SCORPION

Tylor, Edward Burnett, Sir, 1832-1917

"Primitive culture : researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom"

 CHAPTER IV.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE (continued). PAG*

Occult Sciences Magical powers attributed by higher to lower races-
Magical processes based on Association of Ideas Omens Augury,
&c. Oneiromancy Haruspication,Scapulimancy, Chiromancy, &c.
Cartomancy, &c. Rhabdomancy,Dactyliomancy, Coscinomancy,
& c> Astrology Intellectual conditions accounting for the persist-
ence of Magic Survival passes into Revival Witchcraft, origina-
ting in savage culture, continues in barbaric civilization ; its decline
in early mediaeval Europe followed by revival ; its practices and
counter-practices belong to earlier culture Spiritualism has its
source in early stage* of culture, in close connexion with witchcraft
Spirit-rapping and Spirit-writing Rising in the air Performances
of tied mediums Practical bearing of the study of Survival . . 112

CHAPTER IV.
SURVIVAL IN CULTURE (continued).

Occult Sciences Magical powers attributed by higher to lower

Magical processes based on Association of Ideas Omens Augury, &c.
Oneiromancy Haruspication, Scapulimancy, Chiromancy, &c.
Cartomancy, &c. Rhabdomancy, Dactyliomancy, Coscinomancy, &c.
Astrology Intellectual conditions accounting for the persistence of
Magic Survival passes into Revival Witchcraft, originating in
savage culture, continues in barbaric civilization ; its decline in early
mediaeval Europe followed by revival ; its practices and counter-
practices belong to earlier culture Spiritualism has its source in
early stages of culture, in close connexion with witchcraft Spirit-
rapping and Spirit-writing Rising in the air Performances of tied
mediums Practical bearing of the study of Survival.

IN examining the survival of opinions in the midst of
conditions of society becoming gradually estranged from
them, and tending at last to suppress them altogether, much
may be learnt from the history of one of the most pernicious
delusions that ever vexed mankind, the belief in Magic.
Looking at Occult Science from this ethnographic point of
view, I shall instance some of its branches as illustrating
the course of intellectual culture. Its place in history is
briefly this. It belongs in its main principle to the lowest
known stages of civilization, and the lower races, who have
not partaken largely of the education of the world, still
maintain it in vigour. From this level it may be traced
upward, much of the savage art holding its place sub-
stantially unchanged, and many new practices being in
course of time developed, while both the older and newer
developments have lasted on more or less among modern
cultured nations. But during the ages in which progressive

112
ANTIQUITY OF MAGIC. 113

races have been learning to submit their opinions to closer
and closer experimental tests, occult science has been break-
ing down into the condition of a survival, in which state we
mostly find it among ourselves.

The modern educated world, rejecting occult science as a
contemptible superstition, has practically committed itself
to the opinion that magic belongs to a lower level of
civilization. It is very instructive to find the soundness of
this judgment undesignedly confirmed by nations whose
education has not advanced far enough to destroy their
belief in magic itself. In any country an isolated or out-
lying race, the lingering survivor of an older nationality ,jls
liable to the reputation of sorcery. It is thus vith tje
Lavas of Burma, supposed to be the broken-down remains
of an ancient cultured race, and dreaded as man-tigers; 1
and with the Budas of Abyssinia, who are at once the smiths
and potters, sorcerers and were- wolves, of their district.* But
the usual and suggestive state of things is that nations who
believe with the sincerest terror in the reality of the magic
art, at the same time cannot shat their eyes to the fact that
it more essentially belongs to, and is more thoroughly at
home among, races less civilised than themselves. The
Malays of the Peninsula, who have adopted Mohammedan
religion and civilization, have this idea of the lower tribes
of the land, tribes more or less of their own race, but who have
remained in their early savage condition. The Malays have
enchanters of their own, but consider them inferior to the
sorcerers or poyangs belonging to the rude Mintira ; to these
they will resort for the cure of diseases and the working of
misfortune and death to their enemies. It is, in fact, the
best protection the Mintira have against their stronger
Malay neighbours, that these are careful not to offend them
for fear of their powers of magical revenge. The Jakuns,
again, are a rude and wild race, whom the Malays despise
as infidels and little higher than animals, but whom at the

1 Bast ian, ' Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. p. 1 19.

8 ' Life of Nath. Pearce,' ed. by J. J. Halls, vol. i. p. 286.

114 ' SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

same time they fear extremely. To the Malay the Jakun
seems a supernatural being, skilled in divination, sorcery,
and fascination, able to do evil or good according to his
pleasure, whose blessing will be followed by the most
fortunate success, and his curse by the most dreadful con-
sequences ; he can turn towards the house of an enemy, at
whatever distance, and beat two sticks together till that
enemy will fall sick and die ; he is skilled in herbal physic ;
he has the power of charming the fiercest wild beasts.
Thus it is that the Malays, though they despise the Jakuns,
refrain, in many circumstances, from ill-treating them. 1 In
India, in long-past ages, the dominant Aryans described the
rude indigenes of the land by the epithets of ' possessed of
magical powers/ ' changing their shape at will.' 2 To this
day, Hindus settled in Chota-Nagpur and Singbhum firmly
believe that the Mundas have powers of witchcraft, whereby
they can transform themselves into tigers and other beasts
of prey to devour their enemies, and can witch away the
lives of man and beast ; it is to the wildest and most
savage of the tribe that such powers are generally ascribed. 8
In Southern India, again, we hear in past times of
Hinduized Dravidians, the Sudras of Canara, living in fear
of the demoniacal powers of the slave-caste below them. 4
In our own day, among Dravidian tribes of the Nilagiri
district, the Todas and Badagas are in mortal dread of the
Kurumbas, despised and wretched forest outcasts, but
gifted, it is believed, with powers of destroying men and
animals and property by witchcraft. 5 Northern Europe
brings the like contrast sharply into view. The Finns and
Lapps, whose low Tatar barbarism was characterized by
sorcery such as flourishes still among their Siberian kins-

' Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. i. p. 328 ; vol. ii. p. 273 ; see vol. iv. p. 425.

