"Necromancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Jews were not without success. The baptism of the pious Olga marks an era in Russian Christianity, the beginning of the "Judaizing heresy," which centuries of persecution only strengthened. In 1425, Zacharias of Kiev, who is reputed to have "studied astrology, necromancy, and various other magic arts," converted the priest Dionis, the Archbishop Aleksey, and, through the latter, many more clergymen of Novgorod, Moscow, and Pskov. Aleksey became a devout Jew. He called himself ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... dwelt then in the parts of Hungary, in the land which is called the "Seven Castles," a certain rich nobleman, worth 3000 marks a year, a philosopher, practised from his youth in secular literature, but nevertheless learned in the sciences of Necromancy and Astronomy. This master Klingsohr was sent for by the Prince to judge between the songs of these knights aforesaid. Who, before he was introduced to the Landgrave, sitting one night in Eisenach, in the court of his lodging, looked very earnestly upon the ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... gasping and shaken by his cough he burst forth with: "It will soon be over—I feel it within me, and yet I am no nearer to the goal. All the elements of nature I have called to my aid—all the spirits 'twixt Heaven and Earth over whom necromancy has any power have I made subject to my will and have commanded them to help me—to what end? There stands the elixir and is hardly more valuable than the small beer with which the servant down-stairs quenches his thirst, indeed it is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not die like the bee when he sting once. He is only stronger, and being stronger, have yet more power to work evil. This vampire which is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men, he is of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages, he have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply, the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command; he is brute, and more than brute; he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not; he can, within his range, direct ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... years ago—after your Extreme Highness had defeated in battle the King of the Golden Islands—a magician entered the realm. This magician, in the employ of this wicked king, entered a room in the palace where your Highness lay sleeping and by an act of necromancy ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... was called Horoscopy, and esteemed a part of judiciary Astrology: Sometimes in their own hopes and feares, called Thumomancy, or Presage: Sometimes in the Prediction of Witches, that pretended conference with the dead; which is called Necromancy, Conjuring, and Witchcraft; and is but juggling and confederate knavery: Sometimes in the Casuall flight, or feeding of birds; called Augury: Sometimes in the Entrayles of a sacrificed beast; which was Aruspicina: Sometimes in Dreams: Sometimes in Croaking of Ravens, or chattering ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... Buddhism and it possibly contained a pre-buddhist stratum of Iranian ideas.[1017] In later times it adopted or travestied Buddhist dogma, ritual and literature, much as Taoism did in China, but still remained a repository of necromancy, magic, animal sacrifices, devil-dancing, and such like practices, which have in all ages corrupted ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... enough as Mr. Bultitude took it in his hand; there was no kindly hand to hold him back, no warning voice to hint that there might possibly be sleeping within that small marble block the pent-up energy of long-forgotten Eastern necromancy, just as ready as ever to awake into action at the first words which had power to ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... like unto Moses' is here introduced that it does not refer to Jesus only; for it is presented as Israel's continuous defence against the temptation of seeking knowledge of the divine will by the illegitimate methods of divination, soothsaying, necromancy, and the like, which were rampant among the inhabitants of the land. A distant hope of a prophet in the far-off future could afford no motive to shun these superstitions. We cannot understand this passage unless we recognise that the direct ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... great proofs of sorcery in that, after all, but there was still enough smoke to warrant a surmise of fire, and the archdeacon bore a tolerably formidable reputation. We ought to mention however, that the sciences of Egypt, that necromancy and magic, even the whitest, even the most innocent, had no more envenomed enemy, no more pitiless denunciator before the gentlemen of the officialty of Notre-Dame. Whether this was sincere horror, or the game played by the thief who shouts, "stop thief!" at all events, it did not prevent the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... material temptations, and, broadly speaking, incapable (except just at the moment of real death) of communicating scio motu with mankind, though not wholly beyond the possible reach of the higher forms of the "Accursed Science," Necromancy. The question is a profoundly abstruse one; it would be impossible to explain within the brief space still remaining to us, how the conditions immediately after death differ so entirely as they do in the case ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... busied themselves over the transmutation of metals. As for magic, necromancy, pyromancy, geomancy, coscinomancy, and all the other mancies—there was then a whole literature about them. And the witch-burning inquisitors like Sprenger, Bodin, Delrio, and the rest, believed as firmly in the magic powers of the poor wretches whom they tortured to death, as did, ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... into stone is the entrance to a cave which only waits for the magician, and the little fire, and the necromancy, that will make the earth shake. All the dates imported come from the same tree as that unlucky date, with whose shell the merchant knocked out the eye of the genie's invisible son. All olives are of the stock of that fresh fruit, concerning which the Commander of the Faithful overheard ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... now seated together at table eating and talking so, when I asked him whether he had a reputation for sanctity and whether the people brought him food. He answered with a little hesitation that he had a reputation, he thought, for necromancy rather than anything else, and that upon this account it was not always easy to persuade a messenger to bring him the books in French and English which he ordered from below, though these were innocent enough, being, as a rule, novels written ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... not,' said Sir Owen. 