industry, or character, or any assistance from
rich and powerful friends!

The origin of many of the traditions concerning
amulets and talismans is to be found in
the Cabala of the Jews. The Hebrew doctors
affirm that Moses performed his miracles in
Egypt by virtue of a talismanic power inherent
in his rod, which, they say, was made on the
evening of the Sixth Day of the Creation, and
on which was wonderfully engraved the most
venerable name of the Deity, Tetragrammaton.
The miracles were marked on this rod, together
with God's most holy name. According to some
authorities, Moses found the wand in Jethro's
garden, while returning thanks for his deliverance
out of prison, into which he had been cast
by his father-in-law.

It is not very easy to distinguish between
talismans and amulets; but the former seem to
have possessed more important and awful virtues
than the latter. Amulets appear to have been
always worn about the person, for the sake of
warding off some evil. The very word is
derived, through the Latin, from the Arabic hamalet,
something suspended, because these charms
were hung on various parts of the body. The
ancient Egyptians often wore them in the form
of necklaces. The phylacteries of the Jews—
slips of parchment on which passages of the
Law were written, and which they bound about
the forehead or on the left arm—came in
time to be regarded as a species of amulets,
possessing a sovereign virtue against evil spirits;
though there can be no doubt that they were
originally worn merely as an ostentatious exhibition
of piety. For a similar reason, subsequently
degenerating into a magical rite, the
Mahometans have at all times been fond of
carrying about with them short sentences from
the Koran, enclosed in small silver boxes; and
the priests of Morocco sell these precious scraps
to the negroes of Africa, who call them Fetishes.
The early Christians fell so readily into the prevailing superstition, that the practice was solemnly
condemned by the Church; and the clergy
were interdicted, on pain of deprivation of holy
orders, from making and selling charms. The
Gnostics—who were, perhaps, the greatest
professors of mysticism ever known—found
surpassing virtues in particular stones and gems;
especially in those which were called Abraxas,
from having that word engraved on them. The
word is supposed to be barbarously compounded
of the Greek letters forming the number 365,
and to have signified the Supreme Deity, who
was said by those heretics to preside over three
hundred and sixty-five other Deities, the spirits of
as many worlds, corresponding to the number of
days in the year. Many Abraxas stones are still
to be found in the cabinets of the curious. Some
appear to have come from Egypt, and to belong
to the third century; others are suspected to
have been made during the middle ages in Spain,
where the doctrines of the Gnostics were carried
by the Priscillianists; and the Alchemists are
thought to have manufactured similar gems to
aid them in their pursuit of occult knowledge.
These stones are not merely engraved with the
mysterious word Abraxas, but with the ineffable
name Jehovah, and with figures of Isis sitting
on a lotos, Apis surrounded with stars, monstrous
combinations of divers animals, and other
figures. The characters are generally Greek,
but sometimes Hebrew, Coptic, or Etrurian;
occasionally, also, they are of an utterly
indescribable and mongrel kind, of which the sense
cannot even be guessed.

Similar to the Abraxas charm is that called
Abracadabra. The word is said to be Persian,
and to be the equivalent of Mithra, the Sun-god.
According to the directions of Serenus Sammonicus
you are to write the letters several times
over on a piece of paper, in such a manner as
to form a triangle which may be read more than
one way. The paper must then be folded so as
to conceal the writing; stitched into the shape
of a cross with white thread; worn in the bosom,
for nine days, suspended by a linen ribbon; and
finally thrown in dead silence, before sunrise,
into a stream that flows eastward. It must be
flung backward over the shoulder; and you
must on no account open and read it, "or all
the charm is fled." If, however, you observe
all the required conditions, you need never
suffer long from a fever, or from a quartan or
semi-tertian ague. The Abracadabra is a certain
cure.

The Romans were great wearers of talismans
and amulets, which sometimes, as Pliny relates,
took the form of little vessels cut out of amber.
In the middle ages, the coins attributed to St.
Helena, the mother of Constantine, were regarded
with extreme veneration; and only the
other day—viz. in the year 1858—a set of
charms was advertised for sale, including some
pieces of the Atlantic cable.

The ancient Jews thought highly of charmed
rings; and Jerusalem is described in the Bible
as decking herself with the earrings of Baalim.
Petronius Arbiter, in his profligate romance,
speaks of one of his characters—an old libertine,
named Trimalchio—wearing a ring of gold set
with stars of steel, which the commentators
seem to regard as a species of talisman, because
the Samothracians made rings of this sort with
a view to their being used as charms. Rings
have at all times and in all countries been looked
upon as possessing a mystical character. A circle
is the most simple of forms; yet it is the symbol
of Eternity. Perhaps it is on this account that
rings have been held in peculiar solemnity.
At any rate, there are more marvellous stories
about rings than about any other article of
personal adornment. The Slave of the Ring
in the Arabian story of Aladdin, will at once
occur to the reader's mind. Solomon, amongst
his other titles, was "Lord of the magic ring."
Then we have the old Greek legend of Gyges;
the rings of Excestus, the Phocensian tyrant,
which by a peculiar noise advised him of the
progress of his affairs; the ring of Eleazar the
Jew, which, as Josephus reports, dispossessed
several demoniacs in the presence of the
Emperor Vespasian; the seven rings of Jarcha,