Chapter III: Sympathetic Magic (5)

Again, Servian and Bulgarian women who chafe at the restraints of domestic life will take the copper coins from the eyes of a corpse, wash them in wine or water, and give the liquid to their husbands to drink. After swallowing it, the husband will be as blind to his wife’s peccadilloes as the dead man was on whose eyes the coins were laid.[525] When a {p150} Blackfoot Indian went out eagle-hunting, he used to take a skull with him, because he believed that the skull would make him invisible, like the dead person to whom it had belonged, and so the eagles would not be able to see and attack him.[526] The Tarahumares of Mexico are great runners, and parties of them engage in races with each other. They believe that human bones induce fatigue; hence before a race the friends of one side will bury dead men’s bones in the track, hoping that the runners of the other side will pass over them and so be weakened. Naturally they warn their own men to shun the spot where the bones are buried.[527] The Belep of New Caledonia think that they can disable an enemy from flight by means of the leg-bone of a dead foe. They stick certain plants into the bone, and then smash it between stones before the skulls of their ancestors. It is easy to see that this breaks the leg of the living enemy and so hinders him from running away. Hence in time of war men fortify themselves with amulets of this sort.[528] The ancient Greeks seem to have thought that to set a young male child on a tomb would be to rob him of his manhood by infecting him with the impotence of the dead.[529] And as there is no memory in the grave the Arabs think that earth from a grave can make a man forget his griefs and sorrows, especially the sorrow of an unhappy love.[530]

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic of animals.]

Again, animals are often conceived to possess qualities or properties which might be useful to man, and homoeopathic or imitative magic seeks to communicate these properties to human beings in various ways. Thus some Bechuanas wear a ferret as a charm, because, being very tenacious of life, it will make them difficult to kill.[531] Others {p151} wear a certain insect, mutilated, but living, for a similar purpose.[532] Yet other Bechuana warriors wear the hair of a hornless ox among their own hair, and the skin of a frog on their mantle, because a frog is slippery, and the ox, having no horns, is hard to catch; so the man who is provided with these charms believes that he will be as hard to hold as the ox and the frog.[533] Again, it seems plain that a South African warrior who twists tufts of rats’ hair among his own curly black locks will have just as many chances of avoiding the enemy’s spear as the nimble rat has of avoiding things thrown at it; hence in these regions rats’ hair is in great demand when war is expected.[534] In Morocco a fowl or a pigeon may sometimes be seen with a little red bundle tied to its foot; the bundle contains a charm, and it is believed that as the charm is kept in constant motion by the bird, a corresponding restlessness is kept up in the mind of him or her against whom the charm is directed.[535] When a Galla sees a tortoise, he will take off his sandals and step on it, believing that the soles of his feet are thereby made hard and strong like the shell of the animal.[536] The Wajaggas of Eastern Africa think that if they wear a piece of the wing-bone of a vulture tied round their leg they will be able to run and not grow weary, just as the vulture flies unwearied through the sky.[537] The Esquimaux of Baffin Land fancy that if part of the intestines of a fox is placed under the feet of a baby boy, he will become active and skilful in walking over thin ice, like a fox.[538] One of the ancient books of India prescribes that when a sacrifice is offered for victory, the earth out of which the altar is to be made should be taken from a place where a boar has been wallowing, since the strength of the boar will be in that earth.[539] {p152} When you are playing the one-stringed lute, and your fingers are stiff, the thing to do is to catch some long-legged field spiders and roast them, and then rub your fingers with the ashes; that will make your fingers as lithe and nimble as the spiders’ legs—at least so think the Galelareese.[540] As the sea-eagle is very expert at seizing fish in its talons, the Kei islanders use its claws as a charm to enable them to make great gain on their trading voyages.[541] The children of the Baronga on Delagoa Bay are much troubled by a small worm which burrows under their skin, where its meanderings are visible to the eye. To guard her little one against this insect pest a Baronga mother will attach to its wrist the skin of a mole which burrows just under the surface of the ground, exactly as the worm burrows under the infant’s skin.[542] To bring back a runaway slave an Arab of North Africa will trace a magic circle on the ground, stick a nail in the middle of it, and attach a beetle by a thread to the nail, taking care that the sex of the beetle is that of the fugitive. As the beetle crawls round and round it will coil the thread about the nail, thus shortening its tether and drawing nearer to the centre at every circuit. So by virtue of homoeopathic magic the runaway slave will be drawn back to his master.[543] The Patagonian Indians kill a mare and put a new-born boy in its body, believing that this will make him a good horseman.[544] The Lkuñgen Indians of Vancouver’s Island believe that the ashes of wasps rubbed on the faces of warriors going to battle will render the men as pugnacious as wasps, and that a decoction of wasps’ nests or of flies administered internally to barren women will make them prolific like the insects.[545]

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic of snakes and other animals.]

