"Thus, if you give a person, in whom there is a latent tendency to drink, a drop of a drunkard's blood--in a glass of wine, or sweet, or pill, no matter what--that person will at once take to drink. Thus--mark you--people can be metamorphosed into libertines, suicides, idiots and murderers. This metamorphosis can also be produced by means of a magnet called the 'magnes microcosmi,' which is prepared from substances that have had a long association with the human body, and are penetrated by its vitality. Such substances are the hair and blood. Take either one of them, and dry it in a shady and moderately warm place, until it has lost its humidity and odour. By this process it will have lost, too, all its mumia--that is to say, its essence of life--and is hungry to regain it. It is now a magnes microcosmi, or a magnet for attracting diseases and properties, and if it be placed in close contact with a criminal or lunatic, it will be filled with his essence of life, and may then be used as a means of infecting other people with his pernicious qualities. Bury it under the doorstep of the person you wish infected, or hide it in his house, or mix it well with earth, and plant a shrub in the earth, and the vitality the magnet took from the criminal or lunatic will pass into the plant; and if the plant, or even flower of the plant, be given to any one, that person--unless she or he be a person absolutely free from the germs of vice--will be attracted to it, and greatly affected by it.
"Or again, the earth over the grave of a lunatic or criminal will contain his essence of life, _i.e._ his vitality, which impregnates everything around it, and if that earth be placed somewhere in the immediate presence of a person, in whom there are latent tendencies to vice--then that person will be affected by it.
"And through these methods of using the essence of life, that is impregnated with the disease you wish to inflict--you may infect people with all kinds of incurable ailments.
"But a quicker, and equally sure method of smiting people with disease, such as cancer, fever, epilepsy, apoplexy, etc.; of smiting them blind, deaf, dumb, lame, etc.; or bringing upon them all kinds of accidents, is to make an image of the person you wish to torment, and, setting it in front of you, preferably, at times when the moon is new, or in conjunction with Venus, Mars or Saturn, concentrate with all your will on whatever injury you wish to inflict. If, for example, you desire the person to become blind, stick a pin, or thorn, or nail in the eyes of the image; if deaf, in its ears; if maimed, cut a limb off the image; if to have a certain disease, will very earnestly that he or she shall have that disease. You may thus, too, torment the object of your aversion with plagues of insects and vermin.