Research source

VI. Other forms of involuntary indications; "involuntary whispering;" the subconscious 334

Date of account: Published 1900
Source: Fact and Fable in Psychology
Reference: Fact and Fable in Psychology · selected passage 126
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

or of the woman he is wooing (Tylor); the Illinois Indians making figures of those whose days they desire to shorten, and stabbing these images to the heart, or by performing incantations upon a stone trying to form a stone in the hearts of their enemies (Dorman); the Peruvian sorcerer, making rag dolls and piercing th…

Published source text

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Source passage

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, or of the woman he is wooing (Tylor); the Illinois Indians making figures of those whose days they desire to shorten, and stabbing these images to the heart, or by performing incantations upon a stone trying to form a stone in the hearts of their enemies (Dorman); the Peruvian sorcerer, making rag dolls and piercing them with cactus-thorns, and hiding them about the beds to cripple people; or the native of Borneo, making a wax figure of his enemy in the belief that as the image melts, the enemy's body will waste away (Tylor); the Zulu sorcerer who secures a portion of a desired victim's dress and buries it secretly, so that, as it rots away, his life may decay (Clodd); the confession recorded in a seventeenth-century trial for witchcraft, that the accused had "buried a glove of the said Lord Henry in the ground, so that as the glove did rot and waste, the liver of the said lord might rot and waste" (Brand); the New Britain sorcerer of to-day who burns a castaway banana skin, so that he who carelessly left it unburied may die a tormenting death (Clodd); bewitching by operating upon a lock of hair or the parings of the finger-nails, and the consequent widespread custom of religiously preventing such personal scraps from falling in

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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