Semitic magic : its origins and development

CEREMONIES. li
obtain of him, and hence to learn the name came to be
regarded as the equivalent of obtaining something more
tangible.^ This is the reason for the long catalogues of
devils that the Babylonian wizard repeats in the hope
that he may hit on the correct diagnosis of the disease
demon, who will straightway come forth when he perceives
that his name is known. " Whether thou art an evil
Spirit, or an evil Demon, or an evil Ghost, or an evil
Devil, or an evil God, or an evil Fiend, or sickness, or
death, or Phantom of Night, or Wraith of Night, or fever,
or evil pestilence, be thou removed from before me,** ^ or
even longer catalogues of ghosts of people who have died
unnatural deaths, or have been left unburied, who have
returned to torment the living that the rites necessary to
give them rest may be paid.^
The third and last part of the spell, as we have already
mentioned, is the ceremony with water, drugs, amulets,
wax figures, etc. The simplest form that this can take
is pure water with which the demoniac is washed, plainly
with the principle of cleansing lying underneath it.* When
a man has fallen sick of a headache, the Assyrian magician
takes water from two streams, at the spot where they run
into one another, which, like the cross-roads, is always a
place for magic. With this water he sprinkles the patient,
adding due enchantments.^ For some other form of disease
the priest will cleanse him with water in which certain
herbs have been steeped,^ a custom still prevalent among
the Malays. After childbirth among the Malays a part
^ This is more fully discussed in the chapter on the Atonement.
2 Devils and Evil Spirits, i, 16, 17, 11. 154 fF. 3 ibid., xxx ff.
* On the holiness of water see Baudissin, Studien, ii, 148.
5 Devils, ii, Tablet ' P,' 1. 65 fF. « Ibid., Tablet ' T,'" 1. 30 ff.