"Cabalistical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... muscular strength of the ploughman, like that of the ox, would help to drag the new ark into the sanctuary. For this purpose, he carefully concealed from Jobson the latent privileges and immunities that were vested in these cabalistical words, nor did he think it any infringement of his principles to inforce by his own behaviour the abominable doctrine of passive obedience, and to insist that Jobson should either become a covenanter, or quit his service, and forfeit ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... is the shrine of Tulasi Bhawani, (Toolaja Bhowani, {210}) who, with Gorakhanath, is the tutelar deity of the reigning family. There is no image of this deity which is represented by a Yantra, or cabalistical figure. In order to impress the subjects with awe, no person is admitted into this shrine except the Raja, the Rani or Queen, the Guru or spiritual guide of the prince, and the Pujari or priest, who is always of the Guru’s family. In order probably to add more to the awe of the place, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... with a gesture of haughty deprecation. "A parergon, if you please. I take it, a man may dip into the mystical writings of Paracelsus without prejudice to his Latinity; and into the cabalistic lore of the school of Cordova without losing his taste for the pure oratory of the immortal Cicero. Virgil himself, if we may believe Helinandus, gave the weight of his great name to such sports. And Cornelius Agrippa, my ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... 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 ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... half the theories held at this time among ourselves will probably change—that is, the outward and mortal parts of them. Thus the Catholic formulas, instead of living symbols, become dead and powerless cabalistic signs. The religion lost its hold on the conscience and the intellect, and the effect, singularly enough, appeared in the shepherds before it made itself felt among the flocks. From the see of St. Peter to the far monasteries in ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... While I watched these cabalistic marks pass from red to black and finally vanish in a wild leap up the chimney, Mrs. ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... at last, so nothing seemed more natural to me than that I should form mine too; and this I did with much satisfaction. The Neo- Platonism lay at the foundation; the hermetical, the mystical, the cabalistic, also contributed their share; and thus I built for myself a ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... sesame to the courts of royalty, yet which are as opulent in impressive adjectives as any Knight of the Garter's list of dignities. When I have recognized in the every-day name of His Very Worthy High Eminence of some cabalistic association, the inconspicuous individual whose trifling indebtedness to me for value received remains in a quiescent state and is likely long to continue so, I confess to having experienced a thrill of pleasure. I have ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Not a few opened their shops. Others gathered round an astrologer,—a personage no longer to be seen in the cities of the west,—who had taken his stand on the Riva degli Schiavoni, and there, begirt with zone inscribed with cabalistic characters, and holding in his hand his wizard's staff, was setting forth, with stentorian voice, his marvellous power of healing by the combined help of the stars and his drugs. By the way, why should the profession of astrology and the ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... described on the door as "a 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 ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... 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 phrase: ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... thought reasonable. Credo quia impossibile est,—"I believe, because it is impossible,"—is an old paradoxical expression which might be literally applied to this tribe of persons. And they always succeed in finding something marvellous, to call out the exercise of their robust faith. The old Cabalistic teachers maintained that there was not a verse, line, word, or even letter in the Bible which had not a special efficacy either to defend the person who rightly employed it, or to injure his enemies; always provided the original Hebrew ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... stoves—the odor would have been appetizing to one who had not breakfasted. On the shady side stood half a dozen two-wheeled carts, loaded with lightwood and drawn by diminutive steers, or superannuated army mules branded on the flank with the cabalistic letters "C. S. A.," which represented a vanished dream, or "U. S. A.," which, as any negro about the market-house would have borne witness, signified a very concrete fact. Now and then a lady or gentleman passed with leisurely step—no one ever hurried in Patesville—or some poor white sandhiller ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... gilded copper instrument (it had come from Germany 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 enchanted him. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... pieces of cotton were certain cabalistic signs, such as figures, algebraical marks, ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... the table, writing out some cabalistic wiggles that stood for bromide of potassium, when I remarked casually that it was strange how well I could always sleep ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... 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
