Thaumaturgia; Or, Elucidations of the Marvellous

Having so far explained the fragile basis on which human knowledge may be said to have depended, during the obscurity and barbarity of the middle ages, when the progress of true...

Astrologers, among other artifices, have used their best endeavours, and employed all the rules of their art, to render those years of our age, which they call climacterics, dan...

Few subjects present to a philosophic eye more matter of curious, important and instructive research than the natural history of religion. Some sort of religious service has bee...

As we shall have to speak of the art practised through the medium, termed incubation, of curing diseases, it may be proper to say something previously on the interpretation of d...

Obeah, a pretended sort of witchcraft, arising from a superstitious credulity, prevailing among the negroes, has ever been considered as a most dangerous practice, to suppress w...

Few superstitions have been so famous, and so seductive to the minds of men during a number of ages, as oracles. In treaties of peace or truces, the Greeks never forgot to stipu...

In one respect we have but very little occasion to extol our own enlightened age at the expence of those ages which are so frequently and justly termed _dark_. We allude to the...

Medicine unquestionably ranks among the most ancient of all human sciences. In the infant state of society, when simplicity of manners characterised the pursuits of mankind, med...

Many of the prodigies recorded by the ancients, admit of a natural explanation; and an attentive examination will show that a small number of causes, which may be discerned and...

The origin of amulets may be traced to the most remote ages of mankind. In our researches to discover and fix the period when remedies were first employed for the alleviation of...

The British Druids, like the Indian Gymnosophists, or the Persian Magi, had two sets of doctrines; the first for the initiated; the second for the people. That there is one God...

The common opinion of comets being the presages of evil is an old pagan superstition, introduced and entertained among Christians by their prejudice for antiquity; and which Mr....

The pretended art of producing, by the assistance of words and ceremonies, such events as are above the natural power of men, was of several kinds, and chiefly consisted in invo...

The study of astrology, so flattering to human curiosity got into favour with mankind at a very early period,--especially with the weak and ignorant. The first account, of it we...

The power of music over the human mind, as well as its influence on the animal creation, has been variously attested; and its curative virtues have been no less extolled by the...

Children and old women have been accustomed to hear so many frightful things of the cloven-footed potentate, and have formed such diabolical ideas of his satanic majesty, exhibi...

The Egyptian amulets are not so ancient as the Babylonian talismans, but in their uses they were exactly similar. Some little figures, supposed to have been intended as charms,...

The meteors known to the ancients were called [Greek: Lampdes Pithoi] Bolides, Faces, Globi, etc. from particular differences in their shape and appearance, and sometimes under...

This remarkable sect was founded upon the doctrines of Paracelsus, during the latter part of the sixteenth, and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. The society was known...

The ancient magicians, among other pretended extraordinary powers of accomplishing wonderful things by their superior knowledge of the secret powers of nature, of the virtues of...

Apollo is said to have been one of the most gentle, and at the same time, as may be inferred from his numerous issue, one of the most gallant of the heathen deities. The first a...

It would be almost an endless task to enter into a detail of all the inferior deities of the Greeks and Romans; our object being to refer to such only as preside over the health...