Among the western tribes of British New Guinea, a {p153} man who has killed a snake will burn it and smear his legs with the ashes when he goes into the forest; for no snake will bite him for some days afterwards.[546] The Baronga of Delagoa Bay carry the powdered ashes of a serpent in a little bag as a talisman which guards them from snake-bites.[547] Among the Arabs of Moab a woman will give her infant daughter the ashes of a scorpion mixed with milk to drink in order to protect her against the stings of scorpions.[548] The Cholones of eastern Peru think that to carry the poison tooth of a serpent is a protection against the bite of a serpent, and that to rub the cheek with the tooth of an ounce is an infallible remedy for toothache and face-ache.[549] In order to strengthen her teeth some Brazilian Indians used to hang round a girl’s neck at puberty the teeth of an animal which they called _capugouare_, that is “grass-eating.”[550] When a thoroughbred mare has drunk at a trough, an Arab woman will hasten to drink any water that remains in order that she may give birth to strong children.[551] If a South Slavonian has a mind to pilfer and steal at market, he has nothing to do but to burn a blind cat, and then throw a pinch of its ashes over the person with whom he is higgling; after that he can take what he likes from the booth, and the owner will not be a bit the wiser, having become as blind as the deceased cat with whose ashes he has been sprinkled. The thief may even ask boldly “Did I pay for it?” and the deluded huckster will reply, “Why, certainly.”[552] Equally simple and effectual is the expedient adopted by natives of Central Australia who desire to cultivate their beards. They prick the chin all over with a pointed bone, and then stroke it carefully with a magic stick or stone, which represents a kind of rat that has very long whiskers. The virtue of these whiskers naturally passes into the representative stick or {p154} stone, and thence by an easy transition to the chin, which, consequently, is soon adorned with a rich growth of beard.[553] When a party of these same natives has returned from killing a foe, and they fear to be attacked by the ghost of the dead man in their sleep, every one of them takes care to wear the tip of the tail of a rabbit-kangaroo in his hair. Why? Because the rabbit-kangaroo, being a nocturnal animal, does not sleep of nights; and therefore a man who wears a tip of its tail in his hair will clearly be wakeful during the hours of darkness.[554] The Unmatjera tribe of Central Australia use the tip of the tail of the same animal for the same purpose, but they draw out the sympathetic chain one link farther. For among them, when a boy has undergone subincision and is leading a solitary life in the bush, it is not he but his mother who wears the tip of the nocturnal creature’s tail in order that he may be watchful at nights, lest harm should befall him from snakes and so forth.[555] The ancient Greeks thought that to eat the flesh of the wakeful nightingale would prevent a man from sleeping; that to smear the eyes of a blear-sighted person with the gall of an eagle would give him the eagle’s vision; and that a raven’s eggs would restore the blackness of the raven to silvery hair. Only the person who adopted this last mode of concealing the ravages of time had to be most careful to keep his mouth full of oil all the time he applied the eggs to his venerable locks, else his teeth as well as his hair would be dyed raven black, and no amount of scrubbing and scouring would avail to whiten them again.[556] The hair-restorer was in fact a shade too powerful, and in applying it you might get more than you bargained for.

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic of animals among the Cherokees and other American Indians.]

