"Sorcery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... occasional reluctance, springing from some maternal instinct, drew from her every secret of her life. She made herself mistress of the whole formula of poisoning as taught by her grandfather Exili, and of the arts of sorcery practised by her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... conflict was over, I sought Vilalba, and congratulated him on his brilliant achievement, jestingly adding that I knew he was leagued with sorcery and helped on by diabolical arts. The cold evasiveness of his reply confirmed my belief that the condition I have described was abnormal, and that he was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... made laws they did not perceive that by their laws they condemned their gods. For if their laws are righteous, their gods are unrighteous, because they committed transgressions of the law in that they killed one another, practised sorcery, and committed adultery, robbed, stole, and lay with males, not to mention their other practices. For if their gods have done right in doing all this, as they write, then the laws of the Greeks are unrighteous in not being made ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... an account of Sorcery and Fetishism among the African Negros, see Burton's "Lake Regions of Central ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... convince your eyes of truth: Behold my arm, thus blasted, dry, and wither'd, [pulling up his sleeves. Shrunk like a foul abortion, and decay'd, Like some untimely product of the seasons, Robb'd of its properties of strength and office. This is the sorcery of Edward's wife, Who, in conjunction with that harlot Shore, And other like confed'rate midnight hags, By force of potent spells, of bloody characters, And conjurations horrible to hear, Call fiends and spectres from the yawning deep, And set the ministers of hell ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... Cornelius Agrippa was born at Cologne in 1486 and died either at Lyons in 1534 or at Grenoble in 1535. He was professor of theology at Cologne and also at Turin. After the publication of his De Occulta Philosophia he was imprisoned for sorcery. Both works appeared at Antwerp in 1530, and each passed through a large number of editions. A French translation appeared in Paris in 1582, and an English one in London ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... now, Sir Richard, I have a boon to beg. I am in this strait for no better reason than because my kinsman, Sir Clarence Poltwhistle, one of the Secretaries of State, has charged me with sorcery, in order that he may succeed in my estate, which devolves to him ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... more account in my opinion than those of a council of Aztecs. If a man picks your pocket, do you not consider him thereby disqualified to pronounce any authoritative opinion on matters of ethics? If a man hangs my ancient female relatives for sorcery, as they did in this neighborhood a little while ago, or burns my instructor for not believing as he does, I care no more for his religious edicts than I should for those of any ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... country, like Sprenger himself, to denounce witches. This work bore the sanction of the Pope, and was followed, even in Protestant countries, until the eighteenth century. It based its theories upon the Bible, and devoted thirty-three pages to a proof that women were especially addicted to sorcery. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... to seize, of talking about serpents and toads. But, after a long enumeration of the bones, stones, and livers of animals that cause love, the alchemist, urged by Philautus, ends by confessing that the best sorcery of all to gain the loving regard of a woman, is to be handsome, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... gongs, bamboo tubes, and metal pipes. Actors perform old-world dramas in dumb show, and conjurors in gaudy attire attract people of all ages to those time-honoured feats of legerdemain which once represented the sorcery of the mystic East. The simple Malay has not yet adopted the critical and unbelieving attitude which rubs the gilt off the gingerbread or the bloom off the plum, and his fervid faith in mythical heroes and necromantic exploits ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... cowardly disposition, was a firm believer in the magic that passed current in his day, and was questioned on the rack respecting the object of a waxen figure found among his effects. He admitted he had employed it for sorcery, to advance his suit with a lady whose love he sought. Coconnas, an Italian, instead of inviting contempt for his poltroonery, inspires aversion for his crimes. No assassin had distinguished himself more at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day. We are inclined to believe the contemporary ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... who had dealings with the Arabs received orders to make them understand that my pretended miracles were only the result of skill, inspired and guided by an art called prestidigitation, in no way connected with sorcery. ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the young are always optimists. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... It was not because she was more free from superstition than other people, but simply because she knew full well that the only sorcery necessary to be used towards Henry the Third was "the sorcery of a strong mind over ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... days," said Spadevil, "there existed in Ifdawn a mountain island separated by wide spaces from the land around it. A handsome girl, who knew sorcery, caused a bridge to be constructed across which men and women might pass to it. Having by a false tale drawn Hator on to this rock, she pushed at the bridge with her foot until it tumbled into the depths below. 'You and I, Hator, are now together, and ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... dies. Love, Honour, Justice, numberless the forms, Glorious and high the stature, she assumes; But watch the wandering changeful mischief well, And thou shalt see her with low lurid light Search where the soul's most valued treasure lies, Or, more embodied to our vision, stand With evil eye, and sorcery hers alone, Looking away her helpless progeny, And drawing poison from its very smiles. For Julian's truth have I not pledged my own? Have I not sworn Covilla ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... is at present. About that time I became acquainted with an old merchant who imparted to me the secret of the success I have since then obtained. This secret, you will be perhaps somewhat disappointed to learn, consists neither in a charm nor in any kind of magical art or sorcery. It is comprised simply in a particular mode of dealing, and one, in fact, completely opposed to that which is ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... if he had been ten years younger he would have taken his chance with Akela had he met the wolf in the woods, but a wolf who obeyed the orders of this boy who had private wars with man-eating tigers was not a common animal. It was sorcery, magic of the worst kind, thought Buldeo, and he wondered whether the amulet round his neck would protect him. He lay as still as still, expecting every minute to see Mowgli turn into a ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... time of Cyrus the Magi had become a sort of sacerdotal caste. They were the trusted ministers of kings, and exercised a controlling influence over the people. They assumed a stately air, wore white and flowing robes, and were adept in the arts of sorcery and magic. They were even consulted