Page images
PDF
EPUB

defiled in order to its becoming an emblem or type. The prophet in fact put cow-dung with his bread for three hundred and ninety days, and the case cludes at once a fact and a symbol.

passer-by, and hast multiplied thy fornications.

"Et fornicata es cum filiis Egypti in-vicinis tuis, magnarum carnium ; et multiplicasti fornicationem tuam ad irritandum me."

Of the Emblem of Aholah and Aholibah. The holy scripture expressly declares that Aholah is the emblem of Jerusalem. "Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother was a Hittite." The prophet then, without any apprehension of malignant interpretations or wanton railleries, addresses the young Aholah in the following words :

"Ubera tua intumuerunt, et pilus tuus germinavit: et eras nuda et confusione plena."

And thou hast committed fornication with the Egyptians thy neighbours, pow{erful in the flesh: and thou hast mutiplied {thy fornication to provoke me.

The article of Aholibah, which signifies Samaria, is much stronger, and still farther removed from the propriety and decorum of modern manners and language.

"Denudavit quoquc fornicationes suas, discooperuit ignominiam suam." And she has made bare her fornications, and discovered her shame.

"Multiplicavit enim fornicationes suas,

Thy breasts were fashioned, and thyrecordans dies adolescentiæ suæ." hair was grown, and thou wast naked and confused.

"Et transivi per te; et ecce tempus tuum, tempus amantium; et expandi amictum meum super te et operui ignominiam tuam. Et juravi tibi, et ingressus sum pactum tecum, (ait Dominus Deus), et facta es mihi."

I passed by and saw thee; and saw thy time was come, thy time for lovers; and I spread my mantle over thee, and concealed thy shame. And I swore to thee, and entered into a contract with thee, and thou becamest mine.

"Et habens fiduciam in pulchritudine tua fornicata es in nomine tuo; et exposuisti fornicationem tuam omni transeunti, ut ejus fieres."

And, proud of thy beauty, thou didst commit fornication without disguise, and bast exposed thy fornication to every passer by, to become his.

"Et ædificavissti tibi lupanar, et fecisti tibi prostibulum in cunctis plateis."

And thou hast built a high place for thyself, and a place of eminence in every public way.

[ocr errors]

"Et divisisti pedes tuos omni transeunti, et multiplicasti fornicationes tuas."{

And thou hast opened thy feet to every

For she has multiplied her fornications, remembering the days of her youth.

"Et insanivit libidine super concubitum eorum carnes sunt ut carnes asinorum, et sicut fluxus equorum, fluxus eorum."

And she has maddened for the embraces of those whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is as the issue of horses.

These images strike us as licentious and revolting. They were at that time simply plain and ingenuous. There are numerous instances of the like in the Song of Songs, intended to celebrate the purest of all possible unions. It must be attentively considered, that these expressions and images are always delivered with seriousness and gravity, and that in no book of equally high antiquity is the slightest jeering or raillery ever applied to the great subject of human production. When dissoluteness is condemned, it is so in natural and undisguised terms, hut such are never used to stimulate volup tuousness or pleasantry.

This high antiquity has not the slightest touch of similarity to the licentiousness of Martial, Catullus, or Petronius.

Of Hosea, and some other Emblems.

the decencies and decorums of life are longer the same; you no longer find same ideas. Two sea leagues la { changed everything.

ENCHANTMENT,

MAGIC, CONJURATION, SORCERY, Š It is not in the smallest degree pro ble that all those abominable absurdi are owing, as Pluche would have us

We cannot regard as a mere vision, as simply a figure, the positive command given by the Lord to Hosea, to take to himself a wife of whoredoms, and have by her three children. Children are not produced in a dream. It was not in a vision that he made a contract with Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, by whom he had two boys and a girl. It was not in a vision that he afterwards took to him-lieve, to the foliage with which the he self an adulteress, by the express order of the Lord, giving her fifteen pieces of silver, and a measure and a half of barley.

The first of these disgraced women signified Jerusalem, and the second Samaria. But the two unions with these worthless persons, the three children, the fifteen pieces of silver, and the bushel and half of barley, were not the less real for having included or been intended as an emblem.

of Isis and Osiris were formerly crow What connection can this foliage h with the art of charming serpents, that of resuscitating the dead, kil men by mere words, inspiring pers with love, or changing men beasts?

Enchantment (incantatio) comes, some, from a Chaldee word, which Greeks translate "productive so Incantatio comes from the Cha Truly, the Bocharts are great travell and proceed from Italy to Mesopots in a twinkling! The great and lear Hebrew nation is rapidly explored. all sorts of books, and all sorts of us are the fruits of the journey; the charts are certainly not charlatans.

