Credulities Past and Present; Including the Sea and Seamen, Miners, Amulets and Talismans, Rings, Word and Letter Divination, Numbers, Trials, Exorcising and Blessing of Animals, Birds, Eggs, and Luck (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. AMULETS AND TALISMANS. /t MULETS were so called by the Latins, from their sup- posed efficacy in allaying evil; " amuletum quod nialum amolitur." Some derive the term from amula, a small vessel of lustral water, carried about by the Romans. The practice of such superstitions was universal, not only among the Greeks and the Romans, but by the Egyptians and the Orientals. Amulets (alluded to in Isaiah iii. 20) were considered by the Jews as a protection from evil influences, and the same belief in their efficacy exists to the present day in the East. In Arabia, hamalet means that which is suspended. Any kind of object might be thus represented: a precious stone, a plant, an artificial production, or a piece of writing. These were suspended from the neck, or tied to any part of the body, for the purpose of warding off calamities, and securing some specific object. Faith in the virtue of amulets was almost universal in ancient days, so that the whole art of medicine consisted, in a very considerable degree, of directions for their application. The phylacteries, or bits of parchment, with passages from the Bible written upon them, which the Jews were accustomed to carry about them as amulets (Matthew xxiii. 5) were of the same character as the sentences from the Koran, which the Moorish priests now sell to the negroes of Africa, as " fetishes."They were of three kinds, and used for the head, the arm, and were also attached to door-posts. They were prepared in a peculiar manner. A species of amulet at present in use among the natives, is a piece of paper upon which the names of the " Seven Sleepers " and their dog are inscribed. The word Fetish is from the Portuguese feitifo, an amulet, or talisman, and was applied by the early navigators of that nation to th...