King James, in his Dæmonology, says that “The devil teacheth how to make pictures of wax or clay, that by roasting thereof the persons that they bear the name of may be continually melted or dried away by continual sickness.”
So the Governor-General of a Chinese province recently issued a proclamation, whereby it was declared unlawful to bring about the death of others by incantations. “You are forbidden,” said Governor Wang, “if you have a grudge against any one, to practise the magic called ‘Striking the Bull’s Head,’ that is to say, writing a man’s name and age on a scrap of paper, and laying it before the bull-headed idol, and then buying an iron stamp and piercing small holes in this paper, and finally throwing it at the man on the sly, with the intention of compassing his death.”[955]
“So recently,” says the authoress of Wanderings in China, “as December, 1883, a case was tried at the Inverness police court, in which the cause of offence was the discovery of a clay image with pins stuck through it in order to compass the death of a neighbour, a discovery which resulted in an assault. Many similar cases have been discovered both in England and Scotland.”[956]
“The demon-priests of Ceylon,” says Gomme,[957] “make use of images of wax or wood, which represent the person to be injured. They drive nails into the points which represent the heart, the head, etc., mark the name of the intended victim on it, and bury it where he is likely to pass over it.” Plato alludes to the same practice as obtaining amongst the Greeks of his period.[958]
There are very similar Scotch practices.
It was anciently believed that diseases could be transferred from one person to another. Says Pliny,[959] “Take the parings of the toe-nails and finger-nails of a sick person and mix them up with wax, the party saying that he is seeking a remedy for a tertian, quartan, or quotidian fever, as the case may be; then stick this wax, before sunrise, upon the door of another person. Such is the prescription they give for these diseases.”
Gomme says[960] that St. Tegla’s well, about half-way between Wrexham and Ruthin, is resorted to for the cure of epilepsy. The patient offers a cock, or if a woman, a hen. The bird is carried in a basket, first round the well, and then round the church. The patient enters the church, creeps under the altar, and remains there till morning. Having made an offering, he leaves the cock and departs. If the bird dies, it is supposed that the disease has been transferred to it, and the man or woman consequently cured.
The use of wax figures in enchantments is, as we have shown, very ancient, and it has lasted up to the present time. Simœtha in Theocritus says: “As I melt this wax by the help of the goddess, so may Myndian Delphis be presently wasted by love.”[961] And Horace refers to it:—
“Lanea et effigies evat, altera cerea.”