The magical rites of the Jews were, and indeed are still, chiefly
performed on various important occasions, as on the birth of a child,
marriages, etc. On such occasions the evil spirits are supposed to be
more than usually active in their malignity, which can only be
counteracted by certain enchantments.[6] They believe that Lilis will
cause all their male children to die on the eighth day after their
birth; girls on the twenty-first.[7] The following are the means adopted
by the German Jews to avert this calamity. They draw arrows in circular
lines with chalk or charcoal on the four walls of the room in which the
accouchement takes place, and write upon each arrow: _Adam, Eve! make
Lilis go away!_ They write also on certain parts of the room the name of
the three angels who preside over medicine, _Senai, Sansenai and
Sanmangelof_, after the manner taught them by Lilis herself when she
entertained the hope of causing all the Jews to be drowned in the Red
Sea.

Josephus, the historian of the Jews, does not allow to magic so ancient
an origin among them, as many Jewish writers do. He makes Solomon the
first who practised an art which is so powerful against demons; and the
knowledge of which, he asserts, was communicated to that prince by
immediate inspiration. The latter, continues this historian, invented
and transmitted to posterity in his writings, certain incantations for
the cure of diseases, and for the expulsion and perpetual banishment of
wicked spirits from the bodies of the possessed. It consisted, according
to his description, in the use of a certain root, which was sealed up,
and held under the nose of the person possessed; the name of Solomon,
with the words prescribed by him, was then pronounced, and the demon
forced immediately to retire. He does not even hesitate to assert, that
he himself has been an eye witness of such an effect produced on a
person named Eleazer, in the presence of the Emperor Vespasian and his