It was not in a vision that the patriarch Salmon married the harlot Rahab, the grandmother of David. It was not in a vision that Judah committed incest with his daughter-in-law Thamar, from which incest sprang David. It was not in a vision that Ruth, David's other grandmother, placed herself in the bed with Bonz. It was not in a vision that David murdered Uriah, and committed adultery with Bathsheba, of whom was born King Solomon. But, subsequently, all these events became emblems and figures, after the things which they typified were ac-decessors played the bagpipe better complished.

It is perfectly clear, from Ezekiel, Hosea, Jeremiah, and all the Jewish prophets, and all the Jewish books, as well as from all other books which give us any information concerning the usages of the Chaldeans, Persians, Phenicians, Syrians, Indians, and Egyptians: it is, I say, perfectly clear that their manners were very different from ours, and that the ancient world was scarcely in a single point similar to the modern one.

Pass from Gibraltar to Mequinez, and

Is not a large portion of the ab superstitions which have prevailed to ascribed to very natural causes? T are scarcely any animals that may no accustomed to approach at the soun a bagpipe, or a single horn, to take food. Orpheus, or some one of his

other shepherds, or employed sing All the domestic animals flocked tog at the sound of his voice. It was supposed that bears and tigers among the number collected: this step accomplished, there was no diffic in believing that Orpheus made st and trees dance.

If rocks and pine-trees can be made to dance a ballet, it will cost more to build cities by harmony, an stones will easily arrange themselve Amphion's song. A violin only wil

wanted to build a city, and a ram's horn to destroy it.

posterity by hexameter verses, and by statues which represent Laocoon like a giant, and his stout boys as pigmies.

I conceive this event to have hap

The charming of serpents may be at tributed to a still more plausible cause. The serpent is neither a voracious nor a ferocious animal. Every reptile is timid.pened in those times when a prodigious The first thing a reptile does, at least in wooden horse took cities which had been Europe, on seeing a man, is to hide itself built by the gods, when rivers flowed in a hole, like a rabbit or a lizard. The backward to their fountains, when waters instinct of man is to pursue everything were changed to blood, and both sun and that flies from him, and to fly from all moon stood still on the slightest possible that pursue him, except when he is armed, occasion. when he feels his strength, and, above all, when he is in the presence of many ob

servers.

Everything that has been related about serpents was considered probable in countries in which Apollo came down from heaven to slay the serpent Python.

The serpent, far from being greedy of blood and flesh, feeds only upon herbs, and passes a considerable time without Serpents were also supposed to be exeating at all: if he swallows a few in-ceedingly sensible animals. Their sense sects, as lizards and camelions do, he consists in not running so fast as we do, does us a service. and in suffering themselves to be cut in pieces.

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 derive 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.

The bite of serpents, and particularly of vipers, is not dangerous, except when irritation has produced the fermentation of a small reservoir of very acid humour which they have under their gums. With this exception, a serpent is no more dangerous than an eel.

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 repI am not unwilling to believe that tiles, and some are more dangerous than there have been monsters among ser- others, in hot countries; but, in general, pents as well as among men. I will ad-serpents are timid and mild animals: it mit that the army of Regulus was put is not uncommon to see them sucking the under arms, in Africa, against a dragon; udder of a cow. and that there has since been a Norman Those who first saw men more daring there who fought against the water- than themselves domesticate and feed spout. But it will be granted, on the serpents, inducing them to come to them other hand, that such cases are exceed-by a hissing sound in a similar way to ingly rare. that by which we induce the approach of The two serpents that came from Te- bees, considered them as possessing the nedos for the express purpose of devour-power of enchantment. The Psilli and ing Laocoon, and two great lads twenty Marsæ, who familiarly handled aud fonyears of age, in the presence of the whole dled serpents, had a similar reputation. Trojan army, form a very fine prodigy, { The apothecaries of Poitou, who take up and one worthy of being transmitted to vipers by the tail, might also, if they

chose be respected as magicians of the limited themselves to declaring that they first order. saw the shade which was desired to be The charming of serpents was consi-evoked, and their word was sufficient: dered as a thing regular and constant. this was called necromancy. The faThe sacred scripture itself, which always mous witch of Endor has always been a enters into our weaknesses, deigned to subject of great dispute among the faconform itself to this vulgar idea. thers of the church. The sage 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 downwards, and that what terrified the witch was Samuel's being upon his legs.

"The deaf adder, which shuts its ears that it may not hear the voice of the charmer."

"I will sent among you serpents which will resist enchantments."

"The slanderer is like the serpent, which yields not to the enchanter."

