18. Charms And Philtresc

Let the glass cool; separate the ash of the dead bodies from the incombustible dust which will remain at the bottom of the retort. You will then have two poisons - one liquid, the other a powder. The first will be fully as efficacious as the terrible Aqua Toffana; the second, in a few days' time, will cause any person who may have a pinch of it mixed with his drink to grow wilted and old, and subsequently to die amidst horrible sufferings, or in a state of complete collapse. It must be admitted that this recipe has a magical physiognomy of the blackest and most revolting kind, and sickens one by its recollections of the abominable confections of Canidia and Medea. The sorcerers of the Middle Ages pretended to receive such powders at the Sabbath and sold them at a high price to the malicious and ignorant. The tradition of similar mysteries spread terror in country places and came to act as a spell. The imagination once impressed, the nervous system once assailed, the victim rapidly wasted away, the very dread of his relatives and friends sealing his doom. The sorcerer and sorceress were almost invariably a species of human toad, swollen with long-enduring rancours. They were poor, repulsed by all and consequently full of hatred. The fear which they inspired was their consolation and their revenge; poisoned themselves by a society of which they had experienced nothing but the rebuffs and the vices, they poisoned in their turn all those who were weak enough to fear them, and avenged upon beauty and youth their accursed old age and their atrocious ugliness. The perpetration of these evil works and the fulfilment of these loathsome mysteries constituted and confirmed what was then called a pact with the devil. It is certain that the operator must have been given over body and soul to evil and justly deserved the universal and irrevocable reprobation expressed by the allegory of hell. That human souls could descend to such an abyss of crime and madness must assuredly astonish and afflict us. But is not such gulf needed as a basis for the exaltation of the most sublime virtues? Does not the depth of infernus demonstrate by antithesis the infinite height and grandeur of heaven? In the north, where the instincts are more repressed and deep rooted; in Italy, where the passions are more unreserved and fiery, charms and the evil eye are still dreaded; the jettatura is not to be braved with impunity in Naples, and persons who are endowed unfortunately with this power are even distinguished by certain exterior signs. In order to guard against it, experts affirm that horns must be carried on the person, and the common people, who take everything literally, hasten to adorn themselves with small horns, not dreaming of the sense of the allegory. These attributes of Jupiter Ammon, Bacchus and Moses are a symbol of moral power or enthusiasm, so that the magicians mean to say that, in order to withstand the jettatura, the fatal current of instincts must be governed by great intrepidity, great enthusiasm, or a great thought. In like manner, almost all popular superstitions are vulgar interpretations of some grand maxim or marvellous secret of occult wisdom. Did not Pythagoras, in his admirable symbols, bequeath a perfect philosophy to sages but a new series of vain observances and ridiculous practices to the vulgar? Thus, when he said: “Do not pick up what falls from the table; do not cut down trees on the great highway; kill not the serpent when it slips into your garden.” - was he not inculcating the precepts of charity, either social or personal, under transparent allegories?