I cried aloud, but no one heard!
O Lord, do not abandon thy servant!
In the waters of the great storm seize his hand!
The sins which he has committed turn them to righteousness.[13]
This Psalm would hardly be out of place in the English burial-service, which deplores death as a visitation of divine wrath. Wherever such an idea prevails, the natural outcome of it is a belief in demons of disease. In ancient Egypt—following the belief in Ra the Sun, from whose eyes all pleasing things proceeded, and Set, from whose eyes came all noxious things,—from the baleful light of Set’s eyes were born the Seven Hathors, or Fates, whose names are recorded in the Book of the Dead. Mr. Fox Talbot has translated ‘the Song of the Seven Spirits:’—
They are seven! they are seven!
In the depths of ocean they are seven!
In the heights of heaven they are seven!
In the ocean-stream in a palace they were born!
Male they are not: female they are not!