Note 132.3 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

The curse, if curse it were, involved in the rite practised by Professor Westermarck’s servant was not of the kind dependent on the utterance of a name. It was rather of that in which the curse is conveyed by a sign or figure deriving its power from the orenda of the magician himself. I have already referred to one species of such curses intended for the protection of property by marking it as taboo to the owner.132.3 In this form they are chiefly used by the Malayo-Polynesian and Melanesian peoples and on the eastern side of Central Africa, though they have their analogues elsewhere.132.4 The leaden tablets of defixiones employed by the ancient Greeks, of which numerous examples are known, show a similar practice founded on similar ideas. The tablet is inscribed with the name of the person intended to be injured, and it is then “defixed,” or bound, with a nail. The ceremony was doubtless accompanied by some words expressive of the intention. Indeed the expression of the intention was in course of time recorded on the tablet. A further stage in development was reached when the gods were invoked, beginning with Hermes and Ge, and going on to other chthonic divinities. Later, apparently towards the end of the third century B.C., the custom began of devoting to various gods lost property and the thief who had stolen it. Such tablets affixed to the walls of temples doubtless served the purpose of our advertisements for the recovery of lost or stolen property. The difference is that, whereas we offer material rewards, the Greeks invoked the help of the gods and threatened the thief or receiver with supernatural vengeance.133.1 The use of defixiones spread into Italy, and has lasted into quite modern times, or, it may be truer to say, was revived under the influence of learned men who at the close of the Middle Ages became imbued with the astrology and magic of earlier days. One of these learned men, Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, who attained high judicial office under the Emperor Charles the Fifth, but afterwards got into trouble for his occult studies, wrote a book on Occult Philosophy, which was translated into English in the middle of the seventeenth century. At that time the study of magic was falling into disrepute. Agrippa’s book was left to charlatans who preyed upon the ignorant. Some of the results have been found up and down the country in the form of leaden tablets inscribed with curses, mystical numbers and signs, names of the spirits invoked to make the curses effectual and of the victims against whom the curses were intended to operate.133.2 In these modern cases the powers appealed to are no longer beings recognized by the dominant religion. They are relics of religions passed away, or figments of the pedantic imagination. Magic, in short, has for purposes of private vengeance been ousted from religion and has set up for itself.