The use of images to work death and destruction upon your enemies has been the subject of tales from time immemorial. Some kinds of images are, of course, much more deadly than others, according to their differences of construction; and whereas some may only subject the victim to great discomfort, others have far more awful results. In any case, a victim will do well to take every means of discovering his enemy should he suffer such pains for which he can in no wise account. Happier still is he who gives no provocation for the use of this deadly and secret means of vengeance.
Images were sometimes made of brass or the dust of a dead man, as well as of wax. The limbs were often interchanged and inverted, a hand being in place of a foot, and _vice versâ_. The head was also turned backwards. The worst kind was given the form of a man with a certain name—Wierus hesitates to give it—written above the head and the magic words, "Alif, lafeil, Zazahit mel meltat leuatam leutare," then it should be buried in a sepulchre.
Reginald Scot gives the following variation:—
Make an image in his name whom you would hurt or kill, of new virgine wax; under the right arme poke whereof a swallowes hart, and the liver under the left; then hang about the neck thereof a new thread in a new needle, pricked into the member which you would have hurt, with the rehearsalle of certain words (which for the avoiding of superstition are omitted).
This was probably taken straight from Wierus' book, with which it corresponds almost exactly, and the following instructions are, with some changes in the magic words, identical with those given above. This does not, however, by any means exhaust Wierus' list, as will be seen by the following:—
Take two images, one of wax and the other of the dust of a dead man. Put an iron, which could cause the death of a man, into the hand of one of the figures, so that it may pierce the head of the image which represents the person whose death you desire.
Charms for taciturnity under torture, or against feeling the pangs of torture itself, were obviously very freely bestowed by Satan upon his servants. As an enlightened and advanced thinker Wierus remarks that the merit of the spells does not lie in the words which compose them, but is merely a piece of Devil's work. One of these spells against the torture runs thus:—
To three unequal branches, three bodies are hung, Dismas, Gestas, et Divina potestas, which is in the middle. Dismas is condemned, and Gestas has flown to Heaven.
Scot's version of this is:—
Three bodies on a bough doo hang,
For merits of inequalitie.
Dismas and Gestas, in the midst
The power of the Divinitie.
Dismas is damned, but Gestas lifted up
Above the starres on hie.