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1. Preface
a. Who Should Read This Book
b. Why We Wrote This Book
c. Navigating This Book
d. Conventions Used in This Book
e. Using Code Examples
f. O’Reilly Online Learning
g. How to Contact Us
2. 1. Why Rust?
a. Type Safety

3. 2. Basic Types
a. Machine Types
i. Integer Types
ii. Checked, Wrapping, and Saturating
Arithmetic
iii. Floating-Point Types
iv. The bool Type
v. Characters
b. Tuples
c. Pointer Types

i. References
 ii. Boxes
iii. Raw Pointers
d. Arrays, Vectors, and Slices
i. Arrays
ii. Vectors
iii. Slices
e. String Types

i. String Literals
ii. Byte Strings
iii. Strings in Memory
iv. String
v. Using Strings
vi. Other String-Like Types
f. Beyond the Basics
 Programming Rust
SECOND EDITION

Fast, Safe Systems Development

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Jim Blandy and Jason Orendorff

Programming Rust

by Jim Blandy and Jason Orendorff

Copyright © 2020 Jim Blandy, Jason Orendorff. All rights

reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

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Revision History for the Second Edition Early Release
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property rights of others, it is your responsibility to ensure that
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978-1-492-05259-3

[LSI]
Preface
Rust is a language for systems programming.

This bears some explanation these days, as systems

programming is unfamiliar to most working programmers. Yet
it underlies everything we do.

You close your laptop. The operating system detects this,

suspends all the running programs, turns off the screen, and
puts the computer to sleep. Later, you open the laptop: the
screen and other components are powered up again, and each
program is able to pick up where it left off. We take this for
granted. But systems programmers wrote a lot of code to
make that happen.

Systems programming is for:

Operating systems

Device drivers of all kinds

Filesystems

Databases
 Code that runs in very cheap devices, or devices that
must be extremely reliable

Cryptography

Media codecs (software for reading and writing audio,

video, and image files)

Media processing (for example, speech recognition or

photo editing software)

Memory management (for example, implementing a

garbage collector)

Text rendering (the conversion of text and fonts into

pixels)

Implementing higher-level programming languages

(like JavaScript and Python)

Networking

Virtualization and software containers

Scientific simulations

Games

In short, systems programming is resource-constrained

programming. It is programming when every byte and every
CPU cycle counts.

The amount of systems code involved in supporting a basic

app is staggering.

This book will not teach you systems programming. In fact,

this book covers many details of memory management that
might seem unnecessarily abstruse at first, if you haven’t
already done some systems programming on your own. But if
you are a seasoned systems programmer, you’ll find that Rust
is something exceptional: a new tool that eliminates major,
well-understood problems that have plagued a whole industry
for decades.

Who Should Read This Book

If you’re already a systems programmer, and you’re ready for
an alternative to C++, this book is for you. If you’re an
experienced developer in any programming language, whether
that’s C#, Java, Python, JavaScript, or something else, this
book is for you too.

However, you don’t just need to learn Rust. To get the most
out of the language, you also need to gain some experience
with systems programming. We recommend reading this book
while also implementing some systems programming side
projects in Rust. Build something you’ve never built before,
something that takes advantage of Rust’s speed, concurrency,
and safety. The list of topics at the beginning of this preface
should give you some ideas.

Why We Wrote This Book

We set out to write the book we wished we had when we
started learning Rust. Our goal was to tackle the big, new
concepts in Rust up front and head-on, presenting them clearly
and in depth so as to minimize learning by trial and error.

Navigating This Book

The first two chapters of this book introduce Rust and provide
a brief tour before we move on to the fundamental data types
in Chapter 3. Chapters 4 and 5 address the core concepts of
ownership and references. We recommend reading these first
five chapters through in order.

Chapters 6 through 10 cover the basics of the language:

expressions (Chapter 6), error handling (Chapter 7), crates and
modules (Chapter 8), structs (Chapter 9), and enums and
patterns (Chapter 10). It’s all right to skim a little here, but
don’t skip the chapter on error handling. Trust us.

Chapter 11 covers traits and generics, the last two big

concepts you need to know. Traits are like interfaces in Java or
C#. They’re also the main way Rust supports integrating your
types into the language itself. Chapter 12 shows how traits
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support operator overloading, and Chapter 13 covers many
more utility traits.

Understanding traits and generics unlocks the rest of the book.

Closures and iterators, two key power tools that you won’t
want to miss, are covered in Chapters 14 and 15, respectively.
You can read the remaining chapters in any order, or just dip
into them as needed. They cover the rest of the language:
collections (Chapter 16), strings and text (Chapter 17), input
and output (Chapter 18), concurrency (Chapter 20), macros
(Chapter 21), and unsafe code (Chapter 22).

Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

Italic

Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and

file extensions.

Constant width

Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to

refer to program elements such as variable or function
names, databases, data types, environment variables,
statements, and keywords.

Constant width bold

 Shows commands or other text that should be typed
literally by the user.

Constant width italic

Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied

values or by values determined by context.

TIP
This icon signifies a tip or suggestion.

NOTE
This icon signifies a general note.

WARNING
This icon indicates a warning or caution.

Using Code Examples

Supplemental material (code examples, exercises, etc.) is
available for download at
https://github.com/ProgrammingRust.
This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, if
example code is offered with this book, you may use it in your
programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us
for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion
of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several
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this book and quoting example code does not require
permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example
code from this book into your product’s documentation does
require permission.

We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution

usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For
example: “Programming Rust, Second Edition by Jim Blandy
and Jason Orendorff (O’Reilly). Copyright 2021 Jim Blandy and
Jason Orendorff, 978-1-492-05259-3.”

If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or
the permission given above, feel free to contact us at
[email protected].
O’Reilly Online Learning

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Chapter 1. Why Rust?
A NOTE FOR EARLY RELEASE READERS
With Early Release ebooks, you get books in their earliest form—the author’s raw and unedited
content as they write—so you can take advantage of these technologies long before the official
release of these titles.

This will be the 1st chapter of the final book. Please note that the GitHub repo will be made
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If you have comments about how we might improve the content and/or examples in this book,
or if you notice missing material within this chapter, please reach out to the author at
[email protected].

In certain contexts—for example the context Rust is

targeting—being 10x or even 2x faster than the competition
is a make-or-break thing. It decides the fate of a system in
the market, as much as it would in the hardware market.
—Graydon Hoare

All computers are now parallel...

Parallel programming is programming.
—Michael McCool et al., Structured Parallel
Programming
 TrueType parser flaw
used by nation-state attacker for surveillance;
all software is security-sensitive.
—Andy Wingo

Systems programming languages have come a long way in the

50 years since we started using high-level languages to write
operating systems, but two problems in particular have proven
difficult to crack:

It’s difficult to write secure code. It’s especially difficult

to manage memory correctly in C and C++. Users have
been suffering with the consequences for decades, in
the form of security holes dating back at least as far as
the 1988 Morris worm.

It’s very difficult to write multithreaded code, which is

the only way to exploit the abilities of modern
machines. Even experienced programmers approach
threaded code with caution: concurrency can introduce
broad new classes of bugs and make ordinary bugs
much harder to reproduce.

Enter Rust: a safe, concurrent language with the performance

of C and C++.

Rust is a new systems programming language developed by

Mozilla and a community of contributors. Like C and C++, Rust
gives developers fine control over the use of memory, and
maintains a close relationship between the primitive operations
of the language and those of the machines it runs on, helping
developers anticipate their code’s costs. Rust shares the
ambitions Bjarne Stroustrup articulates for C‍++ in his paper
“Abstraction and the C++ Machine Model:”

In general, C++ implementations obey the zero-overhead

principle: What you don’t use, you don’t pay for. And further:
What you do use, you couldn’t hand code any better.

To these Rust adds its own goals of memory safety and

trustworthy concurrency.

The key to meeting all these promises is Rust’s novel system of

ownership, moves, and borrows, checked at compile time and
carefully designed to complement Rust’s flexible static type
system. The ownership system establishes a clear lifetime for
each value, making garbage collection unnecessary in the core
language, and enabling sound but flexible interfaces for
managing other sorts of resources like sockets and file
handles. Moves transfer values from one owner to another, and
borrowing lets code use a value temporarily without affecting
its ownership. Since many programmers will have never
encountered these features in this form before, we explain
them in detail in later chapters.

These same ownership rules also form the foundation of Rust’s

trustworthy concurrency model. Most languages leave the
relationship between a mutex and the data it’s meant to
protect to the comments; Rust can actually check at compile
time that your code locks the mutex while it accesses the data.
Most languages admonish you to be sure not to use a data
structure yourself after you’ve given it to another thread; Rust
checks that you don’t. Rust is able to prevent data races at
compile time.

Rust is not really an object-oriented language, although it has

some object-oriented characteristics. Rust is not a functional
language, although it does tend to make the influences on a
computation’s result more explicit, as functional languages do.
Rust resembles C and C++ to an extent, but many idioms from
those languages don’t apply, so typical Rust code does not
deeply resemble C or C++ code. It’s probably best to reserve
judgement about what sort of language Rust is, and see what
you think once you’ve become comfortable with the language.

To get feedback on the design in a real-world setting, Mozilla

has developed Servo, a new web browser engine, in Rust.
Servo’s needs and Rust’s goals are well matched: a browser
must perform well and handle untrusted data securely. Servo
uses Rust’s safe concurrency to put the full machine to work on
tasks that would be impractical to parallelize in C or C++. In
fact, Servo and Rust have grown up together, with Servo using
the latest new language features, and Rust evolving based on
feedback from Servo’s developers.
Type Safety
Rust is a type-safe language. But what do we mean by “type
safety”? Safety sounds good, but what exactly are we being
kept safe from?

Here’s the definition of undefined behavior from the 1999

standard for the C programming language, known as C99:

undefined behavior

behavior, upon use of a nonportable or erroneous

program construct or of erroneous data, for which this
International Standard imposes no requirements

Consider the following C program:

int main(int argc, char **argv) {

unsigned long a[1];
a[3] = 0x7ffff7b36cebUL;
return 0;
}

According to C99, because this program accesses an element

off the end of the array a, its behavior is undefined, meaning
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that it can do anything whatsoever. When we ran this program
on Jim’s laptop, it produced the following output:

undef: Error: .netrc file is readable by others.

undef: Remove password or make file unreadable by
others.

Then it crashed. Jim’s laptop doesn’t even have a .netrc file. If

you try it yourself, it will probably do something entirely
different.

The machine code the C compiler generated for this main

function happens to place the array a on the stack three words
before the return address, so storing 0x7ffff7b36cebUL in
a[3] changes poor main’s return address to point into the
midst of code in the C standard library that consults one’s
.netrc file for a password. When main returns, execution
resumes not in main’s caller, but at the machine code for these
lines from the library:

warnx(_("Error: .netrc file is readable by

others."));
warnx(_("Remove password or make file unreadable
by others."));
goto bad;
In allowing an array reference to affect the behavior of a
subsequent return statement, the C compiler is fully
standards-compliant. An undefined operation doesn’t just
produce an unspecified result: it is allowed to cause the
program to do anything at all.

The C99 standard grants the compiler this carte blanche to

allow it to generate faster code. Rather than making the
compiler responsible for detecting and handling odd behavior
like running off the end of an array, the standard makes the
programmer responsible for ensuring those conditions never
arise in the first place.

Empirically speaking, we’re not very good at that. While a

student at the University of Utah, researcher Peng Li modified
C and C++ compilers to make the programs they translated
report when they executed certain forms of undefined
behavior. He found that nearly all programs do, including those
from well-respected projects that hold their code to high
standards. And undefined behavior often leads to exploitable
security holes in practice. The Morris worm propagated itself
from one machine to another using an elaboration of the
technique shown before, and this kind of exploit remains in
widespread use today.

In light of that example, let’s define some terms. If a program

has been written so that no possible execution can exhibit
undefined behavior, we say that program is well defined. If a
language’s safety checks ensure that every program is well
defined, we say that language is type safe.

A carefully written C or C++ program might be well defined,

but C and C++ are not type safe: the program shown earlier
has no type errors, yet exhibits undefined behavior. By
contrast, Python is type safe. Python is willing to spend
processor time to detect and handle out-of-range array indices
in a friendlier fashion than C:

>>> a = [0]
>>> a[3] = 0x7ffff7b36ceb
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
IndexError: list assignment index out of range
>>>

Python raised an exception, which is not undefined behavior:

the Python documentation specifies that the assignment to
a[3] should raise an IndexError exception, as we saw.
Certainly, a module like ctypes that provides unconstrained
access to the machine can introduce undefined behavior into
Python, but the core language itself is type safe. Java,
JavaScript, Ruby, and Haskell are similar in this way.

Note that being type safe is independent of whether a

language checks types at compile time or at run time: C checks
at compile time, and is not type safe; Python checks at run
time, and is type safe.

It is ironic that the dominant systems programming languages,

C and C++, are not type safe, while most other popular
languages are. Given that C and C++ are meant to be used to
implement the foundations of a system, entrusted with
implementing security boundaries and placed in contact with
untrusted data, type safety would seem like an especially
valuable quality for them to have.

This is the decades-old tension Rust aims to resolve: it is both

type safe and a systems programming language. Rust is
designed for implementing those fundamental system layers
that require performance and fine-grained control over
resources, yet still guarantees the basic level of predictability
that type safety provides. We’ll look at how Rust manages this
unification in more detail in later parts of this book.

Rust’s particular form of type safety has surprising

consequences for multithreaded programming. Concurrency is
notoriously difficult to use correctly in C and C++; developers
usually turn to concurrency only when single-threaded code
has proven unable to achieve the performance they need. But
Rust guarantees that concurrent code is free of data races,
catching any misuse of mutexes or other synchronization
primitives at compile time. In Rust, you can use concurrency
without worrying that you’ve made your code impossible for
any but the most accomplished programmers to work on.
Rust has an escape valve from the safety rules, for when you
absolutely have to use a raw pointer. This is called unsafe
code, and while most Rust programs don’t need it, we’ll show
how to use it and how it fits into Rust’s overall safety scheme
in Chapter 22.

Like those of other statically typed languages, Rust’s types can

do much more than simply prevent undefined behavior. An
accomplished Rust programmer uses types to ensure values
are used not just safely but meaningfully, in a way that’s
consistent with the application’s intent. In particular, Rust’s
traits and generics, described in a later chapter, provide a
succinct, flexible, and performant way to describe
characteristics that a group of types has in common, and then
take advantage of those commonalities.

Our aim in this book is to give you the insights you need not
just to write programs in Rust, but to put the language to work
ensuring that those programs are both safe and correct, and to
anticipate how they will perform. In our experience, Rust is a
major step forward in systems programming, and we want to
help you take advantage of it.
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Chapter 2. Basic Types
A NOTE FOR EARLY RELEASE READERS
With Early Release ebooks, you get books in their earliest form—the author’s raw and unedited
content as they write—so you can take advantage of these technologies long before the official
release of these titles.

This will be the 3rd chapter of the final book. Please note that the GitHub repo will be made
active later on.

If you have comments about how we might improve the content and/or examples in this book,
or if you notice missing material within this chapter, please reach out to the author at
[email protected].

There are many, many types of books in the world, which

makes good sense, because there are many, many types of
people, and everybody wants to read something different.
— Lemony Snicket

To a great extent, the Rust language is designed around its

types. Its memory and thread safety guarantees rest on the
soundness of its type system. Its flexibility stems from its
generic types and traits. And its performance arises from
letting developers choose representations for their data with
the right balance between flexibility and cost.

This chapter is about that third aspect: Rust’s fundamental

types for representing values. These source-level types have
concrete machine-level counterparts with predictable costs and
performance. Although Rust doesn’t promise it will represent
things exactly as you’ve requested, it takes care to deviate
from your requests only when it’s a reliable improvement.

Compared to a dynamically typed language like JavaScript or

Python, Rust requires more planning from you up front: you
must spell out the types of functions’ parameters and return
values, members of struct types, and a few other constructs.
However, two features of Rust make this less trouble than you
might expect:

Given the types that you did spell out, Rust will infer
most of the rest for you. In practice, there’s often only
one type that will work for a given variable or
expression; when this is the case, Rust lets you leave
out the type. For example, you could spell out every
type in a function, like this:

fn build_vector() -> Vec<i16> {

let mut v: Vec<i16> = Vec::
<i16>::new();
v.push(10i16);
v.push(20i16);
v
}

But this is cluttered and repetitive. Given the function’s

return type, it’s obvious that v must be a Vec<i16>, a
vector of 16-bit signed integers; no other type would
work. And from that it follows that each element of the
vector must be an i16. This is exactly the sort of
reasoning Rust’s type inference applies, allowing you to
instead write:

fn build_vector() -> Vec<i16> {

let mut v = Vec::new();
v.push(10);
v.push(20);
v
}

These two definitions are exactly equivalent; Rust will

generate the same machine code either way. Type
inference gives back much of the legibility of
dynamically typed languages, while still catching type
errors at compile time.

Functions can be generic: a single function can work

on values of many different types.

In Python and JavaScript, all functions work this way

naturally: a function can operate on any value that has
the properties and methods the function will need.
(This is the characteristic often called duck typing: if it
quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.) But it’s exactly this
flexibility that makes it so difficult for those languages
to detect type errors early; testing is often the only
 way to catch such mistakes. Rust’s generic functions
give the language a degree of the same flexibility,
while still catching all type errors at compile time.

Despite their flexibility, generic functions are just as

efficient as their nongeneric counterparts. We’ll discuss
generic functions in detail later.

The rest of this chapter covers Rust’s types from the bottom
up, starting with simple machine types like integers and
floating-point values, then moving on to types that hold more
data: boxes, tuples, arrays, and strings.

Here’s a summary of the sorts of types you’ll see in Rust. This

table shows Rust’s primitive types, some very common types
from the standard library, and some examples of user-defined
types:
Other documents randomly have
different content
 TftUars 423 Visions more interested in literature than in
clerical affairs, and in 1670 he published his first and most important
book, ■Comte da Gabalis. Ostensibly a novel, this volume is largely a
veiled satire on the writings of La Calprenede, at this time very
popular both in France and in England ; but the satirical element in
Villars' paper is supplemented by a curious blend of history,
philosophy and mysticism ; and, as much of the last-named is of a
nature distinctly hostile -to the dogmas of Rome, the author soon
found himself in ill odour with his brother clerics. Probably it was for
this reason that he renounced the pulpit, yet his literary activities
were not vitiated by persecution ; and in 1671 he issued De la
Delicetesse, a speculative treatise, couched in the form of dialogues,
in which the author takes the part of one, a priest who had lately
been writing in opposition to Port Royal doctrines. Like its
predecessor this new book made a considerable stir, and Villars
began to write voluminously, at the same time plunging deeply into
the study of various kinds of mysticism ; but his activities were
suddenly terminated in an unexpected fashion, for in 1673 he was
murdered on the public highroad not far from Lyons, whither he was
journeying from Paris. Presumably he had incurred the hatred of
some one "but the question is shrouded in mystery ; and, be the
solution what it may, no attempt appears to have been made to
frustrate the posthumous publication of divers -works from Villars'
pen. Within the first decade succeeding his death three such works
appeared, V Amour sans Faiblesse, Anne de Bretague et Ailmanzaris,
and Critique de la Berenice de Racine el de Comeille, the last-named
subsequently winning the enconiums of a shrewd judge, Mme. de
Sevigne ; while so late as 1715 a further production by Villars was
issued, a sequel to the Comte du Gabalis, bearing the significant title
of Nouveaux Entretiens sur les Sciences secretes. This volume
elicited ready and wide interest among thinkers in the eighteenth
century, and it may be briefly defined as a treatise opposing the
philosophical theories of Descartes, or rather, opposing the popular
misapprehension and abuse of these. Vintras, Eugene : A Norman
peasant of great devoutness, who in the year 1839 was fixed upon
by the Saviours of Louis XVII. (q.v.), as a fitting successor to their
prophet Martin who had just died. They addressed a letter to the
pretended Louis XVII. and arranged that it should fall into the hands
of Vintras. It abounded in good promises for the reign to come and
in mystical expressions calculated to inflame the brain of a person of
weak and excitable character such as Vintras was. In a letter •
Vintras himself describes as follows the manner in which this
communication reached him : — " Towards nine o'clock I was
occupied in writing, when there was a knock at the door of the room
in which I sat, And supposing that it was a workman who came on
business, I said rather brusquely, ' Come in.' Much to my
astonishment, in place of the expected workman, I saw an old man
in rags. I asked merely what he wanted. He Answered with much
tranquillity, ' Don't disturb yourself, Pierre Michel.' Now, these names
are never used in addressing me, for I am known everywhere as
Engine, and even in signing documents I do not make use of my first
names. I was conscious of a certain emotion at the old man's
answer, and this increased when he said : ' I am utterly tired, and
wherever I appear they treat me with •disdain, or as a thief.' The
words alarmed me considerably, though they were spoken in a
saddened and even a woeful tone. I arose and placed a ten. sous
piece in his hand, saying, ' I do not take you for that, my good man,'
and while speaking I made him understand that I wished to see him
out. He received it in silence but turned his back with .a pained air.
No sooner had he set foot on the last step than I shut the door and
locked it. I did not hear him go down, so I called a workman and
told him to come up to my room. Under some business pretext, I
was wishing him to search with me all the possible places which
might conceal my old man, whom I had not seen go out. The
workman came accordingly. I left the room in his company, again
locking my door. I hunted through all the nooks and corners, but
saw nothing. " I was about to enter the factory when I heard on a
sudden the bell ringing for mass, and felt glad that, notwithstanding
the disturbance, I could assist at the sacred ceremony. I ran back to
my room to obtain a prayer book and, on the table where I had
been writing, I found a letter addressed to Mme. de Generes in
London ; it was written and signed by M. Paul de Montfleury of
Caen, and embodied a refutation of heresy, together with a
profession of orthodox faith. The address notwithstanding, this letter
was intended to place before the Duke of Normandy the most
important truths of our holy Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion.
On the document was laid the ten sous piece which I had given to
the old man." Vintras immediately concluded that the bringer of the
letter was a messenger from heaven, and became devoted to the
cause of Louis XVII. He became a Visionary. He had bloody sweats,
he saw hearts painted with his own blood appear on hosts,
accompanied by inscriptions in his own spelling. Many believed him a
prophet and followed him, among them several priests, who alleged
that they partook of his occult vision. Doctors analysed the fluid
which flowed from the hosts and certified it to be human blood. His
enemies referred these miracles to the Devil. Vintras' followers
regarded him as a new Christ. But one of them, Gozzoli, published
scandalous accounts of his doings, alleging that horrible obscenities
and sacrilegious masses took place in their private chapel at Tilly-
sur-seules. The unspeakable abominations alluded to are contained
in a pamphlet entitled he Prophite Vintras (185 1). The sect was
formally condemned by the Pope, and Vintras constituted himself
sovereign Pontiff. He was arrested on a charge of exploiting his cult
for money, was tried at Caen, and sentenced to five years'
imprisonment. When freed in 1845 he went to England, and in
London resumed the head-ship of his cult which seems to have
flourished for some time afterwards. Virgil, the Enchanter : (See
Italy.) Visions : (From Latin visus, p.p. of videre, to see.) The
appearance to mortals of supernatural persons, or scenes. Of great
frequency in early and mediasval times, and among savage or semi-
civilised races, visions seem to have decreased proportionately with
the advance of learning and enlightenment. Thus among the Greeks
and Romans of the classic period they were comparatively rare,
though visions of demons or gods were occasionally seen. On the
other hand, among Oriental races the seeing of visions was a
common occurrence, and these took more varied shapes. In
mediaeval Europe, again, visions were almost commonplaces, and
directions were given by the Church to enable men to distinguish
visions of divine origin from those false delusions which were the
work of the Evil One. Visions may be roughly divided into two
classes — those which are spontaneous, and those which are
induced. But, indeed, the great majority belong to the latter class.
Ennemoser enumerates the causes of such appearances thus : (1)
Sensitive organism and delicate constitution ; (2) Religious education
and ascetic life (fasting, penance, etc.) ; (3) Narcotics — opium,
wine, incense, narcotic salves (witchsalves) ; (4) Delirium,
monomania ; (5) Fear and expectation, preparatory words, songs,
and prayers. Among the visions induced by prayer and fasting, and
the severe selfdiscipline of the religious ascetic, must be included
many
 Visions 424 Wafer historical or traditional instances — the
visions of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Anthony, St. Bernard Ignatius, St.
Catherine of Siena, St. Hildegarde, Joan of Arc. It may be noted that
the convent has ever been the special haunt of religious visions,
probably for the reasons above mentioned. But the most potent
means for the inductions of visionary appearances are those made
use of by the Orientals. Narcotics of all kinds — opium, haschish,
and so on — are indulged in, and physical means used for this
express purpose. Thus the Brahmins will gaze for hours at a time at
the sun or moon, will remain for months in practically the some
position, or will practise all manner of mortification of the body, so
that they may fall at length into the visionary sleep (a species of
catalepsy.) The narcotic salves with which they anoint themselves
are said to be similar to the witch-salves used in the Middle Ages,
which induced in the witch the hallucination that she was flying
through the air on a goat or a broomstick. Opium also is said to
produce a sensation of flying, as well as visions of celestial delight.
Alcoholic intoxication induces visions of insects and small animals, as
does also nitrogen. The vapours rising from the ground in some
places, or those to be found in certain caverns, are said to exercise
an effect similar to that of narcotics. The Indians of North America
practise similar external methods of inducing visions — solitude,
fasting, and the use of salves or ointments. The savages of Africa
have dances which, by producing severe dizziness, help them
towards the desired visionary ecstasy. The northern savages attain
the same end by the use of drums and noisy music. Spontaneous
visions, though less common, are yet sufficiently numerous to merit
attention here. The difficulty is, of course, to know just how far "
fear and expectation " may have operated to induce the vision. In
many cases, as in that of Swedenborg, the visions may have
commenced as " visions of the night," hardly to be distinguished
from dreams, and so from vision of an " internal " nature to clearly
externalised apparitions. Swedenborg himself declares that when
seeing visions of the latter class he used his senses exactly as when
awake, dwelling with the spirits as a spirit, but able to return to his
body when he pleased. An interesting case of spontaneous vision is
that of Benvenuto Cellini (q.v.). Visions are by no means confined to
the sense of sight. Taste, hearing, smelling, touch, may all be
experienced in a vision. Joan of Arc, for instance, heard voices
encouraging her to be the deliverer of her country. Examples may be
drawn from the Bible, as the case of the child Samuel in the Temple,
and instances could be multiplied from all ages and all times. The
visions of Pordage and the " Philadelphia Society," — or, as they
called themselves later, the " Angelic Brethren " — in 1651 are
noteworthy in this respect because they include the taste of "
brimstone, salt, and soot." In the presence of the " Angelic Brethren
" pictures were drawn on the window-panes by invisible hands, and
were seen to move about. Physiological exlpanations of visions have
from time to time been offered. Plato says : " The eye is the organ
of a fire which does not burn but gives a mild light. The rays
proceeding from the eye meet those of the outward light. With the
departure of the outward light the inner also becomes less active ;
all inward movements become calmer and less disturbed ; and
should any more prominent influences have remained they become
in various points where they congregate, so many pictures of the
fancy." Democritus held that visions and dreams are passing shapes,
ideal forms proceeding from other beings. Of death-bed visions
Plutarch says : " It is not probable that in death the soul gains new
powers which it was not before possessed of when the heart was
confined within the chains of the body ; but it is much more
probable that these powers were always in being, though dimmed
and clogged by the body ; and the soul is only then able to practise
them when the corporeal bonds are loosened, and the drooping
limbs and stagnating juices no longer oppress it." The
spiritualistictheory of visions can hardly be called a physiological one,
save in so far as spirit is regarded as refined matter. An old theory of
visionary ecstasy on these lines was that the soul left the body and
proceeded to celestial spheres, where it remained in contemplation
of divine scenes and persons. Very similar to this is the doctrine of
Swedenborg, whose spirit, he believed, could commune with
discarnate spirits. — the souls of the dead— as one of themselves.
To this may be directly traced the doctrines of modern spiritualism,
which thus regards visions as actual spirits or spirit scenes, visible to
the ecstatic or entranced subject whose spirit was projected to
discarnate planes. The question whether or no visions are
contagious has been much disputed. It has been said that such
appearances may be transferred from one person to another by the
laying on of hands. In the case of the Scottish seers such a
transference may take place even by accidental contact with the
seer. The vision of the second person is.however.less distinct than
that of the original seer. The same idea prevailed with regard to the
visions of magnetised patients. In so far as these may be identified
with the collective hallucinations of the hypnotic state, there is no
definite scientific evidence to prove their existence. Visions have by
no means been confined to the ignorant or the superstitious. Many
men of genius have been subject to visionary appearance. While
Raphael was trying topaint the Madonna she appeared to him in a
vision. The famous composition known as the " Devil's Sonata" was
dictated to Tartini by the Evil One himself. Goethe also had visions.
Blake's portraits of the Patriarchs were done from visionary beings
which appeared to him in the night. And such instances might easily
be multiplied. Vitality, according to theosophists, comes from the
sun. When a physical atom is transfused with vitality, it draws to
itself six other atoms and thus makes an etheric element. The sum
of their vitality is then divided among each of the atoms and in this
state the element enters the physical body by means of one of the
sense organs or ckaksams of the etheric double — that situated
opposite the spleen. Here the element is divided into its component
parts and these are conveyed to the various parts of the physical
body. It is on vitality that the latter depends, not only for life but for
its well-being in life. A person sufficiently supplied with it enjoys
good health and one insufficiently ■ supplied is afflicted with poor
health. In the case of a healthy person, however, more vitality is
drawn in than is necessary for the vital purposes and the
superfluousvitality acts beneficially on his neighbours, whether
human or animal, while it can also be directed in certain definite
channels to the healing of diseases and so forth. With unhealthy
persons, the case is, of course, reversed, and they devitalise the
more healthy, with whom they come in contact. Vjestica, a Slav
name for a witch : (See Slavs.) Vukub-Came : (See Hell.) w Wafer :
The sacred wafer is often used by devil-worshippers for purposes of
profanation. (See Devil-worship.) There was found in the house of
the notorious witch, Dame Alice Kyteler (q.v.), a wafer of
sacramental bread, bearing therepa the name of the Devil.
 Waldenses 425 War Waldenses : The name of a Christian
sect which arose in the south of France about 1 170. They were
much the same in origin and ethics as the Albigenses (q.v.), that is,
their religious system rested upon that of Manichaeism, which
believed in dualism and severe asceticism. It undoubtedly arose from
the desire of the bourgeois class to have changes made in the
clerical discipline of the Roman Church. Its adherents called
themselves calhari thus demonstrating the eastern origin of their
system. There were two classes of these, credentes and perfecti, or
neophytes and adepts, — the perfecti only being admitted to the
esoteric doctrines of the Waldensian Church. Outwardly its aim and
effort was rationalistic ; but the inner doctrine partook more of the
occult. It was in 11 70 that Peter Waldo, a rich merchant of Lyons,
sold his goods and gave them to the poor, and from him the sect
was named. The earliest account of Waldensian beliefs is that of an
enemy,. Sacconi, an inquisitor of the Holy Office, who wrote about
the middle of the thirteenth century. He divides the Waldensians into
two classes, those of Lombardy, and those north of the Alps. The
latter believed that any layman might consecrate the sacrament of
the altar, and that the Roman Church was not the Church of Christ ;
while the Lombardian sect held that the Roman Church was the
Scarlet Woman of the Apocalypse. They also believed that all men
were priests. As their opinions became more widespread,
persecution became more severe, and the Waldensians latterly
withdrew themselves altogether from the Church of Rome, and
chose ministers for themselves by election. Papal bulls were issued
for their extermination, and a crusade was directed against them ;
but they survived these attacks, and so late as the time of Cromwell
were protected by him against the Duke of Savoy and the French
king. Their ministers were later subsidised by the government of
Queen Anne, and this subsidy was carried on until the time of
Napoleon, when he granted them an equivalent. Latterly they have
received much assistance from various Protestant countries of
Europe, especially from England ; and at the present time number
some 1 2,000 to 13,000 communicants. During the Middle Ages, it
was strongly held by the priesthood of the Roman Church that, like
the Albigenses, the Waldensians had a diabolic element in their
religion and they have been from time to time classed with the
various secret societies that sprang up in mediaeval Europe, such as
the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, and so forth ; but although
they possessed an esoteric doctrine _ of their own, there is no
reason to believe that this was in any way magical, nor in any
manner more " esoteric " than the inner doctrine of any other
Christian sect. Walder, Phileas : A Swiss, originally a Lutheran
minister, a well-known occultist and spiritualist, and friend of Eliphas
Levi (q.v.). He is represented by the pseudohistorians of " Satanism "
as a right-hand man of Albert Pike (q.v.) in his alleged diabolic
practices at Charleston, U.S.A. (See Devil Worship.) In reality Walder
was an earnest mason and mystic. Wallace, Alfred ftussel : A
distinguished British naturalist, who discovered the- theory of
evolution independent of Darwin. He was born at Usk, in
Monmouthshire, on the 8th of January, 1823. His scientific studies
included an enquiry into the phenomena of spiritualism, and he
became a firm believer in the genuineness of these manifestations.
Dr. Wallace had unique opportunities for studying these in
connection with Mrs. Guppy, who, as Miss Nichols, lived for a time
with his sister. Among his works was one entitled Miracles and
Modern Spiritualism, published in 1881. Dr. Wallace's views on
psychic phenomena remained unchanged until his death in 1903. His
scientific position made him a tower of strength to the spiritualists.
Wallenstein, Albert Von, Duke of Friedland : (See Astrology.)
Wandering Jew, The : A mediaeval German legend which has several
forms. Through various writers, and differing in detail, the essential
features of the narratives which have been handed down to us, are
the same. The legend is that as Christ was dragged on his way to
Calvary, he passed the house of a Jew, and stopping there, sought
to rest a little, being weary under the weight of his cross. The Jew,
however, inspired with the adverse enthusiasm of the mob, drove
Him- on, and would not allow Him to rest there. Jesus, looking at
him, said, " I shall stand and rest, but thou shalt go till the last day."
Ever afterwardsthe Jew was compelled to wander over the earth, till
this prophecy should be fulfilled. The legend of the Wandering Jew is
to be regarded as theepic of the Semite people in the Middle Ages.
In some parts of Germany we find the Wandering Jew identified with
the Wild Huntsman, whilst in several French districts that mythical
character is regarded as the wind of the night. The blast in his horn,
which, rushing throughthe valleys creates a hollow booming sound
not unlike a great bugle. In this legend we have in all probability the
clue to the mythological side of the story of the wandering Jew. Or
perhaps the idea of the Wandering Jew has been fused with that of
the conception of the wind. The resemblance between the two
conceptions would be too strong to escape the popular mind. From a
literary point of view this legend has been treated by Eugene Sue
and Croly. Wannein Nat : An evil spirit. (See Burma.) War, Occult
Phenomena during the : A surprising number of ideas regarding the
supernatural have crystallized around the circumstances of the war.
Perhaps the most striking of these was the alleged vision of angels
at Mons. The first notice regarding this, or at least the most
important and public record of the occurrence, was that contained in
the Evening News for September 14th, 1915, in. Which Mr. Machen
described the evidence as given to him. by an officer who was in the
retreat from Mons. This officer was a member of a well-known army
family and was aperson of great credibility, who stated that on
August 26th, 1914, he was fighting in the battle of Le Cateau, from
which his division retired in good order. " On the night of the 27th,"
he says, " I was riding along the column with two other officers. ...
As we rode along I became conscious of the fact that in the fields on
both sides of the road along which we were marching I could see a
very large body of horsemen. . . . the other two officers had stopped
talking. At last one of them asked me if I saw anything in thefields. I
told them what I had seen. The third officer confessed that he, too,
had been watching these horsemen, for the past twenty minutes. So
convinced were we. that they were really cavalry, that at the next
halt one of the officers took a party of men out to reconnoitre and
found no one there. The night then' grew "darker and we saw no
more." Mr. Harold Begbie in his book On the Side of the A ngels
states that a vision of angels was seen in the retreat from. Mons and
gives the narrative of a soldier, who states that an officer came up to
him "in a state of great anxiety " and pointed out to him a " strange
light which seemed to be quite distinctly outlined and was not a
reflection of themoon, nor were there any clouds in the
neighbourhood. The light became brighter and I could see quite
distinctly three shapes, one in the centre having what looked
likeoutspread wings. The other two were not so large, but were
quite plainly distinct from the centre one. They" appeared to have a
long, loose-hanging garment of a golden tint and they were above
the German line facing us. We stood watching them for about three-
quarters of an hour." All the men^in the battalion who saw this
with*
 War 426 Werwolf the exception of five were killed. Mr.
Begbie goes on to say that he was told by a nurse that a dying
soldier spoke to her of the reluctance of the Germans to attack our
line, " because of the thousands of troops behind us." This man had
heard German prisoners say so and fully believed in the phantasmal
nature of those supporting hosts. In his monograph on the Bowmen
at Mons, Mr. Machen ;put forward the idea that those seen before
the retreat from Mons were the spirits of the English bowmen who
had fought at Agincourt and this idea gained wide prevalence, an
interesting monograph being written upon it by Mr. Ralph Shirley.
Men from the front, too, have stated to interviewers that phantasms
of the dead frequently appeared in the space between the German
and British trenches called " No Man's Land." Mr. Shirley has also
written an excellent pamphlet on " Prophecies and Omens of the
Great War " dealing ■with the various oracular utterances on the
gigantic struggle, which may be referred to with confidence. Stories,
too, were current in the earlier times of the war regarding the
appearance of saintly and protective figures resembling the patrons
of the several allied countries. Thus the English were convinced that
in certain engagements they had beheld the figure of Saint George
mounted on a white charger and the French were equally sure that
the figure in question was either Saint Denis or Joan of Arc.
Wounded men in base hospitals asked for medallions or coins on
which the likenesses of these saints were impressed in order to
verify the statements they made. Wayland Smith : A famous
character in German mythological romance and father of Weltich,
whom he trained in the art of warfare and sent to the Court of
Dietrich in Bern. To him he gave the sword Miming and told him of a
mermaid, his ancestress, to whom he was to apply when in difficulty.
He is also referred to in the Sigfried story, being in company with a
smith named Mimi, when Sigfried joins the smithy. His workmanship
is praised in the Beowulf Saga and he is mentioned there and
elsewhere as a maker of impregnable armour. He is the supernatural
smith of the Teutonic peoples, and is comparable to Vulcan in
Roman, and to Hephaistos in Greek mythology. "Weir, Major : (See
Scotland.) Weirtz : (See Hypnotism.) Weishaupt : (See Illuminati.)
Werner, Dr. Heinrich : (See Spiritualism.) Werwolf : A man
temporarily or permanently transformed into a wolf, from the Anglo-
Saxon wer, a man, and wulf, a wolf. It is a phase of Lycanthropy
(q.v.), and in ancient and mediaeval times was of very frequent
occurrence. It was, of course, in Europe where the wolf was one of
the largest carnivorous animals, that the superstition gained
currency, similar tales in other countries usually introducing bears,
tigers, and so forth. The belief is probably a relic of early
cannibalism. ■Communities of semi-civilised people would begin to
shun those who devoured human flesh, and they would be
ostracised and classed as wild beasts, the idea that they had
something in common with these would grow, and the -conception
that they were able to transform themselves into veritable animals
would be likely to arise therefrom. There were two kinds of werwolf,
voluntary and involuntary. The voluntary would be, as has been said,
those ^persons who, because of their taste for human flesh, had
withdrawn from intercourse with their fellows. These appeared to
possess a certain amount of magical power, or at least sufficient of it
to transform themselves into the animal shape at will. This they
effected by merely disrobing, by the taking off a girdle made of
human skin, or, putting on a similar belt of wolf-skin, obviously a
substitute for an ■entire wolf-skin. But we also hear of their donning
the entire skin. In other instances the body is rubbed with a magic
ointment, or water is drunk out of a wolf's footprint. The brains of
the animal are also eaten. Olaus Magnus says " that the werwolves
of Livonia drained a cup of beer on initiation, and repeated certain
magic words. In order to throw off the wolf shape the animal girdle
was removed, or else the magician merely muttered a certain
formula. In some instances the transformation was*supposed to be
the work of Satan. The superstition regarding werwolves seems to
have been exceedingly prevalent in France during the 16th century
as is evidenced by numerous trials, in Some of which it is clearly
shown that murder and cannibalism took place. Self-hallucination,
too, was accountable for some of these cases, the supposed
werwolves fully admitting that they had transformed themselves and
had slain numerous persons. But at the beginning of the 17th
century, commonsense came to the rescue, and persons making
such confessions were not credited. In Teutonic and Slavonic
countries it was complained by men of learning that werwolves did
more damage than the real criminals, and a regular " college " or
institution for the practice of the art of animal transformation was
attributed to them. Involuntary werwolves were often persons
transformed into an animal shape because of the commission of sin,
and condemned to pass so many years in that form. Thus certain
saints metamorphosed sinners into wolves. In Armenia it is thought
that sinful women are condemned to pass seven years in the form of
a wolf. To such a woman a demon appears, bringing a wolf-skin. He
commands her to don it, from which moment she becomes a wolf
with all the nature of a wild beast, devouring her own children and
those of strangers, wandering forth at night, undeterred by locks,
bolts, or bars, returning only with morning to resume her human
form. Romance, especially French romance, is full of werwolves, and
one of the most remarkable instances of this is the Lay by Marie de
France entitled Bisclaverel, the Lay of a werwolf. Many werwolves
were innocent persons suffering through the witchcraft of others. To
regain their true form it was necessary for them to kneel in one spot
for a hundred years, to lose three drops of blood, to be hailed as a
werwolf, to have the sign of the cross made on their bodies, to be
addressed thrice by their baptismal names, or to be struck thrice on
the forehead with a knife. According to Donat de Hautemer, quoted
by Goulart, " there are some lycanthropes who are so dominated by
their melancholy humour that they really believe themselves to be
transformed into wolves. This malady, according to the testimony of
Aetius in his sixth book, chapter XL, and Paulus in his third book,
chapter XVI., and other moderns, is a sort of melancholy, of a black
and dismal nature. Those who are attacked by it leave their homes
in the months of February, imitate wolves in almost every particular,
and wander all night long among the cemeteries and sepulchres, so
that one may observe a marvellous change in the mind and
disposition, and, above all in the depraved imagination, of the
lycanthrope. The memory, however, is still vigorous, as I have
remarked in one of this lycanthropic melancholiacs whom we call
werwolves. For one who was well acquainted with me was one day
seized with his affliction, and on meeting him I withdrew a little,
fearing that he might injure me. He, having glanced at me for a
moment, passed on followed by a crowd of people. On his shoulder
he carried the entire leg and thigh of a corpse. Having received
careful medical treatment, he was cured of this malady. On meeting
me on another occasion he asked me if I had not been afraid when
he met me at such and such a place.
 Werwolf 427 Werwolf which made me think that his
memory was not hurt by the vehemence of his disease, though his
imagination was so greatly damaged." " Guillaume de Brabant, in the
narrative of Wier, repeated by Goulart, has written in his History that
a ■certain man of sense and settled understanding was still so
tormented by the evil spirit that at a particular season ■of the year
he would think himself a ravening wolf, and would run here and
there in the woods, caves and deserts, ■chasing little children. It
was said that this man was often found running about in the deserts
like a man out of his senses, and that at last by the grace of God he
came to himself and was healed. There was also, as is related by
Job Fincel in the second book On Miracles a villager near Paule in
the year 1541, who believed himself to be a wolf, and assaulted
several men in the fields, even killing some. Taken at last, though
not without great difficulty, he stoutly affirmed that he was a wolf,
and that the only way in which he differed from other wolves was
that they wore their hairy coats on the outside, while he wore his
between his skin and his flesh. Certain persons, more inhuman and
wolfish than he, wished to test the truth of this story, and gashed his
arms and legs severely. Then, learning their mistake, and the
innocence of the melancholiac, they passed him over to the
consideration of the surgeons, in whose hands he died some days
after. Those afflicted with this disease are pale, with dark and
haggard •eyes, seeing only with difficulty ; the tongue is dry, and
the sufferer very thirsty. Pliny and others write that the brain of a
bear excites such bestial imaginations. It is even said that one was
given to a Spanish gentleman to eat in our times, which so disturbed
his mind, that imagining himself to be transformed into a bear, he
fled to the mountains and deserts." " As for the lycanthropes, whose
imagination was so damaged," says Goulart, " that by some Satanic
efficacy they appeared wolves and not men to those who saw them
Tunning about and doing all manner of harm, Bodin maintains that
the devil can change the shape of one body into that of another, in
the great power that God gives him in this elementary world. He
says, then, that there may be lycanthropes who have really been
transformed into wolves, quoting various examples and histories to
prove his contention. In short, after many disputes, he believes in
Colt's forms of lycanthropy. And as for the latter, there is represented
at the end of this chapter the summary of his proposition, to wit,
that men are sometimes transformed into beasts, retaining in that
form the human reason ; it may be that this comes about by the
direct power of God, or it may be that he gives this power to Satan,
who carries out his will, or rather his redoubtable judgments. And if
we confess (he says) the truths of the sacred history in Daniel,
concerning the transformation of Nebuchadnezzar, and the history of
Lot's wife changed into motionless stone, the changing of men into
an ox or 3. stone is certainly possible ; and consequently the
transformation to other animals as well." G. Peucer says in speaking
of lycanthropy : "As for me I had formerly regarded as ridiculous and
fabulous the stories I had often heard concerning the transformation
of men into wolves ; but I have learnt from reliable sources, and
from the testimony of trustworthy witnesses, that such things are
not at all doubtful or incredible, since they tell of such
transformations taking place twelve days after Christmas in Livonia
and the adjacent countries ; as they have been proved to be true by
the confessions of those who have been imprisoned and tortured for
such crimes. Here is the manner in which it is done. Immediately
after Christmas day is past, a lame boy goes round the country
calling these slaves of the devil, of which there are a great number,
and enjoining them to follow him. If they procrastinate or go too
slowly, there immediately appears a tall man with a whip whose
thongs are made of iron chains, with which he urges them onwards,
and sometimes lashes the poor wretches so cruelly, that the marks
of the whip remain on their bodies till long afterwards, and cause
them the greatest pain. As soon as they have set out on their road,
they are all changed into wolves They travel in thousands, having for
their conductor the bearer of the whip, after whom they march.
When they reach the fields, they rush upon the cattle they find
there, tearing and carrying away all they can, and doing much other
damage ; but they are not permitted to touch or wound persons.
When they approach any rivers, their guide separates the waters
with his whip, so that they seem to open up and leave a dry space
by which to cross. At the end of twelve days the whole band
scatters, and everyone returns to his home, having regained his own
proper form. This transformation, they say, comes about in this wise.
The victims fall suddenly on the ground as though they were taken
with sudden illness, and remain motionless and extended Jike
corpses, deprived of all feeling, for they neither stir, nor move from
one place to another, nor are in any wise transformed into wolves,
thus resembling carrion, for although they are rolled or shaken, they
give no sign of life." Bodin relates several cases of lycanthropy and
of men changed into beasts. " Pierre Mamot, in a little treatise he
has written on sorcerers, says that he has observed this changing of
men into wolves, he being in Savoy at the time. Henry of Cologne in
his treatise de Lamiis regards the transformation as beyond doubt.
And Ulrich in a little book dedicated to the emperor Sigismund,
writes of the dispute before the emperor, and says that it was
agreed, both on the ground of reason, and of the experience of
innumerable examples, that such transformation was a fact ; and he
adds that he himself had seen a lycanthrope at Constance, who was
accused, convicted, condemned, and finally executed after his
confession. And several books published in Germany say that one of
the greatest kings of Christendom, who is not long dead, and who
had the reputation of being one of the greatest sorcerers in the
world, often changed into a wolf." " I remember that the attorney-
general of the King, Bourdin, has narrated to me another which was
sent to him from the Low Countries, with the whole trial signed by
the judge and the clerks, of a wolf, which was struck by an arrow on
the thigh, and afterwards found himself in bed, with the arrow
(which he had torn out), on regaining his human shape, and the
arrow was recognised by him who had fired it — the time and place
testified by the confession of the person." " Gamier, tried and
condemned by the parliament of Dole, being in the shape of a
werwolf, caught a girl of ten or twelve years in a vineyard of
Chastenoy, a quarter of a league from Dole, and having slain her
with his teeth and claw-like hands, he ate part of her flesh and
carried the rest to his wife. A month later, in the same form, he took
another girl, and would have eaten her also, had he not, as he
himself confessed, been prevented by three persons who happened
to be passing by ; and a fortnight after he strangled a boy of ten in
the vineyard of Gredisans, and ate his flesh ; and in the form of a
man and not of a wolf, he killed another boy of twelve or thirteen
years in a wood of the village of Porouse with the intention of eating
him, but was again prevented. He was condemned to be burnt, and
the sentence was executed." " At fhe parliament of Bezancon, the
accused were Pierre Burgot and Michel Verdun, who confessed to
having
 Werwolf 428 West Indian Islands renounced God, and
sworn to serve the devil. And Michel Verdun led Burgot to the bord
du Chastel Charlon where everyone carried a candle of green wax
which shone with a blue flame. There they danced and offered
sacrifices to the devil. Then after being anointed they were turned
into wolves, running with incredible swiftness ; then they were
