Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/219

Rh MAGIC 201 whom the art of writing consolidated and developed false as well as true science, we find magic in full vogue, hardly differing in principle from that of the illiterate barbarians, but worked into more elaborate system and ritual. Of ancient Egyptian magic various original documents have been preserved, containing formulas, mostly of religious magic, that is, acting through the aid of deities invoked. For instance, there are hymns against dangerous animals in the water, and spells for remaining in the country; and the power ascribed to such formulas appears from passages like the following : &quot; I confide in the efficacy of that excellent written book given to-day into my hand, which repels lions through fascination, disables men, ..... which muzzles the mouths of lions, hyaenas, wolves, ..... the mouth of all men who have bad faces, so as to paralyse their limbs,&quot; &amp;lt;kc. Ancient as Egyptian magic is, it has evidently grown up from still earlier forms, as is shown by that plainest symp tom of old traditional lore, the relying on ancient or foreign epithets as words of power over the gods. This practice appears in the ancient papyri, and goes on to later ages, when the god Set is invoked by other mystically powerful names which he must obey, such as &quot; Joerbetb.&quot; The medical art in ancient Egypt shows an interesting com bination of practical and magical remedies. The practical recipe might contain nitre or cedar chips, or deer horn, or various other ingredients administered in ointment or drunk in beer, but with this the magical formula was also required to deal with the demon-cause of the ailment. Thus an emetic was given with the following formula, &quot;O demon who art lodged in the stomach of M., son of N., thou whose father is called Head-smiter, whose name is Death, whose name is cursed for ever ! &quot; &c. It must be remembered that such formulas, foolish as they seem to modern educa tion, had and still have great efficacy in relieving the mind of the superstitious patient, and giving a fair chance to diet and medicaments. Their appearance in medicine so ancient as that of Egypt is good historical evidence how the old magical treatment was encroached upon by natural remedies, though then and for many ages afterwards the physicians, wise in their generation, thought it best not to- discard the supernatural charm. The Egyptians divided out the limbs and organs of the human body, putting each under the special care of a god, a system which, like many other details of their magic, has lasted on into the modern world. From the astrological point of view they made a calendar of lucky and unlucky days, according to which for instance on the 19th of the month Athor one must not embark on the Nile, while a child born on the 5th of the mouth Paopi will be killed by a bull; traces of this set of precepts may be discerned still in the modern Egyptian almanac. Another point deserving attention is the appear ance in early Egypt of the distinction between good and bad magic. Magical curative arts were practised by learned scribes or priests, and were doubtless in high esteem, but when it came to attracting love by charms or philtres, or paralysing men by secret arts, this was held to be a crime. As long ago as the time of Rameses III. it is recorded that one Hai was accused of making images and paralysing a man s hand, for which he was condemned to death ; this was doubtless the ordinary bewitching by an image or pic ture, here already mentioned among the lower races, and to be mentioned again as not forgotten among ourselves. 1 Still more prominent among the ancient nations who brought magic into its pseudo-scientific stage were the Babylonians, whose supernatural arts were adopted and continued among the Assyrians. No savage tribe ever filled their world with more swarming hosts of nature- 1 Records of the Past, vols. vi. , x. ; Maspero, Hist. Anc. des Peuples de I Orient, p. 84 ; F. Chabas, Le Papyrus Magique Harris, spirits and demons ; only these more cultured nations dealt systematically with them by set formulas of propitiation and expulsion. The cuneiform writings preserve numerous documents of this kind, such as &quot; From the burning spirit of the entrails which devours the man, from the spirit of the entrails which works evil, may the king of heaven preserve, may the king of earth preserve !&quot; &quot;The god .... shall stand by his bedside. Those seven evil spirits he shall root out, and shall expel them from his body ; and those seven shall never return to the sick man again.&quot; The magic power believed to reside in the secret names of the gods was recognized by the Babylonians, one of whoso famous myths relates how by the utterance of these mystic names the goddess Ishtar was delivered from Hades. In the rites of the magician priests, this kind of supernatural power resided in sacred texts, whether chanted or tied cm as phylacteries. In divinatory magic the Babylonians had elaborate codes of rules, of which many have been preserved. Thus omens were drawn from prodigies, such as &quot; when a woman bears a child and at the time of birth its teeth are cut, the days of the prince will be long.&quot; So with omens from animals : &quot; if a dog goes to the palace and lies down on a throne, that palace will be burned.&quot; .A remarkable passage, Ezekiel xxi. 21, mentions three modes of divination practised by the king of Babylon as he stood at the head of the two ways : &quot; he shuffled arrows, he con sulted teraphim, he looked in the liver.&quot; The arrow- divination or belomancy here mentioned was done with pointless arrows marked and drawn as lots. They are often represented on Babylonian and Assyrian cylinders, and their use was kept up among the Arabs till the time of Mohammed. The Babylonian rules of haruspication, or examining the entrails of animals, were most minute, to judge from the omens of prosperity or misfortune to be drawn from the twisting and colour of the intestines of an ass. Diodorus Siculus (ii. 29, &c.), in his account of the Chaldtean priests, mentions with evidently good information their hereditary skill in various branches of magic, their use of purifications, sacrifices, and chants, to avert evil and obtain good, their foretelling by omens, dreams, prodigies, &c. But it is on their astrology that he deservedly lays the greatest stress. The five planets, which they called &quot;interpreters,&quot; they held to portend events by their rising and setting and their colour, foretelling the wind or rain or heat, comets also, and eclipses of the sun and moon, and earthquakes, and atmospheric changes, beneficial or harm ful, both to nations and kings and common men. The Babylonian calendars still remain to show how eclipses were brought into connexion with floods, invasions, good and bad harvests, such ideas being worked out, not by mere arbitrary fancy, but from such fancied regularities as that _the same weather and the same famines and pestilences tended to recur in a cycle of twelve years. To the Babylonian astrological system belong the stars of men s nativities, the planetary houses, the twelve signs of the zodiac (probably invented in observatories in Babylon), while the fixed stars are associated with the planets and gods in a system which is seen at a glance to be the astrology which later nations of Asia and Europe have followed since with servile faithfulness. 2 Egypt and Babylon, as these brief notices show, were the chief sources whence the world learnt what may be called the higher branches of occult science, and from the historical point of view the magical rites and beliefs of other ancient Eastern nations, such as Asia Minor and India, are of little importance. It was mainly through Greece and Rome that magic was consolidated and 2 See Sayce in Records of the Past, vols. i., iii. , v. ; Trans. Soc. Biblical Archaeology, vols. iii. , iv. ; Lenormant, Mayie cliez les Chaldtens, and Divination chcz les Chaldeens. XV. 26
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