"Magi" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Pontus in Asia Minor was anciently dismembered from the monarchy of Persia, by Darius the son of Hystaspes, in favour of Artabazus, who is said, by some historians, to have been the son of one of those Persian lords who conspired against the Magi. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... of mighty conjurors created a man out of brass and wood, and leather, and endowed him with such ingenuity that he would have beaten at chess, all the race of mankind with the exception of the great Caliph, Haroun Alraschid. (*22) Another of these magi constructed (of like material) a creature that put to shame even the genius of him who made it; for so great were its reasoning powers that, in a second, it performed calculations of so vast an extent that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... without a knowledge of mystic numbers, letters, jewels and colors. So, also, the four and twenty elders of Re-Veilings are twenty-four stars of the Chaldean Zodiac, "counsellors" or "judges," which rose and set with it. Astrology was brought into great prominence by the visit of the magi, the zodiacal constellation Virgo, the "woman with a child," ruling Palestine, in which country Bethlehem is situated. The great astronomer and astrologer, Ptolemy, judged the character of countries from the signs ruling them, as to this day is ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... recited that Maya, the mother of Gotama, was immaculate. According to St. Matthew, Maria, the mother of Jesus, was also. Previously, in each instance, the coming of a Messiah had been foretold. The infant Jesus was visited by magi. The infant Buddha was visited by kings. Afterward, neither Jesus or Gotama wrote. But both preached charity, chastity, poverty, humility, and abnegation of self. Both fasted in a wilderness. Both were tempted by a devil. Both announced a second ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... magicians were coming, the friends of the boy lifted him up, and carrying him some distance away from the camp, placed him on the ground by himself, and then ranged themselves in two rows upon either side, in a sitting posture, but at some distance behind the patient. The three magi now advanced in the form of a triangle, one leading and the other two behind, equidistantly apart. They were all painted, carried bunches of green reeds in their hands, which they kept shaking, and danced [Note 89 at end of para.] with a measured tread, keeping ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Zoroaster, thought to be the king of the Bactrians, who flourished about 3,800 years ago, or A.M. 2000. He is supposed to have been well versed in the arts of divination and astrology, and was the origin of the Persian magi. "At his birth," remarks an old writer, "he laughed; and his head did so beat, that it struck back the midwife's hand—a good sign of abundance of spirits, which are the best instruments of a ready wit." The magi in Persia, the Brahmins in India, the Chaldae in Assyria, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... also placed on both sides of the road, which were loaded not merely with frankincense, but all kinds of odoriferous herbs. He brought with him for Alexander gifts of various kinds, flocks of sheep and horses; lions, also, and panthers were carried before him in their dens. The magi came next, singing in their usual manner their ancient hymns. After them came the Chaldeans with their musical instruments, who are not only the prophets of the Babylonians, but their artists. The first are wont to sing the praises of the kings; the Chaldeans teach the motion ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... sterling adherents who stuck to him through thick and thin, through prosperity and adversity. These were Richard Hakluyt, Jaques Le Moyne, John White and Thomas Hariot. When Wingandacoa makes up her jewels she will not forget these Four, whom it is just to call Raleigh's Magi. ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... kingdom there shall be no end"? This greatness, this throne, this crown, this kingdom—where were they? Once she had believed that she really was what the angel had called her—the most blessed of women—when she saw Him lying in her lap in His beautiful infancy, when the Shepherds and the Magi came to adore Him, and when Simeon and Anna recognised Him as the Messiah. After that ensued the long period of His obscurity in Nazareth. He was only the village carpenter; but she did not weary, for He was with her in their home; and ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... the East were no ordinary saints; to the relics of the Three Magi, who followed the Star of Bethlehem, and were the first potentates of the earth who adored its Saviour, well might the pious Catholic suppose that a peculiar power and a healing sanctity would belong. Each of the circle (St. Amand, who had been more ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a commission to paint a small picture with figures three parts of a braccio high,—the subject an Adoration of the Magi. ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... data Diaeresis diaereses Desideratum desiderata Effluvium effluvia Ellipsis ellipses Emphasis emphases Encomium encomia or encomiums Erratum errata Genius genii [2] Genus genera Hypothesis hypotheses Ignis fatuus, ignes fatui Index indices or indexes [3] Lamina laminae Magus magi Memorandum memoranda or memorandums Metamorphosis metamorphoses Parenthesis parentheses Phenomenon phenomena Radius radii or radiuses Stamen stamina Seraph seraphim or seraphs Stimulus ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... drama became so corrupt that the Christian Church tried to offset it by introducing the Mysteries, and it became a common custom every year at Christmas, for the Manger at Bethlehem, the Worship of the Shepherds, and the Adoration of the Magi, to be exhibited before the Altar, just as the Mysteries of the Passion were introduced during Lent. The Passion Play at Oberammergau and the Creche, representing the Manger at Bethlehem, as seen in ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... in the collection. It has a nuance of the Byzantine and of the hieratic, but the portraits are enchanting in their crystalline quality. Quentin Matsys' Legend of St. Anne is much admired, though for sincerity we prefer The Passion of the Master of Oultremont. Gerard David's Adoration of the Magi is no longer attributed to him. It was always in doubt: now the name has been removed, though the picture has much of his mellowness. Dr. Scheuring, the old man with the shaved upper lip, beard, and ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... high among the olive groves above the village of Settignano. There are Medicean balls on a shield over the great wrought-iron gates, and the swarthy splendid banker princes appear as the Magi in the faded fresco painting of the Nativity in the chapel. They have knelt there in the straw of the stable of Bethlehem for more than four hundred years. The nobili of Florence were used to loiter long ago on the terrace ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... distinguished, dropping, at rare intervals, words which were both majestic and severe, little Marius stared at them with frightened eyes, in the conviction that he beheld not women, but patriarchs and magi, not ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a Market The Balled of Camden Town Mignon Felo de se Tenebris Interlucentem Invitation to a young but learned friend . . . Balled of the Londoner The First Sonnet of Bathrolaire The Second Sonnet of Bathrolaire The Masque of the Magi The Balled of Hampstead Heath