About The Romani Curse 62 Spells To Defeat Your Enemies I was taught these old old spells to protect oneself from enemies in a cool old book printed back in 1903 given to me as a child from my Romani Grandmother who knew me from birth and what I carry. This section reads more like a short primer on black magick, and Id advise against creating a lot of bad karma for yourself by trying these out on actual people. I do, however, think that it might be interesting to try using them on noncorporeal enemies such as: procrastination, poverty, racism, addictions, etc. However you choose to use them, be wise and be warned. If you wish evil to someone, the evil will come to you. That being said, here they are: 1. If you tie knots in the willow, you can slay a distant enemy. 2. If you would bring your enemy to death, pour poison in his footprints. 3. If you feel fear when you know you are safe, it will prove that when you are in danger you wont think of fear. 4. An image made of wax, named after an enemy or a person whom you wish ill, stuck full of pins and set before the fire, will cause the person named to pine away as the wax melts. 5. Indians charm a piece of worsted and tie it across the path of an enemy or across the door, so that when he passes it, it will surely bring death upon himself. 6. The Devonshire peasant hangs in his chimney corner a pigs head stuck with thorns, believing that so doing his enemy will be pierced in like manner. 7. A charm to be addressed to the spirit of the three winds: Spirit of the three winds, hear me when I call. Go and make So-and-So go crazy ! 8. Old Highlanders will still make the deazil around those whom they wish well. To go around a person in an opposite direction to the sun, is an evil incantation and brings ill fortune. 9. Old women frequently cut a turf a foot long which their enemy has recently trodden upon, and hang it up in the chimney, to cause their enemy to wither away. 10. The Tamils (a race of Southern India and Ceylon) believe that they can kill an enemy at a distance by a ceremony with the skull of a child. 11. If you make a cut on the wall of the house of an enemy, the members of his household will quarrel. (India.) 12. Take six new pins and seven needles, stick point to point in a piece of new cloth, and place it under the doorstep of your enemy; when he or she walks over it, they will lose the use of their legs. 13. The following is a Finnish superstition: The image of an absent person is placed in a vessel of water and a shot aimed at it, thereby wounding or slaying a hated person at many miles distance. 14. If you can get a few strands of your enemys hair, bore a hole in a tree, put them in, and plug up the hole; you can thus give him a headache which cannot be relieved until his hair is taken out of the tree. 15. To make trouble for an enemy, take some hair from the back of a snarling, yelping cur, some from a black cat, put them into a bottle with a tablespoonful of gunpowder, fill the bottle with water from a running brook, and sprinkle it in the form of three crosses on his doorstep, one at each end, and one in the middle. 16. The negroes think that in order to make an evil charm effectual, they must sacrifice something. In accordance with this idea, cake, candy, or small coins are scattered by those who place the charm. The articles thrown away must be placed where wanted, and they must be abandoned without a backward glance. 17. It is a true charm from the old country, that if you are tired of anyone, you can get rid of that person by taking a bushel of dry peas saying a wish for every one you take out, as from day to day you take out some, and as they go, he will waste and go to his grave. 18. To cause the death of an enemy, mould a heart of wax and stick pins in it till it breaks. Another charm is to hold the waxen heart before a slow fire. As it melts, the life of the enemy will depart. 19. To harm an enemy, take salt and pepper and put them into his clothing or his house, and say: I put this pepper on yon, And this salt thereto. That peace and happiness You may never know. He will soon be miserable. 20. A sheaf of corn is sometimes buried with a certain dedication to Satan, in the belief that as the corn rots in the ground, so will the person wither away who is under your curse when you bury the corn. 21. Another form of malediction is to bury a lighted candle by night in a churchyard, with certain weird ceremonies. 22. The following recipe for avenging oneself on ones enemies is given by Kunn, in Westphalia: When the new moon falls on a Tuesday, go out before daybreak to a stake selected beforehand, turn to the east and say: Stick, I grasp thee in the name of the Trinity! Take thy knife and say: Stick, I cut thee in the name of the Trinity, that thou mayest obey me and chastise anyone whose name I mention. Then peel the stick in two places to enable thee to carve these words: Abia, obia, sabis, lay a smock frock on thy threshold and strike it hard with the stick, at the same time naming the person who is to be beaten. Though he be many miles away, he will suffer as much as if he were on the spot. All this distinctly depends upon the moon being new on a Tuesday. 23. To make one die for sleep, dissolve lard and put it in their drink. 24. You can cast a malefic spell on your enemy by repeating the Lords Prayer backwards, all the time wishing some evil upon him. 25. In Southern Italy, the hearts of onions are scorched over a fire in the name of the victim, to burn up their hearts. 26. There is a superstition among the natives of Natal, that if the plant called Isanywane is placed on a mans hearth, it will cause him to become generally disliked. 27. Pythagoras says: That if a flame be put into the skull of a murderer, and the name of your enemy written therein, it will strike the person whose name is so written with fear and trembling, and he will speedily seek your forgiveness and become a steadfast friend. 28. If you wish to harm anybody, read the 107th, 108th and 109th Psalm at 8, 11 and 3 oclock, and you will then have much power over them. (Elworthy, The Evil Eye.) 29. The Greeks believed that to measure exactly the height and circumference of the body of an enemy, would cause him to languish and fall away, or die very soon. 30. If a man hates another and will repeat the 109th Psalm every morning and evening for a year, his enemy will be dead; but if he misses a single time, he will die himself. 31. In Bombay, if one man puts salt into another mans hand, it makes them sworn enemies for life. 32. Bury a dead mans hair under the threshold of an enemy, and he will soon be troubled with ague. 33. To repeat certain formulas among the Hindus, is supposed to bring injury upon an enemy. 34. In West Cork, people spit on the ground in front of anyone whom they wish to have bad luck. 35. Never let your enemy get hold of your picture. If he should keep it turned upside down, or should throw it in the water, you would sicken and die or meet with an accident . 36. If you shoot the picture of an enemy with a silver bullet, you will cause the death of your enemy. 37. In Germany, old women cut out a turf a foot long on which an enemy had trod, and hung it up in the chimney, in the belief that the enemy would shrivel up just as the turf did, and in the end die a lingering death. 38. When a man of one of the Indian tribes cannot get what he wants, or if he thinks he has been unjustly treated, he will cut or wound himself, or perhaps take the life of some member of his family, in order that the blood of the victim may rest upon the head of the oppressor. 39. If you wish to bring ill luck to a neighbor, take nine pins, nine nails, and nine needles, boil them in a quart of water, put it in a bottle, and hide it under or in their fireplace, and the family will always have sickness. (Negro superstition.) 40. The negroes conjure by obtaining an article belonging to another, boiling it, no matter what it may be, in lye with a rabbits foot, and a bunch of hair cut from the left ear of a female opossum. They say terrible headaches and the like can be inflicted in this way. 41. The American Indians believe that anyone who possesses a lock of their hair or other thing related to their person, will have power over them for evil. 42. When the bread is taken from the oven, a few red hot coals or cinders are thrown into the oven by the Magyars, in the belief that it is as good as throwing them down ones enemys throat. Thus, if ones enemy would partake of that bread, he would come to grief. 43. Throw a pebble upon which your enemys name is inscribed, together with a pin, into the well of St. Elian, in Wales, as an offering to the well, and a curse will come upon the one who bears the name, and in all probability he will pine away and die. 44. To cause an enemy ill luck, make a heap of stones, cursing him as many times as there are stones, and as every Christian must add at least a pebble as he passes by, his woes and his misfortunes will constantly increase. (Greece.) 45. Not many years ago, there was a system of cursing in common vogue in Fermanagh with tenants who had been given notice to quit. This was: they collected, from all over their farms, stones. These they brought home, and having put a lighted coal in the fireplace, they heaped the stones on it as if they had been sods of turf. They then knelt down on the hearthstone, and prayed that as long as the stones remained unburnt every conceivable curse might light on their landlord, his children, and their children to all generations. To prevent the stones by any possibility being burnt, as soon as they had finished cursing, they took the stones and scattered them far and wide over the whole country. Many of the former families of the county are said now to have disappeared on account of being thus cursed. 