"Sorcery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Bewildered in our woods, or such as till Outlying fields, caught from the peaceful plough— You cruelly have tortured at the stake. Nor this the worst! In order to augment Your gloomy sway you craftily have played Upon the zeal and frenzy of our tribes, And, in my absence, hatched a monstrous charge Of sorcery amongst them, which hath spared Nor feeble age nor sex. Such horrid deeds Recoil on us! Old Shataronra's grave Sends up its ghost, and Tetaboxti's hairs— White with sad years and counsel—singed by you! In dreams ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... account of Sorcery and Fetishism among the African Negros, see Burton's "Lake Regions of Central Africa," vol. ii. ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... purchased it. So Druso dragged me before the Supreme Council, impeached me of sacrilege in the affair of the nun, of theft, and of violating the sanctity of the tomb, of barbarously mutilating the dead, and of applying their lacerated remains to the unholy purposes of sorcery! and on these counts have I been indicted, found guilty, and sentenced to be burnt as a sacrilegious heretic, an unnatural robber, and a formidable wizard! Antonia, the mother of seven children, is to be—like the unchaste vestal—immured! Oh Heaven! whilst ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... very limited circle of power, and in so far gratified his conceit; and it soothed his misanthropy, by increasing his means of giving terror or pain. But even in a rude Scottish glen thirty years back, the fear of sorcery was very ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... high, I see; To thy rank only I belong. The Lord of Spirits scorneth me, Nature, shut up, resents the wrong. The thread of thought is snapt asunder, All science to me is a stupid blunder. Let us in sensuality's deep Quench the passions within us blazing! And, the veil of sorcery raising, Wake each miracle from its long sleep! Plunge we into the billowy dance, The rush and roll of time and chance! Then may pleasure and distress, Disappointment and success, Follow each other as fast as they will; Man's ...
— Faust • Goethe
... cursed Sorcery vnto their wished end, by sacrificing vnto the Diuell some liuing creatures, as Serres likewise witnesseth, from the confession of Witches in Henry the fourth of France deprehended, among whom, one confessed to haue offered vnto his Deuill or Spirit a Beetle. ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... plough, the furrow, etc. In later hymns these objects are generally of sacrificial nature, and the stones with which soma is pressed are divine like the plant. Yet often there is no sacrificial observance to cause this veneration. Hymns are addressed to weapons, to the war-car, as to divine beings. Sorcery and incantation is not looked upon favorably, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... considered his participation in the Parliament convoked by Sir John Perrott in 1585, and prorogued till the following year. It is remarkable of this Parliament, the third and last of Elizabeth's long reign, that it was utterly barren of ecclesiastical legislation, if we except "an act against sorcery and witchcraft" from that category. The attainder of the late Earl of Desmond, and the living Viscount of Baltinglass, in arms with the O'Byrnes in Glenmalure, are the only measures of consequence to be found among the Irish statutes of the 27th and ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... need not write me a new license, but only renew the old one granted to me by Rameses when I cured his favorite horse. They burnt it with my other possessions, when they plundered my house, and denounced me and my belongings for sorcery. The permit of Rameses is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... religious, the beliefs which have moved the world possess a common origin and follow the same laws. They are formed, not by the reason, but more often contrary to reason. Buddhism, Christianity, Islamism, the Reformation, sorcery, Jacobinism, socialism, spiritualism, &c., seem very different forms of belief, but they have, I repeat, identical mystic and affective bases, and obey forms of logic which have no affinity with rational logic. Their might resides precisely in the fact that reason has as little power to ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... for every case of real malady many were imputed or charged upon poor creatures, who were driven to madness by groundless charges of witchcraft and sorcery, and being loups-garous in secret. Many innocent people were in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries burnt at the stake as wolves in ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... there, motionless; and gradually the bitterness became less perceptible as he drifted, intent on drifting, back through the exotic sorcery of dead years—back into the sun again, where honour was bright and life was young—where all the world awaited happy conquest—where there was no curfew in the red evening glow; no end to day, because the golden light had turned to silver; but where ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... countries inspired, and which they rendered subservient to the purpose of taxation, is now yielding to the dictates of reason, interest, and humanity. The trade of courts is beginning to be understood, and the affectation of mystery, with all the artificial sorcery by which they imposed upon mankind, is on the decline. It has received its death-wound; and though it may linger, it will expire. Government ought to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man, instead of which it has been monopolised from age to age, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Life. Religion its Centre. The Farmhouse. Morning Devotions. Farm Work. Tools. Diet. Neighborliness. New England Superstitions. Not Peculiar to New England. Sunday Laws. Public Worship. First Case of Sorcery. The Witch Executed. Cotton Mather. His Experiments. His Book. The Parris Children Bewitched. The Manifestations. The Trial. Executions. George Burroughs. Rebecca Nurse. Reaction. Forwardness of Clergy. ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... herself. It was even said that in the quiet winter nights she held wonderful conversations with her goat and with her fowls, which she housed in her room during the winter. The entire wild army of tales of witchcraft and sorcery, banished by school education, came back and attached itself to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... had dealings with the Arabs received orders to make them understand that my pretended miracles were only the result of skill, inspired and guided by an art called prestidigitation, in no way connected with sorcery. ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... Stoke Triston, in that county, was accused by "divers persons of credit," of the crimes of witchcraft and sorcery. She was afterwards found guilty by a jury at Taunton, but died before the sentence could be carried into effect. She confessed "that the devil, about ten years since, appeared to her in the shape of a handsome man, and after of a black dog; that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... was taken up in sincerity, though even this now perhaps is not unmixed with some fancy of its reality. For this must be the gradation more or less gone through in all such things, whether Obeism, Fetichism, the Evil Eye, or any sort of sorcery or witchcraft, in whatever variousness of form practised; cheats on the one hand, and dupes on the other the primum mobile in every case being, some shape or other ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... "There is sorcery for you, and a doll worth having; being one of the sort that can shut its eyes; it was going to bed, but its mamma relented and lends it to us for the night. I told Mrs. Dodd you wanted her, and couldn't wait, so she sent her clothes; ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... sorcery, caressed the great city. Its spell threw a sheen over the drab things Beryl remembered so well, the brick schoolhouse, the Settlement, the dirty narrow street flanked by dull-brown tenements with their endless fire escapes mounting higher and higher, hung ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... the work of a sophist and an adventurer! Pope, who was now alarmed at the tendency of some of those principles he had so innocently versified, received Warburton as his tutelary genius. A mere poet was soon dazzled by the sorcery of erudition; and he himself, having nothing of that kind of learning, believed Warburton to be the Scaliger of the age, for his gratitude far exceeded his knowledge.