... the Young 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... make the most favourable impression possible, inasmuch as she no sooner saw him than she very nearly closed it, and placing herself in the narrow gap, inquired what he wanted. But Newman merely uttering the monosyllable 'Noggs,' as if it were some cabalistic word, at sound of which bolts would fly back and doors open, pushed briskly past and gained the door of Miss La Creevy's sitting-room, before the astonished servant could ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... made ready, and the suitors set out, bidding the father be of good cheer, and that before sunset he should embrace his daughter. They then entered the vehicle; Gunakar with cabalistic words caused it to rise high in the air, and Devasharma put to flight the demon by reciting the sacred verse,[FN156] "Let us meditate on the supreme splendour (or adorable light) of that Divine Ruler (the sun) who may ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... injure those who were still wrestling with the severe realities of time, and specially did they come up during the darkness of night. Therefore it was that at midnight the father rose and went forth with cabalistic signs, skilfully adapted to keep the spectres at a distance. After thrice washing his hands in pure spring water, he turned around and took certain black beans into his mouth, and then threw them ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... produced some pieces of an old pot of the latter metal, which were put into the crucible. When melted, the Hijiemmee took from his turban a paper containing powder of a yellowish hue, which he threw into the crucible, over which he repeated some cabalistic words while he stirred the melting metal. At length he took it from the fire, and to his astonishment Mazin beheld a large lump of pure gold, which the Hijiemmee desired him to carry to a goldsmith's and get it exchanged for coin He did did so, and received a handsome ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... bought the cyclopean voice, engraved with cabalistic writing, which might be, as it professed to be, a temple bell of Yamato over five hundred years old, or else the last year's product of an Osaka foundry for antique brass ware. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... one could not take pleasure in him as in the negro advertiser, who paraded the grounds in a costume compounded of a consular chapeau bras and a fox-hunter's top-boots—the American diplomatic uniform of the future—and offered every one a printed billet; he had not even the attraction of the cabalistic herald of Hunkidori. Who was he? what was he? why was he? The mind played forever around these questions in ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... before the old courthouse, which now served as regimental headquarters and bore the magic letters A.O.K. as a sort of cabalistic sign on its front, a military band played every afternoon from three to four at command of His Excellency. This little diversion was meant to compensate the civilian population for the many inconveniences that the quartering of several hundreds of staff ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... patent that his companion desired to form her own impressions of the pages uninfluenced by his well-delivered comments, Mr. Stuyvesant had bethought him of the semi-somnolent occupants of the opposite section, and some cabalistic signs he ventured with a little silver cup summoned them in pleased surprise to the water-cooler at the rear end, where he regaled them with a good story and the best of V. O. P. Scotch, and accepted their lavish bid to sit ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... mystic Gourd; carved all over with cabalistic triangles, and hypogrifs; by study of which a reputed prophet, was said to have obtained his inspiration. (Slightly redolent ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... at the folly of our cabalistic philosophers, who fancy spirits in every element, calling those sylphs which they pretend to inhabit the air; gnomes, those which they feign to be under the earth; ondines, those which dwell in the water; and salamanders, those of fire; we acknowledge but three sorts of created spirits, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... does the focus of this curve follow. The answer comes: The focus of the parabola describes a 'catenary,' a line very simple in shape, but endowed with an algebraic symbol that has to resort to a kind of cabalistic number at variance with any sort of numeration, so much so that the unit refuses to express it, however much we subdivide the unit. It is called the number e. Its value is represented by the following series carried out ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... his character, "a nature which combines the characteristics of 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 ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... with money to pay his expenses to his father's house, whither he wished to repair. Other 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 ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... to 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 Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... I had ventured to hope. For I promptly found my conceived arrangement of my material open the door wide to ingenuity. I remember that in sketching my project for the conductors of the periodical I have named I drew on a sheet of paper—and possibly with an effect of the cabalistic, it now comes over me, that even anxious amplification may have but vainly attenuated—the neat figure of a circle consisting of a number of small rounds disposed at equal distance about a central object. The central object was my situation, my subject ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... perhaps, that your lives may be spared for my own purposes in that which is about to happen. Hearken! My labours are finished; my calculations are complete," and he pointed to the sheets of metal before him that were covered with cabalistic signs. "Tomorrow I am about to do what once before I did and to plunge half the world in the deeps of ocean and lift again from the depths that which has been buried for a quarter of ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... 