The mysteries and secrets of magic / by C.J.S. Thompson.

  • Charles Thompson
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The mysteries and secrets of magic / by C.J.S. Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    45/376 page 19
    serpent, and are often thus represented in drawings illustrating the early Persian romances. The divs or daivers of the Hindus were supposed to inhabit a world called Daiver—Logum—and are usually represented in the Hindu romances as engaged in com¬ bating the giants. They formed a numerous host and are divided into many classes. The word “ devil ” is supposed to have been derived from the Persian “ div.” The Hebrew word translated in the Old Testament means “ hairy ones ” applied to goats. ParkhurSt says: “ It is not unlikely that the Christians borrowed their goat-like conception of the devil with tail, horns and cloven feet from the representations of Pan.” Sir Thomas Browne remarks, that the Rabbins believed the devil to appear most frequently in the form of a goat, as that animal was the emblem of the sin offering and is the emblem of sinful men at the last judgment. The Eastern races represented their devil with horns and a tail, and often with deformed heads and faces on certain parts of the body, such as are depifted in many piftures of the Middle Ages. In colour, he is painted a blackish-red or brown and black, while Satan was painted green. At a later period he is sometimes depi&ed as a black cat, but in witchcraft ceremonial he is generally described as a great he-goat or ram. The incubus was the spirit to which nightmare was attributed and was supposed to impose itself on the sleeper in the dead of night, and give rise to terrible dreams until the viftim could shake it off. Keysler *9
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3