46. The great antiquity of sympathetic magic, by which a person is destroyed if an image of him is made and then ruined again, is shown by the discovery at Thebes of a small clay figure of a man tied to a papyrus scroll, evidently to compass the death of the person described therein. This figure and papyrus are now in the Ashmolean Museum. 47. A South Sea Islander persisted in saying he was very ill because his enemies, the Happahs, had stolen a lock of his hair and buried it in a leaf of a plantain to kill him. He had offered the Happahs the greater part of his property if they would bring back his hair and the leaf, for otherwise he was sure to die. 48. It is a widespread belief that one can injure another person by stepping upon his or her shadow. Any injury done to the shadow would have the same effect upon its owner. To cause an enemys death, it is merely necessary to take his shadow away from him entirely. 49. Anciently, a small bunch of feathers placed in a persons path was -thought, in Jamaica, to give them a curse. Any piece of coffin furniture hung over the door was also capable of cursing the inmates of the house. 50. Put ashes from yellow stamped paper, together with ashes from the temple, on your enemy, and he will be sure to be very sick soon. (China.) 51. The head of a dog and the head of a buffalo, stamped on paper, the paper burned and the ashes collected and mixed with sacred ashes, is also used to make an enemy die, if it can be got into the tea he drinks. 52. Lisiansky, in his Voyage Round the World, gives us an account of a religious sect in the Sandwich Islands who arrogate to themselves the power to pray people to death. Whoever incurs their displeasure receives notice that the homicidelitany is about to begin. Such are the effects of superstition and imagination that the notice alone is frequently sufficient with these weak people to make them waste away with fear, or else go mad and commit suicide. 53. The Finnish superstition of producing an absent person in the form of an image in a vessel of water and then shooting it, and thereby wounding or slaying the absent enemy, is believed to be efficacious at a hundred miles distance. 54. It was at the instigation of Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester (for which she was imprisoned), that a figure made of wax was used to represent King Henry VI., the intention being for his person to be destroyed as the figure was consumed. 55. In British Guiana, it is to this day firmly believed by the negroes an d others, that injuries inflicted even upon the ordure of persons will be felt by the individual by whom they were left. In Somerset, England, it is also believed that it is very injurious to an infant to burn its excrement. It is thought to produce constipation and colic. 56. In Australia, the sorcerer has different means of attacking an enemy. He can creep near him when he is asleep and bewitch him to death by merely pointing a leg bone of a kangaroo at him; or he can steal away his kidney-fat, where, as the natives believe, a mans power dwells; or he can call in the aid of a malignant demon to strike the poor wretch with his club behind the neck, or he can get a lock of hair and roast it with fat over the fire until its former owner pines away and dies. 57. In Calcutta, a servant having quarreled with his master, hung himself in the night in front of the street door, that he might become a devil and haunt the premises. The house was immediately forsaken by its occupants, and, although a large and beautiful edifice, was suffered to go to ruins. 58. The western tribes of Victoria, Australia, believe that if an enemy can get hold of so much as a bone from the meat one has eaten, that he can bring illness upon you. Should anything belonging to an unfriendly tribe be found, it is given to the chief, who preserves it as a means of injuring the enemy. It is loaned to any one of the tribe who wishes to vent his spite against any of the unfriendly tribe. When used as a charm, it is rubbed over with emu-fat mixed with clay, and tied to the point of a spear. This is stuck upright in the ground before the camp fire. The company sit watching it, but at such a distance that their shadows cannot fall on it. They keep chanting imprecations on the enemy till the spear thrower turns around and falls in his direction. Any of these people believe that by getting a bone or other refuse of an enemy, he has the power of life and death over him, be it man, woman, or child. He can kill his enemy by sticking the bone firmly by the fire. No matter how distant, the person will waste away. This same belief is found among the American Indians. 