Of course, as in all other kinds of witchcraft, actual poisons often had much to do with the magic.
White Magic.
As there is White Magic, which according to popular belief is beneficent, and Black Magic, which is diabolical and hurtful, so there are white witches and black ones. The white can help, but not hurt. Cotta says:[971] “The mention of witchcraft doth now occasion the remembrance in the next place of a sort of practitioners whom our custome and country doth call wise men and wise women, reputed a kind of good and harmless witches or wizards, who by good words, by hallowed herbes, and salves, and other superstitious ceremonies, promise to allay and calme divels, practices of other witches, and the forces of many diseases.” The last lingering remains of such wise women may be found in the poorer quarters of all our great towns as well as in country places; they sell herbs, and always have a special ointment or salve which cures everything. This is called “Old Maids’ Salve,” or some such name, and the sellers may often be known by the pile of little chip or willow boxes displayed in a shop or front window in back streets. “White” as they are, they often, it is suspected, give improper advice to women.
A third species of witch was recognised—a mixture of white and black, called grey witches, who could help and hurt.[972]
Blaise Pascal, when an infant a year old, was supposed to have been bewitched by an old woman, who ultimately confessed that she had in fact so influenced his health.
Black Magic.
The following “revelation” of the proceedings of sorcerers is from the Mysteries of Magic by Waite,[973] and was taken by him from the works of Eliphas Lévi.[974]
“They procure either some of the hair or garments of the person whom they wish to curse; then they choose an animal which they consider the symbol of that person by means of the hair or garments; they place this animal in magnetic rapport with the individual; they give it his name, then they slay it with one blow of the magic knife, open its breast, tear out the heart, which they envelop while still palpitating in the magnetised object, and for three days they hourly pierce this heart with nails, red-hot pins, or long thorns, pronouncing maledictions at the same time on the name of the bewitched person. They are then convinced (and often rightly) that the victim of their infamous manœuvres experiences as many torments as if he had himself been probed to the heart with every one of the points. He begins to waste away, and at the end of a certain time dies of an unknown complaint.” Another proceeding is to take a large toad, “baptism is administered to it, and it is given the name and surname of the person whom it is desired to curse; it is made to swallow a consecrated host whereon the formulæ of execration have been pronounced; then it is enveloped in the magnetised objects, bound with the hair of the victim, on which the operator has previously spat, and the whole is buried either beneath the threshold of the bewitched person’s door or in a place which he is bound to pass daily.”[975]
The most important part of the body of a person to be bewitched is a tooth, but the hair or blood will answer fairly well.