"Incantation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... An incantation so serene, So innocent, befits the scene: There's magic in that small bird's note— See, there he flits—the Yellow-throat; A living sunbeam, tipped with wings, A spark of light that ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... the destroyer of her peace. She adjures the god to save his tree, impute the guilt of desecration to the traitor and visit him with deadly vengeance. The visit is repeated and nails are driven until the object of the incantation sickens and dies, or is at least supposed to do so. I have more than once seen such trees and straw images upon them, and have observed others in which the large number of rusted nails and fragments of straw showed how ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... severe and so deadly were the stabs and the thrusts, and the gashes of the many wounds that they had, than to apply to them spells and incantations and charms, in order to staunch their blood, and their bleeding mortal wounds. And for every spell and incantation and charm that was applied to the stabs and the wounds of Cuchulain, he sent a full half westward across the ford to Ferdia; and of each kind of food, and of pleasant, palatable, intoxicating drink that the men of Ireland brought to Ferdia, he sent a half across ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... at the club with a celebrated psycho-analyst about the possibilities of auto-suggestion, he strove to empty his mind and then to repeat to himself very rapidly in a low murmur: "You will sleep, you will sleep, you will sleep, you will sleep," innumerable times. But the incantation would not work, probably because he could not keep his mind empty. The mysterious receptacle filled faster than he could empty it. It filled till it flowed over with the flooding realisation of the awful ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... three maidens stole out unperceived into Kimyall town-place to perform their incantation. Nancy was the first to sow, the others being ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... book indignantly from me, and began to invent doggerel, parodying this precious incantation. But Severance did not seem to enjoy the joke, and it grows tiresome to enact one's own farce ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... gathered around him with looks {300} of terror and frantically signed to him to put away the book. They mistook it for some kind of a fetish, that is, an object inhabited by a powerful spirit, and his muttering they supposed to be a magic incantation. Then a happy thought struck him. He began to sing the service in a loud and cheerful voice. This delighted the savages, who fancied that the book was teaching him ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... the Bantu regards himself as having got under control in his charms, he has to worship the uncontrolled army of the air. This he does by sacrifice and incantation. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... A blunderer whose incantation had brought the spirit up to face me, I stared at him helplessly, nor could I find words to answer or control the passion that my imbecile scolding had evoked. Whatever the barriers Keredec's training had built for his protection, they were ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... Servia, over Southern Greece and the Danubian Provinces, and which would twice within the last twenty-five years have seen its Empire dashed to pieces by an Egyptian vassal but for the intervention of Europe, might be arrested in its decadence by an incantation, and be made strong enough and enlightened enough to govern to all time the Slavic and Greek populations which had still the misfortune to be included within its dominions. Recognising—so ran the words which read like bitter irony, but which ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... a passion, a passion new and sweet in its incantation out of the lost cravings of childhood. When the nearer freshness of the woods filled her nostrils, there from the live-oak moss in her night's abode, she smiled on the grave young fellow who had left her at the door. And ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... is not everything: that "business as usual," while it might serve as a charm or formula against panic in the market-place, and even sustain in private many a doubting soul accustomed to take things on trust, was an incantation something less than adequate to calm the City of London, or the Bank directors and their confidential clerks, who maybe had been working in a frenzy through Sunday and Bank Holiday in their closed offices at headquarters. For a moment Mr Pamphlett realised this, and it gave him a scare. In the ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... beauty, that incantation; he scented that perfume; and his soul boiled over. For a long moment he gazed, and his spirit was as if submerged. But he recovered himself and, leaning out of the window, recited, nearly at full voice, the poem of the "Blossom ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... fields, and there was harvesting going on, so that the villages we passed seemed almost deserted. I will not say whence we started or where we went, and I shall mention no names at all, except one, which is of the nature of a symbol or incantation; for I do not desire that others should go where I went, unless I could be sure that they went with the same peace in their hearts that I bore with me ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... consists in a spell taken from a book of magic. But in the Tamil version, the process is described as being of a different and double nature. According to it, the mother of the murdered child "by the charm called sisupabam re-created the body, and, by the incantation called sanjivi, restored it to life." The suitor, having learnt the charm and the incantation, "took the bones and the ashes (of the dead girl), and having created out of them the body, by virtue of the charm sisupabam gave life to that ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... regretfully. Harlequin was to enter almost in the first scene. "I have hit on nothing I can think of better," writes Kemble, "than the story of King Arthur and Merlin, and the Saxon Wizards. The pantomime might open with the Saxon witches lamenting Merlin's power over them, and forming an incantation by which they create a harlequin, who is supposed to be able to counteract Merlin in all his designs for the good of King Arthur. If the Saxons came on in a dreadful storm, as they proceeded in their magical rites, the sky might brighten and a rainbow sweep ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... intimacy. confn m. confine, limit, border. confundir overwhelm, engulf, confuse, confound, mingle, heap up; —se be bewildered, be perplexed. confusin f. confusion, disorder. confuso, -a confused, dim, indistinct, bewildering. conjurar conjure, implore. conjuro m. conjuration, incantation. conmigo pron. pers. with me. conmover stir, affect. conocer know, be acquainted with, recognize; —se know each other. conque conj. so then, and so. conquistar conquer, subdue. conseguir attain, obtain, gain. consentido, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... And ocean's gods and heaven's gods I adjure, Thou shalt be Tamar's, Tamar shalt be thine." Then she, regarding him long fixed, replied: "I have thy promise, take thou my advice. Gebir, this land of Egypt is a land Of incantation, demons rule these waves; These are against thee, these thy works destroy. Where thou hast built thy palace, and hast left The seven pillars to remain in front, Sacrifice there, and all these rites observe. Go, but go early, ere the gladsome Hours, Strew saffron ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... vain the enchanter's wand we wave: No stroke of ours recalls his magic vision: The incantation that its power gave Sleeps with ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... "Arabian Nights Entertainments" who were forced to serve powerful magicians, but who hated them and longed to tear them in pieces all the time, and did so, too, if the omission of some necessary incantation gave them the power. Well, the camel seemed like one of these subjugated spirits, an excellent servant, but a most unwilling one, and resenting the power to which, forced by inevitable destiny, he yielded implicit obedience. Evidently he was ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... of that look disarmed the other. He swept up the dice-box, and shook it furiously, while his lips stirred. It was as if he murmured an incantation for success. The dice rolled out, winking in the light, spun over, and the owner of the gun stood with both hands braced against the edge of the table, ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... before her eyes as a very central man, and that always counts, and he had powers, unique powers as it seemed, at any rate in the air. The performance with the model had just a touch of the quality of a potent incantation, and women have ever displayed an unreasonable disposition to imagine that when a man has powers he must necessarily have Power. Given so much, and what was not good in Filmer's manner and appearance became an ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... the red-whiskered giant rise, seemingly from the ocean, his hand relaxed on the machine-gun and he stood in ready expectation. The Eskimos appeared to understand the words which the stranger flung at them, for, though they continued their weird incantation, they lowered their weapons and did not attempt to ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... stage of theism, is sorcery. Incantation, dancing, fasting, bodily torture, and ecstasism are practiced. Every tribe has its potion or vegetable drug, by which the ecstatic state is produced, and their venerable medicine-men see visions and dream dreams. No enterprise ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... knew that world-old formula of hate; he knew of its almost innocent use in many a white caban, but its older, deeper meaning of demoniacal incantation rushed to his mind, somehow blending with the wizardry with which he surrounded his thoughts of ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... us had any faith in the incantation except Peter, and, by infection, Cecily. You never could tell what might happen. Cecily took the wishbone in her trembling little hands and began her backward pacing, repeating solemnly, "I wish that we may find Paddy alive, or else his body, so that we can bury him ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a half-mile distant, at the starting-gate, little spots of color moved in impatient circles. The big, good-natured crowd had grown silent, so silent that from the high, sun-warmed grass in the infield one could hear the lazy chirp of the crickets. As though repeating a prayer, or an incantation, Dolly's lips ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... of Shakespeare could carry him triumphantly through subjects the most unpromising, and fables the most improbable: we therefore cannot wonder at the success of such of his plays, where the magic of witches and the incantation of spirits are described, or where the power of fairies is introduced; when such was the credulity of the times respecting these imaginary beings, and when that belief was made a science of, and kept alive by artful and superstitious, knavish, and enthusiastic teachers; what ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... in the locust bough, and in the air an incantation that made a folly of sermons and souls and old maids' resentments and gossips' queries. The preacher fought on, another Saint Anthony in a cloud ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... yellow incantation, You sitting in the cowslips of the meadow above, Me, your shadow on the bog-flame, flowery may-blobs, Me full length in the cowslips, muttering you love; You, your soul like a lady-smock, lost, evanescent, You with your face all rich, like ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... Jew through the fading light, his attention painfully strained by the sense of loneliness and surprise. From mere habit he supposed the chant to be an introduction to a varied service, but no change came. On and on and on went the strange music, like a potent incantation, the big Jew swaying his body slightly with the rhythm, and at long intervals came the whisper of paper with the turning ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... made. In the Caroline archipelago fishing is combined with various rites and religious notions. The chief medicine man owes the authority of his position, not to his knowledge of the art of fishing, but to his knowledge of the formulae of incantation and exorcism employed in fishing. There must be abstinence from the sex relation before a fishing expedition. The men start in silence. Especially, the hoped-for success must not be mentioned. The boat must have a formula of luck ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... ordinary wizard or sorcerer to break; therefore she had given the matter much shrewd thought and hoped she had conceived a plan that would succeed. But because she was not positive of success she would have no one present at the incantation except her assistant, the Wizard ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... not immediately removed. The two boys could hear the sound of footsteps moving round them, and voices chanting in some unknown tongue what seemed to be a mysterious incantation. ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... been compounding a purge out of the blood of a goat, and the ashes of an heifer, and the juice of hyssop. But I have a far better medicine under my hands here. This moment I will make you a purge to the purpose." And then the learned man, half-doctor, half-divine, chanted again the sacred incantation as he bent over his pestle and mortar, saying: Ex carne et sanguine Christi! Those shrewd old eyes soon saw that, in spite of all their defences and all their denials, damage had been done to the conscience and the heart that nothing would set right but a ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... continue to be successful. Just as slavery was the ghost in the House of the American Democracy during the Middle Period, so Hearstism is and will remain the ghost in the House of Reform. And the incantation by which it will be permanently exorcised has not yet been ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... wandering spirit, and this great unchanging multivertebrate which I faced night after night was one ever-listening animal, which writhed along after me wherever I fled, and coiled at my feet every evening, turning up to me the same sleepless eyes which I thought I had closed with my last drowsy incantation! ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... be any surprise when I say that the method of idealism is that of all thought? that in its intellectual process the art of the poet, so far from being a sort of incantation, is the same as belongs to the logician, the chemist, the statesman? It is no more than to say that in creating literature the mind acts; the action of the mind is thought; and there are no more two ways of thinking than there are two kinds of gravitation. Experience is the matter of ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... text is fragmentary, and shows that the text formed part of an incantation which was recited in the Temple of E-Zida, possibly the great temple ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... was suspended under the incantation of opium, his quick mind, without conscious intent, without prejudice or purpose, assembled such mysterious and wonderful sights and sounds as the naked soul might see and hear in the world of actual experience. For De Quincey's range of action and association ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... with which Perpetua followed the incantation of the fool. "This is the black magic," she said; and then asked Perpetua, "Are you content to ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... form. We