Note 24 — V.—CHARMS, SPELLS, AMULETS AND DIVINATIONS.

1 Popular Antiquities, Vol. III. p. 268. ↑

2 Journal of the N. C. B. Royal Asiatic Society, 1869–70, p. 78. ↑

3 China Mail, Sept. 19, 1872. ↑

4 Journal N. C. B. R. A. S. 1853–54, pp. 34 et seq. ↑

5 Lancashire Folk-lore, p. 256. ↑

6 Chinese Repository, Vol. VII., p. 393. ↑

7 Social Life of the Chinese, Vol. II., p. 313. ↑

8 Notes and Queries on China and Japan, Vol. III., p. 98. ↑

9 Mr. Alabaster, in his work on Siamese Buddhism, “The Wheel of the Law,” gives the number of diagrams as 108. ↑

10 Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, Art. “Thor’s Hammer.” ↑

11 Social Life of the Chinese, Vol. 2, p. 311. ↑

12 Not long ago a native said to me, “Would you like A to hate B?” speaking of a bad man who had a very evil influence over a good honest man. Without thinking, I replied, “Yes; it would be the best thing that ever happened.” He only answered me by a gesture of the hand, which literally means, “Leave it to me.” The next day he secured a bit of the bad man’s hair, and sewed it into the coat of the good man. Strange enough, as chance fell out, that day an event happened which opened the eyes of the latter to his friend’s character, and they parted company. Of course nothing would persuade the native that it was not the effect of his charm.—The Inner Life of Syria, by Isabel Burton. ↑

13 In France, an old woman told me to take a small piece of hair exactly at the top of my head and twist round a little slip of wood tightly, to cure a relaxed uvula, or sore throat.—Correspondent, Notes and Queries. ↑

14 The Hakkas are a separate, and it is believed older, race than the Cantonese. They speak a different dialect. ↑

15 Popular Antiquities, Vol. III., p. 259. ↑

16 Social Life of the Chinese, Vol. II. p. 308. ↑

17 Louis Napoleon in his will emphasizes the solemn declaration: “With regard to my son, let him keep as a talisman the seal I used to wear attached to my watch.” This piece of fetishism would appear to have formed yet another link between the imperial exile that has passed from our midst, and those Latin races whose cause he affected to represent, whose superstition he certainly shared.—Chambers’ Journal. ↑

18 Social Life of the Chinese, Vol. II. p. 314. ↑

19 correspondent of the Indian Pioneer says that, among the articles taken as fines from the Dufflas are certain gongs supposed to be very ancient, and which they appear to regard with the greatest reverence. For the edification of readers curious in such matters, we may observe that gongs, or bells, are also among the holy paraphernalia, or fetishes, of the Neilgherry Todas. A Duffla Chief would sooner part with half his kingdom than with his gong. ↑

20 Kitto’s Cyclopædia of Bib. Lit., Art. Bell. ↑

21 While these pages are passing through the press I come across the following paragraph in the Paris correspondence of a leading London Journal. The rumour it gives may be entirely untrue, but I quote it as a specimen of ordinary newspaper gossip in 1875 on the subject under notice:—“It is now known that the Napoleonic talisman is safe; and, so long as that talisman remains in the Bonapartist family, the tradition is that, however much the eagle’s wings may be clipped, the imperial bird will soar at last. On the afternoon of September 4, 1870, as the Empress Eugenie was flying from her apartments to the dentist’s cab which was to take her out of Paris, she pointed to several large boxes containing important papers, and to a small but extremely heavy metal casket, and said to M. Thelen, one of the few faithful servants that remained with her to the last—‘Save those papers, but above all save that casket, and preserve it as you would your own soul.’ In that mysterious casket, doubly and trebly locked, the Napoleonic talisman lay. M. Thelen had the boxes and casket thus confided to him transferred with all possible speed to the house of his sister in one of the quietest suburbs of Paris. But the September 4 Government soon got wind of the affair, and their emissaries were not long before making a descent at the house of M. Thelen’s sister. They found and carried off the papers, but the casket containing the talisman escaped them. It had been concealed in a hole in the wall behind a small map representing the seat of war. In due time the talisman was conveyed to Chiselhurst, where it now is; and so long as it remains in the keeping of the Imperial family, it will be safe to bet on the restoration of Napoleon IV. As the curious reader would, perhaps, like to know in what the talisman consists, I may inform him that it is a large sapphire which Napoleon I. cribbed from the crown of Charlemagne when he took the indecent liberty of having that monarch’s coffin opened up at Aix-la-Chapelle.” ↑

22 I speak in the text of writers in the English language. But Du Halde gives some interesting details in his well-known work. Colonel Yule, in his Marco Polo, Vol. I., p. 290, draws attention to this fact in a note upon the Taosse (Taoists), whom he defines as “worshippers of the mystic cross Swasti. Apparently they had at their command the whole encyclopædia of modern spiritualism. Du Halde mentions amongst their sorceries the act of producing by their invocations the figures of the Laotseu and their divinities in the air, and of making a pencil to write answers to questions without anybody touching it.” This is evidently a Chinese version of Mr. Daniel Home’s alleged powers, and the coincidence is more than strange. ↑

23 機筆靈靈日有精神我今取爾用事指明. ↑

24 妙奪天機. ↑

25 (大王菩薩.) ↑

26 (雲遊大仙.) ↑

27 成. ↑

28 是也. ↑

29 見笑. ↑

30 蒙諸君厚禮我今要請別而去. ↑

31 請去. ↑

32 (曉迷魂法者). ↑

33 (仙婆). ↑

34 (司命灶君). ↑

35 (大學). ↑

36 (七姊). ↑

37 (織女星). ↑

38 (昴星). ↑

39 (七姑星). ↑

40 蠱毒. ↑

41 咒. ↑

42 Gibbon (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) says: “This mode of divination by accepting as an omen the first sacred words which in particular circumstances should be presented to the eye or ear was derived from the Pagans, and the Psalter or Bible was substituted for the poems of Homer or Virgil. From the fourth to the fourteenth century these sortes sanctorum, as they are styled, were repeatedly condemned by the decrees of councils, and repeatedly practised by Kings, Bishops and Saints.” ↑

43 女. ↑

44 Pop. Antiquities, Vol. III., p. 350. ↑

45 Ibid., Vol. III., p. 357. ↑