The Huichol Indians of Mexico admire the beautiful markings on the backs of serpents. Hence when a Huichol woman is about to weave or embroider, her husband catches a large serpent and holds it in a cleft stick, while the woman strokes the reptile with one hand down the whole length of its back; then she passes the same hand over her forehead {p155} and eyes, that she may be able to work as beautiful patterns in the web as the markings on the back of the serpent.[557] Among the Tarahumares of Mexico men who run races tie deer-hoofs to their backs in the belief that this will make them swift-footed like the deer.[558] Cherokee ball-players rub their bodies with eel-skins in order to make themselves as slippery and hard to hold as eels; and they also apply land-tortoises to their legs in the hope of making them as thick and strong as the legs of these animals. But they are careful not to eat frogs, lest the brittleness of the frog’s bones should infect their own bones. Moreover, they will not eat the flesh of the sluggish hog-sucker, lest they should lose their speed, nor the flesh of rabbits, lest, like the rabbit, they should become confused in running. On the other hand, their friends sprinkle a soup made of rabbit hamstrings along the path to be taken by their rivals, in order to make these rivals timorous in action. Moreover, the ball-players will not wear the feathers of the bald-headed buzzard, for fear of themselves becoming bald, nor turkey feathers, lest they should suffer from a goitrous growth on the throat like the red appendage on the throat of a turkey.[559] The flesh of the common grey squirrel is forbidden to Cherokees who suffer from rheumatism, because the squirrel eats in a cramped position, which would clearly aggravate the pangs of the rheumatic patient.[560] And a Cherokee woman who is with child may not eat the flesh of the ruffed grouse, because that bird hatches a large brood, but loses most of them before maturity. Strict people, indeed, will not allow a woman to taste of the bird till she is past child-bearing.[561] When a Cherokee is starting on a journey on a cold winter morning he rubs his feet in the ashes of the fire and sings four verses by means of which he can set the cold at defiance, like the wolf, the deer, the fox, and the opossum, whose feet, so the Indians think, are never frost-bitten. After each verse he imitates the cry and action of the animal, thus homoeopathically identifying himself with the creature. The {p156} song he sings may be rendered, “I become a real wolf, a real deer, a real fox, and a real opossum.” After stating that he has become a real wolf, the songster utters a prolonged howl and paws the ground like a wolf with his feet. After giving notice that he has become a real deer, he imitates the call and jumping of a deer. And after announcing his identification, for all practical purposes, with a fox and an opossum, he mimicks the barking and scratching of a fox and the cry of an opossum when it is driven to bay, also throwing his head back just as an opossum does when it feigns death.[562] Some Cherokees are said to drink tea made of crickets in order to become good singers like the insects.[563] If the eyes of a Cherokee child be bathed with water in which a feather of an owl has been soaked, the child will be able, like the owl, to keep awake all night. The mole-cricket has claws with which it burrows in the earth, and among the Cherokees it is reputed to be an excellent singer. Hence when children are long of learning to speak, their tongues are scratched with the claw of a live mole-cricket in order that they may soon talk as distinctly as the insect. Grown persons also, who are slow of speech, may acquire a ready flow of eloquence, if only the inside of their throat be scratched on four successive mornings with a mole-cricket.[564] The negroes of the Maroni river in Guiana have a somewhat similar cure for stammering. Day and night the shrieks of a certain species of ape resound through the forest. Hence when the negroes kill one of these pests, they remove its larynx and make a cup out of it. If a stammering child drinks out of such a cup for a few months, it ceases to stammer.[565] Cherokee parents scratch the hands of their children with the pincers of a live red crawfish, resembling a lobster, in order to give the infants a strong grip, like that of the crawfish.[566] This may help us to understand why on the fifth day after birth a Greek child used to receive presents of octopuses and cuttle-fish from its friends and relations.[567] For the numerous arms, legs, and tentacles of {p157} these creatures seem well calculated to strengthen the grip of a baby’s hands and to impart the power of toddling to its little toes.

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic of inanimate things.]

On the principle of homoeopathic magic, inanimate things, as well as plants and animals, may diffuse blessing or bane around them, according to their own intrinsic nature and the skill of the wizard to tap or dam, as the case may be, the stream of weal or woe. Thus, for example, the Galelareese think that when your teeth are being filed you should keep spitting on a pebble, for this establishes a homoeopathic connexion between you and the pebble, by virtue of which your teeth will henceforth be as hard and durable as a stone. On the other hand, you ought not to comb a child before it has teethed, for if you do, its teeth will afterwards be separated from each other like the teeth of a comb.[568] Nor should children look at a sieve, otherwise they will suffer from a skin disease, and will have as many sores on their bodies as there are holes in the sieve.[569] In Samaracand women give a baby sugar candy to suck and put glue in the palm of its hand, in order that, when the child grows up, his words may be sweet and precious things may stick to his hands as if they were glued.[570] The Greeks thought that a garment made from the fleece of a sheep that had been torn by a wolf would hurt the wearer, setting up an itch or irritation in his skin. They were also of opinion that if a stone which had been bitten by a dog were dropped in wine, it would make all who drank of that wine to fall out among themselves.[571] Among the Arabs of Moab a childless woman often borrows the robe of a woman who has had many children, hoping with the robe to acquire the fruitfulness of its owner.[572] The Caffres of Sofala, in East Africa, had a great dread of being struck with anything hollow, such as a reed or a straw, and greatly preferred being thrashed with a good thick cudgel or an iron bar, even though it hurt very much. For they thought that if a man {p158} were beaten with anything hollow, his inside would waste away till he died.[573] In eastern seas there is a large shell which the Buginese of Celebes call the “old man” (_kadjâwo_). On Fridays they turn these “old men” upside down and place them on the thresholds of their houses, believing that whoever then steps over the threshold of the house will live to be old.[574] Again, the Galelareese think that, if you are imprudent enough to eat while somebody is sharpening a knife, your throat will be cut that same evening, or next morning at latest.[575] The disastrous influence thus attributed, under certain circumstances, to a knife in the East Indies, finds its counterpart in a curious old Greek story. A certain king had no child, and he asked a wise man how he could get one. The wise man himself did not know, but he thought that the birds of the air might, and he undertook to enquire of them. For you must know that the sage understood the language of birds, having learned it through some serpents whose life he had saved, and who, out of gratitude, had cleansed his ears as he slept. So he sacrificed two bulls, and cut them up, and prayed the fowls to come and feast on the flesh; only the vulture he did not invite. When the birds came, the wise man asked them what the king must do to get a son; but none of them knew. At last up came the vulture, and he knew all about it. He said that once when the king was a child his royal father was gelding rams in the field, and laid down the bloody knife beside his little son; nay, he threatened the boy with it. The child was afraid and ran away, and the father stuck the knife in a tree, either a sacred oak or a wild pear-tree. Meanwhile, the bark of the tree had grown round the knife and hidden it. The vulture said that if they found the knife, scraped the rust off it, and gave the rust, mixed with wine, to the king to drink for ten days, he would beget a son. They did so, and it fell out exactly as the vulture had said.[576] In this story a knife {p159} which had gelded rams is supposed to have deprived a boy of his virility merely by being brought near his person. Through simple proximity it infected him, so to say, with the same disability which it had already inflicted on the rams; and the loss he thus sustained was afterwards repaired by administering to him in a potion the rust which, having been left on the blade by the blood of the animals, might be supposed to be still imbued with their generative faculty.