Muir, ' Sanskrit Texts,' part ii. p. 435.

Dalton, ' Kols/ in ' Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. vi. p. 6 ; see p. 16.

Jas. Gardner, ' Faiths of the World,' s.v. ' Exorcism.'

Shortt, ' Tribes of Neilgherries,' in ' Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. vii. pp. 247,
277; Sir W. Elliot in 'Trans. Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology,' 1868,
P- *53-

SORCERERS OF LOWER RACES.

folk, were accordingly objects of superstitious fear to their
tndinavian neighbours and oppressors. In the middle
jes the name of Finn was, as it still remains among sea-
ing men, equivalent to that of sorcerer, while Lapland

itches had a European celebrity as practitioners of the

>lack art. Ages after the Finns had risen in the social scale,
le Lapps retained much of their old half-savage habit of

life, and with it naturally their witchcraft, so that even the
lagic-gifted Finns revered the occult powers of a people

lore barbarous than themselves. Runs writes thus early
the last century : ' There are still sorcerers in Finland,

>ut the skilfullest of them believe that the Lapps far
them ; of a well-experienced magician they say, "That
quite a Lapp," and they journey to Lapland for such
lowledge.' 1 All this is of a piece with the survival of
ich ideas among the ignorant elsewhere in the civilized

rorld. Many a white man in the West Indies and Africa
reads the incantations of the Obi-man, and Europe

ascribes powers of sorcery to despised outcast ' races
ludites/ Gypsies and Cagots. To turn from nations to
:ts, the attitude of Protestants to Catholics in this matter
instructive. It was remarked in Scotland : ' There is

me opinion which many of them entertain, .... that a
>pish priest can cast out devils and cure madness, and

that the Presbyterian clergy have no such power/ So

lourne says of the Church of England clergy, that the
Igar think them no conjurers, and say none can lay

spirits but popish priests. 2 These accounts are not recent,

but in Germany the same state of things appears to exist

still. Protestants get the aid of Catholic priests and monks

to help them against witchcraft, to lay ghosts, consecrate
jrbs, and discover thieves ; 3 thus with unconscious irony

judging the relation of Rome toward modern civilization.
The principal key to the understanding of Occult Science

1 F. Riihs, ' Finland,' p. 296 ; Bastian, ' Mensch.' vol. iii. p. 202.

2 Brand, ' Pop. Ant.' vol. iii. pp. 81-3 ; see p.' 313.

? Wuttke, ' Deutsche Volksaberglaube,' p. 128 ; see p. 239,

Il6 t SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

is to consider it as based on the Association of Ideas, a
faculty which lies at the very foundation of human reason,
but in no small degree of human unreason also. Man, as
yet in a low intellectual condition, having come to associate
in thought those things which he found by experience to be
connected in fact, proceeded erroneously to invert this
action, and to conclude that association in thought must
involve similar connexion in reality. He thus attempted
to discover, to foretell, and to cause events by means of
processes which we can now see to have only an ideal
significance. By a vast mass of evidence from savage,
barbaric, and civilized life, magic arts which have resulted
from thus mistaking an ideal for a real connexion, may be
clearly traced from the lower culture which they are of, to
the higher culture which they are in. 1 Such are the
practices whereby a distant person is to be affected by
acting on something closely associated with him his
property, clothes he has worn, and above all cuttings of his
hair and nails. Not only do savages high and low like the
Australians and Polynesians, and barbarians like the nations
of Guinea, live in deadly terror of this spiteful craft not
only have the Parsis their sacred ritual prescribed for bury-
ing their cut hair and nails, lest demons and sorcerers
should do mischief with them, but the fear of leaving such
clippings and parings about lest their former owner should
be harmed through them, has by no means died out of
European folk-lore, and the German peasant, during the
days between his child's birth and baptism, objects to lend
anything out of the house, lest witchcraft should be worked
through it on the yet unconsecrated baby. 2 As the negro
fetish-man, when his patient does not come in person, can

1 For an examination of numerous magical arts, mostly coming under
this category, see ' Early History of Mankind,' chaps, vi. and x.

* Stanbridge, ' Abor. of Victoria,' in ' Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. i. p. 299 ; Ellis,
'Polyn. Res.' vol. i. p. 364; J. L. Wilson, ' W. Africa,' p. 215 ; Spiegel,
'Avesta,' vol. i. p. 124; Wuttke, 'Deutsche Volksaberglaube,' p. 195;
general references in ' Early History of Mankind,' p. 129.

MAGICAL ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 117

livine by means of his dirty cloth or cap instead, 1 so the
lodern clairvoyant professes to feel sympathetically the
isations of a distant person, if communication be made
trough a lock of his hair or any object that has been in
mtact with him. 2 The simple idea of joining two objects
ith a cord, taking for granted that this communication will
itablish connexion or carry influence, has been worked out
in various ways in the world. In Australia, the native doctor
fastens one end of a string to the ailing part of the patient's
body, and by sucking at the other end pretends to draw out
blood for his relief. 3 In Orissa, the Jeypore witch lets
down a ball of thread through her enemy's roof to reach his
body, that by putting the other end in her own mouth she
may suck his blood. 4 When a reindeer is sacrificed at a
sick Ostyak's tent door, the patient holds in his hand a
cord attached to the victim offered for his benefit. 5 Greek
history shows a similar idea, when the citizens of Ephesus
carried a rope seven furlongs from their walls to the temple
of Artemis, thus to place themselves under her safeguard
against the attack of Croesus ; and in the yet more striking
story of the Kylonians, who tied a cord to the statue of the
goddess when they quitted the asylum, and clung to it
for protection as they crossed unhallowed ground ; but by
ill-fate the cord of safety broke and they were mercilessly
put to death. 6 And in our own day, Buddhist priests in
solemn ceremony put themselves in communication with a
sacred relic, by each taking hold of a long thread fastened
near it and around the temple. 7

Magical arts in which the connexion is that of mere
analogy or symbolism are endlessly numerous throughout

1 Burton, ' W. and W. from West Africa,' p. 411.

2 W. Gregory, ' Letters on Animal Magnetism,' p. 128.

3 Eyre, ' Australia,' vol. ii. p. 361 ; Collins, ' New South Wales,' vol. i.
pp. 561, 594.

4 Shortt, in ' Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. vi. p. 278.
6 Bastian, 4 Mensch,' vol. iii. p. 117.

6 See Grote, vol. iii. pp. 113, 351.

7 Hardy, ' Eastern Monachism,' p. 241.

Il8 SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

the course of civilization. Their common theory may be
readily made out from a few typical cases, and thence
applied confidently to the general mass. The Australian
will observe the track of an insect near a grave, to ascertain
the direction where the sorcerer is to be found, by whose
craft the man died. 1 The Zulu may be seen chewing a bit
of wood, in order, by this symbolic act, to soften the heart of
the man he wants to buy oxen from, or of the woman he
wants for a wife. 8 The Obi-man of West Africa makes his
packet of grave-dust, blood, and bones, that this suggestive
representation of death may bring his enemy to the grave.*
The Khond sets up the iron arrow of the War-god in a
basket of rice, and judges from its standing upright that war
must be kept up also, or from its falling N that the quarrel
may be let fall too ; and when he tortures human victims
sacrificed to the Earth-goddess, he rejoices to see them shed
plentiful tears, which betoken copious showers to fall upon
his land. 4 These are fair examples of the symbolic magic
of the lower races, and they are fully rivalled in supersti-
tions which still hold their ground in Europe. With quaint
simplicity, the German cottager declares that if a dog howls
looking downward, it portends a death ; but if upward, then
a recovery from sickness. 5 Locks must be opened and bolts
drawn in a dying man's house, that his soul may not be
held fast. 6 The Hessian lad thinks that he may escape the
conscription by carrying a baby-girl's cap in his pocket a
symbolic way of repudiating manhood. 7 Modern Servians,
dancing and singing, lead about a little girl dressed in
leaves and flowers, and pour bowls of water over her to
make the rain come. 8 Sailors becalmed will sometimes

1 Oldfield, in ' TV . Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. p. 246.

8 Grout, 'Zulu-land,' p. 134.

8 See specimen and description in the Christy Museum.

* Macpherson, ' India,' pp. 130, 363.

1 Wuttke, ' Volksaberglaube,' p. 31.

6 R. Hunt, ' Pop. Rom. of W. of England,' 2nd ser. p. 165 ; Brand, ' Pop.
Ant.' vol. ii. p. 231. ,

7 Wuttke, p. loo. 8 Grimm, ' D. M.' p. 560.

MAGICAL ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.

/histle for a wind ; but in other weather they hate

whistling at sea, which raises a whistling gale. 1 Fish,
says the Cornishman, should be eaten from the tail
the head, to bring the other fishes' heads towards

le shore, for eating them the wrong way turns them from
coast. 2 He who has cut himself should rub the

life with fat, and as it dries, the wound will heal ; this is

lingering survival from days when recipes for sympathetic
itment were to be found in the Pharmacopoeia. 8 Fanciful
these notions are, it should be borne in mind that they

>me fairly under definite mental law, depending as they do
a principle of ideal association, of which we "can quite

iderstand the mental action, though we deny its practical
results. The clever Lord Chesterfield, too clever to under-
stand folly, may again be cited to prove this. He relates in
one of his letters that the king had been ill, and that people
generally expected the illness to be fatal, because the oldest
lion in the Tower, about the king's age, had just died. ' So
wild and capricious is the human mind/ he exclaims, by
way of comment. But indeed the thought was neither wild
nor capricious, it was simply such an argument from analogy
as the educated world has at length painfully learnt to be
worthless ; but which, it is not too much to declare, would
to this day carry considerable weight to the minds of four-
fifths of the human race.

A glance at those magical arts which have been systema-
tized into pseudo-sciences, shows the same underlying
principle. The art of taking omens from seeing and meet-
ing animals, which includes augury, is familiar to such
savages as the Tupis of Brazil 4 and the Dayaks of Borneo, 5
and extends upward through classic civilization. The
Maoris may give a sample of the character of its rules : they

Brand, vol. iii. p. 240.
Hunt, ibid. p. 148.

Wuttke, p. 165 ; Brand, vol. iii. p. 305.
Magalhanes de Gandavo, p. 125 j D'Orbigny, vol. ii. p. 168.
St. John, ' Far East,' vol. i. p. 202 ; ' Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. ii.
P- 357-

120 SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

hold it unlucky if an owl hoots during a consultation, but a
council of war is encouraged by prospect of victory when a
hawk flies overhead ; a flight of birds to the right of the
war-sacrifice is propitious if the villages of the tribe are in
that quarter, but if the omen is in the enemy's direction
the war will be given up. 1 Compare these with the Tatar
rules, and it is obvious that similar thoughts lie at the
source of both. Here a certain little owl's cry is a sound of
terror, althouga there is a white owl which is lucky ; but of
all birds the white falcon is most prophetic, and the Kalmuk
bows his thanks for the good omen when one flies by on the
right, but seeing one on the left turns away his face and
expects calamity. 2 So to the negro of Old Calabar, the cry
of the great kingfisher bodes good or evil, according as it is
heard on the right or left. 3 Here we have the obvious sym-
bolism of the right and left hand, the foreboding of ill from
the owl's doleful note, and the suggestion of victory from
the fierce swooping hawk, a thought which in old Europe
made the bird of prey the warrior's omen of conquest.
Meaning of the same kind appears in the 'Angang,' the
omens taken from meeting animals and people, especially on
first going out in the morning, as when the ancient Slaves
held meeting a sick man or an old woman to bode ill-luck.
Any one who takes the trouble to go into this subject in
detail, and to study the classic, mediaeval, and oriental codes
of rules, will find that the principle of direct symbolism still
accounts for a fair proportion of them, though the rest may
have lost their early significance, or may have been originally
due to some other reason, or may have been arbitrarily
invented (as a considerable proportion of such devices must
necessarily be) to fill up the gaps in the system. It is still
plain to us why the omen of the crow should be different on
the right or left hand, why a vulture should mean rapacity,
a stork concord, a pelican piety, an ass labour, why the

1 Yate, ' New Zealand,' p. 90 ; Polack, vol. i. p. 248.

2 Klemm, ' Cultur-Gesch.' vol. iii. p. 202.

8 Burton, ' Wit and Wisdom from West Africa,' p. 381.

OMENS AND DREAMS.

121

ierce conquering wolf should be a good omen, and the timid
tare a bad one, why bees, types of an obedient nation,
should be lucky to a king, while flies, returning however
>ften they are driven off, should be signs of importunity and
ipudence. 1 And as to the general principle that animals
re ominous to those who meet them, the German peasant
rho says a flock of sheep is lucky but a herd of swine un-
lucky to meet, and the Cornish miner who turns away in
lorror when he meets an old woman or a rabbit on his way
Lo the pit's mouth, are to this day keeping up relics of early
ivagery as genuine as any flint implement dug out of a
imulus.

The doctrine of dreams, attributed as they are by the
>wer and middle races to spiritual intercourse, belongs in
far rather to religion than to magic. But oneiromancy,
art of taking omens from dreams by analogical interpre-
ition, has its place here. Of the leading principle of such
lystical explanation, no better types could be chosen than
ie details and interpretations of Joseph's dreams (Genesis
ii., xl., xli.), of the sheaves and the sun and moon and
eleven stars, of the vine and the basket of meats, of the lean
id fat kine, and the thin and full corn-ears. Oneiromancy,
thus symbolically interpreting the things seen in dreams, is
lot unknown to the lower races. A whole Australian tribe
is been known to decamp because one of them dreamt of
certain kind of owl, which dream the wise men declared
to forebode an attack from a certain other tribe. 2 The
lamchadals, whose minds ran much on dreams, had special
iterpretations of some ; thus to dream of lice or dogs be-
tokened a visit of Russian travellers, &c. 3 The Zulus, ex-
jrience having taught them the fallacy of expecting direct
ilment of dreams, have in some cases tried to mend

1 See Cornelius Agrippa, ' De Occulta Philosophia,' i. 53 ; ' De Vanitate
kient.' 37 ; Grimm, ' D. M.' p. 1073 ; Hanusch, ' Slaw. Myth.' p. 285 ;
Jrand, vol. iii. pp. 184-227.

2 Oldfield in ' Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. p. 241.
8 Steller, ' Kamtschatka,' p. 279.

122 SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

matters by rushing to the other extreme. If they dream of
a sick man that he is dead, and they see the earth poured
into the grave, and hear the funeral lamentation, and see all
his things destroyed, then they say, ' Because we have
dreamt of his death he will not die/ But if they dream
of a wedding-dance, it is a sign of a funeral. So the
Maoris hold that a kinsman dreamt of as dying will recover,
but to see him well is a sign of death. 1 Both races thus
work out, by the same crooked logic that guided our own
ancestors, the axiom that ' dreams go by contraries/ It
could not be expected, in looking over the long lists of pre-
cepts of classic, oriental, and modern popular dream-inter-
pretation, to detect the original sense of all their readings.
Many must turn on allusions intelligible at the time, but
now obscure. The Moslem dream-interpretation of eggs as
concerning women, because of a saying of Mohammed about
women being like an egg hidden in a nest, is an example
which will serve as well as a score to show how dream-rules
may turn on. far-fetched ideas, not to be recognized unless
the key happens to have been preserved. Many rules must
have been taken at random to fill up lists of omens, and of
contingencies to match them. Why should a dream of
roasting meat show the dreamer to be a back-biter, or
laughter in sleep presage difficult circumstances, or a dream
of playing on the clavicord the death of relatives ? But the
other side of the matter, the still apparent nonsensical
rationality of so many dream omens, is much more remark-
able. It can only be considered that the same symbolism
that lay at the root of the whole delusion, favoured the keep-
ing up and new making of such rules as carried obvious
meaning. Take the Moslem ideas that it is a good omen to
dream of something white or green, or of water, but bad to
dream of black or red, or of fire; that a palm-tree indicates an
Arab, and a peacock a king ; that he who dreams of devour-
ing the stars will live free at some great man's table. Take
the classic rules as in the ' Oneirocritica ' of Artemidorus,

1 Callaway, ' Rel. of Amazulu,' pp. 236, 241 ; R. Taylor, ' N. Z.' p. 334.

HARUSPICATION. 123

id pass on through the mediaeval treatises down to such a
L-dictionary as servant-maids still buy in penny chap-
>ks at the fair, and it will be seen that the ancient rules
hold their places to a remarkable extent, while half the
of precepts still show their original mystic significance,
lostly direct, but occasionally according to the rule of con-
An offensive odour signifies annoyance ; to wash
hands denotes release from anxieties ; to embrace one's
>t beloved is very fortunate ; to have one's feet cut off
prevents a journey ; to weep in sleep is a sign of joy ; he
who dreams he hath lost a tooth shall lose a friend ; and he
that dreams that a rib is taken out of his side shall ere long
see the death of his wife ; to follow bees, betokens gain ; to
be married signifies that some of your kinsfolk are dead ; if
one sees many fowls together, that shall be jealousy and
chiding ; if a snake pursue himr let him be on his guard
against evil women ; to dream of death, denotes happiness
and long life ; to dream of swimming and wading in the
water is good, so that the head be kept above water ; to
dream of crossing a bridge, denotes you will leave a good
situation to seek a better ; ta dream you see a dragon is a
sign that you shall see some great lord your master, or a
magistrate. 1

Haruspication belongs, among the lower races, especially
to the Malays and Polynesians, 1 and to various Asiatic
tribes. 8 It is mentioned as practised in Peru under the
Incas. 4 Captain Burton's- account from Central Africa
perhaps fairly displays its symbolic principle. He de-
scribes the mganga or sorcerer taking an ordeal by killing

1 Artemidorus, ' Oneirocritica ; ' Cockayne, ' Leechdoms, &c., of Early
England/ vol. iii. ; Seafield, ' Literature, &c., of Dreams ; ' Brand, vol. iii. 5
Halliwell, ' Pop. Rhymes, &c.,' p. 217, &c., &c.

* St. John, ' Far East,' vol. i. pp. 74, 115 j Ellis, ' Polyn. Ret.' vol. iv.
p. 150 ; Polack, ' New Zealanders,' voL i. p. 255.

Georgi, ' Reise im Russ.' Reich, vol. i. p. 281 ; Hooker, ' Himalayan
Journals,' vol. i. p. 135 j 'As. Res.' vol. iii. p. 27 ; Latham, ' Descr. Eth.'
vol. i. p. 61.

4 Cieza de Leon, p. 289 ; Rivero and Tschudi, ' Peru,' p. 183.

124 SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

and splitting a fowl and inspecting its inside : if black-
ness or blemish appears about the wings, it denotes the
treachery of children and kinsmen ; the backbone convicts
the mother and grandmother ; the tail shows that the crim-
inal is the wife, &C. 1 In ancient Rome, where the art held so
great a place in public affairs, the same sort of interpretation
was usual, as witness the omen of Augustus, where the livers
of the victims were found folded, and the diviners prophesied
him accordingly a doubled empire. 2 Since then, haruspica-
tion has died out more completely than almost any magical
rite, yet even now a characteristic relic of it may be noticed
in Brandenburg ; when a pig is killed and the spleen is
found turned over, there will be another overthrow, namely
a death in the family that year. 3 With hamspication may
be classed the art of divining by bones, as where North
American Indians would put in the fire a Certain flat bone
of a porcupine, and judge from its colour if the porcupine
hunt would be successful. 4 The principal art of this kind is
divination by a shoulder-blade, technically called scapuli-
mancy or omoplatoscopy. This art, related to the old
Chinese divination by the cracks of a tortoise-shell on the
fire, is especially found in vogue in Tartary. Its simple
symbolism is well shown in the elaborate account with
diagrams given by Pallas. The shoulder-blade is put
on the fire till it cracks in various directions, and then a
long split lengthwise is reckoned as the ' way of life/
while cross-cracks on the right and left stand for different
kinds and degrees of good and evil fortune ; or if the omen
is only taken as to some special event, then lengthwise splits
mean going on well, but crosswise ones stand for hindrance,
white marks portend much snow, black ones a mild winter,
&c. 5 To find this quaint art lasting on into modern times

1 Burton, ' Central Afr.' vol. ii. p. 32 ; Waitz, vol. ii. pp. 417, 518.

2 Plin. xi. 73. See Cic. de Divinatione, ii. 12.
8 Wuttke, * Volksaberglaube,' p. 32.

4 Le Jeune, ' Nouvelle France,' vol. i. p. 90.

8 J. H. Plath, ' Rel. d. alten Chinesen,' part i. p. 89 ; Klemm, ' Cultur.
Gesch.' vol. iii. pp. 109, 199 ; vol. iv. p. 221 ; Rubruquis, in Pinkerton,

PALMISTRY. 125

Europe, we can hardly go to a better place than our own
mntry ; a proper English term for it is ' reading the speal-
>ne ' (speal = espaule) . In Ireland, Camden describes the
looking through the blade-bone of a sheep, to find a dark
spot which foretells a death, and Drayton thus commemo-
rates the art in his Polyolbion :

' By th' shoulder of a ram from off the right side par'd,
Which usually they boile, the spade-bone being bar'd,
Which when the wizard takes, and gazing therupon
Things long to come foreshowes, as things done long agone.' 1

Chiromancy, or palmistry, seems much like this, though it
is also mixed up with astrology. It flourished in ancient
Greece and Italy as it still does in India, where to say, ' It
is written on the palms of my hands,' is a usual way of ex-
pressing a sense of inevitable fate. Chiromancy traces in
the markings of the palm a line of fortune and a line of life,
finds proof of melancholy in the intersections on the saturn-
ine mount, presages sorrow and death from black spots in
the finger-nails, and at last, having exhausted the powers of
this childish symbolism, it completes its system by details
of which the absurdity is no longer relieved by even an
ideal sense. The art has its modern votaries not merely
among Gypsy fortune-tellers, but in what is called ' good
society/ 2

It may again and again thus be noticed in magic arts,
that the association of ideas is obvious up to a certain point.
Thus when the New Zealand sorcerer took omens by the
way his divining sticks (guided by spirits) fell, he quite
naturally said it was a good omen if the stick representing
his own tribe fell on top of that representing the enemy,
and vice versa. Zulu diviners still work a similar process
with their magical pieces of stick, which rise to say yes and

vol. vii. p. 65 ; Grimm, ' D. M.' p. 1067 ; R. F. Burton, ' Sindh,' p. 189 ;
M. A. Walker, ' Macedonia,' p. 169.

1 Brand, vol. iii. p. 339 5 Forbes Leslie, vol. ii. p. 491.

8 Maury, ' Magie, &c.', p. 74 ; Brand, vol. iii. p. 348, &c. See figure in
Cornelius Agrippa, ' De Occult. Philosoph,' ii. 27.

126 SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

fall to say no, jump upon the head or stomach or other
affected part of the patient's body to show where his com-
plaint is, and lie pointing towards the house of the doctor
who can cure him. So likewise, where a similar device was
practised ages ago in the Old World, the responses were
taken from staves which (by the operation of demons) fell
backward or forward, to the right or left. 1 But when
processes of this kind are developed to complexity, the
system has, of course, to be completed by more arbitrary
arrangements. This is well shown in one of the divinatory
arts mentioned in the last chapter for their connexion with
games of chance. In cartomancy, the art of fortune-telling
with packs of cards, there is a sort of nonsensical sense in
such rules as that two queens mean friendship and four
mean chattering, or that the knave of hearts prophesies a
brave young man who will come into the family to be use-
ful, unless his purpose be reversed by his card being upside
down. But of course the pack can only furnish a limited
number of such comparatively rational interpretations, and
the rest must be left to such arbitrary fancy as that the
seven of diamonds means a prize in the lottery, and the
ten of the same suit an unexpected journey.*

A remarkable group of divining instruments illustrates
another principle. In South-East Asia, the Sgau Karens,
at funeral feasts, hang a bangle or metal ring by a thread
over a brass basin, which the relatives of the dead approach
in succession and strike on the edge with a bit of bamboo ;
when the one who was most beloved touches the basin, the
dead man's spirit responds by twisting and stretching the
string till it breaks and the ring falls into the cup, or at
least till it rings against it. 8 Nearer Central Asia, in the

1 R. Taylor, * New Zealand,' p. 205 ; Shortland, p. 139 ; CaUaway, * Re-
ligion of Axnazulu,' p. 330, &c. ; Theophylact. in Brand, vol. iii. p. 332,
Compare mentions of similar devices ; Herodot. iv. 67 (Scythia) j Burton.
4 Central Africa,' vol. ii. p. 350.

* Migne's ' Die. des Sciences Occultes.'

8 Mason, 'Karens,' in 'Journ. As. Soc. Bengal,' 1865, part ii. p. 200;
Bastian, ' Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. p. 146.

DIVINING INSTRUMENTS. 127

north-east corner of India, among the Bodo and Dhimal, the
professional exorcist has to find out what deity has entered
into a patient's body to punish him for some impiety by an
attack of illness ; this he discovers by setting thirteen leaves
round him on the ground to represent the gods, and then
holding a pendulum attached to his thumb by a string, till
the god in question is persuaded by invocation to declare
himself, making the pendulum swing towards his representa-
tive leaf. 1 These mystic arts (not to go into the question
how these tribes came to use them) are rude forms of the
classical dactyliomancy, of which so curious an account is
given in the trial of the conspirators Patricius and Hilarius,
who worked it to find out who was to supplant the emperor
Valens. A round table was marked at the edge with the
letters of the alphabet, and with prayers and mystic cere-
monies a ring was held suspended over it by a thread, and
by swinging or stopping towards certain letters gave the re-
sponsive words of the oracle. 2 Dactyliomancy has dwindled
in Europe to the art of finding out what o'clock it is by
holding a ring hanging inside a tumbler by a thread, till,
without conscious aid by the operator, it begins to swing
and strikes the hour. Father Schott, in his ' Physica
Curiosa ' (1662), refrains with commendable caution from
ascribing this phenomenon universally to demoniac influence .
It survives among ourselves in child's play, and though we
are ' no conjurers,' we may learn something from the little
instrument, which remarkably displays the effects of in-
sensible movement. The operator really gives slight
impulses till they accumulate to a considerable vibration, as
in ringing a church-bell by very gentle pulls exactly timed.
That he does, though unconsciously, cause and direct the
swings, may be shown by an attempt to work the instrument
with the operator's eyes shut, which will be found to fail, the
directing power being lost. The action of the famous divin-
ing-rod with its curiously versatile sensibility to water, ore,

1 Hodgson, ' Abor. of India,' p. 170. See Macpherson, p. 106 (Khonda).
1 Ammian. Marcellin. xxix. i.

128 SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

treasure, and thieves, seems to belong partly to trickery by
professional Dousterswivels, and partly to more or less con-
scious direction by honester operators. It is still known
in England, and in Germany they are apt to hide it in
a baby's clothes, and so get it baptized for greater effi-
ciency. 1 To conclude this group of divinatory instruments,
chance or the operator's direction may determine the action
of one of the most familiar of classic and mediaeval ordeals,
the so-called coscinomancy, or, as it is described in
Hudibras, * th' oracle of sieve and shears, that turns as i
certain as the spheres/ The sieve was held hanging j
by a thread, or by the points of a pair of shears stuck into j
its rim, and it would turn, or swing, or fall, at the mention j
of a thief's rikme, and give similar signs for other purposes. ;
Of this ancient rite, the Christian ordeal of the Bible and!
key, still in frequent use, is a variation : the proper wayi
to detect a thief by this is to read the 50th Psalm to the!
apparatus, and when it hears the verse, ' When thou sawesti
a thief, then thou consentedst with him,' it will turn to the
culprit. 1

Count de Maistre, with his usual faculty of taking ani
argument up at the wrong end, tells us that judicial]
astrology no doubt hangs to truths of the first order, which;
have been taken from us as useless or dangerous, or which
we cannot recognize under their new forms. 3 A sober
examination of the subject may rather justify the contrary;
opinion, that it is on an error of the first order that astro- j
logy depends, the error of mistaking ideal analogy for real
connexion. Astrology, in the immensity of its delusive!
influence on mankind, and by the comparatively modern
period to which it remained an honoured branch of philo-

1 Chevreul, ' De la Baguette Divinatoire, du Pendule dit Explorateur
et des Tables Tournantes,' Paris, 1854; Brand, vol. Hi. p. 332; Grimm
' D. M.' p. 926; H. B. Woodward, in 'Geological Mag.,' Nov. 1872; Wuttke
p. 94.

* Cornelius Agrippa, ' De Speciebus Magiae,' xxi. ; Brand, vol. iii. p. 351 '
Grimm, ' D. M.' p. 1062.

3 De Maistre, ' Soirees de St. Petersbourg,' vol. ii. p. 212.

ASTROLOGY. I2Q

may claim the highest rank among the occult
ices. It scarcely belongs to very low levels of civiliza-

>n, although one of its fundamental conceptions, namely,
of the souls or animating intelligences of the celestial
lies, is rooted in the depths of savage life. Yet the fol-
Maori specimen of astrological reasoning is as real

argument as could be found in Paracelsus or Agrippa, nor
is then- reason to doubt its being home-made. When the
sie^e of a New Zealand ' pa ' is going on, if Venus is near the
UK u>n, the natives naturally imagine the two as enemy and
fortress ; if the planet is above, the foe will have the upper
hand ; but if below, then the men of the soil will be able to
defend themselves. 1 Though the early history of astrology
is obscure, its great development and elaborate systematiza-
tion were undoubtedly the work of civilized nations of the
ancient and mediaeval world. As might be well supposed,
a great part of its precepts have lost their intelligible sense,
or never had any, but the origin of many others is still
evident. To a considerable extent they rest on direct
symbolism. Such are the rules which connect the sun
with gold, with the heliotrope and paeony, with the cock
which heralds day, with magnanimous animals, such as the
lion and bull ; and the moon with silver, and the changing
chamaeleon, and the palm-tree, which was considered to
send out a monthly shoot. Direct symbolism is plain in
that main principle of the calculation of nativities, the
notion of the ' ascendant ' in the horoscope, which reckons
the part of the heavens rising in the east at the moment of
a child's birth as being connected with the child itself, and
prophetic of its future life.* It is an old story, that when
two brothers were once taken ill together, Hippokrates the
physician concluded from the coincidence that they were
twins, but Poseidonios the astrologer considered rather that
they were born under the same constellation : we may add,

1 Shortland, ' Trad*., &c. of New Zealand,' p. 138.

8 See Cicero, ' De Div.' i. ; Lucian. ' De Astrolog.' ; Cornelius Agrippa,
1 De Occulta Philosophia ; ' Sibly, ' Occult Sciences ; ' Brand, vol. iii,

130 SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

that either argument would be thought reasonable by a
savage. One of the most instructive astrological doctrines
which has kept its place in modern popular philosophy, is
that of the sympathy of growing and declining nature with
the waxing and waning moon. Among classical precepts
are these : to set eggs under the hen at new moon, but to
root up trees when the moon is on the wane, and after
midday. The Lithuanian precept to wean boys on a wax-
ing, but girls on a waning moon, no doubt to make the
boys sturdy and the girls slim and delicate, is a fair match
for the Orkney islanders' objection to marrying except with
a growing moon, while some even wish for a flowing tide.
The following lines, from Tusser's ' Five Hundred Points
of Husbandry,' show neatly in a single case the two con-
trary lunar influences :

' Sowe peason and beans in the wane of the moone
Who soweth them sooner, he soweth too soone :
That they, with the planet, may rest and rise,
And flourish with bearing, most plentiful wise.' l

The notion that the weather changes with the moon's
quarterings is still held with great vigour in England.
Yet the meteorologists, with all their eagerness to catch at
any rule which at all answers to facts, quite repudiate this
one, which indeed appears to be simply a maxim belonging
to popular astrology. Just as the growth and dwindling of
plants became associated with the moon's wax and wane,
so changes of weather became associated with changes of
the moon, while, by astrologer's logic, it did not matter
whether the moon's change were real, at new and full, or
imaginary, at the intermediate quarters. That educated
people to whom exact weather records are accessible should
still find satisfaction in the fanciful lunar rule, is an in-
teresting case of intellectual survival.

In such cases as these, the astrologer has at any rate a
real analogy, deceptive though it be, to base his rule upon.

1 Plin. xvi. 75 ; xviii. 75 j Grimm, ' D. M.' p. 676 ; Brand, vol. ii. p. 169 ;
vol. iii. p. 144.


ASTROLOGY. 13!

But most of his pseudo-science seems to rest on even
weaker and more arbitrary analogies, not of things, but of
names. Names of stars and constellations, of signs de-
noting regions of the sky and periods of days and years,
no matter how arbitrarily given, are materials which the
astrologer can work upon, and bring into ideal connexion
with mundane events. That astronomers should have
divided the sun's course into imaginary signs of the zodiac,
was enough to originate astrological rules that these
celestial signs have an actual effect on real earthly rams,
bulls, crabs, lions, virgins. A child born under the sign
of the Lion will be courageous ; but one born under the
Crab will not go forward well in life ; one born under the
Waterman is likely to be drowned, and so forth. Towards
1524, Europe was awaiting in an agony of prayerful terror
a second deluge, prophesied for February in that year.
As the fatal month drew nigh, dwellers by the waterside
moved in crowds to the hills, some provided boats to save
them, and the President Aurial, at Toulouse, built himself
a Noah's Ark. It was the great astrologer Stoefler (the
originator, it is said, of the weather-prophecies in our
almanacks) who foretold this cataclysm, and his argument
has the advantage of being still perfectly intelligible at
the date in question, three planets would be together in the
aqueous sign of Pisces. Again, simply because astro-
nomers chose to distribute among the planets the names of
certain deities, the planets thereby acquired the characters
of their divine namesakes. Thus it was that the planet
Mercury became connected with travel, trade, and theft,
Venus with love and mirth, Mars with war, Jupiter with
power and ' joviality.' Throughout the East, astrology
even now remains a science in full esteem. The condition
of mediaeval Europe may still be perfectly realized by
the traveller in Persia, where the Shah waits for days
outside the walls of his capital till the constellations
allow him to enter, and where on the days appointed by the
stars for letting blood, it literally flows in streams from the

132 ' SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

barbers' shops into the street. Professor Wuttke declares
that there are many districts in Germany where the child's
horoscope is still regularly kept with the baptismal certifi-
cate in the family chest. We scarcely reach this pitch of |
conservatism in England, but I happen to myself live within
a mile of an astrologer, and I lately saw a grave paper,
on nativities, offered in all good faith to the British j
Association. The piles of ' Zadkiel's Almanack' in thej
bookseller's windows in country towns about Christmas
are a symptom how much yet remains to be done in popular
education. As a specimen at once of the survival and of:
the meaning of astrologic reasoning, I cannot do better;
than quote a passage from a book published in London in;
1861, and entitled ' The Hand-Book of Astrology, by
Zadkiel Tao-Sze.' At page 72 of his first volume, the
astrologer relates as follows : ' The Map of the heavens*
given at page 45 was drawn on the occasion of a young i
lady having been arrested on a charge of the murder of her
infant brother. Having read in a newspaper, at twenty-!
four minutes past noon on the 23rd July, 1860, that Missj
C. K. had been arrested on a charge of the murder of heri
young brother, the author felt desirous to ascertain whether]
she were guilty or not, and drew the map accordingly.
Finding the moon in the twelfth house, she clearly signifies!
the prisoner. The moon is in a moveable sign, and moves!
in the twenty-four hours, 14 17'. She is, therefore, swift^
in motion. These things indicated that the prisoner would!
be very speedily released. Then we find a moveable sign
in the cusp of the twelfth, and its ruler, 9 , in a moveable^
sign, a further indication of speedy release. Hence it was
judged and declared to many friends that the prisoner
would be immediately released, which was the fact. We
looked to see whether the prisoner were guilty of the deed
or not, and finding the Moon in Libra, a humane sign, and
having just past the * aspect of the Sun and ^, both:
being on the M. C. we felt assured that she was a humane,
feeling, and honourable girl, and that it was quite im-

FUTILITY OF MAGIC ARTS. 133

iible she could be guilty of any such atrocity. We
declared her to be perfectly innocent, and as the Moon was
so well aspected from the tenth house, we declared that her
honour would be very soon perfectly established.' Had
the astrologer waited a few months longer, to have read
the confession of the miserable Constance Kent, he would
perhaps have put a different sense on his moveable signs,
just balances, and sunny and jovial aspects. Nor would
this be a difficult task, for these fancies lend themselves to
endless variety of new interpretation. And on such fancies
and such interpretations, the great science of the stars has
from first to last been based.