ON TALISMANS--SOME CURIOUS, NATURAL ONES, ETC.
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, have been found on several mummies,
which, at various times, have been brought to Europe. Plutarch informs
us that the soldiers wore rings, on which the representation of an
insect resembling our beetle, was inscribed; and we learn from Aelian,
that the judges had always suspended round their necks a small figure of
Truth formed of emeralds. The superstitious belief in the virtues of
talismans is yet far from being extinct, the Copths, the Arabians, the
Syrians, and, indeed, almost all the inhabitants of Asia, west of the
Ganges, whether Christians or mahometans, still use them against
possible evils.
There is little distinction between talismans, amulets and the
gree-grees of the Africans as regards their pretended efficacy; though
there is some in their external configuration. Magical figures, engraven
or cut under superstitious observances of the characterisms and
configurations of the heavens, are called talismans; to which
astrologers, hermetical philosophers, and other adepts, attribute
wonderful virtues, particularly that of calling down celestial
influences.[114]
The talismans of the Samothracians, so famous of old, were pieces of
iron formed into certain images, and set in rings. They were reputed as
preservatives against all kinds of evils. There were other talismans
taken from vegetables, and others from minerals. Three kinds of
talismans were usually distinguished 1st. the _astronomical_ known by
the signs or constellations of the heavens engraven upon them, with
other figures, and some unintelligible characters; 2nd. the _magical_,
bearing very extraordinary figures, with superstitious words and names
of angels unheard of; 3rd. the _mixt_ talismans, which consist of signs
and barbarous words; but without any superstitious ones, or names of
angels.
It has been asserted and maintained by some Rabins, that the brazen
serpent raised by Moses in the wilderness, for the destruction of the
serpents that annoyed the Israelites, was properly a talisman. All the
miraculous things wrought by Apollonius Tyanaeus are attributed to the
virtue and influence of _talismans_; and that wizard, as he is called,
is even said to be the inventor of them. Some authors take several
Runic medals,--medals, at least, whose inscriptions are in the Runic
characters,--for talismans, it being notorious that the northern
nations, in their heathen state, were much devoted to them, M. Keder,
however has shown, that the medals here spoken of are quite other things
than talismans.
It appears from the Evangelists[115] that, when St. Paul, after he had
been shipwrecked, and escaped to the island of Malta, a viper fastened
on his hand as he was laying a bundle of sticks, he had gathered, on the
fire; and that, by a miracle, and to the great astonishment of the
spectators, inhabitants of the island, he not only suffered no harm, but
also cured, by the divine power, the chief of the island, and a great
number of others, of very dangerous maladies. There remain still in that
island, as so many trophies gained by the Apostle over that venemous
beast, a great many small stones representing the eyes and tongues of
serpents, and considered for several centuries past, as powerful amulets
against different sorts of distempers and poisons. As the virtue of
these stones is still much boasted of by the Maltese, and as some, on
the contrary, maintain that they are the petrified teeth of a fish
called lamia, it will not be irrelevant here to relate some observations
from the best authors on this interesting subject, so much to our
purpose.
It is said that those eyes and tongues of serpents are only found by the
Maltese when they dig into the earth, which is whitish throughout the
island, or draw up stone, especially about the cave of St. Paul. This
stone is so soft, that, like clay, it may be cut through with any sharp
instrument, and made to receive easily different figures, for building
the walls of their houses and ramparts; but, when it has been imbibed
with a sufficient quantity of rain or well water, it changes into a
flint that resists the cutting of the sharpest instrument: whence the
houses that are built of it in the two cities, appear as hewn out of one
solid rock, and become harder, the more they are exposed to the
inclemencies of the weather. This hardness may, with good reason, be
ascribed to the salt of nitre, which contracts a certain viscidity from
the rain wherewith it is mixed, and which easily penetrates into these
stones, because their substance is spongy and cretaceous, and adheres to
the tongue as hartshorn.
It is in these stones that not only the eyes and tongues of serpents are
found, but also their viscera and other parts: as lungs, liver, heart,
spleen, ribs, and so resembling life, and with such natural colours,
that one may well doubt whether they are the work of nature or art; the
figure of the eyes and tongues is very different. Some are elliptic,
but, for the greater part round: some represent an hemisphere, others a
segment, others an hyperbola. The glossopetrae are naturally of a conic
figure, representing acute, obtuse, regular, and irregular cones. They
are also of different colours, especially the eyes; for some of them are
of an ash-colour, others liver colour, some brown, others blackish; but
these, as most rare, are most esteemed. Bracelets are frequently made
of them and set in gold: some representing an entire eye with a white
pupil, and these are the most beautiful. Several are likewise found of
an orange colour.
The virtues attributed by the Maltese to those eyes and tongues, and to
the white earth which is found in the island, particularly in St. Paul's
cave, and which is kept for use by the apothecaries, as the American
bole, are very singular; for they reckon them not only a preservative
against all sorts of poison, and an efficacious remedy for those who
have taken poison, but also good in a number of diseases. They are taken
internally, infused in water, wine, or in any other convenient liquor;
or let to lie for some hours in vessels made of the white earth; or the
white earth is taken itself dissolved in those liquors. The eyes set as
precious stones in rings, and so as to touch immediately the flesh, are
worn by the inhabitants on the fingers; but the tongues are fastened
about the arm, or suspended from the neck.
Paul Bucconi, a Sicilian nobleman, treated this notion of the eyes and
tongues of serpents as a mere vulgar error; and maintains that they
either constitute a particular species of stone produced in the earth,
or in the stones of the island of Malta, as in their matrix; or that
they are nothing more than the petrified teeth of some marine fish;
which is also the opinion of Fabius Columna, Nicholas Steno and other
physicians and anatomists.
It seems to this noble author that the glossopetrae should be classed in
the animal kingdom, because, being burnt, they are changed into cinders
as bones, before they are reduced into a calx or ashes, whilst calcined
stones are immediately reduced into a calx. He further says, that the
roots of the glossopetrae are often found broken in different ways,
which is an evident argument that they have not been produced by nature,
in the place they are digged out of, because nature forms other fossils,
figured entirely in their matrix, without any hurt or mutilation. Add to
this, that the substance is different in different parts of the
glossopetrae; solid at the point, less solid at the root, compact at the
surface, porous and fibrous in the interior: besides, the polished
surface, contrary to the custom of nature, which forms no stone, whether
common or precious, is polished; and, lastly, the figure that varies
different ways, as well as the size, being found great, broad,
triangular, narrow, small, very small, pyramidal, straight, curved
before, behind, to the right and to the left, in form of a saw with
small teeth, furnished with great jags or notches, and frequently
absolutely pyramidal without notches; all these particulars favour his
opinion. But, as he thence believes he has proved that the glossopetrae
should not be classed amongst stones, so also what he has said may prove
that they are the natural teeth of those fishes, which are called, by
lithographers, lamia, aquila, requiem, (shark) etc. and therefore there
scarce remains any reason for a further doubt on this head.
There are representations of curiosities, which we shall give an account
of from the Ephemerides of the Curious. It is customary to see at
Batavia, in the island of Java, the figure of serpents impressed on the
shells of eggs, Andrew Cleyerus, a naturalist of considerable note,
says, that when he was at Batavia in 1679, he had seen himself, on the
14th of September, an egg newly laid by a hen, of the ordinary size, but
representing very exactly, towards the summit of the other part of the
shell, the figure of a serpent and all its parts, not only the
lineaments of the serpent were marked on the surface, but the three
dimensions of the body were as sensible as if they had been engraved by
an able sculptor, or impressed on wax, plaister or some other like
matter. One could see very plainly the head, ears, and a cloven tongue
starting out of the throat; the eyes were sparkling and resplendent, and
represented so perfectly the interior and exterior of the parts of the
eye, with their natural colours, that they seemed to behold with
astonishment the eyes even of the spectators. To account for this
phenomenon, it may be supposed that, the hen being near laying, a
serpent presented itself to her sight, and that her imagination, struck
thereby, impressed the figure of the serpent on the egg that was ready
to press out of the ovarium.
An egg equally wonderful, was laid by a hen at Rome on the 14th. of
December, 1680. The famous comet that appeared then on the head of
Andromeda, with other stars, were seen represented on its shell.
Sebastian Scheffer says, that he had seen an egg with the representation
of an eclipse on it. Signor Magliabecchi, in his letter to the academy
of the Curious, on the 20th. of October 1682, has these words; "Last
month I had sent me from Rome, a drawing of an egg found at Tivoli, with
the impression of the sun and the transparent comet with a twisted
tail."