rose presently from the sofa, my forehead and the backs of my hands still chafed by the texture of the horsehair, and we faced one another in the dreary light. My Father, perfectly confident in the success of what had really been a sort of incantation, asked me in a loud wheedling voice, 'Well, and what is the answer which our Lord vouchsafes?' I said nothing, and so my Father, more sharply, continued, 'We have asked Him to direct you to a true knowledge of His will. We have ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... said Mrs. Merryweather. "There is nothing I respect more highly than a perigee, unless it be an apogee, which always sounds like the beginning of an incantation. So Hilda likes ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... simple old woman who was wont to cure intermittent fever by a gentle incantation, whom he put to death as a witch, after she had been summoned, with his consent, to his daughter, and had ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... may be allowed to tell what I know about this curious custom of Obeah, or Fetish-worship. It appears to me, on closer examination, that it is not a worship of natural objects; not a primeval worship; scarcely a worship at all: but simply a system of incantation, carried on by a priesthood, or rather a sorcerer class; and this being the case, it seems to me unfortunate that the term Fetish-worship should have been adopted by so many learned men as the general name for the supposed primeval Nature-worship. The Negro does not, as the primeval man is ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix." The slow march, the stately chant, are rhythmically present throughout "A Grammarian's Funeral." In "The Flight of the Duchess" the change from the rough servitor's narrative to the incantation of the gypsy-queen is as exquisitely marked in the metrical movement and in the rhymes as it is in the diction and tone of thought. Many other examples might be cited. Mr. Brinton, who has made a detailed and competent study ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... joined us again just in time for this last trip. We had never seen the box before. His hands hovered above it; and he talked to us ironically, but his face became as grave as though he were pronouncing a powerful incantation over ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... description inherited from Scott and Lewis and Mrs. Radcliffe. Neither is it of importance that "Parisina" is a tale of the year 1405, and has an echo in it of convent bells and the death chant of friars; nor that the first scene of "Manfred" passes in a "Gothic gallery," and includes an incantation of spirits upon the model of "Faust"; nor that "Marino Faliero" and "The Two Foscari" are founded on incidents of Venetian history which happened in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries respectively; nor yet that Byron translated the Spanish ballad "Woe is me Alhama" ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... everything spoken of is symbolically colored black, according to the significance of the colors as already explained. The declaration near the end, "It has become blue," indicates that the victim now begins to feel in himself the effects of the incantation, and that as darkness comes on his spirit will shrink and gradually become less until it dwindles ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... solemnly tried to hush the wires, and each one usually proved to be as futile as an incantation. What was to be done? Step by step the telephone men were driven back. They were beaten. There was no way to silence these noises. Reluctantly, they agreed that the only way was to pull up the ends of each wire from the tainted earth, and join them by a second wire. This was the "metallic ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... this wilderness to suppress," continued Dudley, "demands, I trow, sharper practice than has hitherto been applied, and I do admire at the milk-and-water temper of the worthy Assistant at this present. Not thus is he wont to speak, but in the common is zealous even unto slaying. What incantation or witch of Endor hath blinded him, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... who stands there?" responded Don Rafael, with equal firmness, at the same moment that he recognised in the speaker the Indian whose incantation he had witnessed. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... supercilious disillusion makes her forehead weary, and her eyelids heavy. But after all, to what exquisite children, like rare, exotic flowers, she has the power to give birth! But did you know, you for whom the syllables "Oxford" are an Incantation, that to the yet more subtle, yet more withdrawn, and yet more elaborate soul of Walter Pater, Oxford Herself appeared, as time went on, a little vulgar ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... a class, imaginative, I think—their fancy seldom rising beyond the invention that their fagots are beautiful and sound and dry. But our particular woodman was, in his way, a gifted man. Long before I had dealings with him, I knew him by the superb song, or rather incantation, with which he announced his coming on the Grand Canal. The purport of this was merely that his bark was called the Beautiful Caroline, and that his fagots were fine; but he so dwelt upon the hidden beauties of this idea, and so prolonged their effect upon the mind by artful repetition, and ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... was tried; but without producing the desired effect." The Alchemist then despaired; after a dream, wherein an old man came and talked with him about the "Mercury of the Sages," the Alchemist thought he would charm the Mercury, and so he used a form of incantation. The Mercury suddenly began to speak, and asked the Alchemist why he had troubled him so much, and so on. The Alchemist replied, and questioned the Mercury. The Mercury makes fun of the philosopher. Then the Alchemist again torments the Mercury by heating ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... appears with its appearance: a motif preparing for some unearthly manifestation the mind pricked to disquieted attention by the weirdness of the air. Alberich places it upon his head, utters a brief incantation, and disappears from sight. A column of ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... Dick Turpin, and clever indeed, for they contrive that you shall be helpless, that you may not in good form resist their calculated, schemed, coordinated blood-drawing. And I had as lief have a Sioux Medicine man dance a one-step round my camp fire, and chant his silly incantation for my curing, as any of these blood pressure, electro-chemical, pill, powder specialists. Give me an Ipswich witch instead. Let her lay hands on me. Soft hands that turn away wrath. Have you such or did your ancestors, out of fear of their wives, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... a jargon wonderful to hear. Old scandals woke up, old naughtinesses rose out of their graves, and danced, and smirked, and gibbered again, like those wicked nuns whom Bertram and Robert le Diable evoke from their sepulchres whilst the bassoon performs a diabolical incantation. The Brighton Pavilion was tenanted; Ranelagh and the Pantheon swarmed with dancers and masks; Perdita was found again, and walked a minuet with the Prince of Wales. Mrs. Clarke and the Duke of York danced together—a pretty dance. The old Duke wore a jabot and ailes-de-pigeon, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the romancers enjoyed over the pagan poets in the point of supernatural machinery. "For the more solemn fancies of witchcraft and incantation, the horrors of the Gothic were above measure striking and terrible. The mummeries of the pagan priests were childish, but the Gothic enchanters shook and alarmed all nature. . . You would not ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... information, or he placed his staff on the person's body and so obtained what he sought. The rite was also preceded by sacrifice; hence S. Patrick prohibited both it and the Imbas Forosnai.