59. It is a common belief among the American Indians that certain medicine men possess the power of taking life by shooting needles, straws, spiders webs, bullets and other objects, however distant the person may be at whom they are directed. Thus, in Cloud Shields Winter Count for 1824-1825, CatOwner was killed with a spider-web thrown at him by a Dakota. It reached the heart of the victim from the hand of the man who threw it, and caused him to bleed to death from the nose. (Mallery, Picture Writing of the American Indians.) 60. In the North of Scotland, a peculiar piece of witchcraft is still practiced, where a cowardly, yet deadly, hatred is cherished against a person. A body of clay, called in GaeKc Carp Creaah, is made as nearly as possible to resemble the one sought to be injured. This is placed, in great secrecy, in the stream of some shadowy burn. The belief is that as the body of clay wastes away from the action of the water, the victim sought to be cursed will as surely waste away to death. 61. One of the charms formerly most dreaded by the natives of Madagascar, was called berika. It is said to be most deadly in its effects, bringing about the death of the victim by bursting his heart, and causing him to vomit immense quantities of blood. Even the possessor of this charm stood in terror of it, and none but the most reckless of charm-dealers and sorcerers would have anything to do with it. It was popularly supposed to have an inherent liking for blood, and that it would at times demand from its owner to be allowed to go forth to destroy some living tiling; at one time it would demand a bullock, at another a sheep or pig, at another a fowl, and occasionally its ferocity would only be satisfied with a human victim. The owner was obliged to comply with its demands and perform the appropriate incantations so as to set it at liberty to proceed on its fatal errand, lest it should turn on him and strike him dead. In fact, the charm was of so uncertain a temper, so to speak, that its owner was never sure of his own life, as it might at any moment turn upon him and destroy him, out of sheer ferocity. 62. Another powerful charm is called manara-mody. It is supposed to follow the person to be injured, and on his arrival home, to bring upon him a serious illness or cause his immediate death. For instance, a person goes down from the interior to the coast for the purpose of trade. In some business transaction, he unfortunately excites the anger of a man with whom he is dealing, and who determines to seek revenge. For this purpose, he buys from a charm-dealer the charm called manara-mody. The trader, having finished his business on the coast, starts homeward, all unconscious that his enemy has sent the fatal charm after him to dog his steps through forest and swamp, over hill and valley. At length he reaches his home, thankful to be once more with his family. But alas! the rejoicing is soon turned to mourning, for the remorseless charm does its work, and smites the victim with sore disease, or slays him outright at once. Old Stories About the Devil When the devil appeared to Cuvier, the great man looked at him nonchalantly and asked curtly: What do you wish of me? Ive come to eat youl said the devil. But the great anatomists shrewd eye had already examined him. Horns and hoofs ! he retorted, granivorous. You cant do it! Whereupon, outfaced by science, Satan departed. Plinius Secundus remembers a house at Athens which Athenodorus, the philosopher, hired, and which no man durst inhabit, for fear of the haunting devils. Hesperius, the tribunes house, at Zubeda, near the city of Hippos, was also thus haunted; and he was so much vexed with these demons and ghosts that he could not rest. Vasari, the Italian painter and biographer (d. 1574), tells the following strange tale of Spinello of Arezzo. When this artist had painted, in his famous fresco of the fall of the rebellious angels, the devil as a hideous demon and with seven heads about his body, the fiend came to him in the very bodily form he had conceived him, and asked the artist where he had seen him so, and why he had portrayed him in such a manner and put such a shame upon him? When Spinello came out of the vision, he was in a state of terror, and falling into a melancholy, soon died. A mythical personage who originated in German folklore, was Friar Rusk. He was a fiendish looking creature who was really a devil, and kept monks and friars from leading a religious life. He was probably at one time a goodnatured imp like Robin Goodfellow, but under the influence of Christian superstition, he became the typical emissary from Satan who played tricks among men calculated to set them by the ears, and who sought by various devices, always amusing, to fit them for residence in his masters dominions. (Tuckerman, History of Prose Fiction.) Freischiitz, the free shooter, is a name given to a legendary huntsman who, by entering into a compact with the devil, procures balls six of which infallibly hit, however great the distance, while the seventh, or according to some of the versions, one of the seven, belongs to the devil, who directs it at his pleasure. Legends of this nature were rife among the troopers of Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and during the Thirty Years War. The story first appeared in Apels Ghost Book, and was made known to all civilized countries by Webers opera in 1821. Edward Alleyn, a famous actor of the times of Elizabeth and James I., was the founder of Dulwich college in 1619. The reason he left the stage and became religious, was because, one night when he was taking the part of the devil on the stage and dressed for it, he saw with his own eyes the devil himself appear before him and mock him. He soon after totally quitted his profession, and devoted the remainder of his life to religious exercises. Once upon a time—tradition is never encumbered by dates—there lived at Mathafarn a person who went to law about some property. Not having heard any particulars as to the result of the case, which was tried in one of the supreme courts, he got so anxious that he sent his servant to London to make inquiries. The servant left for the metropolis, and in four days he was seen coming back towards the house. His master, believing it to be impossible that he could travel the distance of about four hundred miles in such a short time, was very angry; so angry that he determined to shoot him for fooling him. However, he was persuaded to hear first what the man had to say. The servant then came forward, and produced the papers belonging to the lawsuit and the money—his master had won the case. The latter now became more pleased than he was angry before, and presented his servant with a farm, called Cocshed, now rented at about £40 per annum. This story has been handed down by tradition as an instance of the friendly feeling which was supposed to have existed between the devil and some favored individuals. It is told in the South Mountains, Pa., that the devil tried to get possession of a girl in this way: He had assumed the form of an old man, and when the girl came to the house of her granny, to be made into a witch, as in her silly head she fancied she wished to be, an old man came in and said: So you wish to make a trade with me? Yes. Then, said he, sit down on the floor, put one hand on the top of your head and the other under the soles of your feet and say, All that is between my two hands belongs to the devil. So the girl sat on the floor, did as she was bid, and said: All that is between my two hands belongs to God! At this unexpected termination, the old man gave a hideous howl and vanished. There are two places on the Rhine where the father of lies still retains occupation. He has a devils house, in which he may be seen at night, drinking hot spiced wine with a long since deceased prince. This proper pair often issues forth at night after their orgies, and, disguised as monks, play tricks on the ferrymen and their boats on the river, so that when morning comes, there is no man at his right station, and every boat is drifting off to sea. Following is a description of the chief of the evil spirits in Arabian legend, by Beckford, in his Vathek. Eblis seemed in person that of a young man whose noble and regular features seemed to have been tarnished by malignant vapors. In his large eyes appeared both pride and despair; his flowing hair retained some semblance to that of an angel of light. In his hand, which thunder had blasted, he swayed the iron scepter that caused monsters, afrits, and all the powers of the abyss to tremble. In Arabia, the prince of the apostate angels is called Eblis, which means despair, and he was exiled to the infernal regions because he would not worship Adam at the command of the Almighty. He gave as his excuse that he was formed out of ethereal fire, while Adam was formed out of common clay; why then should not Adam worship him, and not he Adam? The Mohammedans say that at the birth of their prophet, the throne of Eblis was precipitated to the bottom of hell, and the idols of the Gentiles were overturned. In the Basque legends collected by Rev. W. Webster, we find the following: A wealthy man once promised to give a poor gentleman and his wife a large sum of money if they would tell him the devils age. When the time came, the gentleman, at his wifes suggestion, plunged first into a barrel of honey and then into a barrel of feathers. He then walked on all fours. Presently up came his Satanic majesty and exclaimed: X and x years have I lived, naming the exact number, yet I never saw an animal like this! The gentleman had heard enough, and was able to answer the question without difficulty. Ariel had his birth before Shakespeare made him an airy and tricksy spirit in the Tempest, for in the demonology of the Calaba he was a water-spirit, and in the fables of the Middle Ages a spirit of the air. Shakespeare represents him as having been a servant to Sycora, who, for some acts of disobedience, imprisoned him in the cleft of a pine tree, where he remained for twelve years, until released by Prospero. In gratitude for his deliverance, he became the willing messenger of Prospero, assuming any shape, or rendering himself invisible, in order to execute the commands of his master. Authors distinguished for sense and talent record with great seriousness that the devil once delivered a course of lectures on magic at Salamanca, habited in a professors gown and wig; and that another time he took up house at Milan, lived there in great style, and assumed, rather imprudently one would say, the suspicious yet appropriate title of the Duke of Mammon. Even Luther entertained similar notions about the fiend, and, in fact, thought so meanly of him as to believe that he could come by night and steal nuts, and that he cracked them against the bedposts, for the solacement of his monkey-like appetite. In the Wartburg, there is to this day shown a black mark in Luthers room, which, as the guide will tell you, has been caused by Luther throwing his inkstand at the devil, when he ventured to annoy him while he was translating the Bible. The powers ascribed to this debased demon were exceedingly great. The general belief was that, through his agency, storms at sea and land could at all seasons be raised; that crops could be blight«d and cattle injured; that bodily illness could be inflicted on any person who was the object of secret malice; that the dead could be raised to life. Asmodeus, the destroyer, is a well known mythical character, the demon of vanity and dress. He is called in the Talmud the king of the devils. In the book of Tobit, Asmodeus falls in love with Sara, daughter of Raguel, and causes the death of seven successive husbands on the bridal night. Sara at last married Tobit, and Asmodeus was banished to Egypt by a charm made of the heart and liver of a fish burned on perfumed ashes. It is said that Asmodeus gives the power to travel invisibly at night, and to go through stone walls, if need be, to see what the inhabitants of the world are doing. Such was the popularity of Lesages work about him, entitled Le Diable Boiteux, that two gallants fought a duel in a booksellers shop to see which should have the only copy left, an incident worthy to be recorded by Asmodeus himself! In 1689, it was believed that men made contracts with the devil, in which he marked them with a mole on the body, and gave them the power to be rich, invulnerable to pain or death until a certain time, and full of magic powers. The devil was accustomed to give to the breath of those in compact with him, a magic power that no maiden could resist. They became mad with love of him who possessed this gift, as soon as his breath had touched their nostrils. This practice seems to have been discovered in France, and was more particularly in vogue there. The faith in such practices and compacts of a base nature were firmly believed in during the seventeenth century. How widely diffused witchcraft then was, is evinced by the account of Raynald, who says: In Germany and Italy especially, such numbers of men were reduced to sorcery that the whole earth was overflowed with it, and would have been laid waste by the devil had they not, in both countries, burnt some thirty thousand heretics. Cardan relates of his father, Facius Cardan, that after the accustomed solemnities on the 13th of August, 1491, he conjured up seven devils in Greek apparel,about forty years of age, some ruddy of complexion and some pale, as he thought. He asked them many questions, and they made ready answer that they were aerial devils, that they lived and died as men did, save that they were far longer lived, from seven hundred to eight hundred years. They did as much excel men in dignity as we do apes, and were as far excelled again by those who were above them. Our governors and keepers they are, moreover (which Plato in Critias delivered of old), and they rule themselves as well as us; and the spirits of the meaner sort had usually such offices as we give to our servants. They knew all things, and we can no more apprehend their nature and functions than a horse can apprehend ours. The best kings among us and the most generous natures were not comparable to the meanest among them. Sometimes they did instruct men and communicate their skill, reward and cherish, and sometimes punish and terrify them to keep them in awe. Burton speaks, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, of subterranean devils being as common as the rest and doing as much harm. Munster says: They are commonly seen about mines and metals, and there are six kinds of them. The metal men, in many places, account it good luck to see them, as it is a sign of good ore and treasure. Georgius Agricola, in his book, reckons two more kinds, which he calls Getuli and Cobali, both are clothed after the manner of metal men and will many times imitate their works. Their office, as Pictorius and Paracelsus think, is to keep treasure in the earth, that it be not all at once revealed; and besides, Cicogana avers that they are the frequent cause of those horrible earthquakes, which often swallow up not only houses, but whole islands and cities. The last are conversant about the center of the earth to torture souls of damned men to the day of judgment; the egress and regress are through Aetna, Lipari, Mons Hecla in Ice land, Vesuvius, and it is known by the many shrieks and fearful cries that are continually heard thereabouts, and familiar apparitions of dead men, ghosts and goblins. At a festival, called the Sitsubun, the Japanese have a curious ceremony of casting out devils. The caster out of devils wanders at night through the streets, crying: Devils out, good fortune in! and for a trifling fee, he performs his little exorcism in any house to which he is called. After that, dried peas are scattered about the house in four directions, and as devils hate dried peas, they fly away. Devils are also afraid of fishes heads and holly leaves. People carrying these cannot be possessed by them. (Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan.) Saint Epiphanius, a dogmatical bishop who lived in the fourth century, and who wrote a treatise against heresies, gives the following as an illustration of the cleverness of the devil, attributing the miracle to his power: Among the Gnostics, an ancient Christian sect, in the celebration of their eucharist, the communion, three large vases of the finest and clearest crystal were brought among the congregation and filled with white wine. While the ceremony was going on in full view of everybody, this wine was instantaneously changed to blood-red, then to purple, and then to azure-blue. When that was done, the priest handed one of the vases to a woman in the congregation and requested her to bless it. She did so, and the priest offered up the following prayer, at the same time pouring it into a very much larger vase than the one that contained it: May the grace of God, which is above all inconceivable, inexplicable, fill thy inner man and augment the knowledge of Him within thee, sowing the grain of mustard seed in good ground. Whereupon the wine in the larger vase swelled and swelled until it ran over the brim! Pope John XXII. complains bitterly, in a bull of 1317, that a number of his own courtiers, and even his own physicians, had given themselves over to the devil and had conjured evil spirits into rings, looking-glasses, and circles, in order to influence men both at a distance and near at hand, as the sorcerers had little pictures in amulets and mirrors. These crimes, resulting in many instances in various forms of devil-worship, terrible orgies, and human sacrifices, rose to such an ascendency that the excellent Chancellor Gerson in the year 1398, published twenty-seven articles against sorcery, superstition, and pictures in glasses and stones of demons and spirits, Somewhat later, the persecution of the supposed sorcerers and witches resulted in wholesale burnings at the stake. One of the most notorious sorcerers of that time was the fiendish were-wolf Gilles de Retz, Marshal of France, who boasted, in his confession prior to his execution in Nantes (1440), that he had destroyed one hundred and sixty children, and as many expectant mothers with their unborn. He had kidnapped or enticed them to one or the other of his castles, where he sacrificed them as victims to his unnatural lust and sorceries, indulging in the most infamous orgies, which he held in connection with devil-worship. Gilles de Retz has been made the subject of many romances, such as A. Dumas Les Louves de Machecoul; S. R. Crocketts The Black Douglas, etc. Were-wolves are, according to mediaeval superstition, persons who became voluntarily or unvoluntarily wolves, and in that form practiced cannibalism. BaringGould has made this the study of a very interesting volume, entitled, Book of the Were-Wolves. During the seventeenth century, the belief in witchcraft, fairies, apparitions, charms, and every other species of supernatural agency, was universal in Britain, both among high and low, clergy as well as laity. So ill instructed were the people in the art of tracing events to simple causes, that there appears to have been a continual liability to ascribe occurrences tc the direct influence of good or evil spirits, but particularly to the devil. Give me leave, says a respectable writer of that age, here to relajte a passage which I received from a person of quality, namely, it was believed, • and that not without good cause, that Cromwell, the same morning that he defeated the kings army at Worcester fight, had conference personally with the devil, with whom he made a. contract, that to have his will then, and in all things else for seven years after that time (being the 3rd of September, 1651), he should, at the expiration of the said years, have him at his command, to do at his pleasure both with his soul and body. Now, if anyone will please to reckon from the 3rd of September, 1651, till the 3rd of September, 1658, he shall find it to a day just seven years, and no more, at the end whereof he died; but with such extremity of tempestuous weather that was by all men judged to be prodigious. Such is a specimen of the egregious fallacies which passed for sound argument among our ancestors. In Scotland, where religion assumed the garb of gloom and fanaticism, a belief in the personal appearance of devils was universal in the seventeenth century, and continued among the vulgar till within the last fifty years. The narrations of Satans mean pranks, in assaulting ministers, waylaying travelers, and disturbing families while at worship, would fill a large volume. In the Rev. Mr. Robert Laws Memorials of Memorable Things, from 1638 to 1684, we find the following entry: October, 1670.—There was a devil that troubled a house in Keppoch, within a mile of Glasgow, for the matter of eight days tyme (but disappeared again), in casting pots, and droping stones from the roof, yet not hurting any, like that which appeared in the west, in a weavers house, a good man, about fourteen years agoe, which did the lyke, and spoke to them audibly. The tricks of the devil here referred to, as having taken place in a weavers house in the west, about the year 1656, and which were implicitly believed by the most learned clergy of the time, are related at great length by Mr. George Sinclair, professor of philosophy in the College of Glasgow, in his work, Satans Invisible World Discovered. The alleged events occurred at Glenluce, in Wigtonshire, and would be too contemptible for quotation if it were not desirable to show what paltry tricks were played off, and believed to be supernatural in those days. The family of the weaver, being vexed with noises and appearances, send for the neighboring clergyman to allay the devil, between whom and the worthy man a dialogue takes place, from which we extract a few passages: The minister returned back a little, and standing upon the floor, the devil said, I knew not these scriptures till my father taught me them. Then the minister conjured him to tell whence he was. The foul fiend replied, That he was an evil spirit come from the bottomless pit of hell to vex this house, and that Satan was his father. And presently there appeared a naked hand, and an arm from the elbow down, beating upon the floor till the house did shake again, and also he uttered a most fearful and loud cry, saying, Come up, my father—come up. I will send my father among you; see, there he is behind your backs 1 Then the minister said, I saw, indeed, a hand and an arm, when the stroke was given and heard. The devil said to him, Saw you that? It was not my hand, it was my fathers; my hand is more black in the loof (palm). Would you see me, says the foul thief, put out the candle, and I shall come butt the house (into the outer room) among you like fire-balls, etc. The visit of the minister was unavailing. About this time the devil began with new assaults; and taking the ready meat which was in the house, did sometimes hide it in holes by the door-posts, and at other times hid it under the beds, and sometimes among the bed-clothes and under the linens, and at last did carry it quite away, till nothing was left there save bread and water. The good wife, one morning making porridge for the childrens breakfast, had the wooden plate, wherein the meal lay, snatched from her quickly. Welll says she, let me have my plate again. Whereupon it came flying at her, without any skaith done. Any further extract from this ridiculous, though at one time universally believed, narrative, would be unnecessary. A modern police officer would have effectually relieved the afflicted family by instantly discovering the performer of the tricks and taking him inio custody. (Chambers Information for the People).
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 21:47:08 +0000
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