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 136
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

nous and stinging plants, iron or sulphuric metals, diamond, jasper, amethyst, and magnet; the vein of analogy lying in the fierce character of the god, whose name the planet bears

Published source text

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Source passage

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nous and stinging plants, iron or sulphuric metals, diamond, jasper, amethyst, and magnet; the vein of analogy lying in the fierce character of the god, whose name the planet bears. This idea of correspondence dominates the queer collection of odds and ends by which the old-time magician worked his charms. "Here," for instance, he would say, "is a plate of lead on which is engraved the symbol of a planet; and beside it a leaden flask containing gall. If I now take a piece of fine onyx marked with the same planet symbol and this dried cypress branch, and add to them the skin of a snake and the feather of an owl, you will need but to look into one of the tables given you to find that I have only collected various things in the elementary world which bear a relation of mutual activity to Saturn, and if rightly combined can attract both the powers of that planet and of the angels with which it is connected" (Rydberg). Mr. Tylor thus ably characterizes the analogies on which such systems are built and the uses to which they are put. "But most of his pseudo-science seems to rest on even weaker and more arbitrary analogies, not of things but of names.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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