"Necromancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was a characteristic of the northern nations of Europe, and not of the Mohammedans. This is an all pervading element in romantic and chivalric fiction. The Northmen believed in giants and dwarfs; in wizzards and fairies; in necromancy and enchantments; as well as the Oriental natives. It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that the immense tide of song which inundated Europe from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, under the form of metrical ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... him to be years had been only minutes, during which the fairy spell had been over him. In Count Lucanor, a Spanish work of the fourteenth century, is a story of a Dean of Santiago, who went to Don Illan, a magician of Toledo, to be instructed in necromancy. Don Illan made a difficulty, stating that the dean was a man of influence and consequently likely to attain a high position, and that men when they rise forget easily all past obligations, as well as the persons ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... the Emperor, 'but it is so. Slave! throw up now the doors of all thy vaults, and let us see whether both lions and tigers be not too much for this new necromancy. If it be the gods who interpose, they can shut the mouths of ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... the corridor. On my explanation she brought water and sal-volatile and returned with me to the drawing-room. It was a night of stupefying surprises. The quartier would have called it abracadabrant and they would not have been far wrong. There was necromancy in the air. I felt it, as I followed the nurse across the threshold. I anticipated something odd, some grotesque development. In the atmosphere of those I loved in those days I was ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... reason of the orator, the poet or reformer ceases to be like a taper, needing a match to light it, and becomes a sun, blazing with its own radiance. Spencer wrote: "By no political alchemy can we get golden conduct out of leaden instincts." Thus there is no necromancy by which the mind can get superior work ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... of sorcery in that, after all, but there was still enough smoke to warrant a surmise of fire, and the archdeacon bore a tolerably formidable reputation. We ought to mention however, that the sciences of Egypt, that necromancy and magic, even the whitest, even the most innocent, had no more envenomed enemy, no more pitiless denunciator before the gentlemen of the officialty of Notre-Dame. Whether this was sincere horror, or the game played by the thief who shouts, "stop thief!" at all events, it did not prevent ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... explain!" said Donal: "what could necromancy, which is one of the branches of magic, do ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... the mere substitution of one set of arbitrary signs for another; a doctrine which they suppose to derive irresistible confirmation from the example of algebra. If there were any process in sorcery or necromancy more preternatural than this, I should be much surprised. The culminating point of this philosophy is the noted aphorism of Condillac, that a science is nothing, or scarcely any thing, but une langue bien faite; in ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... obtained one from the form they loved to assume; for example, the familiars of the witches in "Macbeth"—Paddock (toad), Graymalkin (cat), and Harpier (harpy, possibly). Is it surprising that, with resources of this nature at his command, such an adept in the art of necromancy as Owen Glendower should hold Harry Percy, much to his disgust, at the least ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... continued to appear as if by necromancy, and space near the planet was streaked by flarings of white vapor as eighty-gee rockets hurled themselves to destruction against the invading objects. As each bomb went off, its light was brighter than the sun. But each was a mere flicker in enormousness. ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... superstitious awe which the common people entertained with respect to Columbus and his astronomical knowledge. Porras assured them that no real caravel had arrived, but a mere phantasm conjured up by the admiral, who was deeply versed in necromancy. In proof of this, he adverted to its arriving in the dusk of the evening; its holding communication 'with no one but the admiral, and its sudden disappearance in the night. Had it been a real caravel, the crew ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... it is true—in contemplation of my own ill-luck. How little did these two women care for me, who had freely conceded all their claims, and a great deal more, out of the fulness of my heart; while Hollingsworth, by some necromancy of his horrible injustice, seemed to have brought them ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... chief in the south of Scotland. He founded pretensions to the Scottish crown, on his descent from an illegitimate daughter of Alexander II. Soulis was a traitor to his country, and so notoriously wicked, that tradition endows him with the power of infernal necromancy. His castle of Hermitage, in Teviotdale, is still shown as the resort ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... hunchback, vehemently suspected of dealings in necromancy, and of riding to nocturnal orgies on a broomstick, according to the custom of witches. Certain persons had seen her putting the harness on her broom in the stable, which, as everyone knows is on the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... be medically examined further, to the revealing of my terrible past, my perturbed present, and pacific future. The result of which necromancy I shall duly report. I am afraid that they will not find that an operation will do good, if so I shall truly despair. And if they decide for the knife, I shall go to the guillotine like the gayest Marquis of the ancient regime. Yes, I should ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... beyond it, came into view. The little house was likewise a victim of the prevailing necromancy, for its rough, hand-split and weatherbeaten shingles were ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... Ludmila' (1858), Glinka's second work, is founded upon a fantastic Russian legend of magic and necromancy. It has not the national and patriotic interest of 'Life for the Czar,' but as music it deserves to rank higher. Berlioz thought very highly of it. Nevertheless it may be doubted whether, at this time of day, there is any ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... treated this and other pseudo-sciences nearly always with toleration; and showed itself actually hostile even to genuine science only when a charge of heresy together with necromancy was also in question—which certainly was often the case. A point which it would be interesting to decide is this: whether and in what cases the Dominican (and also the Franciscan) Inquisitors in Italy were conscious of the falsehood of the charges, and yet ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... that links it with the stories of Abdullah bin Fazil [451] and Abu Sir and Abu Kir. [452] Very striking is the account of the Mahrabis whom Judar pushed into the lake, and who appeared with the soles of their feet above the water and none can forget the sights which the necromancy of the third Maghrabi put before the eyes of Judar. "Oh, Judar, fear not," said the Moor, "for they are semblances without life." The long and bloody romance of Gharib and Ajib is followed by thirteen storyettes, all apparently historical, and then comes the detective work of ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... remarkable that Yanus and Guianes are homonymous. In short it appears that these books are the source of all that has been transmitted to us by the Greeks and Latins in every science, even in alchymy, necromancy, etc. What is most to be regretted in their loss is that part which related to the principles of medicine and diet, in which the Egyptians