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Sorcery   /sˈɔrsəri/   Listen
Sorcery

noun
(pl. sorceries)
1.
The belief in magical spells that harness occult forces or evil spirits to produce unnatural effects in the world.  Synonyms: black art, black magic, necromancy.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Sorcery" Quotes from Famous Books



... dost destroy, And every evil thought from sorceries Of wonders, omens, dreams that do annoy, And evil apparitions, thou dost turn To happy issue; malice, dark designs; And men and countries in thy might o'erturn, And sorcery that every soul maligns. Oh, in thy presence refuge let me find! From those who spells invoke against thy King, Protect one! and my heart within thine, oh, bind! [4]Thy breath within mine inmost soul, oh, bring! That I with thee, O Samas, may rejoice. And may the gods who me created, take Thy ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... be watcht as Witches are. One of the tests to which beldames suspected of sorcery were put— a mode particularly favoured by that arch-scamp, Matthew Hopkins, 'Witch-Finder General'— was to tie down the accused in some painful or at least uneasy posture for twenty-four hours, during which time relays of watchers sat round. It was supposed that an ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... cannot be grateful enough to him who sent them thither, for it is of the greatest importance to us; and, even those among them who do not know our language sufficiently to speak to us, pray to him that we may feel the power of his blood on our hearts. I have learned sorcery, and I have practised it, but that is the road to the greatest darkness, and can give no peace to the heart; but he who looks to the Saviour, and to his wounds, receives peace and joy in his heart, and that is the only thing of any value in this world." In the following summer there were above ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous

... music is made of, to have glimpses of the divine magic that is the soul of the divinest art. I used to believe that nothing could surpass the beauty of a scale, until Diaz, after writing formal patterns in the still air innumerably, and hypnotizing me with that sorcery, would pass suddenly to the repetition of fragments of Bach. And then I knew that hitherto he had only been trying to be more purely and severely mechanical than a machine, and that now the interpreter was ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett

... I seen?" mentally ejaculated Peter: "is this sorcery or treachery, or both? No body-snatchers would visit this place on a night like this, when the whole neighborhood is aroused. Can it be a vision I have seen? Pshaw! shall I juggle myself as I deceive these hinds? It was no bearded demon that I beheld, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... forget their natural life for you. Iron ceases to be occult when you take it up. Your birthplace in this world disappears by fire the night before you foreclose a mortgage upon a gentleman's daughter. Is all this sorcery inseparable from that necromancer's Hat you wear ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... by Koshchei. Buslaef remarks in his "Influence of Christianity on Slavonic Language," p. 103, that one of the Gothic words used by Ulfilas to express the Greek daimonion is skohsl, which "is purely Slavonic, being preserved in the Czekh kauzlo, sorcery; in the Lower-Lusatian-Wendish, kostlar means a sorcerer. (But see Grimm's "Deutsche Mythologie," pp. 454-5, where skohsl is supposed to mean a forest-sprite, also p. 954.) Kost' changes into koshch whence ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... is derived; but for centuries cats have been connected with superstition and sorcery. They have always been regarded as attendants upon witches; and witches themselves have been said to borrow their shapes when on their mysterious expeditions. I was once told, that Lord Cochrane was accompanied ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... can be done without long stay in any one place. And when a people can have but few luxuries they grow very skillful in the making of those few. They carry their wisdom in such matters, as they do their wealth, wherever they go, and hand it down from father to son. That is all the sorcery they use. ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... what is known as chemical sorcery; so that when Claribel Sudds came next day at two o'clock he showed her a small box filled with compounds that closely ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum

... given by Louis XIII. to Jean du Chatelet, Baron of Beausoleil, and his wife. He was at that time General of the Mines in Hungary, and inspector of the French mines. They were accompanied by German miners, but their mysterious researches caused them to be accused of sorcery and magic. Richelieu had them imprisoned in the Bastille, where they both died, victims of the fanaticism of the age, and the works were abandoned till the eighteenth century. They are now no longer in operation, but it is said ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... being made of the fact that her mother was a gypsy who had committed suicide and that her father had fallen under the ban of the Inquisition, an heretical work of his having been publicly burned. Then the Abbot himself gave evidence, since, where the charge was sorcery, no one seemed to think it strange that the same man should both act as judge and be the principal witness for the prosecution. He told of Cicely's wild words after the burning of Cranwell Towers, from ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... Nell! That nymph is you; and this man is me." She got up, and came to look. And while she was gazing he greedily drank her in. What a strange mixture of innocence and sorcery! What a wonderful young creature to bring to full knowledge of love within his arms! And he said: "You had better understand what you are to me—all that I shall never know again; there it is in that nymph's face. Oh, no! not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the death of that immortal Prince, had, by a superstition, formed a private prayer, that, as they squeezed the orange, so might that Protestant King be squeezed to death[177]: According to that known sorcery described by Virgil, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... supernatural as they say.' He affirms that there must be a witchery in Mr. Sheridan, who had no diamonds—as Hastings had—to win favour with, and says that the Opposition may be fairly charged with sorcery. Burke declared the speech to be 'the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which there was any record or tradition.' Fox affirmed that 'all he had ever heard, all he had ever read, when compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and vanished like vapour before ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... he saw the pieces join and immediately knit together. But Loki was a master of guile, and recognising this as the work of magic, he cut off the other leg, promptly throwing flint and steel between the severed limb and trunk, and thereby hindering any further sorcery. The peasants were immensely relieved to find that their enemy was slain, and ever after they considered Loki the mightiest of all the heavenly council, for he had delivered them effectually from their foe, while the other gods had lent only ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... but the springs had lost all elasticity. Vainly did the watchmaker try to replace them; the wheels remained motionless. These unaccountable derangements were greatly to the old man's discredit. His noble inventions had many times brought upon him suspicions of sorcery, which now seemed confirmed. These rumours reached Gerande, and she often trembled for her father, when she saw malicious glances directed ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... extraordinary and wonderful. The record of what actually is, and has happened in the series of human events, is perhaps the smallest part of human history. If we would know man in all his subtleties, we must deviate into the world of miracles and sorcery. To know the things that are not, and cannot be, but have been imagined and believed, is the most curious chapter in the annals of man. To observe the actual results of these imaginary phenomena, and the crimes and cruelties they have caused us to commit, is one of the ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... therefore, with observing, that these were certainly strange incidents, and requested to know if Sir Piercie Shafton had any other reason for suspecting himself to be in a manner so particularly selected for the sport of sorcery and witchcraft. ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... word?—cowardly! Aye, cowardly! I, Guilhern, son of Joel, the brenn of the tribe of Karnak. I looked timidly around me. Every minute my heart seemed to sink, and tears came to my eyes, as formerly the flush of anger and pride had mantled my forehead. Of this inexplicable transformation, due, perhaps, to sorcery, I was dimly conscious and wondered thereat. Down to this day, when I recall the incident, I wonder, and none of the details of the horrid day has escaped from ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue

... the court he saw the Lady of the Lake. He went straight to her, and with his sword lightly smote off her head before King Arthur, for he knew her as the untruest lady living, one that by enchantment and sorcery had been the destroyer ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler

... knew it; his dark intentions in regard to that waterfall were probably as legible to her as if they had been printed in great-primer type on his forehead. On two or three occasions at Geneva she had wrested his unworded thought from him with the same effortless sorcery. Lynde evaded her look, and studied a spire-like peak on his left. "I shall have an air of detected villainy now, when I ask her," he mused. "That's the first shade of coquetry I ever saw in her. If she accepts my invitation without the ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... we met," he went on, taking no heed of my words, "was yonder at Nodwengu when the witch Mameena was tried for sorcery, she who made my brother mad and brought about the great battle, in which you fought for him with the Amawombe regiment. Do you not remember how she kissed you, Macumazahn, and took poison between the ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... leisure at Spannheim, he wrote several works upon the occult sciences, the chief of which are an essay on geomancy, or divination by means of lines and circles on the ground; another upon sorcery; a third upon alchymy; and a fourth upon the government of the world by its presiding angels, which was translated into English, and published by the famous William ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... excellent opportunity, which the magician does not fail to seize, of talking about serpents and toads. But, after a long enumeration of the bones, stones, and livers of animals that cause love, the alchemist, urged by Philautus, ends by confessing that the best sorcery of all to gain the loving regard of a woman, is to be ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... sorcery are the most astonishing in the book, displaying on the part of this otherwise hard and practical nature a credulity almost without limit. After having related how he had a certain negro sent out of the country "who predicted ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... symphony of the Berlin dawn is ours now, fraeulein, and have done with intrusive memories, corroding reflections. What are my people doing in Berlin at this hour? What are these prowling Al-Raschids about? Do they know the sorcery of the virgin morning light of Berlin as it falls upon the Siegesallee and gives life again to the marble heroes of Germany? Have they ever stood with such as you, fraeulein, in the coral-tipped hours of the dawning day before the image of Friedrich der Grosse in that wonderful ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... ruby throat, What shining spell, what exquisite sorcery, Lured you to float And fight with bees ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes

... the man, "look and tremble at the justice of Hes the Mother. Aye, and be sure that as it is with him, so shall it be with every one of you who dares to defy her and to practise sorcery and murder. Lift up that dead dog ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... he depicts the thoughts which he beholds in mortal mind. Thus he 571:27 rebukes the conceit of sin, and foreshadows its doom. With his spiritual strength, he has opened wide the gates of glory, and illumined the night of paganism with the 571:30 sublime grandeur of divine Science, outshining sin, sorcery, lust, and hypocrisy. He takes away mitre and sceptre. He enthrones pure and undefiled religion, and lifts on 572:1 high only those who have washed their robes white ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... to wiser convictions. To the intelligent, nature converts itself into a vast promise, and will not be rashly explained. Her secret is untold. Many and many an Oedipus[523] arrives: he has the whole mystery teeming in his brain. Alas! the same sorcery has spoiled his skill; no syllable can he shape on his lips. Her mighty orbit vaults like the fresh rainbow into the deep, but no archangel's wing was yet strong enough to follow it, and report of the return of the curve. But it ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... get a bad reputation for working harm by magic. They are said to be cunning in sorcery (TAU TEPANG), and these persons may properly be said to be sorcerers or witches. They are believed to work harm in many ill-defined ways, especially to health; but their procedures are not generally known; they probably include poisoning, but, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... told myself that it had been some silly prank of a romantic amateur, hidden in the gardens of the shore or gliding unperceived on the lagoon; and that the sorcery of moonlight and sea-mist had transfigured for my excited brain mere humdrum roulades out of exercises ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... its breathless Dazzle of may-blobs, when the marigold glare overcast you With fire on your cheeks and your brow and your chin as you dipped Your face in the marigold bunch, to touch and contrast you, Your own dark mouth with the bridal faint lady-smocks, Dissolved on the golden sorcery you should not outlast. ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence

... were attacked by Bedouin, who, however, on hearing the report of Burton's revolver, declared that they were only in fun. Others who tried to stop them were shown the star sapphire, and threatened with "sorcery, death, wild beasts," and other unpleasantnesses. At a place called Aububah, Raghi relinquished the charge of the caravan to some men of the Gudabirsi tribe, who led the way to the village of Wilensi, where they were the guests of the household of a powerful chief called Jirad Adan. Here Burton ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... to avoid Armida's enchanting presence he scorns the warning, saying that love for a woman is to him a thing unknown. In reality however Armida is already ensnaring him with her sorcery, he presently hears exquisitely sweet and dreamy melodies and finding himself in a soft, green valley, he lies ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... Henry VIII. adjudged all witchcraft and sorcery to be felony. A like Act was passed 1 James, c.12, and also in the reign of Philip and Mary. The following ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... put on a par with heresy. Pope Alexander IV had decided that divination and sorcery did not fall under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, unless there was manifest heresy involved.[1] But casuists were not wanting to prove that heresy was involved in such cases. The belief in the witches' nightly rides through the air, ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard

... This infamous inquisition into sorcery and witchcraft has been of greater influence on human affairs than is commonly supposed. The persecutions against philosophers and their libraries was carried on with so much fury, that from this time (A. D. 374) the names ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... and prorogued till the following year. It is remarkable of this Parliament, the third and last of Elizabeth's long reign, that it was utterly barren of ecclesiastical legislation, if we except "an act against sorcery and witchcraft" from that category. The attainder of the late Earl of Desmond, and the living Viscount of Baltinglass, in arms with the O'Byrnes in Glenmalure, are the only measures of consequence to be found among the Irish statutes of the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... which forewarned Hastings of his fate, and as omens generally do, to no manner of purpose; but I speak of the idle accusations put into the mouth of Richard, such as his baring his withered arm, and imputing it to sorcery, and to his blending the queen and Jane Shore in the same plot. Cruel or not, Richard was no fool; and therefore it is highly improbable that he should lay the withering of his arm on recent witchcraft, if it was ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole

... sorcery; occult art, occult sciences; magic, the black art, necromancy, theurgy, thaumaturgy^; demonology, demonomy^, demonship^; diablerie [Fr.], bedevilment; witchcraft, witchery; glamor; fetishism, fetichism, feticism^; ghost dance, hoodoo; obi, obiism^; voodoo, voodooism; Shamanism (Esquimaux), ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... that at this time there was in Dowlutpoor an English doctor who was generally known as the Jadoo-walla Saheb, because he was believed to practise sorcery and had some mysterious need of snakes. Perhaps he was only making experiments with their venom. At any rate, he wanted live cobras and offered a good price for them. So when Nagoo, the snake-charmer, heard that there was a large one in Beharilal's garden, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... noted that in literature only three things count, style, style polished, style repolished; these imagination and the art of transition aid, but do not enhance. As for style, it may be defined as the sorcery of syllables, the fall of sentences, the use of the exact term, the pursuit of a repetition even unto the thirtieth and fortieth line. Grammar is an adjunct but not an obligation. No grammarian ever wrote a thing ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... these people were originally accused were various, but the principal were theft, sorcery, and causing disease among the cattle; and there is every reason for supposing that in none of these points ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... been too many marvels in this man's life. It was marvel enough that he beat the Morholt, but by what sorcery did he try the sea alone at the point of death, or which of us, my lords, could voyage without mast or sail? They say that warlocks can. It was sure a warlock feat, and that is a warlock harp of his pours poison daily into the King's heart. ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier

... children. His principal want is a pair of new eyes; and the train of thought is, "I can't see when older men than myself can." The same idea makes the African ever attribute his sickness and death to sorcery: "Why should I lose life when all around me are alive?"—and this is the idea that lies at the bottom of all witch-persecution. Two pair of spectacles were duly despatched to him after our return to Cairo; and M. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... in this Crime ought to be as clear as in any other Crimes of a Capital nature. The Word of God does no where intimate, that a less clear Evidence, or that fewer or other Witnesses may be taken as sufficient to convict a Man of Sorcery, which would not be enough to convict him were he charged with another evil worthy of Death, Numb. 35.30. if we may not take the Oath of a distracted Person, or of a possessed Person in a Case of Murder, Theft, Felony of any sort, then neither may ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... perfect similacrum of her out of his thoughts, as an enchanter might form at will in the twinkling of an eye the likeness of some one who was far away. "You shall even move and speak," he predicted, "and I'll make your glances and your words whatever I want them to be. Look out for yourself! That is sorcery. I shall have taken a part of you away from yourself, across the ocean, to Africa where the forests are full of magicians. Over here you'll no longer be complete. You'll turn your eyes southeast with a sense of missing something from ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... been kicked, or struck, or burned by them in return; and invariably, these tales tell us, those who are so bespoken meet some one the next day with plain marks of the injury they had inflicted on the froward cat,—which was sure evidence of witchery and sorcery. Doubtless full many a human being has been put to death, in times past, on no stronger evidence of being a witch. Humanity did not come to the rescue of the cat and bring her out from the shadow of ignominy that hung ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... rock; but they are part of the fascination of Niagara which no one resists; nor could Isabel have been persuaded from exploring them. It wants no courage to do this, but merely submission to the local sorcery, and the adventurer has no other reward than the consciousness of having been where but a few years before no human being had perhaps set foot. She grossed from bridge to bridge with a quaking heart, and at last stood upon the outermost ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the work of a sophist and an adventurer! Pope, who was now alarmed at the tendency of some of those principles he had so innocently versified, received Warburton as his tutelary genius. A mere poet was soon dazzled by the sorcery of erudition; and he himself, having nothing of that kind of learning, believed Warburton to be the Scaliger of the age, for his gratitude far exceeded his knowledge.[172] The poet died in this delusion: ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... themselves to certain localities, either owing to some great crime or crimes having been committed there in the past, or because at some still more remote period the inhabitants of those parts—the Milesians and Nemedhians, the early ancestors of the Irish, dabbled in sorcery. ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... their pupils. They taught metaphysics to the Greeks, sorcery to the Persians, aruspicy to the Etruscans, and to the Romans the plating of copper ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... more veraciously in Edom! The fool sighs for a fair woman,—what else should he do, being a fool? Ah, madonna, as in very remote times that notable jester, Love, popped out of Night's wind-egg, and by his sorcery fashioned from the primeval tangle the pleasant earth that sleeps about us,—even thus, may he not frame the disorder of a fool's brain into the semblance of a lover's? Believe me, the change is not so great as you might think. Yet if you will, laugh at me, madonna, for I love a ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... I, a stranger, done to offend a vice-baillie? For this charge of sorcery must be a blind. No sorcerer am I; but a poor true ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... whole of Russia, and even in parts of civilized Germany, Jews are accused of all manner of sorcery. The Cabala is the principal religious authority of the lower classes among the Russian Jews, and this may perhaps inspire such a preposterous notion. The Jews, themselves, frequently believe that some one of their own number is in possession of supernatural secrets which give him ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... 1325, et seq.: also in "The Annals of Ireland," in the second volume of Gibson's Camden, 3rd edition, sub eod. anno. He was nearly related to the lady Alice Kettle, and her son William Utlawe, al. Outlaw; against whom that singular charge of sorcery was brought by Richard Lederede, Bishop of Ossory. The account of this charge is so curious that, for the benefit of those readers of "N. & Q." who may not have the means of referring to the books above cited, I am tempted to ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various

