WAND, MAGIC. Among the Hebrews a certain sacredness or magic power seems to have been ascribed to sceptres, rods, or wands. Moses carried in his hand a divine rod (ma(teh Exod. iv. 20, xvii. 0). With this rod he smote the waters (Exod. vii. 20, xiv. 16), and the rock (Num. xx. 11). In II. Kings iv. 29 the staff of a prophet seems intended to serve instead of the presence of the prophet himself. In Hosea iv. 12 a staff is even referred to as speaking. In early Egyptian religion the gods are represented as carrying a staff such as every Bedouin cuts for himself at the present day, and the goddesses are provided with a simple reed (Adolf Erman). The wand of the king or priest, which was known as " the great magician," had power to cause the dead to be born again; and Elliot Smith notes (Dr.) that such beliefs and stories of a magic wand are found to-day in scattered localities from the Scottish High lands to Indonesia and America. He points out also (p. 154) that the papyrus sceptre of Astarte is regarded at times as an animate form of the mother-goddess. With this may be compared J. G. Frazer's statement (The Magic Art, 1911, I. p. 365) that " the sceptre of king Agamemnon, or what passed for such, was wor shipped as a god at Chaeronea; a man acted as priest of the sceptre for a year at a time, and sacrifices were offered to it daily." In ancient Mexico (as noted by
Marian Edwardes and Lewis Spence, p. 1S9) the traveller's staff was worshipped as a symbol of Yacate cutli. It was sprinkled with sacrificial blood; incense was burned before it; offerings were presented to it; and prayers and genuflections were made to it. The Mexican Quetzalcoatl was represented as a traveller with a staff in his hand; and JizO, the god of travellers among the Buddhists of Japan, carries a pilgrim's staff. In all such cases we m ty assume that the staff had a religious significance. The Iranian priests used in their magic practices bund! •s of magic wands called ba-resma.n. These were gathered with certain rites. The so-called " staffs of office " depicted by the cave-dwellers of the Reindeer Age probably played some part in magic ceremonial (so S. Reinach, Mitts). The staffs are often marked with regular notches. This suggested to Bernadin, who com pares the genealogical staffs of the Maoris, that the notches were intended to recall the chief's genealogy.