16. Witchcraft And Spellsb

They are persuaded, and often rightly, that the victim of their infamous operations experiences as many tortures as if his own heart had been pierced at all points. He begins to waste away and dies after a time of an unknown disease. Another bewitchment, made use of by country people, consists in consecration of nails to works of hatred by means of the stinking fumigations of Saturn and invocations of evil genii. They follow the footsteps of the person whom it is sought to torment, and drive the nails cross-wise into every imprint of his feet which can be traced upon the earth or sand. Yet another and more abominable practice. A fat toad is selected; it is baptized; the name and surname of the person to be bewitched is given it; it is made to swallow a Consecrated Host over which the formulae of execration have been pronounced. The animal is then wrapped in magnetized objects, bound with the hairs of the victim, upon which the operator has previously spat, and is buried at the threshold of the bewitched person's door, or at some point where he is obliged to pass daily. The elementary spirit of the toad will become a nightmare and vampire, haunting the dreams of the victim, unless indeed he should know how to drive it back on the operator. Let us pass now to bewitchments by waxen images. The sorcerers of the Middle Ages, eager to please by their sacrileges him whom they regarded as their master, mixed baptismal oil and ashes of Consecrated Hosts with a modicum of wax. Apostate priests were never wanting to deliver them the treasures of the Church. With the accursed wax they formed an image as far as possible resembling the person whom they desired to bewitch. They clothed this image with garments similar to his; they administered to it the sacraments which he received; they called down upon its head all maledictions which could express the hatred of the sorcerer, inflicting daily imaginary tortures upon it, so as to reach and torment by sympathy the person whom the image represented. This bewitchment is more infallible if the hair, blood and above all a tooth of the victim can be procured. It was this which gave rise to the proverbial saying: You have a tooth against me -meaning, you bear me a grudge. There is also bewitchment by the glance, called the jettatura or evil eye in Italy. During our civil wars, a shopkeeper had the misfortune to inform against one of his neighbours, who after a period of detention was set at liberty, but with his position lost. His sole vengeance was to pass twice daily the shop of the informer, whom he regarded fixedly, saluted and went on. Some little time after, the shopkeeper, unable to bear the torment of his glance any longer, sold his goods at a loss and changed his neighbourhood, leaving no address. In a word, he was ruined. A threat is a real bewitchment, because it acts powerfully on the imagination, above all when the latter is open readily to belief in an occult and unlimited power. The terrible menace of hell, that bewitchment of humanity, during so many centuries, has created more nightmares more nameless diseases, more furious madness, than all vices and all excesses combined. This is what Hermetic artists of the Middle Ages represented by the incredible and unheard-of monsters which they carved about the doorways of basilicas. But bewitchment by threat produces an effect altogether contrary to the intentions of the operator when it is evidently vain intimidation; when it does outrage to the legitimate pride of the menaced person and consequently provokes his resistance; or finally, when it is ridiculous by its atrocity. The sectaries of hell have discredited heaven.