The Ramblings and Wanderings

Posts Tagged ‘Magick’

I love Walking the Hedge’s Wild Geek Hang aka the forum (FYI: “wild geek hang” is an anagram for “walking the hedge” hehehehe)

Here’s the start of a great thread going right now called Seeking help with protective charms:

pa_hsia says:

“I want to make a couple of protective charms for my new house – goodness knows we need some if this last month is anything to go by – so I’ve been doing a bit of reading on the topic, focusing on English folk magic and East Anglian (Anglo-Saxon) charms as my particular area of interest.

I think I understand how they work – sympathetic magic, mostly, as well as warding sigils and protective spirits – and I can more-or-less extrapolate reasons for why the charms are made how they are, but the reasoning behind one eludes me.

According to the Times Online, at least one Witch’s Bottle contained a leather heart stuck through with an iron nail.
I know that this is a symbolic representation of a charm for the protection of livestock – a bullock’s heart pierced by pins or nails and placed in the chimney – but I cannot find out how the original charm is meant to work.
I’m sure I’m overlooking something, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?”

Juniper (that’s me) responds:

I know the bottle you speak of, as I studied it when researching for the Witch Bottle article I wrote a while back.
http://walkingthehedge.net/wildgeekhang … ;Itemid=68

I do not think this bottle was made to protect livestock at all, I think it is love related. Let me explain.

First of all this bottle was found in a home in Greenwich which is part of London, meaning this bottle and the person making it was in the city. The person who owned this home may have had a horse, but not livestock. Also there are a number of charms and such for livestock protection; they are always found in the pasture itself, in the barn, tied to the fencing etc … near the animals themselves and not in the home.

If someone wanted to signify a bullock’s heart, it was easy enough back then to simply go to the butcher and buy a heart, and add a slice or two of actual heart to the bottle.

Symbolic hearts <3 mean the heart in the sense of love, desire, romance. For the person making this bottle, it is less likely the leather piece cut into a symbolic heart shape meant a real organ heart; it meant love/desire/romance to their mind.

From Wikipedia:

“In European traditional art and folklore, the heart symbol is drawn in a stylized shape. This shape is typically coloured red, suggesting both blood and, in many cultures, passion and strong emotion. The hearts have constituted, since the 15th century, one of the red suits in most playing card decks. The shape is particularly associated with romantic love; it is often seen on St. Valentine’s Day cards, candy boxes, and similar popular culture artefacts as a symbol of romantic love.
What the traditional “heart shape” actually depicts is a matter of some controversy. It only vaguely resembles the human heart.
The seed of the silphium plant, used in ancient times as an herbal contraceptive, has been suggested as the source of the heart symbol.

… Inverted heart symbols have been used in heraldry as stylized testicles (coglioni in Italian) as in the canting arms of the Colleonis of Milan.”

The fact that the heart is made of leather may or may not be significant. After all, leather was a readily available material at the time, easier to come by than many textiles in fact. Using leather may have just been using what was at hand, much like one of us using a left over piece of broadcloth from the scrap box.

The fact that it was pierced makes me think of Cupid’s arrow, or a broken heart. The symbolism of a pierced heart was around back then, and means much of the same thing as it does today.

Other than the heart this bellamine bottle also

“contained 12 bent iron nails (one of which pierced a small leather heart), eight brass pins, 10 adult fingernail pairings (not from a manual worker, but a person “of some social standing”), a quantity of hair and urine with traces of nicotine, indicating it had come from a smoker. There were also traces of sulphur, then known as brimstone, and what is thought to be navel fluff.” ~ Fortean Times

A Witch bottle was made using ingredient from the person, place or thing it was meant to protect. Aside from the leather there is no pieces of livestock in the this bottle.

An Old Bailey court record from 1682 documents that a husband, believing his wife to be afflicted by witchcraft, was advised by a Spitalfields apothecary to

“take a quart of your Wive’s urine, the paring of her Nails, some of her Hair, and such like, and boyl them well in a Pipkin.”

We know the finger nails come from an upper class man. That the urine came form a smoker and that most women did not smoke back then. So we know the person mean to receive this spell breaking or the effects of the charm was probably male and reasonably well to do.

I think most likely this bottle was meant to cure someone of a particular curse … love. Perhaps the person making it was trying to be free of someone who was not taking no as answer, perhaps this person was trying to make someone fall in love with them.

I think the most likely case is this person felt they had a love spell cast on them and needed to break it. What kind of love spell? I don’t know, maybe an unlucky in love spell, maybe they thought someone had been enspelled to fall in love with them, or maybe they were having a hard time getting over someone and felt it was a curse.

Maybe, just maybe they were trying to make someone fall in love with them. There are twelve nails in the bottle, the last one piercing the leather. Perhaps someone was hoping for another to love them a little more or a little less, each month over the course of a year?

It is possible the person making the bottle was not the person who needed the magick. It was common to hire someone, such as Cunning Folk to do it for you; it was also common to do it for a family member, with or without their permission. Maybe a concerned parent, wanting to keep his or her child away from a lover or someone they had affection for created the bottle.

Certainly one of the more common spells requested today is to help someone move on from a relationship that has ended, that they want to end, or to stop obsessing over someone. People 300 years ago were not so different.

Well that’s the first two posts, there’s more and hopefully you’ll join in, either in that thread or another one … or start one!

I headed out job hunting in the downtown core yesterday, wearing my best clothes and the boots-that-look-good-but-hurt. The stress of looking for work combined with navigating a new city on my own and a minor bladder infection was weighing heavily on my mind as I left the printing store and headed down Sparks street.

As I walked in to the cold December wind and plodded along in my boots, heavy bag over my shoulder, I began to think to myself that I should have done more to rack up “good karma” over the last week before going job hunting. Just as I finished this thought a homeless man approached me.

He was in his 50s or 60s, with scraggly grey hair and a scruffy beard. He walked with a slight limp and sported a nasty looking black eye that had swollen shut. Speaking with a thick Northern European accent (German or perhaps Norwegian) he humbly asked me for “One dollar or even fifty cents”.

I follow a mostly Celtic path, but certain Norse gods have popped up in my life a few times before. Including Odin, I have also met a couple of folks who swear they have encountered Old One Eye in the guise of a homeless man before. Whether this guy really was sent by the All Father or not, I am not so foolish that I would miss such and obvious sign, nor am I foolish enough to then do nothing.

I gave the one eyed homeless man with the Norse accent two dollars, double of what he asked for, despite the fact that I myself am broke. He took my hand in his and we spoke the usual platitudes of “Merry Christmas” and “Bless you” before continuing on our separate journeys.

After handing out about half a dozen resumes I grew tired of the cold and anxious due to the buzzing traffic and crowded streets. My head ached, my feet had begun to hurt in the boots, my shoulders were sore from the heavy bag and my throat was also sore. My ears were burning from the cold and my nose had started to run. So I headed in the direction of the one of the big downtown malls. Job hunting indoors sounded like a good idea.

As I walked along, I took a brief detour to pass by the war memorial and give the statutes there a salute, careful not to step on the plaque set into the ground. Then I walked to the plaza where statues and busts of some of the greatest heroes in Canadian history are placed. I took out three pennies from my purse, a very old and rough looking one, a not so old one and a shiny new one; one for the past, one for the present and one for the future. These I placed at the feet of Laura Ingersoll Secord. I crouched before this brave tribal hero and gently touch her foot. Humbly I whispered to her, asking for some of her strength in the coming days.

Secord’s Warning

©1991 Tanglefoot Media, by Joe Grant and Steve Ritchie

Come all ye brave young soldier lads, with your strong and manly bearing.

I’ll tell you a tale of a women brave, and her deed of honest daring.

Laura Secord was American born, in the state of Massachusetts,

But she made her home in Canada and proved so faithful to us.

Chorus:

There’s American guns and five hundred men,

So the warning must be given.

Laura Ingersoll Secord is the stalwart heart,

Who braved the heat, and the flies and the swamp,

To warn Colonel FitzGibbon.

Soldiers pounding at the door, they’ve come from across the boarder.

American officers march inside, it’s food and drink they order.

In comfort they have dined and drunk, their own success they’ve toasted,

But they pay no heed to the woman who hears their plan so widely boasted.

Chorus

“Oh! James I’ve overheard it all, a surprise attack their making.

FitzGibbon they intend to smash, his men for prisoners taking.

But James, a warning never you’ll take, with your wounded knee and shoulder.

I myself must carry it past the sentries and the soldiers.”

Chorus

It’s an all day tramp to the British camp, by way of Shipman’s Corners.

With snakes and flies, and sweat in her eyes, there is no respite for her.

She’s lost her shoes in the muck of the bog, her feet are torn and blistered,

But there’s many a soldier lad to be spared, if the message be delivered.

Chorus

So all you Yankee soldier lads who dare to cross our boarder,

Thinking to save us from ourselves, disturbing British order,

There’s women and men, Canadians all of every rank and station,

To stand on guard and keep us free, from Yankee domination!

Chorus:

There’s American guns and five hundred men,

So the warning must be given.

Laura Ingersoll Secord is the stalwart heart,

Who braved the heat, and the flies and the swamp,

To warn Colonel FitzGibbon.

Is it my imagination that as I walk away from the lady’s statue that my sore throat dissipates?

Then, hours later, my bag empty of resumes, I head back to the bus stop. It is time to go home. After a few hours in the boots-that-look-good-but-hurt my feet are blistered and sore. The pain works it way up my spine and cramps my neck. Damned fallen arches make my body a mass of pressure points and pinched nerves!

I hobble along the streets of downtown and begin to wonder just how cold the cement sidewalks are? My feet are sore enough that I begin to seriously consider taking my boots off and braving the cold sidewalk the rest of the way to my bus stop. Just as I looked up from contemplating my pain-filled feet to take the boots-that-look-good-but-hurt off; an older man approached me. He was in his 50s, with shoulder length, grey curls and an outdated ski jacket. He looked me right in the eyes, raised one hand in the same manner that priests do when offering blessings or benediction and quietly said something short to me in French (which I did not understand). Then he nodded his head in a kind of bow, smiled gently and walked past me.

A little dumbfounded, I decided I could make it to the bus stop in the boots-that-look-good-but-hurt after all.

The end.

A Reality Check on Magick

Only YOU are responsible if you bungle a spell and harm yourself or others.

Spells that change the color of your hair, change red traffic lights to green, make you invisible and such DO NOT WORK. This is not Hollywood.

Spells that force a person to act or feel against their own free will rarely work, and when they do, they always wear off. There is also a high price to be paid for such spells, so think twice.

If you think you have been cursed or some such thing, chances are you HAVE NOT been cursed, you’re just having a run of bad luck.

Start small and work towards the big stuff.

Use your common sense.

Make sure that any work you do is worth any backlash you may receive.

Choose your words carefully.

Magick is a not cure-all for your life’s problems.

Magick takes a lot of energy out of you; it is not advisable to cast spells while ill or tired.

Energy work, such as working with tarot cards or casting spells, can be very wearing on your natural reserves, try not to over do it.

Bragging about how powerful you are makes you look like a loser.

Never raise something you cannot put down.

Know what you are getting into, do your research.

All the cool looking tools in the world will not make your spells more powerful if you do not know what you are doing.