(Lib. i., Sat. 8, l. 30.)
Paracelsus advises the patient afflicted with St. Vitus’ dance to make an image of himself in wax or resin, and by an effort of mind to concentrate all his blasphemies and sins in it, “without the intervention of any other person, to set his whole mind and thoughts concerning these oaths on the image.” Having done this, he was to destroy the image by fire.[962]
Pliny says[963] that abrotonum (which was probably southernwood), “if put beneath the pillow, will act as an aphrodisiac, and that it is of the very greatest efficacy against all those charms and spells by which impotence is produced.” As an antaphrodisiac he recommends the tamarisk, mixed in a drink or in food with the urine of an ox.[964]
Amongst the Tamils of Ceylon there is a ceremony performed with the skull of a child, with the design of producing the death of the person against whom the incantation is directed. Cabalistic figures are drawn upon the skull after it has been duly prepared. The name of the person to be destroyed by the charm is also written on the skull. Then a paste is composed with his saliva, some of his hair, and a little earth on which he has imprinted his footsteps, and this is spread upon a plate, and taken with the skull to the cemetery of the place, where for forty nights the evil spirits are invoked to destroy the denounced person. The natives believe that as the paste dries on the plate, the victim of the charm will waste and die.[965]
“Both Greeks and savages,” says Mr. A. Lang,[966] “have worshipped the ghosts of the dead. Both Greeks and savages assign to their gods the miraculous powers of transformation and magic, which savages also attribute to their conjurors or shamans. The mantle (if he had a mantle) of the medicine-man has fallen on the god; but Zeus, or Indra, was not once a real medicine-man.”
In the Kalevala the hero of the poem wounds himself with an axe. The wound can only be healed by one who knows the mystic words that hold the secret of the birth of iron. Iron is the bane of warlike men; when the wizard curses the iron as a living thing, the hero is healed.[967]
Knots.
Justin Martyr says that the Jews used magic ties or knots in their exorcisms. The Babylonians did the same. When the god Marduk writes to soothe the last moments of a dying man, Hea says, “Take a woman’s linen kerchief, bind it round thy right hand; loose it from the left hand, knot it with seven knots; do so twice.”[968]
The 113th chapter of the Koran was written by Mohammed when he was suffering from an illness of a rheumatic character, and he believed that it was caused by some evil person who had bewitched him. The chapter runs thus:—
“Say, I fly for refuge unto the Lord of the daybreak, that he may deliver me from the mischief of those things which he hath created; and from the mischief of the night when it cometh on; and from the mischief of woman blowing on knots; and from the mischief of the envious, when he envieth.” Sales’ notes on this chapter explain the singular expression about knots; he says: “That is, of witches, who used to tie knots in a cord, and to blow on them, uttering at the same time certain magical words over them, in order to debilitate the person they had a mind to injure.” Wizards in the north who pretend to sell mariners a wind do something similar, and the French Nouër l’aiguillete is of the same character. This bewitchment by the knot was called by the Romans Nodus and Obligamentum. Mr. Cockayne says[969] the Saxons translated it into lyb, drug, φάρμακον. It was believed that a man might lose his power by being put under a knot, and there are cures for this injury in the Leechbook. We find protections “contra maleficium ligaturæ ut vocant.” Priests are warned not to make any alterations in the mode of conducting the marriage service by any reason of these knots.[970]