in the effort he next hooks it up again in another series of contortions and grimaces while the patient experiences a corresponding relief fee 5 francs in like manner a direct medicine man who is being fetched in a case of illness will lie down and pretend to be dead he is accordingly treated like a corpse he is bound up in mats taken out of the house and deposited on the ground after about an hour or other medicine men lose the pretended dead man to bring him to life and as he recovers the sick person is supposed to recover too a cure for a tumour based on the principle of homeopathic magic is prescribed by Marcellus Aborto court physician in Theodosius I in his curious work on medicine it is as follows take a root of v vein cut it across and hang one end of it around the patient's neck and the other in the smoke of the fire as a vervian dries up in the smoke so the tumour will also dry up and disappear if the patient should act to his proof ungrateful to the good physician the man of skill can avenge himself very easily by throwing the vervian in the water or as the root absorbs the moisture once more the tumour will return the same sapient writer recommends you if you are troubled with pimples to watch for a falling star then instantly while the star is still shooting from the sky to wipe the pimples with a cloth or anything that comes to hand just as the star falls from the sky so the pimples will fall from your body and you must be very careful not to wipe them with your bare hand or the pimples will be transferred to it End of section 3