fortunate aspect or conjunction of the Moon, we must take a stone and
herb that is under that Star, and make a ring of the metal that is
suitable to this Star, and in it fasten the stone, putting the herb
or root under it--not omitting the inscriptions of images, names, and
characters, as also the proper suffumigations...."[1] SOLOMON'S ring
was supposed to have been possessed of remarkable occult virtue.
Says JOSEPHUS (_c_. A.D. 37-100): "God also enabled him [SOLOMON] to
learn that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful and
sanative to men. He composed such incantations also by which
distempers are alleviated. And he left behind him the manner of using
exorcisms, by which they drive away demons, so that they never return;
and this method of cure is of great force unto this day; for I have
seen a certain man of my own country, whose name was Eleazar, releasing
people that were demoniacal in the presence of Vespasian, and his sons,
and his captains, and the whole multitude of his soldiers. The manner
of the cure was this; he put a ring that had under the seal a root of
one of those sorts mentioned by Solomon, to the nostrils of the
demoniac, after which he drew out the demon through his nostrils: and
when the man fell down immediately, he abjured him to return unto him
no more, making still mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations
which he composed."[2]

[1] H. C. AGRIPPA: _Occult Philosophy_, bk. i. chap. xlvii.
(WHITEHEAD'S edition, pp. 141 and 142).

[2] FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS: _The Antiquities of the Jews_ (trans. by
W. WHISTON), bk. viii. chap. ii., SE 5 (45) to (47).

Enough has been said already to indicate the general nature
of talismanic magic. No one could maintain otherwise than