@8Lou1 asked me to repost here about demons being bamboozled by geometric shapes. From a blog post I found:
Puzzles as a defense
Throughout history and across geography, more than one culture has come to the same conclusion that mazes (and puzzles) can be used to confuse, distract and
!
For example, the “
” is a hexagram-based
* star with interlocking triangles that are meant to confuse and confound demons. It was this symbol on King Solomon’s ring, which gave him his commanding power over the
.
The Jews of Mesopotamia employed incantations written in spirals on the inside of
in order to entrap demons. Often puzzle traps work like a roach motel—malevolent forces check in but they don’t check out.
What about in other magical traditions?
In America, one common method of keeping witches out of your home is to leave a broom lying across the doorway. This is because, when confronted with a cluster of objects, the witch is compelled to count them. Counting every bristle, grain of rice,
, grains of
, or other objects…takes time. A similar tradition can be found throughout the American South and in the Caribbean.
In the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, scattering grains of uncooked rice in front of the door is used to keep away witches and, similar to many anti-
practices, may have originated from West Africa, where similar traditions can be found.
Puzzles and dimensional conundrums using these methods to confound entities, provided an excellent backdrop to explain linear, planar and dimensional mathematics in the classic book , “Flatland”, published in 1884.
According to Witches Still Live by Theda Kenyon (published 1929):
Every necromancer, for example, knows how to draw , riddled with “blind alleys.” These are wrapped as amulets, in silk or cotton, and worn either as a , or as an actual curative dressing over the seat of affection. It is assumed that the evil spirit will start roaming about this maze, and, betrayed by curiosity or boredom or some such human weakness, will just naturally get lost, and spend all the rest of his immortal life with his nose to the ground, his one-dimension mind never realizing the possibility of stepping over the lines. Sometimes these drawings are augmented by texts from the Koran for the Moslems, and from the Puranos for the Hindus.
