Among the Parsis, a tray with writing materials including a sheet of blank paper is placed by the mother's bed on the night of the sixth day. The goddess who rules human destiny traces upon the paper the course of the child's future, which henceforth cannot be changed, though the writing is invisible to mortal eyes.
In Calabria there is a plant called "Fortune's Grass," which is suspended to the beams of the ceiling: if the leaves turn upwards, Fortune is sure to follow; if downwards, things may be expected to go wrong. The oracle is chiefly consulted on Ascension Day, when it is asked to tell the secrets confided to it by Christ when He walked upon the earth.
Auguries, portents, charms, waxen images, votive offerings, the evil eye and its antidotes, happy "finds," such as horseshoes, four-leaved shamrocks, and two-tailed lizards: these, and an infinite number of kindred superstitions, are closely linked with what may be called the Science of Luck. Fortune and Hecate come into no mere chance contiguity when they meet in the moon. For the rest, there is hardly any popular belief that has not points of contact with magic, and that is not in some sort made the more comprehensible by looking at the premises on which magical rites rest. Magic is the power admitted to exist among all classes not so very long ago, of entering by certain processes into relation with invisible powers. For modern convenience it was distinguished into black magic, and natural, and white—the latter name being given when the intention of the operant was only good or allowable, and when the powers invoked were only such as might be supposed, whether great or small, to be working in good understanding with the Creator. The reason of existence of all magic, which runs up into unfathomable antiquity, lies in the maxim of the ancient sages, Egyptian, Hebrew, Platonist, that all things visible and sensible are but types of things or beings immediately above them, and have their origin in such. Hence, in magical rites, black or white, men used and offered to the unseen powers those words or actions or substances which were conceived to be in correspondence with their character or nature, employing withal certain secret traditional manœuvres. The lowest surviving form is fetish; sacrifice also had a similar source; so had the Mosaic prescriptions, in which only innocent rites and pure substances were to be employed. Whereas the most horrible practices and repulsive substances have always been associated with witches, necromancers, &c., who are reported to have put their wills at the absolute disposal of the infernal and malevolent powers who work in direct counter-action of the decrees and providence of the Deity. Hence the renunciation of baptism, treading on holy things, the significant act of saying the Lord's Prayer backwards, i.e., in the opposite intention to that of the author. This is the consummate sin of pacti, or, as it is said, "selling the soul," and is the very opposite of divine magic or the way of the typical saint: "Present yourselves a living sacrifice (not a dead carcase) in body, soul, and spirit." To persons in the last condition unusual effects have been ascribed, as it was believed that those who had put themselves at the absolute disposal of the malignant powers were also enabled to effect singular things, on the wrong side, indeed, and very inferior in order, so long as the agreement held good.
The most sensible definition of magic is "an effect sought to be produced by antecedents obviously inadequate in themselves." Certain words, gestures, practices, have been recognised on the tradition of ancient experience to have certain remedial or other properties or consequents, and they are used in all simplicity by persons who can find no other reason than that they are thought to succeed.
One of the most remarkable of early ideas still current about human destiny is that which pictures each man coupled with a personal and individualised fate. This fate may be beneficent or maleficent, a guardian angel or a possessive fiend; or it may, in appearance at least, combine both functions. The belief in a personal fate was deeply rooted among the Greeks and Romans, and proved especially acceptable to the Platonists. Socrates' dæmon comes to mind: but in that case the analogy is not clear, because the inward voice to which the name of dæmon was afterwards given, was rather a personal conscience than a personal fate—a difference that involves the whole question of the responsibility of man. But the evil genii of Dion the Syracusan and of Brutus were plainly "personal fates." Dion's evil genius appeared to him when he was sitting alone in the portico before his house one evening; it had the form of a gigantic woman, like one of the furies as they were represented on the stage, sweeping the floor with a broom. It did not speak, but the apparition was followed by the death of Dion's son, who jumped in a fit of childish passion from the house-top, and soon after, Dion himself was assassinated. Brutus' dæmon was, as every-one knows, a monstrous spectre that seemed to be standing beside him in his tent one night, a little while before he left Asia, and which, on being questioned, said to him, "I am thy evil genius, Brutus, thou wilt see me at Philippi."
We catch sight again of the personal fate in the relations of Antony with the young Octavius. Antony had in his house an Egyptian astrologer, who advised him by all means to keep away from the young man, "for your genius," he said, "is in fear of his; when it is alone its port is erect and fearless, when his approaches it, it is dejected and depressed." There were circumstances, says Plutarch, that carried out this view, for in every kind of play, whether they cast lots or cast the die, Antony was still the loser; in their cock fights and quail fights, it was still "Cæsar's cock and Cæsar's quail."
In ancient Norse and Teutonic traditions, where Salida, or Frau Sælde, takes the place of Fortuna, we find indications of the personal fate, both kindly and unkindly. The fate appeared to its human turn chiefly in the hour of death, that is, in the hour of parting company. Sometimes it was attached not to one person, but to a whole family, passing on from one to another, as in the case of the not yet extinct superstition of the White Lady of the Hohenzollerns.
In a very old German story, quoted by Jacob Grimm, a poor knight is shown, eating his frugal meal in a wood, who on looking up, sees a monstrous creature among the boughs which cries, "I am thy ungelücke!" The knight asks his "ill-luck" to share his meal, and when it comes down, catches it, and shuts it up in a hollow oak. Someone, who wishes to do him an ill-turn, lets out the ungelücke; but instead of reverting to the knight, it jumps on the back of its evil-minded deliverer.
In the Sicilian story of "Feledico and Epomata," one of those collected by Fraülein Laura Gonzenbach,[2] a childless king and queen desire to have children. One day they see a soothsayer going by: they call him in, and he says that the queen will bear a son, but that he will die when he is eighteen years of age. The grief of the royal pair is extreme, and they ask the soothsayer for advice what to do. He can only suggest that they should shut the child up in a tower till the unlucky hour be past, after which his fate will have no more power over him. This is accordingly done, and the child sees no one in the tower but the nurse and a lady of the court, whom he believes to be his mother. One day, when the lady has gone to make her report to the queen, the boy hears his fate crying to him in his sleep, and asking why he stays shut up there, when his real father and mother are king and queen and live in a fine castle? He makes inquiries, and at first is pacified by evasive answers, but after three visits of his fate, who always utters the same words, he insists on going to the castle and seeing his father and mother. "His fate has found him out, there is no good in resisting it," says the queen. However, by the agency of Epomata, the beautiful daughter of an enchantress, who had conveyed the prince to her castle, and had provided for his execution on the very day ordained by his fate, Feledico tides over the fatal moment and attains a good old age.
Hahn states that the Greek name of Μοῖραι is given by the Albanians to what I have called personal fates, as well as to the Parcae; but the Turkish designation of Bakht, meaning a sort of protecting spirit, seems to be in more common use. The Albanian story-teller mentions a negress who is in want of some sequins, and who says, "Go and find my fortune (Bakht), but first make her a cake, and when you offer it to her, ask her for a few gold pieces."