General Forlong, referring to the serpent Buddhism of Kambodia, says, that “Fetish worship was the first worship, and to a great extent is still the real faith of the great mass of the ignorant, especially about these parts.”[549] “Probably one-quarter of the world yet deifies, or at least reverences, sticks and stones, ram-horns and charms.”[550]
The Abyssinians are sunk in the grossest superstition; their medical practice is, to a large extent, based on the use of amulets and charms. Even leprosy and syphilis are treated by these means, and eye diseases by spitting in the affected organs.[551]
“Fetiches” are claws, fangs, roots, or stones, which the Africans believe to be inhabited by spirits, and so powerful for good or evil. The word is derived from the Portuguese feitiço, a charm or amulet.
The Tibetans wear amulets upon their necks and arms; they contain nail-parings, teeth, or other reliques of some sainted Lama, with musk, written prayers, and other charms.[552]
Barth, travelling in Africa, found an English letter which had not reached its destination, used as a charm by a native.[553]
Leaving primitive folk and savage peoples, and turning to the great civilized nations of the past, we find the Egyptians, the Chaldæans, Assyrians, and Babylonians not less addicted to the use of amulets, charms, talismans, and philters than their untutored progenitors (assuming with the anthropologists that the savage of to-day represents the primitive people who must have preceded the founders of civilization). The Magi, according to Pliny,[554] prescribed the herb feverfew, the Pyrethrum parthenium, to be pulled from the ground with the left hand, that the fevered patient’s name must be spoken forth, and that the herborist must not look behind him. He tells us also that the Magi and the Pythagoreans ordered the pseudo-anchusa to be gathered with the left hand, while the plucker uttered the name of the person to be cured, and that it should be tied on him for the tertian fever.[555]
Of the aglaophotis, by which some commentators understand the peony (Pæonia officinalis), and others the “Moly” of Homer, Pliny says, “by means of this plant, the Magi can summon the deities into their presence when they please.” Concerning the achæmenis, he says the root of it, according to the Magian belief as expressed by Democritus, when taken in wine, torments the guilty to such a degree during the night, by the various forms of avenging deities, as to extort from them a confession of their crimes. He tells, amongst other marvels, of the adamantis, a plant found in Armenia, which, when presented to a lion, will make the beast fall upon its back and drop its jaws. The Magi said if any one swallowed the heart of a mole palpitating and fresh, he would at once become an expert diviner. An owl’s heart placed on a woman’s left breast while she is asleep will make her tell all her secrets. For quartan fevers they recommended a kind of beetle taken up with the left hand to be worn as an amulet.[556] The use of scarabs or beetles made of steatite, lapis-lazuli, cornelian, etc., as amulets, dates from the most ancient periods of Egyptian history. In the fourth Egyptian room of the British Museum there are specimens of scarabs, with the names of kings and queens dating B.C. 4400-250. The objects are not in all cases as old as the dates of the sovereigns whose names they bear. “The beetle was an emblem of the god Khepera, the self-created, and the origin and source from whence sprang gods and men. Rā, the Sun-god, who rose again daily, was, according to an Egyptian myth, a form of Khepera; and the burial of scarabs with mummies probably had reference to the resurrection of the dead.”[557]
Some large scarabs which were fastened on the breasts of mummies had inscriptions from the 30th chapter of the Book of the Dead. The deceased person prays: “Let there be no obstruction to me in evidence; let there be no obstacle on the part of the Powers; let there be no repulse in the presence of the Guardian of the Scale.” Other amulets consist of papyrus sceptres, buckles of Isis, hearts, fingers, etc., in gold and precious stones. They are laid between the bandages of mummies to guard the dead from evil.
Professor Lenormant explains the magical incantations which were used in connection with these talismans; they had to be “pronounced over the beetle of hard stone, which is to be overlaid with gold and to take the place of the individual’s heart. Make a phylactery of it anointed with oil, and say magically over this object, ‘My heart is my mother; my heart is in my transformations.’”[558]
The ancient Egyptians were buried with their amulets as a protection against the evil powers of the other world. Mr. Flinders Petrie, excavating at the Pyramid of Hawara, discovered on the body of Horuta a great number of these charms. He says: “Bit by bit the layers of pitch and cloth were loosened, and row after row of magnificent amulets were disclosed, just as they were laid on in the distant past. The gold ring on the finger which bore his name and titles, the exquisitely inlaid gold birds, the chased gold figures, the lazuli statuettes, delicately wrought, the polished lazuli and beryl, and carnelian amulets finely engraved, all the wealth of talismanic armoury, rewarded our eyes with a sight which has never been surpassed to archæological gaze. No such complete and rich a series of amulets has been seen intact before.”[559]