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic of iron.

Homoeopathic magic of stones.

Oaths upon stones.]

The strengthening virtue of iron is highly appreciated by the Toradjas of Central Celebes, only they apply it externally, not internally, as we do in Europe. For this purpose the people of a village assemble once a year in the smithy. The master of the ceremonies opens the proceedings by carrying a little pig and a white fowl round the smithy, after which he kills them and smears a little of their blood on the forehead of every person present. Next he takes a doit, a chopping-knife, and a bunch of leaves in his hand, and strikes with them the palm of the right hand of every man, woman, and child, and ties a leaf of the _Dracaena terminalis_ to every wrist. Then a little fire is made in the furnace and blown up with the bellows. Every one who feels sick or unwell now steps up to the anvil, and the master of the ceremonies sprinkles a mixture of pigs’ blood, water, and herbs on the joints of his body, and finally on his head, wishing him a long life. Lastly, the patient takes the chopping-knife, heats it in the furnace, lays it on the anvil, and strikes it seven times with the hammer. After that he has only to cool the knife in water and the iron cure is complete. Again, on the seventh day after a birth the Toradjas hold a little feast, at which the child is carried down the house ladder and its feet set on a piece of iron, in order to strengthen its feeble soul with the strong soul of the iron.[577] At critical times the Mahakam Dyaks of Central Borneo seek to strengthen their souls {p160} by biting on an old sword or setting their feet upon it.[578] At initiation a Brahman boy is made to tread with his right foot on a stone, while the words are repeated, “Tread on this stone; like a stone be firm”;[579] and the same ceremony is performed, with the same words, by a Brahman bride at her marriage.[580] In Madagascar a mode of counteracting the levity of fortune is to bury a stone at the foot of the heavy house-post.[581] The common custom of swearing upon a stone may be based partly on a belief that the strength and stability of the stone lend confirmation to an oath. Thus the old Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus tells us that “the ancients, when they were to choose a king, were wont to stand on stones planted in the ground, and to proclaim their votes, in order to foreshadow from the steadfastness of the stones that the deed would be lasting.”[582] There was a stone at Athens on which the nine archons stood when they swore to rule justly and according to the laws.[583] A little to the west of St. Columba’s tomb in Iona “lie the black stones, which are so called, not from their colour, for that is grey, but from the effects that tradition says ensued upon perjury, if any one became guilty of it after swearing on these stones in the usual manner; for an oath made on them was decisive in all controversies. Mac-Donald, king of the isles, delivered the rights of their lands to his vassals in the isles and {p161} continent, with uplifted hands and bended knees, on the black stones; and in this posture, before many witnesses, he solemnly swore that he would never recall those rights which he then granted: and this was instead of his great seal. Hence it is that when one was certain of what he affirmed, he said positively, I have freedom to swear this matter upon the black stones.”[584] Again, in the island of Arran there was a green globular stone, about the size of a goose’s egg, on which oaths were taken. It was also endowed with healing virtue, for it cured stitches in the sides of sick people if only it was laid on the affected part. They say that Macdonald, the Lord of the Isles, carried this stone about with him, and that victory was always on his side when he threw it among the enemy.[585] Once more, in the island of Fladda there was a round blue stone, on which people swore decisive oaths, and it too healed stitches in the side like the green stone of Arran.[586] When two Bogos of eastern Africa have a dispute, they will sometimes settle it at a certain stone, which one of them mounts. His adversary calls down the most dreadful curses on him if he forswears himself, and to every curse the man on the stone answers “Amen!”[587] In Laconia an unwrought stone was shewn which, according to the legend, relieved the matricide Orestes of his madness as soon as he had sat down on it;[588] and Zeus is said to have often cured himself of his love for Hera by sitting down on a certain rock in the island of Leucadia.[589] In these cases it may have been thought that the wayward and flighty impulses of love and madness were counteracted by the steadying influence of a heavy stone.

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic of special kinds of stones.]

