Magic

When I was a teenager, in the library I once came across a book on curses, spells and magical potions. Since I was just in a phase of reading fantasy literature, I could not resist having a look. It was full with recipes and rituals for all sorts of purposes. Most of them were love spells. I didn't really have a lot of use for that then. The one I recall best was against migraine. The cure was to press a raw egg against your forehead and mumble a few magical words that would make the pain go into the egg. The pain would then be passed on to whoever was unlucky enough to eat the egg.I was fascinated by the amount of detail that was paid to these magical procedures, like at which time of the day and which moon phase herbs were supposed to be cut, and I liked to imagine what the world would be like if these spells actually worked. I didn't try any of them. My reasoning was if they would actually work, certainly nobody on this planet would still suffer from a broken heart or headache. Today I would probably give a different reason. The one offering a miracle cure is the one who should come up with a scientific documentation for the efficiency of their treatment. Needless to say, the spell book didn't bother with evidence that the rituals had any effect whatsoever.I was thinking about the little book with the spells recently when I coincidentally came across a website selling spells. Sure, I know the internet is cluttered with nonsense, but for whatever reason this made me think. It's...