'I seek my dear wife and her dominions, and have been seeking them these many months. But I fear me some evil necromancy hath been reared against me, so that I may not find her again, and she must be in much sorrow and misery in my absence. And if I never see my lady in life again, yet must I seek for her until ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... these vessels from the vast regions beyond the Great Lakes? Those thousands of settlers who poured into the Northwest had cargoes ready to fill every manner of craft in so short a space of time that it seems as if they must have resorted to arts of necromancy. It was not magic, however, but perseverance that had triumphed. The story of the creating of the main lakeward-reaching canals is long and involved. A period of agitation and campaigning preceded every such undertaking; and when construction ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... bed! Ah, would they in that crisis, when life and death are before them, and each within their reach, would they but think, or try to think, that Forgetfulness will come to their relief, and lull them into ease, they could stay their hand, and lay hold of life. But there is a necromancy in wretchedness that entombs the mind, and increases the misery, by shutting out every ray of light and hope. It makes the wretched falsely believe they will be wretched ever. It is the most fatal of all dangerous delusions; ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... incomprehensible) leaning to the clergy. I think it belongs to the same kind of superstition which many of our own day are turning to. Offered the Spirit of God for the asking, offered it by the Lord himself, in the misery of their unbelief they betake themselves to necromancy instead, and raise the dead to ask their advice, AND FOLLOW IT, and will find some day that Satan had not forgotten how to dress like an angel of light. Nay, he can be more cunning with the demands of the time. We are clever: he will be cleverer. Why should he dress and not speak like ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... discern dimly a huge body half a mile long approaching nearer and nearer. At first the king could not believe that this was the small beast who had seemed so friendly on the shore of the lake of quicksilver but then he knew very little of necromancy, and had never studied the art of expanding and contracting his body. But it was the dragon and nothing else, whose six wings were carrying him forward as fast as might be, considering his great weight and the length of his tail, which had fifty ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... Egyptian astrologers the arts of healing, thaumaturgy and necromancy, and teaching them in their school, the professors of the Jewish college of Alexandria assumed the title of Essenes, or Therapeutae, the Egyptian and Greek words signifying Doctors, Healers or Wonder Workers. Possessed of the sad and gloomy characteristics of ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... of both were equally well founded: both were jugglers, and merited to have fared alike; but society, while it lavished all its credence and all its patronage upon the one, denounced the other as impostors. One colossal system of necromancy filled Europe; but the age gave the priest a monopoly; and so jealously did it guard his rights, that the conjuror who did not wear a cassock was banished or burned. We can assign no reason for the odium under which the one lay, and the repute in which the other was held, save that the art, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... in every-day matters of the still real existence of the power of this magic was the first step in the rebuilding of Lady Anstruthers. To realise that the wonderful and yet simple necromancy was gradually encircling her again, had its parallel in the taking of a tonic, whose effect was cumulative. She herself did not realise the working of it. But Betty regarded it with interest. She saw it was good for her, merely to look on ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Pyrrhus sent a party of messengers to the Roman camp to say to Decius, that if in the approaching battle he attempted to resort to any such arts of necromancy to secure the victory to the Roman side, he would find himself wholly unsuccessful in the attempt; for the Greek soldiers had all been instructed not to kill him if he should throw himself among them, but to take him alive and bring him ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... a division into several classes or sections: Religious Cults, Necromancy, Magic, Second Sight, Divination, Astrology, Palmistry, of which all have their special literatures and bibliographies. Major Irwin recently sold an extensive series of works on these and kindred topics. Cornelius ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... to embody them, it seemed to be no longer the same high and mysterious faculty that so ruled the tides of the feelings of others. He then appeared a more ordinary poet—— a skilful verse-maker. The necromancy which held the reader spellbound became ineffectual; and the charm and the glory which interested so intensely, and shone so radiantly on his configurations from realities, all failed and faded; for his genius dealt not with airy fancies, but had ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... suffered as an astrologer, though it is extremely doubtful whether he was ever guilty of the charges brought against him, was Henry Cornelius Agrippa, who was born at Cologne in 1486, a man of noble birth and learned in Medicine, Law, and Theology. His supposed devotion to necromancy and his adventurous career have made his story a favourite one for romance-writers. We find him in early life fighting in the Italian war under the Emperor Maximilian, whose private secretary he was. The honour of knighthood conferred upon him did not satisfy his ambition, and he betook himself ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... well in its place, but this place is second- [5] ary. Necromancy has no foundation,—in fact, no intelligence; and the belief that it has, deceives itself. Whatever simulates power and Truth in matter, does this as a lie declaring itself, that mortals' faith in matter ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... them, would be lit with the fire of magic. Words of destiny like blood-hued rubies; words fraught with ominous opal warning; words that glittered with the biting brilliance of diamonds—they were his to link together with thought: he was their master. The necromancy of language was ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... especially because of the fine use made of antique green tiles in the polychromatic roofing. Surely the august Spirit of Kwammu Tenno might well rejoice in this charming evocation of the past by architectural necromancy! ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... historic past, and stand before us in the full light of contemporary attention. Not alone this group of choice persons, but the environment of their time, the very atmosphere, are demanded of this necromancy. The figure of Adelaide Kemble (Mrs. Sartoris) is one of these, and the tradition still survives of a concert given in the splendid, spacious hall of the Palazzo Colonna where she was the prima donna of the occasion. There were also musicals at the house of Mrs. ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... high spirits and irrepressible buffoonery of youth. Others, again, fewer in number, and mystically given, insisted that the corpse was bona fide necessary to the exhibition, and that the disclosures and allusions which had astonished so many people were distinctly due to necromancy. ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of inquisitorial ingenuity were employed to ensnare the old man, and to draw from him evidence that might be brought against himself, and might corroborate certain secret information that had been given against him. He had been accused of practising necromancy and judicial astrology, and a cloud of evidence had been secretly brought forward to substantiate the charge. It would be tedious to enumerate all the circumstances, apparently corroborative, which had been industriously cited by the secret accuser. ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... also must be referred the rise of that system of necromancy which, originating in America, has had great vogue in other countries, and here in its native land has taken such form as really to constitute a new cult. Making no mention of sporadic instances of what in earlier generations would have been called (and properly enough) by the name of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... last, his hair was dark; he dressed himself like a modern Englishman; and he really preserved a likeness to the full-length portrait at Knowl, that you fell in love with, you know; but, angels and ministers of grace! such a spectre! I asked myself, is it necromancy, or is it delirium tremens that has reduced him to this? And said he, with that odious smile, that made me ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... Koromantyn who is the victim of Obi.[Footnote: 'The victim of Obi.'—It seems worthy of notice, that this magical fascination is generally called Obi, and the magicians Obeah men, throughout Guinea, Negroland, &c.; whilst the Hebrew or Syriac word for the rites of necromancy, was Ob or Obh, at least when ventriloquism was concerned.] As a Greek word, which it was, the name imported no ill; but for a Roman to say Ibo Epidamnum, was in effect saying, though in a hybrid dialect, half-Greek half-Roman, 'I will go to ruin.' The name was therefore ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of its existence. Books he detested, one and all, excepting only such as he happened to write himself. And these were not a few. On all subjects known to man, from the Thirty-nine Articles of our English church down to pyrotechnics, legerdemain, magic, both black and white, thaumaturgy, and necromancy, he favored the world (which world was the nursery where I lived amongst my sisters) with his select opinions. On this last subject especially—of necromancy—he was very great: witness his profound work, though but a fragment, and, unfortunately, long since departed to the bosom of Cinderella, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... miracles through the interposition of Christ. Ordinary miracles, indeed, could be tested by the senses, but the essence of transubstantiation was that it eluded the senses. Thus nothing could be more convenient to the government than to make this invisible and intangible necromancy a test in capital cases for heresy-Hence Wycliffe had no alternative but to deny transubstantiation, for nothing could be more insulting to the intelligence than to adore a morsel of bread which a ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... cut-asunder these so blissful bonds.' He even appears surprised at the 'Duenna Cousin,' whoever she may have been, 'in whose meagre, hunger-bitten philosophy, the religion of young hearts was, from the first, faintly approved of.' We, even at such distance, can explain it without necromancy. Let the Philosopher answer this one question: What figure, at that period, was a Mrs. Teufelsdroeckh likely to make in polished society? Could she have driven so much as a brass-bound Gig, or even a simple iron-spring one? Thou foolish 'absolved Auscultator,' ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Eriphyle. Irish legendary history describes a similar battle in which the slain revive each night and renew the fight daily, as occurring in the wanderings of the Tuatha De Danann before they reached Ireland. According to Keating, they learnt the art of necromancy in the East, and taught it to ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday
... and that so there were eight Cabeiric divinities. The lower or Titanic powers being subdued, chaos ceased, and creation began in the reign of the divinities of mind and love; but the chaotic gods still existed in the abyss, and the notion of evoking them was the origin, the idea, of the Greek necromancy. ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Price Current, and in a very little while disappeared, like a witch from the stage, in blasts of sulphur fire and rumbling thunder, under the management of those effective scene-shifters, the quarrymen. A government contract, more potent than the necromancy of the famed wizard Michael Scott, lifted this massive rock from its base, and, flying with it full two hundred miles, buried it fathoms below the surface of the Atlantic, at the Rip Raps, near Hampton Roads; and thus it happens that I cannot vouch the ocular ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... disembodied spirits of dead men who make the communications, the Bible reader is at once aware of a conflict of claims. In times when the Bible was written, there were practices among men which went under the names of "enchantment," "sorcery," "witchcraft," "necromancy," "divination," "consulting with familiar spirits," etc. These practices were all more or less related, but some of them bear an unmistakable meaning. Thus, "necromancy" is defined to mean "a pretended ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... the windows of Van Twiller's sleeping-room there appeared, as if by necromancy, an aggressive poster with MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI on it in letters at least a foot high. This thing stared him in the face when he woke up one morning. It gave him a sensation as if she had called on him ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... would be as fresh and vivid at the end of that period as the day they were penned. In them the atmosphere of, the river and its environment—its pictures, its thousand aspects of life—are reproduced with what is no less than literary necromancy. Not only does he make you smell the river you can fairly hear it breathe. On the appearance of the first ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... not what I did. Those I most loved fell beneath the blow which crushed