Palæographia sacra. Or discourses on sacred subjects / By William Stukeley.

  • Stukeley, William, 1687-1765.
Date:
1763
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Palæographia sacra. Or discourses on sacred subjects / By William Stukeley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [ ‘6 ] Hypericori, called fuga dcemonum, reckon'd among facred magical plants, on account of the Druids uling them, good againft witchcraft. At the fummer folftice, they ufed likewife to make wreathes and chaplets of our native co?ivolvulus major and minor, bind weed, a beautiful white campaniform, growing plentifully at this feafon. hence the magical notion became affixt to them, by the common people, called fpirits bells. The autumnal equinox was celebrated with the oak, then big with acorns; a tree, from all antiquity thought moft facred; and with which I fhall conclude this dif- courfe. Maximus of Tyre, a famous Platonijl, informs us, the Druids worfhiped Jupiter; whofe ftatue or fign, fays he, was a very high oak tree, we are not to be moved to think, the Druids were idolaters, the truth is this, the great woods, and groves were their verdant temples, at this feafon of the year; the boughs of oak and acorns were the ornaments of their ftaves, and al¬ tars ; which they cut down, with the brazen inftru- ments called Celts. innumerable quantitys whereof we find at this day, in Brittain, and the circumjacent iilands. but they preferved the cuflom of the eaft, from whence they came, of having a kebla, or objedt, to which they all turned their faces, in adts of religion, ’tis the Ara¬ bian method to this day. from thence the Druids and the aboriginal Britons came. O In the open temples of the Druids, they had an obe- lifcal ftone, fet upright, for the kebla; or three Bones fet nich-wife ; fymbolic of the divine prelence. in a grove,