REALM OF MAGIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 75, 20 June 1927, Page 12

REALM OF MAGIC

MANY SUPERSTITIONS A LINK WITH SCIENCE Most people if you ask them the question, “Are you superstitious?” will declare they are nothing of the sort, but you will generally find there are one or two things for which they have a superstitious regard. Perhaps it is breaking a mirror, sitting down thirteen to a table, or starting for a journey on a Friday; in any case you can generally discover the one weak spot. In ancient times a superstitious regard for omens seems to have added considerably to the fund of human misery. The spilling of salt toward a person was formerly considered a very unlucky omen. According to Pennant, a tune called “Gosteg yr Halen” or the prelude of the salt, was invariably placed when the salt cellar was placed before the Knights at King Arthur’s Round Table. Bailey observes that the superstition as to the spilling of the salt is connected with the opinion that salt is incorruptible. Accordingly it was the symbol of friendship, and the occurrence of an accident therefore was interpreted to signify that the friendly intercourse of those between whom it happened would cease. Mirrors were used by magicians in their magical operations in ancient time, hence, the ancient belief that accounts the breaking of a looking-glass an unlucky accident. Hearing by Touch The popular belief that people’s ears burn when others are talking of them has a very remote origin. It Is mentioned by Pliny, who says: “It is held that the absent are aware of being the subject of conversation through the tinging of the ears.” Pliny supposes this to have proceeded from a genius or universal mercury that conducted sounds to their distant subjects, anc 1 taught them to hear by touch. In view of this present age of broadcasting, this is an interesting point. Taken together, a repertory of the superstitious beliefs of a special group of savages shows a remarkable correspondence with the magic which once flourished in the civilised world, and which still lingers in peasant folk-lore The very details often agree so much as to raise the question whether the magic of savages may sometimes have been borrowed by native tribes of Australia from the lower class of settler there.

The word charm is derived from the latin word “carmen,” and in the Athenea.n oracle is defined as a form of words or letters repeated or written, whereby strange things are said or done. Certain herbs and other substances, and also particular words written on parchment had the property of preserving men from wounds in the midst of battle. This -was so universally credited at one time that an oath was administered to persons going to fight a. legal duel “that they had on them no charm or herb of virtue.”