Auguries, portents, charms, waxen images, votive offerings, the evil eye and its antidotes, happy "finds," such as horseshoes, four-leaved shamrocks, and two-tailed lizards: these, and an infinite number of kindred superstitions, are closely linked with what may be called the Science of Luck. Fortune and Hecate come into no mere chance contiguity when they meet in the moon. For the rest, there is hardly any popular belief that has not points of contact with magic, and that is not in some sort made the more comprehensible by looking at the premises on which magical rites rest. Magic is the power admitted to exist among all classes not so very long ago, of entering by certain processes into relation with invisible powers. For modern convenience it was distinguished into black magic, and natural, and white--the latter name being given when the intention of the operant was only good or allowable, and when the powers invoked were only such as might be supposed, whether great or small, to be working in good understanding with the Creator. The reason of existence of all magic, which runs up into unfathomable antiquity, lies in the maxim of the ancient sages, Egyptian, Hebrew, Platonist, that all things visible and sensible are but types of things or beings immediately above them, and have their origin in such. Hence, in magical rites, black or white, men used and offered to the unseen powers those words or actions or substances which were conceived to be in correspondence with their character or nature, employing withal certain secret traditional man[oe]uvres. The lowest surviving form is fetish; sacrifice also had a similar source; so had the Mosaic prescriptions, in which only innocent rites and pure substances were to be employed. Whereas the most horrible practices and repulsive substances have always been associated with witches, necromancers, &c., who are reported to have put their wills at the absolute disposal of the infernal and malevolent powers who work in direct counter-action of the decrees and providence of the Deity. Hence the renunciation of baptism, treading on holy things, the significant act of saying the Lord's Prayer backwards, _i.e._, in the opposite intention to that of the author. This is the consummate sin of _pacti_, or, as it is said, "selling the soul," and is the very opposite of divine magic or the way of the typical saint: "Present yourselves a living sacrifice (not a dead carcase) in body, soul, and spirit." To persons in the last condition unusual effects have been ascribed, as it was believed that those who had put themselves at the absolute disposal of the malignant powers were also enabled to effect singular things, on the wrong side, indeed, and very inferior in order, so long as the agreement held good.