IMAGES AND NAMES. 125 



and other magical plants required also a mention of the patient's 

 name to make them work.^ 



How the name is held to be part of the very being of the 

 man who bears it^ so that by it his personality may be carried 

 away, and, so to speak, grafted elsewhere, appears in the way 

 in which the sorcerer uses it as a mqans of putting the life of 

 his victim into the image upon which he practises. Thus King 

 James, in his ' Deemonology,' says that " the devil teacheth how 

 to make pictures of wax or clay, that by roasting thereof, the 

 persons that they bear the name of may be continually melted 

 or dried away by continual sickness."^ A mediaeval sermon 

 speaks of baptizing a " wax " to bewitch with ; and in the 

 eleventh century, certain Jews, it was believed, made a waxen 

 image of Bishop Eberhard, set about with tapers, bribed a clerk 

 to baptize it, and set fire to it on that sabbath, the which 

 image burning away at the middle, the bishop fell grievously 

 sick and died.^ 



A similar train of thought shows itself in the belief, that the 

 utterance of the name of a deity gives to man a means of direct 

 communication with the being who owns it, or even places in 

 his hands the supernatural power of that being, to be used at 

 his will. The Moslems hold that the " great name " of God 

 (not Allah, which is a mere epithet), is known only to prophets 

 and apostles, who, by pronouncing it, can transport themselves 

 from place to place at will, can kill the living, raise the dead, 

 and do any other mu-acle.* 



The concealment of the name of the tutelary deity of Rome, 

 for divulging which Valerius Soranus is said to have paid the 

 penalty of death, is a case in point. As to the reason of its being- 

 kept a secret, Pliny says that Verrius Flaccus quotes authors 

 whom he thinks trustworthy, to the effect that when the Ro- 

 mans laid siege to a town, the first step was for the priests to 

 summon the god under whose guardianship the place was, and 

 to offer him the same or a greater place or worship among the 

 Romans. This practice, PHny adds, still remains in the pon- 

 tifical discipline, and it is certainly for this reason that it has 



1 Plin., xxii. 16, 24. ; xxiii. 54. ^ Grimm, D. M., p. 1047. 



■ Brand, vol. iii. p. 10. ^ Lane, Mod. Eg., vol. i. p. 361. 