Litany to Satan The Translator and the Children Opportunity Destroyer of Ships, Men, Cities War Song of the Saracens Joseph and Mary No Coward's Song A Western Voyage Fountains The ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... bowl octagonal, with the monogram I.H.S. and other devices on alternate sides. In the chancel are modern frescoes executed by Miss Alice Erskine, an amateur artist of much taste. The subject on the north wall is the visit of the Magi to the Infant Saviour, while on the wall to the south of the east window are representatives of the Archangels St. Michael and St. Gabriel. Gifts of handsome brass candlesticks for the Holy Table, and service books have recently ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... Birth of Christ, 14 The place of His Birth, ib. The visit of the angel to the shepherds, 15 The visit of the Magi—the flight into Egypt—and the murder of the infants at Bethlehem, ib. The presentation in the Temple, 16 The infancy and boyhood of Jesus, 17 His baptism and entrance upon His public ministry, 18 His mysterious movements, 19 The remarkable blanks in the accounts given of ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... people were kept in utter ignorance and darkness, it is no wonder that they reached a great and unparalleled degree of power over the mass of the population. In this manner we account for the origin, and trace the history, of the Chaldean priests in Assyria, the Bramins of India, the Magi of Persia, the Oracles of Greece, the Augurs of Italy, the Druids of Britain, and the Pow-wows, Prophets, or "Medicins," as they sometimes called them, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... costume was led by a crowned king in scarlet robes, accompanied by his fool, by his knights and his minstrels. Music and dancing and feats of arms were followed by a religious ceremony, and at night-fall after the play, the king's banquet, where white-bearded magi offered him gifts of gold and silver goblets, of frankincense and myrrh, finished ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... sword in the hand of her idea of duty. She can be feminine, too,—there is one who knows. She can be particularly distant, too. If in timidity, she has a modest view of herself—or an enormous conception of the magi that married her. Will she take the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... disposed of is Mr. Beauford, who derives the name of our Round Towers from Tlacht—earth; asserts that the foundations of temples for Vestal fire exist in Rath-na-Emhain, and other places (poor devil!)—that the Persian Magi overran the world in the time of the great Constantine, introducing Round Towers in place of the Vestal mounds into Ireland, combining their fire-worship with our Druidism—and that the present towers were built in imitation of the Magian Towers. This is all, as ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... is a thing of splendour, if one examines it closely in its solitude. These strange upraised domes, which from a distance look like the head-dresses of dervishes or magi, are embroidered with arabesques, and the walls are crowned with ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... huge largesses of money. All day long he sat in his palace-like tent, receiving congratulations from even the lowest of his followers, and bound in turn not to reject any reasonable petition. The Magi sacrificed blooded stallions and rare spices to Mithra the "Lord of Wide Pastures," to Vohu-Manu the "Holy Councillor," and all their other angels, desiring them to bless ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... in me, "the only living descendant of those Eastern Magi to whom the stars revealed their mysteries, and spirits gave their power. Age after age did sages add to that knowledge which, by bequeathing to their posterity, they trusted would in time combat to conquer their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... place the "Adoration of the Magi," full of fine mundane motives and gorgeous costumes; then the "Sposalizio" (whose marriage I am not certain), the only grandly composed picture of the series, and marked by noble heads; then the "Adoration of the Shepherds," with two lovely angels holding ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... the Magas, that is Magi, are the priests of the sun and the proper persons to superintend the consecration of temples and images dedicated to that deity, but the clearest statements about this foreign cult are to be found in the Bhavishya Purana[1155] which contains a legend as to its introduction ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... thrones Of despots born, with gladness filled the homes Of men, e'en the Eternal City bade Her gates imperial open wide; and, like A cloud the darkness lifted from the land. Then Freedom's gentle, buoyant spirit, like The Magi's wand, extended far across The sea, and thereupon the gloomy flood Was parted wide asunder, and revealed A glorious paradise for Freedom's sons. Columbia, beneath thy banner's stars, The mind of man in rare luxuriance blooms, Unfolding one by one ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... baby brother of Mary. I hid a light behind the straw, so that the place was illumined. And then my little wise men came in; and the children, who with their parents were seated on the hay back in the shadows, sang, "We Three Kings" and other carols. The gifts which the Magi brought were the children's own pennies which they are giving to the other little children across the sea who are fatherless because ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... also at the Mass. If we cannot assist with the seraphic love and rapt attention of the angelic spirits, let us worship, at least, with the simple devotion of the shepherds of Bethlehem and the unswerving faith of the Magi. Let us offer to our God the golden gift of a heart full of love and the incense of our praise and adoration, repeating often during the holy oblation the words of the Psalmist: "The mercies of the Lord ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... old stories divined; mystery and wonder enfold all things, and not only evoke the full play of the mind, but flood it with intimations and suggestions of the presence of more elusive and subtle forces, of finer and more obedient powers, as the world of fairies, magi and demons enfolded the ancient earth of ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... flattery not the open but the secret, not the playful but the serious. For it throws suspicion even upon a genuine friendship, which we may often confound with it, if we are not careful. When Gobryas pursued one of the Magi into a dark room, and was on the ground wrestling with him, and Darius came up and was doubtful how he could kill one without killing both, Gobryas bade him thrust his sword boldly through both of them;[361] but we, since we give no assent to that saying, "Let friend ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... went by. Scenes from the Master's life began to be represented in the churches, especially at Christmas time, when the story of Christ's birth was made more effective, to the eyes of a people who could not read, by a babe in a manger surrounded by magi and shepherds, with a choir of angels chanting the Gloria in Excelsis.[126] Other impressive scenes from the Gospel followed; then the Old Testament was called upon, until a complete cycle of plays from the Creation to the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... in Persia with the magi, it endowed India with wonderful traditions, it civilised Greece to the ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... have substituted the will of God for his individual will, if he is to become a saint. And this new man, this regenerate being, is the spiritual man, the heavenly man, of which the Vedas speak as well as the gospel, and the Magi as well as ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... their misfortunes, some wag, less scrupulous than inventive, on one occasion, under cover of the darkness, affixed above the door leading to the rooms occupied by the brothers a painting which represented the adoration of the Magi, beneath which was printed in bold letters, "At the sign of the Three Kings"; a practical jest which afforded great amusement ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Servites, than which none of his works was more admired— the "Nativity of the Virgin,'' which shows the influence of Leonardo, Domenico Ghirlandajo and Fra Bartolommeo, in effective fusion, and the "Procession of the Magi,'' intended as an amplification of a work by Baldovinetti; in this fresco is a portrait of Andrea himself. He also executed at some date a much-praised head of Christ over the high altar. By November 1515 he had finished at the Scalzo ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... dwell By streams that gush out richness; there should be Tones that entrance, and forms more exquisite Than throng the sculptor's visions! I would dream Of gorgeous palaces, in whose lit halls Repos'd the reverend magi, and my lips Would pour their spiritual commune 'mid the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... probably in 215; and came forward as a Teacher (according to the Mohammedan tradition, which is the most trustworthy) at the coronation of Sapor I, Ardashir's successor, in 242. Sapor at first was disposed to hear him; but the Magi moved heaven and earth to change that disposition. Ardashir had bound church and state together in the closest union: no worship but the Zoroastrian was allowed in his dominions. This was mainly aimed at the Christians, and must have caused them much discomfort. But Mani, it ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... little groups of two and three under the palm trees drinking whiskey and soda; though of course the more temperate among them drink nothing but whiskey and Lithia water, and those who have important business to do in the afternoon limit themselves to whiskey and Radnor, or whiskey and Magi water. There are as many kinds of bubbling, gurgling, mineral waters in the caverns of the Mausoleum Club as ever sparkled from the rocks of Homeric Greece. And when you have once grown used to them, it is as impossible to go back to plain water as it is to live again in the forgotten ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... Greek, Mosaic, Oriental and remoter antiquities, he consulted the learned Robert Burhill. Hariot had since 1606 been lodging or boarding in the Tower at the charge of the munificent Earl of Northumberland. He, Hues, and Warner were the Earl's 'three magi.' For chronology, mathematics, and geography, Ralegh relied upon him. 'Whenever he scrupled anything in phrase or diction,' he would refer his doubt to that accomplished serjeant-at-law, John Hoskyns or Hoskins. Hoskyns, now remembered, if at all, by some poor little epigrams, belongs to the ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... shepherds in the distance, who are guarding their sheep, clothed in the rustic dress of those times and very lifelike, and listening attentively to the words of the Angel, who is telling them to go to Nazareth. On the opposite wall is the Adoration of the Magi, with baggage, camels, giraffes, and all the Court of those three Kings, who, reverently offering their treasures, are adoring Christ, who is lying upon the lap of His mother. Besides this, he painted on the vaulting, and in the frontals of some arches outside, some ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... national faith and ritual fell into decay and neglect. Early in the third century of the Christian era, Ardeshir overthrew the Parthian dominion in Persia and established the Sassanian dynasty. One of his first acts was, stimulated doubtless by the surviving Magi and the old piety of the people, to reinaugurate the ancient religion. A fresh zeal of loyalty broke out, and all the prestige and vigor of the long suppressed worship were restored. The Zoroastrian Scriptures were now sought for, whether in manuscript or in the memories of the priests. It would ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... these days nearly corresponding to the time when the Israelites left Egypt, which was on the fourteenth day of the month Mib or Nisan, including part of our March and April. I know not whether our Western Magi suppose that the inclemency of the borrowing days had any reference to the storm which proved ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... myths of the Scandinavians. Buddha has been at one time conjectured to be the Woden of the Scythians; at another the prophet Daniel, whom Nebuchadnezzar had created master of the astrologers, or chief priest of the Magi, as the title is rendered in the Septuagint—[Greek: Archonta Magoi]. An antiquarian of Wales, in devising a pedigree for the Oymri, has imported ancestors for the ancient Britons from Ceylon; and a writer in the Asiatic ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... The magi, in vain, From the heights to the plain Their gods' images carry In white tunic: they quake— No idol can make The blue sulphur tarry; The temple e'en where they meet, Swept under their feet In the folds of its sheet! Turns a palace to coal! Whence ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... snare with thy wives, whilst them I buried alive by the help of my negresses, who thus spent their last moments greatly to their satisfaction. With respect to Dilara, who ever stood high in my favor, she hath evinced the greatness of her mind by fixing herself near in the service of one of the Magi, and I think will soon ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... regular Golgotha—the skulls of the Magi, par excellence, and then the skulls of Saint Ursula and her 11,000 virgins. I wonder where she collected so many! Saint Ursula brought a great force into the field, at all events, and, I presume, commands the right wing of the whole army of martyrs. I went into the golden ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... and he died, having committed many crimes, among which was the slaying of his brother Smerdis. And there rose up one among the Magi who pretended to be Smerdis, and was proclaimed king. But this false Smerdis was one whose ears had been cut off, and he was thus found out by one of his wives, the daughter of a Persian nobleman, Otanes. Then seven nobles conspired together, since they would not be ruled over by one of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... by the wrath of God To fire; from which there would descend on earth All manner of evil—plagues and sudden death, Frenchmen and famine." Preachers thumped and raved. Theodore Beza in Calvin's pulpit tore His grim black gown, and vowed it was the Star That led the Magi. It had now returned To mark the world's end and the Judgment Day. Then, in this hubbub, Dancey told the king Of Denmark, "There is one who knows the truth— Your subject Tycho Brahe, who, night by night, Watched and recorded ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... scrolls[31] upon which are written words of their own, bearing more or less forcibly upon the coming of the Messiah. The eleventh subject has, properly speaking, no supporters, but the Shepherds and the Magi are so arranged as to carry on the artistic effect of a central group with conspicuous lateral figures. In the twelfth and last