MAGIC STONES AND ELECTRIC GEMS 13
After
enumerating all the well-known precious stones, Volmar, in his
"Steinbuch," proceeds to relate that there is one which produces
blindness, another that enables the wearer to understand the language
of birds, still another that saves people from drowning, and, finally,
one of such sovereign power that it brings back the dead to life.
However, we are told that because of the miraculous virtues of these
stones God hides them so well that no man can obtain them.23
About a century earlier Saint Hildegard of Bingen wrote that "just as a
poisonous herb placed on a man's skin will produce ulceration, " by an
analogous though contrary effect "certain precious stones will, if
placed on the skin, confer health and sanity by their virtue.''24
Persian records tell of a "royal stone" found in the head of the our en bad, a
kind of eagle; this preserved the wearer from the attacks of venomous
reptiles. If a deadly poison had been administered to a person, he
would be immediately cured by taking one drachm's weight of the stone.
It thus appears that its virtues were those of the far-famed bezoar.25
Persia evidently had good store of "wonderworkers" of this kind, for
the Persian romance entitled "Hatim Tai and the Benevolent Lady,"
written about the beginning of the eighteenth century, recites the
marvellous virtue of a stone called the Shah-muhra. If this
were fastened on the arm the wearer became endowed with miraculous
vision and all the gold and precious stones beneath the earth's
surface were revealed to him.26
For
ten centuries or more, countless thousands, although feeling assured of
spiritual immortality, were none the less eager to have eternal youth
and vigor and the power to peer
"Volmar,
"Steinbuch," ed. by Hans Lambel, Heilbronn, 1877, p. 24. " St.
Hildegards, " Opera omnia," in Pat. Lat., ed. J. P. Migne, vol. cxcvii,
col. 1260.
/Herbelot, " Bibliothèque Orientale," La Haye, 1778, p. 230. " Clouston, " A Group of Kastern Romances," Glasgow, 1889.