appear to have made a considerable progress, and to have delivered ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... put forth that it is the disembodied spirits of dead men who make the communications, the Bible reader is at once aware of a conflict of claims. In times when the Bible was written, there were practices among men which went under the names of "enchantment," "sorcery," "witchcraft," "necromancy," "divination," "consulting with familiar spirits," etc. These practices were all more or less related, but some of them bear an unmistakable meaning. Thus, "necromancy" is defined to mean "a pretended communication with ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... end of that period as the day they were penned. In them the atmosphere of, the river and its environment—its pictures, its thousand aspects of life—are reproduced with what is no less than literary necromancy. Not only does he make you smell the river you can fairly hear it breathe. On the appearance of the first ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... fluctuating over the broad expanse of the mountains, and the witch-face silently mowing and grimacing at the world below, albeit seen by no human being except perchance some dweller at the little house on the spur, struck aghast by this unwelcome apparition evoked by the necromancy of the breeze and the sheen and the shadow, marking this as an ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... corrupted guardians of the human race, they seek the same ends,—to divert worship from the true God, and by the destruction of man, to contrive a solace for their own perdition. They are the inventors of astrology, sooth-saying, divination, necromancy, and black magic; they were once the ministers of God, and still have a presentiment of his acts, so that they can sometimes speak truly of the future by means of oracles and magicians, claiming the while the credit of bringing that to pass which in fact they only foresaw. Milton, ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... overflowed, and gasping and shaken by his cough he burst forth with: "It will soon be over—I feel it within me, and yet I am no nearer to the goal. All the elements of nature I have called to my aid—all the spirits 'twixt Heaven and Earth over whom necromancy has any power have I made subject to my will and have commanded them to help me—to what end? There stands the elixir and is hardly more valuable than the small beer with which the servant down-stairs quenches his thirst, indeed it is less useful ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... us!—what necromancy is this! It seems to sink into the mountain—top—why, I only see the uppermost branches now. It has disappeared, and yet the outline of the hill is as distinct and well defined as ever; I can even see the cattle on the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... motion alike for noble or ignoble ends—alike by men, beasts, devils, or gods. Seeing something mysterious and wonderful, he believes all things mysterious and wonderful; and he is afloat without shore or compass, on the wildest sea of superstition and necromancy. He sees a god in every phenomenon, and fears a sorcerer in every enemy. Life, under such a system of polytheism and wild belief, is a constant scene of fears and alarms. Fear is the predominating passion, and ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... irrepressible buffoonery of youth. Others, again, fewer in number, and mystically given, insisted that the corpse was bona fide necessary to the exhibition, and that the disclosures and allusions which had astonished so many people were distinctly due to necromancy. ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... theme, I bade him think Of Auerbach's cellar, and that wassail night Whole centuries ago: and then in phrase, Better than that which cometh to me now I likened it—the necromancy which Drew richest vintage from the rugged boards— Unto the spell wherewith he'd bound himself— The spell by which he drew from simplest things Conceptions beautiful, as Faust drew wine From the rude table; for this friend of mine Was a true poet, though he seldom ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... variety of singular accidents that I became intimate with a Sicilian priest, who was a man of very elevated genius and well instructed in both Latin and Greek letters. In the course of conversation one day we were led to talk about the art of necromancy; apropos of which I said: "Throughout my whole life I have had the most intense desire to see or learn something of this art." Thereto the priest replied: "A stout soul and a steadfast must the man have who sets himself to such an enterprise." I answered that of strength and steadfastness ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... as animism or spirit-worship, or rather, the propitiation of spirits both good and evil on certain occasions, principally in times of trouble. The propitiation of these spirits is carried out either by priests (lyngdohs), or by old men well versed in the arts of necromancy, and as the lyngdoh or wise man deals with good as well as evil spirits, and, as often as not, with the good spirits of ancestors, the propitiation of these spirits may be said to partake of the nature of Shamanism. A very prominent feature of the Khasi ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... both were equally well founded: both were jugglers, and merited to have fared alike; but society, while it lavished all its credence and all its patronage upon the one, denounced the other as impostors. One colossal system of necromancy filled Europe; but the age gave the priest a monopoly; and so jealously did it guard his rights, that the conjuror who did not wear a cassock was banished or burned. We can assign no reason for the ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... Bibliotaph's collection revealed the fact that he had either used necromancy or given many gifts. The reader may imagine some such conversation between the great collector and one ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... Springtime, I am sitting here, your guest. Nay—I think it is a vision, or a fancy - Part of dreamland Necromancy; And I question: is it true That the great warm hearts of you, Heard the winging of that singing in the West, Heard the chiming of my rhyming From the farmhouse ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and miracle-working line is modern Spiritualism. Multitudes of people of all classes are believers in this soul-destroying doctrine. The system is generally acknowledged to be but a modern form of what was anciently styled witchcraft, necromancy, magic, etc., while the mediums of to-day are of the same class as those formerly known as "witches," "sorcerers," "magicians." This they themselves often admit. The system is so well known both in doctrine and in its pernicious effects that I will not devote further ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... but wanted to perform some great exploit, that would give them a reputation everywhere for courage. There was the town of Hvitaby (now Whitby, in Yorkshire, England), which many great warriors had attacked, their father among them, but all had been driven back by the power of magic or necromancy. If they could take this stronghold it would give them infinite honor, said Iwar, and to ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... standeth in the air, By necromancy placed there, That it no tempests needs to fear, Which way soe'er it blow it; And somewhat southward toward the noon, Whence lies a way up to the moon, And thence the Fairy can as soon Pass to the ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... necromancy, there was conjured in Hazel's mind a picture of Reddin—flushed, hard-eyed, with an expression that aroused in her misgiving and even terror. So she had seen him just before she fled to Vessons. At the remembrance she flushed so deeply that Mrs. Marston congratulated ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... little uncomfortably perhaps, and said it reminded one of the story of Giles de Rays, marechal of France, who was said to have killed and tortured to death in a few years no less than one hundred and sixty women and children for the purposes of necromancy, and who was executed for his crimes at Nantes. But Shorthouse would not "rise," and only returned to ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... these proposals was Sheridan who, on 18th June brilliantly declaimed against the formation of a great Regular Army, as alien to the spirit of our people, and by all the arts of rhetorical necromancy sought to raise the spectre of a Standing Army. When others bemoaned the threatened increase of taxation and Windham and Craufurd ("Craufurd of the Light Division") criticized the measure severely, the Opposition cherished the hope of defeating ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... angered at this blasphemy, would ill denote the pity that I feel," said Mark, more excited at the charge of necromancy, than he was willing to own; "and yet to-suffer so fatal an error to spread among these deluded victims of Satan, would be neglect of duty. Thou hast heard some legend of thy wild people, man of the Wampanoags, which may heap double perdition on thy soul, lest thou shouldst ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... heard it, and listened and believed, that The Rat had taken fire. His imagination seized upon the idea, as it would have seized on some theory of necromancy proved ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... expected no such thing. He sought only a new passage to the East Indies. He insisted, with a noble constancy, that he should find land in sailing west. But he did not expect to find, as if by the power of necromancy, that a vast continent should rise up before his eyes. And it is altogether questionable, whether the great navigator did not die without a true knowledge of this fact. It will be recollected that it was not until six years after ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... nothing else of Mr. Kipling's existed, his memory might live by it, as does the memory of the American Irishman by the "Diamond Lens." The sham magic of "In the House of Suddhu" is as terrible as true necromancy could be, and I have a faiblesse for the "Bisara of Pooree." "The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows" is a realistic version of "The English Opium Eater," and more powerful by dint of less rhetoric. As for the sketches of native life—for example, "On the ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... strictly a term belonging to the Indian mythology and necromancy, and is constantly used to indicate a spirit. It has not the regular termination of the noun in win, and seems rather verbal in its aspect, and so far as we can decipher its meaning, mon is a syllable having a ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... possibly contained a pre-buddhist stratum of Iranian ideas.[1017] In later times it adopted or travestied Buddhist dogma, ritual and literature, much as Taoism did in China, but still remained a repository of necromancy, magic, animal sacrifices, devil-dancing, and such like practices, which have in all ages corrupted Tibetan Buddhism though ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... I replied, but with a little misgiving, for no one knows what necromancy this fellow is capable of, and I had already conjured up visions of the Lord Lieutenant and the Dowager This and the Countess That—"but mind you, my speech is to come in at the end; and I promise you they won't have to look ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... maid with Fancy Free; If Cupid's necromancy Imprison not her heart, maybe, It will arrest ...
— Happy Days • Oliver Herford
... did Maitresse Aimable know? By what necromancy had this fat, silent fisher-wife learned the secret which was the heart of her life, the soul of her being—which was Philip? She was frightened, but danger made ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... divinities. The lower or Titanic powers being subdued, chaos ceased, and creation began in the reign of the divinities of mind and love; but the chaotic gods still existed in the abyss, and the notion of evoking them was the origin, the idea, of the Greek necromancy. ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... the influence of music seem inexplicable to the man who idly dreams that his life began less than a hundred years ago! But the mystery lightens for whomsoever learns that the substance of Self is older than the sun. He finds that music is a Necromancy;—he feels that to every ripple of melody, to every billow of harmony, there answers within him, out of the Sea of Death and Birth, some eddying immeasurable ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... leaning back, his hands behind his head, gazing up at the ceiling. "Hello, here's Leslie! What did you find, Doctor?" The coroner had entered with a look of awe on his face, as if Kennedy had directed him by some sort of necromancy. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... defeated in battle the King of the Golden Islands—a magician entered the realm. This magician, in the employ of this wicked king, entered a room in the palace where your Highness lay sleeping and by an act of necromancy changed you ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... speaks of him: "It is not long since there was in this city (Florence) a great master in necromancy, who was called Michele Scotto, because he was a ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... asked a big Baluba if he did not think that the aeroplane was a wonderful thing the barbarian simply grunted and replied, "White man can do anything." He summed up the native attitude toward his conqueror. I believe that if a white man performed the most astounding feat of magic or necromancy the native would not express the ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... Lucifer' says in regard to it: 'I enclose a narration of facts. Not noted for assurance, I yet feel well assured that its publication in THE CONTINENTAL 'will do uses.'' Should there be any among our readers who have inquired into our modern necromancy, they will not fail to recognize in the excited, wild, incoherent, and uncultured jargon of the spirits of 'The Love Lucifer,' the same style and character evinced by those to whom they may have been ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... hero of the Talmudists, a fine Arabian story is told. This king was an adept in necromancy, and a male and a female devil were always in waiting for an emergency. It is observable, that the Arabians, who have many stories concerning Solomon, always describe him as a magician. His adventures with Aschmedai, the prince of devils, are numerous; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the character of Dr. Holcomb that gives the latter. He was a great man and a splendid thinker. That he should have been led into a maze of cheap necromancy is, on the face, improbable. He had a wonderful mind. For years he had been battering down the scepticism that had ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... soul can hold these things. No one knows how the miracle is done. No phenomenon in nature, no process in chemistry, no chapter in necromancy can ever help us to begin to understand this amazing operation. For, think of it, the past is not only FOCUSED there, in a man's soul, it IS there. How could it be reflected from there if it were not there? All things that he has ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... more crossed the wide Atlantic—and (not by the necromancy of imagination but by a longer and more tedious transit) found myself in an English meadow,—I exclaimed with ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... death are before them, and each within their reach, would they but think, or try to think, that Forgetfulness will come to their relief, and lull them into ease, they could stay their hand, and lay hold of life. But there is a necromancy in wretchedness that entombs the mind, and increases the misery, by shutting out every ray of light and hope. It makes the wretched falsely believe they will be wretched ever. It is the most fatal of all dangerous delusions; and it is ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... to come, according to Nucingen, the Napoleon of finance; commerce by which a man can grasp the totality of fractions, and skim the profits before there are any. Gigantic idea! one way of pouring hope into pint cups,—in short, a new necromancy! So far, we have only got ten or a dozen hard heads initiated into the cabalistic secrets of these ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... opportunities to embody them, it seemed to be no longer the same high and mysterious faculty that so ruled the tides of the feelings of others. He then appeared a more ordinary poet—— a skilful verse-maker. The necromancy which held the reader spellbound became ineffectual; and the charm and the glory which interested so intensely, and shone so radiantly on his configurations from realities, all failed and faded; for his genius dealt not with airy fancies, but ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... knights, as we read of in the romances of chivalry. Necromancer, lit. one who by magical power can commune with the dead (Gk. nekros, a corpse); hence a sorcerer. From confusion of the first syllable with that of the Lat. niger, black, the art of necromancy came to ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... people thus afflicted, he found his chief employment in exhibiting these miserable sores to any who would give themselves the pain of viewing them. A third guest was a hypochondriac, whose imagination wrought necromancy in his outward and inward world, and caused him to see monstrous faces in the household fire, and dragons in the clouds of sunset, and fiends in the guise of beautiful women, and something ugly or wicked beneath all the pleasant surfaces ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... our career; but the relations of men are far more complicated and numerous than of yore; and in the play of the passions, and in the devices of creative spirits, that have thus a proportionately greater sphere for their action, there are spells of social sorcery more potent than all the necromancy of Merlin or ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... harmless enough as Mr. Bultitude took it in his hand; there was no kindly hand to hold him back, no warning voice to hint that there might possibly be sleeping within that small marble block the pent-up energy of long-forgotten Eastern necromancy, just as ready as ever to awake into action at the first words which had ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... all, excepting only such as he happened to write himself. And these were not a few. On all subjects known to man, from the Thirty-nine Articles of our English church down to pyrotechnics, legerdemain, magic, both black and white, thaumaturgy, and necromancy, he favored the world (which world was the nursery where I lived amongst my sisters) with his select opinions. On this last subject especially—of necromancy—he was very great: witness his profound work, though but a fragment, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... manifestations of the unseen world. A typical answer is given to that appeal by a distinguished writer, Doctor Inge, Dean of St. Paul's, London, who declares: "If this kind of after-life were true, this portrayed in the pitiable revival of necromancy in which many desolate hearts have sought spurious satisfaction, it would, indeed, be a melancholy postponement or negation of all we hope ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... there stopped at the hut of the Bee-man a Junior Sorcerer. This young person, who was a student of magic, necromancy, and the kindred arts, was much interested in the Bee-man, whom he had frequently noticed in his wanderings, and he considered him an admirable subject for study. He had got a great deal of useful practice by endeavoring to find out, by the various rules and laws of sorcery, exactly why the old ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... Mataram?'" The invocation was flung back to him in a ragged shout. Here and there a student leapt to his feet brandishing a clenched fist. "Compose your laudable intoxication, brothers. I do not say, 'Be violent.' There is a necromancy of the spirit more potent than weapons of the flesh:—the delusion of irresistible suggestion that will conquer even ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... though it is extremely doubtful whether he was ever guilty of the charges brought against him, was Henry Cornelius Agrippa, who was born at Cologne in 1486, a man of noble birth and learned in Medicine, Law, and Theology. His supposed devotion to necromancy and his adventurous career have made his story a favourite one for romance-writers. We find him in early life fighting in the Italian war under the Emperor Maximilian, whose private secretary he was. The honour of knighthood conferred upon him did not satisfy his ambition, and he betook himself to ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... much divided about. This great point of difference was with regard to spiritualism. Browning did not dislike spiritualism; he disliked spiritualists. The difference is tremendous. Unfortunately many of the interpreters of spiritualism have degraded it into a kind of blatant necromancy which is in no way dignified or useful. It is entirely ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... this especially because of the fine use made of antique green tiles in the polychromatic roofing. Surely the august Spirit of Kwammu Tenno might well rejoice in this charming evocation of the past by architectural necromancy! ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... turned sharply. "Do no such thing! There may be spells, but the worst spell here would be a battle!" We let fly no arrow, but the belief persisted that here was seen veritably at work the necromancy that all along ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... us by the Chorus at the commencement of the play as a scholar of repute, 'glutted now with learning's golden gifts,' and about to turn aside to the study of necromancy. Accordingly he appears in his study rejecting logic as no end in itself, law as servile, medicine because he has exhausted its possible limits, divinity because it tells him that the reward of sin is death. Upon sin his mind is set all the time, so that the reminder ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... iv.), that the concave mirror was probably used as the instrument for bringing the gods before the people. The throwing of the images formed by such mirrors upon smoke or against fire, so as to make them more distinct, seems to have been a favourite device in the ancient art of necromancy. ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... the poet, and so you want Something—what is it?—a theme, a fancy? Something or other the Muse won't grant To your old poetical necromancy; Why, one half you poets—you can't deny— Don't know the Muse when you chance to meet her, But sit in your attics and mope and sigh For a faineant goddess to drop from the sky, When flesh and blood may be standing by Quite at your service, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... said to Rabbi Abhu, "Ye say that the souls of the righteous are treasured up under the throne of glory; how then had the Witch of Endor power to bring up the prophet Samuel by necromancy?" The Rabbi replied, "Because that occurred within twelve months after his death; for we are taught that during twelve months after death the body is preserved and the soul soars up and down, but that after twelve months the body is destroyed ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... was looking at them. In their dumb stupidity was a suggestion of the foe. The suggestion amused. Smiling still he raised a cup. Abruptly, before it could reach his lips, it fell with a clatter on the lapis lazuli of the floor beneath. Before him, on that wall, beneath those beasts, the necromancy of the priesthood had projected an armless, fluidic hand that mounted, descended, tracing with a forefinger the three luminous hierograms ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... why of course he would worship her! When Cupid finds the soft spot in the hearts of such men They are ideal husbands." Maurice Somerville Felt the whole world was shaping itself to his will. And his heart stirred with joy as, by thought necromancy, He made the near future unfold to his fancy, And saw Ruth the bride of his friend, and the place She left vacant supplied with the beauty and grace Of this woman he longed for, the love of his life, Fair Mabel, his ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... useful to his people. Orat. Fest. de Vitae Immort. Spe., &c., auct. Ph. Alb. Stapfer, p. 12 13, 20. Berne, 1787. ——Moses, as well from the intimations scattered in his writings, the passage relating to the translation of Enoch, (Gen. v. 24,) the prohibition of necromancy, (Michaelis believes him to be the author of the Book of Job though this opinion is in general rejected; other learned writers consider this Book to be coeval with and known to Moses,) as from his long residence in Egypt, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... housemaid's fancy Lightly turns from pot and pan To the greater necromancy Of a young unmarried man. You can hold her through the winter, And she'll work around and sing, But it's just as good as certain She will marry ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... not,' said Sir Owen. 'I seek my dear wife and her dominions, and have been seeking them these many months. But I fear me some evil necromancy hath been reared against me, so that I may not find her again, and she must be in much sorrow and misery in my absence. And if I never see my lady in life again, yet must I seek ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... friends, or landscape views, may be hidden on the sensitive surface from the eye, but they are ready to make their appearance as soon as proper developers are resorted to. A spectre is concealed on a silver or glassy surface until, by our necromancy, we make it come forth into the visible world. Upon the walls of our most private apartments, where we think the eye of intrusion is altogether shut out and our retirement can never be profaned, there exist the vestiges of all our acts, silhouettes ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... conjecture. Whatever his views were, or whatever effects the execution of them might have, his work can only be laid before the public at present as a matter of entertainment. Even as such, some apology for it is necessary. Miracles, visions, necromancy, dreams, and other preternatural events, are exploded now even from romances. That was not the case when our author wrote; much less when the story itself is supposed to have happened. Belief in every kind of prodigy was so established ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... Popishe Prelates," and from this work, as it is incorporated in those of Tyndale, Barnes, and Frith, printed by Day in 1572, fol., the reader is presented with the following amusing specimen of the author's vein of humour and indignation: "And as I heard it spoken of divers, he made, by craft of necromancy, graven imagery to bear upon him; wherewith he bewitched the king's mind—and made the king to doat upon him, more than he ever did on any lady or gentlewoman: so that now the king's grace followed ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of one suddenly roused from sleep, know myself ungrateful. These silvery-laughing folk who now toddle along beside me upon their noisy little clogs, stepping very fast to get a peep at my foreign face, these but a moment ago were visions of archaic grace, illusions of necromancy, delightful phantoms; and I feel a vague resentment against them for thus ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... arise, and the true point of inquiry is, whether our constitution meant that they should be finally settled, or whether they are to remain suspended between heaven and earth, until they are compelled to make their appearance by the necromancy of legal subtlety, or occasionally ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... useless as I do. But then if the power to build a tree be conceded to pure matter, what an amazing expansion of our notions of the 'potency of matter' is implied in the concession' Think of the acorn, of the earth, and of the solar light and heat—was ever such necromancy dreamt of as the production of that massive trunk, those swaying boughs and whispering leaves, from the interaction of these three factors? In this interaction, moreover, consists what we call life. It will be seen that I am not in the least insensible to the wonder ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... with matter by which alone they can manifest themselves here and now, and that personality persists beyond bodily death." Nineteen hundred and fourteen proclaimed telepathy a "harmless toy," which, with necromancy, has taken the place of "eschatology and the inculcation of a ferocious moral code." And yet it is on telepathy, if we are to believe the daily papers, that Sir Oliver Lodge largely relies for his proofs. ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... to Ross of Balneel, with whom he obtained a considerable estate. She was an able, politic, and high-minded woman, so successful in what she undertook, that the vulgar, no way partial to her husband or her family, imputed her success to necromancy. According to the popular belief, this Dame Margaret purchased the temporal prosperity of her family from the Master whom she served under a singular condition, which is thus narrated by the historian of her grandson, the great Earl of Stair: "She lived to a great ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... it mean? By what inconceivable necromancy could a paved street with houses, trees and buildings be spirited away and the space it had ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... this point of view, which is of course largely foreign to our minds to-day. The ordinary Englishman is not a great believer in devils or spirits of evil: though he does in some instances believe in ghosts, and is inclined to the practice of what in former ages was called necromancy—the attempt to establish an illicit connexion with the spirits of the departed—under the modern name of psychical research. There are, no doubt, some forms of psychical research which are genuinely scientific and legitimate. ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... wharves and public squares and tenement roofs where she had seen all the young men and women making love were heavily carpeted drawing-rooms, broad manor, house verandas, and the fragrant conservatories of luxurious mansions! But Cordelia managed all this mental necromancy easily, to her own satisfaction. And now she was tripping down the bare wooden stairs beside the dark greasy wall, and thinking of her future husband, the rich Mayor, who must be either the bachelor police captain of the precinct, ...
— Different Girls • Various
... What's Juliot to me? I was but made fancy By some necromancy That much of my life claims the ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... fellow named Paolo Giovio, Bishop of Nocera, a charlatan and a wretched dabbler in necromancy and something of an alchemist, who has lately written the life of another Pope's son—Cesare Borgia, who lived nigh upon half a century ago, and who did more than any man to consolidate the States of the Church, though his ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... evidently united the highest departments of her art with its humblest offices; and possessed those nobler aspirations of the soul, which, during the middle ages, elevated in considerable degree the professors of necromancy. But our purpose is not now to determine her pretensions. We have but to exhibit and to ascertain a small specimen of her skill in the vulgar business of fortune-telling—an art which will continue to be received among men, to a greater or less extent, so long as they shall possess a hope which ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... mine, how goes it, Since you've taken you a mate?— Your smile, though, plainly shows it Is a very happy state! Dan Cupid's necromancy! You must sit you down and dine, And lubricate your fancy With a ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... rested were set forth in ten rules. The most interesting are the following: (1) Books printed before 1515 condemned by popes or council; (2) Versions of the Bible; (3) books of heretics; (4) obscene books; (5) works on witchcraft and necromancy. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... esteemed a part of judiciary Astrology: Sometimes in their own hopes and feares, called Thumomancy, or Presage: Sometimes in the Prediction of Witches, that pretended conference with the dead; which is called Necromancy, Conjuring, and Witchcraft; and is but juggling and confederate knavery: Sometimes in the Casuall flight, or feeding of birds; called Augury: Sometimes in the Entrayles of a sacrificed beast; which was Aruspicina: Sometimes in Dreams: Sometimes in Croaking ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... quite unconscious of any necromancy at work upon his daughter. He smoked his pipe, made notes in his field-book, directing an occasional remark toward his apprentice, enjoying in his tranquil, middle-age way the beauty and ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... who have many traditions regarding Solomon, invariably represent him as adept in necromancy, and as being intimately acquainted with the language of beasts and birds. Josephus, the great Jewish historian, distinctly states that Solomon possessed the art of expelling demons, that he composed such incantations also by which distempers are alleviated, and that ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... as we had every reason to believe from after experience, an astral body subject to a free will and an active intelligence. With that astral body, space ceased to exist. The vast distance between London and Aswan became as naught; and whatever power of necromancy the Sorceress had might have been exercised over the dead mother, and possibly ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... experimental proof to establish the undulatory theory of light. While the records of science are strewn on every page with accounts of such triumphs of human skill and intellect, we see no need of resorting to fiction or to necromancy for the gratification of a natural ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the Nutrition Expert was asked to talk about "potato substitutes" and expected to exercise some necromancy whereby that which was not a potato might become a potato. Now, the Nutrition Expert was very imperturbable—not at all disturbed by the calamity which had befallen our tables. That unfeeling person saw potatoes, not in ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... thou shalt have it: for I love the bold adventurer that trusts himself hardily upon the great deep;" answered the unabashed Pippo. "My first lessons in necromancy were received on the mole of Napoli, amid burly Inglesi, straight-nosed Greeks, swarthy Sicilians, and Maltese with spirits as fine as the gold of their own chains. This was the school in which I learned to know my art, and an apt scholar I proved in all that touches the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... of necromancy were the learning of the period, and Sir Kenneth heard his companion's confession of diabolical descent without any disbelief, and without much wonder; yet not without a secret shudder at finding himself in this fearful place, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... proved wholly inane, this huge world-ocean of Intrigues and Imperial Necromancy; ran dry at last into absolute nothing even for the Kaiser, and might as well not have been. And Mother and Father, on the Prussian side, were driven to despair and pretty nearly to delirium by it; and our poor young Fritz got tormented, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... that is to be reputed the most foolish which deals with the belief in Necromancy, the sister of Alchemy, which gives birth to simple and natural things. But it is all the more worthy of reprehension than alchemy, because it brings forth nothing but what is like itself, that is, ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... claim the wandering eye of fancy, Physics will grasp imagination's wings, Plain fact exorcise fiction's necromancy, The workshop hammer where ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Necessity, to cut asunder these so blissful bonds." He even appears surprised at the "Duenna Cousin," whoever she may have been, "in whose meagre hunger-bitten philosophy, the religion of young hearts was, from the first, faintly approved of." We, even at such distance, can explain it without necromancy. Let the Philosopher answer this one question: What figure, at that period, was a Mrs. Teufelsdrockh likely to make in polished society? Could she have driven so much as a brass-bound Gig, or even ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... them, would be lit with the fire of magic. Words of destiny like blood-hued rubies; words fraught with ominous opal warning; words that glittered with the biting brilliance of diamonds—they were his to link together with thought: he was their master. The necromancy of language ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... place and Patricia turned her attention to the laughable parodies and excellent dances and necromancy that filled the first half of the program. It was all hugely diverting, and she laughed and applauded with the rest, but all the while at the back of her mind there was a little uneasiness, a sense ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... kinds,—the dark and evil, appertaining to witchcraft or necromancy; the pure and beneficent, which is but philosophy, applied to certain mysteries in Nature remote from the beaten tracks of science, but which deepened the wisdom of ancient sages, and can yet unriddle the myths of ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... efforts of the Jews were not without success. The baptism of the pious Olga marks an era in Russian Christianity, the beginning of the "Judaizing heresy," which centuries of persecution only strengthened. In 1425, Zacharias of Kiev, who is reputed to have "studied astrology, necromancy, and various other magic arts," converted the priest Dionis, the Archbishop Aleksey, and, through the latter, many more clergymen of Novgorod, Moscow, and Pskov. Aleksey became a devout Jew. He called himself Abraham and his wife Sarah. Yet, strange to say, he retained the ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... colored churches of the cities and those of the poor negro districts, in some of which not merely have the old superstitions been retained but there has been a marked relapse into the Obeah rites and serpent worship of African heathenism. The rank superstitions, the beliefs in necromancy and witchcraft, the wild orgies of excitement, the utter divorce between the moral virtues and what is called religion, which obtain among the millions of the plantation negroes of the South, are but little understood. By one who knows it, the ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various
... was all that his heart could find to say. It was sufficient, for the present, to ring the tuneful changes on that novel word, and to clasp the little hand that trembled under its load of happiness, and to press that little magic circle, out of which the necromancy of Marriage should conjure such wonders ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... a very curious pamphlet on this subject, by SIR FRANCIS PALGRAVE. It is called The Confessions of Richard Bishop, Robert Seymour, and Sir Edward Neville, before the Privy Council, touching Prophecie, Necromancy, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... their home." On this wise befel it with Alaeddin and the Maghrabi; but withal the King's son-in-law escaped not wholly from the Accursed, albeit the body had been burnt and the ashes scattered in air. For the villain had a brother yet more villainous than himself, and a greater adept in necromancy, geomancy and astromancy; and, even as the old saw saith "A bean and 'twas split;"[FN210] so each one dwelt in his own quarter of the globe that he might fill it with his sorcery, his fraud and his treason.[FN211] Now, one day of the days it fortuned that the Moorman's brother would learn ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... fashion Of fairer maids, who love, or think they do. 'Tis not the man they love, but what he seems; A bright Hyperion, moving stately through The rosy ether of exalted dreams. Alas! that love, the purest and most real, Clusters forever round some form ideal; And martial things have some strange necromancy To captivate romantic maiden fancy. The very word "Lieutenant" hath a charm, E'en coupled with a vulgar face and form, A shriveled heart and microscopic wit, Scarce for a coachman or a barber fit; His untried ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... Nentres of the land of Garlot wedded Elaine. All this was done at the request of King Uther. And the third sister Morgan le Fay was put to school in a nunnery, and there she learned so much that she was a great clerk of necromancy. And after she was wedded to King Uriens of the land of Gore, that was Sir ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... knowledge is deposited in the dead archives of literature; and probably had there been no Gypsies, with them would have died the belief in chiromancy, as is the case with respect to astrology, necromancy, oneirocritica, and the ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... of king Lear. Geoffrey of Monmouth says that "This Prince Bladud was a very ingenious man and taught necromancy in his kingdom; nor did he leave off pursuing his magic operations till he attempted to fly to the upper regions of the air with wings which he had prepared, and fell down upon the temple of Apollo in the city of Trinovantum, where he was ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... susceptible of a division into several classes or sections: Religious Cults, Necromancy, Magic, Second Sight, Divination, Astrology, Palmistry, of which all have their special literatures and bibliographies. Major Irwin recently sold an extensive series of works on these and kindred topics. Cornelius Agrippa, Ashmole, Bulwer, Lilly, Partridge, Gadbury are among ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... the wonderful necromancy the gods had used to set their lives to the sweet music of happiness. How Lauzanne the Despised had saved Ringwood to her father; how he had won Alan's supposed price of redemption for Mortimer; how he had stood sturdy and true to the girl of much faith and all gentleness. And the ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... which he had been conscious of early that morning, surged for a moment through him, a sip of champagne brought quick relief and gilded the scene and his spirits with its necromancy. He felt dizzy but blissful. He became drowsy.... He had sunk into a dream, glorious then ugly, foolish ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... the same kind of superstition which many of our own day are turning to. Offered the Spirit of God for the asking, offered it by the Lord himself, in the misery of their unbelief they betake themselves to necromancy instead, and raise the dead to ask their advice, AND FOLLOW IT, and will find some day that Satan had not forgotten how to dress like an angel of light. Nay, he can be more cunning with the demands of the time. We are clever: he will be cleverer. Why should he dress and not speak like an angel ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... received from them priceless benefits; from the doctor, health and life; from the teacher, the noble culture of the soul. Both are our friends, and deserve our most sincere thanks, not so much by their merchantable art, as by their frank goodwill."[19] The practice of necromancy in the time of Nero had grown to such an extent that an edict of banishment was issued against all magicians, but this did not lessen the popularity of the magicians, who indeed prospered under the semblance of persecution, and were honoured in times of public ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... Stacey, an ecclesiastic, much connected with the duke as well as with Burdet, was exposed to a like iniquitous and barbarous prosecution. This clergyman, being more learned in mathematics and astronomy than was usual in that age, lay under the imputation of necromancy with the ignorant vulgar; and the court laid hold of this popular rumor to effect his destruction. He was brought to his trial for that imaginary crime; many of the greatest peers countenanced the prosecution ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... and Syria (kindred peoples) may have instilled the less scientific rites of Fetishism. It is in the early accounts of that people that sorcery, whatever its character and profession, with the allied arts of divination, necromancy, incantations, &c., appears most flourishing. The Mosaic penalty, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,' and the comprehensive injunction, 'There shall not be found among you that maketh his son or his daughter to pass ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... dwelt then in the parts of Hungary, in the land which is called the "Seven Castles," a certain rich nobleman, worth 3000 marks a year, a philosopher, practised from his youth in secular literature, but nevertheless learned in the sciences of Necromancy and Astronomy. This master Klingsohr was sent for by the Prince to judge between the songs of these knights aforesaid. Who, before he was introduced to the Landgrave, sitting one night in Eisenach, in the court of his lodging, looked very earnestly upon the stars, ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... Have you read the Conte bleu (a lying story)?" he asked everybody who went to see him; and, when he was told of the great effect which M. Necker's work was producing on the public: "I know, I know," said the veteran minister, shrugging his shoulders, "we have fallen from Turgomancy into Necromancy." ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... morning away went I and my fellows to the chase. Their conversation turned on my necromancy, and the manner in which I could envelope myself in a cloud, or make myself bullet-proof. "What is that you are talking about?" said I.—"Some of these unbelieving folks," answered my huntsman, "affirm your honour is unable to ward off balls."—"Well, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... said, "to have tact, to be able to play upon the peculiar talents and specialities, the cosmopolitanism of the grocer and the world-old necromancy of the chemist. Where ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... stronger, have yet more power to work evil. This vampire which is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men, he is of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages, he have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply, the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command; he is brute, and more than brute; he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not; he can, within his range, direct ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... thousands to pretend to it and millions to believe in it. From the second sprang the absurd search for the philosopher's stone, which was to create plenty by changing all metals into gold; and from the third, the false sciences of astrology, divination, and their divisions of necromancy, chiromancy, augury, with all their train of signs, portents, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... called, says Keating, from their skill in necromancy, for which some were so famous ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... period also must be referred the rise of that system of necromancy which, originating in America, has had great vogue in other countries, and here in its native land has taken such form as really to constitute a new cult. Making no mention of sporadic instances of what in earlier generations would have been called (and properly enough) ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Toboso for the study, it is said, of magic, but more likely of chemistry, algebra, and other sciences, which, altogether mistaken by the ignorant and vulgar, and imperfectly understood even by those who studied them, were supposed to be allied to necromancy, or at least to natural magic. It was, of course, the business of the Inquisition to purify whatever such pursuits had left of suspicious Catholicism, and their labours cost as much blood on accusations of witchcraft and magic as for heresy ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... in the briefest summary; his own at great length, so that it is not easy to know how their reasoning really sped. Her charges were his authorship of the "Monstrous Regiment of Women"; that he caused great sedition and slaughter in England; and that he was accused of doing what he did by necromancy. The rest ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... deeply she loved him. We have all had such experiences—we live along, thinking of things after a certain fashion, and suddenly there comes a day when everything seems changed. It was so with Adrienne. All things seemed changed to her, and in that bitter necromancy her pride was humbled. Wherever she went there was but one dear face she longed to see—one dear face with the quiet eyes she loved. There were days when she so longed to see him, when the sound of ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... ornament and use. The good gossips slyly peep into the covers of Matthew Henry, and regard their retiring pastor as a more learned man than they had suspected, while the black letter-press of Lorenzo Dow, and John Bunyan, and Fox's "Book of Martyrs" touches them like so much necromancy. The faithful old clock, whose disorders are crises in our humdrum pastoral year, is stopped and disjointed, much to our marvel, and all the spare straw in the barn is brought to protect the large gilt-edged cups and saucers, which say upon their edges, "To our pastor," and "To our pastor's ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... day, sir. (Aline much terrified.) ALEXIS Good day—I believe you are a Sorcerer. WELLS Yes, sir, we practice Necromancy in all its branches. We've a choice assortment of wishing-caps, divining-rods, amulets, charms, and counter-charms. We can cast you a nativity at a low figure, and we have a horoscope at three-and-six that we can guarantee. Our Abudah chests, each containing a patent Hag ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... alectryomantic ate up the pickles that were posited on the letters T.H.E.O.D. Or, for the more certainty, will you have a trial of your fortune by the art of aruspiciny, by augury, or by extispiciny? By turdispiciny, quoth Panurge. Or yet by the mystery of necromancy? I will, if you please, suddenly set up again and revive someone lately deceased, as Apollonius of Tyane did to Achilles, and the Pythoness in the presence of Saul; which body, so raised up and requickened, will ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... consider that it would be in effect nothing else than a capacity of transporting himself at any moment into any scene—a gift as great as can be possessed by a disembodied spirit: and suppose, also, this necromancy embracing not only the present but the past, and enabling us seemingly to enter into the very bodily presence of men long since gathered to the dust; to behold them in act as they lived, but—with greater privilege than ever was granted to the companions of those transient acts of life—to see them ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... comparison of this story with that of the Greek Eriphyle. Irish legendary history describes a similar battle in which the slain revive each night and renew the fight daily, as occurring in the wanderings of the Tuatha De Danann before they reached Ireland. According to Keating, they learnt the art of necromancy in the East, and taught ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday
... reputation. After looking Panurge in the face and making conclusions by metoposcopy and physiognomy, he casts his horoscope secundum artem, then, taking a branch of tamarisk, a favorite tree from which to get the divining rod, he names some twenty-nine or thirty mantic arts, from pyromancy to necromancy, by which he offers to predict his future. While full of rare humor, this chapter throws an interesting light on the extraordinary number of modes of divination that have been employed. Small wonder that Panurge repented of his ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... Peter Poyas, Denmark Vesey and others against whom charges had then been lodged. By eavesdropping those who were now convicted and confronting them with their own words, confessions were procured implicating many others who in turn were put on trial, including Gullah Jack whose necromancy could not save him. In all 130 negroes were arrested, including nine colored freemen. Of the whole number, twenty-five were discharged by the committee of vigilance and 27 others by the court. Nine more were acquitted with recommendations ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Platonism, he had nothing but contempt for the later Neoplatonism, the theurgic and theosophic apparatus of Iamblichus and his friends. I have said nothing yet about the extraordinary development of magic in all its branches, astrology, necromancy, table-rapping, and other kinds of divination, charms and amulets and witchcraft, which brought ridicule upon the last struggles of paganism. These aberrations of Nature-Mysticism will be dealt with in their later developments ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... particular branch of specialism attracts but few; for the greater part of those who collect such works are students of the occult (whether serious or idle) and have no true love for their books qua books. Seemingly it is an absorbing hobby, for those who devote their attention to necromancy soon become known ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... were taken into custody. After previous examination, on the 25th of July 1441, Bolingbroke was placed upon a scaffold before the cross of St Paul's, with a chair curiously painted, which was supposed to be one of his implements of necromancy, and dressed in mystical attire, and there, before the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Cardinal of Winchester, and several other bishops, made abjuration of all his ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... circles of hope and service. But there are fires which, once they are allowed to slow down, can never be rekindled. There are large and generous beliefs at twenty-five years of age which, unless we cultivate and keep ourselves in the love of them, thin out like wasting magic, and no necromancy can ever conjure them back again. You young men have potencies of hope and enthusiasm which, if denied expression, strike inwardly and corrupt the source out of ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... necromantic order, wherein she doubted not that the scholar must be a thorough adept; which idea she imparted to her mistress. The lady, being none too well furnished with sense, never thinking that, if the scholar had been an adept in necromancy, he would have made use of it in his own behoof, gave heed to what her maid said, and forthwith bade her learn of the scholar whether he would place his skill at her service, and assure him that, if he so did, she, in guerdon thereof, would do ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... faith-healing and in the time-honoured pretensions of priest-craft. But the devastation which the war has brought into countless loving families has turned the current of superstition strongly towards necromancy. The 'will to believe,' no longer inhibited and suspected as a reason for doubt, has been allowed to create its own logic. A few highly educated men, who have long been playing with occultism and gratifying their intellectual curiosity by exploring the dark places ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... for which Adam was turned forth of Eden," saith Father: "disobedience to a plain command of God. Look in the xviii chapter of Deuteronomy, and you shall see necromancy forbidden by name. That is, communication ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt |
