Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

It will be noticed that the doctors who so exactly laid down the precise influence of each sigil and gem have left themselves a loophole for escaping whenever the promised result failed to follow their prescriptions: for the stone was to be worn "in all honour and purity," and thus any miscarriage could always be ascribed to the wearer's own transgression of the necessary conditions of success.

Strange to say, the sole nation of the present day, amongst whom a belief in the virtue of magic stones still exists, are the Irish; who place the greatest faith in the medical properties of certain round pebbles which have been preserved from time immemorial upon the altars of certain chapels. The water in which these stones have been steeped is considered a sovereign remedy for all the diseases of cattle. But, consistently with the respective degrees of civilization of the two races, the gem of the Italian astrologer engraved with the mystic sigil, which aided and multiplied its native potency, is replaced among the Celts by a round pebble of the most ordinary quality, with nothing but antiquity and faith to recommend it. A ball of crystal was lately in the possession of the chief of a Highland clan, which was famed for possessing the same virtue, and which had been for unknown ages in the hands of the same family. Such crystal balls are sometimes found in ancient tombs:

Greek, Roman, and Sassanian medals, evidently selected as figures possessing some talismanic virtue; and copied as literally as the skill of the barbarous die-sinker would allow. Thus a piece of FakerEddin, who reigned in the early part of the twelfth century, bears on its obverse an exact copy of a reverse of Constantine, a Victory holding a tablet inscribed VOTXXX,

and with the legend VICTORIA. CONSTANTINI. AVG. The ingenious Arabs had doubtless interpreted these, to them mysterious devices, as symbols of mystic import, according to the same rules as they, and the doctors of the West after their guidance, adopted in their explanation of the purpose of engraved gems.

we have seen that Orpheus ascribes great efficacy to their presence at sacrifices; doubtless they were interred with the corpse as a propitiation to the deities of the Shades. Dr. Dee's divining ball, so famous in the seventeenth century, and now in the British Museum, was probably a sphere of this class, which had accidentally come into the possession of that "egregious wizard."

I have seen two spherical gems of Roman date which must have been made for some magical use, as not being perforated they could not have been intended for ornaments, for which also their size and weight rendered them inappropriate. The first, a ball of red Jasper, 1 inch in diameter, was engraved with a small medallion containing various symbols; the second, formed of green Jasper (in the Herz Collection), had on the centre an engraving of Osiris and Isis, inscribed • A, probably for Pharia (compare the Isis Faria of the coins of Julian), and this was surrounded by twelve intaglio busts of deities, of very good execution. The Sphere was one inch in diameter. We perpetually meet in the poets with allusions to the Ivy, Rhombus, Turbo, or magic wheel used by the ancient witches in their operations, and more especially figuring foremost in the list of philtres as possessing the power of inspiring love when spun in one direction, and of freeing the heart from its spell when made to revolve in the opposite one, as appears from Horace's prayer to Canidia:

"Retro potenten, retro, solve turbinem."

"Reverse thy magic wheel and break the spell."

The Crystal Spheres now under consideration may have been the very instruments referred to by the poet: at least that employed by the famous sorceress Nico is expressly described as cut out of Amethyst in the dedicatory inscription given in the Anthology, v., 205.

[ocr errors]

That magic wheel which power to Nico gave
To draw the lover o'er the distant wave,
And from her couch, half willing, half afraid,
At dead of night to lure the trembling maid,
Cut in bright Amethyst by a skilful hand,
And nicely balanced on its golden stand,
Lies strung on twisted wool of purple sheen.
A grateful offering to the Cyprian queen :
Which erst the sorceress from Larissa brave,
A precious keepsake, to her hostess gave."

Damis saw four Ivyyes suspended from the dome of the judgment hall of the Parthian king. They were called "Tongues of the Gods," and placed there to remind him of Nemesis, and repress his pride. These may be supposed to be golden images of Ferouers, or Protecting Genii, of the Magian religion, for this term is used as synonymous with the Platonic "Ideas" in the Zoroastrian oracles

Νοούμεναι Ιυγγες πατρόθεν νοεουσι και αὗται.

For the Ferouers are the Ideas conceived in the mind of Ormuzd previous to, and the Architypes of, the visible creation.

Indian Sacred Bull, with Pehlevi legend. Calcedony

OVUM ANGUINUM.

Before we quit the subject of Magic Spheres we must not forget the famed Ovum Anguinum of the Druids, especially

as it is the present practice to call by that name the large beads of variegated glass so frequently found in this country, although these are in reality nothing more than the central ornaments of Roman, British, or Saxon necklaces. Very different was the true Ovum Anguinum which Pliny had seen worn as a badge of office by a Druid. He describes it as round, of the size of an apple, enclosed in a cartilaginous crust and covered with protuberances like the suckers on the arms of a cuttle-fish. It was evidently some natural production, not an ornament made by art, and the description of it resembles more that of a large echinus than anything else; could it have been some fossil species of that shell? The legend told by the Druids of its production was, that at a certain season an innumerable host of snakes collected together, and intertwining with each other produced from their collected foam this substance, and bore

"The mystic egg aloft in air;"

where it was necessary to catch it in a cloak before it fell to the ground, otherwise it lost its virtue. The captor was immediately pursued by the whole troop of serpents until he could cross a running stream, and unless enabled by the swiftness of his steed to escape his followers, woe unto him!

"Ah Tam, ah Tam, thou 'lt get thy fairing,

In hell they'll roast thee like a herring."

The possession of this wondrous egg was supposed to give success in law-suits. To Pliny's own knowledge, a Gallic knight who had carried one in his bosom during the hearing of his cause, probably before the emperor himself, was executed for this attempt to pervert justice, by order of that "wisest fool" Claudius Cæsar. The opinion that this amulet was some sort of echinus is in some measure supported by

the fact, that a variety of this shell is still popularly called the Mermaid's Egg.

Though we are thus obliged to degrade these large paste beads from their sacred character of Druidical insignia, we must still award them the merit of being frequently extraordinary specimens of the taste and skill of the Gallic or British workers in glass. Some exhibit the most vivid colours, arranged in elegant wavy patterns equal to any productions in a similar style by the factories of Murano: others, probably intended to be worn on the little finger, are thick rings of blue or green glass, with small spheres of spiral and different coloured threads, like variegated snail shells, stuck on the outer circumference at regular intervals. Others again are merely circles of a bluish green glass, or of a vitrified clay. It is curious that whenever discovered in modern times they have always been regarded by the peasantry as amulets productive of good luck to the wearer.

This famous talisman of the Druids has a singular analogy, both in name and in its reputed virtues, to the " Ophites' or Serpent-stone of the Asiatic Greeks, of which Orpheus sings (v. 355).

10

"To him had Phoebus giv'n the vocal stone,
Hight Sideritis, for true answers known;
The Living Ophite' some the wonder call,
Black, hard, and weighty, a portentous ball.
Around the stone, in many a mazy bend,
In wrinkles deep the furrowed lines extend.
For thrice seven days the mighty wizard fled
The bath's refreshment and his spouse's bed;
For thrice seven days a solemn fast maintained,
No flesh of living thing his strength sustained.
Then in the living fount the gem he laves,
And in soft vestments like an infant swathes;

10 Helenus.

« ZurückWeiter »