those I most abhorred, and shared the same fate. The terrible agencies I had summoned as my slaves became my masters. The fiends which, as ministers of God's justice, garbed in the guise of angels of light, I had, by hideous necromancy, evoked to aid me in righteous retribution, proved the dark demons of hell and derided all orders to accomplish my bidding. The awful engines I had set in motion I found myself powerless to arrest or control. Effects ceased not with the causes ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... it with the stories of Abdullah bin Fazil [451] and Abu Sir and Abu Kir. [452] Very striking is the account of the Mahrabis whom Judar pushed into the lake, and who appeared with the soles of their feet above the water and none can forget the sights which the necromancy of the third Maghrabi put before the eyes of Judar. "Oh, Judar, fear not," said the Moor, "for they are semblances without life." The long and bloody romance of Gharib and Ajib is followed by thirteen storyettes, all apparently historical, and then comes the detective work ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... down at his writing. Studies for the marvellously painted hands are among the Louvre drawings. The very Self of the man—the lean, strong, thinking countenance,—the elusive smile, shrewd, ironical, yet kindly, stealing out on his lips,—is alive here by some necromancy of art. ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... open in Toboso for the study, it is said, of magic, but more likely of chemistry, algebra, and other sciences, which, altogether mistaken by the ignorant and vulgar, and imperfectly understood even by those who studied them, were supposed to be allied to necromancy, or at least to natural magic. It was, of course, the business of the Inquisition to purify whatever such pursuits had left of suspicious Catholicism, and their labours cost as much blood on accusations of witchcraft and magic as for heresy ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... of music seem inexplicable to the man who idly dreams that his life began less than a hundred years ago! But the mystery lightens for whomsoever learns that the substance of Self is older than the sun. He finds that music is a Necromancy;—he feels that to every ripple of melody, to every billow of harmony, there answers within him, out of the Sea of Death and Birth, some eddying immeasurable of ancient pleasure ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... possible, than when he had first known her. Time, experience, even the pangs of literary parturition had not writ a single character on that alabaster brow. The very atrophy of the forces of time which she had accomplished by unknown necromancy seemed to endow her with an elfin youth, making her seem smaller, more childlike, more radiantly elusive than when she had worn ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... witch-face silently mowing and grimacing at the world below, albeit seen by no human being except perchance some dweller at the little house on the spur, struck aghast by this unwelcome apparition evoked by the necromancy of the breeze and the sheen and the shadow, marking this as ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... are the words Satan is clever in coining when the false gods speak and reject the true," he stated quietly. "My children, we must not hold this against the weak human brother. The devils of necromancy and sorcery are stubborn—but ere this the stubbornness has been broken, and the saints have rejoiced! It is plain that devilish arts could not prosper where the Image remained—hence it has been given back! Make no mistake my children, where the word of God, and the ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... most noble worth, To whom high renown is given, Who, victorious on earth, Are beloved of God in Heaven, 5 I a priest am and my home Is Portugal, From the Sibyl's cave I come Where fumes diabolical Are distilled and brought to birth. 10 In magic and necromancy I'm a skilled practitioner, A most accomplished sorcerer, Well versed in astrology. In so many a devil's art 15 Would I have part That o'er the strongest I'll prevail And just seize him by the tail And hand him to prince Luis there. Sorcerers of past time ne'er 20 Knew the enchantments that I ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... Morayshire peasant has testified to having seen him riding forth on a sunny day, the shadow of his horse visible, with those of his spurs and his whip, but his body offering no impediment to the rays of the sun. He enriched the library with books on necromancy, demonology, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... the case," remarked Craig, leaning back, his hands behind his head, gazing up at the ceiling. "Hello, here's Leslie! What did you find, Doctor?" The coroner had entered with a look of awe on his face, as if Kennedy had directed him by some sort of necromancy. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... The world was then ignorant and credulous and passionately fond of wonderful adventures and deeds of valor. They believed in giants, dwarfs, dragons, enchanted castles, and every imaginable species of necromancy. These form the materials of the old romance. The knight-errant was described as courteous, religious, valiant, adventurous, and temperate. Some enchanters befriended and others opposed him. To do his mistress ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... second work, is founded upon a fantastic Russian legend of magic and necromancy. It has not the national and patriotic interest of 'Life for the Czar,' but as music it deserves to rank higher. Berlioz thought very highly of it. Nevertheless it may be doubted whether, at this time of day, there is any likelihood of Glinka ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... no husband but one who could prove himself "a wise king." In our days, when every king and nearly every man thinks himself wise, such a decision would not have deterred suitors, and she would have been compelled, in the end, to choose among the few unwise. But wisdom, in those times of fable and necromancy, had a wider meaning than we give it. A wise king was one who had control of the powers of earth and air, who could call the genii to his aid by incantations, and perform supernatural deeds. Hence it was that ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... one corner of the table, and her face had a witch-like loveliness, as though borrowing its pallor and beauty from the moon, source of all magic and necromancy. Her eyes shone with such luster that, seeking their hue, they held the observer's gaze in mocking languor, and cheated the inquisitive coxcomb of his quest, the while the disdainful lips curved laughingly and so bewildered ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... regard to spiritualism. Browning did not dislike spiritualism; he disliked spiritualists. The difference is tremendous. Unfortunately many of the interpreters of spiritualism have degraded it into a kind of blatant necromancy which is in no way dignified or useful. It is entirely opposed to proper ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... continued to appear as if by necromancy, and space near the planet was streaked by flarings of white vapor as eighty-gee rockets hurled themselves to destruction against the invading objects. As each bomb went off, its light was brighter than the sun. But each was a mere flicker in enormousness. They flashed, and flashed—Each was ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... manifest as all three have been throughout His dealings with Israel. The worship of other gods is forbidden and so is every attempt to represent Himself in a material form. His ritual is purged of foolish, unclean and cruel elements. Witchcraft and necromancy ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... Loristan had heard it, and listened and believed, that The Rat had taken fire. His imagination seized upon the idea, as it would have seized on some theory of necromancy proved true ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... what you are," he said. "You've lived so long in the East that you've imbibed its tricks of occultism and necromancy. I suppose you have discovered in some way that that mushroom has sprung up since the old man sent me ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... another word, Mr. Forbes," he said gravely, "let me tell you that in my efforts to trace your whereabouts I also called up Fortescue Square. Miss Forbes came to the telephone. She said you had gone to the Home Office. By some feminine necromancy, too, she divined the link which binds you with the death of Mrs. Lester. She was distressed on your account, and I was hard put to it to extricate myself from the risk of saying something which ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... men, by his private reviews, to which no stranger, even of the highest rank, was ever admitted, and by a series of mystifications, had laboured to produce this impression upon Europe, and had largely succeeded. Mankind love being cheated; and what the charlatanism of necromancy effected a thousand years ago, was now effected by the charlatanism of genius. If I had seen the Prussian troops only at Potsdam, I should probably have mistaken the truncheon for a talisman, like the rest of the world. But the field suffers no mystification. I had seen that the true secret ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... Beard anticipates my demands; and how she facilitates my departure," said Croustillac to himself; "there is something very strange under this. I was not, perhaps, altogether wrong in accusing her of magic or necromancy." Then he continued aloud, "You will go and open the outer gates, Mirette, and tell the blacks to prepare themselves at once. Well," said Croustillac, seeing the woman remain motionless, "did you not ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... piano has swept over the civilized world, carrying with it hosts of accomplished pianists. Of some of those who are familiar figures in our musical centres it has been said that Teresa Carreno learned from Rubinstein the art of piano necromancy; that Rosenthal is an amazing technician whose interpretations lack tenderness; that De Pachmann is on terms of intimacy with Chopin, and that Rafael Joseffy, the disciple of Tausig, combines all that is best in the others with striking ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... proposals was Sheridan who, on 18th June brilliantly declaimed against the formation of a great Regular Army, as alien to the spirit of our people, and by all the arts of rhetorical necromancy sought to raise the spectre of a Standing Army. When others bemoaned the threatened increase of taxation and Windham and Craufurd ("Craufurd of the Light Division") criticized the measure severely, the Opposition cherished the hope of defeating the Ministry. The debate dragged on till ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... him her face flushed radiant with surprise and joy. She seemed to think that nothing short of necromancy could have conjured him to that spot. She had no reproaches for him, because she had no suspicion that he had trifled with his promise not to seek her. But ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the city in question when he wrote the poem, this explanation would be more plausible than most others, for the allusions are all to some lady who has been done to death. Galt asserts that the plot turns on a tradition of unhallowed necromancy—a human sacrifice, like that of Antinous attributed to Hadrian. Byron himself says it has no plot, but he kept teasing his questioners with mysterious hints, e.g. "It was the Staubbach and the Jungfrau, and something ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... angered at this blasphemy, would ill denote the pity that I feel," said Mark, more excited at the charge of necromancy, than he was willing to own; "and yet to-suffer so fatal an error to spread among these deluded victims of Satan, would be neglect of duty. Thou hast heard some legend of thy wild people, man of the Wampanoags, which may heap double perdition ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... once more crossed the wide Atlantic—and (not by the necromancy of imagination but by a longer and more tedious transit) found myself in an English meadow,—I exclaimed with ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... foreign to our minds to-day. The ordinary Englishman is not a great believer in devils or spirits of evil: though he does in some instances believe in ghosts, and is inclined to the practice of what in former ages was called necromancy—the attempt to establish an illicit connexion with the spirits of the departed—under the modern name of psychical research. There are, no doubt, some forms of psychical research which are genuinely scientific ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... ceases to be like a taper, needing a match to light it, and becomes a sun, blazing with its own radiance. Spencer wrote: "By no political alchemy can we get golden conduct out of leaden instincts." Thus there is no necromancy by which the mind can get superior work out of its ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Guianesa of the Indians, and it is remarkable that Yanus and Guianes are homonymous. In short it appears that these books are the source of all that has been transmitted to us by the Greeks and Latins in every science, even in alchymy, necromancy, etc. What is most to be regretted in their loss is that part which related to the principles of medicine and diet, in which the Egyptians appear to have made a considerable progress, and to ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... his pets were a porcupine trained to prick the legs of his guests under the table "so that they drew them in quickly"; a raven that spoke like a human being; an eagle, and many snakes. He also studied necromancy, the better to frighten his apprentices. He left Florence in 1528, after the Medici expulsion, and, like Leonardo, took service with Francis the First. He died at the age ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... explanation she brought water and sal-volatile and returned with me to the drawing-room. It was a night of stupefying surprises. The quartier would have called it abracadabrant and they would not have been far wrong. There was necromancy in the air. I felt it, as I followed the nurse across the threshold. I anticipated something odd, some grotesque development. In the atmosphere of those I loved in those days I was as sensitive ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... cats, making fancy coats, and topping off the human head with elegant hats and bonnets; the Austrians in the manufacture of shin-plasters for their soldiers, and the making and breaking of constitutions for ungovernable dependencies; the Prussians in the blasphemous necromancy of receiving crowns for their kings direct from God; and all in some shape or other professing devotion to human liberty, and doing every thing in their power to subvert it. Truly it is enough to puzzle one who seeks for truth amid the prevailing fogs of error that seem to ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... him." These instances might be multiplied. They prove that "to be gathered unto one's fathers" means to descend into Sheol and join there the hosts of the departed. A belief in the separate existence of the soul is also involved in the belief in necromancy, or divination, the prevalence of which is shown by the stern laws against those who engaged in its unhallowed rites, and by the history of the witch of Endor. She, it is said, by magical spells evoked the shade of old Samuel from below. It must ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... say. It was sufficient, for the present, to ring the tuneful changes on that novel word, and to clasp the little hand that trembled under its load of happiness, and to press that little magic circle, out of which the necromancy of Marriage should conjure such ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... necromancy were the learning of the period, and Sir Kenneth heard his companion's confession of diabolical descent without any disbelief, and without much wonder; yet not without a secret shudder at finding ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... opinions that is to be reputed the most foolish which deals with the belief in Necromancy, the sister of Alchemy, which gives birth to simple and natural things. But it is all the more worthy of reprehension than alchemy, because it brings forth nothing but what is like itself, that is, lies; this does not happen in Alchemy which ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... London in the Springtime, I am sitting here, your guest. Nay—I think it is a vision, or a fancy - Part of dreamland Necromancy; And I question: is it true That the great warm hearts of you, Heard the winging of that singing in the West, Heard the chiming of my rhyming From the farmhouse in ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... from the doctor, health and life; from the teacher, the noble culture of the soul. Both are our friends, and deserve our most sincere thanks, not so much by their merchantable art, as by their frank goodwill."[19] The practice of necromancy in the time of Nero had grown to such an extent that an edict of banishment was issued against all magicians, but this did not lessen the popularity of the magicians, who indeed prospered under the semblance of persecution, and were honoured in times ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... disturbing visions. MacRae seemed to see with remarkable clarity and sureness that he would be penalized for yielding to that bewitching fancy. By what magic had she so suddenly made herself a shining figure in a golden dream? Some necromancy of the spirit, invisible but wonderfully potent? Or was it purely physical,—the soft reddish-brown of her hair; her frank gray eyes, very like his own; the marvelous, smooth clearness and coloring of her skin; her voice, that was given to soft cadences? ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was asked to talk about "potato substitutes" and expected to exercise some necromancy whereby that which was not a potato might become a potato. Now, the Nutrition Expert was very imperturbable—not at all disturbed by the calamity which had befallen our tables. That unfeeling person saw potatoes, not in terms of their ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... them; and he heard a voice saying, 'Embrace me! for I am Venus, whom this day you wedded, and I will not restore your ring.' As this was constantly repeated, he consulted his relations, who had recourse to Palumbus, a priest, skilled in necromancy. He directed the young man to go, at a certain hour of night, to a spot among the ruins of ancient Rome, where four roads met, and wait silently till he saw a company pass by, and then, without uttering ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... to profane the temples, by smoking their pipes, and taking refreshments, and even by gambling, within the consecrated precincts. The priests are shameless impostors. They practise the mountebank sciences of astrology, divination, necromancy, and animal magnetism, and keep for sale a liquid, which, they pretend, will confer immortality ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... it is true—in contemplation of my own ill-luck. How little did these two women care for me, who had freely conceded all their claims, and a great deal more, out of the fulness of my heart; while Hollingsworth, by some necromancy of his horrible injustice, seemed to have brought ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... different shape, under the influence of an erroneous derivation; which, curiously enough, even now that it has been dismissed, has left behind it the marks of its presence, in our common phrase, "the Black Art". I need hardly remind you that 'necromancy' is a Greek word, which signifies, according to its proper meaning, a prophesying by aid of the dead, or that it rests on the presumed power of raising up by potent spells the dead, and compelling them ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... beyond convenient reach of the Church. The purposes of the society are twofold; first, to preserve the traditions just mentioned, and second, to give a certain class of ambitious men and women sufficient influence through their acknowledged power of exorcism and necromancy to lead a comfortable life at the expense of the credulous. The persons admitted into the society are firmly believed to possess the power of communing with various supernatural beings—manidos—and in order that certain desires may be realized they are sought ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... blinking, a band of maidens came and unbuckled their arms and cast a shining cloak upon each; which was hardly done when a lady came towards them out of the throng, and though she was truly the Queen Morgan le Fay, they knew her not at all, for by her necromancy she had altered ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... doubt, for he knew Ootah's prowess, his strength of limb, and braveness of heart. However, he put out with quick powerful strokes, and with a sense of anticipated triumph, for he was confident that the magician by his necromancy had created in the depths of the sea a tupilak, or artificial walrus, which should attack Ootah. He knew it might upset Ootah's kayak and cause him to be drowned. The probabilities were, however, that it would permit itself to be harpooned, ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... even seeing her, she suddenly realized how deeply she loved him. We have all had such experiences—we live along, thinking of things after a certain fashion, and suddenly there comes a day when everything seems changed. It was so with Adrienne. All things seemed changed to her, and in that bitter necromancy her pride was humbled. Wherever she went there was but one dear face she longed to see—one dear face with the quiet eyes she loved. There were days when she so longed to see him, when the sound of his voice or the touch of his hand would have been so inexpressibly dear to her, that it seemed ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... Monsignor," answered Horace impressed. "It is like necromancy, though I see how the trick ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... enclose a narration of facts. Not noted for assurance, I yet feel well assured that its publication in THE CONTINENTAL 'will do uses.'' Should there be any among our readers who have inquired into our modern necromancy, they will not fail to recognize in the excited, wild, incoherent, and uncultured jargon of the spirits of 'The Love Lucifer,' the same style and character evinced by those to whom they may have ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... some practice of a necromantic order, wherein she doubted not that the scholar must be a thorough adept; which idea she imparted to her mistress. The lady, being none too well furnished with sense, never thinking that, if the scholar had been an adept in necromancy, he would have made use of it in his own behoof, gave heed to what her maid said, and forthwith bade her learn of the scholar whether he would place his skill at her service, and assure him that, if he so did, she, in guerdon thereof, would ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... him: "It is not long since there was in this city (Florence) a great master in necromancy, who was called Michele Scotto, because he was ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... be medically examined further, to the revealing of my terrible past, my perturbed present, and pacific future. The result of which necromancy I shall duly report. I am afraid that they will not find that an operation will do good, if so I shall truly despair. And if they decide for the knife, I shall go to the guillotine like the gayest Marquis of the ancient regime. Yes, I should do better for I have my chance, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... romances of chivalry. Necromancer, lit. one who by magical power can commune with the dead (Gk. nekros, a corpse); hence a sorcerer. From confusion of the first syllable with that of the Lat. niger, black, the art of necromancy came to ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... by the so-called pythonic spirit; evidently outside the natural order, still more evidently not by the agency of God, and of a certainty through the secret workings of the "Old Boy" himself. It was called Necromancy, or the Black Art. It had attractions for the Jews and they yielded to some extent to the temptation of consulting the Python. For this reason Moses condemned the evil as an abomination. These are ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... waxen wings did mount above his reach, And, melting, heavens conspir'd his overthrow; For, falling to a devilish exercise, And glutted now[6] with learning's golden gifts, He surfeits upon cursed necromancy; Nothing so sweet as magic is to him, Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss: And this the man that in ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... means, that he had been giving much of his mental strength during the last twenty years to the search for ulterior motives on the part of Mrs. Louis Champney, a woman of sixty now, a Googe by birth (the Googes, through some genealogical necromancy, traced their descent from Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The name alone, not the blood, had, according to family tradition, suffered corruption with time), and the widow of Louis Champney, the late ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... mind. She evidently united the highest departments of her art with its humblest offices; and possessed those nobler aspirations of the soul, which, during the middle ages, elevated in considerable degree the professors of necromancy. But our purpose is not now to determine her pretensions. We have but to exhibit and to ascertain a small specimen of her skill in the vulgar business of fortune-telling—an art which will continue to be received ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... east and west, and up in the air and down on the floor; but the search was in vain. The judge at last began to suspect witchcraft, and exclaimed, "This is a deceptio auris—it is absolute delusion, necromancy, phantasmagoria." And to the day of his death the judge never understood the precise origin of ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... arise, and the true point of inquiry is, whether our constitution meant that they should be finally settled, or whether they are to remain suspended between heaven and earth, until they are compelled to make their appearance by the necromancy of legal subtlety, or occasionally ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... custody. After previous examination, on the 25th of July 1441, Bolingbroke was placed upon a scaffold before the cross of St Paul's, with a chair curiously painted, which was supposed to be one of his implements of necromancy, and dressed in mystical attire, and there, before the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Cardinal of Winchester, and several other bishops, made abjuration of ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... of experimental proof to establish the undulatory theory of light. While the records of science are strewn on every page with accounts of such triumphs of human skill and intellect, we see no need of resorting to fiction or to necromancy for the gratification of a natural taste ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... of extraordinary character, and the tired imagination of those pleasure-seekers was tickled by his talk of black art. Some even asserted that the blasphemous ceremonies of the Black Mass had been celebrated in the house of a Polish Prince. People babbled of satanism and of necromancy. Haddo was thought to be immersed in occult studies for the performance of a magical operation; and some said that he was occupied with the Magnum Opus, the greatest and most fantastic of alchemical experiments. ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... of the Khasis may be described as animism or spirit-worship, or rather, the propitiation of spirits both good and evil on certain occasions, principally in times of trouble. The propitiation of these spirits is carried out either by priests (lyngdohs), or by old men well versed in the arts of necromancy, and as the lyngdoh or wise man deals with good as well as evil spirits, and, as often as not, with the good spirits of ancestors, the propitiation of these spirits may be said to partake of the nature of Shamanism. A very prominent feature of the Khasi beliefs is the propitiation ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... of any necromancy at work upon his daughter. He smoked his pipe, made notes in his field-book, directing an occasional remark toward his apprentice, enjoying in his tranquil, middle-age way the beauty and serenity ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... the maid with Fancy Free; If Cupid's necromancy Imprison not her heart, maybe, It will ...
— Happy Days • Oliver Herford
... all be a power in necromancy that he yet dreamed not of? Was it possible that even now those old enchanters held their meetings here, and would question his right to force his way ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... conquerors or as corrupted guardians of the human race, they seek the same ends,—to divert worship from the true God, and by the destruction of man, to contrive a solace for their own perdition. They are the inventors of astrology, sooth-saying, divination, necromancy, and black magic; they were once the ministers of God, and still have a presentiment of his acts, so that they can sometimes speak truly of the future by means of oracles and magicians, claiming the while the credit of bringing that to pass which in fact they only foresaw. Milton, in adopting ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... said the Emperor, 'but it is so. Slave! throw up now the doors of all thy vaults, and let us see whether both lions and tigers be not too much for this new necromancy. If it be the gods who interpose, they can shut the mouths ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... for ten years to come, according to Nucingen, the Napoleon of finance; commerce by which a man can grasp the totality of fractions, and skim the profits before there are any. Gigantic idea! one way of pouring hope into pint cups,—in short, a new necromancy! So far, we have only got ten or a dozen hard heads initiated into the cabalistic ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... crimsoned. What—how much did Maitresse Aimable know? By what necromancy had this fat, silent fisher-wife learned the secret which was the heart of her life, the soul of her being—which was Philip? She was frightened, but danger ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... it is incorporated in those of Tyndale, Barnes, and Frith, printed by Day in 1572, fol., the reader is presented with the following amusing specimen of the author's vein of humour and indignation: "And as I heard it spoken of divers, he made, by craft of necromancy, graven imagery to bear upon him; wherewith he bewitched the king's mind—and made the king to doat upon him, more than he ever did on any lady or gentlewoman: so that now the king's grace followed him, as ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... grouping around the dead saint is very suggestive of Ghirlandajo, and shews a deep study of his frescoes in the Sassetti Chapel. The colouring is peculiarly his own; there is the mingling of a great variety of bright tints of equal intensity, which by some necromancy are made to relieve each other, instead of being relieved by the art of chiaroscuro as in the handling ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... fellow named Paolo Giovio, Bishop of Nocera, a charlatan and a wretched dabbler in necromancy and something of an alchemist, who has lately written the life of another Pope's son—Cesare Borgia, who lived nigh upon half a century ago, and who did more than any man to consolidate the States of the Church, though his true aim, like Pier Luigi's, was to found a State for himself. I am given ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... certainly pay dividends, paper that would presently sell at or near its face value. And this success had come when he was only thirty-four. His mind was already projecting greater triumphs in this modern necromancy by which millionaires evoke and materialize millions from the empty air—apparently. He was bubbling over with happiness—in the victory won, in victories to ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... material, had even been extended into the neighbourhood of the eyes and mouth, lending to the keen expression of the former a look of twinkling cunning, and to the dogmatism of the latter, not a little of the grimness of necromancy. He had been despoiled of his upper garments, and, in their stead, his body was sufficiently protected from the cold, by a fantastically painted robe of dressed deer-skin. As if in mockery of his pursuit, sundry toads, frogs, lizards, butterflies, &c., all duly prepared ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... thou shalt have it: for I love the bold adventurer that trusts himself hardily upon the great deep;" answered the unabashed Pippo. "My first lessons in necromancy were received on the mole of Napoli, amid burly Inglesi, straight-nosed Greeks, swarthy Sicilians, and Maltese with spirits as fine as the gold of their own chains. This was the school in which I learned to know my art, and an apt scholar I proved in all that touches the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... And yet, unless memory fails me, this is certainly a living woman in my arms. Evidently this is a sleep induced by necromancy. Well, it is not for nothing I have read so many fairy tales. There are orthodoxies to be observed in the awakening of every enchanted princess. And Lisa, wherever she may be, poor dear! is nowhere in this neighborhood, because I hear nobody talking. So I may ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... would realize the wondrous necromancy of the sun, pass a night in some primeval forest, untouched by the hand of man. Until he stands in the awful silence of the midnight wood, or upon some vast waste of nature, no man can figure to himself the varied shapes the mind can give to terrors ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... their knowledge is deposited in the dead archives of literature; and probably had there been no Gypsies, with them would have died the belief in chiromancy, as is the case with respect to astrology, necromancy, oneirocritica, and the other ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland |
