"Cabalistic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them, and, if those were not to be had, would put up with the next best thing,—quacks. Every one who was willing to be an Eminent Statesman issued his circulars, like the Retired Physician, on all public occasions, offering to send his recipe in return for a vote. The cabalistic formula always turned out to be this:—"Take your humble servant for four years at the White House; if no cure is effected, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... ceremony subsequent to baptism after I don't know how many days, but the priest ties and then unties the bands. Of what is this symbolical? Je m'y perds. Then an old man gave a little round cake of bread, with a cabalistic-looking pattern on it, both to Omar and to me, which was certainly baked for Isis. A lot of closely-veiled women stood on one side in the aisle, and among them the mothers of the babies who received them from the men in yellow copes at the end of the ceremony. One of these young men ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... ecstasy marvelling at the treasures, and when weary of admiration he gathered together bags of Ashrafis, a sufficient load for his ten mules, and placed them by the entrance in readiness to be carried outside and set upon the beasts. But by the will of Allah Almighty he had clean forgotten the cabalistic words and cried out, "Open, O Barley!" whereat the door refused to move. Astonished and confused beyond measure he named the names of all manner of grains save sesame, which had slipped from his memory as though he had never heard the word; whereat in his ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... a ceremonious leave of his family. He cut off a lock of his hair, and divided it into three parts. One of these he fastened to the top of his wife's head, and blew on it three times with the utmost violence, at the same time uttering certain cabalistic words. The other two portions he fastened with the same formalities to the heads ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... "bina," a second an ordinary school-slate covered with crude cabalistic signs and a third a rude book, something like a Vani's "chopda," filled with Marathi characters, which doubtless plays a part in the fortune-telling and spirit-scaring that form the stock-in-trade of these wandering hierophants. Hardly had they disappeared ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... darkened the room and almost extinguished the lights. The sorcerer was undressed like ourselves, but barefooted; about his bare neck he wore an amulet, suspended by a chain of human hair; round his middle was a white apron marked with cabalistic ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... spadeful, as it was thrown out, was accompanied by a separate distich, the meaning of which she could distinctly gather from some uncouth and barbarous rhymes—the remnants, probably, of a more superstitious age—almost cabalistic in their form and acceptation. The following may serve as a specimen, though we have taken the precaution to render them ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... in the seal of California is the presiding goddess of that State, her spear in one hand, the other resting on her shield, the cabalistic word "Eureka" over her head and a bear crouching quietly at her feet. She seems to be calmly contemplating the magnificent harbor within the Golden Gate. The shadows on the distant mountains, the richly-laden vessels ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... teachings of the Cabala with his Neo-Platonized Christianity and so produced a new blend. Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), great German classical and Hebrew scholar, brave opponent of obscurantism, forerunner of the Reformation, introduced the Neo-Platonic and Cabalistic blend ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... of Infantry, yet it is extremely probable that even there the details were never written down. Sufficient if, following certain names on that long regimental roll, there should be duly entered those cabalistic symbols signifying to the initiated, "Killed in action." After all, that tells the story. In those old-time Indian days of continuous foray and skirmish such brief returns, concise and unheroic, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... once more: Z Marcas! The man's whole life lies in this fantastic juxtaposition of seven letters; seven! the most significant of all the cabalistic numbers. And he died at five-and-thirty, so his ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... from her wearing it about her person (probably that she might be able to refresh her memory with its information concerning her cousin), the epistle was either very difficult of comprehension, or it had some witching spell which drew her eyes irresistibly to its cabalistic characters. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... have leaped up in a wild joy had he known how carefully Randall Clayton had already entered the accidentally found address in the little silver-clasped address book, in which he had recorded, with judicious cabalistic cloudiness, the combinations of his safes and certain ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... zigzag of the initial implies a life of torment. What ill wind, he asks, has blown upon this letter, which in no language (Balzac's acquaintance with German was probably limited) commands more than fifty words? The name is composed of seven letters, and seven is most characteristic of cabalistic numbers. If M. Gozlan's narrative be authentic, Balzac was right to value this name highly, for he had spent many hours in seeking for it by a systematic perambulation of the streets of Paris. He was rather vexed at the discovery that the Marcas of real life ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... summoned to attend in the apartment where he and the rest of the company were gathered. We went in and took our seats; the little elderly gentleman with the hooked nose prayed, and we all stood up. When he had finished most of us sat down. The gentleman with the hooked nose then muttered certain cabalistic expressions, which I was too much frightened to remember, but I recollect that at the conclusion I was given to understand that I was married to a young lady by the name of Frances Fairchild, whom I perceived standing by my side, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... repeated, drove the ingenuity of the artist to a still more curious combination—the three letters being kept perfectly independent, yet interlaced, or rather overlapped, so that their lines exhibit a figure which has the curious property, like the cabalistic Abracadabra, of presenting the same appearance from whatever ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... blade, Standish showed upon the reverse from the sun, moon, and stars, an ornamented medallion close to the hilt, containing certain cabalistic signs and marks. Below this was an inscription of several ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... Cazotte. Of Martines de Pasqualis little is known; even the country to which he belonged is matter of conjecture. Equally so the rites, ceremonies, and nature of the cabalistic order he established. St. Martin was a disciple of the school, and that, at least, is in its favour; for in spite of his mysticism, no man more beneficent, generous, pure, and virtuous than St. Martin adorned the last century. Above ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... principle, and the seat of consciousness, intellect, will, and affection. Jehovah said to Solomon, in answer to his prayer, "Lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding heart." The later Jews speculated much, with many cabalistic refinements, on these different words. They said many persons were supplied with a Nephesh without a Ruah, much more without a Neshamah. They declared that the Nephesh (Psyche) was the soul of the body, the Ruah (Pneuma) the soul of the Nephesh, and the Neshamah (Nous) the soul of the Ruah. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... another "little boy," of whom you may have heard, With a cabalistic action as discourteous as absurd, (The Bulgar boy maintains it means no more than prudent doubt) He "puts his thumb unto his nose, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... or necklace, a trifle over two feet in length, the ends united by a massive ring supporting a medallion. The links, so to speak, of the necklace consisted of twelve magnificent emeralds, each engraved upon one side with certain cabalistic characters, the meaning of which Escombe could not guess at, and upon the other with a symbol which was easily identifiable as that of the sun; these emeralds were massively set— framed would be almost the more appropriate word—in most elaborately sculptured ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... meeting of the council of state was called, and at it M. Lontane revealed the meaning of those cabalistic letters and the leadership of Kelly. He had tracked down the fishermen and found their headquarters ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... which customers were to stand before the table-counter. The wholesome smell of plaster and whitewash pervaded the apartment. A very small "Matilda Jenkyns, licensed to sell tea," was hidden under the lintel of the new door, and two boxes of tea, with cabalistic inscriptions all over them, stood ready to disgorge their contents into ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... metals, classed in exact order. Here are crowds of diminutive deities and tutelary lars, to whom the superstition of former days attributed those midnight murmurs which were believed to presage the misfortunes of a family. Amongst these now neglected images are preserved a vast number of talismans, cabalistic amulets, and other grotesque relics of ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... every important movement in Chicago and New York. The manager called up his customers, and bawled into the telephone the condition of the market and the significant gossip of the far-off exchange halls. It was so strange, and yet so familiar, that he went away with his head full of those cabalistic sentences— ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... successful essays in psychological analysis ever attempted by an author; and in his wonderful portrait, which must be closely studied, and not epitomized or reproduced in extracts, we see glowing enthusiasm united to cabalistic profundity, and the most morbid tension of the intellectual powers united to clear and well-defined hopes. How has the author succeeded in making Mordecai so human and so true to nature? By mixing the gold with an alloy of commoner metal, and by giving the angelic likeness features which are ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... spilling in the centre of the court, a constantly varying group is gathered, washing, drinking, and filling their flasks and vases. Near by, a charlatan, mounted on a table, with a huge canvas behind him painted all over with odd cabalistic figures, is screaming, in loud and voluble tones, the virtues of his medicines and unguents, and his skill in extracting teeth. One need never have a pang in tooth, ear, head, or stomach, if one will but trust his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the aim of a good Jew's life. As for the Messiah, he would come assuredly—in God's good time. Thus Karlkammer at enormous length with frequent intervals of unintelligibility and huge chunks of irrelevant quotation and much play of Cabalistic conceptions. Pinchas, who had been fuming throughout this speech, for to him Karlkammer stood for the archetype of all donkeys, jumped up impatiently when Karlkammer paused for breath and denounced as an interruption that ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... lighted by two large windows and a large table of white wood stands in the centre of the room. Occasionally it is heaped with papers, but generally it is clear, and only maps are to be seen, maps of all parts of France and of foreign countries also, marked with red pencil, ornamented with cabalistic signs, thickly sprinkled with notes. Placed against the walls are the desks of the officers of this department, two captains and two lieutenants. Next to this room is the small office where Commandant Dumoulin, the chief ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... arguments already employed. In referring to the indictment, he said that it was the history of the last nine months; and that he defied the most brilliant imagination to grasp the monstrous accumulation of matter. Its entire strength rested on the meaning of that cabalistic word, "conspiracy." He continued:—"If, my lords, I look into the dictionary for the meaning of that word, I find that it is 'a secret agreement between several to commit a crime;' and that is the rational, common-sense ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... opened one after another of the various volumes, he began to fancy that a feast of Tantalus had been provided for him: one book was English, another German, a third Russian; there was even one in cabalistic letters that seemed Turkish. Was this a polyglottic joke the countess ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... an irritating little notebook of red leather, the sort of thing that is advertised when lost as 'of no value to anyone but the owner.' It was full of mysterious little marks and unintelligible little notes. He put down, in cabalistic signs, 'Hyacinth's dinner, eight o'clock.' He enjoyed writing her name, even ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... particular sort of mysterious ordinance, by which alone they can become thoroughly known and acquainted with each other—and when no man, upon any pretence or consideration whatsoever, dare speak to a fellow-creature, until some one known to both of them has whispered some cabalistic words between them, which, in general, neither of them hear distinctly. At the time I speak of, however, acquaintance was much more easily made, so far, at least, as common civility and the ordinary charities ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... solemn stillness broken only by the cabalistic phrases of the whist-players: "Spades!" "Trumped!" "Cut!" "How are honors?" "Two to four." "Whose deal?"—phrases which represent in these days the higher emotions of the European aristocracy. Modeste continued ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... way, distinctly audible, utters the cabalistic words, "Two forty." Another voice, as audible, asks, "Which'll you bet on?" It was not soothing. It did seem as if the imp of the perverse had taken possession of that terrible nag to go and make such a display at such a moment. But as his will rose, so did mine, and as my will went up, my whip ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... whom no one listens to, pretended to be distributing abroad from its place of dignity on the shelf. Sometimes, also, there will drop out of a heavy folio a little slip of orange-yellow paper covered with some cabalistic-looking characters, which a careful study discovers to be a hint, conveyed in high or low Dutch, that the dealer from whom the volume was purchased, about the time of some crisis in the Thirty Years' War, would be rather gratified than otherwise should the purchaser be pleased ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... v. 41) he took her by the hand, and said unto her, "Talitha cumi, which is, being interpreted," the Evangelist explains, "Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise." Doubtless most readers get the impression that our Lord used here some cabalistic words in a foreign tongue; the fact is that these are the words of the common speech of the people; only the Evangelist seems to have thought them especially memorable, and he has given us not merely, as he generally does, a translation into the Greek of our Lord's words, but the ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... obscure, unexplainable, enigmatical, unfathomed, unfathomable, abstruse, mystic, inexplicable, recondite, cabalistic, occult, unexplained. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... from one to the other, of human companionship. Always he had found a difficulty in talking to a girl, because he had, in his self-consciousness, thought about what he should say. There had been the cabalistic question of sex ever in front of him, a thing that troubled and deterred him. But Sylvia, with her hand on his shoulder, absorbed in her singing, and directing him only as she would have pressed the pedal ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... again saluted and seizing Juve's valise traced on it the cabalistic chalk mark which allowed ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... all conventional alphabets one of the grandest of Morse's inventions, and one which has conferred great good upon mankind. It is used to convey intelligence not only by electricity, but in many other ways. Its cabalistic characters can be read by the eye, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... jars and bottles upon shelves, strange-looking mirrors and crystals, some fixed and some lying upon the tables, books and parchments full of cabalistic signs propped open beside the crucibles or hung against the wall, all gave evidence of the nature of the pursuits carried on in that unhallowed spot. The brothers, burning with curiosity as well as filled with awe, approached the tables and looked into the many vessels lying upon ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in a corner of the room opposite the telegraphic machine, from which