by kings and chieftains, as if they possessed prophetic power. They were a picturesque body of men, with their mystic wands, their impressive robes, their tall caps, appealing by their long incantations and frequent ceremonies and prayers to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... whom they serued, and to whome they were priuatelye sworne: entered into the detestable Art of witchcraft, which they studied and practised so long time, that in the end they had seduced by their sorcery a number of other to be as bad as themselues: dwelling in the boundes of Lowthian, which is a principall shire or parte of Scotland, where the Kings Maiestie vseth to make his cheefest residence or abode: and to the end that their detestable wickednes which they priuilye had pretended against ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... before God, "O Lord, King of the universe, hear me!" that He might send fire down from heaven and consume all that was upon the altar; and again he prayed, "Hear me!" that they might not imagine that the result was a matter of sorcery; for it is said, "Thou hast ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... the king and unite our efforts to overcome him, ere he appear without guilt and come forth and get the better of us." So they all went in to the king and prostrating themselves before him, said to him, "O king, have a care lest this youth beguile thee with his sorcery and bewitch thee with his craft. If thou heardest what we hear, thou wouldst not suffer him live, no, not one day. So pay thou no heed to his speech, for we are thy viziers, [who endeavour for] thy continuance, and if thou hearken not to our word, to whose word wilt thou hearken? See, we are ten ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... Pierce well knew his own incompetence to restrain these strong and violent men. He did not know where his knight was to be found, and, if he had known, it was only too likely that these terrible intentions might be carried out before any messenger could reach him. Indeed, the belief in sorcery was universal, and no rank was exempt from the danger of the accusation. Thora's treachery was specially perilous. All that the young man could do was to seek counsel with Cuthbert Ridley, and even this he was obliged to do in the stable, bidding Dick keep watch outside. Ridley too had heard ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... things to be explained? Say a fellow had some unusual powers, things that happened around him, things he knew without any explanation for knowing them. I'll tell you. There were two courses open to him. He could express it in the semantics of spiritism, or he could admit to witchcraft and sorcery. Take your pick; those were the only two systems of semantics which had been built up through ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... be noted that in literature only three things count, style, style polished, style repolished; these imagination and the art of transition aid, but do not enhance. As for style, it may be defined as the sorcery of syllables, the fall of sentences, the use of the exact term, the pursuit of a repetition even unto the thirtieth and fortieth line. Grammar is an adjunct but not an obligation. No grammarian ever wrote a thing that was fit ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... interesting to note in passing the more than modern liberality of Luther's views with respect to the marriage question and the celibacy of the clergy, contrasted with the strong mediaeval flavour of his belief in witchcraft and sorcery. In his De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae (1519) he expresses the view that if, for any cause, husband or wife are prevented from having sexual intercourse they are justified, the woman equally with the man, in seeking it elsewhere. He was opposed to divorce, though he did not ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... sir", said Thyrston, "those jokes have been used by every conjurer since Merlin, and while perhaps without them your trick would work, yet I have never heard of it being done and I have found", said Thyrston, "that in sorcery the best results are obtained by ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... Yet, inasmuch as it is the nature of a body to have an indwelling spirit, death—the permanent severing of body and spirit—cannot occur naturally: it must be due to the machination of some enemy, by violence, by poison, or by sorcery. ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... loose from some dim underworld to range These terrene vistas till their twilight sets: When, dispossessed of wonderfulness, they stand Beggared and common, plain to all the land For stooks of leaves! And lo! the wizard hour Whose shining, silent sorcery hath such power! Still, still the streets, between their carcanets Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep: But see how gable ends and parapets In gradual beauty and significance Emerge! And did you hear That little twitter-and-cheep, Breaking ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... along the railroad's right-of-way deeply delighted my friend, but to me they were more than flowers, they were cups of sorcery, torches of magic incense. Each nodding pink brought back to me the sights and sounds and smells of the glorious meadows of my boyhood's vanished world. Every weed had its mystic tale. The slopes of the hills, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... becomes apparent to men when they are clear of them, while as long as they are under their dominion they seem so true to them that they think them beyond all argument." Instances are the craze for tulips, belief in sorcery, and the aberrations of literary fashions.—The religion of Reason was such a craze. It was common to the most ignorant and the most cultured, to the "sub-veterinaries" of the Chamber, and certain of the keenest intellects ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... oath taken by Eleanor Pead before being licensed by the Archbishop to be a midwife a similar clause occurs; the words, "Also, I will not use any kind of sorcery or incantations in the time of the travail of any woman." Can any of your readers inform me what charms or prayers are here referred to, and at what period midwives ceased to be licensed by the Archbishop, or if any ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... it be? Why have they descended into this dark hole, these little ones, who howl in the midst of the smoke, held by these phantoms in mourning? Had we entered it unawares we might have thought it a den of wicked sorcery, an underground cavern for ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... "What aileth them, that they believe not the resurrection?"11 "Is not He who created man able to quicken the dead?"12 "The scoffers say, 'Shall we be raised to life, and our forefathers too, after we have become dust and bones? This is nothing but sorcery.'"13 First, Israfil will blow the blast of consternation. After an interval, he will blow the blast of examination, at which all creatures will die and the material universe will melt in horror. Thirdly, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Tortoise; the second of the Beaver, and the third of the Wolf. In battle, the totum was borne as the standard. The criminal code was not elaborate, yet it sufficed to maintain order in the small republics. Murder, robbery treason and sorcery were the crimes understood to entail its penalties. Instead of being punished by death, murder was expiated by a very large number of presents, to provide which, not only the assassin, but every family in the village was laid under contribution. The punishment of the criminal was thus ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... fact, to