Semitic Magic, Its Origins and Development

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 Excerpt: ...and consequently my husband kept away from me, and there came unto me a wedding guest, and this son was (born) to me. Thus it was found that the boy was a bastard, and a Ben hanniddah." It is to be noted that Niddah (a woman in her courses) is from the root ""H which in Piel means 'to lay under a ban.' In Palestine at the present day, women in their separation are not allowed into the presence of a woman in childbed, 1 Ibid., Tract. Aboth, i (ix), 11,12. According to Rabbinic tradition, menstruation and the pain of primae noctis were part of the curse of Eve, ibid., 6. 1 Quoted Hershon, Talm. Misc., 44. as very serious illness is believed to follow such visits.1 In Syria a woman that has her courses may neither salt nor pickle, for the people think that whatever she might prepare thus would not keep.2 One of the three important duties among the Jewesses in Palestine is to attend to the special regulation for their sex regarding ceremonial uncleanness,3 the other two being to throw a lump of dough on the fire on the eve of the Sabbath and to light the Sabbath candles. To neglect these means suffering in childbirth. Maimonides4 says that "the practice of the Sabians, even at present general in the East, among the few still left of the Magi, was to keep a menstruous woman in a house by herself, to burn that upon which she treads, and to consider as unclean everyone that speaks with her; even if a wind passed over her and a clean person, the latter was unclean in the eyes of the Sabians." According to Zoroaster, the menstruous flow, at least in its abnormal manifestations, is a work of Ahriman, or the devil.5 Arguing from the kuown to the unknown, the next question that arises is how far these tabus have been met with in the Assyrian re...