St. Augustin, when interrogated by The enchantment was sometimes so Simplicion, replies, in the second book of powerful as to make serpents burst asun- his Questions, that there is nothing more der. The natural philosophy of anti-extraordinary in a witch's invoking a quity made this animal immortal. If shade, than in the devil's transporting any rustic found a dead serpent in his Jesus Christ through the air to the pinroad, some enchanter must inevitablynacle of the temple on the top of a have deprived it of its right to immorta-mountain. lity :

[blocks in formation]

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 fable; but this opinion can

Enchantment of the Dead, or Evocation. {not be maintained.

Of other Sorceries.

To enchant a dead person, to resuscitate him, or barely to evoke his shade to speak to him, was the most simple thing When a man is sufficiently expert to in the world. It is very common to see evoke the dead by words, he may yet the dead in dreams, in which they are more easily destroy the living, or at least spoken with and return answers. If any threaten them with doing so, as the phyone has seen them during sleep, why may{sician, malgré lui, told Lucas that he he not see them when he is awake? It would give him a fever. At all events, is only necessary to have a spirit like the it was not in the slightest degree doubtPythoness; and, to bring this spirit of ful that sorcerers had the power of killing Pythonism into successful operation, it is beasts; and, to ensure the stock of catonly necessary that one party should betle, it was necessary to oppose sorcery to a knave, and the other a fool; and no one can deny that such rencontres very frequently occur.

sorcery. But the ancients can with little propriety be laughed at by us, who are ourselves scarcely even yet extricated from the same barbarism. A hundred

The evocation of the dead was one of the sublimest mysteries of magic. Some-years have not yet expired since sorcerers times 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,

were burnt all over Europe; and even so recently as 1750, a sorceress, or witch, was burnt at Wurtzburg. It is unquestionable, that certain words and ceremonies will effectually destroy a flock of

a

His ego sæpè lupum fieri, et se condere silvis
Moerim saepe animas imis exira sepulchris.
Smear'd with these powerful juices on the plain,
He howls a wolf among the hungry train,
And oft the mighty necromancer boasts
With these to call from tombs the stalking ghosts.
Dryden.

To see a man-wolf must certainly be great curiosity; but to see human souls the monks of Mount Cassin see the soul must be more curious still; and did not 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?

sheep, if administered with a sufficient the power of enchantment, we may obportion of arsenic. serve, that a young shepherd's having The Critical History of Superstitious killed a wolf, and clothed himself with Ceremonies, by Le Brun of the Oratory, its skin, was enough to excite the terror is a singular work. His object is to op- of all the old women of the district, and pose the ridiculous doctrine of witch-to spread throughout the province, and craft, and yet he is himself so ridiculous thence through other provinces, the noas to believe in its reality. He pretends {tion of a man's having been changed into that Mary Bucaille, the witch, while in a wolf. Some Virgil will soon be found prison at Valogna, uppeared at some to say :leagues distance, according to the evidence given on oath to the judge of Valogna. He relates the famous prosecution of the shepherds of Brie, condemned in 1691, by the parliament of Paris, to be hanged and burnt. These shepherds had been fools enough to think themselves sorcerers, and villains enough to mix real poisons with their imaginary sorceries. Father Le Brun solemnly asserts, that there was much of what was 66 supernatural" in what they did, and that they were hanged in consequence. The sentence of the parliament is in direct opposition to this author's statement. "The court declares the accused duly attained and convicted of superstitions, impieties, sacrileges, profanations, and poisonings." These were for the young. They were The sentence does not state that the vended by the Jews at Rome and Alexdeath of the cattle was caused by profa-andria, and are at the present day sold in nations, but by poison. A man may Asia. You will find some of these secommit sacrilege without as well as with {crets in the "Petit Albert ;" and will bepoison, without being a sorcerer. come farther initiated by reading the pleading composed by Apuleius on his being accused by a Christian, whose daughter he had married, of having bewitched her by philtres. Emilian, his father-in-law, alleged that he had made useof certain fishes, since, Venus having been born of the sea, fishes must necessarily have prodigious influence in exciting women to love.

Enchantments to kindle Love.

Other judges, I acknowledge, sentenced the priest Ganfredi to be burnt, in the firm belief that, by the influence of the devil, he had an illicit commerce with all his female penitents. Ganfredi himself imagined that he was under that influence; but that was in 1611, a period when the majority of our provincial population was very little raised above the Caribs and negroes. Some of this de- What was generally made use of conscription have existed even in our own {sisted of vervain, tenia, and hippomanes ; times; as, for example, the Jesuit Girard, or a small portion of the secundine of the ex-Jesuit Nonotte, the Jesuit Du-a mare that had just foaled, together with plessis, and the ex-Jesuit Malagrida; the little bird called wagtail; in Latin but this race of imbeciles is daily has-motacilla. tening to extinction.

With respect to lycanthrophy, that is, the transformation of men into wolves by

But Apuleius was chiefly accused of having employed shell-fish, lobster patties, she-hedgehogs, spiced oysters, and

« PreviousContinue »