be nothing which could account for such an attempt being successfully made unless recourse was had to an accusation of sorcery. The idea of handing him over to the ecclesiastical authorities was briefly discussed, but proofs were necessary, and the judges hesitated. It is a principle of justice, which has become a precept ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... it is of the greatest importance to us; and, even those among them who do not know our language sufficiently to speak to us, pray to him that we may feel the power of his blood on our hearts. I have learned sorcery, and I have practised it, but that is the road to the greatest darkness, and can give no peace to the heart; but he who looks to the Saviour, and to his wounds, receives peace and joy in his heart, and that is the only ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... religious, the beliefs which have moved the world possess a common origin and follow the same laws. They are formed, not by the reason, but more often contrary to reason. Buddhism, Christianity, Islamism, the Reformation, sorcery, Jacobinism, socialism, spiritualism, &c., seem very different forms of belief, but they have, I repeat, identical mystic and affective bases, and obey forms of logic which have no affinity with rational logic. Their might resides precisely in the fact that ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... unpleasant bridegroom resorts to the graveyard and repairs to his own grave, from which he has recently issued to execute his errand. It is a repulsive subject. "Svetlana," however, is more agreeable than its prototype "Leonora," inasmuch as the whole catastrophe turns out a dream brought on by "sorcery," during the "sviatki" or Holy Nights (see Canto V. st. x), and the dreamer awakes to hear the tinkling of her lover's sledge approaching. "Svetlana" has been ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... youth, When expectation soared on pinions high, And hope shone out on boyhood's cloudless sky, Seeming all truth— When all looked fair to fancy's ardent eye, And pleasure wore an air of sorcery? ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... powerful of the two sorcerers—"What would happen if one of your spirits had overpowered me?" "You would go out of this room," he answered, "with his character added to your own." I asked about the origin of his sorcery, but got little of importance, except that he had learned it from his father. He would not tell me more, for he had, it appeared, taken a ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... mystery and sorcery has long hung about the mountainous regions which lie to the north of India. Hindus and Chinese alike saw in them the home of spirits and wizards, and the grand but uncanny scenery of these high plateaux has influenced the art and ideas of the natives. The climate made ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... even said that in the quiet winter nights she held wonderful conversations with her goat and with her fowls, which she housed in her room during the winter. The entire wild army of tales of witchcraft and sorcery, banished by school education, came back and attached ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... systematic injustice in the practice of what first was taken up in sincerity, though even this now perhaps is not unmixed with some fancy of its reality. For this must be the gradation more or less gone through in all such things, whether Obeism, Fetichism, the Evil Eye, or any sort of sorcery or witchcraft, in whatever variousness of form practised; cheats on the one hand, and dupes on the other the primum mobile in every case being, some shape or other of gain ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... "withdraw your displeasure, for this same lady was the falsest lady living, and by enchantment and sorcery she has destroyed many good knights. She it was who through falsehood and treachery caused ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... right when he said he knew this wild, mountain scenery was to his friend's taste. The very air had for him a certain sorcery. He stood still at last and took some long, deep breaths, but the cloud on his brow had not yet disappeared; it grew darker instead, as he leaned against a tree and cast ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... is the bogie, or witch, blowing from her mouth a malevolent exhalation, an embodiment of malignant and maleficent sorcery. The vapour which flies and curls from the mouth constitutes "a sending," in the technical language of Icelandic wizards, and is capable (in Iceland, at all events) of assuming the form of some detestable supernatural animal, to destroy ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... Christianity. Mediaeval Christianity is at one with patristic, on this head. The masses, the clergy, the theologians, and the philosophers alike, live and move and have their being in a world full of demons, in which sorcery and possession are everyday occurrences. Nor did the Reformation make any difference. Whatever else Luther assailed, he left the traditional demonology untouched; nor could any one have entertained a more hearty ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... head, my lord. Not very effectual if you know what to look for. There are better spells than that for guarding things. Now we'll see what his lordship wants to protect so badly that he practices sorcery without a license." He lifted the lid again, and then opened the inner lid. "It's safe now, my lord. ...
— The Eyes Have It • Gordon Randall Garrett
... faithful to the old religion. This might have persuaded Ahuna to loosen up a little. Or she may have jolted fear into him; for she knew a lot of the line of chatter of the old Huni sorcerers, and she could make a noise like being on terms of utmost intimacy with Uli, who is the chiefest god of sorcery of all the sorcerers. She could skin the ordinary kahuna lapaau" (medicine man) "when it came to praying to Lonopuha and Koleamoku; read dreams and visions and signs and omens and indigestions to beat the band; make the practitioners ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... best authorities the bards were divided into three great classes. The first class was composed of the historians and antiquaries, who piqued themselves a little upon their sorcery, and who, upon occasion, took up the roles of diviners and prophets. The second class was composed of domestic bards, living in private houses, quite after the custom of ancient Greece. These we may suppose were chiefly devoted to the annals and glories of their wealthy ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... and art and romance meet and mingle to create that indefinable sorcery of Venice. It is like nothing on earth except a poet's dream, and his poetic dream is of the ethereal realm. The wonderful music that floats over the "silver trail" of still waters; the mystic silences; the resplendence of color,—all, indeed, weave ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... a solid road through the inundated marshes, throwing bridges over the deeper channels, and building a causeway elsewhere. But in the face of an active enemy this was no easy task; and so frequently were the Normans surprised by Hereward that they believed he must be aided by sorcery, and employed the "witch," who perished by fire (as mentioned in another Note), to counteract his magic, ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... has given us facts which entirely fit in with our theory that an ancestor-worshipping people, believing in metamorphosis and sorcery, adores a god who is supposed to be a deceased ancestral sorcerer with the power of magic and metamorphosis. But