# An Examen of Witches/Chapter 26

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Chapter XXVI.
Whether Witches Afflict with Words.
Raemond, Antichrist, 26. 6.Fourthly, witches cause harm and mischief by their words. A Jew named Zambares by uttering certain words made a bull fall stark dead at the feet of St. Sylvester in the time of Constantine the Great. Nider tells that he saw a witch who, by pronouncing a single word, caused people to die suddenly; and he tells also that he likewise saw another who, with one word made her neighbour’s chin turn upside down. When Françoise Secretain wished to kill certain beasts, she struck them with a wand, saying these words: “I touch thee to kill thee,” etc. I have seen many other witches who did likewise. Moreover, we find in Homer that Circe changed the companions of Ulysses into swine by the power of words.
Circe did with her chants accursed and strange The wretched comrades of Ulysses change.
And Aristophanes writes that the witches of Thessaly performed marvellous things by their words:
Vile witches can with magic utterance Free wretched souls of all the ills that chance; Or charm the remnants of their wits away From those who dote on loving all the day; Or stay a river in its onward flowing So as to set its waters backward going.
​1. 7.And Ovid, in his “Amores”:
Charms change corn to grass and make it die: By charms are running springs and fountains dry. By charms mast falls from oaks, from vines grapes fall, And fruit from trees when there’s no wind at all. Why might not then my sinews be enchanted, And I grow faint as with some spirit haunted?
And Vergil says: Poisonous snakes burst at a witch’s chant. And Lucan:
With no more venom than a magic song They turn man’s sounder judgment out headlong.
Touching this matter the Romans made a law: “That he who hath bewitched the fruits of the earth shall be punished; and that it shall not be lawful for any person soever to remove the corn from one man’s field to another by enchantment.” We know the verses which make it impossible to churn butter; Ecl. VIII. 77and for those who “tie the points” (causing sexual impotence and frigidity) Vergil says:
Three strands of divers colours, in three knots Knot them; and say: “Here bind I Venus’ fetters.”
Nec mirum. 8. Magi. 26. q. 5.The Canon also allows that witches can cause injury by their mere words.
But now are we to account for the fact that even when they praise and compliment you, they injure you? Yet this is no new thing; for there ​were formerly in Africa and Italy certain families which, by praising people, caused them to die, thereby proving themselves altogether devilish. Yet other strange matters do they accomplish by their uttered spells. To go to the Sabbat, they place a staff between their legs and say these words: White staff, black staff, etc. The Ephesians, by means of certain magic words which they used, brought all their undertakings to a successful issue. Pythagoras enchanted the eagle with his words. It was by the force of her words that Medea seized the moon from the sky and brought it down to the earth. The great magician Mahomet did likewise, and put the moon in his sleeve: El-phurkan.at least he himself wrote that he did so.
Yet, in spite of all this, who will believe that mere words have the power to hurt? For my part I am of opinion that they are no more than a symbol of the pact between the witch and Satan; for it is certain that words have no other purpose than to denote the thing for which they were ordained and to express the passions of the soul and the affections of the spirit. Besides, if words had the power to kill, they would do so when uttered by anyone who was not a witch. And again, of what possible effect could be the strange unknown words used by witches: such as Gaber siloc fandu, which they say when they wish to prevent a chicken, whose head has been pierced with a knife, from dying? Or Malaton malatas dinor, which they use to prevent one from shooting with an arquebus? There are countless others which I purposely omit. I have the same opinion of the numbers and characters which have been only too curiously quoted by ​certain authors, even by Paracelsus in his Celestial Medicine, who, as well as Pico, Prince of Mirandola, is to be censured for saying that barbaric and meaningless words have more magic power than those which are understood. For in such cases it is Satan who secretly causes death or casts the evil spell. And if we find it written that Medea and Mahomet brought the moon down from the sky, we must not take this for the truth; but rather we should think that these witches cast a glamour over peoples’ eyes and made them see what was not. For Satan and his witches are wont to act in this way, as we have remarked in another place.