Page:The Annual Register 1758.djvu/289

 

E tells things past, prefent, and to come, by means of a quobdas, kannus, or drum, handed down from nine generations from his great ancestor Ulan Gorff, who, in the reign of Swein, King of Norway, was burnt for being a wizard, being charged by some missionaries with having a familiar, but was in reality no other than a Gam, or good genius, which is a constant attendant on the chief fire of each tribe of the Laplanders and most of the aborigines or old inhabitants of Scandinavia, and all the regions of the north.

His life hath been devoted to the study of astrology; and he hereby informs the learned, that his chief reason of his present visit to these southern regions of the globe, is to have the opportunity of beholding and observing the expected amazing comet, or blazing star, whose appearance was predicted by him in his Ephemeris Septentrionalis, published at Copenhagen and Stockholm in 1745, the transit of which, being by him and Dr. Halley laid down to the south of the equinoctial line, could not be observed in his own country, the latitude or altitude of the pole being there 73 degrees north, consequently the comet's path being below the horizon of Lapland, that stupendous phænomenon will be invisible to all the inhabitants thereof.

He begs leave to acquaint the public, that he hath by frequent converse with some Bramins (who, by means of the Russian caravans from China and India, have passed from the east into Norway) acquired all the wisdom of the oriental Magi or Gymnosophists, the same as that of the ancient soothsayers, modern rosycrusians, or followers of Peter Lully, the first European professor of the cabalistical and hermetic arts, derived originally from the Pythagorean sect; and hath, according to the unalterable rule and law of the original founder, condemned himself to a septennial silence and cessation of speech, but utters his responses in writing, void of all ambiguity, and easy to be comprehended by the meanest capacity.

He therefore professes and understands all the mysteries of chyromanchy, alectromanchy, and catoptromanchy, he having a magical glass to be consulted upon some extraordinary occasions. He can also divine either by hydromanchy or necromancy, and is fully possessed of the art, called by the Greeks, oneiocritica, or the interpretation of dreams: and will prove to the virtuosi, that he hath the true selinites lac lunæ, or moonstone, proper for the making of talismans, only to be found genuine near the dreadful volcano of Mount Hecla in Iceland; and though he also hath in his museum several of the mystical knots and magical darts of his countrymen, the Samoides and Finlanders, he sticks chiefly to his drum.

From all which it is evident, (even to the literati themselves)