"Sorcery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sorcery! But to me now listen! I hasten'd unto Hortha's gloomy forests, To glut myself in Roman blood; then look'd I Down from the thunder-cloud in which I journey'd, And on these towering hills my eyes I fastened; Then saw I ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... I have no doubt, will here be anxious to know the numbers that bubbled up to the surface; but I am very sorry to say that I cannot gratify their laudable curiosity, for the interference of the police prevented the completion of the sorcery. So the curious must be content to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... the forest may, for he can cut them down and burn them. Yet, inasmuch as it is the nature of a body to have an indwelling spirit, death—the permanent severing of body and spirit—cannot occur naturally: it must be due to the machination of some enemy, by violence, by poison, or by sorcery. ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... this cult may be able to make an apparent success of it, but I have never yet met any. If they do, however, they will live to regret it, for they are merely practitioners of black magic. Their efforts are of the same nature as sorcery. All such methods build up a heavy debt of future suffering, and seriously hinder the soul in its ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... Testament is made of than the heretics and their theologians, not forgetting their Tinkers, though I confess some of the latter have occasionally surprised us—for example, Bunyan. The New Testament is crowded with allusions to heathen customs, and with words connected with pagan sorcery. Now, with respect to words, I would fain have you who pretend to be a philologist, tell me ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... worship of artists by those who have never been seasoned in youth to the enchantments of art. Tenors and prima donnas, pianists and violinists, actors and actresses enjoy powers of seduction which in the middle ages would have exposed them to the risk of being burnt for sorcery. But as they exercise this power by singing, playing, and acting, no great harm is done except perhaps to themselves. Far graver are the powers enjoyed by brilliant persons who are also connoisseurs in art. The influence they can exercise on young people who have been brought up ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... adversaries, 'but with his bands of taffetie fastened with golden rings.' The lady for whom he put on this state was Margaret Stewart, the daughter of his friend Lord Ochiltree, and the same critics assure us that 'by sorcery and witchcraft he did so allure that poor gentlewoman, that she could not live without him.' Queen Mary was angry when she heard of it, because the bride 'was of the blood,' i.e. related to the Royal house; and even Knox's friends did not like his union at ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, the king's escape from the Tower was accomplished; but not by might, nor by human power nor device, but by faith and prayer, was the work wrought out, which holy communion her enemies do maliciously report as the practice of sorcery and the forbidden art. Howbeit the king hath escaped, as thou seest, the fangs of the executioner. Stay, I perceive what thou wouldest urge in reply, but listen for a short space. In order to deter them from pursuit on finding his escape, and with a view likewise to lull them ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... made laws they did not perceive that by their laws they condemned their gods. For if their laws are righteous, their gods are unrighteous, because they committed transgressions of the law in that they killed one another, practised sorcery, and committed adultery, robbed, stole, and lay with males, not to mention their other practices. For if their gods have done right in doing all this, as they write, then the laws of the Greeks are unrighteous ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... case of real malady many were imputed or charged upon poor creatures, who were driven to madness by groundless charges of witchcraft and sorcery, and being loups-garous in secret. Many innocent people were in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries burnt at the stake as ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... we hadn't," she said. "Don't you see it was only my sorcery, as you call it, that took us there? I meant us ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... answered the father, in a hollow, despairing voice; "he has been bewitched — undone by foul sorcery, bound over hand and foot, and given to the keeping of Satan. Even the priest can do nothing for us. He is lost, body ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... ye forgot your youth, When expectation soared on pinions high, And hope shone out on boyhood's cloudless sky, Seeming all truth— When all looked fair to fancy's ardent eye, And pleasure wore an air of sorcery? ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... take part in the battle of Hernani, he swore by the skull from which Byron drank that he would not be a defaulter. His first volume, Poesies, appeared in 1830, and was followed in two years by Albertus, a fantastic manufacture of strangeness and horror, amorous sorcery, love-philtres, witches' Sabbaths. The Comedie de la Mort evokes the illustrious shades of Raphael, Faust, Don Juan to testify to the vanity of knowledge and glory and art and love. Gautier's ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... a glorious, if unbounded sea. Each is the yearning for the GREAT BEYOND, which attests our immortality. Each has its visions and chimeras—some false, but some true! Verily, a man who becomes great is often but made so by a kind of sorcery in his own soul—a Pythia which prophesies that he shall be great—and so renders the life one effort to fulfil the warning! Is this folly?—it were so, if all things stopped at the grave! But perhaps the very sharpening, and exercising, and elevating the faculties here—though ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... were full of spells, And all her words of sorcery; And in some way they seemed to say "Oh, come ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... the like. Another reason was detestation of idolatry: because the Gentiles, and especially the Egyptians, among whom they had grown up, offered up these forbidden animals to their idols, or employed them for the purpose of sorcery: whereas they did not eat those animals which the Jews were allowed to eat, but worshipped them as gods, or abstained, for some other motive, from eating them, as stated above (A. 3, ad 2). The third reason was to prevent excessive care ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... his Church Convention. The note of the conference became tinged with exasperation, and certain gentlemen seized the opportunity to relieve their pent-up feelings on the subject of the President and his slavish advisers,—some of whom, before they came under the spell of his sorcery, had once been sound lawyers and sensible men. With the exception of the great Banker himself, who made few comments, Theodore Watling was accorded the most deference; as one of the leaders of that indomitable group of senators who had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... beholden to, and hither she came under my safe-conduct; I shall never forgive you that trespass. Sir, said Balin, me forthinketh of your displeasure, for this same lady was the untruest lady living, and by enchantment and sorcery she hath been the destroyer of many good knights, and she was causer that my mother was burnt, through her falsehood and treachery. What cause soever ye had, said Arthur, ye should have forborne her in my presence; therefore, think not the contrary, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... Goutran smiled. "But this is sorcery, my dear fellow. You must have been dreaming. It ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... the human fingers, or of a hair, will have, perhaps, reminded them of some sort of sorcery, or of some diabolic art ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... lay upon it because it was the house of Julia! The texture of the sunshine came under a spell here; glowing flakes of amber were afloat; a powder of opals and rubies fell silently adrizzle through the trees. The very air changed, beating faintly with a fairy music, for breathing it was breathing sorcery: elfin symphonies went tinkling through it. The grass in the next yard to Julia's was just grass, but every blade of grass in her yard ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... heart-strings of his auditors in his hand, he could not have had them more in his power. For an hour he continued, rising from one important subject to another, until the breath was fairly suspended in the excitement. An uninterested spectator would have supposed that he had used sorcery in thus transfixing his auditors. While all others forgot, he noticed the day was drawing to a close, he turned and looked toward the setting sun, and apostrophized its fading glory—then in his most touching voice and manner, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... Its name is Moly among the gods, and no wicked sorcery can hurt the man who treasures it carefully. Its root is black. Its blossom is as white as milk, and it is hard for men to tear it from the ground. Take this herb and go fearlessly into the dwelling of the sorceress; ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... what we had seen, and we had also reason to fear, from the savage looks that the people cast at us, that we ourselves were in no slight danger. The juggler might at any moment accuse us of sorcery, and, in the excited state of mind in which the people surrounding us then were, they might set upon us, and in spite of the resistance we might make, tear us limb from limb. Fortunately for us, the names of three other persons were shouted out as having taken part in the enchantment which had ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... regard to the idea that Vaudois comes from Vaudes, a sorcerer, it would be more correct to say that the term sorcerer was one applied by the inhabitants of the plains to those who were Vaudois, or hill-men, under the notion that the inhabitants of such localities practised sorcery. Hence we are compelled to assume that the name is purely geographical, and applied from time immemorial to the persons living in those valleys of Piedmont which have ever formed part of the Italian territory, and are not to be confounded ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... wounded and deprived of his judgment. Various causes were assigned for this disaster; but Oddo, asserting that they had parted in anger that evening from Geirrida, insisted that his companion must have sustained the injury through her sorcery. Geirrida was accordingly cited to the popular assembly and accused of witchcraft. But twelve witnesses, or compurgators, having asserted upon their oath the innocence of the accused party, Geirrida was honourably freed from ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... humble lodging to the hospitality which more than one friend had offered him; and his open disregard for religious practices, together with singularities of life and demeanour, sufficiently explained the trouble that had come upon him. Charges of sorcery were not uncommon in Rome at this time. Some few years ago a commission of senators had sat in judgment upon two nobles accused of magic, a leading article of proof against one of them being that he had a horse which, when stroked, gave off sparks of fire. On this account Decius ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... at this time there was in Dowlutpoor an English doctor who was generally known as the Jadoo-walla Saheb, because he was believed to practise sorcery and had some mysterious need of snakes. Perhaps he was only making experiments with their venom. At any rate, he wanted live cobras and offered a good price for them. So when Nagoo, the snake-charmer, heard that there was a large one in Beharilal's garden, he thought he might do good business ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... "Ay," repeated Hildebrand. "Sorcery. The King swears you have cast spells upon him, delivering him madness in a draught of well-water, that you ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... extension elsewhere,[46-1] and in this connection will only observe that the narrative of Xahila, in repeated passages, proves how deeply it was rooted in the Cakchiquel mind. The expression ru puz ru naval, should generally be rendered "his magic power, his sorcery," though it has a number of allied significations. Naval as a noun means magician, naval chee, naval abah, the spirit of the tree, of the stone, or the divinity embodied in the idols of ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... exactly, my son. Elymas, the sorcerer, was permitted to practise his arts—gained from the devil—that it might be proved, by his overthrow and blindness, how inferior was his master to the Divine Ruler; but it does not therefore follow that sorcery generally was permitted. In this instance it may be true that the evil one has been permitted to exercise his power over the captain and crew of that ship, and, as a warning against such heavy ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... her own sorcery, because, so many times, that which she had seen had come true. Once, when a child was ill, she had gazed into the crystal and seen the little white coffin that, a week later, was carried out of the ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... those thin, helmet lids we spy, Veiling mild orbs, of changeful hue, Where auburn half subsides in blue! Lord Fauconberg, canst thou divine What is the curve, or what the line, That makes this girl, like lightning, send Looks of our long lamented friend? If Richard liv'd, that sorcery spell Quickly his lion-heart would quell: He never could her glance descry, And any wish'd-for boon deny! She's weeping too!—most strangely wrought By workings of another's thought! She knows no English; yet I speak That language, and her paling cheek With watery floods is overcast.— Fair ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... crowns in record are those of virginity and purity; and thou shalt shine as an Angel. But as thou hast gladly listened to the good things, listen without shrinking to the contrary. Every covetous deed of thine is recorded; every fleshly deed, every perjury, every blasphemy, every sorcery, every theft, every murder. All these things are henceforth recorded, if thou do these after baptism; for thy former deeds are ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... and therefore resolved to effect his ruin. By degrees they persuaded their credulous master that the dervish was a magician, who would in time possess himself of his throne, and the sultan, alarmed, resolved to put him to death. With this intention, calling him to the presence, he accused him of sorcery, and commanded an executioner to strike off his head. "Forbear awhile," exclaimed the dervish, "and let me live till I have shown you the most wonderful specimen of my art." To this the sultan consented, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... moving their bodies to the tune, and humming, almost below their breath, a low dreamy air. When they caught sight of Don Pedro they scowled at him, and some of them looked terrified, for only a few weeks before he had had two of their tribe hanged for sorcery in the market- place at Seville, but the pretty Infanta charmed them as she leaned back peeping over her fan with her great blue eyes, and they felt sure that one so lovely as she was could never be cruel to anybody. So they played on ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... alterations of laws and beliefs—a loss much to be regretted by every wise man. It often came to pass that noble "Ingenia" were destroyed by barbarous oppressors of art; for if they saw figures traced in a few lines they thought it nought but vain, devilish sorcery. And in destroying them they attempted to honour God by something displeasing to Him; and to use the language of men, God was angry with all destroyers of the works of great mastership, which is only attained by much toil, labour, and expenditure of time, and is bestowed by God alone. ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... convicted of certain crimes were also subject to the same form of execution adulterating and uttering base coins (Alan Napier, cutler in Glasgow, was strangled and burned at the stake in December 1602) sorcery, witchcraft, incantation, poisoning (Bailie Paterson suffered a like fate in December 1607). For bestiality John Jack was strangled on the Castle Hill (September 1605), and the innocent animal participator in his ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... of the Duke of Burgundy, but was taken prisoner by him. For a large sum of money the duke delivered her into the hands of the English, who put her in prison in Rouen. She lay in prison for a year, and finally was charged with sorcery and brought to trial. It was said that she was under the influence of the Evil One. She declared to her judges her innocence of the charge and said, "God has always been my guide in all that I have done. The devil has never ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... Peter of Abano, famous as a physician, having promulgated this with other obnoxious doctrines in science, only escaped the Inquisition by death; and in 1327 Cecco d'Ascoli, noted as an astronomer, was for this and other results of thought, which brought him under suspicion of sorcery, driven from his professorship at Bologna and burned alive at Florence. Nor was this all his punishment: Orcagna, whose terrible frescoes still exist on the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa, immortalized Cecco by representing him in the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... in the offing! They dash one against another like steel-clad knights! Ha, what joy to be a witching-wife and ride on the whale's back—to speed before the skiff, and wake the storm, and lure men to the deeps with lovely songs of sorcery! ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... in thee, and the sound of a millstone shall be heard in thee no more; (23)and the light of a lamp shall shine in thee no more; and the voice of bridegroom and of bride shall be heard in thee no more; because thy merchants were the great men of the earth; because by thy sorcery all ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... persecutions were renewed by Valentinian, spasmodically carried on to a slight extent, and then lapsed. During the period that elapsed between the sixth and thirteenth centuries the executions for sorcery were comparatively rare. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... everything," and another, desirous of persuading hers that he was not of sound mind, took the measure of his length and across his head. In a Zurich Ms. of 1393, "measuring" is included among the unchristian and forbidden things of sorcery. In the region about Treves, a malady known as night-grip (Nachtgriff) is ascertained to be present by the following procedure: "Draw the sick man's belt about his naked body lengthwise and breadthwise, then take it off and hang it on a nail with the words 'O God, I pray ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... gods have been smitten and defied; woes great and terrible, such as history tells not of, have fallen upon us through magic; tens of thousands, from the first-born child of Pharaoh down, have perished in a single night. And now these Hebrews, who have murdered them by sorcery, for they are sorcerers all, men and women together, especially one of them who sits at Memphis, of whom I will not speak because she has wrought me private harm, by the decree of Pharaoh are to be suffered to leave the land. More, they ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... a little eminence, blew most furiously at us, and performed other equally efficacious ceremonies. I however felt just as well after we had been subjected to this dire sorcery as I did before; and we continued to pull gently along the shore, still trying to induce them to approach, which they at last did, having nothing but a fishing-spear in their hands. To entice them towards us I had made Kaiber strip himself ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... thousand persons. Conversions were made in masses, forty thousand men being baptised at one time. When the multitudes were not converted by the miracles, they fled terrified. The saints were accused of sorcery; enigmas were proposed to them, which they solved at once; they were obliged to dispute questions with learned men, who remained speechless before them. As soon as they entered the temples of sacrifice the idols were overthrown with a breath, and were broken to pieces. ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... furrow, etc. In later hymns these objects are generally of sacrificial nature, and the stones with which soma is pressed are divine like the plant. Yet often there is no sacrificial observance to cause this veneration. Hymns are addressed to weapons, to the war-car, as to divine beings. Sorcery and incantation is not looked upon favorably, but nevertheless ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... Christian princes adapted their penal statutes to the degrees of moral and religious turpitude. Adultery was first declared to be a capital offence: the frailty of the sexes was assimilated to poison or assassination, to sorcery or parricide; the same penalties were inflicted on the passive and active guilt of paederasty; and all criminals of free or servile condition were either drowned or beheaded, or cast alive into the avenging flames. The adulterers were spared by the common sympathy of mankind; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... the fact that her mother was a gypsy who had committed suicide and that her father had fallen under the ban of the Inquisition, an heretical work of his having been publicly burned. Then the Abbot himself gave evidence, since, where the charge was sorcery, no one seemed to think it strange that the same man should both act as judge and be the principal witness for the prosecution. He told of Cicely's wild words after the burning of Cranwell Towers, from which burning she and her familiar, Emlyn, had evidently escaped by ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... be objected that one of the most constant facts in the history of all religions, from the lowest to the highest, is that religion has at all times carried on war against sorcery, witchcraft, and magic, that in the lowest stages of man's evolution witches have been 'smelt out' by the witch-finder, and that in the higher stages of civilization witches have been persecuted, tortured, and burnt, the reply made to the objection is that the ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... time muttering to herself. It was even said that in the quiet winter nights she held wonderful conversations with her goat and with her fowls, which she housed in her room during the winter. The entire wild army of tales of witchcraft and sorcery, banished by school education, came back and attached ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... course aware of the matters on which the holy office exercises its functions. I need scarcely mention sorcery, Judaism, and certain ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the South American Indians, who still remain under the influence of sorcery and empiricism, consider women in the light of impure and evil beings, and calculated to injure them. Among a few of the less rude nations this aversion is apparent in domestic life, in a certain unconquerable ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... a man whom Naples could suppose to be addicted to superstitious fancies, neither was the age one in which the belief of sorcery was prevalent. Still, in the South of Italy there was then, and there still lingers, a certain spirit of credulity, which may, ever and anon, be visible amidst the boldest dogmas of their philosophers and sceptics. In his childhood the Prince had learned strange ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... picked up by Mr. Newells, from the recitation of a street boy in New York. The daughter of a Jew is not more likely than the daughter of a duke to have been concerned in the cruel and blasphemous imitation of the horrors attributed by Horace to the witch Canidia. But some such survivals of pagan sorcery did exist in the Middle Ages, under the ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... upon this heaven-sent flower before he was seized with the fever of love. He fell into a state of melancholy, frequented no bad places, and only with regret now and then did he take a bite at his royal and dainty German morsel Isabella. He became passionate, and swore either by sorcery, by force, by trickery, or with her consent, to enjoy the flavours of this gentle lady, who, by the sight of her sweet body, forced him to the last extremity, during his now long and weary nights. At first, he pursued her with honied words, but he soon knew ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... man had been recently unfortunate in his sorcery. The corn crop had been cut short by reason of a lack of rain which he had promised should fall in June. He had justified the drought, in the opinion of most of the Indians, by feigning illness and taking to his bed; for by these it was believed that if he had been able to be up ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... magic, was concerned with the evocation of demons and devils—spirits supposed to be superior to man in certain powers, but utterly depraved. Sorcery may be distinguished from witchcraft, inasmuch as the sorcerer attempted to command evil spirits by the aid of charms, etc., whereas the witch or wizard was supposed to have made a pact with the Evil One; though both terms have been rather loosely used, "sorcery" ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... replaced on it what had fallen to the earth." The great lords themselves deigned to become initiated into the occult sciences, and were invested with these formidable powers. A prince who practised magic would enjoy amongst us nowadays but small esteem: in Egypt sorcery was not considered incompatible with royalty, and the magicians of Pharaoh often took Pharaoh himself ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Bolinbrook, a cunning necromancer, and Margery Jordane, the cunning Witch of Eye, that they, at the request of Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, had devised an image of wax, representing the king, (Henry the Sixth,) which by their sorcery a little and a little consumed; intending thereby in conclusion to waste and destroy the king's person. Shakspeare mentions this, Henry VI., P. II., act i., ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... powder into an iron tube, and seal it with an iron signet, lest they steal any of it, and let him seal the mouth of it, lest any harm ensue. Rav Bibi bar Abbai did thus, and he was harmed, but the Rabbis prayed for mercy, and he was healed." Arts of sorcery are attributed to the Rabbis. They are represented as having the power to create both men and melons. One of them is said to have changed a woman into an ass, and ridden the ass to market, when another sorcerer changed the ass ...
— Hebrew Literature
... "if we were in the middle ages, I should explain by magic and sorcery the utter discomfiture of my candidate, and the election of the stone-man, whom you are fated to have for your colleague. How is it possible to believe, what is however the fact, that an old tricoteuse, a former friend of Danton, and now the abbess ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... under constant suspicion of being Christians only formally; it was believed that in their hearts they retained their ancient faith and secretly performed its rites; they were credited with antagonism to Christianity and suspected of practising sorcery to destroy the "Old Christians." There was some basis for the first, at least, of these suspicions. Many doubtless failed to abandon completely their ancestral ceremonies; and not only they but even some Old Christians ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... persons who were accused. The stupefying recipe was known to all jailers, who, for a consideration, communicated it to prisoners. It was this use of anaesthetics that gave rise to the rule of jurisprudence according to which partial or general insensibility was regarded as a certain sign of sorcery. We may cite a certain number of preparations, which vary according to the country, and to which is attributed the properly of giving courage and rendering persons insensible to wounds inflicted by the enemy. In most cases alcohol forms ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... pouting, and smiling and as open as a rose that is unfolding in the sun, when she opened it in a laugh, and showed her pearly teeth, so that it became a target for kisses? Who will ever be able to explain that kind of magic and sorcery which some Chosen Women exercise over all men, that despotic authority, against which nobody would think ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... wonder, marvel; astonishment, amazement, wonderment, bewilderment; amazedness &c adj.^; admiration, awe; stupor, stupefaction; stound^, fascination; sensation; surprise &c (inexpectation) 508 [Obs.]. note of admiration; thaumaturgy &c (sorcery) 992 [Obs.]. V. wonder, marvel, admire; be surprised &c adj.; start; stare; open one's eyes, rub one's eyes, turn up one's eyes; gloar^; gape, open one's mouth, hold one's breath; look aghast, stand ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Noah he was called only by his grandfather Methuselah; his father and all others called him Menahem. His generation was addicted to sorcery, and Methuselah apprehended that his grandson might be bewitched if his true name were known, wherefore he kept it a secret. Menahem, Comforter, suited him as well as Noah; it indicated that he would be a consoler, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... counsel thee, etc. Wherever thou beer drinkest, invoke to thee the power of earth; for earth is good against drink, fire for distempers, the oak for constipation, a corn-ear for sorcery, a hall for domestic strife. In bitter hates invoke the moon; the biter for bite-injuries is good; but runes against calamity; fluid let ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... perhaps, of that evening when the Russian girl had been at little pains to disguise her interest in this man. And Palla had noticed it—noticed that Marya was seated too near him—noticed that, and the subtle attitude of provocation, and the stealthy evolution of that occult sorcery which one woman instantly divines in another and ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... this place There came a man of Sicily, Who when the image he did see, Knew full well who, in days of yore, Had set it there; for much strange lore, In Egypt and in Babylon, This man with painful toil had won; And many secret things could do; So verily full well he knew That master of all sorcery Who wrought the thing in days gone by, And doubted not that some great spell It guarded, but could nowise tell What it might be. So, day by day, Still would he loiter on the way, And watch the image carefully, ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... made me shudder," she says, "until I reasoned the matter out,"—a single, silent, motionless object; the figure of a woman leaning against its lattice. By careful scrutiny she made it out to be only a sorcery of moonbeams that fell aslant from the farther side through the skylight of the belvedere's roof and sifted through the lattice. Would that there were no more reality ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... extreamly addicted to Sorcery, Inchantments, Astrology and Divinations, Isa. xlvii. 9, 12, 13. Dan. ii. 2, & v. 11. and to the worship of Idols, Jer. l. 2, 40. and to feasting, wine and women. Nihil urbis ejus corruptius moribus, nec ad irritandas illiciendasque ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... letters, M. Huysman, who has passed out of Zolaism in the direction of transcendental religion, is, in a certain sense, the discoverer of modern Satanism. Under the thinnest disguise of fiction, he gives in his romance of La Bas, an incredible and untranslatable picture of sorcery, sacrilege, black magic, and nameless abominations, secretly practised in Paris. Possessing a brilliant reputation, commanding a wide audience, and with a psychological interest attaching to his own personality, which more than literary excellence infuses a contagious element into private ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... charming—and I use the epithet in all the significance of its sorcery. She conveys to me each morning his Excellency's instructions for my day's work; and it is only by a mighty effort I can tear myself from the magic thrill of her voice, and the captivation of her manner, to follow what I ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... thoughtful historians, and has been considered to tell strongly in the tribunal of equity in favor of the Templars. Instead of these probable or possible crimes, we find nothing but monstrous charges of sorcery, idolatry, apostasy, and such like, instances of which we know are to be found in those strange times; but which it seems altogether unlikely would infect a large body whose fundamental principle was close adherence to Christianity; a body which was spread all over the world, and which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Tyro, in Homer, loved the divine Enipeus. We hold it "far the fairest of the floods that run upon the earth." How dear the border scenery was to Dr. John Brown, and how well he knew and could express its legendary magic, its charm woven of countless ancient spells, the music of old ballads, the sorcery of old stories, may be understood by readers of his essay on "Minchmoor." {3} The father of Dr. Brown was the third in a lineage of ministers of the sect called Seceders. To explain who the Seceders were, it would be necessary to explore the sinking morasses of Scotch ecclesiastical ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... this belief. "What aileth them, that they believe not the resurrection?"11 "Is not He who created man able to quicken the dead?"12 "The scoffers say, 'Shall we be raised to life, and our forefathers too, after we have become dust and bones? This is nothing but sorcery.'"13 First, Israfil will blow the blast of consternation. After an interval, he will blow the blast of examination, at which all creatures will die and the material universe will melt in horror. Thirdly, he will blow ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... them soars a dazzling sky, In winter blue and clear as steel, In summer like an arctic sea Wherein vast icebergs drift and reel And melt like sudden sorcery. ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... can soon be broken; he knew many receipts out of Albertus Magnus, Raimundus Lallus, Theophrastus, Paracelsus, &c., against sorcery and evil witches." ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... the deeper channels, and building a causeway elsewhere. But in the face of an active enemy this was no easy task; and so frequently were the Normans surprised by Hereward that they believed he must be aided by sorcery, and employed the "witch," who perished by fire (as mentioned in another Note), to counteract his magic, with ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... rebukes the conceit of sin, and foreshadows its doom. With his spiritual strength, he has opened wide the gates of glory, and illumined the night of paganism with the 571:30 sublime grandeur of divine Science, outshining sin, sorcery, lust, and hypocrisy. He takes away mitre and sceptre. He enthrones pure and undefiled religion, and lifts on 572:1 high only those who have washed their robes ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the E. of the Black Sea, and S. of Caucasus, where the Argonauts, according to Greek tradition, found and conquered the Golden Fleece; the natives had a reputation for witchcraft and sorcery. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Balue, insolently, "the affairs of purgatory are in my ministry, and I am bound to inform you that there is sorcery going ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... good men whom it has beguiled, because it professed to meet the earnest craving of their minds for a restoration of Christ's church with power, need not fear to open their eyes to its hollowness; like the false miracles of fraud or sorcery, it is but the counterfeit of a real truth. The restoration of the church, is, indeed, the best consummation of all our prayers, and all our labours; it is not a dream, not a prospect to be seen only in the remotest distance; ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... also in "The Annals of Ireland," in the second volume of Gibson's Camden, 3rd edition, sub eod. anno. He was nearly related to the lady Alice Kettle, and her son William Utlawe, al. Outlaw; against whom that singular charge of sorcery was brought by Richard Lederede, Bishop of Ossory. The account of this charge is so curious that, for the benefit of those readers of "N. & Q." who may not have the means of referring to the books above cited, I am tempted to extract it ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... divinity; but those people know little of Mahomet's religion save its externals, and are practically "barbarous atheists." The people are largely governed by omens; they sometimes offer sacrifices to their old-time idols, but these have little real hold on them. Sorcery has great vogue among them, and Corralat and other powerful chiefs excel in it; this is one source of their ascendancy. Combes describes their mode of life: their food (which is little besides boiled rice), their clothing, their houses and furniture; and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... farmhouse? For so exquisite and unique a fragrance could only be the work of a master perfumer. There was youth in that vigorous hair, coquetry in the individual perfume, panic in her useless sacrifice of the braid I held; yet strangest self-possession in the telling of that fanciful tale of sorcery to me. ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... "There's sorcery at the bottom of it," said a sinister voice in the crowd. It was that of the bald man, who never removed ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... her soft white body, to stamp out her life, to annihilate her and gloat over her shrieking despair. She felt like some hapless little princess in a fairy-tale who had wandered into a monstrous land of black sorcery. ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... pondered on the possibilities they grew darker and more distorted in his mind; he thought vaguely of things remote and repulsive, strange forms of slavery or sorcery, and then of ugly things yet more unnatural but nearer home. The figure of Verner seemed to be blackened and transfigured in his imagination, and to stand against varied backgrounds and ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... was one who was known as the True Prince of the Jasper Castle. He had acquired the art of sorcery through the cultivation of magic. The five Ancients begged him to rule as the supreme god. He dwelt above the three and thirty heavens, and the Jasper Castle, of white jade with golden gates, was his. Before him stood the stewards ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... fiercely operative superstition, is unknown in England and other Northern latitudes. On the contrary, to my thinking, the regular old vulgar witch of England and Scotland was but an impersonatrix of the very same superstition. Virgil expresses this mode of sorcery to the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... their dangling hooves, and down the beams Of sunshine dance like motes. Thy languor seems An ocean-depth of love wherein I sink Like some fond Argonaut, right willingly—, Because of wooing eyes upturned to mine, And siren-arms that coil their sorcery About my neck, with kisses so divine, The heavens reel above me, and the sea Swallows and licks its wet ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... Grand. For a few moments in the incantation scene at this performance the audience seemed inclined to ignore the author's sober second thought, and accept the work as a comic instead of romantic opera. The wicked nuns, called back to life by the sorcery of Bertram, amid the ruins of the cloister, appeared to have been stinted by the undertaker in the matter of shrouds, and the procession of gray-wrapped figures in cutty sarks caused the liveliest merriment until the transformation took place, and serious interest was revived by ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... mostly through miracles; he would go back at less cost from Christianity to paganism.... It is only lately that a monster exists, the impious peasant.... The rustic, in spite of school-teachers, even in spite of the cures, believes in sorcerers and in sorcery the same as the Gauls and Romans."—Therefore the means employed against him are wholly external. ("Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," by Abbe Lagrange, pastoral notes of Mgr. Dupanloup, I., 64.) "What has proved ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... not broke: so that the wound in his head had only killed him; which occasioned an universal talk, that he had got proof against shot from the devil, and that the forementioned purse contained the sorcery or charm. However, his brother got liberty to erect a marble monument on him, which instead of honour (the only end of such sumptuous structures) stands yet in St. Andrews as an ensign of his infamy unto ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... mentioned in the Scriptures were of this description. Neither in sacred nor profane ancient history do we find what was understood in the days of our ancestors by witchcraft, which meant a formal and actual compact with the great Prince of evil beings. The sorcery of antiquity consisted in pretending to possess certain mysterious charms, and to do by their means, or by the co-operation of superhuman spirits, without any reference to their character as evil or good beings, what transcends the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... and sorcery proves that we are not exaggerating. It is not very long since the insane were regarded, not as persons suffering from disease, but as criminals and sorcerers, and were treated by punishment and exorcism. The ancients, on the ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... clergy were not always able to save them from the wrath of the populace. The many sects known by the name of Albigenses were Gnostics; but they were better known as Manichees, for the Roman law was severe on Manichees, who were dualists, and by a dualist they meant a worshipper of the devil. Sorcery had not become epidemic and sectarian, but it was suspected occasionally in the twelfth century. We know at the present day to what horrible and loathsome rites Madame de Montespan submitted for the sake ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... Not very effectual if you know what to look for. There are better spells than that for guarding things. Now we'll see what his lordship wants to protect so badly that he practices sorcery without a license." He lifted the lid again, and then opened the inner lid. "It's safe now, my ...
— The Eyes Have It • Gordon Randall Garrett
... marvelled what it might mean. This falcon flew straightway into the chamber, jessed and hooded from the glove, and came where the dame was seated. Whilst the lady yet wondered upon him, the tercel became a young and comely knight before her eyes. The lady marvelled exceedingly at this sorcery. Her blood turned to water within her, and because of her dread she hid her face in her hands. By reason of his courtesy the knight first sought to persuade her to put away ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... you very much, but my love does not blind me to the fact that, no matter, what your talents at sorcery, you are in everyday matters a hopelessly unpractical person. Do you leave this affair to me, and I will manage it with ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... Mankind and his creatures are of no more account in my opinion than those of a council of Aztecs. If a man picks your pocket, do you not consider him thereby disqualified to pronounce any authoritative opinion on matters of ethics? If a man hangs my ancient female relatives for sorcery, as they did in this neighborhood a little while ago, or burns my instructor for not believing as he does, I care no more for his religious edicts than I should for those of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... manufacture. But how do they achieve this astounding feat? How do the Jews succeed in so lording it over the immense majority? By witchcraft? Is it by magic that a few bankers and brokers keep all their competitors in subjugation and handle them at their will and to their own profit? Is it by sorcery that they force their way to the universities and academies? Are they in possession of secret formulas by which they can direct the currents of trade at their will? Recently, loud complaints were raised ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau
... strife. Lohengrin tenderly questions Elsa, who tells him all. As Ortrud's venomous insinuations have had no apparent effect upon her, he is about to lead her into the church, when Telramund suddenly steps forward, loudly declaring that the Swan Knight overcame him by sorcery, and imploring Elsa not to believe ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... Itinerary of Clement it is said in the narrative of Nicetas to Peter, that Simon Magus, by sorcery retained power over the soul of a child that he had slain, and that through this soul he worked magical wonders. But this could not have been without some corporeal change at least as to place. Therefore, the separate soul has the power ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... ground. The medicine men from the South laid equal claim to it. Each wanted it as the stronghold of their witchcraft, their magic. Great bands of these medicine men met on the small space, using every sorcery in their power to drive their opponents away. The witch doctors of the North made their camp on the northern rim of the island; those from the South settled along the southern edge, looking towards what is now the great city of ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... of the precepts of the Old Testament also characterized the Presbyterian reformers. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," was a text, which at once (as they conceived) authorized their belief in sorcery, and sanctioned the penalty which they denounced against it. The Fairies were, therefore, in no better credit after the Reformation than before, being still regarded as actual daemons, or something very little ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... preamble disposed of, he proceeds to the more serious charge of magic. He has, so the indictment says, fascinated a child; he has bought poisons; he keeps something uncanny in his handkerchief, probably some token of sorcery: he offers nocturnal sacrifices, vestiges of which of a suspicious character have been found; and he worships a little skeleton he has made and which he always carries about with him. His answer to these charges is as follows:—the child was ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... "withdraw your displeasure, for this same lady was the falsest lady living, and by enchantment and sorcery she has destroyed many good knights. She it was who through falsehood and treachery caused my mother to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... Catherine, gravely, "is helping me to tie the cow up faster to her stake, for I find that last night when she put her head out of window and lowed, she alarmed the whole village; and—we shall be suspected of sorcery among the heretics, if they do not discover the cause of the apparition, or lose ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... in Paris, on the Quai Voltaire, and in the nineteenth century; the time and place made sorcery impossible. The idol of French scepticism had died in the house just opposite, the disciple of Gay-Lussac and Arago, who had held the charlatanism of intellect in contempt. And yet the stranger submitted himself ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... these strong and violent men. He did not know where his knight was to be found, and, if he had known, it was only too likely that these terrible intentions might be carried out before any messenger could reach him. Indeed, the belief in sorcery was universal, and no rank was exempt from the danger of the accusation. Thora's treachery was specially perilous. All that the young man could do was to seek counsel with Cuthbert Ridley, and even this he was obliged to do ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... contained such statements at all; for, unlike our Bible, the Buddhist canon has undergone wholesale textual alterations.... As to the popular literature of Buddhism, and its absurdities, we might as well collect those little pamphlets on dreams, on sorcery, on lucky and unlucky days, on the lives and miracles of saints, which circulate among Roman Catholic peasants,—but would that give us a true picture of Roman Catholicism? Thus it is with Buddhism."(9) ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... religion. This commentary on the "Essay on Man," then, looks much like the work of a sophist and an adventurer! Pope, who was now alarmed at the tendency of some of those principles he had so innocently versified, received Warburton as his tutelary genius. A mere poet was soon dazzled by the sorcery of erudition; and he himself, having nothing of that kind of learning, believed Warburton to be the Scaliger of the age, for his gratitude far exceeded his knowledge.[172] The poet died in this delusion: he consigned his immortal works to the mercy of a ridiculous commentary ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... claimed to possess was tested by actual demonstration during the trial for his life. His superior skill in planning was universally admitted by his fellow workmen. He did not, however, attribute this superior influence to sorcery, conjuration or such like agencies, for he had the utmost contempt ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... upon mercurial temperaments, Makes hope as prophecy. "Our Emperor Will show himself [say they] in this exploit Unwavering, keen, and irresistible As is the lightning prong. Our vast flotillas Have been embodied as by sorcery; Soldiers made seamen, and the ports transformed To rocking cities casemented with guns. Against these valiants balance England's means: Raw merchant-fellows from the counting-house, Raw labourers from the fields, who thumb for arms Clumsy untempered pikes forged hurriedly, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... surgery." All through the early Middle Ages dissections of human bodies had been forbidden, and even dissection of the lower animals gradually fell into disrepute because physicians detected in such practices were sometimes accused of sorcery. Before the close of the thirteenth century, however, a reaction had begun, physicians were protected, and dissections were occasionally sanctioned by the ruling monarch. Thus Emperor Frederick H. (1194-1250 A.D.)—whose services to science we have already had occasion to mention—ordered that ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... eyes contracted. Kinney took the battered cavalry sabre in his hand, and set its point in the earth floor of the cabin. "Stand back," he said, in mysterious tones, and Cheschapah shrank from the impending sorcery. Now Kinney had been to school once, in his Eastern childhood, and there had committed to memory portions of Shakespeare, Mrs. Hemans, and other poets out of a Reader. He had never forgotten a single word of any of them, and it now occurred to him that for the purposes of an incantation ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... in complicated observances, and the latter into the most appalling licentiousness. The worship of the Sakti, or female principle, has become a most elaborate system. The beings adored are "the most outrageous divinities which man has ever conceived."[30] Sorcery began early in India; but it is in connection with this system that it attains to full development. Human sacrifices are a normal part of the worship when fully performed. We cannot go farther into detail. It is ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... carried off large flocks of cattle—and many Argentines, as captives. They were pursued to the River Colorado, however, when part of the stolen cattle was recovered, and several captives liberated. They are under the belief that when death does not occur, in consequence of violence, it is owing to sorcery. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... my father, famed Miramon Lluagor, because it was the sword which Galas made, in the old time's heyday, for unconquerable Charlemagne. Clerks declare it is a magic weapon and that the man who wields it is always unconquerable. I do not know. I think it is as difficult to believe in sorcery as it is to be entirely sure that all we know is not the sorcery of a drunken wizard. I very potently believe, however, that with this sword I ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... Spring, with its eternal sorcery, caressed the great city. Its spell threw a sheen over the drab things Beryl remembered so well, the brick schoolhouse, the Settlement, the dirty narrow street flanked by dull-brown tenements with ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... cowardly disposition, was a firm believer in the magic that passed current in his day, and was questioned on the rack respecting the object of a waxen figure found among his effects. He admitted he had employed it for sorcery, to advance his suit with a lady whose love he sought. Coconnas, an Italian, instead of inviting contempt for his poltroonery, inspires aversion for his crimes. No assassin had distinguished himself more at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... veraciously in Edom! The fool sighs for a fair woman,—what else should he do, being a fool? Ah, madonna, as in very remote times that notable jester, Love, popped out of Night's wind-egg, and by his sorcery fashioned from the primeval tangle the pleasant earth that sleeps about us,—even thus, may he not frame the disorder of a fool's brain into the semblance of a lover's? Believe me, the change is not so great as you might think. Yet if you will, laugh ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... mountain, and strewn with sweet-smelling flowers, was now as foul as the den of the man-devouring troll of the heaths. From the fair-carven roof of oak and chestnut-beams hung ugly knots of rags and shapeless images of the sorcery of the Dusky Men. And furthermore, and above all, from the last tie-beam of the roof over the dais dangled four shapes of men-at-arms, whom the older men of the Wolf knew at once for the embalmed bodies of their four great chieftains, who had been slain on the day of the Great Undoing; and ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... sickness he is called in, not as M.D. in our acceptation, but as "doctor of magic," and he charms both the hut and the patient against death, with the fluctuating results that must attend professionals even in sorcery. His subjects have the most thorough confidence in his power; and so great is his reputation that distant tribes frequently consult him, and beg his assistance as a magician. In this manner does old Katchiba hold his sway over his savage, but credulous people; and so long has he imposed upon the ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... by the Indians of medicine against sickness, I learned only that they are in the habit of taking various herbs for their ailments. What part incantation or sorcery plays in the healing of disease I do not know. Nor did I learn what the Indians think of the origin and effects of dreams. Me-le told me that he knows of a plant the leaves of which, eaten, will cure the bite of a rattlesnake, and that he knows also of a plant which ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... substituting one Fetich for another. The delighted negroes went to mass as to their favorite Calenda; the tawdry garments and detestable drone of the priest, whose only Catholicism was his indiscriminate viciousness, appeared to them a superior sorcery; the Host was a great Gree-gree; the muttered liturgy was a palaver with the spirits; music, incense, and gilding charmed them for a while away from the barbarous ritual of their midnight serpent-worship. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... the existence of the system. In the reign of Philip the Good, the vicar of the inquisitor-general gave sentence against some heretics, who were burned in Lille (1448). In 1459, Pierre Troussart, a Jacobin monk, condemned many Waldenses, together with some leading citizens of Artois, accused of sorcery and heresy. He did this, however, as inquisitor for the Bishop of Arras, so that it was an act of episcopal, and not papal inquisition. In general, when inquisitors were wanted in the provinces, it was necessary to borrow them from France ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of magic in the first harmonics of strings, and the sense of sorcery is always sustained ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... Tortoise; the second of the Beaver, and the third of the Wolf. In battle, the totum was borne as the standard. The criminal code was not elaborate, yet it sufficed to maintain order in the small republics. Murder, robbery treason and sorcery were the crimes understood to entail its penalties. Instead of being punished by death, murder was expiated by a very large number of presents, to provide which, not only the assassin, but every family in the village was laid under contribution. The punishment of the criminal ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... the humiliation and ruin of their enemies became more and more the objects towards which their occult powers were directed: and thus turned from their lawful use, and practised for all sorts of selfish and malevolent purposes, they inevitably led to what we must call by the name of sorcery. ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot |
