Thirdly, as the means of detecting the witch’s personality.
Much that might have been included within this chapter has been arranged under the caption of “Love-Philters” and “Child-Birth,” and should be examined under those heads.
The subject of amulets and talismans is another that is so closely connected with the matter of which we are now treating, that it must be included in any investigation made in reference to it.
Exactly where the science of medicine ended, and the science of witchcraft began, there is no means of knowing; like Astrology and Astronomy, they were twin sisters, issuing from the same womb, and travelling amicably hand in hand for many years down the trail of civilization’s development; long after medicine had won for herself a proud position in the world of thought and felt compelled through shame to repudiate her less-favored comrade in public, the strictest and closest relations were maintained in the seclusion of private life.
“Among the counter-charms too are reckoned the practice of spitting into the urine the moment it is voided.”—(Pliny, lib, xxviii. cap. 7.)
“Goat’s dung attached to infants, in a piece of cloth, prevents them from being restless, female infants in particular.” (Idem, cap. 78.) This was probably a survival from times still more ancient, when infants were sometimes suckled by goats, and it was a good plan to have them thoroughly familiarized with the smell,—the hircine or caprine odor.
“In cases of fire, if some of the dung can be brought away from the stalls, both sheep and oxen may be got out all the more easily, and will make no attempt to return.”—(Idem, cap. 81.)
The adepts in magic expressly forbid a person, when about to make water, to uncover the body in the face of the sun or moon, or to sprinkle with his urine the shadow of any object whatsoever. Hesiod gives a precept recommending persons to make water against an object standing full before them, that no divinity may be offended by their nakedness being uncovered. Osthanes maintains that every one who drops some urine upon his foot in the morning will be proof against all noxious medicaments.—(Idem, lib. xxviii. cap. 19.)
The adepts in the magical art also believed that “it is improper to spit into the sea, or to profane that element by any other of the evacuations that are inseparable from the infirmities of human nature.”—(Idem, lib. xxx. cap. 6, speaking of the disinclination of the Armenian magician, Tiridates, to visit the Emperor Nero by sea.)
The Thibetans share these scruples. Among the things prohibited to their “Bhikshuni,” or monks and nuns, are: “Ne pas se soulager dans de l’eau quand on n’est pas malade, n’y cracher, n’y moucher, y vomir, ni y jeter quoi que soit de sale.”—(“Pratimoksha Sutra,” translated by W. W. Rockhill, Paris, 1884, Soc. Asiatique.)