[866] Another incantation, the Cetnad, was sung through the fist to discover the track of stolen cattle or of the thief. If this did not bring enlightenment, the File went to sleep and obtained the knowledge through a dream.[867] Another Cetnad ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... which they had with them and which scented a whale's carcass stranded on the beach. On the other hand we are gravely told that the hero Gliding-Tide having dropped an axe overboard off the shore, muttered an incantation so powerful that the bottom of the sea rose up, the waters divided, and the axe returned to his hand. The shoal at any rate is there, and is pointed out to this day. And what are we to say to the tale of another leader, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... in making a random cast on the surface of a strange language. You cannot tell what will come up. It is like an experiment in witchcraft. We should not have been at all surprised, I must confess, if our preliminary incantation had brought forth a cow ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... flame sank low. It flickered, once, twice, thrice, each time showing the pale, drawn faces of us six seated about it, like wizards making an incantation, like corpses in ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... not speak Spanish, she leered at us pleasantly from where she lay, occasionally muttering something in her native tongue, that might have been a tribute to our charms of mind or person, but which sounded more like an incantation. I felt she was a veritable witch, and at any moment expected to find myself changed into some animal or other under the baleful light of her eyes. If she had said, "Rumpelstilzchen, rumpelstilzchen," or any other cabalistic thing the witches ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... a thrill of interest as the old man began to spin slowly on his toes round the column of smoke, chanting slowly some strange mixture of savage music which was, as Frank guessed, an incantation to the fetish that, as he believed, dwelt in the smoke. As the smoke grew thicker he cast some sort of powder from a skin-bag into it and instantly a thick yellow column ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... contemporary care. These announcements must have been in their way marvels of attractive composition, the placard bristling from top to toe with its analytic "synopsis of scenery and incidents"; the synoptical view cast its net of fine meshes and the very word savoured of incantation. It is odd at the same time that when I question memory as to the living hours themselves, those of the stuffed and dim little hall of audience, smelling of peppermint and orange-peel, where the curtain rose on our gasping but rewarded patience, two performances only stand out ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... mysterious things.... And thus endeth the whole and truthful Historia and Magic of Dr. Faust, from which every Christian man should take warning, and specially those who are of a presumptuous, proud, curious and obstinate mind and head, that they may flee from all Magic, Incantation, and other works of the devil. Amen! This I wish for each and every one from the ground ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... her people, peered through the reek for a reassuring sign from the rock, for what she now demanded of Milo called for superhuman swiftness and surety. As the seconds sped, she kept the smoke swirling thickly, and her voice rang out in a weird incantation that kept the spectators ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the Cave. The Abbot moved not from his place: His faculties were all bound up in pleasure, anxiety, and surprize. At length the darkness dispersing, He perceived Matilda standing near him in her religious habit, with the Myrtle in her hand. No traces of the incantation, and the Vaults were only illuminated by the faint rays of the ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... to be a young woman, who brought a badly-sprained wrist for cure. She was treated with an herb poultice, over which the old woman muttered an inaudible incantation; and having paid a bunch of parsnips as her fee, she went away well satisfied. Next came a lame old man, who received a bottle of lotion. The third applicant wanted a charm to make herself beautiful. She was desired to wash herself once a day in cold spring water, into which ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... became so confused that he could not even begin; then he reddened with anger, and, gnashing his teeth, tore the graceless book out of Fanny's hand, threw it down upon the table and commenced an assault upon the heathen words, and with glaring eyes read the million-times repeated incantation: "His abacem, panacem, phylacem, coracem facemque," striking the back of his head with clinched fist ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... she said, and she hardly recognized her own voice, so deep and vibrant were its tones, "did you ever hear of snakey-noodles? Snakey-noodles! snakey-noodles! snakey-noodles!" she repeated three times like a magic incantation. ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... forms as they are now classified,[83] e.g. contagious magic, and homoeopathic magic, the exercise of the mysterious will-power, real or imaginary, is to be found all the world over, accompanied usually with a spell or incantation which is believed to enforce and increase that power—a kind of telepathy, which seems to be the psychological basis, so far as there is one, of the whole system. In these rites the virtue resides in some action, which, together with the spell or incantation, enforces the desired result by calling ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... been ruined by the loss of a feather, so that my daughter can no longer go abroad in the appearance of a swan, because the robe is not able to work any more wonders until that feather in your pocket has been sewed back into the robe with the old incantation." ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... brewed for giddiness and pain in the bowels. To this end, a bit of stump is burned, thrown into a jug, and turned upside down into a bowl filled with water, which is placed on the patient's stomach: after an incantation, he is given a spoonful ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... words of this spell serve for all men alike? Had the Sirens only to utter this one incantation, and was ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... the priests of the Median religion, greatly developed the practices of incantation and sorcery. Among these rites they "pretended to have the power of making fire descend on to their altars by means of magical ceremonies." [Footnote: Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, 226, 238.] Moses appears to have been very fond of this particular miracle. It is mentioned as having been ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... attempt of Gressmann [116] to find some historical background to the episode is a failure. The goddess Ishtar symbolizes the earth which woos the sun in the spring, but whose love is fatal, for after a few months the sun's power begins to wane. Gilgamesh, who in incantation hymns is invoked in terms which show that he was conceived as a sun-god, [117] recalls to the goddess how she changed her lovers into animals, like Circe of Greek mythology, and brought them to grief. Enraged at Gilgamesh's insult to her vanity, she flies ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous
... Indian will not attempt to perform when his courage is taxed, or the honour of his nation called in question. "An Omawhaw," says Long, "being on a visit to the Pawnees, was present at a kind of grand incantation, during which many extraordinary feats were performed. He there saw, for the first time, the mountebank trick of appearing to cut off the tongue, and afterwards replacing the severed portions without a wound. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... break the jaws of serpents with my incantations; I am she who can uproot living trees and rocks; who can make the mountains shake; who can bring the ghosts from their tombs. O Earth, help me now." At this strange incantation the mixture in the vat boiled and bubbled more and more. Then the boiling and bubbling ceased. Up to the surface came the ram. Medea helped it to struggle out of the vat, and then it turned and smote the vat ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... the grave, the secret place, In kingly oil, I gently laid him. The grave-stone marketh his resting-place. With mighty bronze I sealed its entrance, And I protected it with an incantation." ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... then, the 'Duchess' ... the conception of it was noble, and the vehicle, rhythm and all, most characteristic and individual ... though some of the rhymes ... oh, some of the rhymes did not find grace in his ears—but the incantation-scene, 'just trenching on the supernatural,' that was taken to be 'wonderful,' ... 'showing extraordinary power, ... as indeed other things did ... works of a highly original writer and of such various faculty!'—Am ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... wild incantation in which all joined. The old priest would speak some words, and the reply came in barbaric music. The words meant nothing to me; they must have been in some tongue long since dead. But the music told its own tale. It spoke of old kings and great battles, of splendid palaces and ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... of the forest stirred, and sent forth sounds like an incantation. Soon might be distinguished the various voices of the mighty trees, as they expressed their terror or their agony. The oak roared, the beech shrieked, the elm sent forth its deep and long-drawn groan; while ever and anon, amid a momentary ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... time I woke, Tom Kivelson was reciting the Mayday, Mayday incantation into the radio, and his father was asleep. The man who had been praying had started again, and nobody seemed to care whether he wasted oxygen or not. It was a Theosophist prayer to the Spirit Guides, and I remembered that Cesario Vieira was ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... along mapped roads foredoomed, and its mills went round. Its life was expressed for export. It was on the way to Manchester and success. Of all the infernal uses to which a country can be put there is none like development. Let every good savage make incantation against it, or, if to some extent he has been developed, cross himself against the fructification of the evil. As for us whites, we are eternally damned, for we cannot escape the consequences of our past cleverness. The Devil has us on a complexity of strings, and ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... cure of those "'visseit with frenacies, madness, falling evil (epilepsy), persones distractit in their wittis, and with feirful apparitiones, etc., and utheris uncouth diseases; all done be sorcerie, incantation, devellische charmeing.' Above forty persons are enumerated for whom he had prescribed, for which he was strangled and burnt as too familiar with Satan."[32] The same author relates that a poor woman having become frantic, the alleged author of the malady came, and "laying ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... rises like a summer zephyr even from the soft lap of luxury and ease. Even the hardened criminal, dandled on the knee of a patriarchal Government, will sometimes complain and try to give the Doctor trouble. But the Doctor has a specific—a brief incantation that allays every species of inflammatory discontent. "Look here, my man! If I hear any more of this infernal nonsense, I'll turn you out of the gaol neck and crop." This is a threat that never fails ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... of Aldgate to a flat in Chelsea. Hurrying through Houndsditch, across Leadenhall Street and up St. Mary Axe, the author discovers the right 'bus in Broad Street about to start. They are filling the radiator with water and the conductor is intoning a mysterious incantation which resolves itself into "Benk! Oobun, Benk! Piccadilly, 'Yde Pawk, Sloon Stree', Sloon Square, Kings Road, Chelsea an' Walham Green. Here y' are, lidy." With long practice he can make the vowels reverberate ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... the Imperial family; at all events the names of the Emperor, of the Empress, of the Empress Marie, of the Tsarevitch and of the Grand Duchess herself were thundered out every minute or two—they were the only words that I could understand Listening to the priest's sonorous incantation reverberating through the building that morning, one little dreamt that within less than two years' time the winsome princess—her photograph was to be seen everywhere in the Petrograd streets and she seemed to be especially ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... have Milton's description of the Moon when affected by the demoniacal practices of the 'night-hag' who was believed to destroy infants for the sake of drinking their blood, and applying their mangled limbs to the purposes of incantation. The legend is of Scandinavian ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... inarticulate mutterings are probably an echo of the "incantation and magic words" ("incantationem et verba quas sibi reperta sunt de quibus ad funem utitur ... quoniam in fune aliquam nec vocem nec gemitum emittit sed solum inter dentes ipse videtur et auditur loqui" [Die beiden ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... eggs were now motionless. While he was wondering what could be done, he remembered there was a magical charm which would destroy eggs and render them harmless to nomes. There were nine passes to be made and six verses of incantation to be recited; but Ruggedo knew them all. Now that he had ample time to be exact, he carefully went through the ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... and day by day the machine grew in complexity and power. But in the process it yielded automatically a result very different from that which its constructors had foreseen. It is the story of the witch who, by a magic incantation, had won the consent of her broomstick to go to the river and fill her buckets; having no formula ready to check the work, she watched her cave fill with water until ...
— The Meaning of the War - Life & Matter in Conflict • Henri Bergson
... of this incantation is, that Lady Christabel has a strange dream—and when she awakes, her first exclamation is, 'Sure I have sinn'd'—'Now heaven be praised if all be well!' Being still perplexed with the remembrance of her 'too lively' dream—she then dresses ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... And then the usual incantation was gone through, which constitutes an introduction in England—namely, the repetition of two names, whereof each person hears only his or her own (an item of information by no means new or in any way to be desired), while the ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... early periods of society, concealing himself to eat: he fears that another, with as sharp an appetite, but more strong than himself, should come and ravish his meal from him. The ideas of witchcraft are also widely spread among barbarians; and they are not a little fearful that some incantation may ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... ordinary kahuna lapaau" (medicine man) "when it came to praying to Lonopuha and Koleamoku; read dreams and visions and signs and omens and indigestions to beat the band; make the practitioners under the medicine god, Maiola, look like thirty cents; pull off a pule hee incantation that would make them dizzy; and she claimed to a practice of kahuna hoenoho, which is modern spiritism, second to none. I have myself seen her drink the wind, throw a fit, and prophesy. The aumakuas were brothers to her when she slipped offerings to them across ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... Charles M. Barrows, in "Facts and Fictions of Mental Healing," remarks that whatever acts upon a patient in such a way as to persuade him to yield himself to the therapeutic force constantly operative in Nature, is a means of healing. It may be an amulet, a cabalistic symbol, an incantation, a bread-pill, or even sudden fright. It may be a drug prescribed by a physician, imposition of hands, mesmeric passes, the touch of a relic, or visiting a ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... and the figures around them, with those of the dancers, reminded me of the witch scenes in Macbeth, as conceived by Shakspeare, not by the actors of them upon the stage. Four grim figures were stirring the cauldrons incessantly, with a sort of humming incantation, the others dancing around. In one of their dances they used a sort of small kettle-drum, with a guitar-like handle to it. But after a while, the evening dances seemed to vary from the devotional to the complimentary and to the diverting; but ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... authority, the perfect Poet or Ollamh should know and practise the Teinim Laegha, the Imas Forosnadh, and the Dichedal do chennaibh. The first appears to have been a peculiar druidical verse, or incantation, believed to confer upon the druid or poet the power of understanding everything that it was proper for him to say or speak. The second is explained or translated, 'the illumination of much knowledge, as from the teacher to the pupil,' that is, that he should ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... another difficulty, happily easy to reform, which somewhat interfered with the success of the performance. At the end of the incantation scene the Italian translator has made Macbeth fall insensible upon the stage. This is a change of questionable propriety from a psychological point of view; while in point of view of effect it ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spirits of wine. Light the solution, and it will burn with a beautiful emerald green flame. Pieces of sponge soaked in this spirit, lighted and suspended by fine wires over the stage, produces the lambent green flames now so common in incantation scenes; strips of flannel saturated with it, and applied round copper swords, tridents, &c., produce, when lighted, the flaming swords and fire forks brandished by the demons in such scenes; indeed, the chief consumption of nitrate of ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... embrace, then gently seals her eyes in slumber with tender kisses, lays her softly down upon the green mound, and draws down the visor of her helmet. Then, after covering her with her shield to protect her from all harm, he begins a powerful incantation, summoning Loge to surround her with an impassable barrier of flames. As this incantation proceeds, small flickering tongues of fire start forth on every side; they soon rise higher and higher, roaring and crackling until, as Wotan disappears, they form a fiery barrier all around ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... special ones of Libri sacrorum, sacerdotum, haruspicini, &c. Some have confounded with the Annales a different sort of record altogether, the Indigitamenta, or ancient formulae of prayer or incantation, and the Axamenta, to which class the song of the Arval Brothers ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... to hear: at length it seems hardly a human voice; it sounds like a series of magic formulas, unwinding themselves from an inexhaustible roller, and escaping to take flight through the air. By its very weirdness, and by the persistency of its incantation, it ends by producing in my half-awakened brain an almost ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... As soon as the incantation was over, the Chancellor surveyed himself in the mirror. Then he nodded to a couple of soldiers, and the impostor was tied backwards on to a mule and driven with jeers out of the camp. There were many such impostors (who ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... arias of the less important people. Agatha, the heroine, has a prayer of exquisite beauty, which still is often heard as a church tune. And in contrast with these elements was the weird and uncanny music of Zamiel, the Satanic spirit of the wood, and the strange incantation scene in the Wolf's Glen at midnight, where the magic balls are cast. The story was thoroughly German, and the music not only German and well suited to the story, but distinctly original and charming of itself. In ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... its idle Tread of leisurely delay; Fear or doubt it cannot bridle Should it headlong run away; No remorse, no incantation Moves ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... patients? —the representatives of all sects. There is, for example, the superstitious vulgar in medicine,—the gross worshipper of the Fetish, who believes in the efficacy of charm, and spell, and incantation, of mere ceremonial and opus operatum; then there is the polytheist, who will adore any thing in the shape of a drug, and who is continually quacking himself with some nostrum or other from morning to night; who not only takes his regular physician's prescriptions, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... (demand) 741; petition, suit, prayer; begging letter, round robin. motion, overture, application, canvass, address, appeal, apostrophe; imprecation; rogation; proposal, proposition. orison &c. (worship) 990; incantation &c. (spell) 993. mendicancy; asking, begging &c. v.; postulation, solicitation, invitation, entreaty, importunity, supplication, instance, impetration[obs3], imploration[obs3], obsecration[obs3], obtestation[obs3], invocation, interpellation. V. request, ask; beg, crave, sue, pray, petition, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... everything," said Carroll, smiling, "except the secret chamber where you keep the magic lamp and ring. Are we not to see the spot where the incantation that produces these marvels is held, even if we are forbidden to witness the ceremony? The ladies are dying to see your sanctum—your ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... Italian shores, opposite the Messenian walls. I am ashamed to recount my promises, my entreaties, my caresses, and my rejected suit. But, do thou, if there is any power in incantations, utter the incantation with thy holy lips; or, if {any} herb is more efficacious, make use of the proved virtues of powerful herbs. But I do not request thee to cure me, and to heal these wounds; and there is no necessity for an end {to them; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... tree-tops with weird illumination, and anon hovering so low that my horse often stepped the higher to avoid them. The dewy Cherokee roses brushed my face, the solemn "Chuck-will's-widow" croaked her incantation, and the rabbits raced phantom-like across the shadowy road. Slowly in the darkness I followed the well-known path to the spot where our most advanced outposts were stationed, holding a causeway which thrust itself far out across the separating river,—thus fronting a similar causeway ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sufficient interval of time had passed for the most meditative and abstracted of men to remember his purpose, our host, reminded of what he had apparently forgotten by my companion's conjuring robes, an electrical machine, and other instruments of incantation, which the slaves carried from our carriage, civilly inquired when we intended to commence operations. "What operations?" demanded my companion, with much apparent unconcern. "The discovery of the ring." "Whenever his highness pleased, and it suited the female part of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... fire seemed burning his vitals, until he felt water sprinkled on his face, and saw that his wife, whom he had left at home too ill to move, stood behind him and was casting holy water into the furnace, speaking an incantation as she did so. At that moment a storm arose, and a rain fell that put out the fire; but as the last glow faded the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... cries of derision rose in his wake, but he took no notice, pressing onward to the house of Scundoo. He hammered on the door, beat it with his fists, and howled vile imprecations. Yet there was no response, save that in the lulls Scundoo's voice rose eerily in incantation. Klok-No-Ton raged about like a madman, but when he attempted to break in the door with a huge stone, murmurs arose from the men and women. And he, Klok-No-Ton, knew that he stood shorn of his strength and authority before an alien people. He saw a man ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... graceful and appropriate adjective redeems the substantive, which happens to be Latin and incorrect at the same time. It does seem a waste of time to say Chrysanthemum leucanthemum instead of Whiteweed; though, if the long scientific name were an incantation to banish the intruder, our farmers would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced, than the past is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty start ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... followed him and suddenly, as we are told, struck him with a druidic wand, or according to one version, flung at him a tuft of grass over which he had pronounced a druidical incantation." ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... line," he continued, "sweeping their arms upwards and downwards, while their lips moved as if repeating some prayer or incantation. Suddenly they ceased to gesticulate, and broke out for the third time into the wild, weird, piercing cry which had roused me from my slumber. Never shall I forget that shrill, dreadful summons swelling and reverberating through the silent night with an intensity ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... repeated raps. The board gave out a hollow ring that strangely filled the river chasm; a sound well calculated to terrify the evil spirits of the spot. For indeed it was an exorcism of homoeopathic design. His incantation finished, he stood motionless. So did the rest of us, waiting for the plunge. The boat dipped by the bow, darted forward, and in a trice we were in the midst of a deafening turmoil of boiling waters and crashing breakers. The breakers laid violent hands upon us, grappling at the frail gunwale ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... than human, so intense it was and so solemn,—thrilled in the voice which thus closed predictions that seemed signally to belie the more vague and menacing warnings with which the dreary incantation had commenced. The Morthwyrtha stood erect and stately, still gazing on the pale blue flame that rose from the burial stone, still slowly the flame waned and paled, and at last died with a sudden flicker, leaving the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of Cato throw a sidelight upon the state of medicine in his time. He attempted to cure dislocations by uttering a nonsensical incantation: "Huat hanat ista pista sista damiato damnaustra!" He considered ducks, geese and hares a light and suitable diet for the sick, and had ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... inhaling the volatile essence of its poisonous contents. Then, holding the bouquet with one hand at arm's length, she sprinkled the glowing roses with the transparent liquid from the vial which she held in the other hand, repeating, in a low, harsh tone, the formula of an ancient incantation, which was one of the secrets imparted to Antonio Exili by ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... is a visible, tangible repository of power to whom you can apply. If the repository is in the humour you will get whatever you want done, in the way of justice or injustice. Now in a free country justice is absorbed into the great cosmic forces, and it is apt to be an expensive incantation that wakes the lost elementary spirit. In Russia justice shines by contrast with the surrounding corruption, but there is no mistake about it when you get it. In America it is taken for granted everywhere, ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... in a low, droning chant but before he had uttered a dozen words there came a distant roar, dull but unmistakable, that drowned the sound of his incantation. ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... dignified attitude before the offender. At that moment, the withered squaw already mentioned moved into the circle, in a slow, sidling sort of a dance, holding the torch, and muttering the indistinct words of what might have been a species of incantation. Though her presence was altogether an intrusion, it ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... friend of ours, in order to win a favour of his beloved, filled his room with skulls and bones like a churchyard?' The most loathsome tasks were prescribed—to draw three teeth from a corpse or a nail from its finger, and the like; and while the hocus-pocus of the incantation was going on, the unhappy ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... expostulated. Mad Sal drowned his words with her wild shrieks, while she continued to wave her staff as if in the performance of an incantation. What with his unwillingness to face the mad woman should he be left on the beach, and the threats of the men, he was induced ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... incantation formulae, the word "Jumala" often occurred, the name of the Bjarmers' old god, whose memory, in the far north, is not so completely eradicated as one would think, and who to this day has perhaps some sacrificial stone ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... rose to their feet with a motion so well timed that it seemed as if the whole south end of the pavilion was rising. As 1,800 scarlet-covered chorus books were hoisted into view, the whole amphitheater seemed aflame as if for an exaggerated incantation scene of Fra Diavolo. Then there was another motion of the baton, with the precision of a machine fifty bows scraped upwards over fifty violins and 150 other instruments, and 1,800 voices ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and far more portentous—why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... An incantation: jingle of bits mouthed in those velvet muzzles; a hoof pawed sharply on the road; swish of long, restless tails; creaking of saddlery; and sudden bursts of all the instruments in unison when heads were tossed and shaken. Remotely ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... accumulated air on the head of his horn, smelt it to see if all was going right, jingled the bell again close to his ear, and grunted his satisfaction. The missing article must be found. To carry out the incantation more effectually, all the men were sent for to sit in the open air before the hut, when the old doctor rose, shaking the horn and tinkling the bell close to his ear. He then, confronting one of the men, dashed the horn forward as if intending to strike him on the face, then smelt ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... is made of the Mid[-e]/, the Jes/sakk[-i]d/, or the W[^a]b[)e]n[-o]/, but the term sorcerer or juggler is generally employed to designate that class of persons who professed the power of prophecy, and who practiced incantation and administered medicinal preparations. Constant reference is made to the opposition of these personages to the introduction of Christianity. In the light of recent investigation the cause of this antagonism is seen to lie in the fact that the traditions of Indian genesis ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... them into heroic form and substance. And I have been amazed to find within my mind a witch's charm for working rainbow miracles upon your dim sky,—but so it is. There have always been mad moments in my life when I have felt all-powerful, as if I had got hold of the ribbon ends of an incantation! This is another one of my limitations at which you must not laugh. For a juggler must be taken seriously, or he juggles in vain; he must have an opportunity to create the necessary illusion in you ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... sent by me alone. But the reward of these little-minded men is finite. They who sacrifice to the gods go to the gods: they who worship me come to me. I am the immolation. I am the whole sacrificial rite. I am the libation to ancestors. I am the drug. I am the incantation. I am the fire. I am the incense. I am the father, the mother, the sustainer, the grandfather of this universe—the path, the supporter, the master, the witness, the habitation, the refuge, the friend, the origin, the dissolution, the place, the receptacle, the inexhaustible seed. I heat. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... ridges distant, leading a boy in her hand, and, coming again to the grave where Hector Munro was interred alive, demanded of the witch which victim she would choose, who replied that she chose Hector to live and George to die in his stead. This form of incantation was thrice repeated ere Mr. Hector was removed from his chilling bed in a January grave and carried home, all remaining mute as before. The consequence of a process which seems ill-adapted to produce the former effect was that ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... words and phrases had some talismanic power, and charmed themselves asleep by repeating "liberty," "all men equal before the law," "dictates of conscience," "free speech" and all manner of such incantation to exorcise the spirits of the night. And when they could no longer close their eyes to the dangers environing them; when they saw at last that what they had mistaken for the magic power of their form of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... whereupon every opening was walled up, except a rose at the end of the chancel, and a few slits in the nave, above the side-aisles. A sombre twilight, like that of a stormy day, fills the edifice. Here the rustling of stoles and the muttering of prayers suggest incantation rather than worship; the organ has a hollow, sepulchral sound of lamentation; and there is a spirit of mystery and terror in the stale, clammy air. The place resembles an antechamber of Purgatory much more than of Heaven. The mummy of Don ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... be restrained! Stand up, and I and thou will fight together.' When Tiamat heard this, she uttered her former spells, she repeated her command. Tiamat also cried out vehemently with a loud voice. From her roots she rocked herself completely. She uttered an incantation, she cast a spell, and the gods of battle demand for themselves their arms. Then Tiamat attacked Merodach the counsellor of the gods; in combat they joined; they engaged in battle. Then Bel opened his net and enclosed her; the evil wind that seizes behind he sent before ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... precise physiological functions are specifically mentioned; while the person who is fond of mystery and strange ceremonies will be better served in the affirmations or statements taken in the form of some magical incantation, etc. The difference, however, lies in the mind of the patient, rather than in the words themselves. Words are merely invokers of ideas—symbols of ideas. In themselves, ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... strength of lungs inflated by patriotism, until the stirring staves ring and resound through those dim caves. The miners, who hold the superstition, that to whisper bodes ill-luck, must have imagined we were exorcising evil spirits with an incantation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... understand that the term "medicine," foolishly enough adopted by both French and English to express the aboriginal magic arts, has no therapeutic significance. Very few even pretended remedies were administered to the natives and probably never by the professional shaman, who worked by incantation, often pulverizing and mixing the substances mystically used, to prevent their detection. The same mixtures were employed in divination. The author particularly mentions Mandan ceremonies, in which a white "medicine" stone, as hard as pyrites, ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... and death from pain, and the pain which comes over me; as thou hast freed, as thou hast released thy son Horus, whilst I enter into the fire and come forth from the water," etc. Again, when the invalid took the medicine, an incantation had to be said which began thus: "Come remedy, come drive it out of my heart, out of these limbs strong in magic power with the remedy." He adds: "There may have been a few rationalists amongst the Egyptian ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... this mystic harangue with a vacant and fixed expression, as though his mind were wandering, and he hardly understood the profundity of the discourse. Every feeling was absorbed in the conviction that some horrid incantation had for ever deprived him of his beloved. Then he fancied some imposition had been practised upon him. Being prevented from a closer examination, at length he felt some relief in the idea that the form he beheld might possibly be a counterfeit. He knew ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... do not thou rehearse The holy incantation of a verse; But when that men have both well drunk and fed, Let my enchantments then be sung or read. When laurel spirts i'th' fire, and when the hearth Smiles to itself, and gilds the roof with mirth; ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... Nibelung music, which is taken up by the orchestra and mounts to a climax, in the midst of which HAGEN pronounces a sort of incantation. ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... the incantation of the great Roback would make, if set fairly to work among the politicians, for instance! But after all, on second thoughts, what a horrible mass of abominations would they lay bare in telling the truth ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... 'Quit the shape of woman of which you are unworthy and take that of a mare.' What the nature of the charm might be, or by the aid of what demon the change took place, I know not; at any rate the incantation was effectual, and as I pronounced the words, Sojah disappeared and a ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... than the poets, find acrid and dangerous juices in the anemone and its kin. Certain European peasants will run past a colony of these pure innocent blossoms in the belief that the very air is tainted by them. Yet the Romans ceremonially picked the first anemone of the year, with an incantation supposed to guard them against fever. The identical plant that blooms in our woods, which may be found also in Asia, is planted on graves by the Chinese, who call ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... be great wrongs, we cannot distrust the Maker, and postpone the security of the soul. Impatience is a wrong as great as any. Love and trust are remedies for wrong. Music is our cure for insanity, and I remember that incantation of fair reasons which Plato prescribed. What gain is in scolding and knitting the brows? The blue sky, the bright cloud, the star of night, the star of day, every creature is in its smiling place a protest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... rose and sang a hymn, every now and then falling on their faces and touching the floor with their foreheads. The whole looked like an incantation, or a scene in Robert le Diable. The novice was then raised from the ground and led to the feet of the bishop, who examined her as to her vocation, and gave her his blessing, and once more the black curtain fell between us ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... his mind in boyhood. The cult of Osiris woke in his blood again; Horus and Nephthys stirred in their long-forgotten centres. There revived in him, too long buried, the awful glamour of those liturgal rites and vast body of observances, those spells and formulae of incantation of the oldest known recension that years ago had captured his imagination and belief—the Book of the Dead. Trumpet voices called to his heart again across the desert of some dim past. There were forms of life—impulses ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood |
