Enchantment9 (incantatio) comes, say some, from a Chaldee word, which the Greeks translate “productive song.” Incantatio comes from the Chaldee. Truly, the Bocharts are great travellers and proceed from Italy to Mesopotamia in a twinkling! The great and learned Hebrew nation is rapidly explored, and all sorts of books, and all sorts of usages, are the fruits of the journey; the Bocharts are certainly not charlatans11.
Is not a large portion of the absurd superstitions12 which have prevailed to be ascribed to very natural causes? There are scarcely any animals that may not be accustomed to approach at the sound of a bagpipe13, or a single horn, to take their food. Orpheus, or some one of his predecessors14, played the bagpipe better than other shepherds, or employed singing. All the domestic animals flocked together at the sound of his voice. It was soon supposed that bears and tigers were among the number collected; this first step accomplished15, there was no difficulty in believing that Orpheus made stones and trees dance.
If rocks and pine-trees can be thus made to dance a ballet, it will cost little more to build cities by harmony, and the stones will easily arrange themselves at Amphion’s song. A violin only will be wanted to build a city, and a ram’s horn to destroy it.
The charming of serpents may be attributed to a still more plausible16 cause. The serpent is neither a voracious17 nor a ferocious18 animal. Every reptile19 is timid. The first thing a reptile does, at least in Europe, on seeing a man, is to hide itself in a hole, like a rabbit or a lizard20. The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursue him, except when he is armed, when he feels his strength, and, above all, when he is in the presence of many observers.
The serpent, far from being greedy of blood and flesh, feeds only upon herbs, and passes a considerable time without eating at all; if he swallows a few insects, as lizards22 and chameleons23 do, he does us a service.
All travellers relate that there are some very large and long ones; although we know of none such in Europe. No man or child was ever attacked there by a large serpent or a small one. Animals attack only what they want to eat; and dogs never bite passengers but in defence of their masters. What could a serpent do with a little infant? What pleasure could it derive24 from biting it? It could not swallow even the fingers. Serpents do certainly bite, and squirrels also, but only when they are injured, or are fearful of being so.
I am not unwilling25 to believe that there have been monsters among serpents as well as among men. I will admit that the army of Regulus was put under arms in Africa against a dragon; and that there has since been a Norman there who fought against the waterspout. But it will be granted, on the other hand, that such cases are exceedingly rare.
The two serpents that came from Tenedos for the express purpose of devouring26 Laocoon, and two great lads twenty years of age, in the presence of the whole Trojan army, form a very fine prodigy27, and one worthy28 of being transmitted to posterity29 by hexameter verses, and by statues which represent Laocoon like a giant, and his stout30 boys as pygmies.
I conceive this event to have happened in those times when a prodigious31 wooden horse took cities which had been built by the gods, when rivers flowed backward to their fountains, when waters were changed to blood, and both sun and moon stood still on the slightest possible occasion.
Everything that has been related about serpents was considered probable in countries in which Apollo came down from heaven to slay32 the serpent Python.
Serpents were also supposed to be exceedingly sensible animals. Their sense consists in not running so fast as we do, and in suffering themselves to be cut in pieces.
The bite of serpents, and particularly of vipers33, is not dangerous, except when irritation34 has produced the fermentation of a small reservoir of very acid humor which they have under their gums. With this exception, a serpent is no more dangerous than an eel21.
Many ladies have tamed and fed serpents, placed them on their toilets, and wreathed them about their arms. The negroes of Guinea worship a serpent which never injures any one.
There are many species of those reptiles35, and some are more dangerous than others in hot countries; but in general, serpents are timid and mild animals; it is not uncommon36 to see them sucking the udder of a cow.
Those who first saw men more daring than themselves domesticate37 and feed serpents, inducing them to come to them by a hissing38 sound in a similar way to that by which we induce the approach of bees, considered them as possessing the power of enchantment. The Psilli and Mars?, who familiarly handled and fondled serpents, had a similar reputation. The apothecaries39 of Poitou, who take up vipers by the tail, might also, if they chose, be respected as magicians of the first order.
The charming of serpents was considered as a thing regular and constant. The Sacred Scripture40 itself, which always enters into our weaknesses, deigned41 to conform itself to this vulgar idea.
