680, AMULETS. 
no prosecution shall for the fSure be carried on against any person 
for conjuration, witchcraft, sorcery, or enchantment. But the misde- 
meanor of persons pretending to use witchcraft, tell fortunes, or dis- 
cover stolen goods, by skill in the occult sciences, i^ still deservedly 
punished with a year’s imprisonment, and standing four times in the 
pillory. 
Amulets. 
In the customs of almost all the nations of antiquity, amulets were 
favourite and sometimes very important, instruments of superstition 
and empiricism. They were most frequently suspended from the 
neck, and contained the name or exploits of some deity, whose pro- 
tection they were supposed to ensure, and of whose service they were 
the token or badge. They were formed of all sorts of materials, 
though precious stones were naturally preferred, and thus they often 
added to the elegance of dress, what was meant for the safety of the 
person. In their formation, or their being made into amulets, par- 
ticular times were imagined to be very propitious, especially after 
the reveries of the astrologers succeeded the early discoveries of 
astronomy. Various herbs and plants, gathered at these times, of which 
the full age of the moon was considered on^ of the most important, 
were presented as sovereign remedies for many fatal disorders, the 
bite of venomous reptiles, &c. The Egyptians had a great variety of 
them, of which the most popular w'as the Abraxas, a Cabalistic word 
engraven on a stone, to which it gave name. The Jews had an early 
propensity to using them for similar purposes. (Compare Dent, 
xviii. 10 — 12, w'ith Jer. viii. 17. In later times "the Mishna allow^ed 
an amulet to be worn, which had previously been three times success- 
, ful in the cure of any disease. 
The Chaldeans, Persians, and oriental nations, also held them in 
the highest estimation. Amongst the Greeks, parts of animals, mine- 
rals, and herbs, wefe used as amulets, especially in exciting and con- 
quering the passion of love ; and Pliny mentions many that w'ere in 
use among the Romans. Ovid speaks of Mount Caucasus as cele- 
brated for yielding the necessary plants, 
(An quie 
Lecta Promotheis dividit herba jugis, 
supposed to spring from the blood of Prometheus; and Colchis is 
mentioned by other poets as noted for similar productions. Amulets 
were also sometimes appended to the bodies of beasts, for medical 
and other purposes. They are still commonly w'orn in the East, and 
among the Turks, with whom magical words, numbers, and figures, 
sentences of the koran, prayers, &c. inscribed on scrolls of paper 
or silk, are in great request in time of w'ar. 
Christianity, in the decline of the Roman empire, supplied nume- 
rous amulets to her nominal converts from Paganism, in crosses, 
agnus dei’s, relics of the saints and martyrs, &c. The pope is said 
still to claim a prerogative of creating them. Their connexion with 
ancient British customs is also important. Burton, prescribing some, 