now Dr. Hahn offers his own explanation. According to the philological method, he will 'study the names of the persons, until we arrive at the naked root and original ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... such wise he did because he saw that his wife was the pink of perfection and he opined that the whole of her sex resembled her, and he knew naught of the wickedness and debauchery of the genus and their sorcery and their contrariety and the cunning contrivance wherewith they work upon men's wits. He abode all careless of such matters, in consequence of the virtues of his spouse, until one chance day of the days when suddenly a man came to him with a grievance ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... love you very much, but my love does not blind me to the fact that, no matter, what your talents at sorcery, you are in everyday matters a hopelessly unpractical person. Do you leave this affair to me, and I will manage it with ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... heifer, with fifty heifers about her and a chain of silvered bronze between each two of the heifers. [2]She bursts upon the pools and fords at the head of the cattle. It was then that Cuchulain said, "I cannot see the fords for the waters."[2] The women [3]came with their strange sorcery, and[3] constrained Cuchulain by geasa and by inviolable bonds [4]to check the heifer for them[4] lest she should escape from him without harm. Cuchulain made an unerring cast [5]from his sling-stick[5] at her, so that he shattered one of ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... Hobgoblins, Presentiments, Second Sight, and Supernatural Appearances; Magical Practices and Conjuration; Daemonology, Spectres, and Vampires; Popular Superstitions, Popish Credulity, Delusions, Ecstacies, Fanaticisms, and Impostures; Astrology, Divination, Revelations, and Prophecies; Necromancy, Sorcery, and Witchcraft; Infatuation, Diabolical Possession, and Enthusiasm; Proverbs, Old Sayings, and Vulgar Errors; the Household Book of Sir Ed. Coke, Original MS.; Early English Poetry, MS. temp. James I.; Grammatical Treatises printed by W. de Worde; Facetiae; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... when, in an evil hour, the husband was tempted "to look upon the wine when it is red," and to taste of it, "when it giveth its colour in the cup." The charmer fastened round its victim all the serpent-spells of its sorcery, and he fell; and at every step of his degradation from the man to the brute, and downward, a heartstring broke in the ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... get a bad reputation for working harm by magic. They are said to be cunning in sorcery (TAU TEPANG), and these persons may properly be said to be sorcerers or witches. They are believed to work harm in many ill-defined ways, especially to health; but their procedures are not generally known; they probably include poisoning, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... of enlightened Frederick; Benedictines erasing the masterpieces of classical literature to make way for their own litanies and lurries, or selling pieces of the parchment for charms; a laity devoted by superstition to saints and by sorcery to the devil; a clergy sunk in sensual sloth or fevered with demoniac zeal: these still ruled the intellectual destinies of Europe. Therefore the first anticipations of the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... over to the Bishop's officer, who duly brought them before the Courts. The Church adjudged Simone heretic, and condemned her for salutary penance to the bread of suffering and the water of affliction. Robin was convicted of sorcery, and, persevering in his error, was burned alive in the Place ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... Casibos continued to be savage Anthropophagi. It is worthy of remark that they never eat women, a fact which some may be inclined to attribute to respect for the female sex. It is, however, assignable to a different feeling. All the South American Indians, who still remain under the influence of sorcery and empiricism, consider women in the light of impure and evil beings, and calculated to injure them. Among a few of the less rude nations this aversion is apparent in domestic life, in a certain unconquerable ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... to the shame of the Church be it spoken, the Archbishop of Rheims was one of those who most zealously sought to persuade him of the folly of entrusting great matters to the hands of a simple peasant girl, and warned the whole Court of the perils of witchcraft and sorcery which were like to be the undoing of ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... desire, to crush her soft white body, to stamp out her life, to annihilate her and gloat over her shrieking despair. She felt like some hapless little princess in a fairy-tale who had wandered into a monstrous land of black sorcery. ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... in the direction of transcendental religion, is, in a certain sense, the discoverer of modern Satanism. Under the thinnest disguise of fiction, he gives in his romance of La Bas, an incredible and untranslatable picture of sorcery, sacrilege, black magic, and nameless abominations, secretly practised in Paris. Possessing a brilliant reputation, commanding a wide audience, and with a psychological interest attaching to his own personality, which more than ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... full year of widowhood might not wed again; the names of her deities she gave to the days of the planetary week. Her superstitions and folk-lore, deep-rooted, survived and lingered long among many nations: the old sorcery of the waxen image of an enemy transfixed by bodkins for the torment of that enemy; the belief in the were-wolf (one of the oldest of Roman traditions); the association of the yew tree with mourning and the passing of ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... attractive, whose downcast eyes seem to fear you, whose timid glance tempts you, and for whom the conjugal bed has no secrets, for she is at once a virgin and an experienced woman! How can a man remain cold, like St. Anthony, before such powerful sorcery, and have the courage to remain faithful to the good principles represented by a scornful wife, whose face is always stern, whose manners are always snappish, and who frequently refuses to be caressed? What ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... Pavaent language a school-house is called po-kunt-in-in-yi-kaen. The first part of the word, po-kunt, signifies sorcery is practiced, and is the name given by the Indians to any writing, from the fact that when they first learned of writing they supposed it to be a method of practicing sorcery; in-in-yi is the verb signifying to count, and the meaning of the word has been extended so as to signify to read; kaen signifies wigwam, and is derived from the verb kueri, to stay. Thus the name of ...
— On the Evolution of Language • John Wesley Powell
... sin, and foreshadows its doom. With his spiritual strength, he has opened wide the gates of glory, and illumined the night of paganism with the 571:30 sublime grandeur of divine Science, outshining sin, sorcery, lust, and hypocrisy. He takes away mitre and sceptre. He enthrones pure and undefiled religion, and lifts on 572:1 high only those who have washed their robes white in obedience ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... authority, the humiliation and ruin of their enemies became more and more the objects towards which their occult powers were directed: and thus turned from their lawful use, and practised for all sorts of selfish and malevolent purposes, they inevitably led to what we must call by the name of sorcery. ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... which its expanse of broad waters calls forth. To such an one, each plank seems a friend; the vessel, a refuge from the world and its cares. Trusting himself to its guidance, deceit wounds him no more— hollow-hearted friendship proffers not its hand to sting—love exercises not its fatal sorcery—foes are afar—and his heart, if not the waves, is comparatively at peace. And oh! the wonders of the deep! Ocean! tame is the soul that loves not thee! grovelling the mind that scorns the joys thou ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... sedative power of the human fingers, or of a hair, will have, perhaps, reminded them of some sort of sorcery, or of some diabolic art worthy ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... destruction, of the Mussulman yoke. No taller than an ordinary woman, and with the hand of a child, he was, nevertheless, possessed of wonderful strength, which, of course, his compatriots ascribed to sorcery. His sword is still preserved in a museum, and one cannot help wondering at its size and weight, and at the hilt, through which only a ten-year-old child could put his hand. The basis of this hero's fame is the fact that he, the son of a poor officer in ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... general right to make any exactions he thinks he has the power of enforcing, without any regard to justice or a regulated tariff. This right is called Hongo, in the plural Mahongo. Another source of revenue is in the effects of all people condemned for sorcery, who are either burnt, or speared and cast into the jungles, and their property seized by the grey-beards for ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... rather arrogantly perhaps. "The sorcery that lured me hither may carry me as lightly back. But I have tasted honey and covet ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... cities as above, and the villages near them; where they are Christians, as they call themselves, of the Greek church; but even these have their religion mingled with so many relics of superstition, that it is scarce to be known in some places from mere sorcery and witchcraft. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... earth lays all petulance at rest, and soothes us to wiser convictions. To the intelligent, nature converts itself into a vast promise, and will not be rashly explained. Her secret is untold. Many and many an Oedipus[523] arrives: he has the whole mystery teeming in his brain. Alas! the same sorcery has spoiled his skill; no syllable can he shape on his lips. Her mighty orbit vaults like the fresh rainbow into the deep, but no archangel's wing was yet strong enough to follow it, and report of the return of the ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... were the priests of the Median religion, greatly developed the practices of incantation and sorcery. Among these rites they "pretended to have the power of making fire descend on to their altars by means of magical ceremonies." [Footnote: Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, 226, 238.] Moses appears to have been very fond of this particular miracle. It is mentioned as having been effective here at ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... Emlyn's early life was set out, much being made of the fact that her mother was a gypsy who had committed suicide and that her father had fallen under the ban of the Inquisition, an heretical work of his having been publicly burned. Then the Abbot himself gave evidence, since, where the charge was sorcery, no one seemed to think it strange that the same man should both act as judge and be the principal witness for the prosecution. He told of Cicely's wild words after the burning of Cranwell Towers, from which burning she and her familiar, Emlyn, had evidently escaped by magic, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... they all talked together, and made a noise while they rowed, instead of being "silent in the boat." But what impressed Eilert most of all was the fact that, in the Finnwoman's family, they practised sorcery and idolatry, or so folks said. He also heard tell of something beyond all question, and that was the shame of having Finn blood in one's veins, which also was the reason why the Finns were not as ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... violence of the storm and withdraw a while from the court, he was soon recalled and reinstated in all his former dignities. This melancholy infatuation of the king is imputed by the writers of that age to sorcery on the part of the favorite. [4] But the only witchcraft which he used, was the ascendency of a strong mind ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... his pawns (Whenas a moan escapes each soul) As bleary sons of noble lords Sway twin censers' fumes in silence, Until in myrtle groves we see A blazing arch where agate eyes Doth peer malignly from a crypt Thro' turbid phials of violence,— A scene of impish sorcery! Where, in furbished chambers there lies— As vypers write on evil script The ghastly deeds that sinners wrought— A glow-worm's fagot that arrays Dim shapes of souls of men that were. And cyphers nights of doomes to be, Till flaring pyres and yon red ghaut— So monstrous ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... DEMONSTRATION, not by myths and allegories? Why do they, the deadly enemies of civilization, borrow from it, nevertheless, its most pernicious fruits,—property, inequality of fortune and rank, gluttony, concubinage, prostitution, what do I know? theurgy, magic, and sorcery? Why these endless denunciations of morality, metaphysics, and psychology, when the abuse of these sciences, which they do not understand, constitutes their whole system? Why this mania for deifying a man whose principal merit consisted in talking nonsense about things whose names, even, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... as a town given over to sorcery and witchcraft assists in giving the impression that the time of the Play falls within the Christian era, when the ancient customs of the Pagan inhabitants gave the City a bad repute of this particular kind. Was it derived ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... wonderful. The record of what actually is, and has happened in the series of human events, is perhaps the smallest part of human history. If we would know man in all his subtleties, we must deviate into the world of miracles and sorcery. To know the things that are not, and cannot be, but have been imagined and believed, is the most curious chapter in the annals of man. To observe the actual results of these imaginary phenomena, and the crimes and cruelties they have caused us to commit, is one of the most instructive ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... demonstration, had taught me that chemistry is concerned with the shuffle of matter, uniting or separating the various elements. But what a strange idea I formed of this branch of study! To me it smacked of sorcery, of alchemy and its search for the philosopher's stone. To my mind, every chemist, when at work, should have had a magic wand in his hand and the wizard's pointed, star studded ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... elsewhere endeavored to show the purifying and ennobling influence of science upon religion; how it has assisted, if indeed it may not claim the main share, in sweeping away the dark superstitions, the degrading belief in sorcery and witchcraft, and the cruel, however well-intentioned, intolerance which embittered the Christian world almost from the very days of the Apostles themselves. In this she has surely performed no mean service to religion itself. As Canon Fremantle has well and justly said, men of ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... honor is confided to your hand,— There let it well protected be! It sinks with you! with you it will expand! Poesy's sacred sorcery Obeys a world-plan wise and good; In silence let it swell ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a nothing; But taking sorcery from the master-hand To paralyze the Caesars, and to strike The loud ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... not lonely, and when the marvels of the inviting eyes turned towards him, he was always conscious of an ideal presence as if the god-maid of the mesa had stepped between, and made harmless the sorcery of the village daughters by which he might ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... farce; where, instead of just imitations of nature and human character, we are entertained with the transformation of cauliflowers and beer-barrels, the apparition of ghosts and devils, and all the other magic of the wooden sword. Those who can prefer this eternal sorcery, to the just and modest representation of human actions and passions, will probably take more delight in walking among the holly griffins, and yew sphinxes of the city gardener, than in ranging among the groves and lawns which have been laid out by a hand that feared to violate nature, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... the hermit fated Beside those shores of sorcery, Sat and the damsel fair awaited, And dark the woods began to be— The beams of morn the night mists scatter, No Monk is seen then, well a day! And only, only in the water The lasses view'd his beard ...
— The Talisman • George Borrow
... this Crime ought to be as clear as in any other Crimes of a Capital nature. The Word of God does no where intimate, that a less clear Evidence, or that fewer or other Witnesses may be taken as sufficient to convict a Man of Sorcery, which would not be enough to convict him were he charged with another evil worthy of Death, Numb. 35.30. if we may not take the Oath of a distracted Person, or of a possessed Person in a Case of Murder, Theft, Felony of any sort, ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... pastoral tragedy, which served to revive the study of Virgil. Other poets seizing on the old romance of the Trouveres, added to them an element of mockery, in place of the old religious belief. This new spirit was adopted by Ariosto. From the East he borrowed the magic and sorcery interwoven in the adventures of his knights and ladies, giants and magicians. It remained for Torquato Tasso to revive the heroic epic in his Jerusalem Delivered, in which he depicts the struggle between the Christians ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... case of real malady many were imputed or charged upon poor creatures, who were driven to madness by groundless charges of witchcraft and sorcery, and being loups-garous in secret. Many innocent people were in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries burnt at the stake ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... ours, as we danced along the braes—have long ceased to be more than images and echoes, incapable of commanding so much as one single tear. Alas! for the treachery of memory to all the holiest human affections, when beguiled by the slow but sure sorcery ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... beaten me, always saying that it was wrong to beat an apprentice, and that those who so did were lacking in their senses. And this is but another proof of his sorcery, for who, other than a sorcerer, could handle ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... which, it seems, must necessarily be longer prohibited; but the origin of all is the same. A changing world has shown how the most shocking crimes punished by the severest penalties have been taken from the calendar and no longer even bear the suspicion of wrong. Religious differences, witchcraft and sorcery have probably brought more severe punishments than any other acts; yet a change of habit and custom and belief has long since abolished all such crimes. So, too, crimes come and go with new ideals, new movements and conditions. The largest portion of our criminal code deals with ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... book is all about a place called Atlantis that is said to have existed in the Atlantic Ocean between America and Ireland, and to have been deluged by an earthquake owing to the wickedness of its inhabitants. They practised sorcery." ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... question dates back to ancient times, and was shared by Plato and Pliny, the latter of whom says that to guard against any spell of the kind some wolf fat should be rubbed upon the threshold and door jambs of one's bed-chamber. In the sixteenth century sorcery of this description was so generally believed in, in some parts of France, that Cardinal du Perron inserted special prayers against it in the ritual. Some particulars on the subject will be found in the Admirables ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... herself to them, when they all praised her for her cunning and her son rejoiced and said, "May the Messiah never fail thee!" Then she took with her the Syrian Christians, and set out for the army of Baghdad. Now this accursed old woman was a witch of the witches, past mistress in sorcery and deception, knavish, crafty, debauched and perfidious, with foul breath, red eyelids, sallow cheeks, pale face, bleared eyes, mangy body, grizzled hair, humped back, withered complexion and running nostrils. She had studied the scriptures of Islam and made the pilgrimage to the Holy House ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... Plato, of N. African birth, lived in the 2nd century; having captivated a rich widow, was charged at one time with sorcery; his most celebrated work was the "Golden Ass," which contains, among other stories, the exquisite apologue or romance of PSYCHE ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... system. In the reign of Philip the Good, the vicar of the inquisitor-general gave sentence against some heretics, who were burned in Lille (1448). In 1459, Pierre Troussart, a Jacobin monk, condemned many Waldenses, together with some leading citizens of Artois, accused of sorcery and heresy. He did this, however, as inquisitor for the Bishop of Arras, so that it was an act of episcopal, and not papal inquisition. In general, when inquisitors were wanted in the provinces, it was necessary to borrow them from France or Germany. The exigencies of persecution ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... who has ever lived can touch Dickens in indicating this sort of familiar sorcery and the secret of its terror. For it is children, more than any, who are conscious how "haunted" all manner of places and things are. And people themselves! The searching psychologists are led singularly ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... the Indians of medicine against sickness, I learned only that they are in the habit of taking various herbs for their ailments. What part incantation or sorcery plays in the healing of disease I do not know. Nor did I learn what the Indians think of the origin and effects of dreams. Me-le told me that he knows of a plant the leaves of which, eaten, will cure the bite of a rattlesnake, and that ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... of the Malay Peninsula we live in the Middle Ages, with all the appropriate accessories of the dark centuries. Magic and evil spirits, witchcraft and sorcery, spells and love-potions, charms and incantations are, to the mind of the native, as real and as much a matter of everyday life as are the miracle of the growing rice, and the mysteries of the reproduction of species. This must be not ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... recitation of a street boy in New York. The daughter of a Jew is not more likely than the daughter of a duke to have been concerned in the cruel and blasphemous imitation of the horrors attributed by Horace to the witch Canidia. But some such survivals of pagan sorcery did exist in the Middle Ages, ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... and, as soon as he revived, fear fluttered the scrotum[FN408] below his belly and he complained to the ancient dame, Zat al-Dawahi. Now this accursed old woman was a witch of the witches, past mistress in sorcery and deception; wanton and wily, deboshed and deceptious; with foul breath, red eyelids, yellow cheeks, dull brown face, eyes bleared, mangy body, hair grizzled, back humped, skin withered and wan and nostrils which ever ran. But she had studied the scriptures ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... multitude of minutiae. His vigorous blows avail but little against the impalpable ideal with which he is contending; his arguments might frequently convince a court of justice, but could do nothing to dispel the sorcery which enthralled the popular imagination. Milton's "Eikonoklastes" had only three editions, including a translation, within the year; the "Eikon Basilike" is said to ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... and he knew it; his dark intentions in regard to that waterfall were probably as legible to her as if they had been printed in great-primer type on his forehead. On two or three occasions at Geneva she had wrested his unworded thought from him with the same effortless sorcery. Lynde evaded her look, and studied a spire-like peak on his left. "I shall have an air of detected villainy now, when I ask her," he mused. "That's the first shade of coquetry I ever saw in her. If she accepts ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... smitten and defied; woes great and terrible, such as history tells not of, have fallen upon us through magic; tens of thousands, from the first-born child of Pharaoh down, have perished in a single night. And now these Hebrews, who have murdered them by sorcery, for they are sorcerers all, men and women together, especially one of them who sits at Memphis, of whom I will not speak because she has wrought me private harm, by the decree of Pharaoh are to be suffered to leave the land. More, they are to take with them all their cattle, ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... tunick of bark, a sort of steel net, to which some pieces of iron are attached, the noise of which is very great when the improvisator is agitated; he has moments of inspiration which a good deal resemble nervous attacks, and it is rather by sorcery, than talent, that he makes an impression on the people. The imagination, in such dreary countries, is scarcely remarkable but by fear, and the earth herself appears to repel man by the terror with which she inspires him. I afterwards saw the ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... are related the Exciting Experiences of Princess Ozma of Oz, and Dorothy, in their hazardous journey to the home of the Flatheads, and to the Magic Isle of the Skeezers, and how they were rescued from dire peril by the sorcery of Glinda ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Angelo born here? and he who wove Love's charm with sorcery of Tuscan tongue, Indissolubly blent? and he whose song Laid bare the world below to world above? And he who from the lonely valley clove The azure height and trod the stars among? And he whose searching mind the monarch's wrong, Fount ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... buffalo, hippopotamus, lion, and various others are hunted in Caffraria with great spirit by the natives. Of a Divine Being whom they call 'Uhlanger,' or 'Supreme,' they have some idea; but as to a state of future rewards or punishments they are altogether in ignorance. Sorcery and witchcraft in various forms most extensively prevail, and are the ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... sorcery!" interrupted the Captain. "No, you shall not enter here. The King allows no animals in his domain. How you have brought them so ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... incantations, and to the moon; to Hecate, [Footnote: Hecate was a mysterious divinity sometimes identified with Diana and sometimes with Proserpine. As Diana represents the moonlight splendor of night, so Hecate represents its darkness and terrors. She was the goddess of sorcery and witchcraft, and was believed to wander by night along the earth, seen only by the dogs, whose barking told her approach.] the goddess of the underworld, and to Tellus the goddess of the earth, by whose power plants potent for enchantment are produced. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... the other feats of skill and sorcery you have accomplished, why don't you reconstruct their speech, also?" asked ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... your notion, Richard. Whom does he not forestall? 'Confirmed dyspepsia is the apparatus of illusions,' and he accuses the Ages that put faith in sorcery, of universal indigestion, which may have been the case, owing to their infamous cookery. He says again, if you remember, that our own Age is travelling back to darkness and ignorance through dyspepsia. He lays the seat of wisdom ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the ancient goddesses identified as evil influences, and as the leader of a midnight band of women, who practised secret and unholy rites. This leads us at once to witchcraft. In all ages and in all races this belief in sorcery has existed. Men and women practised it alike, but in all times female sorcerers have predominated. [18] This was natural enough. In those days women were priestesses; they collected drugs and simples; women alone knew the virtues of plants. Those soft ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... the crowd stood listening; All silent were they through the spacious hall. The elders then began again to say, Those sinful men—the truth they did not know!— That it was magic art and sorcery That made the shining stone to talk to men. Evil was blossoming in their hearts, and hate Welled hot as fire within their wicked breasts, A serpent, foe to joy, a poison dire; 770 And by their words of mocking were ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... on two knees implore the aid of sorcery, To suit their wicked purposes they quickly put the laws awry; With Adam I in wife may vie, for none could tell the use of her, Except to cheapen golden pippins hawk'd ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... that we discover the fact that at certain moments these fountains actually sing. Are we in the presence of a phenomenon similar to that recalled just now by M. Anastasius Baringouin? Are we, at the beginning of the twentieth century—the century of Science and Precision—victims of hallucination or sorcery? This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we are about to investigate, and we will begin by consulting the celebrated clairvoyant, Madame ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... This infamous inquisition into sorcery and witchcraft has been of greater influence on human affairs than is commonly supposed. The persecutions against philosophers and their libraries was carried on with so much fury, that from this time (A. D. 374) the names of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... gorgeous eastern coloring of the character; all these contradictory elements has Shakspeare seized, mingled them in their extremes, and fused them into one brilliant impersonation of classical elegance, Oriental voluptuousness, and gipsy sorcery. ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... Cal. I say, by sorcery he got this isle; From me he got it. If thy Greatness will Revenge it on him,—for, I know, thou darest, But ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of this cult may be able to make an apparent success of it, but I have never yet met any. If they do, however, they will live to regret it, for they are merely practitioners of black magic. Their efforts are of the same nature as sorcery. All such methods build up a heavy debt of future suffering, and seriously hinder the soul in its ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... Persia, the Brahmins in India, the Chaldae in Assyria, the magicians of Arabia, the priesthood of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and the Druids of Britain, were all members of a class which comprised astrology, omens, divination, conjuration, portents, chiromancy, and sorcery; and all united in the pursuit of enslaving mankind for the purposes of gain and power, with artfully devised schemes, and a skilful series of impostures; and we can easily imagine the influence they must have exercised over the minds of their proselytes, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... her cast from some topmost tower and hear her frail bones break on the cruel rocks below, or—as had happened to the last queen—to watch her writhe out her life in the pangs of poison upon a charge of sorcery. It was indeed a night of festival, a night filled full of promise of rich ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... pondered on the possibilities they grew darker and more distorted in his mind; he thought vaguely of things remote and repulsive, strange forms of slavery or sorcery, and then of ugly things yet more unnatural but nearer home. The figure of Verner seemed to be blackened and transfigured in his imagination, and to stand against varied backgrounds and ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... stars! what sorcery! But to me now listen! I hasten'd unto Hortha's gloomy forests, To glut myself in Roman blood; then look'd I Down from the thunder-cloud in which I journey'd, And on these towering hills my eyes I fastened; Then saw I Denmark's Hother, prince ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... there, motionless; and gradually the bitterness became less perceptible as he drifted, intent on drifting, back through the exotic sorcery of dead years—back into the sun again, where honour was bright and life was young—where all the world awaited happy conquest—where there was no curfew in the red evening glow; no end to day, because the golden light had turned ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... in Hindustani (corrupted from the Persian patilah), signifies the match of a gun, a candle, a wick used in sorcery.] ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... much persuasion, said that the clans of Mataiea had always believed they were descended directly from eels; that an eel of Lake Vaihiria had been the progenitor of all the people of the valley. A vahine of another clan had been overcome by the eel's sorcery, as Mother Eve by the serpent, which ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... and agreed with Leh Shin that sorcery had been used, shaking his head gravely and at length rising to ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... recognized in ancient times; King David, we hear from the Rabbinic records, used to hang his kinnor (kithara) over his bed at night, when it sounded in the midnight breeze. The same is related of St Dunstan of Canterbury, who was in consequence charged with sorcery. The Chinese at the present day fly kites of various sizes, having strings stretched across apertures in the paper, which produces the effect of an aerial ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Greenwich, England, and by Jeremiah Dixon, the son of a collier discovered in a coalpit. For three years they continued westward, running their stakes over mountains and streams, like a gypsy camp in appearance, frightening the Indians with their sorcery. But, near this spot, they halted longest, to fix with precision the tangent point, and the point of intersection of three States—the circular head of Delaware, the abutting right angle of Maryland, and the tiny pan-handle ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... to the Pythagorean philosophy. Origen also refers to the view that was prevalent in his time, that Zamolxis, the servant of Pythagoras, had taught the Druids the philosophy of Pythagoras. He further states that the Druids practised sorcery. The triple division of the non-military aristocracy is perhaps best given by Strabo, the Greek geographer, who here follows Posidonius. The three classes are the Bards, the Seers (ouateisvates), and Druids. The Bards were hymn-writers ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... back in his cab and fell a-thinking of a thin girl with red hair and great gray eyes—a thin, frail creature, scarcely more than a child, who had held him for a week in a strange sorcery only to release him with a frightened smile, leaving her indelible impression ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... meadows, the destructive contagion that diffused itself among the flocks, the raging tempest that rooted up the oak, when the thunder roared among the hills, and the lightning flashed from pole to pole, they ascribed to the machinations and the sorcery of Rodogune. Their conjectures indeed were blind, but their notions were not ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... of sorcery, he was too lazy to leave the town and its pleasures—the chariot-racing, the theatre, and the wrestling, and to travel in search of the wizards who were renowned for their skill in the art. However, the time came when, very unwillingly, he was forced to take a journey into Thessaly, ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... in its room. But the thousands of good men whom it has beguiled, because it professed to meet the earnest craving of their minds for a restoration of Christ's church with power, need not fear to open their eyes to its hollowness; like the false miracles of fraud or sorcery, it is but the counterfeit of a real truth. The restoration of the church, is, indeed, the best consummation of all our prayers, and all our labours; it is not a dream, not a prospect to be seen only in the remotest ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... keep it still; Lean on it safely; not a period Shall be unsaid for me. Against the threats Of malice or of sorcery, or that power Which erring men call Chance, this I hold firm: Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt, Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled; 590 Yea, even that which Mischief meant most harm Shall in the happy trial prove most glory. But evil on itself ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... what it might mean. This falcon flew straightway into the chamber, jessed and hooded from the glove, and came where the dame was seated. Whilst the lady yet wondered upon him, the tercel became a young and comely knight before her eyes. The lady marvelled exceedingly at this sorcery. Her blood turned to water within her, and because of her dread she hid her face in her hands. By reason of his courtesy the knight first sought to persuade her to put ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... Venus!" cried the knight, starting back, "here be manifest sorcery! Ha! by the sweet blind boy, 'tis black magic!" and he crossed himself devoutly. But Beltane, laughing, put back his hood of mail, that his long, fair hair fell a-down ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol |
