; the petty
annoyances--accidents, pains, ill luck, and the like--were put down to
the account of the spirits. The gods were, on the whole, favorably
disposed towards man. They were angry at times, they sent punishments,
but they could be appeased. The spirits were, on the whole, hostile; and
although the Babylonians also invoked favorable and kind spirits, when a
spirit was hostile there was only one method of ridding oneself of the
pernicious influence,--to drive it out by means of formulas, and with
the help of a priest acting as exorciser.

Sorcerers and Sorceresses.

A widespread and apparently very ancient belief among the Babylonians
and Assyrians was that certain human beings possessed demoniac power,
and could exercise it for evil purposes over whomsoever they pleased.
This belief may have originated in the abnormal appearance presented by
certain individuals in consequence of physical deformities or
peculiarities. The uncanny impression made by dwarfs, persons with
misshapen limbs, with a strange look in their eyes, and, above all, the
insane would give rise to the view that some people, for the very reason
of their variation from the normal type, possessed peculiar powers. But
by the side of such as were distinguished by bodily defects, those who
outranked their fellows by virtue of their prowess or of natural gifts,
by keenness of intellect or cunning, would also be supposed to have
received their power through some demoniac source. With the giant and
the artificer there would thus be associated ideas of sorcery and
witchcraft, as with dwarfs, the deformed, and insane. The sorcerers
might be either male or female, but, for reasons which are hard to
fathom, the preference was given to females. Accordingly, it happens
that among the Babylonians, as in the Middle Ages, the witch appears
more frequently than the male sorcerer. The witches have all the powers
of the demons, and in the incantation texts the two are often thrown
together. Just as the demons, so the witches take away the breath of
man, defile his food and drink, or close up his mouth. They are able to
penetrate into the body of men, and thus produce similar physical and
mental disturbances as the animalic demons. In view of this close
relationship between witches and demons, we are justified in regarding
the two as varying aspects of one and the same belief. The witch appears
to be merely the person through whom the hitherto 'invisible' demon has