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, then?" ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... not at all by way of a jest, amused Dada far more than the tablets, cylinders and cones covered with numbers and cabalistic signs, to which Medius tried to direct her attention. She darted off in the midst of his eager explanations to show his grandchildren how a rabbit sniffs and moves his ears when ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... poem was written, we have had from the President the pledge that the "cabalistic words" shall be uttered by him on the first of January, 1863, unless the rebellion is abandoned before that time. Thanks and honor to the President for the promise! But we shall not look for the magical operation of the words till they are uttered without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... 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, and I hope in the course of few months to have the ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... astonished eyes when their good and old friend, the Chevalier de Croustillac, addressing himself to the Duchess of Monmouth with an air of understanding, said to her, while striving to hide a tear of emotion, the following apparently truly cabalistic words: ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... colour—is not worth sixpence. The best thing you can do in such a case is to put your thumb to your nose, flattening your hand and sticking out your fingers far apart, moving on at the same time, or to utter the cabalistic word "hookey"; in either case the ring-dropper will at once drop astern, with a half-stifled curse, for he knows that he has to do with "no flat," and that you are "awake to his little game." Doing so is much better than moving rapidly on, ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... last. The which was of little comfort to me who of this necessity took that honourable post. In the narrowest part of the valley, on the south side, was a great cliff of rock, rising sheer, of smooth and even surface. Hereon were graven certain cabalistic signs, and many figures of men and animals, fishes, reptiles and birds; suns and stars; and many quaint symbols. Some of these latter were disjointed limbs and features, such as arms and legs, fingers, ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... 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 powers ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... 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 to ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... 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 ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... 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
... proprietor. It had once been the front parlor of the old dwelling which, with its veranda and grass-plat, still held its own in the midst of the tall business houses that closed it in on either side. Here were the show-cases, queer instruments, and cabalistic looking charts for trying the sight; over the high mantel hung a large clock, and in the grate below a coal fire nickered and purred in a lazy fashion; and through the half-open folding doors Francis had a glimpse into what seemed to be a ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... 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 ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... dervise in vain tried every expedient to console her. At length he said, that, if she pleased, he would cause her nightingale to revive every morning, and entertain her with his tunes as long as she thought proper. The dervise accordingly laid himself on a sopha, and by means of certain cabalistic words, transported his soul into the body of the nightingale, and began to sing. Fadlallah watched his time; he lay in a corner of the room unobserved; but no sooner had the dervise deserted his body, than the king proceeded to take ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... cryptogram, of course—an arrangement of cabalistic signs instead of letters, but I could make nothing of it. The message, whatever it is, would take hours of careful study to decipher; and even then, without the key, one might fail. I have seen nothing quite like it, in all ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... valid evidence of any kind to support the merely traditional notions on this subject. The only way of discerning predictions of a death, descent, and ascent, of the Messiah, in the law and the prophets, is by the application of Cabalistic methods of interpretation, theories of occult types, double senses, methods which now are not tolerable to intelligent men. That Rabbinical interpretation which made the story of Ishmael and Isaac, the two children borne to Abraham by Hagar and Sarah, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Michelet's Jeanne 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 ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... 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 ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 till I felt positively ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... M. Barrows, in "Facts and Fictions of 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, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... the ruler's daughter (Mark 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 ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... consider the conception of this simplest of 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, the ear, and ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... into the gloomy chamber proceeded 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, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Coppernose took 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 ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... them carried a "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.
... aller 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 • William Wallace Blancke
... 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 ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... muttered; "I long to be with them;" and then with his clenched fist he knocked four times on the door. There was a sudden silence which lasted about a minute, and was broken by a voice within, asking who was there. Tomlinson answered by some cabalistic word; the door was opened, and ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 at the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... appearance. She had followed so quickly upon Stamfordham's steps that he was still standing looking round him at his strange surroundings, Lady Adela facing him with a smile of welcome. The apparatus of the fortune-teller apparently consisted in certain cabalistic properties—wands, dials with signs upon them, and the like—arranged round a table. Stamfordham spoke first. He was absolutely convinced that Rachel had come to appeal to him for mercy, and was as absolutely clear that it was an appeal to which he ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... 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 was a tailor. 'He deserved a ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Excellency had placed much reliance and confidence in his favorite officer. It was impossible to create so much as a suspicion in the mind of him, who had been compelled to endure irksome suppression at the hands of a cabalistic and jealous military party, and who, for that very reason, took a magnanimous view of the plight of one beset with similar persecutions. General Arnold was in his eyes a brave and fearless leader, but one ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... tell you at present," he said. "I take it that the line across the island signifies this gap or canyon, and the small intersecting line the cave. But 32 divided by 1, and an 'X' surmounted by a dot are cabalistic. They would cause even Sherlock Holmes to smoke at least two pipes. I have barely ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... oblong, each bearing weird and cryptic pencilings on one end; cryptic, that, is to anyone except Mrs. Brewster and you who have owned an attic. Thus "H's Fshg Tckl" jabberwocked one long slim box. Another stunned you with "Cur Ted Slpg Pch." A cabalistic third hid its contents under "Slp Cov Pinky Rm." To say nothing of such curt yet intriguing fragments as "Blk Nt Drs" and "Sun Par Val." Once you had the code key they translated themselves simply enough into such homely ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... 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, ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... suppose they thought was too particular; and therefore they were forced to change it to the number three, whence some have endeavoured to squeeze out a dangerous meaning that was never thought on. And indeed the conceit was half spoiled by changing the numbers; that of four being much more cabalistic, and therefore better exposing the pretended virtue of numbers, a superstition ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... 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 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... 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 as ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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. From all the circumstances of the case, ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... d'Urbino, Catherine's father. This physician was called Ruggiero the Elder (Vecchio Ruggier and Roger l'Ancien in the French authors who have written on alchemy), to distinguish him from his two sons, Lorenzo Ruggiero, called the Great by cabalistic writers, and Cosmo Ruggiero, Catherine's astrologer, also called Roger by several French historians. In France it was the custom to pronounce the name in general as Ruggieri. Ruggiero the elder was so highly valued by the Medici that the two dukes, Cosmo and Lorenzo, stood ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... fashion. It was next thought the height of vulgar wit to answer all questions by placing the point of the thumb upon the tip of the nose, and twirling the fingers in the air. If one man wished to insult or annoy another, he had only to make use of this cabalistic sign in his face, and his object was accomplished. At every street corner where a group was assem- bled, the spectator who was curious enough to observe their movements, would be sure to see the fingers of some of them at their noses, either as a mark of incredulity, surprise, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... a more correct enumeration of the thirteen cabalistic rules of exposition, the English reader is referred to vol. 1, page 209, of the "Conciliator" of B. Menasseh ben Israel, translated by ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... two, you just walked round to your astronomer's for some indication concerning the future. After bumping about in dim religious gloom among stuffed crocodiles and such-like accessories to science of those days, you discovered your astronomer deeply engaged in describing cabalistic figures on parchment; he would raise his eyes with a far-away look, as if no henchman had hurried round a few minutes earlier to say that "the old man was carrying on something awful," your astronomer would descend to earth for a space and then at his ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... 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
... draw upon his slate, his utter ignorance of Algebra prevented him from being much edified by the cabalistic signs on the blackboard, which Mr. Tinkler seemed to chalk up dubiously, and rub out again as soon as possible, with an air of being ashamed of them. So he tried to nerve himself for the coming ordeal by furtively watching and studying the Doctor, who was taking a Xenophon class ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... company, were like an idyl. The rainy days in the large, low drawing-room, singing with Sophia, or dreaming and speculating with her on all sorts of mysteries, were, in their way, equally charmful. He liked to walk slowly up and down, and to talk to her softly of things obscure, cryptic, cabalistic. The plashing rain, the moaning wind, made just the monotonous accompaniment that seemed fitting; and the lovely girl, listening, with needle half-drawn, and sensitive, sensuous face lifted to his own, made a situation ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... "I will take your advice, Cap'n, and enchant the weapons of the Pinkies." She then went out and had all the Pinkies come before her, one by one, and she enchanted their sharp sticks by muttering some cabalistic words and making queer passes with her hands over the weapons. "Now," she said to them, "you will be powerful enough to defeat the Blueskins whatever they may do." The Pinkies were overjoyed at this promise, and it made ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... and everybody had gone mad for one day before turning pious for the long, dull forty days of Lent. The market-place was filled with maskers in quaint costumes, each wilder and more extravagant than the last. Here were magicians with high peaked hats covered with cabalistic signs, here Eastern sultans of the medieval model, with very fierce looks and very large scimitars: here Amadis de Gaul with a wagging plume a yard high, here Pantagruel, here harlequins, here Huguenots ten times more lugubrious than the despised ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... that the business belonged to them. They hated Rockefeller as much as they feared him, yet at the very moment when the Titusville operators were hanging him in effigy and posting the hoardings with cabalistic signs against his corporation, this mysterious, almost uncanny power was encircling them: Men who one night were addressing public meetings denouncing the Standard influence would suddenly sell out their holdings the ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... yet that decade from 1875 to 1885 held another powerful movement, the rise of another ideal to guide the unguided, another pillar of fire by night after a clouded day. It was the ideal of "book-learning;" the curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance, to know and test the power of the cabalistic letters of the white man, the longing to know. Mission and night schools began in the smoke of battle, ran the gauntlet of reconstruction, and at last developed into permanent foundations. Here at last seemed to have been discovered the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... present. The audience had begun to assemble when we arrived. Collins went into the shilling places, while I ensconced myself in the second row of reserved seats. I had an excellent view of the stage. There, in the middle of the platform, stood the conjuror's table—a quaint, cabalistic-looking piece of furniture with carved black legs and a deep bordering of green cloth all round the top. A gay pagoda-shaped canopy of many hues was erected overhead. A long white wand leaned up against the wall. To the right stood a bench ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... mechanism, making no mention here of astronomical discoveries, some of them surprising enough, it is especially for the Algebraic analysis that we must thank the Moors. A strange fascination, doubtless, these crafty men found in the cabalistic characters and hidden processes of reasoning peculiar to this science. So they established it on a firm basis, solving equations of no inconsiderable difficulty, (of the fourth degree, it is said,) and enriched our arithmetic with various rules ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... 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, nor will it ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... the direction of his gaze and saw an oblong frame enclosing a large photograph of an inscription in the weird and cabalistic arrow-head character. I looked at it in silence for some seconds ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... therefore, aptly illustrates the accepted definition of education. Though it defies analysis and the rule of thumb, the boy is conscious of it and can say with the man who was born blind, "One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see," and no cabalistic marks in a grade-book can express the value of the ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... chamber overlooking the Calder, and used to break the monastic rules by wandering forth at night upon the hills. When he was absent thus one night, accompanied by others of the brethren, I visited his chamber, and examined his papers, some of which were covered with mystical figures and cabalistic characters. These papers I seized, and a watch was set to make prisoner of Alvetham on his return. Before dawn he appeared, and was instantly secured, and placed in close confinement. On the next day he was brought before the assembled conclave ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... rearing of a mountain peak into 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
... fence he finds the bars, and there stopping, speaks some words in undertone, but loud enough to be heard by the animals inside. As if it were a cabalistic speech, one separates from the rest, and comes towards him. It is the steed of Clancy. Protruding its soft muzzle over the rail, it is stroked by the mulatto's hand, which soon after has hold of the forelock. Fortunately the saddles are close by, astride the fence, with ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... thou?" said Kelly, not raising his head as he spoke, but intently poring over a grim volume of cabalistic symbols. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... 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
... took the first daguerreotype from the roof of that famous building. That was the greatest wonder of the day. What was more remarkable, a picture or portrait could be copied in a few moments. Then there was a hint of war with Mexico, and the Oregon question was looming up with its cabalistic figures of "54, 40, or fight." Indeed, it seemed as if war was in ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... caisson exploded, each swiftly wrote a few cabalistic symbols. There was a house to the left, as we sat feeing our rear, and I saw that they kept their eyes on that almost continually. Curious to know why, I shouted in the ear of one, asking the reason. He wrote, 'Meade's headquarters,' and then I ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... differed, as they certainly did, from those that came through Bagdad. The 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 system ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... overspread by a thick layer of sand, was a bed of charcoal kept glowing by attendants armed with fans attached to long poles. Priests were intoning a prayer to the god of water, who lived in the moon, to descend with vengeance upon the god of fire. With much twisting of fingers and cabalistic waving of hands, a worshiper would draw something from a bag purchased from the priest. This he told the onlookers was spirit powder. Sprinkling a part of it on the fire and rubbing his feet with what was left he would ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... 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 vital ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... touched their foreheads and hands with water. This is a 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 ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... M. Hardy, like a true magician, has pronounced three cabalistic words: ASSOCIATION—COMMUNITY—FRATERNITY. We have understood the sense of these words, and the wonders you have seen have sprung from them, to our great advantage; and also, I repeat, to the great advantage ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... number of garments as he took away. But even when his intentions are good, it makes it the more difficult to return the washing correctly that the English markings on the clothes are to him only so many cabalistic signs, merely to be recognised by their general appearance. And as the dhobi often finds himself misled in his attempt to follow this uncertain guide, he adopts signs of his own for his regular customers, and with coloured thread, or even ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... he 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 had arranged ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... 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, were ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... hard words, which the 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
... heroes, his goblins, his feats, his hair-breadth escapes, his imminent deadly breaches, and the poor, foolish, childish old world renews the excitements of its nonage. Perhaps this is a work of beneficence; and perhaps our brave conjurer in his cabalistic robe ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... book breed not moths or worms in it. And put the case that, at the coupling together of the buckhounds, the little puppies shall have waxed proud before the notary could have given an account of the serving of his writ by the cabalistic art, it will necessarily follow, under correction of the better judgment of the court, that six acres of meadow ground of the greatest breadth will make three butts of fine ink, without paying ready money; considering ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... emaciated old man on whose silvery head was set a curious golden mitre ending in the shape of a wondrously bejewelled trident. The curious Americans noted that the arch-priest's robes were as black as his evilly glittering eyes, and were embroidered with curious cabalistic symbols done in silver thread. In his withered hand Herakles carried a ceremonial trident—the mark of ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... superstition that once overhung the spot seem at last to have taken on that form. Behind it the land opens out and falls away in a barren tract known from the earliest period as the Great Pastures, where a solitude reigns almost as complete as that of the primitive settlement, and where, swinging cabalistic webs from one to another of the arbor-vitae and dwarf-pine trees that grow upon it, spiders enough still abide to furnish familiars for a world full of witches. But here on the hill there is no special suggestion of the dark memory that broods upon it when seen in history. An obliging ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... a marginal note of cabalistic import before he swung round in his chair and looked at her over ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... amuse himself in his 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, but ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... of beasts—when they settled questions of right and expediency by counting noses—when cows were enslaved and women free—when science had not dawned to chase away the shadows of imagination and the fear of immortality—and when the cabalistic letters "A.D.," which from habit we still affix to numerals designating the date, had perhaps a known signification. It is indeed well to live in this golden age, under the benign sway of that supreme ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... fumed under his breath and led the way to an inner courtyard where stood four immense black boxes painted with death-heads, splintered bones, fountains of blood and cabalistic symbols all of ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... mustache? Was he John Bray? Impossible. It was all very perplexing. But here in his hand he held the tangible evidence of McGuire's fears. "You know what I've got and I know what you've got." The sentence seemed to have a cabalistic significance—a pact—a threat which each man held over the other. Perhaps it wasn't money only that "Hawk" wanted. Whatever it was, he meant to have it, and soon. The answer the man expected was apparently something well understood between ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... the valley of La Belle Riviere. And as I saw the white-hot sheets of iron issuing from those crunching rollers, driven by the power of seven thousand horses, I felt that the youth with the stamping iron should have put a fleur-de-lis upon each with all his other cabalistic markings, for who of us can know that any metal would ever have flowed white from the furnaces in that valley if the white-metal signs of Louis XV had not first been carried ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... her left hand on her breast, and the cross on her right. Inscribed "FIDES OPTIMA IN DEO." The Faith of Giotto holds the cross in her right hand; in her left, a scroll with the Apostles' Creed. She treads upon cabalistic books, and has a key suspended to her waist. Spenser's Faith (Fidelia) is still ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... 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 to ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... handed to him, and, running his eye through them, he drew his knife across one of the pages, and put at the bottom the cabalistic mark which indicated the ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... 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 blood, and had kindled his affections at ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... from her old crowd. And 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, later, ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... names, is 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 ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... "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
... 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 ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... 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, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of public life and of scholastic theories, together with the love of occult and cabalistic science, and the craft of Provencal poetry, Dante received from his Florence of the thirteenth century the knowledge of this new, this exotic and esoteric intellectual love. And, as it is the mission of genius to gather into ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... and Member of the Arcadian Academy, 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 than those of any singer of ancient or modern times; how his brief life had been but a series ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... nice clean coil of rope, while Madaline besought her in every kind of cabalistic sign she could summon to her aid, to desist in her reckless intention of tieing the man to the tree. But the temptation was evidently too much for the frolicsome Grace, for as Madaline cast a wild eye over her shoulder ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... and theories of that overburdened century, and no 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, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... could speak again, a gorgeous witch came prancing up, carrying a broomstick wound with red ribbons. The witch was all in red, with a tall peaked hat of red, covered with cabalistic designs cut from gilt paper and pasted on. She groaned and wailed, too, and then spoke in a rapid and ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... was a cabalistic formula of his; and whenever he had been heard to pronounce it, some misfortune had happened to the individual who had offended him. Sylvain crossed himself to ward off the evil spirit. The terrible words resounded through ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... 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 ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... to get three leaves from the tulip tree, you must send them to me in a letter, it is for something cabalistic. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... the walls of Rome. It was observed, however, amidst the growing darkness; and no sooner was the word amnesty read than a cry of enthusiasm was heard. People hastened from their houses in all directions, the passers-by stopped in crowds to read, by torchlight, the cabalistic words. Among the fast-assembling masses there was but one feeling. They embraced and even wept for joy. In the depth of their emotion, and whilst yet, as may be said, intoxicated with delight, they sought how to express their gratitude. ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... friend stepped into the apartment. Hubert was an aged man, learned and pious, and well skilled, it was believed, in cabalistic science. He had buried three Gottmars, and received their last confessions. From these he had drawn conjectures and conclusions which induced him to investigate the traditions current amongst the people respecting his unhappy patrons; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... preacher, a slave named Nat Turner. He was a man of slight figure, reputed among his people a sort of prophet, addicted to visions and rhapsodies. He planned in 1831 an uprising of the slaves. He circulated among them a document written in blood, with cabalistic figures, and pictures of the sun and a crucifix. One night he and a group of companions set out on their revolt. Others joined them voluntarily or by impressment till they numbered forty. They began by killing Turner's master and his family; then they killed ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... "They are cabalistic signs," the Professor replied, "part of the language of the tribe. They indicate that this is the guest tent, and there are a few little maxims traced upon it, extolling the virtues of hospitality. Out in the desert there we met the Mongars as foes, and we had, I can assure you, ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to understand it admirably, my lord," replied Dunroe. "He says it quickens a man's intellects, and not only prevents him from being imposed upon by knaves and sharpers, but enables him, by putting on a long face, and using certain cabalistic phrases, to overreach—no, not exactly that, but to—let me see, to steer a safe course through the world; or something to that effect. He says, too, that religious folks always come best off, and pay more attention to the things ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... robe fell over his shoulders, covered with hieroglyphic symbols; the embroidery was in black and gold, upon a variegated ground of brilliant colors. The robe was bound about his waist with a broad belt of gold, with cabalistic devices traced on it in dark red and black; red stockings, and shoes embroidered with gold, and pointed and curved upward at the toes, in Oriental fashion, appeared below the skirt of the robe. The man's face was dark, fixed, and solemn, and his eyebrows ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that of the Suaheli. A few now assume an air of superiority in matters of worship, and would fain take the place of Mullams or doctors of the law, by giving authoritative dicta as to the times of prayer; positions to be observed; lucky and unlucky days; using cabalistic signs; telling fortunes; finding from the Koran when an attack may be made on any enemy, &c.; but this is done only in the field with trading parties. At Zanzibar, the regular ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... scholar of high attainments. In the field of astronomy he had made important discoveries, and he carried on an extensive correspondence with observers of stellar phenomena in many far corners of the world. His name in the Madison catalogue was followed by a bewildering line of cabalistic letters testifying to the honor in which other institutions of learning held him. Wishing to devise for him a title that combined due recognition of both his naval exploits and his fine scholarship, the undergraduates called him "Capordoc"; and it was part of a freshman's initiation to learn ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... with you. If we might say the words and pass from sight! There is a way of cutting off the world: I have it at times completely: I lose it again, as if it were a cabalistic phrase one had to utter. But with you! You give it me for good. It will be for ever, eternally, my Clara. Nothing can harm, nothing touch us; we are one another's. Let the world fight it out; we have nothing to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a day! All he can say Is but just so much trouble and time thrown away; Not a man can be tempted to join the melee: E'en those words cabalistic, "I promise to pay Fifty pounds on demand," have for once lost their sway, And there the Knight stands Wringing his hands In his agony—when on a sudden, one ray Of hope darts through his midriff!—His Saint!— Oh, it's funny And almost ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 he bade ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... woman, as if suddenly recollecting that she had been too matter-of-fact in the way of dealing with us, went to her cauldron, and poking up the fire, began to mutter various cabalistic words, at the same time stirring its contents ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... most difficult as well as one of the most 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 ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... would walk along, taking the beans out of his mouth as he walked, and throwing them behind him. The specters were supposed to gather up these beans as he threw them down. He must, however, by no means look round to see them. He then, after speaking certain mysterious and cabalistic words, washed his hands again, and then making a frightful noise by striking brass basins together, he shouted out nine times, "Ghosts of this house begone!" This was supposed effectually to drive the specters away—an opinion which was always abundantly confirmed by the ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... every clerk added more charges, and that every charge was a tighter turn to the vise which held my fingers. Finally, the last clerk defiantly thrust in my face the terrible official document, on which were scrawled certain cabalistic characters, signifying the amount of money I should be forced to pay to the German government before I could have my property. I would not touch it but resolved I would really leave my packages until I could communicate with one of our consuls in Germany, and I said ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... of your supposition is true, sweet sister mine,' replied Rupert: 'not knowing what spells it might contain, seeing that Miss Merton's caligraphy is more like the cabalistic characters of a sorceress than the Italian-hand of a gentle demoiselle, I exorcised it—I committed it to ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had better employ the time in writing to his elder brother respecting the fee. Materials were supplied to him, and he used them so as to do credit to the monks of Beaulieu, in spite of little Dennet spending every spare moment in watching his pen as if he were performing some cabalistic operation. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... with the vandyked corners, I am constrained to remark in a distinct tone of voice—don't be alarmed, ma'am, it is merely a form of law—that I deliver this, as my act and deed. Mr Abel will place his name against the other wafer, repeating the same cabalistic words, and the business is over. Ha ha ha! You see how ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... entered 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
... 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, get thee somehow up to her, and touch her; and then go into ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... 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 ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... enabled to die there—which was 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 gentleman's ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill |
