"Necromancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... 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 ...
— Different Girls • Various
... stupefied Coleman. It was anarchy, naked and unashamed. He could not imagine how such changes could have been consummated in the short time he had been away from them, but he laid it all to some startling necromancy on the part of Nora Black, some wondrous play which had captured them all because of its surpassing skill and because they were, in the main, rather gullible people. He was wrong. The magic had been wrought by the unaided foolishness of Mrs. Wainwfight. As soon as Nora Black had succeeded ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... 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 happily ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 condemned the accused, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... beast approached us, as I have before said, with the greatest rapidity, it must have been moved altogether by necromancy—for it had neither fins like a fish nor web-feet like a duck, nor wings like the seashell which is blown along in the manner of a vessel; nor yet did it writhe itself forward as do the eels. Its head and its tail were shaped precisely alike, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... with a shiver of repulsion. "It is horrible—it is necromancy beyond belief! Why, oh, why were we ever driven to that horrible Chateau Larouge? Why could not fate have spared the Villa de Carjorac? It ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... reviews, to which no stranger, even of the highest rank, was ever admitted, and by a series of mystifications, had laboured to produce this impression upon Europe, and had largely succeeded. Mankind love being cheated; and what the charlatanism of necromancy effected a thousand years ago, was now effected by the charlatanism of genius. If I had seen the Prussian troops only at Potsdam, I should probably have mistaken the truncheon for a talisman, like the rest of the world. But the field ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... the Great Lakes? Those thousands of settlers who poured into the Northwest had cargoes ready to fill every manner of craft in so short a space of time that it seems as if they must have resorted to arts of necromancy. It was not magic, however, but perseverance that had triumphed. The story of the creating of the main lakeward-reaching canals is long and involved. A period of agitation and campaigning preceded every such undertaking; and when construction was once begun, financial ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... This, an't please your worship; I am a young beginner, and am building Of a new shop, an't like your worship, just At corner of a street:—Here is the plot on't— And I would know by art, sir, of your worship, Which way I should make my door, by necromancy, And where my shelves; and which should be for boxes, And which for pots. I would be glad to thrive, sir: And I was wish'd to your worship by a gentleman, One captain Face, that says you know men's planets, And their good angels, and ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... to the house of some person or family whose destruction it is intended to compass, and who presently falls sick and dies. The only means of averting this catastrophe is, that some one, himself an adept in necromancy, should perform a counter-charm, the effect of which is to send back the disguised beetle to destroy his original employer; for in such a conjuncture the death of one or the other is essential to appease the demon whose intervention has been invoked. Hence the discomfort of a Singhalese ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... 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 both ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... astrologer, 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 ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... red-caps, a heretical sect, some members of which have arhat pretensions of a very high order—indeed I am ready to admit that I have met with Shammar adepts, who, so far as supernatural powers were concerned, were second to none among ourselves. But this was only the result of that necromancy which Buddha in his sixth incarnation denounced in the person of Tsong- kha-pa, the great reformer. They even deny the spiritual supremacy of the Dalai Lama at Lhassa, and own allegiance to an impostor who lives at the ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... behind her back was fetching from the clothes-prop a waterglobe upon its stand; she set it down on the table before the rush-light, moving on tiptoe, for to her the writing of a letter was a sort of necromancy, and she was distressed for Katharine's sake. She had heard that to write at night would make a woman blind before thirty. The light grew immense behind the globe; watery rays flickered broad upon the ceiling and on the hangings, and the paper shone with a mellow radiance. The gentle knocking was ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... Supernatural Appearances; Magical Practices and Conjuration; Daemonology, Spectres, and Vampires; Popular Superstitions, Popish Credulity, Delusions, Ecstacies, Fanaticisms, and Impostures; Astrology, Divination, Revelations, and Prophecies; Necromancy, Sorcery, and Witchcraft; Infatuation, Diabolical Possession, and Enthusiasm; Proverbs, Old Sayings, and Vulgar Errors; the Household Book of Sir Ed. Coke, Original MS.; Early English Poetry, MS. temp. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... the Khasis may be described 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 beliefs is the propitiation ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... 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 of nature. His neighbor at table was one who, in his ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... water; thus supplying the last link of 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
... 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
... sentence; and now with a stiff forefinger flipped a paper across the table. "In extremis my brother did more than confess. He signed,—your Majesty," said Gloucester. The Duke on a sudden flung out his hands, like a wizard whose necromancy fails, and the palms were bloodied where his nails ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... materials of his experience, and 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 had its power and dominion amid the living ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... departed prophet. With his two adjutants, (73) Abner and Amasa, he betook himself to Abner's mother, the witch of En-dor. (74) The king did not reveal his identity, but the witch had no difficulty in recognizing her visitor. In necromancy the peculiar rule holds good that, unless it is summoned by a king, a spirit raised from the dead appears head downward and feet in the air. (75) Accordingly, when the figure of Samuel stood upright before them, the witch knew that the king was with her. Though the witch saw Samuel, she could ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... just to teach that to puir barbarous folk—signs and wonders, laddie, to mak them believe in somewhat mair than the beasts that perish: an' so ghaists an warlocks might be a necessary element o' the divine education in dark and carnal times. But I've no read o' a case in which necromancy, nor geomancy, nor coskinomancy, nor ony other mancy, was applied to sic a purpose as this. Unco gude they were, may be, for the discovery o' stolen spunes—but no that o' ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... spite of, or rather because of, his 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
... 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 was his to ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... so called, says Keating, from their skill in necromancy, for which some were so famous as to be ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... Obi.[Footnote: 'The victim of Obi.'—It seems worthy of notice, that this magical fascination is generally called Obi, and the magicians Obeah men, throughout Guinea, Negroland, &c.; whilst the Hebrew or Syriac word for the rites of necromancy, was Ob or Obh, at least when ventriloquism was concerned.] As a Greek word, which it was, the name imported no ill; but for a Roman to say Ibo Epidamnum, was in effect saying, though in a hybrid dialect, half-Greek ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of the 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 ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... no great proofs 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, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... What—how much 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, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various
... 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 a simple iron-spring one? Thou foolish ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... be assumed that the association of the rod or wand with necromancy is merely an indication of power or authority, in the same way as the sceptre is associated with kingship. But there is something more in it. Magic has been well called 'the shadow of religion,' and the early religious idea found expression in symbols. ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... a 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 housetops. To tell the truth, she ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... erroneous derivation; which, curiously enough, even now that it has been dismissed, has left behind it the marks of its presence, in our common phrase, "the Black Art". I need hardly remind you that 'necromancy' is a Greek word, which signifies, according to its proper meaning, a prophesying by aid of the dead, or that it rests on the presumed power of raising up by potent spells the dead, and compelling them to give answers about things to come. We all know that it was supposed possible to exercise ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... 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 ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... follower of the devil. He went to Spain in search of magical instruction. Being introduced to a Saracen philosopher skilful in magic, he became his disciple. But his stay with the learned man was short; for seeing a valuable book of necromancy belonging to his instructor, he stole it. Fleeing to a place of safety, he studied the black art very closely. His intercourse with Satan was frequent. Through the devil's assistance, he became an archbishop, and subsequently a pope, upon condition that, after his death, he would ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... Respect for woman 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 romances, ballads, and songs, was made up of confluent streams from ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... 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 likelihood of Glinka becoming popular in Western Europe. ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... well in its place, but this place is second- [5] ary. Necromancy has no foundation,—in fact, no intelligence; and the belief that it has, deceives itself. Whatever simulates power and Truth in matter, does this as a lie declaring itself, that mortals' faith in matter may have the effect of power; but when the whole fabrication [10] is found to be a lie, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... 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 ...
— 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.
... 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 terms of their hot mealiness and spicy mildness, but ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... 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, ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... hands, had paused in attitudes of arrested motion. Save for the voices of the two players, the whole vast cavern of the theatre was as still as the very self of silence. And the stirless air that filled it was charged with necromancy. ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... 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 ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... 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
... acquainted with the lives, true and fabulous, of the patriarchs, than is warranted by our own sacred writ; and not content with Adam, they have a biography of Pre-Adamites. Solomon is the monarch of all necromancy, and Moses a prophet inferior only to Christ and Mahomet. Zuleika is the Persian name of Potiphar's wife; and her amour with Joseph constitutes one of the finest poems in their language. It is, therefore, no violation of costume to put the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... 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 for who derives any benefit ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sauntering alone, sometimes conversing in groups; they appeared to be the pervading genii of the place. I now called to mind what I had read of certain colleges in old times, where judicial astrology, geomancy, necromancy, and other forbidden and magical sciences were taught. Was this an establishment of the kind, and were these black-cloaked old men really professors of ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... the case," remarked Craig, 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
... has led 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 ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Could it be that I was thus suddenly "developed as a medium," and that the spirit of some departed friend wished to communicate with me? I rejected the thought instantly, for I was no believer in modern necromancy. But no sooner had I mentally decided that this was not the true explanation than I began to feel my right hand tremble in an unnatural manner, and my fingers close against my will around a pencil which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... the wondrous necromancy of the sun, pass a night in some primeval forest, untouched by the hand of man. Until he stands in the awful silence of the midnight wood, or upon some vast waste of nature, no man can figure to himself the varied shapes ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... civilised country Logotheti's servants might have supposed that he retired to this solitude to practise necromancy or study astrology, or to celebrate the Black Mass. But his matter-of-fact Frenchmen merely said that he was 'an original'; they even said so with a certain pride, as if there might be bad copies of him extant somewhere, which they despised. One man, who had an epileptic aunt, suggested ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... 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
... magnanimities. Well may 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 of ancient pleasure ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... 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 long ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... may 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 for ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... manifesting his power on the deceptive 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 space to the ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... dealings with Israel. The worship of other gods is forbidden and so is every attempt to represent Himself in a material form. His ritual is purged of foolish, unclean and cruel elements. Witchcraft and necromancy are utterly condemned. ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... of those pleasure-seekers was tickled by his talk of black art. Some even asserted that the blasphemous ceremonies of the Black Mass had been celebrated in the house of a Polish Prince. People babbled of satanism and of necromancy. Haddo was thought to be immersed in occult studies for the performance of a magical operation; and some said that he was occupied with the Magnum Opus, the greatest and most fantastic of alchemical experiments. Gradually these ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... 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 age, and at her death desired that ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the 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
... next. Our own learned men have been blind. The whole chain of reasoning is so clear. Every article of human food contains its separate particles, affecting the moral as well as the physical system. Why should it have been deemed necromancy to endeavor to combine these parts, to evolve by careful elimination and change the perfect food? In the house, young man, which you have told me of, there died the hero of the greatest discovery which has ever been made since the world began ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to 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
... eye of fancy, Physics will grasp imagination's wings, Plain fact exorcise fiction's necromancy, The workshop hammer where the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "They believe in necromancy, and have their conjurers, who do much harm, and are our chief opponents, as we weaken their influence, and consequently their profits. If cattle are stolen, they are referred to. If a chief is sick, they are sent for to know who has bewitched him; they must ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... 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 the ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... 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 laid in ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... are seen to rise; that we should see them as well by day as by night, were it not for the excess of light which prevents us even from seeing the stars. He adds that by this means we might behold the idea, and represent by a lawful and natural necromancy the figure or phantom of all the great men of antiquity, our friends and our ancestors, provided we possess ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... time. It would probably cost him his situation; his weakness would be revealed to his family and to the world, and the knowledge of it might prevent his obtaining employment elsewhere; therefore he felt that he must hide the vice and fight it to its death in absolute secrecy. Under the terrible necromancy of his sin the wife from whom he had scarcely concealed a thought in preceding years was the one whom he most feared. As yet the habit was a sin, because he had the power to overcome it if he would simply resolve to do right regardless of the consequences; and these would be slight indeed compared ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... influence 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 ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... philanthropy; under another, monastic communion; under another, high morality; under another, a variety of materialistic philosophy; under another, simple demonology; under another, a mere farrago of superstitions, including necromancy, witchcraft, idolatry, and fetishism. In some form or other it may be held with almost any religion, and embraces something ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... the same time, one John 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 by their presence; he was condemned, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... fun to watch little Miss Banks at her necromancy. She takes it so earnestly, literally wrenching the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... to ensnare the old man, and to draw from him evidence that might be brought against himself, and might corroborate certain secret information that had been given against him. He had been accused of practising necromancy and judicial astrology, and a cloud of evidence had been secretly brought forward to substantiate the charge. It would be tedious to enumerate all the circumstances, apparently corroborative, which had been industriously cited by the ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... or nursery tales, will survive obscurely among peasants and the illiterate generally. In an age of fatigued scepticism and rigid physical science, the imaginative longings of men will fall back on the savage or peasant necromancy, which will be revived perhaps in some obscure American village, and be run after by the credulous and half-witted. Then the wished-for phenomena will be supplied by the dexterity of charlatans. As it is easy to demonstrate the quackery of paid 'mediums,' as that, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • 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 bad meaning generally, as in monaudud, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the gallant Don comforted poor Sancho Panza with hopes of an island, and explained away all their sufferings on the grounds of necromancy. All that had gone awry with them was the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... began to swear also; and these two companions cursed Madame Midas and all that belonged to her most heartily. If Slivers could only have seen the interior of Madame Midas's dining room, by some trick of necromancy, he would certainly not have been able to do the subject justice ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... perfection that books were soon printed and issued in large numbers. But so slowly did the art travel, partly on account of want of communication, and partly because it was believed to partake of necromancy, and partly, too, from the phlegmatic character of the English people, that thirty years elapsed before it was brought into England. The art of printing came in response to the demand of an age of progress: it was needed before; it was called ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... two 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
... because Loristan had 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 ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... dimly a huge body half a mile long approaching nearer and nearer. At first the king could not believe that this was the small beast who had seemed so friendly on the shore of the lake of quicksilver but then he knew very little of necromancy, and had never studied the art of expanding and contracting his body. But it was the dragon and nothing else, whose six wings were carrying him forward as fast as might be, considering his great weight and the length of his tail, which had ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... materialization those charming figures to come forth out of the shadowy air of the rich, historic past, and stand before us in the full light of contemporary attention. Not alone this group of choice persons, but the environment of their time, the very atmosphere, are demanded of this necromancy. The figure of Adelaide Kemble (Mrs. Sartoris) is one of these, and the tradition still survives of a concert given in the splendid, spacious hall of the Palazzo Colonna where she was the prima donna of the occasion. There were also musicals ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... certainly not a pattern of female virtue, but that she shone as a moral paragon when contrasted with her name-sake and successor, the sister of King Ladislaus. Of this second Queen, tradition more or less accurate relates a host of stories, none of them to her credit; how she dabbled in necromancy and was immersed in love intrigues, the most celebrated of which was her amour with the handsome "Ser. Gianni," Giovanni Caracciolo, head of an eminent family that has figured prominently in Neapolitan ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... the Church. The purposes of the society are twofold; first, to preserve the traditions just mentioned, and second, to give a certain class of ambitious men and women sufficient influence through their acknowledged power of exorcism and necromancy to lead a comfortable life at the expense of the credulous. The persons admitted into the society are firmly believed to possess the power of communing with various supernatural beings—manidos—and in order that certain desires may be realized they are sought after and consulted. ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... mean to start any question about belief; I only wanted to suppose necromancy for the moment a fact, and put it at its best: suppose the magician could do for you all he professed, what would it amount to?—Only this—to bring before your eyes a shadowy resemblance of the form of flesh and blood, itself but a passing shadow, in which the man moved on the earth, and was known ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... so. As their two heads filled the open trap in the cabin floor there was a click and then, as if some necromancy had focused the sun on a part of the darkened world, a circle of light seemed to spring out of the desert beneath. Yellow, with here and there a ragged rock and a sage brush or two, the shadows of the rocks and brush black like spilled ink, and the sand glaring back ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... palace standeth in the air, By necromancy placed there, That it no tempest needs to fear, Which way soe'er it blow it: And somewhat southward tow'rd the noon, Whence lies a way up to the moon, And thence the fairy can as soon Pass to the earth below it. The walls of spiders' legs are made, Well morticed and ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... traditions have it that these two men were victims of their dabbling into certain phases of psychic phenomena, i.e., the "raising up of spirits" by the arts of Black Magic. In other words, these men had been experimenting along the lines of Jewish Necromancy, or Invocation and Evocation of Disembodied Astral Intelligences by means of Conjuration. They had raised up Astral Intelligences that had then refused to retire to their own plane, but which had taken ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... discussion as to the nature of the dead man's wounds. One of the surgeons called in had spoken of marks that looked like bites. The suggestion of witchcraft was revived, and the opposing lawyers hurled tomes of necromancy at each other. ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... they had a real significance in her mind. She 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 ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... Beard anticipates my demands; and how she facilitates my departure," said Croustillac to himself; "there is something very strange under this. I was not, perhaps, altogether wrong in accusing her of magic or necromancy." Then he continued aloud, "You will go and open the outer gates, Mirette, and tell the blacks to prepare themselves at once. Well," said Croustillac, seeing the woman remain motionless, "did you not ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... wakened suddenly; the skies had been sapphire, the sward emerald, Plattville a Camelot of romance; to be there, enchantment—and now, like a meteor burned out in a breath, the necromancy fell away and he gazed into desolate years. The thought of the Square, his dusty office, the bleak length of Main Street, as they should appear to-morrow, gave him a faint physical sickness. To-day it had all been touched to beauty; he had felt fit to live and work there a thousand ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... like a duck in a thunder-storm. "Well," said he, "I have lived more than seventy years, and have read all the books in the world; I have practised magic and necromancy, and know all about algebra and geometry, and yet, wise as I am, I never ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... 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 Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... 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 ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... ariolation^, hariolation^; foreboding, aboding^; bodement^, abodement^; omniation^, omniousness^; auspices, forecast; omen &c 512; horoscope, nativity; sooth^, soothsaying; fortune telling, crystal gazing; divination; necromancy &c 992. [Divination by the stars] astrology^, horoscopy^, judicial astrology^. [Place of Prediction]. adytum prefiguration^, prefigurement; prototype, type. [person who predicts] oracle &c 513. V. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... mother, and King 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 Ewain's le ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... master-key to unlock every science. A problem in Euclid or a phrase in Pindar, a secret in astronomy or a knotty passage in the Fathers, were all riddles, with the solution of which application had nothing to do. One's mother-wit was a precious sort of necromancy, which could pierce every mystery at first sight; and all the gifts of knowledge, in his opinion, like reading and writing in that of the sage Dogberry, "came by nature." Alas! I was not under the same pleasurable delusion; I ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... virtuous parents have wicked children, as Cain, Reuben, Absolom, and such like, have been to their parents. So Faustus having godly parents, who seeing him to be of a toward wit, were desirous to bring him up in those virtuous studies, namely, of Divinity; but he gave himself secretly to necromancy, and conjuration, insomuch that few or ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... 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 ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... the marvellously painted hands are among the Louvre drawings. The very Self of the man—the lean, strong, thinking countenance,—the elusive smile, shrewd, ironical, yet kindly, stealing out on his lips,—is alive here by some necromancy ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... a sacred vessel, and he who cursed in necromancy, and the paramour of an Aramaean?" "The avengers may at once fall upon him." "The priest who served in legal uncleanness?" "His brother priests have no need to bring him to the tribunal, but the young priests drag him outside of the court, and dash out his brains ...
— Hebrew Literature
... rich velvet, and a gold-headed cane, had come forth to see the procession. As this ancient lady had the renown (which subsequently cost her no less a price than her life) of being a principal actor in all the works of necromancy that were continually going forward, the crowd gave way before her, and seemed to fear the touch of her garment, as if it carried the plague among its gorgeous folds. Seen in conjunction with Hester Prynne—kindly as so many now felt towards the latter—the dread ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... unbuckled their arms and cast a shining cloak upon each; which was hardly done when a lady came towards them out of the throng, and though she was truly the Queen Morgan le Fay, they knew her not at all, for by her necromancy she had altered ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lessons in necromancy and the black art of crows. He declines to pledge his honour on the continued brightness ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... necromancy in the azure flames, that suddenly revealed the beloved face of the wife of his youth, and the lovely vision of their only child? His eagle eyes were dim with tears, and his hand shook; but, as if ashamed of the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... instruments a never-ending hellish concert. Yea, if all sins had not already been invented, they would have been invented here, for there was no road they would not have followed in their wickedness. The most unnatural vices flourished among them, and even such rare sins as necromancy, magic, and exorcism were familiar to them, for there were many who hoped to obtain from the powers of evil the protection which ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... 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 ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... shared the same fate. The terrible agencies I had summoned as my slaves became my masters. The fiends which, as ministers of God's justice, garbed in the guise of angels of light, I had, by hideous necromancy, evoked to aid me in righteous retribution, proved the dark demons of hell and derided all orders to accomplish my bidding. The awful engines I had set in motion I found myself powerless to arrest or control. ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... more pernicious than 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, and his acquaintance with Egyptian wisdom, could not be ignorant of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... sufficiently strong to oppose the introduction of Buddhism and it 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 ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... scowling defiance at the throng around him. So silently had he come on his errand of vengeance it was difficult to believe he was a reality, and not some clever piece of stageplay, some vision conjured up by Martian necromancy. ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... 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 bulwarked itself in ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... We have 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 difficulty and danger. The practice ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... the credulity of the public found its chief outlet in various systems of 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 of perverted ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... 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
... [3] a self-conceit, His waxen wings did mount above his reach, And, melting, heavens conspir'd his overthrow; For, falling to a devilish exercise, And glutted now with learning's golden gifts, He surfeits upon [4] cursed necromancy; Nothing so sweet as magic is to him, Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss: And this the man that in ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... scruples. He had a strong belief in necromancy, and had never heard that there was sin in its practice. He was still Romanist enough at heart to look upon the confessional as an easy and pleasant way of getting rid of the burden of an uneasy conscience. His mind was very open ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... 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 ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... of the realms of fancy, The bright dreams flocked to his call Like sprites that the necromancy Of a Prospero ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... 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 ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... superior regard to a different mode of revelation, and we should live, as it were, among the tombs. A morbid state of feeling would pervade our minds, and the world would be full of enchantments, necromancy, and cunning craftiness. Blessed be God for the silence of the dead! We are glad that our weak and foolish hearts, so prone to love the creature more than the Creator, are broken off, by the impenetrable veil ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... 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 true aim, like Pier Luigi's, was ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... 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
... be a power in necromancy that he yet dreamed not of? Was it possible that even now those old enchanters held their meetings here, and would question his right to ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... the Imagination. Yet if we cannot go back to the Past, we can march forward to a Future, which opens a deeper and more wondrous and airier vista, with its magicians of the Actual casting into shade the puny achievements of old necromancy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... "a wise king." In our days, when every king and nearly every man thinks himself wise, such a decision would not have deterred suitors, and she would have been compelled, in the end, to choose among the few unwise. But wisdom, in those times of fable and necromancy, had a wider meaning than we give it. A wise king was one who had control of the powers of earth and air, who could call the genii to his aid by incantations, and perform supernatural deeds. Hence ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... 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 his voice or the touch of his hand would have been so inexpressibly ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... introduced to 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
... innumerable miracles through the interposition of Christ. Ordinary miracles, indeed, could be tested by the senses, but the essence of transubstantiation was that it eluded the senses. Thus nothing could be more convenient to the government than to make this invisible and intangible necromancy a test in capital cases for heresy-Hence Wycliffe had no alternative but to deny transubstantiation, for nothing could be more insulting to the intelligence than to adore a morsel of bread which a priest held in his hand. The pretension ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... or ten times as long, they would be as fresh and vivid at the 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
... "Suppose, now, by some necromancy our young and tender friend here on the platter should be changed to a cleverly fashioned block of wood, painted in imitation of a roasted porker, with a wooden apple in ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham |
