The Secret History of Witches & Witchcraft, Part 4: Hand of Glory

     Today’s entry reminds me of a Dungeon’s and Dragon’s campaign I ran many years ago. It was about an ancient wizard’s magically preserved hand and the quest to retrieve it from an evil necromancer (wizard of the dead).  I really had no clue that the Hand of Glory was a real thing, I always just assumed it was made up by the D&D guru’s but just like most things in any Fantasy novel or game from D&D to Harry Potter are steeped in real ancient myth and legend.  Wait until you read what these hands were used for! It is hard to believe some of this stuff is real, but it makes things so much more fascinating. I am going to get right into what the Encyclopedia od Witches & Witchcraft has to say about Hand of Glory, remember this is a real thing that was done not too long ago in the past.

Hand of Glory: The severed hand of a hanged murderer, magically preserved, once used as a charm in black magic spells and was believed to aid burglars in breaking into homes and buildings.

The hand of glory was the right hand of a murderer, ideally severed while the corpse still swung from the gallows or cut during an eclipse of the Moon. It was wrapped in a shroud, squeezed of blood and pickled for two weeks in an earthenware jar with salt, long peppers and saltpeter. It was then either dried in an oven with vervain, an herb believed to repel demons, or laid out to dry in the sun, preferably during the dog days of August.

Once preserved, the hand was fitted with candles between the fingers. The candles, called “dead man’s candles,” were made from the murderer’s fat, with the wick being made from his hair. In another method of curing, the hand of glory was bled, dried and dipped in wax, so that the fingers themselves could be lit as candles.

With the candles or fingers burning, the hand of glory supposedly had the power to freeze people in their footsteps and render them speechless. Burglars lit hands of glory before breaking into a house, confident that the charm would keep the occupants in a deep sleep while they plundered the household. If the thumb refused to burn, it meant someone in the house was awake and could not be charmed. According to lore, once a hand was lit, nothing but milk could extinguish it.

As a counter-charm, homeowners made ointments from the blood of screech owls, the fat of white hens and the bile of black cats and smeared it on their thresholds.

Hands of glory were linked to witches during the witch-hunt centuries. In 1588 two German women, Nichel and Bessers, who were accused of witchcraft and the exhumation of corpses, admitted they poisoned helpless people after lighting hands of glory to immobilize them. John Fain, who was severely tortured in his witch trial in Scotland in 1590, confessed to using a hand of glory to break into a church, where he performed a service to the devil. (The Encyclopedia of Witches & Witchcraft, 2^nd edition,  Rosemary Ellen Guiley)

     So, there you have it. I think this may be one of the more interesting things I have found in recent weeks and I feel like I will have to do some more research on this. I wrote about Australian aborigines using Bone Pointing as a method of execution and how their absolute belief in the ritual made it work psychologically, so it is very possible that folks in the medieval ages truly believed the power of these charms and spells. These people really believed this stuff worked and with the right amount of luck and a little skill, I could see how a successful burglar could have imagined that his hand of glory helped in his break in. Just having something like the hand could give a person more confidence and as I have stated in previous posts, the power of suggestion and ancient beliefs can go a long way. An enterprising person could have robbed graves and made hands of glory to sell to nefarious folks for a pretty penny. As long as the people believed they were getting a real deal murderer’s hand they couldn’t care less. The hands just gave these criminals that little boost of motivation they needed. You have to remember this is the stuff these people believed for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years and even after the church cracked down a lot of common folk still believed in the stuff, they just did it quietly. Of course, the witches caught would say anything under the duress of torture and witch-hunters and inquisitors would often force them into horrifying confessions. The torturer would say something like, “You used a Hand of Glory to break into the church, correct?”  The tortured witch would reply, “Yes,” and so now the inquisitors than had the fodder they needed to fan the flames of hate and ignorance. I’m certain medieval burglars used severed hands dipped in wax to assure a good plunder, but we also had homeowners butchering poor little owls and cats just to smear blood or bile on a doorway in hopes of stopping the powerful hands of glory because as with any sort of magic or charm there is a counter measure. The power of belief and ritual goes both ways as we have seen in previous posts as well. So, we have a thief walking up to a house, ready to light his hand of glory and do his thieving until he sees the screech owl blood and black cat bile smeared in the doorway. He decides the home’s magic is more powerful then his own and he moves on down the block to look for a dwelling that isn’t protected. Much like now a days, a thief will case his potential target and if a home has a sign saying protected by such and such security, they will move onto the next house.  Owl blood and cat bile was the Brink’s Home Security system of the Dark Ages, I suppose.

In conclusion, not only was today’s post interesting and brought forth a lot of intriguing ideas, it once again shows just how much faith and belief the people of the dark/middle ages had and how much they actually believed in superstition and magick.  I often wonder how these beliefs come to be. Who was the first witch or burglar to use a murderer’s severed hand as a candelabra and why did it become such a powerful and well-known tool for witches and thieves?  These are the kind of things that make this research fun and intriguing. I am going to dig more into these hands and I’ll try to track down just were it could have come from. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this post and look forward to sharing many more with you all. Have a great day and I shall return soon with another weird and wacky witch post! PEACE!