But while a general magical efficacy may be supposed {p162} to reside in all stones by reason of their common properties of weight and solidity, special magical virtues are attributed to particular stones, or kinds of stone, in accordance with their individual or specific qualities of shape and colour. For example, a pot-hole in a rocky gorge of Central Australia contains many rounded boulders which, in the opinion of the Warramunga tribe, represent the kidneys, heart, tail, intestines, and so forth of an old euro, a species of kangaroo. Hence the natives jump into the pool, and after splashing the water all over their bodies rub one another with the stones, believing that this will enable them to catch euros.[590] Again, not very far from Alice Springs, in Central Australia, there is a heap of stones supposed to be the vomit of two men of the eagle-hawk totem who had dined too copiously on eagle-hawk men, women, and children. The natives think that if any person caught sight of these stones he would be taken very sick on the spot; hence the heap is covered with sticks, to which every passer-by adds one in order to prevent the evil magic from coming out and turning his stomach.[591] The Indians of Peru employed certain stones for the increase of maize, others for the increase of potatoes, and others again for the increase of cattle. The stones used to make maize grow were fashioned in the likeness of cobs of maize, and the stones destined to multiply cattle had the shape of sheep.[592]

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic of stones in New Caledonia.]

No people perhaps employ stones more freely for the purposes of homoeopathic magic than the natives of New Caledonia. They have stones of the most diverse shapes and colours to serve the most diverse ends—stones for sunshine, rain, famine, war, madness, death, fishing, sailing, and so forth. Thus in order to make a plantation of taro thrive they bury in the field certain stones resembling taros, praying to their ancestors at the same time. A stone marked with black lines like the leaves of the coco-nut palm helps to produce a good crop of coco-nuts. To make bread-fruit grow they use two stones of different sizes representing the unripe and the ripe fruit respectively. {p163} As soon as the fruit begins to form, they bury the small stone at the foot of the tree; and later on, when the fruit approaches maturity, they replace the small stone by the large one. The yam is the chief crop of the New Caledonians; hence the number of stones used to foster its growth is correspondingly great. Different families have different kinds of stones which, according to their diverse shapes and colours, are supposed to promote the cultivation of the various species of yams. Before the stones are buried in the yam field they are deposited beside the ancestral skulls, wetted with water, and wiped with the leaves of certain trees. Sacrifices, too, of yams and fish are offered to the dead, with the words, “Here are your offerings, in order that the crop of yams may be good.” Again, a stone carved in the shape of a canoe can make a voyage prosperous or the reverse according as it is placed before the ancestral skulls with the opening upwards or downwards, the ceremony being accompanied with prayers and offerings to the dead. Again, fish is a very important article of diet with the New Caledonians, and every kind of fish has its sacred stone, which is enclosed in a large shell and kept in the graveyard. In performing the rite to secure a good catch, the wizard swathes the stone in bandages of various colours, spits some chewed leaves on it, and, setting it up before the skulls, says, “Help us to be lucky at the fishing.”[593] In these and many similar practices of the New Caledonians the magical efficacy of the stones appears to be deemed insufficient of itself to accomplish the end in view; it has to be reinforced by the spirits of the dead, whose help is sought by prayer and sacrifice. Moreover, the stones are regularly kept in the burial-grounds, as if to saturate them with the powerful influence of the ancestors; they are brought from the cemetery to be buried in the fields or at the foot of trees for the sake of quickening the fruits of the earth, and they are restored to the cemetery when they {p164} have discharged this duty. Thus in New Caledonia magic is blent with the worship of the dead.

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic of stones in Melanesia.]

In other parts of Melanesia a like belief prevails that certain sacred stones are endowed with miraculous powers which correspond in their nature to the shape of the stone. Thus a piece of water-worn coral on the beach often bears a surprising likeness to a bread-fruit. Hence in the Banks Islands a man who finds such a coral will lay it at the root of one of his bread-fruit trees in the expectation that it will make the tree bear well. If the result answers his expectation, he will then, for a proper remuneration, take stones of less-marked character from other men and let them lie near his, in order to imbue them with the magic virtue which resides in it. Similarly, a stone with little discs upon it is good to bring in money; and if a man found a large stone with a number of small ones under it, like a sow among her litter, he was sure that to offer money upon it would bring him pigs. In these and similar cases the Melanesians ascribe the marvellous power, not to the stone itself, but to its indwelling spirit; and sometimes, as we have just seen, a man endeavours to propitiate the spirit by laying down offerings on the stone.[594] But the conception of spirits that must be propitiated lies outside the sphere of magic, and within that of religion. Where such a conception is found, as here, in conjunction with purely magical ideas and practices, the latter may generally be assumed to be the original stock on which the religious conception has been at some later time engrafted. For there are strong grounds for thinking that, in the evolution of thought, magic has preceded religion. But to this point we shall return presently.

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic of precious stones.]

The ancients set great store on the magical qualities of precious stones; indeed it has been maintained, with great show of reason, that such stones were used as amulets long before they were worn as mere ornaments.[595] Thus the Greeks gave the name of tree-agate to a stone which exhibits tree-like markings, and they thought that if two {p165} of these gems were tied to the horns or neck of oxen at the plough, the crop would be sure to be plentiful.[596] Again, they recognised a milk-stone which produced an abundant supply of milk in women if only they drank it dissolved in honey-mead.[597] Milk-stones are used for the same purpose by Greek women in Crete and Melos at the present day;[598] in Albania nursing mothers wear the stones in order to ensure an abundant flow of milk.[599] In Lechrain down to modern times German women have attempted to increase their milk by stroking their breasts with a kind of alum which they call a milk-stone.[600] Again, the Greeks believed in a stone which cured snake-bites, and hence was named the snake-stone; to test its efficacy you had only to grind the stone to powder and sprinkle the powder on the wound.[601] The wine-coloured amethyst received its name, which means “not drunken,” because it was supposed to keep the wearer of it sober;[602] and two brothers who desired to live at unity were advised to carry magnets about with them, which, by drawing the twain together, would clearly prevent them from falling out.[603] In Albania people think that if the blood-stone is laid on a wound it will stop the flow of blood.[604]

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic of the sun, the moon, the stars, and the sea.

Homoeopathic magic of the setting sun.

Homoeopathic magic of the pole-star.]

Amongst the things which homoeopathic magic seeks to turn to account are the great powers of nature, such as the waxing and the waning moon, the rising and the setting sun, the stars, and the sea. Elsewhere I have illustrated the homoeopathic virtues ascribed to the waxing and the waning moon:[605] here I will give an Arab charm of the {p166} setting sun. When a husband is far away and his wife would bring him home to her, she procures pepper and coriander seed from a shop that faces the east, and throws them on a lighted brasier at sunset. Then turning to the east she waves a napkin with which she has wiped herself and says: “Let the setting sun return having found such and such an one, son of such and such a woman, in grief and pain. May the grief that my absence causes him make him weep, may the grief that my absence causes him make him lament, may the grief that my absence causes him make him break the obstacles that part us and bring him back to me.” If the charm is unsuccessful, she repeats it one day at sunrise, burning the same perfumes. Clearly she imagines that as the sun goes away in the west and comes back in the east, it should at its return bring the absent one home.[606] The ancient books of the Hindoos lay down a rule that after sunset on his marriage night a man should sit silent with his wife till the stars begin to twinkle in the sky. When the pole-star appears, he should point it out to her, and, addressing the star, say, “Firm art thou; I see thee, the firm one. Firm be thou with me, O thriving one!” Then, turning to his wife, he should say, “To me Brihaspati has given thee; obtaining offspring through me, thy husband, live with me a hundred autumns.”[607] The intention of the ceremony is plainly to guard against the fickleness of fortune and the instability of earthly bliss by the steadfast influence of the constant star. It is the wish expressed in Keats’s last sonnet:—

_Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—_
_Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night._

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic of the tides.]

Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of its ceaseless ebb and flow, and are apt, on the {p167} principles of that rude philosophy of sympathy and resemblance which here engages our attention, to trace a subtle relation, a secret harmony, between its tides and the life of man, of animals, and of plants. In the flowing tide they see not merely a symbol, but a cause of exuberance, of prosperity, and of life, while in the ebbing tide they discern a real agent as well as a melancholy emblem of failure, of weakness, and of death. The Breton peasant fancies that clover sown when the tide is coming in will grow well, but that if the plant be sown at low water or when the tide is going out, it will never reach maturity, and that the cows which feed on it will burst.[608] His wife believes that the best butter is made when the tide has just turned and is beginning to flow, that milk which foams in the churn will go on foaming till the hour of high water is past, and that water drawn from the well or milk extracted from the cow while the tide is rising will boil up in the pot or saucepan and overflow into the fire.[609] The Galelareese say that if you wish to make oil, you should do it when the tide is high, for then you will get plenty of oil.[610] According to some of the ancients, the skins of seals, even after they had been parted from their bodies, remained in secret sympathy with the sea, and were observed to ruffle when the tide was on the ebb.[611] Another ancient belief, attributed to Aristotle, was that no creature can die except at ebb tide. The belief, if we can trust Pliny, was confirmed by experience, so far as regards human beings, on the coast of France.[612] Philostratus also assures us that at Cadiz dying people never yielded up the ghost while the water was high.[613] A like fancy still lingers in some parts of Europe. On the Cantabrian coast of Spain they think that persons who die of chronic or acute disease expire at the moment when the tide begins to recede.[614] In Portugal, all along the coast of Wales, and on some parts of the coast of Brittany, {p168} a belief is said to prevail that people are born when the tide comes in, and die when it goes out.[615] Dickens attests the existence of the same superstition in England. “People can’t die, along the coast,” said Mr. Peggotty, “except when the tide’s pretty nigh out. They can’t be born, unless it’s pretty nigh in—not properly born till flood.”[616] The belief that most deaths happen at ebb tide is said to be held along the east coast of England from Northumberland to Kent.[617] Shakespeare must have been familiar with it, for he makes Falstaff die “even just between twelve and one, e’en at the turning o’ the tide.”[618] We meet the belief again on the Pacific coast of North America among the Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands. Whenever a good Haida is about to die he sees a canoe manned by some of his dead friends, who come with the tide to bid him welcome to the spirit land. “Come with us now,” they say, “for the tide is about to ebb and we must depart.”[619] At the other extremity of America the same fancy has been noted among the Indians of Southern Chili. A Chilote Indian in the last stage of consumption, after preparing to die like a good Catholic, was heard to ask how the tide was running. When his sister told him that it was still coming in, he smiled and said that he had yet a little while to live. It was his firm conviction that with the ebbing tide his soul would pass to the ocean of eternity.[620] At Port Stephens, in New South Wales, the natives always buried their dead at flood tide, never at ebb, lest the retiring water should bear the soul of the departed to some distant country.[621]

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic of grave-clothes in China.]

