DISCOVERY 



129 



the child, you make the child lie down upon his stomach; 

 you cause him to place his chin on the brink of the 

 vessel ; you make him look into the oil, he having a 

 cloth spread over his head, there being a lighted lamp 

 on his right hand and a censer on his left." Further 

 ritual preliminaries follow. " WTien you have finished, 

 you make the child open his eyes, you ask him saying 

 ' Is the god coming in ? ' If he says ' The god has come 

 in ' you recite before him " — an incantation of the 

 ordinary type (see Discovery, iii, p. 99) here follows — 

 " you ask him concerning that which you desire. 

 When you have finished your inquiry, which you are 

 asking about, you call to him seven times : you dismiss 

 the god to his home." 



A Yorkshire Incantation 



In Christian Europe angels or devils have been the 

 agents most usually invoked. Thus a Yorkshire wise 

 man used the incantation " I command ye, exorcise ye, 

 the archangels Michael and Gabriel, that ye make Mark 

 Jobling's shop to appear in the glass and also the like- 

 ness of the thief or thieves so that they may be seen 

 and identified." On the conclusion of the incanta- 

 tion, he said, "Presto! quick begone ! " whereupon 

 Mark Jobling's shop and the thieves appeared in the 

 glass. Similarly in the formulce for divination by 

 the crystal or the phial of holy water, which are quoted 

 in Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, the spirits 

 first appear and then conjure up the required scene. 

 In Mohammedan countries the place of angels or 

 devils is naturally taken by Jinni, who give information 

 sometimes by the indirect method of causing a reflec- 

 tion of a required scene and sometimes by direct 

 answer like the gods of the magical papyri. Thus an 

 Arab magician in the Malay Peninsula invoked a 

 little old Jinn into a bowl of water into which a written 

 charm had been dipped. The Jinn first appeared and 

 then caused a pictorial reflection of the event required. 

 In the Panjab the normal instrument seems to be a pool 

 of ink dropped upon a written charm in which a small 

 boy is instructed to gaze. He summons first the Four 

 Guardians. When they appear he instructs them to 

 summon their King. When the King appears the 

 questions are put to him and answered by him through 

 the child, who alone hears or sees the spirits. ^ 



A similar and even more elaborate procedure re- 

 corded by Professor Browne in Persia is of particular 

 interest, because his informant had himself taken part. 

 " Now you must know that the operator cannot him- 

 self see the force of the Jinn whom he evokes : he needs 

 for this purpose the assistance of a young chUd. I then 

 being quite a child was selected as his assistant. The 

 magician began by drawing a talismanic figure in ink 

 on the palm of my hand, over which he subsequently 



1 Crooke, Herklot's Islam in India, p. 264. 



rubbed a mi.xture of ink and oil, so that it was no 

 longer visible. He then commenced his incantations : 

 and before long I, gazing steadily, as I had been in- 

 structed to do, into the palm of my hand, saw reflected 

 in it, as it were, a tiny figure which I recognised as 

 myself." This figure he was told to address in a 

 peremptory manner and bid it summon the King of 

 the Jinni. A second figure then appeared, but the boy 

 became frightened and rubbed the ink off his hand. 

 Another boy was, however, procured to take his place. 

 After the King of the Jinni had appeared, his Wazir 

 was summoned and then the other members of the 

 Royal Council of the Jinni, and they were bidden to be 

 seated. The operator then took slips upon which the 

 names of members of the household were written : 

 as he took up each slip the boy looking into the ink- 

 mirror read therein the name which was written upon 

 the slip until one was reached, when the bo^^ instead 

 of the name, could only see the te.xt " In the name of 

 God, the Merciful, the Clement." The name upon this 

 slip indicated the person guilty of the theft about 

 which inquiry was being made.- 



BIBLIOGRAPHIC.\L NOTE 



A. useful bibliography of the literature dealing with the use 

 of mirrors in classical magic is given in Abt, Die Apologie des 

 Apiileins von Madaura, p. 25. The references for most of the 

 examples here given will be found in my little book on Greek 

 Divination, pp. 150 foil. I have here quoted references only 

 for the examples which are not there recorded. 



Forests and Fertility 



By Colonel H. de H. Haig 



It is one of the imfortunate results of civilisation that 

 while it enables men to live in much larger numbers 

 on the ground, they can only do so by annihilating other 

 forms of life. In this way, man has ruthlessly destroyed 

 trees to make his houses and to make way for his 

 flocks, without considering what effect their destruction 

 may have on the climate and resources of the region 

 he lives in. This point never was considered until the 

 increasing ill effects forced themselves on man's notice, 

 by curtailing his means of livelihood. It cannot be 

 altogether accidental that where mountains and up- 

 lands have been denuded of the forests which naturally 

 clothed them, the results have always been destructive 

 floods in the rainy season and shrivelled-up rivers in 

 the dry. There may be other cosmic causes underlying 

 these phenomena, but as the sequence always appears, 

 the denud^ition of the trees must be at any rate a 

 contributing cause, if not the main one. 



Most people have noticed that on the hottest day a 



2 Browne, A Year amongst the Persians, pp. 146-7. 