[172] The poet died in this delusion: he consigned his immortal works to ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... a little eminence, blew most furiously at us, and performed other equally efficacious ceremonies. I however felt just as well after we had been subjected to this dire sorcery as I did before; and we continued to pull gently along the shore, still trying to induce them to approach, which they at last did, having nothing but a fishing-spear in their hands. To entice them towards us I had made Kaiber strip himself ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... remember that the powers which surmounted the disadvantage of those early habits, were such as very rarely appear upon this earth. Let him remember, too, how long the genius even of Mr. Henry was kept down, and hidden from the public view, by the sorcery of those pernicious habits; through what years of poverty and wretchedness they doomed him to struggle; and let him remember, that at length, when in the zenith of his glory. Mr. Henry himself, had frequent ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... "those jokes have been used by every conjurer since Merlin, and while perhaps without them your trick would work, yet I have never heard of it being done and I have found", said Thyrston, "that in sorcery the best results are obtained by ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... this spell, this sorcery—why this sweetness filling all her being, when, after all, duty and seemliness bade it all to end, as end it must, to-day? Thus had the Lady Catharine reflected but the hour before John Law came; her knight of dreams—tall, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... tribe of Abyssinia was almost wholly Pagan as the natives believed fully in witchcraft, sorcery, myths and superstitions. The witch doctor held absolute sway over the members of the tribe and when his reputation as a giver of rain, bountiful crops or success in the chase was at stake the tribes were called together ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... persecuting them. Andrew, after being attached to the cross, preached during two days to twenty thousand persons. Conversions were made in masses, forty thousand men being baptised at one time. When the multitudes were not converted by the miracles, they fled terrified. The saints were accused of sorcery; enigmas were proposed to them, which they solved at once; they were obliged to dispute questions with learned men, who remained speechless before them. As soon as they entered the temples of sacrifice the idols were overthrown ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... Its name is Moly among the gods, and no wicked sorcery can hurt the man who treasures it carefully. Its root is black. Its blossom is as white as milk, and it is hard for men to tear it from the ground. Take this herb and go fearlessly into the dwelling of ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... same day by the citizens on guard at the Walls and handed over to the Bishop's officer, who duly brought them before the Courts. The Church adjudged Simone heretic, and condemned her for salutary penance to the bread of suffering and the water of affliction. Robin was convicted of sorcery, and, persevering in his error, was burned alive in the ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... been a believer in the protecting influence of his own god or fetish, who would, as he thought, hold his priests scatheless from the lightning. Often and often had he stood in past days upon that plain while the great tempests broke around his head, and returned thence unharmed, attributing to sorcery a safety that was really due to chance. From time to time indeed a priest was killed; but, so his companions held, the misfortune resulted invariably from the man's neglect of some rite, or was a mark of the anger ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... ejaculated Peter: "is this sorcery or treachery, or both? No body-snatchers would visit this place on a night like this, when the whole neighborhood is aroused. Can it be a vision I have seen? Pshaw! shall I juggle myself as I deceive these hinds? It was no bearded demon that I beheld, but the gipsy patrico, Balthazar. I knew ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... his own record, it is plain that he himself elicited every accusation. His first witness John, the West India negro servant, husband to Tituba, was rebuked by Sarah Cloyse as a grievous liar. Abigail Williams, the niece to Parris, was also at hand with her wonderful tales of sorcery. She swore she had seen the prisoner at ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... ever lived can touch Dickens in indicating this sort of familiar sorcery and the secret of its terror. For it is children, more than any, who are conscious how "haunted" all manner of places and things are. And people themselves! The searching psychologists are led singularly astray. They peer and pry and repine, and all the while the real essence of the figure ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... magic, was concerned with the evocation of demons and devils—spirits supposed to be superior to man in certain powers, but utterly depraved. Sorcery may be distinguished from witchcraft, inasmuch as the sorcerer attempted to command evil spirits by the aid of charms, etc., whereas the witch or wizard was supposed to have made a pact with the Evil One; though both terms ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... when he saw the pieces join and immediately knit together. But Loki was a master of guile, and recognising this as the work of magic, he cut off the other leg, promptly throwing flint and steel between the severed limb and trunk, and thereby hindering any further sorcery. The peasants were immensely relieved to find that their enemy was slain, and ever after they considered Loki the mightiest of all the heavenly council, for he had delivered them effectually from their foe, while the other gods had lent ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... son. Elymas, the sorcerer, was permitted to practise his arts—gained from the devil—that it might be proved, by his overthrow and blindness, how inferior was his master to the Divine Ruler; but it does not therefore follow that sorcery generally was permitted. In this instance it may be true that the evil one has been permitted to exercise his power over the captain and crew of that ship, and, as a warning against such heavy offences, the supernatural appearance of the vessel may be permitted. So far we ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... is, in 1803-4. Yet he has wives and young children. His principal want is a pair of new eyes; and the train of thought is, "I can't see when older men than myself can." The same idea makes the African ever attribute his sickness and death to sorcery: "Why should I lose life when all around me are alive?"