Stories
The 16th century Hispanic writer Martin Delrio states that one day a mandragora (mandrake), entering at the request of a sorcerer, who was being tried before a court for wizardry, was caught by the arms by the judge, who did not believe in the existence of the spirit, to convince himself of its existence, and thrown into the fire, where of course it would escape unharmed.
The author of the work entitled Petit Albert says that on one occasion, whilst travelling in Flanders and passing through the town of Lille, he was invited by one of his friends to accompany him to the house of an old woman who posed as being a great prophetess. This aged person conducted the two friends into a dark cabinet lit only by a single lamp, where they could see upon a table covered with a cloth a kind of little statue or mandragora, seated upon a tripod and having the left hand extended and holding a hank of silk very delicately fashioned, from which was suspended a small piece of iron highly polished. Placing under this a crystal glass so that the piece of iron was suspended inside the goblet, the old woman commanded the figure to strike the iron against the glass in such a manner as she wished, saying at the same time to the figure: "I command you, Mandragora, in the name of those to whom you are bound to give obedience, to know if the gentleman present will be happy in the journey which lie is about to make. If so, strike three times with the iron upon the goblet." The iron struck three times as demanded without the old woman having touched any of the apparatus, much to the surprise of the two spectators. The sorceress put several other questions to the Mandragora, who struck the glass once or thrice as seemed good to him. But, as the author shows, the whole was an artifice of the old woman, for the piece of iron suspended in the goblet was extremely light and when the old woman wished it to strike against the glass, she held in one of her hands a ring set with a large piece of magnetic stone, the virtue of which drew the iron towards the glass.
Read more about this topic: Mandragora (demon)
Famous quotes containing the word stories:
“All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter.... For me “style” is matter.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The return of the asymmetrical Saturday was one of those small events that were interior, local, almost civic and which, in tranquil lives and closed societies, create a sort of national bond and become the favorite theme of conversation, of jokes and of stories exaggerated with pleasure: it would have been a ready- made seed for a legendary cycle, had any of us leanings toward the epic.”
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—Frances Beale, African American feminist and civil rights activist. The Black Woman, ch. 14 (1970)