changed again into men, and suddenly transformed back to wolves,
when they enjoyed the society of female wolves as much as they
had done that of their wives. They confessed also that Burgot had
killed a boy of seven years with his wolf-claws and teeth, intending
to eat him, but the peasants gave chase, and prevented him. Burgot
and Verdun had eaten four girls between them ; and they had
caused people to die by the touch of a certain powder." " Job Fincel,
in the eleventh book of his Marvels wrote that there was at Padua a
lycanthrope who was caught and his wolf-claws cut, and at the same
instant he found his arms and feet cut. That js given to strengthen
the case against the sorcerers of Vernon (1556) who assembled
themselves in an old and ruined chateau under the shape of an
infinite number of cats. There happened to arrive there one evening
four or five men, who decided to spend the night in the place. They
were awakened by a multitude of cats, who assaulted them, killed
one of their number, and wounded others. The men, however,
succeeded in wounding several of the cats, who found on recovering
their human shape that they were badly hurt. And incredible as it
may seem, the trial was not proceeded with." " But the five
inquisitors who had experimented in these causes have left it in
writing that there were three sorcerers in Strasbourg who, in the
guise of three large cats, assaulted a labourer, and in defending
himself he wounded and dispersed the cats, who found themselves,
at the same moment, laid on sick-beds, in the form of women
severely wounded. At the trial they accused him who had struck
them, and he told the judges the hour and the place where he had
been assaulted by the cats, and how he had wounded them." (See
Lyeanthropy.) West Indian Islands : Magic and sorcery in the West
Indian Islands are wholly the preserve of the negro population, who
possess special magical cults called Obeah and Vaudoux, variants of
West African fetishism. The root idea of Obeahism and Vaudoux is
the worship and propitiation of, the snake-god Obi — a West African
word typifying the Spirit of Evil. Vaudoux or Voodoo is a form of
Obeah practised in Hayti, San Domingo, and the French West Indies.
Its rites are always accompanied by the sacrifice of fowls and goats,
and in only too many cases by the offering up of the " goat without
horns " — the human sacrifice, usually a young girl or boy. The
lonely groves and mountain caves where the devotees of Vaudoux
enjoy the orgies of a Walpurgis night seldom give up their secrets.
There are two sects of Vaudoux — the white and the red. The
former, which only believes in the sacrifice of white fowls and goats,
is tolerated by the laws of Hayti, and its rites are as commonly
practised as those of the Catholic Church. But even the red sect,
which openly stands for human sacrifice, is seldom interfered with.
The authorities dare not suppress it, for their own policemen and
soldiers stand in awe of the " Papaloi," and " Mamaloi " — the priests
and priestess of the snake-god. More than that, there have been
Presidents of Hayti in recent years who believed in Vaudoux.
Hippolyte was even a " Papalni " himself. He beat the black goatskin
drum in the streets of the capital to call the faithful together to see
him kill the sen-sel fowl. Another president, Geffard, tried to do his
duty and stamp out the cult. A terrible revenge was taken upon him.
His young daughter, Cora, was shot dead as she knelt in prayer
before the altar of a church in Port-au-Prince. To-day there is a
temple of the red sect in the Haytian capital near a triumphal arch,
which is inscribed with the unctuous words, ' ' Liberty — education
— progress." Under British government Obeahism perforce takes
forms less dangerous to the social order than it does in Hayti ; but it
is none the less a constant public peril in Jamaica and the other
British West Indian Islands-. It is a bitter foe of religion, education
and social advancement In olden days it worked by means of
wholesale poisoning, and in quite recent days there have been not a
few cases of Obeahmen seeking to do murder in the old way. A
favourite method of the Obeahmen, both in Jamaica and Hayti, is to
mix the infinitesimal hairs of the bamboo in the food of persons who
.refuse to bow the knee to them. This finally sets up malignant
dysentery. If the afflicted one remains contumacious, he dies ; if he
makes his peace with the Obeahman, and gives him a handsome
present, the slow process of poisoning ceases, and he lives. In all
the crises and troubles of life the negro flies to the Obeahman. If he
has to appear at the Police Court he pays the Obeahman to go there
also and " fix de eye " of the magistrate, so that he will be
discharged. Perhaps he has been turned out of his office of deacon
in the Baptist Chapel by a white minister for immorality. In that case
the Obeahman will arrange for a choice collection of the most
powerful spells — such as dried lizards, fowls' bones, and graveyard
earth — to be placed in the minister's Bible for him to stare upon
when he looks up the text of his sermon. Then, if the Obeah works
properly, the erring deacon will be received back to office. Even
coloured men of education and official position are often tainted with
Obeahism. They often make use of it for profit and to increase their
power over the ignorant negroes. The mulatto chairman of a
Parochial Board — the Jamaican equivalent of our County Council —
was sent to goal for practising Obeah only a few years ago. A
prominent member of the Kingston City Council was the leading
Obeahman in the island — the pontiff of the cult. He was so clever
that the police could never catch him, although he was supposed to
make over ^3,000 a year by his nefarious practices. Once some
detectives raided his place, but he received timely warning and fled.
A writer to the press thus describes a " red " Vaudoux ceremony : "I
had seen the ' white ' ritual several times in Port-au-Prince and
elsewhere when at last I was permitted through the kindness of a
mulatto general, to witness the ' red ' rite. I was informed that only
cocks and goats would be sacrificed, and that turned out to be the
fact. The General conducted me to a small wood about three miles
from the town of Jacmel. By the light of kerosene oil flares I saw
about forty men and women gathered round a rude stone altar, on
which, twined around a cocomacacque stick, was the sacred green
snake. The ' Mamaloi,' a tall, evil-looking negress, was dressed in a
scarlet robe, with a red turban on her head. She was dancing a
sinuous dance before the altar, and droning an ancient West African
chant, which the onlookers repeated. Rapidly she worked herself up
to a frantic pitch of excitement, pausing now and then to take a
drink from one of the rum bottles which passed freely from hand to
hand. At last she picked up a glittering machete from the altar, and
with her other hand seized a black cock held by a bystander. She
whirled the bird round her head violently until the feathers were
flying in all directions, and then severed the head from the body
with one swift stroke. The tense and horrible excitement had kept
the worshippers silent, but they burst into a savage yell when the
priestess pressed the bleeding neck of the slaughtered fowl to her
lips. Afterwards she dipped her finger in the blood and made the
 West Indian Islands 429 Westcar Papyrus sign of the cross
on her forehead and pressed it to the forehead of some of her
disciples." The obeah man can always be easily recognised by one
who has had much to do with negroes. He has an indescribably
sinister appearance. He is unwashed, ragged, often half mad, usually
diseased, and almost always has an ulcerated leg. This last, indeed,
is a badge of the tribe. Often he is a very old negro who knew "
slavery days " and more than half believes in his magical
pretensions. But not all are of this disreputable type. Even some of
the white planters themselves do not scorn to make use of obeah,
although, of course, they have no belief in it. The theft of growing
crops by the negroes is one of the greatest trials of their lives.
Sometimes they adorn the trees round the edge of a " banana piece
" or orange grove with miniature coffins, old bones, bottles of dirty
water, and other obeah objects ; and then the negroes will not dare
to enter and steal. An interesting report published in a Jamaican
journal during 1908 gives particulars of an obeah case of possession
or haunting as follows : " The cause cilebre at Half-way Tree Court,
Jamaica, recently, was the case of Rex v. Charles Donaldson for
unlawfully practising obeah. Robert Robinson, who stated that he
was a labourer living at Trench Pen, in the parish of St. Andrew,
stat'ed that on Tuesday, the 8th ult., he was sitting down outside the
May Pen cemetery on the Spanish Town Road. He was on his way
from work, and had a white handkerchief tied around his head. He
was feeling sick, and that led him to sit down. While there sitting the
prisoner came to him. He did not know the man before, but he
began by asking him what was the matter. Witness replied, " I am
well sick." The prisoner said, " No, you are not sick ; you have two
ghosts on you — one Creole and one coolie." Witness told the
prisoner to go away and was left. He next saw prisoner on
Wednesday 9th. He came to him at Bumper Hall, where he was
working, and he said to him, " Man, how you find me here ? " " Oh,"
replied the prisoner, " if a man is in hell self I can find him ; I come
for you to give me the job ? " Witness then inquired, " What job ?"
and accused told him he wanted to " take off the two ghosts." He
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