"
Witchcraft, which has by no means thoroughly disappeared from
Europe, maintains firm hold upon the African brain. The idea is
found amongst Christians, for instance, the "reduced Indians" of
the Amazonas River; and it is evidently at the bottom of that
widely spread superstition, the "evil eye," which remains
throughout Southern Europe as strong as it was in the days of
Pliny. As amongst barbarians generally, no misfortune happens, no
accident occurs, no illness nor death can take place without the
agency of wizard or witch. There is nothing more odious than this
crime; it is hostile to God and man, and it must be expiated by
death in the most terrible tortures. Metamorphosis is a common
art amongst Mpongwe magicians: this vulgar materialism, of which
Ovid sang, must not be confounded with the poetical Hindu
metempsychosis or transmigration of souls which explains
empirically certain physiological mysteries. Here the adept
naturally becomes a gorilla or a leopard, as he would be a lion
in South Africa, a hyena in Abyssinia and the Somali country, and
a loup-garou in Brittany.
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