{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Wicca and Neo-Paganism","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_pag_err_err16_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_pag_err_err16_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_pag_err_err16_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/pag/err/err16.htm","summary":"This is an excerpt from a late-nineteenth-century work of comparative folklore \u2014 almost certainly by Charles Godfrey Leland \u2014 documenting folk-magical practices among the witches (*streghe*) of Tuscany and the Romagna, presented with scholarly apparatus and personal fieldwork. The text transcribes and translates three distinct spells: an incantation by which a witch defies Death on behalf of a dying patient (using a pumpkin carved to resemble a skull and the protective \"sign of the horns\"), a birth ritual in which a witch secretly carries a newborn to the highest room of the house to ensure the child's future greatness, and a lead-divination ceremony involving herbs, midnight candles, and dream interpretation. The author's central analytical claim is that these practices are not merely \"Etrusco-Roman\" but far older \u2014 survivals of shamanic sorcery predating recorded civilization, with Etruscan and Roman elements only accreted along the way. A distinctive and recurring argument is that the principle of *similia similibus curantur* (like cures like) underlies the magic throughout: Death is repelled by a death-mask, demons by demon-images, which the author uses to explain the grotesque figures on Christian churches as direct descendants of Babylonian-Ninevite apotropaic sculpture. The text also mounts an explicit attack on the theory of independent folkloric invention, arguing instead for diffusion \u2014 that the close parallels between Tuscan, Roman (Ovid's Lemuria), and even Pennsylvania-Dutch folk practice are too specific to be coincidental.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Part Two: Chapter III--THE EXORCISM OF DEATH","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Wicca and Neo-Paganism","translated_text":null,"word_count":9354}