Chapter 34

There are certain safeguards in general use against magic. One should not answer a witch's question (Sup. I, 59), not thank her for her greeting (568); for certain kindnesses and gifts, if they are to do you good, it is advisable not to thank any one (398. Swed. 35. 52. Esth. 94). A witch may be known by her thanking you for lending things (I, 566); she never answers three times (563).----Whatever she praises will turn out ill, unless you promptly reply with railing, reviling, wishing 'the same to you' (696), or spitting. To praise one to his face does harm, Pliny 28, 2. 'Si ultra placitum laudarit, baccare frontem cingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua futuro,' Virg. Ecl. 7, 27; hence in praising oneself a 'praefiscini' (prae fascino?) was added, Plaut. Asin. ii. 4, 84. Insult and imprecation the ancients turned aside with the words: eij kefalhn soi, on thy head may it fall!---The Mod. Greeks and Slavs are shy of praise, and try to save themselves by spitting: a Russian nurse directly spits in the face of one who cracks up her baby without putting in the precautionary 'God save the mark!' Before a witch's house you spit three times (Sup. I, 756), the same in crossing a haunted water by night (Swed. 40); the Greeks at sight of a madman spat thrice into their bosom, Theocr. 6, 39. 21, 11. 'ter dictis despue carminibus,' Tibull. i. 2, 55. Home-sprites cannot bear spitting (p. 514); conf. Sup. I, 317. 453. To the same effect, and worth reading, is what Pliny 28, 4 says on despuere, adspuere, inspuere, exspuere.--- In case of need you may without scruple strike a suspected witch, and draw blood (p. 1096), or throw a firebrand at her (Sup. Swed. 96).---Bread, salt and coals are a protective against magic (I, 564. 713), as witches abstain from bread and salt (p. 1071). I fancy that pipping of the loaf, so distasteful to the wood-wives (p. 484), was a sacred magic-averting symbol; conf. 'placenta digito notata' in Lasicz 49. ---Throw a steel over over enchanted beasts, and they are bound to resume their natural shape (Sup. I, 886); (117) throw a knife marked with the cross over a witch, and you recognise her (554); when a man threw steel between the elfin and the hill, it prevented her going into it (p. 467); steel insures the child in the cradle from being changed. Instances of magic thus averted by steel we find in Faye 20. 24-5-6. 51. 141; conf. Sup. Swed. 71. ---Witches and devils shun the sign of the cross: that is why we see so many crosses on the doors the first night in May. The peasant ploughs a cross into each corner of his field. On the cradles of infants before they were christened, the cross was lavishly employed to guard against elf or devil; just so the heathens used hammer, and there is a remarkable vestige of it forthcoming still: 'malleum, ubi puerpera decumbit, obvolvunt candido linteo' (Gisb. Voetii sel. disput. theol. Ultraj. 1659, pars 3 p. 121.) --- No less do evil spirits hate and shun the sound of bells (pp. 1022-74); it disturbs their dance at the cross-road, Sup. I, 542. ---To this must be added the methods mentioned p. 1078 of recognising witches and guarding against them (see Suppl.).

These are the most distinctive phenomena in the world of Magic. Many, indeed most magic appliances run over into Superstition, between which and magic proper it is impossible to draw a fixed boundary. I have indeed put forward, as a distinguishing mark of sorcery, the malicious design to do mischief, and it does seem to have resulted from inverting the wholesome use of occult forces in nature (pretty much as the devil from an inversion of God, p. 986); but particular applications of the true and the false art cannot always be kept apart. As a herb, a stone, a spell proves a source of healing, so may it also act perniciously too; the use was proper and permissible, the abuse abhorred and punished. A poisoner as such is not a witch, she becomes one in the eyes of the people the moment she uses preternatural means. A wise woman, healing sickness and charming wounds, begins to pass for a witch only when with her art she does evil; her means are as natural as the poison of the murderess. To higher antiquity, witches were priestesses, physicians, fabulous night-wives, whom men honoured, feared, and at last made light of, but never dreamt as yet of persecuting and executing. Maidens might turn into swans, heroes into werewolves, and lose nothing in popular estimation. In course of time, when the Devil's complicity with every kind of sorcery came to be assumed, the guilt of criminality fell upon all personal relations (with him); but the people for the most part continued to practise their long-accustomed charms in the innocent sense of superstition, though a suspicion of sorcery was more likely to overshadow it now than before.




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