the "tape" was issuing with a monotonous click. On this "tape"—a narrow strip of paper seemingly endless, which fell on the floor in serpentine coils—were inscribed at regular intervals some cabalistic characters unintelligible to the general public, but full of meaning ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... keeps him all a-glow. It is the consciousness of power—the mightiest power of the present age—the power of money. Those figures which he scrawls at his writing-desk involve a more potent magic than the cabalistic cyphers of Doctor Dee, or Cornelius Agrippa. His hand presses the spring of an influence that casts midnight or sunshine over the World of Traffic, and shakes entire blocks of real estate with a speculative earthquake. It is not the Czar or the Sultan, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... theory is that the Hindu system, without the zero, early reached Alexandria (say 450 A.D.), and that the Neo-Pythagorean love for the mysterious and especially for the Oriental led to its use as something bizarre and cabalistic; that it was then passed along the Mediterranean, reaching Boethius in Athens or in Rome, and to the schools of Spain, being discovered in Africa and Spain by the Arabs even before they themselves knew the improved ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... under the pastoral name of Evander Lilybaean, Venice, 1785, with the approbation of the Superiors. I tell them all how this singer, this Balthasar Cesari, was nick-named Zaffirino because of a sapphire engraved with cabalistic signs presented to him one evening by a masked stranger, in whom wise folk recognized that great cultivator of the human voice, the devil; how much more wonderful had been this Zaffirino's vocal gifts ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... Prince of the Powers of this world, bring a valiant and worthy knight!—Seest thou he cannot look upon us; he cannot look upon her; and who knows by what impulse from his tormentor his hand forms these cabalistic lines upon the floor?—It may be our life and safety are thus aimed at; but we spit at and defy the foul ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... information that vegetarianism was the only possible diet for any who were cultivating their psychical powers, Mrs Quantock asked her if these weird finger-ornaments had any mystical signification. They had; one was Gnostic, one was Rosicrucian, and the other was Cabalistic.... It is easy to picture Mrs Quantock's delight; adventure had met her with smiling mouth and mysterious eyes. In the course of an animated conversation of half an hour, the lady explained that if Mrs Quantock was, like her, a searcher after psychical truths, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... Till with gestures cabalistic, Crossing, lining figures mystic, (Diagram most mathematic, Simple to these signs erratic,) O'er the seals her quick hands going Loose the rills and set them flowing: Pent up music rushing out Bathes thy spirit all about; Spell-bound nature, freed again, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... Descoings never staked on any but the "wheel of Paris." Full of confidence that the trey cherished for twenty-one years was about to triumph, she now imposed upon herself enormous privations, that she might stake a large amount of savings upon the last drawing of the year. When she dreamed her cabalistic visions (for all dreams did not correspond with the numbers of the lottery), she went and told them to Joseph, who was the sole being who would listen, and not only not scold her, but give her the kindly words with which an artist knows how to soothe the follies of the ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... from a square opening, about a foot in diameter, at a height of about seven feet from the floor. Yet what will the energy of true genius not effect? I resolved to clamber up to this hole. A vast quantity of wheels, pinions, and other cabalistic—looking machinery stood opposite the hole, close to it; and through the hole there passed an iron rod from the machinery. Between the wheels and the wall where the hole lay there was barely room for my body—yet I was desperate, and determined to persevere. I called Pompey ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... ancient idols of Mexico, which bear a surprising resemblance to those used by the followers of the Buddhist superstition. In return for a translation of an Arabic inscription which I made for him, he presented me with a copy of the Cabalistic book Zohar, in the Rabbinical language and character, which on the destruction of the Inquisition at Seville (1820) he obtained from the library ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... gray horsehair hanging about her face, a red and black robe, a staff, and cabalistic signs upon her cloak. Hugo demanded a potion to make Zara adore him, and one to destroy Roderigo. Hagar, in a fine dramatic melody, promised both, and proceeded to call up the spirit who would bring the ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... wolf that scratched and sniffed at his door as long as he lived. I do not know why the wolf sniffed, for Mozart really never had anything worth carrying away. He was so generous that his purse was always open, and so full of unmixed pity that the beggars passed his name along and made cabalistic marks on his gateposts. Every seedy, needy, thirsty and ill-appreciated musician in Germany regarded him as lawful prey. They used to say to Mozart, "I can not beg and to dig I am ashamed—so grant me a small loan, I ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... blackboard, upon a platform, a young man in shirt-sleeves, his cuffs caught up by metal clamps, walked up and down. Screwed to the blackboard itself was a telegraph instrument, and from time to time, as this buzzed and ticked, the young man chalked up cabalistic, and almost illegible figures under columns headed by initials of certain stocks and bonds, or by the words "Pork," "Oats," or, larger than all the others, "May Wheat." The air of the room was stale, close, and heavy ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... and dated from the seventeenth century) of a second-hand Paris dealer, after a visit to the Cluny Museum, where he had stood for a long while in ecstatic admiration before a marvelous astrolabe made of chiseled ivory, whose cabalistic appearance ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... d'Arc, though he swore the book was not written by Michelet. (Not such a wild shot, though not correct in this particular instance, for the world has since discovered that several books posthumously attributed to Michelet were written by his widow.) The etcher was interested in the cabalistic arts. On one of his large plates he drew some eagles, and when Baudelaire objected that these birds did not frequent Parisian skies he mysteriously whispered "those folks at the Tuileries" often launched as a rite the sacred eagles ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... to bear the knowledge," he said smiling—"if you will promise to speak the cabalistic two words that were to have such effect upon Reuben. So you want to put nonsense into ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... neglected frames shall be brought out, and the world shall find Apollos in his men, and Venuses in his women, which before were only meaner beauties; Vanitas shall loiter round his easel and command his pencil with ready gold; and Art-Journals shall rehearse his praises in strange, cabalistic words. Scripsit, who has digested his paltry rasher in moody silence, shall touch the hearts of men with new-born words of flame; and the poor epic, which once had served a clownish huckster's vulgar need, shall travel far and wide, in blue and gold, and lie on tables ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... hobby for himself, and an amusement for his friends. A wealthy man of refined and eccentric tastes, he had spent much of his life and fortune in gathering together what was said to be a unique private collection of Talmudic, cabalistic, and magical works, many of them of great rarity and value. His tastes leaned toward the marvellous and the monstrous, and I have heard that his experiments in the direction of the unknown have passed all the bounds of civilization and of decorum. To his English ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the pale dawn that gave me a deep religious appreciation of my significance in the Grand Scheme, as though I had heard and understood a parable from the holy lips of an Avatar. And the vast plains of my native country are as a mystic scroll unrolled, scrawled with a cabalistic writ ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... came the closed and mysterious box-cars, important with big numbers and initials in cabalistic sequence, indicating a wide and exciting range of travels. Then came stock cars, from between the slats of which strange and envied cattle looked out on their way to a wondrous city; and there was a car of squealing pigs, who seemed not to want to ride on a real train; ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... at such a singular conceit among uncivilized tribes, for it still prevails in Europe. On many of the French and German soldiers, killed during the last German war, were found talismans composed of strips of paper, parchment or cloth, on which were written supposed cabalistic words or the name of some saint, that the wearer firmly believed to be possessed of the power of making ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... across his mind in his studies of that almost abstract, nay, almost cabalistic thing, the science of bodily proportions. It was plain that the mystery of antique beauty—the ancient symmetry, symmetria prisca as a humanist designs it in his epitaph for Leonardo da Vinci—was but a matter of numbers. For a man's length, if he stand with outstretched arms, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... prejudiced and ignorant neighbors; the knowledge of his character and the benefits arising from his presence were confined to the lady of the house and her faithful tenantry. Even after his death the secret was still kept, and only the cabalistic characters "R. I. P." remain to tell an intelligent reader that he was neither Quaker nor Protestant; and, probably, tradition alone, preserved doubtless in the neighborhood, could assure us that he was ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... cabalistic word with such magic power that all the air seemed instantly filled with a cheerful flight of gold American eagles, each carrying a double eagle on its back and a silver dollar in its claws; and all the soil of America seemed to sprout with coin, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Antonio Exili, who had caused it to be made, ostensibly for the safe-keeping of his cabalistic formulas and alchemic preparations, when searching for the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life, really for the concealment of the subtle drugs out of which his alembics distilled the aqua tofana and his crucibles prepared the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... a favorite among the Indian tribes living on the North Pacific Coast. The disks, always of an uneven number, are made of wood and ornamented with designs composed of segments of circles with groupings of dots. Some of the markings are regarded as cabalistic, and there are men who claim to have a knowledge of spells that will bring luck to the disks they ornament and treat; such disks are considered valuable and often command a high price. All of the disks in a set that is used in this game are ornamented ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... Eskimo is confined to the female sex, who are tattooed on arriving at the age of puberty. The women of Saint Lawrence island, in addition to lines on the nose, forehead and chin, have uniformly a figure of strange design on the cheeks, which is suggestive of cabalistic import. It could not be ascertained, however, whether such is the case. The lines drawn on the chin were exactly like the ones I have seen on Moorish women in Morocco. Another outlandish attempt at adornment was witnessed at Cape ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... University, and we probably distorted the method, and I was busy trying to find the least common multiple of Hamlet and the greatest common divisor of Macbeth, and I began asking him whether stories were constructed by cabalistic formulae. At length he sighed wearily and shook his ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Men's C. A. of Iowa City, after having regularly engaged Miss OLIVE LOGAN in their lecture course, concluded to back out, the cabalistic letters seemed ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... Thou He who should come?"—namely, the Messias, Jahve, or, as we call it, Jehovah. Compare Heb. x. 37; Hagg. ii. 6, 7; Rev. i. 8. I must observe, next, that all the Theophanisms (God manifestations) recorded in the Old Testament, to which the theosophistic, cabalistic Dr. Joel refers, were considered by the earty Christian fathers as manifestations to the senses, not of God—whom no man hath seen or can see—but of the asarchos Christ. Even the elder rabbins understand, in these Theophanisms, not God, but the Mediator between God and the world—the angel Metatron. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... there, the margin. Now the "Red Stars" have a meeting, With their weird, uncanny customs; Now the "Knights of Pythias" cluster 'Round a shrine of secret magic; Now the "Eastern Star" is dawning, With its cabalistic mottoes; Now the "Julipeans" revel 'Neath the awnings on the greensward, With their mighty dignitaries, With Sockdologers, Sapsuckers, With their Knockemstiffs, Lawgivers, With their Orators and Wise-Men, With their visitors and laymen— All their corps of jolly ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... Lou could not find either on a printed page, and, further, could not tell wherein they differed when found for her, that, also, Emmy Lou made her figure 8's by adding one uncertain little o to the top of another uncertain little o; and that while Emmy Lou might copy, in smeary columns, certain cabalistic signs off the blackboard, she could not point them off in tens, hundreds, thousands, or read their numerical values, to save her little life. The Large Lady, sorely perplexed within herself as to the proper course to be pursued, in the sight of the fifty-nine other ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... adventure. I have buried myself in libraries to extract from the nonsense of ancient days new nonsense of my own. I have turned over volumes, which, from the pot-hooks I was obliged to decipher, might have been the cabalistic manuscripts of Cornelius Agrippa, although I never saw "the door open and the devil come in." [Footnote: See Southey's Ballad on the Young Man who read in a Conjuror's Books.] But all the domestic inhabitants of the libraries were disturbed by the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... captain. "All those signs that look so cabalistic to you form the clearest and most logical language for those who ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... illustrious" (here he heaved a sigh, and passed his hairy hand across his eyes) "but in these degenerate days I am become the slave of quack doctors and newspapers. I am driven from pillar to post and hurried up and down, sometimes with stencil-plate and paste-brush to defile the fences with cabalistic legends, and sometimes in grotesque and extravagant character at the behest of some driving journal. I attended to that Ocean Bank robbery some weeks ago, when I was hardly rested from finishing up the pow-wow about the completion of the Pacific ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Bacon's philosophy, dwelling on disconnected passages of ample thought or aphoristic wisdom, and rarely attempting to gain an insight into the real character of his system. Indeed, "the system of Lord Bacon" became a sort of cabalistic phrase. It meant anything and everything. It was like the English Constitution, venerable in authority and prescription, interpreted in contradictory methods, and never precisely defined. Few men undertook to study it with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... naught to be seen there but flashing fire. No Latin letters, nor Arabic, nor Greek, no cabalistic signs, can ever express this device; and no hand is there may trace it in characters ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... fate he obtained more fame from his horoscopes than from his canvasses. He "prognosticated," says Burton, "that I was to become a great astrologer." Straightway Burton buried himself in astrological and cabalistic books [56], studied the uncanny arts, and became learned in "dark spells and devilish enginery," but his own prophecies generally proved to be of the Moseilima type; that is to say, the opposite invariably happened—a fatality that pursued him to the end of life. The Rev. Robert Montgomery, with ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... if, at times, her gallant fight seemed futile—if at times she could not still the cry of her heart, it was because she was a woman, made to be loved, fitted for finer things and truer things than writing cabalistic signs on a tablet and transcribing them, ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... of the talisman probably originated from the belief that certain properties or virtues were impressed upon substances by planetary influences. "A talisman," says Pettigrew, "may in general terms be defined to be a substance composed of certain cabalistic characters engraved on stone, metal, or other material, or else written on slips of paper." Hyde quotes a Persian writer who defines the Telesm or Talismay as "a piece of art compounded of the celestial powers and elementary bodies, appropriated to certain figures or positions, and purposes and ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... Spanish priests and civil authorities. The ceremonies, formulas and methods of procedure were everywhere identical or alike. This itself was justly regarded as a proof of the secret intelligence which existed among the members of this cabalistic guild.[29-[]] ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... practices, no chastity, nor any other observance peculiar to the order of priesthood in other parts of the world. They claim no high prerogatives of their own; they can not slay at a distance nor metamorphose themselves into animals of fierce aspect. They have no cabalistic rites nor magic formulas nor miraculous methods for producing wondrous effects. In a word, as far as my personal observation goes, they are not impostors nor conjurers, plying thrifty trade with their fellow tribesmen, but merely intermediaries, who avail themselves ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... Zoological Society of London, and in other kindred societies, is that the member's fee cannot be paid in work; that the keepers and numerous employes of this large institution are not recognized as members of the Society, while many have no other incentive to joining the society than to put the cabalistic letters F.Z.S (Fellow of the Zoological Society) on their cards. In a word, what is needed is a ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... private, confidential, inquiry office," sat, on the morning following John Steele's ride in the park, a little man with ferret-like eyes at a dusty desk near a dusty window. He did not seem to be very busy, was engaged at the moment in drawing meaningless cabalistic signs on a piece of paper, when a step in the hallway and a low tapping at the door caused him to throw down his pen and straighten expectantly. A client, perhaps!—a woman?—no, a man! With momentary surprise, he gazed on the delicately chiseled features of ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... Scorpio with some of those of Sagitarrius, as is the case," she explained gravely, "with persons born near the cusp," a term which produced no impression upon his mind, though he said, "Oh, indeed," politely. She made some cabalistic marks on a square of paper and turned to him with a somewhat startled expression, which faded at once, and the mocking eyes looked full into his as she ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... have acquired that most profitless of all arts, the art of reading, we will go very deeply into ancient English literature. There is the story of the enterprising mouse, who, at one o'clock precisely, ran down the clock to the cabalistic tune of "Dickory, dickory, dock." There are the bold bowl-mariners of Gotham. There is "the man of our town," who was unwise enough to destroy the organs of sight by jumping into a bramble-bush, and who came triumphantly out of the experiment, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... obtained almost unconsciously an immortal reputation by a species of flattery to which the Welsh are most open. I had learnt, after no little application, a Welsh toast—a happy specimen of the language; it was but three words, but they were truly cabalistic. No sooner had I, after a "neat and appropriate" preface, uttered my triple Shibboleth, (it ended in rag, and signified "Wales, Welshmen, and Welshwomen,") than the whole party rose, and cheered at me ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... hand to the left, he gave three successive and careful tugs at his right coat lapel, all the while facing Judson Green. Following this he made a military salute and then, stepping two paces forward, he undertook to engage Green's hand in a peculiar and difficult cross-fingered clasp. And he uttered cabalistic words of greeting in some strange tongue, all the ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... commentators confess they can make nothing of. Various, however, are the derivations, and numerous the guesses made about them. The English reader may, if he pleases, call them not improperly, especially the first, Cabalistic. ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... by this highly entertaining scheme of telegraphing across the street. And Rex, his arts exhausted in vain, watched hopelessly while, one after another, five telegrams were sent to The Montana, a hundred feet away. The first being short two of the regulation ten words. Strong finished with a cabalistic ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Kafirs, who whether, descending from Alexander's Greeks or not, received him kindly. We believe the Hukeem was aided in his researches by a big book supposed to contain medical receipts, but which was in reality a box of surveying instruments, its outside covered with cabalistic signs bearing a family resemblance to a plane-table! The Hukeem was much given to solitary meditation, and generally sought mountain peaks for that purpose. On such occasions the plane-table ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... we could breathe the characteristic pervading odor of sandalwood. Rich Oriental hangings were on the walls, interspersed with cabalistic signs, while at one end ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... lamplight struck as he salaamed before the General Lord Sahib. Then he extracted from his ear a minute section of quill sealed at both ends. The General's son opened the strange envelope forwarded by a postal service so hazardous, and unrolled a morsel of paper which seemed to be covered with cabalistic signs. The missive had been sent out from Lucknow by Brigadier Inglis, the commander of the beleaguered garrison of the Lucknow Residency, and its bearer was the stanch and daring scout, Ungud. As I write the originals of this communication and of others which came in the same way lie before me; ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... that land of siren sights and sounds, saw a dance of peasant girls, and was charmed with lutes and gondolas,—or wandered into Germany and lost himself in the labyrinths of the Hartz Forest and of the Kantean philosophy, and amongst the cabalistic names of Fichte and Schelling and Lessing, and God knows who—this was long after, but all the former while he had nerved his heart and filled his eyes with tears, as he hailed the rising orb of liberty, since quenched in darkness and in ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... pronounce the magic words, and having also succeeded in bringing the Saw-Horse to life, Tip did not hesitate an instant in speaking the three cabalistic words, each accompanied by the peculiar gesture of ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... motion doubly mystic, Resumed his juggling cabalistic. The aspects here again were various; But seemed to indicate Aquarius. Thereat portentously he frowned; Then frowned again, then smiled:—'twas found! But 'twas too simple to be tried. "What is it, ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... the bride and bridegroom being thrice pronounced. The first time, the knot must be drawn rather tight; the second time still more so, and the third time quite close. Vulgar operators content themselves with pronouncing some cabalistic words during the marriage rite, tracing, at the same time, some mysterious figures or diagrams on the earth with the left foot, and affixing to the dress of the bride or bridegroom small slips of paper having magical ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... inquiring—now for this one, then for another; occasionally taking from his pocket a small paper parcel into which he thrust finger and thumb mysteriously and guardedly, and turning half away from you would make the cabalistic motions common to imbibers of "old Rappee"; and having satisfied the desire of that extraordinary pug nose of his, would be off in a twinkling to some distant part of the farm, where you may be sure that he was edifying his hearers with a specimen of good-nature, and the peculiar intonations ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... had like to have proved fatal. Then shutting his eyes, he advanced backward, sword in hand, toward the enchanter, who at the first moment he saw him, began those mysterious wavings of the hand with which he was wont to put his victims to sleep, and those cabalistic words which changed men into beasts, insects, and reptiles. But the prince having his eyes shut, and his back toward him, could not see his motions, and the enchanter being horribly affrighted, as well as naturally a great blockhead, was so long ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... scruple; but they will not partake of the beast of the uncloven foot, and the fish which has no scales. They pay no regard to the denunciations of holy prophets against the children of sin, but they quake at the sound of a dark cabalistic word, pronounced by one perhaps their equal, or superior, in villainy, as if God would delegate the exercise of his power to the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... demeanor, with one hand in his pocket, and his small mouth contracted into a singularly soothing and almost voiceless whistle—Richelieu's own peculiar accomplishment. But no stone appeared. Like most of his genus he was superstitious, and repeated to himself the cabalistic formula: "Losin's seekin's, findin's keepin's"—presumed to be of great efficacy in such cases—with religious fervor. He had laboriously reached the end of the veranda when he noticed the open window of Louise's room, and stopped as a perfunctory ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... outside them and would fain be inside, a newspaper office is a retreat where, amid cigarette smoke and the rumour of continual event, clever people write what they like when they like, while others, only one degree less gifted, correct, by means of cabalistic signs, proofs, with the rapidity of lightning and the omniscience of gods, exchanging at intervals brilliant repartee with the beings who write. Round these are supposed to hover boys, compositors, porters, famous contributors and timid aspirants, and in the underground distance ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... the earth and its inhabitants, and to whom was committed the administration of its affairs. Abraxas stones are of very little value. In addition to the word Abraxas and other mystical characters, they have often cabalistic figures engraved on them. The commonest of these have the head of a fowl, and the arms and bust of a man, and terminate in the body and tail of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... as an historical and noteworthy phrase, much in vogue in 1835, "Young France," and describes it as one of those cabalistic formulae which assume to give expression to a grand, terrible, sublime, and volcanic idea. What shall we say now-a-days of these two brief monosyllabic words, in which the strong generation of the ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... witnesses deponed that Rebecca muttered to herself in an unknown tongue, that the songs she sang were peculiarly sweet, that her garments were of a strange mystic form, and that she had rings with cabalistic devices. A soldier testified that he had seen her cure a wounded man in a mysterious way. He said she made certain signs upon the wound, and repeated words he understood not. The result, he declared, was that the iron head of a cross-bow bolt disengaged itself from the wound, the bleeding ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... pre-Smithian ages, when men cherished quaint superstitions and rode on the backs of "horses"—when they passed over the seas instead of under them—when science had not yet dawned to chase away the shadows of imagination—and when the cabalistic letters A.D., which from habit we still affix to the numerals designating the age of the world, had perhaps ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... handed him, and return to his room to eat. The neighborhood, however, was blessed with a series of second-hand book-shops. One day his eyes fell on an English-French phrase-book. He bought it. He learned the meaning of the cabalistic sign, "Table d'hote. Diner, 2f." He began ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... journal. It looked like a sibyl's conjuring book, or an Assyrian manuscript; a seeming endless strip of paper was rolled upon a reed; at the head of this there were two varieties of the Egyptian sphinx and a cabalistic star drawn in red ink,—and under these mysterious signs I wrote down, upon the full length of the paper and in a cipher of my own invention, daily events and reflections. A year later, however, ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... pitying words, as his appearance excited the mirth or commiseration of the passers-by. When he reached the entrance to the Daily News office he was followed by a motley crowd of noisy urchins whom he dismissed with a grimace and the cabalistic gesture with which Nicholas Koorn perplexed and repulsed Antony Van Corlear from the battlement of the fortress of Rensellaerstein. Then closing the door in their astonished faces, he mounted the two flights of stairs to the editorial rooms, where he recounted, with the glee of the boy ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... bat taxed all Calandrino's art and craft for the whole of the evening; but having at length taken him, he brought him with the other matters to Bruno: who, having withdrawn into a room by himself, wrote on the skin some cabalistic jargon, and handed it to him, saying:—"Know, Calandrino, that, if thou touch her with this scroll, she will follow thee forthwith, and do whatever thou shalt wish. Wherefore, should Filippo go abroad to-day, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... glittered in the light of the lambent flame that arose from the altar; as he approached me I saw that it was a rudely fashioned collar of silver, its surface covered with engraved lines and strange cabalistic characters; this he speedily fastened around my neck in such a way that I could not displace it, and again motioned me to follow him; leaving me entirely in the dark, as to the object or meaning of this singular proceeding. Reaching the first terrace of the temple, we descended to the plain and ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... Grand Caymanas, are digging up the beach around a certain inlet of the island, in search of a treasure supposed to have been buried by the pirate Gibbs. Several flat stones, marked with cabalistic letters, have ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... teaching of Christianity among their other beliefs. They conceived that the Almighty had to be propitiated by signs and symbols. Words, they considered, were the direct gift of God to man, and, therefore, signs representing words were of great avail. Hence arose the use of amulets and cabalistic signs, or, rather, the common use, for they had been in evidence long prior to the foundation of this sect. Amulets were worn on the person. The Jews had phylacteries or bits of parchment on which were written passages from the Scriptures. In the first century after ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... Schlechtigkeit," though he deprecates the part as "eine etwas zu grell and zu breit angefuhrte Schilderung."[168] "Ego scelestus," says Ballio himself.[169] He calmly and unctuously pleads guilty to every charge of "liar, thief, perjurer," etc., and can never be induced to lend an ear until the cabalistic ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... brethren were to offer up for him solemn prayers and intercessions;—of Baron Heinrich von Ekker and Eckenhofen, gentleman of the bed-chamber and counsellor of the Duke of Coburg Saalfeld, and his Jewish colleague Hirschmann, with their Asiatic brethren and order named Ben Bicca, Cabalistic and Talmudic; of the Illuminati, and poor Adam Weisshaupt, Professor of Canon and National Law at Ingoldstadt in Bavaria, who set up what he considered an Anti-Jesuitical order on a Jesuit model, with some vague hope, according to his own showing, of "perfecting the reasoning ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... had melted out of them. Several prints were pinned up unframed,—among them that grand national portrait-piece, "Barnum presenting Ossian E. Dodge to Jenny Lind," and a picture of a famous trot, in which I admired anew the cabalistic air of that imposing array of expressions, and especially the Italicized word, "Dan Mace names b. h. Major Slocum," and "Hiram Woodruff names g. m. Lady Smith." "Best three in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... reply to Godfrey's courtesy, broke the seal of the letter, and gazed upon the cabalistic characters therein written. Had they been Chinese, she would have learned as much from them as she did. She handed back the letter with a request that he would read it to her, if he possessed the art of reading; if not, she ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... a wizard; let us go in here!" Robin had spied a dim, mysterious booth, outside of which were triangles and cones and fiery serpents coming forth from a golden pot, with cabalistic signs and figures about the sides of it. Standing there was a tall, aged man, clad in a long red robe and leaning ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... Merle, and Granier de Cassagnac, all of whom swore the oath of fidelity and enthusiastically named Balzac Grand Master of the new order. The place of meeting was changed each week, in order not to attract the attention of the waiters who served the "Horses,"—cabalistic name of the conspirators,—and their secret had to be carefully guarded, for it was nothing less than a project for distributing among the members of the Red Horse the chief offices of State, the ministries and ambassadorships, ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... the cabalistic signs was headed with certain words, which were all but illegible, and this he ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... knowledge of remedies. The Moor at once gave Brandon a soothing drink, which soon put him into a sweet sleep. He then bathed him as he slept, with some strengthening lotion, made certain learned signs, and spoke a few cabalistic words, and, sure enough, so strong were the healing remedies and incantations that the next morning Brandon was another man, though very far from well and strong. The Moor recommended nutritious food, such as roast beef and generous wine, and, although this advice was ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... announced the victory. Then, clasping in his nerveless hand the baton, ornamented with its fleurs-de-lis, he cast on it his eyes, which had no longer the power of looking upwards towards Heaven, and fell back, murmuring strange words, which appeared to the soldiers cabalistic—words which had formerly represented so many things on earth, and which none but the dying man any ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the gravity of a real sorcerer, I solemnly thrust a pin through a lighted candle, and pronounced some cabalistic words. After which, blowing out the candle, and turning to the poor ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... Eva had driven immediately to the hypnotist's, and he had been instructed about her coming. At his door she had knocked, and an old, evil-visaged man, in flowing robes which were marked in cabalistic signs, had opened the door. In true fakir fashion he salaamed almost to the floor while in flowery language ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... is a stone or other small object covered with cabalistic inscriptions. It is worn around the neck, and is supposed to render its owner impervious to knife or bullet. Many are wearing these charms, especially the Tulisanes or outlaws. The Anting-Anting must not be confused, however, with the scapular, ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... dissatisfaction among the Laps, who regarded me with increased suspicion, doubtless imagining me to be enumerating themselves and reins for the purpose of taxation, or something worse. Several came close up to me, and peered over the cabalistic signs on my paper with a sort of gloomy inquisitiveness. I spoke to the Lap who understood Norwegian, and he acted as tolk in interpreting anew to his brethren the purely amicable nature of my intentions. As to the half-dozen of little wild imps of children, I had already won ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... another room, hung entirely in red, with weird, cabalistic signs all about, on the ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... quantities of flagons, hams, and pasties; also in cutting their names on it with a knife: this stone is now called La Pierre Levee. And in memory of this, no one can be matriculated in the said University of Poitiers who has not drunk at the cabalistic fountain of Croustelles, been to Passe-Lourdin, and ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... within and her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, she saw the old hag, looking more witch-like than ever, with her head tied up in a flaming yellow bandanna, and her shoulders wrapped in a great cloak covered with cabalistic signs. ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... breath Of wind, goes wand'ring; whispering low of things, The irremediable, where sorrow clings. Around her limbs a veil of woven mist Wavers, and turns from fibered amethyst To textured crystal; through which symboled bars Of silver burn, and cabalistic stars Of nebulous gold. ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... entirely groundless, for that is the room where the ferrets of the house who assume the name of Detectives, but are more significantly called 'shadows,' are hidden from the prying eyes of the world. A 'shadow' here is a mere numeral—No. 1, or something higher—and obeys cabalistic calls conveyed by bells or speaking-tubes, by which devices the stranger patron is convinced of the potency of the Detective Agency which moves in such mysterious ways to perform its wonders. If any doubt were left by all this paraphernalia of marvel, it would be dispelled ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... unknown tongue, and songs of a sweet, strange sound, which made the ears of the hearer tingle and his heart throb, adding that her garments were of a strange and mystic form, and that she had rings impressed with cabalistic devices, all which were, in those ignorant and superstitious times, easily credited as proofs ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... hold to be almost equally condemnable. In the first place, no playwright who understands the evolution of the modern theatre can nowadays use in his stage-directions the abhorrent jargon of the early nineteenth century. When one comes across a manuscript bespattered with such cabalistic signs as "R.2.E.," "R.C.," "L.C.," "L.U.E.," and so forth, one sees at a glance that the writer has neither studied dramatic literature nor thought out for himself the conditions of the modern theatre, but has found his dramatic education between the buff covers of French's Acting Edition. Some ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... this varied. Some looked in amazement; one ventured to say, "Well, that's the beater!" and another dropped into the cabalistic remark which cannot be defined, but which has its due significance, "Well, you must be sent for!" The result of all this running commentary was such that, when the visitor reached the top of the hill where Horn o' the Moon lies, encircled by other lesser ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... last meeting took place in 1760 and you recall that shortly afterward the movement of Judaism started. It is now 1787 years since the destruction of Jerusalem and this year is designated for a meeting of the Cabalistic Sanhedrin. This is the day of the meeting; the place is this city. I want to be present at this meeting in spite of the danger and am ready to take ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... scene ensued between the regent and the Duke de Bourbon, little to the credit of either, both having been deeply implicated in the cabalistic operations of the system. In fact, the several members of the council had been among the most venal "beneficiaries" of the scheme, and had interests at stake which they were anxious to secure. ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... Bohemian fashion. A recent invitation card bid its members to attend a "Rip-Snorter at the Club House," stating that "provisions and provisos would be provided and Frou Frous be on tap." The exact significance of this cabalistic description is known only to the members and their guests. The same card announced that the new Constitution and By-Laws would be finally voted upon at the same meeting, and further announced the conditions of a forthcoming sketch competition. ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, 1895 • Various
... ceiled room whose rafters were grimed with smoke and dirt. A low bed stood in one corner of the room; a small deal table and three chairs completed the simple furnishings, but the girl's eyes were caught by the strings of herbs that depended from the walls, and the cabalistic signs that were everywhere in evidence. A fire burned on the hearth and over it, depending from a crane, hung a large kettle in which something savory ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... country of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and of that self-sacrificing love which brought Christ into the world to die for the rich and the poor, the high and the low, the black and the white alike. So it is entitled to write on all its literature and emblazon on its shield those cabalistic letters, "A M ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various
... Government on placing the spiritual life of the Jews under police supervision. In 1836 a censorship campaign was launched against Hebrew literature. Hebrew books, which were then almost exclusively of a religious nature, such as prayer-books, Bible and Talmud editions, rabbinic, cabalistic, and hasidic writings, were then issuing from the printing presses of Vilna, Slavuta, [1] and other places, and were subject to a rigorous censorship exercised by Christians or by Jewish converts. ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... through mythology(609) and pantheism(610) to the belief in a Creator;(611) next, to Judaism(612) as the worship of the soul of the world; and lastly, through the Persian(613) and Hindu(614) systems to Christianity,(615) which he attempts to show to be the worship of the sun under the cabalistic names of Christ and Jesus. Availing himself of some of the fragments of mythology which such writers as Eusebius have preserved, and with a faint perception of the nature of mythology, he tries to resolve the narrative ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... had entreated the latter to select some other spot where they might not disturb a philosopher, but the grooms turned a deaf ear to all his solicitations. In this emergency he had recourse to the aid of magic. He constructed a small horse of bronze, upon which he inscribed certain cabalistic characters, and buried it at midnight in the midst of the highway. The next morning, a troop of grooms came riding along as usual; but the horses, as they arrived at the spot where the magic horse ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... leisure hours, something like one who, as Dryden says, 'is for raking in Chaucer for antiquated words.' By and by he heard a wish here and a wish there, whether real or otherwise he does not know, which said something about 'type,' 'press,' and used other cabalistic words, such as 'copy,' 'devil,' etc. Then there was a gathering of papers, a transcribing of passages from letters, an arranging in alphabetical order, a correcting of proofs, and the work was done,—poorly it may be, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... ecstasy of laughter at the idea of her own importance and dignity, brooded over the whole table with her two elbows, like a spread eagle, and reposed her head upon her left arm as a preliminary to the formation of certain cabalistic characters, which required a deal of ink, and imaginary counterparts whereof she executed at the same time with her tongue. Also, how, having once tasted ink, she became thirsty in that regard, as tame tigers are said to ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... bunches of shining fruits, or coins that looked as if they had just emerged from the seclusion of the poor-box. Thread gloves abounded, and were mostly in what saleswomen call "the loud shades"—bright scarlet, marigold yellow, grass green or acute magenta. Mittens, too, were visible covered with cabalistic inscriptions in glittering beadwork. Not a few gentlewomen, like Madame, trod in elastic-sided boots, and one small but intrepid lady carried herself boldly in a cotton skirt topped with a tartan blouse "carried ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... Arabia," and informs us (?) in a foot-note that it is "Ascribed to a prince of the Barmecide race, an ancestor of the Gran Vizier Giafar." The word "Jafr" is supposed to mean a skin (camel's or dog's), prepared as parchment for writing; and Al-Jafr, the book here in question, is described as a cabalistic prognostication of all that will ever happen to the Moslems. The authorship is attributed to Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet. There are many legendary tales concerning its contents; however, all are mere inventions as the book is supposed to be kept in the Prophet's family, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... by him, again to the apartment where his daughter was reposing.—The pretended Jew followed his guide with the most profound sobriety, handling sundry vials and jars he had brought with him, and upon which the Bey looked with not a little interest and respect, as he strove to decipher the cabalistic ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... two almost equal parts, one of which was filled with seats for the spectators and the other occupied by a platform covered with a checkered carpet. In the center of this platform was placed a table, over which was spread a piece of black cloth adorned with skulls and cabalistic signs. The mise en scene was therefore lugubrious and had its effect upon the merry visitors. The jokes died away, they spoke in whispers, and however much some tried to appear indifferent, their lips framed no smiles. All felt as if they had entered a house ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... Mental Healing," remarks that whatever acts upon a patient in such a way as to persuade him to yield himself to the therapeutic force constantly operative in Nature, is a means of healing. It may be an amulet, a cabalistic symbol, an incantation, a bread-pill, or even sudden fright. It may be a drug prescribed by a physician, imposition of hands, mesmeric passes, the touch of a relic, or visiting ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... which nourishes our brain. Secret, indifferent, imperious and implacable, it subjugates and oppresses us from a great height or a great depth, in any case, from very far, without telling us why. One might say that figures place those who handle them in a special condition. They draw the cabalistic circle around their victim. Henceforth, he is no longer his own master, he renounces his liberty, he is literally "possessed" by the powers which he invokes. He is dragged he knows not whither, into a formless, ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... chief work, Theoria Analytica, 1579), instructor in logic in Cambridge from 1573, who was strongly influenced by Reuchlin and who favored an Aristotelian-Alexandrian-Cabalistic eclecticism, was the first to disseminate Neoplatonic ideas in England; and, in spite of the lack of originality in his systematic presentation of theoretical philosophy, aroused the study of this branch in England into new life. His opponent, Sir William Temple [1] (1553-1626), by his defense ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... the pedant rejoined; "these four Latin words, which have a cabalistic sound, not unlike the croaking of certain batrachians, and might have been borrowed, one would say, from the 'Comedy of the Frogs,' by one Aristophanes, an Athenian poet, contain the very pith and marrow of ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... if antiquity can consecrate some follies, they are of very ancient date. They were classed, among the Hebrews, among the cabalistic sciences; they pretended to discover occult qualities in proper names; it was an oriental practice; and was caught by the Greeks. Plato had strange notions of the influence of Anagrams when drawn out of persons' names; and the later Platonists ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... other service to render our brave Chapron than to arrange a duel for him under the most dangerous conditions. Ah, but I became inopportunely angry!... But why the deuce did Gorka select such a second? It is incomprehensible!... Did you see what the cabalistic word gentleman means to those rascals: Steal, cheat, assassinate, but have carriages perfectly appointed, a magnificent mansion, well-served dinners, and fine clothes!... No, I have suffered too much! Ah, it is not ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... of Solomon could be found only in the unknown sepulchres of the ancient Hebrew monarchs, and that none might dare to touch it but one of their descendants. Armed with the cabalistic talisman, which was to guide him in his awful and difficult researches, Alroy commenced his pilgrimage to the Holy City. At this time, the love of these sacred wanderings was a reigning passion among the Jews ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... answer, no reply to the questions addressed to heaven and eternity; and they went to the fountains of mysticism and secret knowledge to quench the thirst of the soul. There sprung up the visionary Gnostics among the Gentiles, and the Cabalistic Mystics among the Jews. History notices the same rotation continually—idealism, sensualism, scepticism, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Flaxman thought it extremely likely that he would. He studied the cabalistic lines Elsmere's stick had made in the sand for a minute or two; then he said dryly, 'I will take the first expense: and draw on me afterwards up to five hundred a year, for the first ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... unambitious likeness to the meaner Asychian, the characteristic of which, barring its presumptuous motto, must be veiled in one word from Herodotus (2-136),—alas! for the bathos of translation, the cabalistic—[Greek: ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... to the desk in his box, and brought him a note, saying, that a lady had left it at half-past nine. Left it?—Then the lady could not be the alarming lady. He was relieved. The words of the letter were cabalistic; these, beneath underlined address: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