“The deaf adder42, which shuts its ears that it may not hear the voice of the charmer.”
“I will send among you serpents which will resist enchantments43.”
“The slanderer44 is like the serpent, which yields not to the enchanter.”
The enchantment was sometimes so powerful as to make serpents burst asunder45. The natural philosophy of antiquity46 made this animal immortal47. If any rustic48 found a dead serpent in his road, some enchanter must inevitably49 have deprived it of its right to immortality50:
Frigidus in pratis cantando rumpitur anguis.
— Virg. Eclogue viii. 71.
Verse breaks the ground, and penetrates51 the brake,
And in the winding52 cavern53 splits the snake.
— Dryden.
Enchantment of the Dead, or Evocation54.
To enchant8 a dead person, to resuscitate55 him, or barely to evoke56 his shade to speak to him, was the most simple thing in the world. It is very common to see the dead in dreams, in which they are spoken to and return answers. If any one has seen them during sleep, why may he not see them when he is awake? It is only necessary to have a spirit like the pythoness; and, to bring this spirit of pythonism into successful operation it is only necessary that one party should be a knave57 and the other a fool; and no one can deny that such rencontres very frequently occur.
The evocation of the dead was one of the sublimest58 mysteries of magic. Sometimes there was made to pass before the eyes of the inquiring devotee a large, black figure, moved by secret springs in dimness and obscurity. Sometimes the performers, whether sorcerers or witches, limited themselves to declaring that they saw the shade which was desired to be evoked59, and their word was sufficient; this was called necromancy60. The famous witch of Endor has always been a subject of great dispute among the fathers of the Church. The sage10 Theodoret, in his sixty-second question on the Book of Kings, asserts that it is universally the practice for the dead to appear with the head downwards61, and that what terrified the witch was Samuel’s being upon his legs.
St. Augustine, when interrogated62 by Simplicion, replies, in the second book of his “Questions,” that there is nothing more extraordinary in a witch’s invoking63 a shade than in the devil’s transporting Jesus Christ through the air to the pinnacle64 of the temple on the top of a mountain.
Some learned men, observing that there were oracular spirits among the Jews, have ventured to conclude that the Jews began to write only at a late period, and that they built almost everything upon Greek fable65; but this opinion cannot be maintained.
Of Other Sorceries.
When a man is sufficiently66 expert to evoke the dead by words, he may yet more easily destroy the living, or at least threaten them with doing so, as the physician, malgré lui, told Lucas that he would give him a fever. At all events, it was not in the slightest degree doubtful that sorcerers had the power of killing beasts; and, to insure the stock of cattle, it was necessary to oppose sorcery to sorcery. But the ancients can with little propriety67 be laughed at by us, who are ourselves scarcely even yet extricated68 from the same barbarism. A hundred years have not yet expired since sorcerers were burned all over Europe; and even as recently as 1750, a sorceress, or witch, was burned at Würzburg. It is unquestionable that certain words and ceremonies will effectually destroy a flock of sheep, if administered with a sufficient portion of arsenic69.
The “Critical History of Superstitious70 Ceremonies,” by Lebrun of the Oratory71, is a singular work. His object is to oppose the ridiculous doctrine72 of witchcraft73, and yet he is himself so ridiculous as to believe in its reality. He pretends that Mary Bucaille, the witch, while in prison at Valognes, appeared at some leagues distance, according to the evidence given on oath to the judge of Valognes. He relates the famous prosecution74 of the shepherds of Brie, condemned75 in 1691, by the Parliament of Paris, to be hanged and burned. These shepherds had been fools enough to think themselves sorcerers, and villains76 enough to mix real poisons with their imaginary sorceries.
Father Lebrun solemnly asserts that there was much of what was “supernatural” in what they did, and that they were hanged in consequence. The sentence of the parliament is in direct opposition77 to this author’s statement. “The court declares the accused duly attainted and convicted of superstitions, impieties78, sacrileges, profanations, and poisonings.”
The sentence does not state that the death of the cattle was caused by profanations, but by poison. A man may commit sacrilege without as well as with poison, without being a sorcerer.
Other judges, I acknowledge, sentenced the priest Ganfredi to be burned, in the firm belief that, by the influence of the devil, he had an illicit79 commerce with all his female penitents80. Ganfredi himself imagined that he was under that influence; but that was in 1611, a period when the majority of our provincial81 population was very little raised above the Caribs and negroes. Some of this description have existed even in our own times; as, for example, the Jesuit Girard, the ex-Jesuit Nonnotte, the Jesuit Duplessis, and the ex-Jesuit Malagrida; but this race of imbeciles is daily hastening to extinction82.
With respect to lycanthropy, that is, the transformation83 of men into wolves by the power of enchantment, we may observe that a young shepherd’s having killed a wolf, and clothed himself with its skin, was enough to excite the terror of all the old women of the district, and to spread throughout the province, and thence through other provinces, the notion of a man’s having been changed into a wolf. Some Virgil will soon be found to say:
His ego84 s?pe lupum fieri, et se condere silvis
Moerim s?pe animas imis exire sepulchris.
Smeared85 with these powerful juices on the plain.
He howls a wolf among the hungry train,
And oft the mighty86 necromancer87 boasts
With these to call from tombs the stalking ghosts.
— Dryden.
To see a man-wolf must certainly be a great curiosity; but to see human souls must be more curious still; and did not the monks88 of Monte Cassino see the soul of the holy Benedict, or Bennet? Did not the monks of Tours see St. Martin’s? and the monks of St. Denis that of Charles Martel?
Enchantments to Kindle89 Love.
These were for the young. They were vended90 by the Jews at Rome and Alexandria, and are at the present day sold in Asia. You will find some of these secrets in the “Petit Albert”; and will become further initiated91 by reading the pleading composed by Apuleius on his being accused by a Christian92, whose daughter he had married, of having bewitched her by philtres. Emilian, his father-in-law, alleged93 that he had made use of certain fishes, since, Venus having been born of the sea, fishes must necessarily have prodigious influence in exciting women to love.
What was generally made use of consisted of vervain, tenia, and hippomanes; or a small portion of the secundine of a mare94 that had just foaled, together with a little bird called wagtail; in Latin motacilla.
But Apuleius was chiefly accused of having employed shell-fish, lobster95 patties, she-hedgehogs, spiced oysters96, and cuttle-fish, which was celebrated97 for its productiveness.
Apuleius clearly explains the real philtre, or charm, which had excited Pudentilla’s affection for him. He undoubtedly98 admits, in his defence, that his wife had called him a magician. “But what,” says he, “if she had called me a consul99, would that have made me one?”
The plant satyrion was considered both among the Greeks and Romans as the most powerful of philtres. It was called planto aphrodisia, the plant of Venus. That called by the Latins eruca is now often added to the former. — Et venerem revocans eruca morantem.
A little essence of amber100 is frequently used. Mandragora has gone out of fashion. Some exhausted101 debauchees have employed cantharides, which strongly affect the susceptible102 parts of the frame, and often produce severe and painful consequences.
Youth and health are the only genuine philtres. Chocolate was for a long time in great celebrity103 with our debilitated104 petits-ma?tres. But a man may take twenty cups of chocolate without inspiring any attachment105 to his person. —“ . . . . ut amoris amabilis esto.” (Ovid, A. A. ii., 107.)—“Wouldst thou be loved, be amiable106.”
