MAGIC AND SORCERY 145 



that ought to be known to physicians, so that they 

 may learn the cause of certain mysterious diseases, and 

 know the means how to cure them, and to counteract 

 evil influences by the power of good. There are, for in- 

 stance, some sorcerers who make an image representing 

 the person whom they desire to injure, and they drive a 

 nail into the foot of that image, and evil will and mali- 

 cious thought cause the person whom the image repre- 

 sents to experience a great pain in his foot, and to be 

 unable to walk until the nail from the image is removed. 

 Now, if a physician meets with such a case, and he 

 does not know the cause of the pain in the foot of 

 his patient, he will not be able to cure it; but if he 

 knows the cause, he can employ the power of imagina- 

 tion to counteract the evil that has been caused by a 

 similar power." ^ 



" Thus, it has happened that nails and hair, needles, 

 bristles, pieces of glass, and many other things have been 

 cut or been pulled out of the bodies of certain patients, and 

 were followed by other things of a similar character, and 

 that sudh a state of affairs continued for many weeks or 

 months, and the physicians stood there helpless, and did 

 not know what to do. But if they had better understood 

 their business, they would have known that these things 

 had been brought into the body of a patient by the power 

 of the evil imagination of a sorcerer, and they might 

 have put one of the extracted articles into an elder or 

 oak tree, on the side directed towards the rising sun, 

 and that article would have acted like a magnet to 

 attract the evil influence, and it would have cured the 

 patient." 



" A strong will subdues a weaker one, and therefore 



* If the representatives of modern erudition would take some trouble to 

 inquire in an unsophisticated manner among the country populations of 

 Europe, they would be surprised at the great amount of evil that is still 

 caused by sorcery, either consciously or unconsciously employed. Such 

 things are all caused by natural means, but with whose character our 

 modem sceptics are not acquainted. 



K 



