Thus the Peruvian sorcerers are said still to make rag dolls and stick cactus-thorns into them, and to hide them in secret holes in houses, or in the wool of beds or cushions, thereby to cripple people, or turn them sick or mad.[1] In Borneo the familiar European practice still exists, of making a wax figure of the enemy to be bewitched, whose body is to waste away as the image is gradually melted,[2] as in the story of Margery Jordane's waxen image of Henry VI. The old Roman law punished by the extreme penalty the slaying of an absent person by means of a wax figure. The Hindoo arts are thus described by the Abbé Dubois:—"They knead earth taken from the sixty-four most unclean places, with hair, clippings of hair, bits of leather, etc., and with this they make little figures, on the breasts of which they write the name of the enemy; over these they pronounce magical words and mantrams, and consecrate them by sacrifices. No sooner is this done, than the grahas, or planets, seize the hated person, and inflict on him a thousand ills. They some- times pierce these figures right through with an awl, or cripple them in different ways, with the intention of killing or crippling in reality the object of their vengeance."[3] Again, the Karens of Burmah model an image of a person from the earth of his footprints, and stick it over with cotton seeds, intending thereby to strike the person represented with dumbness.[4] Here we have the making of the figure combined with the ancient practice in Germany known as the "earth-cutting" (erdschnitt), cutting out the earth or turf where the man who is to be destroyed has stood, and hanging it in the chimney, that he may perish as his footprint dries and shrivels.[5]
In these cases the object in view is to hurt the original through the image, but it is also possible to make an image, transfer to it the evil spirit of the disease which has attacked the person it is to represent, and then send it out like a scapegoat into the wilderness. They conjure devils into puppets in
- ↑ Rivero and Tschudi, p. 181.
- ↑ St. John, vol ii. p. 260.
- ↑ Dubois, 'Mœurs, etc., des Peuples de l'Inde;' Paris, 1825, vol. ii. p. 63.
- ↑ Mrs. Mason, 'Civilizing Mountain Men;' London, 1862, p. 121. See Mason in Journ. As. Soc. Bengal, part ii. 1865, p. 224.
- ↑ Grimm, D. M., p. 1047. Wuttke, 'Deutsche Volksaberglaube;' Hamburg, 1860, pp. 102, 120.