To ensure a long life the Chinese have recourse to certain complicated charms, which concentrate in themselves the magical essence emanating, on homoeopathic principles, from times and seasons, from persons and from things. The vehicles employed to transmit these happy influences {p169} are no other than grave-clothes. These are provided by many Chinese in their lifetime, and most people have them cut out and sewn by an unmarried girl or a very young woman, wisely calculating that, since such a person is likely to live a great many years to come, a part of her capacity to live long must surely pass into the clothes, and thus stave off for many years the time when they shall be put to their proper use. Further, the garments are made by preference in a year which has an intercalary month; for to the Chinese mind it seems plain that grave-clothes made in a year which is unusually long will possess the capacity of prolonging life in an unusually high degree. Amongst the clothes there is one robe in particular on which special pains have been lavished to imbue it with this priceless quality. It is a long silken gown of the deepest blue colour, with the word “longevity” embroidered all over it in thread of gold. To present an aged parent with one of these costly and splendid mantles, known as “longevity garments,” is esteemed by the Chinese an act of filial piety and a delicate mark of attention. As the garment purports to prolong the life of its owner, he often wears it, especially on festive occasions, in order to allow the influence of longevity, created by the many golden letters with which it is bespangled, to work their full effect upon his person. On his birthday, above all, he hardly ever fails to don it, for in China common sense bids a man lay in a large stock of vital energy on his birthday, to be expended in the form of health and vigour during the rest of the year. Attired in the gorgeous pall, and absorbing its blessed influence at every pore, the happy owner receives complacently the congratulations of friends and relations, who warmly express their admiration of these magnificent cerements, and of the filial piety which prompted the children to bestow so beautiful and useful a present on the author of their being.[622]

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic applied to the sites of cities in China.]

Another application of the maxim that like produces {p170} like is seen in the Chinese belief that the fortunes of a town are deeply affected by its shape, and that they must vary according to the character of the thing which that shape most nearly resembles. Thus it is related that long ago the town of Tsuen-cheu-fu, the outlines of which are like those of a carp, frequently fell a prey to the depredations of the neighbouring city of Yung-chun, which is shaped like a fishing-net, until the inhabitants of the former town conceived the plan of erecting two tall pagodas in their midst. These pagodas, which still tower above the city of Tsuen-cheu-fu, have ever since exercised the happiest influence over its destiny by intercepting the imaginary net before it could descend and entangle in its meshes the imaginary carp.[623] Some thirty years ago the wise men of Shanghai were much exercised to discover the cause of a local rebellion. On careful enquiry they ascertained that the rebellion was due to the shape of a large new temple which had most unfortunately been built in the shape of a tortoise, an animal of the very worst character. The difficulty was serious, the danger was pressing; for to pull down the temple would have been impious, and to let it stand as it was would be to court a succession of similar or worse disasters. However, the genius of the local professors of geomancy, rising to the occasion, triumphantly surmounted the difficulty and obviated the danger. By filling up two wells, which represented the eyes of the tortoise, they at once blinded that disreputable animal and rendered him incapable of doing further mischief.[624]

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic to avert threatened misfortune.]

Sometimes homoeopathic or imitative magic is called in to annul an evil omen by accomplishing it in mimicry. The effect is to circumvent destiny by substituting a mock calamity for a real one. At Kampot, a small seaport of Cambodia, a French official saw one morning a troop of armed guards escorting a man who was loaded with chains. They passed his house and went away towards the country, preceded by a man who drew lugubrious sounds from a gong, and followed by a score of idlers. The official thought it must be an execution and was surprised to have heard nothing {p171} about it. Afterwards he received from his interpreter the following lucid explanation of the affair. “In our country it sometimes happens that a man walking in the fields has nothing but the upper part of his body visible to people at a distance. Such an appearance is a sign that he will certainly die soon, and that is what happened last evening to the man you saw. Going homewards across the plain he carried over his shoulder a bundle of palms with long slender stems ending in fan-like tufts of leaves. His family, returning from their work, followed him at a distance, and soon they saw his head, shoulders, and arms moving along the road and carrying the branches, while his body and legs were invisible. Struck with consternation at the sight, his mother and wife repaired in all haste to the magistrate and implored him to proceed against the man after the fashion customary in such cases. The magistrate replied that the custom was ridiculous, and that he would be still more ridiculous if he complied with it. However, the two women insisted on it so vehemently, saying it was the only way to avert the omen, that he decided to do as they wished, and gave them his word that he would have the man arrested next morning at sunrise. So this morning the guards came to seize the poor man, telling him that he was accused of rebellion against the king, and without listening to his protestations of innocence they dragged him off to court. His family pretended to be surprised and followed him weeping. The judges had him clapped into irons and ordered him to instant execution. His own entreaties and the prayers of his family being all in vain, he begged that the priests of the pagoda might come and bear witness to his innocence and join their supplications to those of his friends. They came in haste, but receiving a hint how the wind lay they advised the condemned man to submit to his fate and departed to pray for his soul at the temple. Then the man was led away to a rice-field, in the middle of which a banana-tree, stripped of its leaves, had been set up as a stake. To this he was tied, and while his friends took their last leave of him, the sword of the executioner flashed through the air and at a single stroke swept off the top of the banana-tree above the head of the {p172} pretended victim. The man had given himself up for dead. His friends, while they knocked off his irons, explained to him the meaning of it all and led him away to thank the magistrates and priests for what they had done to save him from the threatened catastrophe.” The writer who reports the case adds that if the magistrates had not good-naturedly lent themselves to the pious fraud, the man’s family would have contrived in some other way to impress him with the terror of death in order to save his life.[625]