... thrice between them they ensured a plentiful harvest is worthy of note. The mode in which this result was supposed to be brought about is indicated by another writer on Welsh folk-lore, according to whom it used to be held that "the bonfires lighted in May or Midsummer protected the lands from sorcery, so that good crops would follow. The ashes were also considered valuable as charms."[381] Hence it appears that the heat of the fires was thought to fertilize the fields, not directly by quickening the seeds in the ground, but indirectly by counteracting the baleful influence ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... little was there to remember. The morning's awakening, the nightly summons to bed; the connings, the recitations; the periodical half-holidays and perambulations; the playground, with its broils, its pastimes, its intrigues; these, by a mental sorcery long forgotten, were made to involve a wilderness of sensation, a world of rich incident, an universe of varied emotion, of excitement the most passionate and spirit-stirring. 'Oh, le bon temps, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... we strictly forbid all heathenism. It is heathenism for a man to worship idols,—that is, to worship heathen gods, and the sun or moon, fire or flood, water-wells or stones, or any kind of wood-trees, or practise witchcraft, or contrive murder by sorcery." ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... been noticed by most thoughtful historians, and has been considered to tell strongly in the tribunal of equity in favor of the Templars. Instead of these probable or possible crimes, we find nothing but monstrous charges of sorcery, idolatry, apostasy, and such like, instances of which we know are to be found in those strange times; but which it seems altogether unlikely would infect a large body whose fundamental principle was close ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... such a piece of fortune which could then be instanced, and which, even during Fabert's life, had appeared so extraordinary, the vulgar never feared to ascribe his elevation to supernatural causes. It was said that from his youth he had busied himself with magic and sorcery, and that he had made a league with the devil. Mine host, who, to the stupidity inherent in all the natives of the province of Champagne, added the credulity of our Brittany peasants, assured us with a great deal of sangfroid, that when ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... he first established himself—the Coeurs d'Alene—were renowned among all the tribes for their belief in sorcery; and he experienced great difficulty in making an impression upon them, from the opposition of the medicine-men (jugglers). Among this tribe he found two relics held in great esteem, of which the Indians gave him ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... Duchess of Burgundy, the king's escape from the Tower was accomplished; but not by might, nor by human power nor device, but by faith and prayer, was the work wrought out, which holy communion her enemies do maliciously report as the practice of sorcery and the forbidden art. Howbeit the king hath escaped, as thou seest, the fangs of the executioner. Stay, I perceive what thou wouldest urge in reply, but listen for a short space. In order to deter them from pursuit on finding his escape, and with a view likewise to lull them into vain confidence ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... facetious, and praise its representative then present. This man would then question the Janta on all points regarding his own family, his connections, worldly goods, and what gods he worshipped, ask who was the witch, who taught her sorcery, and how and why she practised it in this particular instance. But the witch-doctor, having taken care to be well coached, would answer everything correctly and fix the guilt on to the witch. A goat would be sacrificed and eaten with ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... the bogie, or witch, blowing from her mouth a malevolent exhalation, an embodiment of malignant and maleficent sorcery. The vapour which flies and curls from the mouth constitutes "a sending," in the technical language of Icelandic wizards, and is capable (in Iceland, at all events) of assuming the form of some detestable supernatural animal, to destroy the life of a hated rival. In the case of our last example ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang

... Master mingled with publicans and thieves? Many of the Gypsy race came frequently to visit me; received instruction, and heard parts of the Gospel read to them in their own language, and when they were hungry and faint, I gave them to eat and drink. This might be deemed sorcery in Spain, but I am not without hope that it will be otherwise estimated in England, and had I perished at this period, I think there are some who would have been disposed to acknowledge that I had not lived altogether in vain (always as an instrument of the "Most Highest"), ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... their theologians, not forgetting their Tinkers, though I confess some of the latter have occasionally surprised us—for example, Bunyan. The New Testament is crowded with allusions to heathen customs, and with words connected with pagan sorcery. Now, with respect to words, I would fain have you who pretend to be a philologist, tell me the meaning ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... yesterday you marvelled at their stablishment; this morning they will be floating above the world. One week the clear-cut beauty of their lines and curves gladdens your heart; the next, a mocking mystery of soft blurred battlements will tease your vision. Such shifting sorcery is never stale. Light, shade, and atmosphere play such fantastic tricks with Pau's fair heritage that the grey town, curled comfortably in the sunshine upon her plateau's edge, looks not on one, but upon many prospects. The pageant of ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... Oh, sorcery of the most wonderful magician of letters the world has seen since Shakespeare! If you have come under the spell of his enchantments, be it only for an hour, here is a book that will delight you, a book that ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... under constant suspicion of being Christians only formally; it was believed that in their hearts they retained their ancient faith and secretly performed its rites; they were credited with antagonism to Christianity and suspected of practising sorcery to destroy the "Old Christians." There was some basis for the first, at least, of these suspicions. Many doubtless failed to abandon completely their ancestral ceremonies; and not only they but even some Old Christians felt the attraction of their ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... the last Hanavave suffered from cannibalism and extreme sorcery. The taua, the pagan priest, was still powerful, however, and his gods demanded victims. The men here conspired with the men of Hanahouua to descend on Oi, a little village by the sea between here and Oomoa. They had guns of a sort, for the whalers had brought old and ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... prohibited; but the origin of all is the same. A changing world has shown how the most shocking crimes punished by the severest penalties have been taken from the calendar and no longer even bear the suspicion of wrong. Religious differences, witchcraft and sorcery have probably brought more severe punishments than any other acts; yet a change of habit and custom and belief has long since abolished all such crimes. So, too, crimes come and go with new ideals, new movements and conditions. The largest portion of our criminal ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... enemies became more and more the objects towards which their occult powers were directed: and thus turned from their lawful use, and practised for all sorts of selfish and malevolent purposes, they inevitably led to what we must call by the name of sorcery. ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot

... are their names, all of which point to their godless action. The representative of the tribe of Reuben was called Shammua, the son of Zaccur, because he did not obey God, which was counted against him just as if he had pursued sorcery. Shaphat, the son of Hori, was Simeon's representative. His name signifies, "He did not conquer his evil inclination, and hence went out empty-handed, without having received a possession in the land of Israel." The tribe of ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... down by her trembling, but neither for awe of her greatness, nor for fear and horror of her guile and sorcery. ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

... fought against its introduction but nevertheless finally permitted it. [Sidenote: 1544] During the sixteenth century in that city there were no less than 803 processes for Lutheranism, 5 for Calvinism, 35 against Anabaptists, 43 for Judaism and 199 for sorcery. In countries outside of Italy the Roman Inquisition did not take root. Bishop Magrath endeavored in 1567 to give Ireland the benefit of the institution, but naturally the English Government ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... 18:10-12] This commandment forbids all magic arts, witchcraft, sorcery, pow-wowing, fortune-telling, and all attempts by signs or formulas to discover what God has kept hidden or to attain what He has withheld. If results are obtained by such means, e.g., by pow-wowing, that ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump

... Stoke Triston, in that county, was accused by "divers persons of credit," of the crimes of witchcraft and sorcery. She was afterwards found guilty by a jury at Taunton, but died before the sentence could be carried into effect. She confessed "that the devil, about ten years since, appeared to her in the shape of a handsome ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various

... "There's sorcery at the bottom of it," said a sinister voice in the crowd. It was that of the bald man, who never removed his eyes from ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... interesting; and this being Whitsun Eve, all were crowding to it, with their mass-books and rosaries, the little babies commonly with coral crosses hanging on the breast. Here we took a guide, left the village, ascended a hill, and now the woods rose up before us in a verdure which surprised us like a sorcery. The spring had burst forth with the suddenness of a Russian summer. As we left Gottingen there were buds, and here and there a tree half green; but here were woods in full foliage, distinguished from summer ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... Maugrabin [153] dervish came up and stopping to look at the lads, singled out Alaeddin from his comrades and fell to gazing upon him and straitly considering his favour. Now this dervish was from the land of Hither Barbary [154] and he was an enchanter who would cast mountain upon mountain with his sorcery and was skilled to boot in physiognomy. [155] When he had well considered Alaeddin, he said in himself, "Certes, this boy is he whom I seek and he it is in quest of whom I came forth from my country." So he took one of the lads apart ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne

... truth to offer in its room. But the thousands of good men whom it has beguiled, because it professed to meet the earnest craving of their minds for a restoration of Christ's church with power, need not fear to open their eyes to its hollowness; like the false miracles of fraud or sorcery, it is but the counterfeit of a real truth. The restoration of the church, is, indeed, the best consummation of all our prayers, and all our labours; it is not a dream, not a prospect to be seen only in the remotest distance; it is possible, it lies very near us; ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold

... Cynthia! can oblige thee, That, O Nisida, can compel thee To attempt this undertaking By so many risks attended. But I think you both are wrong, Since in this case, having heard that The affliction this man suffers Christian sorcery hath effected Through abhorrence of our gods, By that atheist sect detested, Neither of these feelings should Be your motive to attempt it. I then, who, for this time only Will believe these waves that tell me— These bright fountains—that the beauty Which so oft they have reflected Is unequalled, ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... Bible, the Buddhist canon has undergone wholesale textual alterations.... As to the popular literature of Buddhism, and its absurdities, we might as well collect those little pamphlets on dreams, on sorcery, on lucky and unlucky days, on the lives and miracles of saints, which circulate among Roman Catholic peasants,—but would that give us a true picture of Roman Catholicism? Thus it is with Buddhism."(9) In other words, Dr. Eitel would urge that in order to deal fairly with ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.

... cross, preached during two days to twenty thousand persons. Conversions were made in masses, forty thousand men being baptised at one time. When the multitudes were not converted by the miracles, they fled terrified. The saints were accused of sorcery; enigmas were proposed to them, which they solved at once; they were obliged to dispute questions with learned men, who remained speechless before them. As soon as they entered the temples of sacrifice the idols were overthrown with a breath, and were broken to pieces. A ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola

... Sorcery is a great evil among the Papuans. In every village almost, some crafty man pretends to be a witch and to have the power to destroy those who are his enemies. This is a constant thorn in the side of the Government official and the missionary. The poor Papuan ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox

... an overbearing manner. I enveloped myself in mysterious darkness, which obscured at times the brightness of my genius, and as I had accomplished several extraordinary cures, strongly resembling miracles, or tricks of sorcery, my airs of an inspired priest did not seem out of place, and I had devotees who encouraged these licenses of my pride by the excess of their humility. And then, behold, suddenly, this man of importance, this miraculous personage, flat upon his face, ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... testing the truth of Christianity. Mediaeval Christianity is at one with patristic, on this head. The masses, the clergy, the theologians, and the philosophers alike, live and move and have their being in a world full of demons, in which sorcery and possession are everyday occurrences. Nor did the Reformation make any difference. Whatever else Luther assailed, he left the traditional demonology untouched; nor could any one have entertained a more ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... arrived at the Bahamas affords, perhaps, the nearest parallel to our feelings, but in our case the land in sight was the outlier of another planet. Watchful curiosity and silent expectation, the ineffable sorcery of new scenes, the mystery of the unknown, the romance of adventure, the exultation of triumph, and the dread of disaster, were inextricably blended in our hearts. It was a glorious hour, and come what might, we all felt that we had not lived ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... eat women, a fact which some may be inclined to attribute to respect for the female sex. It is, however, assignable to a different feeling. All the South American Indians, who still remain under the influence of sorcery and empiricism, consider women in the light of impure and evil beings, and calculated to injure them. Among a few of the less rude nations this aversion is apparent in domestic life, in a certain unconquerable ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... its Centre. The Farmhouse. Morning Devotions. Farm Work. Tools. Diet. Neighborliness. New England Superstitions. Not Peculiar to New England. Sunday Laws. Public Worship. First Case of Sorcery. The Witch Executed. Cotton Mather. His Experiments. His Book. The Parris Children Bewitched. The Manifestations. The Trial. Executions. George Burroughs. Rebecca Nurse. Reaction. Forwardness of Clergy. ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... philosophy. Origen also refers to the view that was prevalent in his time, that Zamolxis, the servant of Pythagoras, had taught the Druids the philosophy of Pythagoras. He further states that the Druids practised sorcery. The triple division of the non-military aristocracy is perhaps best given by Strabo, the Greek geographer, who here follows Posidonius. The three classes are the Bards, the Seers (ouateisvates), and Druids. The Bards were hymn-writers and poets, the Seers sacrificers ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl

... degrees they persuaded their credulous master that the dervish was a magician, who would in time possess himself of his throne, and the sultan, alarmed, resolved to put him to death. With this intention, calling him to the presence, he accused him of sorcery, and commanded an executioner to strike off his head. "Forbear awhile," exclaimed the dervish, "and let me live till I have shown you the most wonderful specimen of my art." To this the sultan consented, when ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... was not lonely, and when the marvels of the inviting eyes turned towards him, he was always conscious of an ideal presence as if the god-maid of the mesa had stepped between, and made harmless the sorcery of the village daughters by which he ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan

... be broken; he knew many receipts out of Albertus Magnus, Raimundus Lallus, Theophrastus, Paracelsus, &c., against sorcery and evil witches." ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... with the melody they drink, Uplift their dangling hooves, and down the beams Of sunshine dance like motes. Thy languor seems An ocean-depth of love wherein I sink Like some fond Argonaut, right willingly—, Because of wooing eyes upturned to mine, And siren-arms that coil their sorcery About my neck, with kisses so divine, The heavens reel above me, and the sea Swallows and licks its ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley

... 1632. Godre, Bois, a Frenchman, prisoner in the King's Bench, takes upon him to cure the King's Evil, and daily a great concourse of people flocked to him, although it is conceived that if such cures have been, it is rather by sorcery and incantation than by any skill he has in physic. Endorsed: The Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench is to call him for examination, to ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... many a victory. When he came back to Finmark, his men found a girl in a Lapland hut, whose equal for beauty they never had seen. She said her name was Gunhild, and that her father dwelt in Halogaland, and was called Ozur Tote. "I am here," she said, "to learn sorcery from two of the most knowing Fins in all Finmark, who are now out hunting. They both want me in marriage. They are so skilful that they can hunt out traces either upon the frozen or the thawed earth, like dogs; and they can run so swiftly on skees that neither man nor beast can ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... should not be confounded with sorcery or spiritism. If the reader so interprets, he may expect the opposite to what is here forecast to follow. True magic is the study of ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... the attempt to compress and confine liberty would end in explosion. In that hour Northern men made tentative overtures looking to the purchase of all slaves. But slavery, Delilah-like, made the southern leaders drunk with the cup of sorcery. They scorned the proposition. In the light of subsequent events we see that in saving her institution the South lost it, and with it her wealth, while in losing her slaves the North gained her wealth. Under free labor the North doubled ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis



Words linked to "Sorcery" :   sorcerize, sorcerous, demonism, obiism, magic, enchantment, diabolism, witchcraft, thaumaturgy, black magic, bewitchment, Satanism, sorcerise, black art, witchery



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