228 THE OCCULT SCIENCES. 



in clay or in virgin wax an effigy of the intended victim, and the next to 

 kill a swallow, the heart of which was placed under the right arm of the 

 effigy, and the liver under the left. Then the sacrilegious operation began ; 

 the body and limbs of the wax or clay figure were pricked with new needles, 

 to the accompaniment of the most horrible imprecations. During the trial 

 of the ill-fated Enguerrand de Marigny, Prime Minister of Philippe le Bel, a 

 magician was brought before the tribunal to declare that he had, at the 

 minister's request, bewitched the King by pricking the magic image which 

 represented him with a needle. The bewitchers had recourse to other 

 processes. In some cases the figure was of bronze, and more or less deformed ; 

 it was concealed in a tomb, and left to rust, the rust coinciding with the 

 leprosy which attacked the person bewitched. In other cases the figure was 

 of wax, and was made to melt before a fire of wood and vervain, the progress 

 of the bewitched person to death keeping pace with the melting of his 

 image. In other cases, again, the effigy was made out of earth taken from 

 a graveyard and mixed with dead bones : an inscription in mystic characters 

 completed the bewitchment, and caused the death of the victim within a 

 short time. 



Amongst the numerous trials which revealed details of this crime, the 

 most celebrated was that of the Duchess of Gloucester, who was accused of 

 having bewitched King Henry VI. She had instructed a necromancer, a 

 priest named Bolingbroke, with the execution of this act of magic, in 

 concert with a well-known sorceress, one Marie Gardemain, Satan being 

 invoked under the name of MilFouvrier. The wax figure of the King was 

 found half melted in front of a fire of dry plants which had been gathered 

 in a cemetery by moonlight. The crime being proved, the necromancer was 

 hung, the sorceress burnt, and the Duchess of Gloucester condemned to 

 imprisonment for life. The most notorious bewitchers of the fourteenth 

 century were Paviot and Robert. In the sixteenth century the Italian 

 astrologer, Cosmo Ruggieri, would have been compromised in many such 

 cases but for the protection of Catherine de' Medicis ; and it was always 

 believed by the public that the illness to which Charles IX. succumbed eight 

 months after the massacre of St. Bartholomew was caused by bewitchment. 



Another piece of withcraft, not less formidable, and very easy to practise, 

 was that of chcvillemeni (peg or nail driving), which was also supposed to 

 have a fatal influence upon the person whose death it was sought to compass. 



