Philosophical Library/Open Road

Easter Sunday to place herbs and simples in a wooden vessel together with the dried carcase of a snake, which every person present must have touched with his, or her, fingers.

The herbs were then burned.

To prevent a child having the whooping-cough, hang an adder stone round its neck.

remote parts of the Highlands.

Serpents’ Eggs and Snake Eggs

oman has a phobia of bay-trees. As soon as she sees a cluster of bay-trees, she faints. The psychoanalyst discovers in her childhood a painful sexual incident connected with a laurel bush. Therefore, what will the emotion be in such a case? A phenomenon of refusal, of censure. Not of refusal of the bay-tree. A refusal to re-live the memory connected with the bay-tree.

emotion of active sadness in this case is therefore a magical comedy of impotence; the sick person resembles servants who, having brought thieves into their master’s home, have themselves tied up so that it can be clearly seen that they could not have prevented the theft

Freedom has to come from a purifying reflection or a total disappearance of the affecting situation.

The Renaissance is the most famous term in historical discourse.

no one is presumed to trifle at the point of death”