Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/547

Rh person represented by the statuette is supposed to be wounded in the same way. Others, having made and named the statuette, put it where the sun will shine upon it, and as it wastes away in the heat the person represented by it declines, until, when it has all melted away, the person dies—very much like a Western form of enchantment.

Another form of sorcery is beating a buffalo hide with an enchanted stick, pronouncing a magic formula the while, to cause the hide to shrink till it is invisible. It is then ordered to enter the stomach of the victim of the spell, and obeys, when it swells out again till the victim is killed. Yet, if the stomach is examined after death, nothing will be found in it, because the hide has shrunk again to nothing.

These sorcerers pretend to cure diseases. When they are called for this purpose, the first thing looked after is the day when the malady developed itself, for each of the spirits has its special day for appearing, and it is important to know which of them is to be driven away. The "doctor" hardly looks at the patient, for he is of no account in the affair, and the spirit is all. He molds three rude statuettes with rice dough, and puts them in a small box made of a single piece of banana bark, and by the side of it ten leaf packages containing food. A wax candle is attached to one side of the box, and a fragrant stick to each corner. The exorcist then takes an areca knife, and with it touches the forehead at the root of the hairs three times, saying in Cambodian: "One, two, three (mé keo, mé kot, mé chan, or mé si). Come out of this body, go back to your country, so that this sick man may be no longer ill." He lays the knife by the side of the patient, takes the banana-bark box, goes out of the house toward the south, crosses the yard, and throws the box over the fence or the hedge. He returns, declaring that the evil spirits have gone home and the man is cured, and recites a prayer in Pâli. If the patient fails to recover, they say the spirit has refused to obey, and begin the performance again after two days.

The sorcerers are also fortune tellers. In one of their methods they use a tablet containing twelve figures arranged around a square. The figures are the tower, the silver parasol, the royal dragon, the silver house, the golden house, the dragon that causes eclipses, the golden parasol, the angel, the man with his head cut off, the doctor, the witch, and the man's head without a body. When consulted, the honorable prophet sets his tablet before him, so as to have the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 12 at the bottom. Having ascertained the sex and age of his consultant, he counts up and refers to the figure on the tablet supposed to correspond to them. If he does not know by heart the prophecies which he is to draw from each figure, he