Sorcerers Still Flouirish in our Midst

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 50, 27 August 1932, Page 18

Sorcerers Still Flouirish in our Midst

To the scandal (of all -who hopefully " ~ believe that we nixe becoming rational ■ animals, a womaja has just been sent to prison for professing sorcery. Her ■'■ particular department was the applica- • *~. tion of magic to^marriage, writes H. C.- ---:; Bailey in the liondon "Daily Telegraph." "For a consideration she was pre- - pared not only tyo predict a husband for .". , a customer, bul? also to bring the man . up to the seraitch by potions and spells." The first part of this process, the prophecy, is largely practised both by pro- •^=- fessionals and! amateurs. Palms are Tead, with or '■without pieces of silver, faces are seen; in crystals, and more or less seriously, mirrors and dishes of ■water and glowing fires are looked into on Hallow Efen for visions of the ap- ., pointed bridegroom. ' For all I. know,: girls may still go ■. bathing at midnight with a hand-glass as Eose Saiterne did, and invoke the happy man. ••- "It you be lpndsman, come down the strand; If you be Bailor, come up the sand; If you be ajngel come from the sky, Look in my glass and pass me by." Such experiments may do no great harm, thongh I am told the police are of another opinion. But when an officiating magician undertakes to make a prophecy come true, people are sur- . prised. The learned counsel who prosecuted thijs one remarked that it might be thougjht incredible that her victims ■" should have believed in her. She obtaihed some £200 from them to buy a

material called "Zep," a preparation of "an animal bred in the East" and brought to Germany, which "would do anything." :

And if anyone does find it incredible that women—or men either—should be found to put their trust in the almighty power of "Zep" when "put on . a man," that sceptic knows little of human nature, past or present. Faith in the love philtre is as old as Genesis. Did not Leah beg one from Baehel to work upon Jacob? The things were commonly sold in Greece and Eome.

The leading case, I think, is that of Charlemagne. For years the Emperor * * doted upon a woman of mean favour and condition, to the great grief and indignation of his friends and followers."

At last she died, and lie had her embalmed and carried about with him, till it was revealed to a bishop that "the cause of the Emperor's love lay under the dead woman's tongue." So the bishop went to the mummy and took out of the mouth a small ring. The results were disconcerting. Charlemagne immediately "abhorred the corpse, and instead of it fell as furiously in love with the bishop."

The resourceful prelate flung the ring into a lake. From that hour Charlemagne forsook all his palaces to build another near the lake and a temple by it—the cathedral of Aix la Chapelle, where he was buried, and the Emperors after him were crowned.