subject, the picture extends entirely across the ceiling; in the centre is the Lord Jesus in His ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... STAR of five points an allusion to the Divine Providence, is also fanciful; and to make it commemorative of the Star that is said to have guided the Magi, is to give it a meaning comparatively modern. Originally it represented SIRIUS, or the Dog-star, the forerunner of the inundation of the Nile; the God ANUBIS, companion of Isis in her search for the body of OSIRIS, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... exotic religions stimulated the imagination of the satirists, and the pomp of the festivities furnished the novelists with brilliant descriptive matter. Juvenal laughs at the mortifications of the devotees of Isis; in his Necromancy Lucian parodies the interminable purifications of the magi, and in the Metamorphoses Apuleius relates the various scenes of an initiation into the mysteries of Isis with the fervor of a neophyte and {14} the studied refinement of a rhetorician. But as a rule we find only incidental remarks and superficial observations ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... songs which used to be sung to the Christ-child in the German churches at Christmas when the decadent nativity plays (now dwarfed to a mere tableau of the manger, the holy parents, and the adoring shepherds and magi) were still cultivated. From the old custom termed Kindeiwiegen, which remained in the German Protestant Church centuries after the Reformation, Luther borrowed the refrain, "Susaninne" for one of his Christmas chorales. The beginning of the little song which Gretel sings used to be "Sause ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... arrived, and having reiterated his belief that this marvellous conjurer was the devil's own relative, the party set out to ascertain by what means they could prove the truth of the affinity between his infernal majesty and the sage descendant of the Magi. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... was the Dominican church—an Annunciation, dated March 16, 1513, with a predella of five subjects, a praying Dominican, a Nativity of Christ, a galley in the harbour of Mezzo, the Adoration of the Magi, and the entrance of the Dominicans into the cloister. A good campanile still remains, though the cloister is ruined. There are several chapels in the place, also roofless and in ruins, and ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... race of men came there from India, flying from the sword of the Magi, a race of plunderers and tyrants who laid waste their country, and they determined to lead a philosophic life in fellowship with one another. Although the community of wives is not instituted among the other inhabitants of their province, ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... praecipue patre, quem quidam opificem figulum, plures Magi cuiusdam viatoris initio mercennarium mox ob industriam generum tradiderunt egregieque substantiae silvis coemendis et apibus curandis auxisse reculam.' (Cf. Virgil's treatment of bees ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... Dickens' Christmas Carol, Henry van Dyke's The Other Wise Man, and Thomas Nelson Page's Santa Claus's Partner, at the Christmas season, and it has the advantages of extreme brevity, a fresh breeziness of style, surprise in the plot, and romantic interest. The magi brought various gifts to the Child in the manger—gold, frankincense, myrrh—but only one gift, that of love. O. Henry does not often moralize, but no reader ever finds fault with his concluding paragraph. The author's real name was William Sidney Porter. He was born in Greensboro, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... being born in Bethlehem in Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold Magi came from the East to Jerusalem, saying, [2:2]Where is the king of the Jews born? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him. [2:3]And Herod the king hearing this was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; [2:4]and assembling ...
— The New Testament • Various
... to show that the episcopal mitre and the papal tiara are respectively the copies each of a distinct head-dress originally worn by the kings of Persia and the conterminous countries, and by the chiefs of their priesthood, the Magi. The nomenclature alone indicates a foreign extraction. It comes to us through the Romans from the Greeks; both of which nations employed the terms [Greek: mitra], Lat. mitra, and [Greek: tiara], Lat. tiara, to designate two different kinds of covering for ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... with delightful distant effect, upon ruby and dark blue. Approaching nearer you find it to be a Travellers' window, and those odd lines of white the long walking-staves in the hands of Abraham, Raphael, the Magi, and the other saintly patrons of journeys. The appropriate provincial character of the bourgeoisie of Champagne is still to be seen, it would appear, among the citizens of Troyes. Its streets, for the most part in timber and pargeting, present more than one ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... beautiful thought is applicable, for the Gospel is not merely the narration of what has been; it is the sublime narration of what is and what always will be. Ever will the Saviour of the world be adored by the kings of intelligence, represented by the Magi; ever will He multiply the eucharistic bread, to nourish and comfort our souls; ever, when we invoke Him in the night and the tempest, will He come to us walking on the waters, ever will He stretch forth His hand and make us pass ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... had insisted on his incurring. I have then a whole column about the proceedings at the "Propaganda" on the festival of the Epiphany, now some days ago. The Archbishop of Thebes, I rejoice to learn, excited the pupils of the Academy to imitate the virtues manifested in the "Magi," by an appropriate homily, drawing a striking parallel between the simplicity, the faith and honesty of the three kings, and the disbelief and hypocrisy of the wicked king Herod. I wonder if I have ever heard of Herod under a more modern name, and pass on to a passage, written ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... was of pure white wool, thrown over a tunic of silk; and a white, pointed cap, with long lapels at the sides, rested on his flowing black hair. It was the dress of the ancient priesthood of the Magi, called the fire-worshippers. ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... group, camels and dromedaries, covered with rich harness, and led by the bridle by slaves. If you want to do things right and leave nothing out, you must skilfully arrange above the crib a yellow-colored glass in which burns a flame, which represents the star that the Magi perceived and which stopped over the grotto at Bethlehem. Candles and tapers burn before the crib, which is surrounded by some pious women, and a number of children, who never grow weary of admiring the Holy Family and its ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... uncertainty of the sex, as well as of the event, excited the ambitious hopes of the princes of the house of Sassan. The apprehensions of civil war were at length removed, by the positive assurance of the Magi, that the widow of Hormouz had conceived, and would safely produce a son. Obedient to the voice of superstition, the Persians prepared, without delay, the ceremony of his coronation. A royal bed, on which the queen lay in state, was exhibited ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... of 1937, I conducted on the smooth lawns at Encinitas the first of many Sunrise Services. Like the magi of old, several hundred students gazed in devotional awe at the daily miracle, the early solar fire rite in the eastern sky. To the west lay the inexhaustible Pacific, booming its solemn praise; in the distance, a tiny white sailing boat, and the lonely flight of a seagull. "Christ, thou ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... and holy fires which only the Magi, or priests, were allowed to approach, were kept perpetually burning upon the mountain tops. The sun also was worshiped, the Persian kneeling with his face toward the east at sunrise in beatific joy. This worship may have been borrowed from the Egyptians, who ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... in the east to the shepherds of Bethlehem, introducing the "Gloria in Excelsis," and the second shows the presentation of Christ in the temple, suggesting the "Nunc Dimittis," the "Magnificat," and the "Benedictus." Then beautiful representations are given in the north transept windows of the Magi bringing gifts to the infant Saviour, and the wise men before King Herod. The windows of the nave show the flight into Egypt, the massacre of the innocents, and the return ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... the effect as a whole, the tourists proceeded to examine the church in detail. Behind the high altar is the shrine of the Three Kings of Cologne. They are represented as the Magi, who came from the east with presents for the infant Saviour. Their bodies are said to have been brought by the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, from the Holy Land to Constantinople, and then sent to Milan; and when this city was captured ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... tradition of the Odin migration from the East. A writer the reverse of credulous expresses himself thus on that subject: 'We know that the Scandinavians came from some country of Asia.... This doctrine was in many respects the same with that of the Magi. Zoroaster had taught that the conflict between Ormuzd and Ahriman (i.e. light and darkness, the Good and Evil Principle) should continue to the last day; and that then the Good Principle should be ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... their offerings themselves, and the Child takes them in His hand, or smiles at them. The painters who thought this an undignified conception left the presents in the hands of the attendants of the Magi. But Giotto considers how presents would be received by an actual king; and as what has been offered to a monarch is delivered to the care of his attendants, Giotto puts a waiting angel to receive the gifts, as not worthy to be placed in the hands ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... used as a coach-house. The fresco, which gave Raffaelle the idea of the Christ of the Transfiguration, is in an old wood shed at San Miniato, concealed behind a heap of faggots. In June, last year, I saw Gentile da Fabriano's picture of the Adoration of the Magi, belonging to the Academy of Florence, put face upmost in a shower of rain in an open cart; on my suggesting the possibility of the rain hurting it, an old piece of matting was thrown over its face, and it was wheeled away ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... books of China tell of similar appearances at the births of Yu, the founder of the first dynasty, and of the inspired sage, Lao-tse. According to the Jewish legends, a star appeared at the birth of Moses, and was seen by the Magi of Egypt, who informed the king; and when Abraham was born an unusual star appeared in the east. The Greeks and Romans cherished similar traditions. A heavenly light accompanied the birth of Aesculapius, and the births of various Caesars were ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the hills of Judea, not among the lowly shepherds only, that angels found the watchers for Messiah's coming. In the land of the heathen also were those that looked for Him; they were wise men, rich and noble, the philosophers of the East. Students of nature, the magi had seen God in His handiwork. From the Hebrew Scriptures they had learned of the Star to arise out of Jacob, and with eager desire they awaited His coming, who should be not only the "Consolation of Israel," but a ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... giants, and cannibals; of gods whose very names it was impiety to utter; of ancient dynasties which had left behind them monuments surpassing all the works of later times; of towns like provinces; of rivers like seas; of stupendous walls, and temples, and pyramids; of the rites which the Magi performed at daybreak on the tops of the mountains; of the secrets inscribed on the eternal obelisks of Memphis. With equal delight they would have listened to the graceful romances of their own country. They now heard of ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Where are the strong people who hedge themselves around with their individuality, and will be roused by no prince's kiss, but taken only by storm, yet, once captured, are sweeter than the dews of Hymettus? Where are the seers, the prophets, the Magi, who shall unfold for us the secrets of the sky and the seas, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... the one lyne end at the end of the whol syllab, and the other begin the next lyne. As, for exemple, if this word magistrat fel to be divided at the first syllab, it behoved to be ma-gistrat; if at the second, it behoved to be magi-strat; but no wayes to parte the m from the a, nor the g from the i, nor the s from t, nor ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... first author to mention him. This Otto wrote a chronicle to the date 1156. He says that John was of the family of the Magi, and ruled over the country of these Wise Men. Otto tells us that Prester John had "a sceptre ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... address of the bookseller: "a Paris, en la rue Neufre Nostre-Dame, a l'enseigne Saint Jehan Baptiste;" and decorated with medallions of the four Evangelists, framed at the bottom by the Adoration of the Three Magi, and at the top by the Triumph of Jesus Christ, and His resurrection. And then picture after picture followed; there were ornamented letters, large and small, engravings in the text and at the heading of the chapters; "The Annunciation," an immense angel inundating ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... in the volumes of the Magi—in the iron-bound, melancholy volumes of the Magi. Therein, I say, are glorious histories of the Heaven, and of the Earth, and of the mighty Sea—and of the Genii that overruled the sea, and the earth, and the lofty heaven. There was ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... greatest of all Greek philosophers, it is known, travelled very widely, spending no less than twenty-two years in Egypt. He also spent some considerable time at Babylon, and was taught the lore of the Magi. ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear
... portion of a photograph of Nicolo Pisano's Adoration of the Magi, on the pulpit of the Pisan Baptistery. The intensely Greek character of the heads, and the severely impetuous chiselling (learned from Late Roman rapid work), which drives the lines of the drapery nearly straight, may be seen better in a fragment ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... "divining-rod," with "its versatile sensibility to water, ore, treasure and thieves," and one whose history is apparently as remote as it is widespread. Francis Lenormant, in his "Chaldean Magic," mentions the divining-rods used by the Magi, wherewith they foretold the future by throwing little sticks of tamarisk-wood, and adds that divination by wands was known and practised in Babylon, "and that this was even the most ancient mode of divination used in the time of the Accadians." Among the Hindus, even in the Vedic period, magic wands ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... and being asked what those presents meant, and if he had commission to say anything, answered that he had not; which puzzled and gravelled Darius very much, till Gobrias, one of the seven captains that had killed the magi, explained it, saying to Darius: By these gifts and offerings the Scythians silently tell you that except the Persians like birds fly up to heaven, or like mice hide themselves near the centre of the earth, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Blanche might love me. I could speak to her in the language of all countries, and tell her the lore of all ages. I could trace the nursery legends which she loved up to their Sanscrit source, and whisper to her the darkling mysteries of the Egyptian Magi. I could chant for her the wild chorus that rang in the disheveled Eleusinian revel: I could tell her and I would, the watchword never known but to one woman, the Saban Queen, which Hiram breathed in the abysmal ear of Solomon—You don't ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... he drove his car of light round the sky. They worshipped fire likewise as the sign of the light-giving and consuming Godhead; and this notion is not entirely gone yet, so that there are many Parsees, or fireworshippers, still in the East. Their priests were called Magi, and their faith was therefore termed Magian. Though it went astray in adoring these created things, yet it did not teach wickedness, as did the religions of the sons of Ham; and the Persians were a brave, upright race, who loved ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... greater importance than his "philosophy dreamt of." Whatever the circle we live amongst, the public opinion of that circle will, sooner or later, obtain a control over us. This is the reason why a life of pleasure makes even the strongest mind frivolous at last. The lawyer, the senator, the magi of letters, all are insensibly guided—moulded—formed—by the judgment of the tribe they belong to, and the circle in which they move. Still more is it the case with the idlers of the great world, amongst whom the only main staple of ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... before Takes not the way he took in his despite, When him above the sea the courser bore, And seldom was the land beneath in sight. But taught to make him beat his wings and soar, Here, there, as liked him best, with docile flight, Returning, he another path pursued; As Magi erst, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... the ass—for those good animals helped with their breath through that cold night to keep him warm. In the foreground are the two ravi—a man and a woman in awed ecstasy, with upraised arms—and the adoring shepherds. To these are added on Epiphany the figures of the Magi—the Kings, as they are called always in French and in Provencal—with their train of attendants, and the camels on which they have brought their gifts. Angels (pendent from the farm-house ceiling) float in the air above the stable. ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... the state; A foe who (like a wizard in his cell) In his dark cabinet of crooked schemes, Resembling Cuma's gloomy grot, the forge Of boasted oracles, and real lies, (Aided, perhaps, by second-sighted Scots, French magi, relics riding post from Rome, A gothic hero(48) rising from the dead, And changing for spruce plaid his dirty shroud, With succour suitable from lower still,) A foe who, these concurring to the charm, Excites those storms that shall o'erturn the state, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... familiar and homelike seemed the sculptures on the Celtic crosses. They were mostly about people, and people whom we had known from earliest childhood. There were Adam and Eve, and Cain slaying Abel, and the Magi. They were members ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... laws from that country; how Orpheus made voyages in search of knowledge, and attained to a depth of learning which has made him renowned in all succeeding ages; how Pythagoras passed twenty-two years in Egypt, and, after graduating there, spent twelve years more at Babylon, where the Magi admitted him ad eundem; how the ancient Brahmins lived two hundred years; how the earliest Greek philosophers foretold earthquakes and plagues, and put down riots by magic; and how much Ninus surpassed in abilities any of his successors on the throne of Assyria. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... true God. I will acquaint you with the most remarkable effect of his greatness and power. You must know, that this city was the metropolis of a mighty kingdom, over which the sultan my father reigned. That prince, his whole court, the inhabitants of the city, and all his other subjects, were magi, worshippers of fire, and of Nardoun, the ancient king of the giants, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... marvellous holiness of the figures. The expression of reverent humility and gentleness in the face of the Holy Mother, as she bent over the Child; the deep intelligence in the eyes of the Holy Child, as though he saw something afar; the triumphant silence of the Magi, amazed by the Divine Miracle, as they bowed at his feet: and finally, the indescribable peace which emanated from the whole picture—all this was presented with such strength and beauty, that the impression it made was magical. ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... provenence was recognized, and, accordingly Turandot was no longer the princess of China, but that of Shiraz, her father being transformed into the Shah of Persia and the doctors of the divan into Oriental Magi.[123] At Dresden the same thing happened, and here even Tartaglia and Brigella, who had been allowed to retain their Italian names in Hamburg, were made to assume the Oriental names of Babouk and Osmin. The specifically Chinese ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... series of mural painting in England. The church dates from the eleventh century, and the paintings, says Mr. Philip Mainwaring Johnson, who has studied them with the greatest care, cannot be much less old. The subjects are the Annunciation, the Nativity, the appearance of the Star, the Magi presenting their Gifts, and so forth, with one or two less familiar themes added, such as Herod conferring with his Counsellors and the Torments of Hell. There are the remains also of a series of Moralities drawn from the parable of Dives and Lazarus, and of ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... the great idolaters of fire, ab- horred the burning of their carcases, as a pollution of that deity. The Persian magi declined it upon the like scruples, and being only solicitous about their bones, exposed their flesh to the prey of birds and dogs. And the Persees now in India, which expose their bodies unto vultures, and endure not so much as feretra or biers of wood, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... long before the days of Smith and Rigdon, advanced the theory that the Urim and Thummim were clear crystals intended for "gazing" purposes. One writer remarks of the practice, "Aeschylus refers it to Prometheus, Cicero to the Assyrians and Etruscans, Zoroaster to Ahriman, Varro to the Persian Magi, and a very large class of authors, from the Christian Fathers and Schoolmen downward, to the devil."* An act of James I (1736), against witchcraft in England, made it a crime to pretend to discover property "by any occult ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... both to death, but as the young men had saved him from a lion he laid no hand on them, but told them not to return to their father's dominions. They wandered on for a time, and then parted, but both reached the same place, which was a city of the Magi. Here, by a strange adventure Amgiad was made vizier, while Assad was thrown into a dungeon, where he was designed as a sacrifice to the fire-god. Bosta'na, a daughter of the old man who imprisoned Assad, released him, and Amgiad out of gratitude made her his wife. After ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... philosophy, which was then rising in the opinions of the Greeks as highly worth their notice. He had been travelling in the East; and, boasting that he was already master of all the fabled wisdom of the Magi of Babylon and of the Gymnosophists of India, he was come to Egypt to compare this mystic philosophy with that of the hermits of Ethiopia and the Thebaid. Addressing himself as a pupil to the priests, he willingly yielded his belief to their ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... of Nun, who foretold His own sufferings in David and the prophets, who was incarnate in the Virgin, who was born at Bethlehem, who was wrapped in swaddling clothes in the manger, who was seen of the shepherds, who was glorified of the Angels, who was worshipped by the Magi, who was pointed out by John, who gathered together the Apostles, who preached the Kingdom, who healed the maimed, who gave light to the blind, who raised the dead, who appeared in the temple, who was not believed on by the people, who was betrayed by ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... co-religionists, who, aloof from the world, have to this day preserved the glorious truths of their once mighty religion, and who, hidden in the recesses of solitary mountains and unknown silent caves, are still in possession of; and exercising, mighty powers, the heirloom of the ancient Magi. Our Scriptures say that ancient Mobeds were Yogis, who had the power of making themselves simultaneously visible at different places, even though hundreds of miles apart, and also that they could heal the sick and ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... the Paraclete, whom Jesus, of blessed memory,(85) had previously announced. Mani took the elements of his doctrine from the religion of the Magi and Christianity.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Before he met Sapor Mani had spent about forty years in foreign lands.(86) Afterward he converted Peroz, the brother of Sapor, and Peroz procured him an audience with his brother Sapor. The Manichaeans ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... spiritually, "before His birth He will save His people solely by invocation," as a gloss expounds it. Augustine however (Serm. xxxii de Temp.) says that this was fulfilled in the adoration of the Magi. For he says: "Before He uttered human words in human flesh, He received the strength of Damascus, i.e. the riches which Damascus vaunted (for in riches the first place is given to gold). They themselves were the spoils of Samaria. Because Samaria is taken to signify idolatry; ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... always find enjoyment in that master romancer of the Cabarabian Nights. "Don't talk to me of Dickens' Christmas Stories," Aubrey said to himself, recalling his adventure in Brooklyn. "I'll bet O. Henry's Gift of the Magi beats anything Dick ever laid pen to. What a shame he died without finishing that Christmas story in Rolling Stones! I wish some boss writer like Irvin Cobb or Edna Ferber would take a hand at finishing it. If I were an editor I'd hire someone to wind up that yarn. It's ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... that hypnotism is a very old subject, though the name was not invented till 1850. In it was wrapped up the "mysteries of Isis" in Egypt thousands of years ago, and probably it was one of the weapons, if not the chief instrument of operation, of the magi mentioned in the Bible and of the "wise men" of Babylon and Egypt. "Laying on of hands" must have been a form of mesmerism, and Greek oracles of Delphi and other places seem to have been delivered by priests or priestesses who went into trances of self-induced hypnotism. It is suspected ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... picture, this is my favorite," and Miss Sherwin took from a portfolio a photograph of the Magi on the way ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... this mighty spirit alone. Be not afraid, the Father is with us, The Holy Martyrs and the Innocents, The adoring Magi in their coats of mail, And He who died and rose on the third day And all ...
— The Land Of Heart's Desire • William Butler Yeats
... chapel, left on entering, a"Nativity" by A.Semini. The figure of the Virgin appears rather large, but the contour and expression of the others are admirable. In another chapel on the same side of the church is an "Adoration of the Magi" by Albert Durer, in the form of a triptych. In a small church, called the Capella di Christo, over the altar within a niche, is a wooden figure of our Lord, said to be 800 years old. In the sacristy are two reliefs in black marble ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... Come. I was going to Mayence to see the Magi and Van Dyck's Christ. We will go to Soignies instead, and study green leaves. I will paint your face by sunlight. It is the best way to paint you. You belong to the open air. So should Gretchen; or how else should she have the ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... considered the richest in all France. The most notable are a reliquary of gold, set with sapphires and pearls, containing a fragment of the True Cross, given by Charlemagne in the year 800; four magnificent tapestries of the time of Charles V., representing the "Adoration of the Magi;" and the pontifical robes of St. Thomas (a Becket), chasuble, aube, stole, manipule, cordon, two mitres, and two collars. This courageous archbishop, persecuted by Henry II., took refuge in Sens ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... sortes of menne that bare rule and office emong them. The king, the nobles with the Seniours, and those that had serued in the warres and ware now exempte. Thei had also menne skilfull in the secretes of nature, whiche thei calle Magi, and Chaldei, suche as ware the priestes of Egipte, institute to attende vpon the seruice of their Goddes. These men all their life daies, liued in the loue of wisedome, and were connyng in the cours of the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... that he was about to paint a picture of St. Augustine, as a fresco for the chapel of the Magi of the church I have named. And having seen me and heard that story of mine, he conceived the curious notion of using me as the model for the figure of the saint. I consented, and daily for a week he came to us in the afternoons to paint; ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... announced to the king early in the morning by the river's brink. Pharaoh went thither regularly, for he was one of the magi, who need water for their enchantments.[186] Moses' daily morning visits were beginning to annoy him, and he left the house early, in the hope of circumventing his monitor. But God, who knows the thoughts of man, sent Moses to Pharaoh at the very ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... dissolved into liquid before their credulous eyes; and he had turned away that they might not mark his flush of shame. In the Cathedral at Cologne he had gazed long at the supposed skulls of the three Magi who had worshipped at the rude cradle of the Christ. Set in brilliant jewels, in a resplendent gilded shrine, these whitened relics, which Bishop Reinald is believed to have discovered in the twelfth century, seemed to mock him in the very boldness ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... certain philosophy of intuition of the present day. He too believed himself a magician and physician, and effected cures by the application of astrology to therapeutics. Agrippa did the same with yet stranger phantasies, passing from absolute scepticism through mysticism to magi and demonology; in his own time and in subsequent centuries enjoying the reputation of a ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... tender gaze. St. Joseph is at her side and behind her are two young women who are holding and admiring the gifts offered to the Saviour. The infant Jesus has laid his hand on the head of the oldest of the Magi, who, prostrated, kisses his feet with devotion. The two other Kings are much younger than the first one. They are presenting their offerings to the Son of God, and are about to lay their crowns before him. Then follows the retinue of these Magi; and in this throng, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... Chap. CII) that the aglaophotis "is found growing among the marble quarries of Arabia, on the side of Persia," just as the Egyptian didi was obtained near the granite quarries at Aswan. "By means of this plant [aglaophotis], according to Democritus, the Magi can summon the deities into their presence when they please, "just as the users of the conch-shell trumpet believed they could do with this instrument. I have already (p. 196) emphasized the fact that all of these plants, mandrake, bryony, peony, and ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... the convent of St. Catherine of Siena, in her native city, and in time became its abbess. Patiently, with earnest prayer, she studied and copied the works of Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto, until she was able to paint an original "Adoration of the Magi" of such excellence as to secure her a place among the ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... march through the Troad, before invading Greece (B.C. 480) arrived at the Scamander and went up to Priam's Pergamus, as he wished to see that citadel; and, after having seen it, and inquired into its past fortunes, he sacrificed 1,000 oxen to the Ilian Athena, and the Magi poured libations to ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Druid, the writer in the Encyclopedia Metropolitana says, "The name Druid is derived from deru, an oak." The Druids were an order of priests; they were divided into three classes, resembling the Persian magi. The first class were the Druids proper; they were the highest nobility, to whom was entrusted all religious rites and education. The second class were the bards; they were principally employed in public instruction, ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... Christ and His Baptism. S. Gregory Nyssen says that the Feast of Lights, and of the Baptism of Jesus Christ, was celebrated some days after that of His Nativity. The other S. Gregory takes notice of several mysteries which were commemorated at Nazianzium with the Nativity, the Magi, etc., but he says nothing, in that place, of the Baptism. And yet, if the festival of Christmas was observed in Cappadocia upon the 25th of December, we must say that S. Chrysostom was ignorant of it, since he ascribes this practice only ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... along. The finest effluence of her life in the first century of our era, as in this last, was love. Mary then bore the Christ; other Mary's loved him. Woman was first in his life, and last in it. When the bearded magi adored, she loved; she was the illustrator of his teachings, the repository of his hopes for their future realization. Bring all those memories, visions, yearnings, trusts, faiths—dreams of the good, never yet seen but by the inner sight ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Antenor and Nestor were as good as Pericles, and so of the rest; but none present, before, or after Socrates, nemo veterum neque eorum qui nunc sunt, were ever such, will match, or come near him. Those seven wise men of Greece, those Britain Druids, Indian Brachmanni, Ethiopian Gymnosophist, Magi of the Persians, Apollonius, of whom Philostratus, Non doctus, sed natus sapiens, wise from his cradle, Epicurus so much admired ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... associates of his crimes. Wandering among broken graves and crumbling sepulchres, they discovered her, sitting sublime on a ragged rock, where Mount Haemus stretches its roots to the Pharsalic field. She was mumbling charms of the Magi and the magical gods. For she feared that the war might yet be transferred to other than the Emathian fields. The sorceress was busy therefore enchanting the soil of Philippi, and scattering on its surface the juice ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... that they were Jews who lived in Persia, as David had done long before, and were learned in all the wisdom of the Chaldeans, who studied the stars, and believed that they had much to do with the lives of people on the earth. These wise men were called Magi. They had heard that a great One would be born about this time, and that He would be the ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... prophecy being thus established, it will be impossible to misunderstand the internal relation between the star of Balaam and the star of the wise men from the East. The star of Balaam is the emblem of the kingdom which will rise in Israel. The star of the Magi is the symbol of the Ruler in whom the kingly power appears concentrated. The appearance of the star embodying the image of the prophet, indicates that the last and highest fulfilment of his prophecies is ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... Christianity. If I could show you several suitably chosen pictures at once, you would recognize in the arrangement of the three Kings here (two standing, one kneeling before the Virgin and Child) a plain resemblance to the typical treatment of a well-known subject—the Adoration of the Magi. You remember how when the three Wise Men of the East—always thought of in the Middle Ages as Kings—had followed the star which led them to the manger where Christ was born, they brought Him gold and frankincense and myrrh as offerings. This beautiful story was a favourite one in ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... the land of the magi are the records of a million years. In the unpolluted tombs of Osorapi the history of life and of time is written on the cerements of kings. Where the bells ring at the neck of the camels of Iran is a stretch of columns on which ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... wherein is deposited a massy gold chest inlaid with precious stones of all sorts and of great value, containing the bones of the identical three Kings (it is said) who came from the East to worship the infant Jesus at Bethlehem. The Scriptures say it was three wise men or Magi. The legend however calls them Kings and gives them Gothic names. Let schoolmen and theologians reconcile this difference: ce n'est point notre affaire. To me it appears that when the German tribes embraced Christianity and enrolled ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... The Druids were magi as they were priests in the same sense that the American Indian shaman is both magus and priest. That is, they were medicine-men on a higher scale, and had reached a loftier stage of transcendental knowledge than the priest-magicians ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence |
