Curious Myths of the Middle Ages Author:Sabine Baring-Gould Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Btbintnfl FROM the remotest period a rod has been regarded as the symbol of power and authority, and Holy Scripture employs it in the popular sense. Thus Davi... more »d speaks of " Thy rod and Thy staff comforting me;" and Moses works his miracles before Pharaoh with the rod as emblem of Divine commission. It was his rod which became a serpent, which turned the water of Egypt into blood, which opened the waves of the Red Sea and restored them to their former level, which " smote the rock of stone so that the water gushed out abundantly." The rod of Aaron acted an oracular part in the contest with the princes ; laid up before the ark, it budded and brought forth almonds. In this instance we have it; no longer as a symbol of authority, but as a means of divining the will of God. And as such it became liable to abuse ; thus Hosearebukes the chosen people for practising similar divinations. "My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them1." Long before this, Jacob had made a different use of rods, employing them as a charm to make his father-in-law's sheep bear pied and spotted lambs. We find rabdomancy a popular form of divination among the Greeks, and also among the Romans. Cicero in his "De Officiis" alludes to it. " If all that is needful for our nourishment and support arrives to us by means of some divine rod, as people say, then each of us, free from all care and trouble, may give himself up to the exclusive pursuit of study and science2." Probably it is to this rod that Ennius alludes in the passage quoted in the first book of his " De Divinatione," wherein he laughs at those who for a drachma will teach the art of discovering treasures. According to Vetranius Maurus, Varro left a satire on the " Virgula divina," which has not been preserved. ...« less