Magic Arts And Precious Stones

Auto-suggestion may also afford an explanation of much that is mysterious in the effects attributed to precious stones, for if the wearer be firmly convinced that the gem he is wearing produces certain results, this conviction will impress itself upon his thought and hence upon his very organism. He will really experience the influence, and the effects will manifest themselves just as powerfully as though they were caused by vibrations or emanations from the material body of the stone.

All this may serve to explain the persistence of the belief in magic arts. A few hundred years ago, a Hungarian woman was accused of having murdered two or three hundred young girls, and at her trial she confessed that her object was to use the blood of her victims to renew her youth and beauty, for the blood of innocent virgins was supposed to have wonderful properties. In some parts of England to-day there is a superstitious belief that an article of clothing worn by a person, or anything he has habitually used, absorbs a portion of his individuality. Therefore, it sometimes happens that a handkerchief, for instance, will be stolen and pinned down beneath the waters of a stream on a toad, the pins marking the name of the enemy, the belief being that as this cloth wastes away, so will the body of him who had worn it. In medieval and later times this was the common practice of the sorcerers, although they frequently composed a wax figure rudely resembling the person against whom the spell was directed, and then thrust pins into this figure or allowed it to melt away before a slow fire. The enchantment of the sorcerer was supposed to have caused some essence of the personality to enter into the image, and therefore the living and breathing being felt sympathetically the effects of the ill-treatment inflicted upon its counterfeit.

The persistence of the most cruel and unnatural practices of old-time sorcery is illustrated by the fact that only a few years ago, in the island of Cuba, three women were condemned to death for murdering a white baby so as to use the heart and blood as a cure for diseases. Four other women were sentenced to from fourteen to twenty years' imprisonment as accomplices. When such things happen in Cuba, it is not surprising that in half-civilized Hayti similar crimes are committed. Here the Voodoo priests and priestesses, papalois and mamalois (papa-kings and mama-queens) require from time to time a human sacrifice to appease their serpent-god. One strange case is related where a stupefying potion, inducing a state of apparent death, was secretly administered to a sick man. When the attending physician pronounced him dead, he was duly interred; but, two days after, the grave was found open and the body had disappeared. The Voodoo worshippers had carried the man away so as to revive him and then sacrifice him at their fearful rites.