Cruz people are also great voyagers, and their
wizards control the weather on their expeditions, taking with them the
stock or log which represents their private or tame ghost and setting it
up on a stage in the cabin. The presence of the familiar ghost being
thus secured, the weather-doctor will undertake to provide wind or calm
according to circumstances.[619] We have already seen how in these
islands the wizard makes rain by pouring water on the wooden posts which
represent the rain-ghosts.[620]

[Sidenote: Black magic working through personal refuse or rubbish of the
victim.]

Such exercises of ghostly power for the healing of the sick and the
improvement of the weather are, when well directed and efficacious,
wholly beneficial. But ghostly power is a two-edged weapon which can
work evil as well as good to mankind. In fact it can serve the purpose
of witchcraft. The commonest application of this pernicious art is one
which is very familiar to witches and sorcerers in many parts of the
world. The first thing the wizard does is to obtain a fragment of food,
a bit of hair, a nail-clipping, or indeed anything that has been closely
connected with the person of his intended victim. This is the medium
through which the power of the ghost or spirit is brought to bear; it
is, so to say, the point of support on which the magician rests the
whole weight of his infernal engine. In order to give effect to the
charm it is very desirable, if not absolutely necessary, to possess some
personal relic, such as a bone, of the dead man whose ghost is to set
the machinery in motion. At all events the essential thing is to bring
together the man who is to be injured and the ghost or spirit who is to
injure him; and this can be done most readily by placing the personal
relics or refuse of the two men, the living and the dead, in contact
with each other; for thus the magic circuit, if we may say so, is
complete, and the fatal current flows from the dead to the living. That
is why it is most dangerous to leave any personal refuse or rubbish
lying about; you never can tell but that some sorcerer may get hold of
it and work your ruin by means of it. Hence the people are naturally
most careful to hide or destroy all such refuse in order to prevent it
from falling into the hands of witches and wizards; and this sage
precaution has led to habits of cleanliness which the superficial
European is apt to mistake for what he calls enlightened sanitat