—and this is the idea that lies at the bottom of all witch-persecution. Two pair of spectacles were duly despatched to him after our return to Cairo; and M. Lacaze there exhibited ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... yesterday you marvelled at their stablishment; this morning they will be floating above the world. One week the clear-cut beauty of their lines and curves gladdens your heart; the next, a mocking mystery of soft blurred battlements will tease your vision. Such shifting sorcery is never stale. Light, shade, and atmosphere play such fantastic tricks with Pau's fair heritage that the grey town, curled comfortably in the sunshine upon her plateau's edge, looks not on one, but upon many prospects. The pageant of the ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... whom he first established himself—the Coeurs d'Alene—were renowned among all the tribes for their belief in sorcery; and he experienced great difficulty in making an impression upon them, from the opposition of the medicine-men (jugglers). Among this tribe he found two relics held in great esteem, of which the Indians ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... It is worthy of remark that they never eat women, a fact which some may be inclined to attribute to respect for the female sex. It is, however, assignable to a different feeling. All the South American Indians, who still remain under the influence of sorcery and empiricism, consider women in the light of impure and evil beings, and calculated to injure them. Among a few of the less rude nations this aversion is apparent in domestic life, in a certain unconquerable contempt of females. With the Anthropophagi ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... and earth lays all petulance at rest, and soothes us to wiser convictions. To the intelligent, nature converts itself into a vast promise, and will not be rashly explained. Her secret is untold. Many and many an Oedipus[523] arrives: he has the whole mystery teeming in his brain. Alas! the same sorcery has spoiled his skill; no syllable can he shape on his lips. Her mighty orbit vaults like the fresh rainbow into the deep, but no archangel's wing was yet strong enough to follow it, and report of the return of the curve. But it also ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... empire. It is to him that India owes the weakening, if not the entire destruction, of the Mussulman yoke. No taller than an ordinary woman, and with the hand of a child, he was, nevertheless, possessed of wonderful strength, which, of course, his compatriots ascribed to sorcery. His sword is still preserved in a museum, and one cannot help wondering at its size and weight, and at the hilt, through which only a ten-year-old child could put his hand. The basis of this hero's ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... Then craftily he moves his pawns (Whenas a moan escapes each soul) As bleary sons of noble lords Sway twin censers' fumes in silence, Until in myrtle groves we see A blazing arch where agate eyes Doth peer malignly from a crypt Thro' turbid phials of violence,— A scene of impish sorcery! Where, in furbished chambers there lies— As vypers write on evil script The ghastly deeds that sinners wrought— A glow-worm's fagot that arrays Dim shapes of souls of men that were. And cyphers nights of doomes to be, Till flaring ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... Kelson said slowly. "This book is all about a place called Atlantis that is said to have existed in the Atlantic Ocean between America and Ireland, and to have been deluged by an earthquake owing to the wickedness of its inhabitants. They practised sorcery." ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... devilish men, who serve nobody but the Devil, that is, the spirit which in their language they call Menetto; under which title they comprehend everything that is subtle and crafty and beyond human skill and power. They have so much witchcraft, divination, sorcery and wicked arts, that they can hardly be held in by any bands or locks. They are as thievish and treacherous as they are tall; and in cruelty they are altogether inhuman, more than barbarous, ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... actually is, and has happened in the series of human events, is perhaps the smallest part of human history. If we would know man in all his subtleties, we must deviate into the world of miracles and sorcery. To know the things that are not, and cannot be, but have been imagined and believed, is the most curious chapter in the annals of man. To observe the actual results of these imaginary phenomena, and the crimes and cruelties they have caused us to commit, is one of the most ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... cruel desire, to crush her soft white body, to stamp out her life, to annihilate her and gloat over her shrieking despair. She felt like some hapless little princess in a fairy-tale who had wandered into a monstrous land of black sorcery. ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... time I set the whole community by the ears. But it could not have been so, for I had not been twenty-four hours in town before it was all over that I had come home to propose to Elizabeth; which was annoying but true. By the same sort of sorcery the town knew in another day that she had refused me, and all the wise heads wagged and bore witness that they could have told me so. What did I, a common carpenter, want at the "castle"? That was what they called her father's house. He had other ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... us go no further, lord. Here is a city of Enchanters, built By fairy Kings.' The second echoed him, 'Lord, we have heard from our wise man at home To Northward, that this King is not the King, But only changeling out of Fairyland, Who drave the heathen hence by sorcery And Merlin's glamour.' Then the first again, 'Lord, there is no such city anywhere, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... "A reptilian sorcery," he whispered to Lockwood, and smiled. "The face of a malignant Pierrette. A diabolic clown. Look at it. I saw it in the lightning outside. She wears a mask. Do you get her?" He paused mockingly. Lockwood ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... "There's sorcery at the bottom of it," said a sinister voice in the crowd. It was that of the bald man, who never removed his ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... a magic word, and the Suffrage party has been fortunate in its attempt to invoke the sorcery of the thought that it enfolds, and to blend it with the claim of woman to share in the public duty of voting. Possession of the elective franchise is a symbol of power in man's hand; why should it not bear the same relation to woman's upward impulse and action? Modern ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... its probability. I do not mean the silly recapitulation of silly omens which forewarned Hastings of his fate, and as omens generally do, to no manner of purpose; but I speak of the idle accusations put into the mouth of Richard, such as his baring his withered arm, and imputing it to sorcery, and to his blending the queen and Jane Shore in the same plot. Cruel or not, Richard was no fool; and therefore it is highly improbable that he should lay the withering of his arm on recent witchcraft, if it was ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... any evil or wicked spirit, to or for any intent or purpose; or take up any dead man, woman, or child, out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place where the dead body resteth; or the skin, bone, or other part of any dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment; or shall practise or exercise any witchcraft, &c., whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her body, or any part thereof: such offenders, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... infantine at one moment, when she was pouting, and smiling and as open as a rose that is unfolding in the sun, when she opened it in a laugh, and showed her pearly teeth, so that it became a target for kisses? Who will ever be able to explain that kind of magic and sorcery which some Chosen Women exercise over all men, that despotic authority, against which nobody would think ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... or sect is the history of opposition to knowledge, unless that knowledge come through it. This study, therefore, the offspring of "pagans and heathens," was not even given a trial. It was denounced as sorcery and witchcraft; the devil was conjured up as the father of all such students, and the result was that through this bitter persecution, the study was outlawed, and fell into the hands of vagrants, tramps, and gipsies. In spite of this persecution ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... power of the human fingers, or of a hair, will have, perhaps, reminded them of some sort of sorcery, or of some diabolic art worthy of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... them. Mabel's innate delicacy and excellent common sense would, in ordinary circumstances, have barred effusiveness upon the theme nearest her heart, but love at nineteen is rarely discreet, even when the persuasives to communicativeness are less powerful than were the sorcery of Rosa's sympathy and the confessions that paved the way to answering and trustful communicativeness on ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the chiefs and people mourned after their manner on occasion of a chief's death, conducting themselves like madmen and like beasts. Their conduct was such as to forbid description; The priests, also, put into action the sorcery apparatus, that the person who had prayed the King to death might die; for it was not believed that Kamehameha's departure was the effect either of sickness or old age. When the sorcerers set up by their fire-places sticks with a strip of kapa flying at the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... truths by reasoning consists in the mere substitution of one set of arbitrary signs for another; a doctrine which they suppose to derive irresistible confirmation from the example of algebra. If there were any process in sorcery or necromancy more preternatural than this, I should be much surprised. The culminating point of this philosophy is the noted aphorism of Condillac, that a science is nothing, or scarcely any thing, but une langue bien faite; in other words, that the one sufficient rule for discovering ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... of Kana, Uli, the grandmother of Kana, goes up to Paliuli to dig up the double canoe Kaumaielieli in which Kana is to sail to recover his mother. The chant in which this canoe is described is used to-day by practicers of sorcery to exorcise ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... legend.[49] The resemblance of the catastrophe—presumably the appearance of Satan in the form of Lucifer—to the scene in Mickle's Sorcerer, which was published among Lewis's Tales of Wonder (1801), is vague enough to be accidental. There are blue flames and sorcery, and an apparition in both, but that is all the two scenes have in common. The tyrannical abbess may be a heritage from The Romance of the Forest, but, if so she is exaggerated almost ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... could not have had them more in his power. For an hour he continued, rising from one important subject to another, until the breath was fairly suspended in the excitement. An uninterested spectator would have supposed that he had used sorcery in thus transfixing his auditors. While all others forgot, he noticed the day was drawing to a close, he turned and looked toward the setting sun, and apostrophized its fading glory—then in his most touching voice ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... like Petrarch, Aeneas Sylvius, and Pico to discredit it, retained its hold over the minds of many eminent, otherwise emancipated, thinkers throughout the period of the Renaissance. [Footnote: Bodin was also a firm believer in sorcery. His La Demonomanie (1578) is a monument of superstition.] Here Bodin is in the company of Machiavelli and Lord Bacon. But not content with the doctrine of astral influence on human events, he sought another key to historical changes in the influence of numbers, reviving ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... beauty of self-sacrifice to a noble ideal. A treatise on the fall of the feudal system; on the position, at home and abroad, of France in the seventeenth century; on foreign alliances; on the justice of parliaments or of secret commissions, or on accusations of sorcery, would not perhaps have been read. But the romance ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and fell with all its grandeurs. Its spirit walks the earth and haunts the institutions of to-day, in the great corporations, with the control of the National highways, their occupation of great domains, their power to tax, their cynical contempt for the law, their sorcery to debase most gifted men to the capacity of splendid slaves, their pollution of the ermine of the judge and the robe of the Senator, their aggregation in one man of wealth so enormous as to make Croesus seem a pauper, their picked, paid, and skilled ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... at Spannheim, he wrote several works upon the occult sciences, the chief of which are an essay on geomancy, or divination by means of lines and circles on the ground; another upon sorcery; a third upon alchymy; and a fourth upon the government of the world by its presiding angels, which was translated into English, and published by the famous William Lilly ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... from Pamphylia (Acts xiii. 13), leaving S. Paul and S. Barnabas to go on without him. Of those in whom the seed is choked by the weeds of worldliness and love of money, there were many examples. Simon Magus, who after renouncing his sorcery and being baptised, thought that the power of the Holy Ghost might "be purchased with money" (Acts viii. 19, 20); Demas who "loved this present world" so much that he forsook S. Paul in the hour of danger (2 Tim. iv. 10); and the many of whom S. Paul spoke with tears, "whose God is their ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... it not for author-borrowers, through age grown obsolete, might virtually perish. But by and by, just as some precious thought is being lost unto the world, let there come some Medea, by whose potent sorcery that old and withered idea receives new life-blood through its shrunken veins, and it starts to life again with recreated vigor—another AEson, with the bloom of youth upon him. Besides in this way playing the physician to save old ideas from a burial alive, the author-borrower often delivers ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... relations of men are far more complicated and numerous than of yore; and in the play of the passions, and in the devices of creative spirits, that have thus a proportionately greater sphere for their action, there are spells of social sorcery more potent than all the necromancy of Merlin or ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... has fallen into it from novels and travels, and to keep merely the facts of the town's luxurious life and agonizing death, with such incidents of the eruption as he can remember from the description of Pliny. These are the spells to which the sorcery yields, and with these in your thought you can rehabilitate the city until Ventisei seems to be a valet de place of the first century, and yourselves a set of blond barbarians to whom he is showing off the splendors of one of the most brilliant towns ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... devil's sorcery denoted we shall soon see; for as they approached Ziemitze, and the ducal house of Wolgast appeared in sight, Dinnies Kleist started on before the safety sleigh; and as soon as the high towers of the castle rose above the trees, he waved the two banners above his head, and brought them ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... Mediaeval Heresy and the Inquisition, pp. 111-12 (1920), ending with the words: "The voluminous records of the holy tribunal, the learned treatises of its members, are the great repositories of the true and indisputable facts concerning the abominable heresies of sorcery and witchcraft." ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... which, even during Fabert's life, had appeared so extraordinary, the vulgar never feared to ascribe his elevation to supernatural causes. It was said that from his youth he had busied himself with magic and sorcery, and that he had made a league with the devil. Mine host, who, to the stupidity inherent in all the natives of the province of Champagne, added the credulity of our Brittany peasants, assured us with a great deal of sangfroid, that when Fabert died in the chateau of the Duke de C——, a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... he has recently issued to execute his errand. It is a repulsive subject. "Svetlana," however, is more agreeable than its prototype "Leonora," inasmuch as the whole catastrophe turns out a dream brought on by "sorcery," during the "sviatki" or Holy Nights (see Canto V. st. x), and the dreamer awakes to hear the tinkling of her lover's sledge approaching. "Svetlana" has been ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... Neither in sacred nor profane ancient history do we find what was understood in the days of our ancestors by witchcraft, which meant a formal and actual compact with the great Prince of evil beings. The sorcery of antiquity consisted in pretending to possess certain mysterious charms, and to do by their means, or by the co-operation of superhuman spirits, without any reference to their character as evil or good beings, what transcends the action of ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... forth that it is the disembodied spirits of dead men who make the communications, the Bible reader is at once aware of a conflict of claims. In times when the Bible was written, there were practices among men which went under the names of "enchantment," "sorcery," "witchcraft," "necromancy," "divination," "consulting with familiar spirits," etc. These practices were all more or less related, but some of them bear an unmistakable meaning. Thus, "necromancy" ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... was there to remember. The morning's awakening, the nightly summons to bed; the connings, the recitations; the periodical half-holidays and perambulations; the playground, with its broils, its pastimes, its intrigues; these, by a mental sorcery long forgotten, were made to involve a wilderness of sensation, a world of rich incident, an universe of varied emotion, of excitement the most passionate and spirit-stirring. 'Oh, le bon temps, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... made laws they did not perceive that by their laws they condemned their gods. For if their laws are righteous, their gods are unrighteous, because they committed transgressions of the law in that they killed one another, practised sorcery, and committed adultery, robbed, stole, and lay with males, not to mention their other practices. For if their gods have done right in doing all this, as they write, then the laws of the Greeks are unrighteous in not being made according to the will of their gods. And consequently ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... artists by those who have never been seasoned in youth to the enchantments of art. Tenors and prima donnas, pianists and violinists, actors and actresses enjoy powers of seduction which in the middle ages would have exposed them to the risk of being burnt for sorcery. But as they exercise this power by singing, playing, and acting, no great harm is done except perhaps to themselves. Far graver are the powers enjoyed by brilliant persons who are also connoisseurs ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... we, before the troops, proclaim his crimes, I dread his arts of seeming innocence, His bland address, and sorcery of tongue; And, should he fall, unheard, by sudden justice, Th' adoring soldiers would revenge ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... witch hang! What care I? She has done harm enough with her charms and her sorcery on Pastor Tappau's girls. Let her die, and let all other witches look to themselves; for there be many kinds of witchcraft abroad. Cousin Lois, thou wilt like best to stop with Pastor Nolan, or I would pray thee to come back with ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... wonder, marvel; astonishment, amazement, wonderment, bewilderment; amazedness &c. adj[obs3].; admiration, awe; stupor, stupefaction; stound|, fascination; sensation; surprise &c. (inexpectation) 5O8[obs3]. note of admiration; thaumaturgy &c.(sorcery) 992[obs3]. V. wonder, marvel, admire; be surprised &c. adj.; start; stare; open one's eyes, rub one's eyes, turn up one's eyes; gloar|; gape, open one's mouth, hold one's breath; look aghast, stand ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and origin of death, 31 sq.; universal interest of the question, 32 sq.; the belief in immortality general among mankind, 33; belief of many savages that death is not natural and that they would never die if their lives were not cut prematurely short by sorcery, 33 sq.; examples of this belief among the South American Indians, 34 sqq.; death sometimes attributed to sorcery and sometimes to demons, practical consequence of this distinction, 37; belief in sorcery as the cause of death among the Indians of Guiana, 38 sq., among the Tinneh ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... mazes bound Of vernal sorcery, I heard a dainty dubious sound, As of goodly melody; Which first was faint as if in swound, Then burst so suddenly In warring concord all around, That, whence this thing might be, To see The very marrow longed in me! It seemed of air, it seemed of ground, And never any witchery Drawn ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... was about the last Hanavave suffered from cannibalism and extreme sorcery. The taua, the pagan priest, was still powerful, however, and his gods demanded victims. The men here conspired with the men of Hanahouua to descend on Oi, a little village by the sea between here and Oomoa. They had guns of a sort, for the whalers had brought old and rusty guns to trade ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... sub anno 1325, et seq.: also in "The Annals of Ireland," in the second volume of Gibson's Camden, 3rd edition, sub eod. anno. He was nearly related to the lady Alice Kettle, and her son William Utlawe, al. Outlaw; against whom that singular charge of sorcery was brought by Richard Lederede, Bishop of Ossory. The account of this charge is so curious that, for the benefit of those readers of "N. & Q." who may not have the means of referring to the books above cited, I am tempted to ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... immediately after the charge, while those behind passed over their bodies, enabling them to rise and retreat in order to rush forward again in their turn—that the troops of the Rhine and the Alps were seized with a panic, and spread a rumour that there was sorcery among the blacks, by which they were made invulnerable. It was scarcely possible, too, to believe in the inferiority of their numbers, so interminable seemed the succession of foes that presented a fresh ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... Shamanes, are a kind of improvisators; they wear, over their tunick of bark, a sort of steel net, to which some pieces of iron are attached, the noise of which is very great when the improvisator is agitated; he has moments of inspiration which a good deal resemble nervous attacks, and it is rather by sorcery, than talent, that he makes an impression on the people. The imagination, in such dreary countries, is scarcely remarkable but by fear, and the earth herself appears to repel man by the terror with which she inspires him. I afterwards saw the citadel, in the circumference ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... in Paris, on the Quai Voltaire, and in the nineteenth century; the time and place made sorcery impossible. The idol of French scepticism had died in the house just opposite, the disciple of Gay-Lussac and Arago, who had held the charlatanism of intellect in contempt. And yet the stranger submitted himself to the influence of an imaginative spell, as all of ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... stay in any one place. And when a people can have but few luxuries they grow very skillful in the making of those few. They carry their wisdom in such matters, as they do their wealth, wherever they go, and hand it down from father to son. That is all the sorcery they use. ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... the fishing has been bad. But one among them, "a man about forty years old, with a sad and dignified air," has been more fortunate than the others. The fishermen envy him, and vaguely suspect him of sorcery. He tries to enter into friendly conversation with them, and offers his catch to a poor family. But in vain; his advances are repulsed and his generosity is eyed with suspicion. He is a stranger—the ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... he practiced what is known as chemical sorcery; so that when Claribel Sudds came next day at two o'clock he showed her a small box filled with compounds that ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... the inundated marshes, throwing bridges over the deeper channels, and building a causeway elsewhere. But in the face of an active enemy this was no easy task; and so frequently were the Normans surprised by Hereward that they believed he must be aided by sorcery, and employed the "witch," who perished by fire (as mentioned in another Note), to counteract his magic, with the ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... leave it. They are always there; they are always the same. You may go into a theatre when it is empty and dark; but did you ever go into a private bar that was empty and dark? A private bar is as eternal as the hills, as changeless as the monomania of a madman, as mysterious as sorcery. Always the same order of bottles, the same tinkling, the same popping, the same time-tables, and the same realistic pictures of frothing champagne on the walls, the same advertisements on the same ash-trays on the counter, the same odour that wipes ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... They have little toleration, and put Michael of Turnigoo and Feodor to death for not worshipping the sun at midday at the command of Prince Bathy. They are a superstitious people, believing in enchantment and sorcery, and looking upon fire as the purifier of all things. When one of their chiefs dies he is buried with a horse saddled and bridled, a table, a dish of meat, a cup of mare's milk, and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... of the Apulian are commonly in this strain, though he heats himself a little in the battle. Two of his similes from hawking and sorcery are descriptive of manners.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... conference became tinged with exasperation, and certain gentlemen seized the opportunity to relieve their pent-up feelings on the subject of the President and his slavish advisers,—some of whom, before they came under the spell of his sorcery, had once been sound lawyers and sensible men. With the exception of the great Banker himself, who made few comments, Theodore Watling was accorded the most deference; as one of the leaders of that indomitable group of senators who had dared to stand up against popular clamour, his opinions were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... youth, When expectation soared on pinions high, And hope shone out on boyhood's cloudless sky, Seeming all truth— When all looked fair to fancy's ardent eye, And pleasure wore an air of sorcery? ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... the life of a book was soon extinguished. Whole libraries were sometimes sacrificed at one fell swoop, as in the case of the 6000 volumes destroyed at Salamanca in 1490 by Torquemada, on a charge of sorcery.[111] After the invention of printing it became more difficult to carry on this warfare against literature, while the rapid diffusion of Protestant opinions through the press rendered the need for their extermination urgent. Sixtus ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... strains of the Gamelon, an orchestra of tiny gongs, bamboo tubes, and metal pipes. Actors perform old-world dramas in dumb show, and conjurors in gaudy attire attract people of all ages to those time-honoured feats of legerdemain which once represented the sorcery of the mystic East. The simple Malay has not yet adopted the critical and unbelieving attitude which rubs the gilt off the gingerbread or the bloom off the plum, and his fervid faith in mythical heroes and necromantic ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... hadn't," she said. "Don't you see it was only my sorcery, as you call it, that took us there? I ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... this day there was scarce a soul at the inn, all the usual customers having been drawn away to witness the execution of a Portuguese named Gomez, who had been found guilty of sorcery, witchcraft, and other crimes, and was to suffer in ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... whether it were true or not that she had attempted to weave spells against him. In fact, there were few of the new-comers from England who did not, like Bedford, impute the transparency of Henry's hands, and the hollowness of his brightly-tinted cheek, to some form of sorcery. ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that is the soul of the divinest art. I used to believe that nothing could surpass the beauty of a scale, until Diaz, after writing formal patterns in the still air innumerably, and hypnotizing me with that sorcery, would pass suddenly to the repetition of fragments of Bach. And then I knew that hitherto he had only been trying to be more purely and severely mechanical than a machine, and that now the interpreter was at work. I have heard him repeat a passage fifty times—and so slowly!—and each ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... silvered bronze between each two of the heifers. [2]She bursts upon the pools and fords at the head of the cattle. It was then that Cuchulain said, "I cannot see the fords for the waters."[2] The women [3]came with their strange sorcery, and[3] constrained Cuchulain by geasa and by inviolable bonds [4]to check the heifer for them[4] lest she should escape from him without harm. Cuchulain made an unerring cast [5]from his sling-stick[5] at her, so that he shattered one of the ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... and Z lie within the circle; and the question is, by what art or artifice—we might almost say by what sorcery—can they be transplanted out of it, without at the same time being made to overpass the limits of the sphere? There are just four conceivable answers to this question—answers illustrative of three great schools of philosophy, and of a fourth ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... haunted castle the Queen contrived to gain a reputation for sorcery and poisoning, and the connection brought no good on her royal son, for she involved him in a war with France on behalf of her husband. He met with no success, and his French domains were at the mercy of Louis IX.; but that excellent prince would not ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... a bad love-letter in the florid style. He had at his command, in especial, certain poetical quotations, the effect of which repeated experience had assured him to be as potent upon the female breast as the incantations or carmina of the ancient sorcery. The ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... diffused itself among the flocks, the raging tempest that rooted up the oak, when the thunder roared among the hills, and the lightning flashed from pole to pole, they ascribed to the machinations and the sorcery of Rodogune. Their conjectures indeed were blind, but their notions were not ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... minutes of this feinting, the caribou stood still, deliberating some new move. Instantly the bear, also, became motionless as a stone. The sudden peace was like a shock of enchantment, a violent sorcery, and over it the blue-white, flooding shine of the moonlight seemed to take on some sinister significance. The seconds lengthened out as a nightmare, till at last the stupendous stillness was broken by the ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... movements of the four-foot rule, that wand of architects and builders, with which Grindot was measuring. She saw in those mysterious weavings a conjuring spirit that augured evil; she wished the walls were less high, the rooms less large, and dared not question the young man on the effects of his sorcery. ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... hands she carried a staff, upon which there was a knob, which was ornamented with brass, and set with stones up about the knob. Circling her waist she wore a girdle of touch-wood, and attached to it a great skin pouch, in which she kept the charms which she used when she was practising her sorcery. She wore upon her feet shaggy calf-skin shoes, with long, tough latchets, upon the ends of which there were large brass buttons. She had cat-skin gloves upon her hands, which were white inside and lined with fur. When she entered, all of the folk felt it to be their duty ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... of the matters on which the holy office exercises its functions. I need scarcely mention sorcery, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... there would be a thunderstorm during the night, and every one knew that he never made a mistake about the weather. Nevertheless, Jack's mother watered the plants as if he had not spoken, for it seemed to her that this meteorological gift smacked a little of sorcery and black magic; but in spite of herself she felt sure that there would be a thunderstorm and that her labour was therefore vain, save perhaps as a protest against idle superstition. It was in the same spirit ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... fond of his cat, He thought she was pretty, and sleek, and all that; And she purred in the softest tone, He wished to make her his own. This man by prayers, by tears, By sorcery and charms, Changed pussy to a woman fair, And took her in his arms. But in the wainscot soon a rat Made itself manifest, And very soon the pussy cat, Could still no longer rest. Her foolish husband who believed That nothing had of cat remained, And as his wife had her received— Was, now, I ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... walked by the waters grieving over the ignorance and suffering of his nation. Suddenly the spirit of the waters, the woman Orehu, rose from the waves and addressed him. She taught him the mysteries of semeci, the sorcery which pleases and controls Yauhahu, and presented him with the maraka, the holy calabash containing white pebbles which they rattle during their exorcisms, and the sound of which summons the beings of the unseen ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... peerless Princess thou shalt be, Through wit of love's rare sorcery: To crown the crown of thy gold hair Thou shalt have rubies, bleeding there Their crimson splendor midst the marred Pulp of great pearls, ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... Hutchinson, as already mentioned, wrote in 1718 an epoch-making history of the subject, a book which is still useful and can never be wholly displaced. In 1851 Thomas Wright brought out his Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, a work at once entertaining and learned. Wright wrote largely from original sources and wrote with a good deal of care. Such blunders as he made were the result of haste and of the want of those materials which we now possess. Mrs. ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... right when he said he knew this wild, mountain scenery was to his friend's taste. The very air had for him a certain sorcery. He stood still at last and took some long, deep breaths, but the cloud on his brow had not yet disappeared; it grew darker instead, as he leaned against a tree and cast his eyes ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... cause. A wooden tower was built, and pushed along the causeway in front of the troops, the old woman within it actively dispensing her incantations and calling down the powers of witch-craft upon Hereward's head. Unfortunately for her, Hereward tried against her sorcery of the broomstick the enchantment of the brand, setting fire to the tower and burning it and the sorceress within it. We could scarcely go back to a later date than the eleventh century to find such an absurdity as this possible, but in those ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Ferrando, relates to his associates the story of the fate of Garzia, brother of the Count di Luna, in whose service they are employed. While in their cradles, Garzia was bewitched by an old gypsy, and day by day pined away. The gypsy was burned at the stake for sorcery; and in revenge Azucena, her daughter, stole the sickly child. At the opening of the opera his ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... the lake and was come forth from the House of Captivity; it might well be that she was but swimming unto death; naked as she was, fireless, foodless, and helpless, at the mercy of mere sorcery. Yet she called to mind the word of the wood-mother that they should meet again, and took heart thereby; and she was glad in that she had had her will, and shaken off the guile and thraldom of the witch. Much she thought of the wood-mother, and loved her, and wondered had she ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... she murmured, clearing her eyes of the clouded hair and feeling for her stirrups with small, moccasined toes. "Hark! Now we hear the Kennyetto roaring below the hill. See, cousin, it is sunset, the west blazes, all heaven is afire! Ah! what sorcery has turned the world to paradise—riding this ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... lady prayed that kindly friar, that he Would straight conduct her to some haven near, For that she from the land of France might flee, And never more of loathed Rinaldo hear. The hermit, who was skilled in sorcery, Ceased not to soothe the gentle damsel's fear. And with the promise of deliverance, shook His pocket, and drew forth ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... "It is doubtless sorcery that she should ask of me an interview with you who came two hundred miles to ask of me ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... arch-enchanter's wand! Itself a nothing; But taking sorcery from the master-hand To paralyze the Caesars, and to strike ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... began to play softly upon their zithers, moving their bodies to the tune, and humming, almost below their breath, a low dreamy air. When they caught sight of Don Pedro they scowled at him, and some of them looked terrified, for only a few weeks before he had had two of their tribe hanged for sorcery in the market- place at Seville, but the pretty Infanta charmed them as she leaned back peeping over her fan with her great blue eyes, and they felt sure that one so lovely as she was could never be cruel to anybody. So they played ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... primitive savages, are all, I believe, different manners of expression of their belief in ghosts, and of the anthropomorphic interpretation of out-of-the-way events, which is its concomitant. Witchcraft and sorcery are the practical expressions of these beliefs; and they stand in the same relation to religious worship as the simple anthropomorphism of children, or savages, does ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the old jeweller. But a diamond had never previously been cut: men, wise in their generation, had said that a diamond never could be cut; and consequently, according to the general mode of treating inventors in those days, a charge of sorcery was brought against the first diamond-cutter. Berghen, thrown into prison, had abundant leisure for deliberation. Two courses were open to him: one was to keep his secret, and be burned as a sorcerer; the other, to clear himself of that charge ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... apostles of Lamaism, i.e. of Tibetan Buddhism, and a great master of enchantments. The doctrines of Sakya, as they prevailed in Udyana in old times, were probably strongly tinged with Sivaitic magic, and the Tibetans still regard that locality as the classic ground of sorcery and witchcraft. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... flood-tide. The exhilaration had grown with each sweep of the fiddle-bow, with the sorcery of sinuous, swaying bodies, with the song of the dancers as they joined in the calling out of the figures, with the rhythmic shuffle of feet, with the hum of the pulses, with the leaping of blood to cheek and heart till the dancers whirled as leaves circling towards the eddies of ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... wild animals upon the road. In case of sickness he is called in, not as M.D. in our acceptation, but as "doctor of magic," and he charms both the hut and the patient against death, with the fluctuating results that must attend professionals even in sorcery. His subjects have the most thorough confidence in his power; and so great is his reputation that distant tribes frequently consult him, and beg his assistance as a magician. In this manner does old Katchiba hold his sway over his savage, but credulous people; and so long has he imposed upon ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... to the violence of the storm and withdraw a while from the court, he was soon recalled and reinstated in all his former dignities. This melancholy infatuation of the king is imputed by the writers of that age to sorcery on the part of the favorite. [4] But the only witchcraft which he used, was the ascendency of a strong mind ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... their enemies became more and more the objects towards which their occult powers were directed: and thus turned from their lawful use, and practised for all sorts of selfish and malevolent purposes, they inevitably led to what we must call by the name of sorcery. ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... street raving on the wonders of that speech; for my part, I cannot believe it was so supernatural as they say.' He affirms that there must be a witchery in Mr. Sheridan, who had no diamonds—as Hastings had—to win favour with, and says that the Opposition may be fairly charged with sorcery. Burke declared the speech to be 'the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which there was any record or tradition.' Fox affirmed that 'all he had ever heard, all he had ever read, when compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and vanished like ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... him do it," Tanno declared. "Never heard of it from Nemestronia, and she'll talk 'leopard' by the hour, if you let her. Never suspected any such sorcery from Hedulio. How does he do it? ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... converted by DEMONSTRATION, not by myths and allegories? Why do they, the deadly enemies of civilization, borrow from it, nevertheless, its most pernicious fruits,—property, inequality of fortune and rank, gluttony, concubinage, prostitution, what do I know? theurgy, magic, and sorcery? Why these endless denunciations of morality, metaphysics, and psychology, when the abuse of these sciences, which they do not understand, constitutes their whole system? Why this mania for deifying a man whose principal merit consisted ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... in the industrial and mechanical arts, the low type of group morals, rudimentary art-sense, lack of race-pride and self-assertiveness, and in intellectual and religious life largely synonymous with fetishism and sorcery."[132] ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... the Immaculate Virgin at Halona and the chapel and parish house of the Immaculate Conception at Hawikuh, he set his face against the Rain Dance, and especially against the Priests of the Rain. Witchcraft and sorcery he called it, and in Zuni to be ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... "Son of Aeson, thou wilt despise the counsel which I will tell thee, but, though in evil plight, it is not fitting to forbear from the trial. Ere now thou hast heard me tell of a maiden that uses sorcery under the guidance of Hecate, Perses' daughter. If we could win her aid there will be no dread, methinks, of thy defeat in the contest; but terribly do I fear that my mother will not take this task upon her. Nevertheless I will go back again to entreat her, for ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... Israel, bearded and grave, stalwart and scantily clad. They repaired a cable or fitted an ax-handle or mended a hoe. But they were full of serious and absorbed discourse, for the great Hebrew, Moses, from the sheep-ranges of Midian, had been among them, showing them marvels of sorcery, preaching Jehovah and promising freedom. The first high white light of dawn was breaking upon the century-long night ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... went on again and said: "To say sooth they be not very handy for crushing as a man crushes a wasp, because sorcery goes with them, and the wiles of one who is their Queen, the evilest woman who ever spat upon the blessed Host of the Altar: yet is she strong, a devouring sea of souls, God help us!" ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... horrible place; and the bible teaches the existence of hell and this big devil and all these little devils. The bible teaches the doctrine of witchcraft and makes us believe that there are sorcerers and witches, and that the dead could be raised by the power of sorcery. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... missionaries would prove more indulgent, but the reverse is found to be the case. The new broom sweeps clean; and the white missionary of to-day is often embarrassed by the bigotry of his native coadjutor. What else should we expect? On some islands, sorcery, polygamy, human sacrifice, and tobacco-smoking have been prohibited, the dress of the native has been modified, and himself warned in strong terms against rival sects of Christianity; all by the same man, at the same ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... etiquette has prescribed a number of customs limiting the utterance of names among savage and barbarous peoples all the world over. The origin of these rules and customs seems to have been the dread of sorcery. A personal name was held to be a part of its owner; and, just as the possession of a lock of another's hair, or even a paring of his nail, was believed to confer power over him, so was the knowledge of his name. Similarly men in the ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland |
