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Updated: June 19, 2025
As, too, in the case of vervain and rue, the besom, although dearly loved by witches, is still extensively used as a counter-charm against their machinations it being a well-known belief both in England and Germany that no individual of this stamp can step over a besom laid inside the threshold.
It consisted of two incisions made crosswise on the witch's forehead, and was "confided in all throughout Scotland as the most powerful counter-charm." The wolf-skin is supposed to fall down from heaven and to return to heaven after seven years, if the were-wolf has not been delivered from her unhappy state in the meantime by the burning of the skin.
But every Izumo household knows the counter-charm. Each evening, before retiring, the careful wife sees that a hocho, or kitchen knife, is laid upon the kitchen floor, and covered with a kanadarai, or brazen wash- basin, on the upturned bottom of which is placed a single straw sandal, of the noiseless sort called zori, also turned upside down.
This sumptuous creature, this Eve just within the gate of an untried Paradise, untutored in the ways of the world, but on tiptoe to reach the fruit of the tree of knowledge, alive to the moist vitality of that warm atmosphere palpitating with voices and music, as the flower of some diaecious plant which has grown in a lone corner, and suddenly unfolding its corolla on some hot-breathing June evening, feels that the air is perfumed with strange odors and loaded with golden dust wafted from those other blossoms with which its double life is shared, this almost overwomanized woman, might well have bewitched him, but that he had a vague sense of a counter-charm.
"I can give the Princess a counter-charm, Queen Lura," said she, "but it is not sure. Look you! she will have a lonely life, for the Spark burns, as well as shines, and the only way to mend that matter is to give the fire better fuel than herself.
Let us place great men between it and ourselves: they all are tutelar: not the warrior and the statesman only; not only the philosopher; but also the historian who follows them step by step, and the poet who secures us from peril and dejection by his counter-charm.
He might be the victim of some enchanter's spell, and in his hand lay the counter-charm. Almost unconsciously he opened it, and a purple vapour came pouring out. He held the empty box in his hand, and as he looked he saw that the fresh hand of youth had grown suddenly shrivelled, like the hand of an old, old man.
The only means of averting this catastrophe is, that some one, himself an adept in necromancy, should perform a counter-charm, the effect of which is to send back the disguised beetle to destroy his original employer; for in such a conjuncture the death of one or the other is essential to appease the demon whose intervention has been invoked.
I have known some, who have secured themselves from this mischance, by coming half sated elsewhere, purposely to abate the ardour of the fury, and others, who, being grown old, find themselves less impotent by being less able; and one, who found an advantage in being assured by a friend of his, that he had a counter-charm of enchantments that would secure him from this disgrace.
This sumptuous creature, this Eve just within the gate of an untried Paradise, untutored in the ways of the world, but on tiptoe to reach the fruit of the tree of knowledge, alive to the moist vitality of that warm atmosphere palpitating with voices and music, as the flower of some dioecious plant which has grown in a lone corner and suddenly unfolding its corolla on some hot-breathing June evening, feels that the air is perfumed with strange odors and loaded with golden dust wafted from those other blossoms with which its double life is shared, this almost over-womanized woman might well have bewitched him, but that he had a vague sense of a counter-charm.
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