There are also representations of Indian nuts, or small cocos, with the
head of an ape. The nut has been exactly engraved in the Ephemerides of
the Curious, both as to size and form, and covered with its shell, as
expressed there by cyphers and other figures which represent the same
nut stripped of its covering, and exhibiting the head of an ape. This
nut seems pretty much like the foreign fruit described by Clusius,
Exoticorum lib. a, which John Bauhin (Hist. Plant. Universal Lib. 3)
retaining the description of Clusius, calls, "a nut resembling the
areca," and which C. Bauhin (Pinac. lib. II, sect. 6) calls, the fruit
of the fourteenth of Palm-tree, that bears nuts, or a foreign fruit of
the same sort as the areca.
This fruit with its shell, is, as Clusius says, an inch and a half in
length, but is somewhat more than an inch thick. Its shell or
membraneous covering, is about the thickness of the blade of a knife,
and outwardly of an ash colour mixed with brown. Clusius was in the
right to say, that the shell of this nut was formed of several fibrous
parts, but those fibres resemble rather those of the shell of a coco,
than the fibrous parts of the back of the areca nut. He, moreover, has
very properly observed, that this shell is armed, at its lower part,
with a double calyx and that the opposite part terminates in a point;
but it is necessary to observe, that this point is not formed by the
prolongation of the shell, as the figure he has given of it seems to
specify; but that from the middle of the upper part of the fruit, there
juts out a sort of small needle.
The shell being taken off, the nut is found to be hard, ligneous,
oblong, of unequal surface, furrowed, and of a chesnut yellow. One of
its extremities is roundish, and the other, by the reunion and
prolongation of three sorts of tubercles, terminates in a point; those
protuberances being so formed, that the middlemost placed between the
two others, has the appearance of a nose, and the two lateral
protuberances resemble flat lips. On each side of that which forms what
we call the nose, a small hole or nook is perceived, capable of
containing a pea; but does not penetrate deep, and is surrounded with
black filaments, sometimes like eye-brows and eyelashes, so that the nut
on that side resembles an ape or a hare.
This _lusus naturae_, or sport of nature, has a very pretty effect, but
is oftener found in stones than other substances. A great variety of
such rare and singular productions of nature may be seen at the British
Museum: but nothing can be more extraordinary in this respect than what
is related concerning the agate of Pyrrhus, which represented,
naturally, Apollo holding a lyre, with the nine muses distinguished each
by their attributes. In all probability, there is great exaggeration in
this fact, for we see nothing of the kind that comes near this
perfection. However, it is said, that, at Pisa, in the church of St.
John, there is seen, on a stone, an old hermit perfectly painted by
nature, sitting near a rivulet, and holding a bell in his hand; and
that, in the temple of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, there is to be
seen, on a white sacred marble, an image of St. John the Baptist,
cloaked with a camel's skin, but so far defective that nature has given
him but one foot.
There is an instance in the Mercury of France, for July 1730, of some
curious sports of nature on insects. The rector of St. James at Land,
within a league of Rennes, found in the month of March, 1730, in the
church-yard, a species of butterfly, about two inches long, and
half-an-inch broad, having on its head the figure of a death's-head, of
the length of one nail, and perfectly imitating those that are
represented on the church ornaments which are used for the office of the
dead. Two large wings were spotted like a pall, and the whole body
covered with a down, or black hair, diversified with black and yellow,
bearing some resemblance to yellow.
These freaks of nature are equally extended to animate as to inanimate
bodies; and the human species, as well as the brute creation, affords
numerous specimens, not only of redundance and deficiency in her work,
but a variety of other phenomena not well understood. The march of
intellect, however, it is to be hoped, will be as successful in this
instance, as in obliterating the hobgoblins of astrologers and quacks
who so long have ruled the destiny and health of their less sagacious
fellow-creatures;--and when the public shall become persuaded of the
advantages which science may derive from occurrences similar to those we
shall enumerate in the next chapter, it will be more disposed to offer
them to the consideration of scientific men.
FOOTNOTES:
[114] The author of a book, entitled "_Talismans justifiés_" pronounces
a talisman to be the seal, figure, character, or image of a heavenly
sign, constellation or planet, engraven on a sympathetic stone, or on a
metal corresponding to the star, etc. in order to receive its
influences.
[115] Acts of the Apostles, chap. xxviii. v. 3.