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1
abominable
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| adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的 | |
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absurdities
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| n.极端无理性( absurdity的名词复数 )；荒谬；谬论；荒谬的行为 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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resuscitating
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| v.使（某人或某物）恢复知觉，苏醒( resuscitate的现在分词 ) | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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enchant
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| vt.使陶醉，使入迷；使着魔，用妖术迷惑 | |
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enchantment
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| n.迷惑，妖术，魅力 | |
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sage
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| n.圣人，哲人；adj.贤明的，明智的 | |
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charlatans
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| n.冒充内行者，骗子( charlatan的名词复数 ) | |
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superstitions
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| 迷信，迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 ) | |
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bagpipe
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| n.风笛 | |
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predecessors
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| n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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voracious
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| adj.狼吞虎咽的，贪婪的 | |
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ferocious
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| adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的 | |
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reptile
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| n.爬行动物；两栖动物 | |
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lizard
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| n.蜥蜴，壁虎 | |
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eel
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| n.鳗鲡 | |
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lizards
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| n.蜥蜴( lizard的名词复数 ) | |
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chameleons
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| n.变色蜥蜴，变色龙( chameleon的名词复数 ) | |
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derive
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| v.取得；导出；引申；来自；源自；出自 | |
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unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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devouring
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| 吞没( devour的现在分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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prodigy
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| n.惊人的事物，奇迹，神童，天才，预兆 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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slay
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| v.杀死，宰杀，杀戮 | |
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vipers
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| n.蝰蛇( viper的名词复数 )；毒蛇；阴险恶毒的人；奸诈者 | |
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irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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reptiles
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| n.爬行动物，爬虫( reptile的名词复数 ) | |
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uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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domesticate
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| vt.驯养；使归化，使专注于家务 | |
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hissing
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| n. 发嘶嘶声, 蔑视 动词hiss的现在分词形式 | |
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apothecaries
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| n.药剂师，药店( apothecary的名词复数 ) | |
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scripture
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| n.经文，圣书，手稿；Scripture:(常用复数)《圣经》，《圣经》中的一段 | |
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41
deigned
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| v.屈尊，俯就( deign的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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adder
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| n.蝰蛇；小毒蛇 | |
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enchantments
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| n.魅力( enchantment的名词复数 )；迷人之处；施魔法；着魔 | |
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slanderer
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| 造谣中伤者 | |
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asunder
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| adj.分离的，化为碎片 | |
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antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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immortality
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| n.不死，不朽 | |
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penetrates
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| v.穿过( penetrate的第三人称单数 )；刺入；了解；渗透 | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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cavern
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| n.洞穴，大山洞 | |
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evocation
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| n. 引起，唤起 n. <古> 召唤，招魂 | |
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resuscitate
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| v.使复活，使苏醒 | |
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evoke
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| vt.唤起，引起，使人想起 | |
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knave
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| n.流氓；（纸牌中的）杰克 | |
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sublimest
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| 伟大的( sublime的最高级 )； 令人赞叹的； 极端的； 不顾后果的 | |
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evoked
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| [医]诱发的 | |
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necromancy
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| n.巫术；通灵术 | |
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downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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interrogated
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| v.询问( interrogate的过去式和过去分词 )；审问；（在计算机或其他机器上）查询 | |
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invoking
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| v.援引( invoke的现在分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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pinnacle
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| n.尖塔，尖顶，山峰；(喻)顶峰 | |
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fable
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| n.寓言；童话；神话 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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propriety
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| n.正当行为；正当；适当 | |
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extricated
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| v.使摆脱困难，脱身( extricate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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arsenic
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| n.砒霜，砷；adj.砷的 | |
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superstitious
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| adj.迷信的 | |
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oratory
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| n.演讲术；词藻华丽的言辞 | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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witchcraft
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| n.魔法，巫术 | |
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prosecution
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| n.起诉，告发，检举，执行，经营 | |
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condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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villains
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| n.恶棍( villain的名词复数 )；罪犯；（小说、戏剧等中的）反面人物；淘气鬼 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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impieties
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| n.不敬( impiety的名词复数 )；不孝；不敬的行为；不孝的行为 | |
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illicit
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| adj.非法的，禁止的，不正当的 | |
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penitents
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| n.后悔者( penitent的名词复数 )；忏悔者 | |
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provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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extinction
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| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
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transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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ego
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| n.自我，自己，自尊 | |
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smeared
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| 弄脏； 玷污； 涂抹； 擦上 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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necromancer
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| n. 巫师 | |
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monks
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| n.修道士，僧侣( monk的名词复数 ) | |
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kindle
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| v.点燃，着火 | |
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vended
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| v.出售（尤指土地等财产）( vend的过去式和过去分词 )；（尤指在公共场所）贩卖；发表（意见，言论）；声明 | |
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initiated
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| n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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mare
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| n.母马，母驴 | |
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lobster
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| n.龙虾，龙虾肉 | |
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oysters
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| 牡蛎( oyster的名词复数 ) | |
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celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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consul
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| n.领事；执政官 | |
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amber
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| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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celebrity
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| n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望 | |
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debilitated
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| adj.疲惫不堪的，操劳过度的v.使（人或人的身体）非常虚弱( debilitate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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attachment
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| n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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