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic to avert threatened misfortune.]

Again, two missionaries were journeying not long ago through Central Celebes, accompanied by some Toradjas. Unfortunately the note of a certain bird called _teka-teka_ was heard to the left. This boded ill, and the natives insisted that they must either turn back or pass the night on the spot. When the missionaries refused to do either, an expedient was hit upon which allowed them to continue the journey in safety. A miniature hut was made out of a leafy branch, and in it were deposited a leaf moistened with spittle and a hair from the head of one of the party. Then one of the Toradjas said, “We shall pass the night here,” and addressing the hair he spoke thus: “If any misfortune should happen through the cry of that bird, may it fall on you.” In this way the evil omen was diverted from the real men and directed against their substitute the hair, and perhaps also the spittle, in the tiny hut.[626] When a Cherokee has dreamed of being stung by a snake, he is treated just in the same way as if he had really been stung; otherwise the place would swell and ulcerate in the usual manner, though perhaps years might pass before it did so. It is the ghost of a snake that has bitten him in sleep.[627] One night a Huron Indian dreamed that he had been taken and burned alive by his hereditary foes the Iroquois. Next morning a council was held on the affair, and the following measures {p173} were adopted to save the man’s life. Twelve or thirteen fires were kindled in the large hut where they usually burned their prisoners to death. Every man seized a flaming brand and applied it to the naked body of the dreamer, who shrieked with pain. Thrice he ran round the hut, escaping from one fire only to fall into another. As each man thrust his blazing torch at the sufferer he said, “Courage, my brother, it is thus that we have pity on you.” At last he was allowed to escape. Passing out of the hut he caught up a dog which was held ready for the purpose, and throwing it over his shoulder carried it through the wigwams as a sacred offering to the war-god, praying him to accept the animal instead of himself. Afterwards the dog was killed, roasted, and eaten, exactly as the Indians were wont to roast and eat their captives.[628]

[Sidenote: Homoeopathic magic to avert misfortune in Madagascar.]

In Madagascar this mode of cheating the fates is reduced to a regular system. Here every man’s fortune is determined by the day or hour of his birth, and if that happens to be an unlucky one his fate is sealed, unless the mischief can be extracted, as the phrase goes, by means of a substitute. The ways of extracting the mischief are various. For example, if a man is born on the first day of the second month (February), his house will be burnt down when he comes of age. To take time by the forelock and avoid this catastrophe, the friends of the infant will set up a shed in a field or in the cattle-fold and burn it. If the ceremony is to be really effective, the child and his mother should be placed in the shed and only plucked, like brands, from the burning hut before it is too late. Again, dripping November is the month of tears, and he who is born in it is born to sorrow. But in order to disperse the clouds that thus gather over his future, he has nothing to do but to take the lid off a boiling pot and wave it about. The drops that fall from it will accomplish his destiny and so prevent the tears from trickling from his eyes. Again, if fate has decreed that a young girl, still unwed, should see her children, still unborn, descend before her with sorrow to the grave, she can avert the calamity as follows. She kills a grasshopper, wraps it in a rag to represent a shroud, and mourns over it like {p174} Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted. Moreover, she takes a dozen or more other grasshoppers, and having removed some of their superfluous legs and wings she lays them about their dead and shrouded fellow. The buzz of the tortured insects and the agitated motions of their mutilated limbs represent the shrieks and contortions of the mourners at a funeral. After burying the deceased grasshopper she leaves the rest to continue their mourning till death releases them from their pain; and having bound up her dishevelled hair she retires from the grave with the step and carriage of a person plunged in grief. Thenceforth she looks cheerfully forward to seeing her children survive her; for it cannot be that she should mourn and bury them twice over. Once more, if fortune has frowned on a man at his birth and penury has marked him for her own, he can easily eraze the mark in question by purchasing a couple of cheap pearls, price three halfpence, and burying them. For who but the rich of this world can thus afford to fling pearls away?[629]