Secrets of Witches & Witchcraft

Part 3: ELF ARROWS

     Today’s installment involves ancient arrow heads and what witches would do with them. I think most folks, me included, tend to forget that people were finding dinosaur fossils and per-historic artifacts throughout history.  Ancient Greeks thought dinosaur bones were mythological creatures such as dragons, cyclops, etc. So when per-historic man’s artifacts such as arrow heads began turning up in medieval times, there was an obvious reason, Elves and Fairies had left them! Just as the farmer’s who encroached on and dismantled ancient burial mounds in the US during the late 1800s, when medieval farmer’s where tilling their lands or people where digging for whatever reason arrow heads from thousands of years ago would have been found regularly.  One thing the folks in the Dark ages/Middle Ages were good at was making up stories to explain the then unexplained. Here is what the Encyclopedia of Witches & Witchcraft says about Elf Arrows:

Elf Arrows:  Arrowhead-shaped flints from the Stone Age found in many parts of the British Isles, Europe and Northern Africa, which later witches supposedly used as weapons against animals and people. Elf-arrow superstitions predominate in Ireland, Scotland and parts of England, where fairy lore is strong. According to lore, many witches learn their craft from fairies and elves.

Elf arrows are said to be fatal to cattle, a common target of witches. Stricken cattle can be saved by touching them with the arrow, then dipping the arrow into water and giving the water to the cattle to drink. In some areas, the term elf-shot is still applied to sick animals. A person shot with an elf arrow supposedly comes down with mysterious and fatal supernatural illnesses. The use of elf arrows was among the accusations of witchcraft brought in 1560 against a Scottish woman, Catherine Ross, Lady Fowllis, and her son-in-law, Hector Munro. The two were part of a group of witches who conspired to kill Ross’ husband and Marjory Campbell, Lady Balnagowan, so that Ross and Lord Balnagowan could marry. The witches were charged with “the making of two clay pictures, one for the destruction of the young Lady Balnagowan, and getting them enchanted, and shooting of elf-arrow heads at the said persons.”  Apparently the witches’ plot was uncovered before the victims were killed. (Encyclopedia of Witches & Witchcraft, 2^nd edition, Rosemary Ellen Guiley) .

     Here is one of those cases where witchcraft was used to or attempted to be used for nefarious purposes, in this case, the good Lady Fowllis wanted her husband dead and a certain young Lady so Lady Fowllis could marry another man. The use of the elf-arrows was all the evidence needed to end that plot. As I stated in the opening paragraph, Stone Age tools would have been easy to obtain, at least easier than it is now a days and of course it could have just been a rock shaped like an arrow head, not an actual artifact as it were. It also stated how cows were a favorite target for witches and I can see how that would be the case as cattle was the families lively hood. Imagine an old lady, mad at her neighbors for some reason, getting ancient arrow head walking over to the neighbor’s cow and poking it! Now whether there was magic or not, the farmer is going to assume the cow was bewitched and do whatever it took to appease the old lady. A dead cow was a death sentence to some families or at least the difference between a good winter and a horrible winter. So, the old lady, happy with her neighbor’s willingness to change, does a little reverse hocus pocus and voila! The farmer’s cow is better! As comical as that story may have seemed it was exactly how a “witch” got things done, of course this action was also very liable to get the old woman killed since witchcraft or the perceived acts of witchcraft were strictly forbidden as organized religion spread. The farmer would then go to the local priest or vicar and complain of the old woman’s action, her home would have been searched, the arrow heads found and she would have been strangled and then burned to ashes. Subsequently either the farmer or the church would have received the old woman’s lands and holdings, if she possessed any. As we can see, it did go both ways, although scaring some hick farmer isn’t worth a death sentence, at least in my eyes.

In conclusion, I think elf-arrows showed us the way that a people can find unexplained artifacts and put a meaning and use to them. The ironic thing is these arrow heads were fashioned and used by these people’s ancestor’s to keep them alive and protect them, so in a way they could have been imbued with some sort of ancestor magic or other protective charm. We may never know.

I hope you enjoyed this installment of the secrets of Witches and Witchcraft and we shall see you again soon, until then take care and as always, PEACE!!!!!!!!

A Secret History: Witches & Witchcraft Part 2: The Burning Times.

     Hello! Welcome back to my blog. Today in Part two of my research on witches and witchcraft, I bring to you a small sampling of what these poor people went through while being hunted and persecuted for hundreds of years. Now, remember their only real crime they ever committed was being a witch, someone who up until the spreading of Christianity had been a highly respected member of society. Banished to live in solitude or on the run, these women (and Men) continued to practice their beliefs even with the threat of torture and death. Of course, when captured they usually always capitulated to the whims of their torturers, telling the inquisitors everything they wanted to hear, thus fanning the flames of the Burning times. Torture is unreliable and not a good way to get real information but the again in those times, that didn’t matter, it actually worked in the Church’s’ favor, of course these witches didn’t consort with the devil or have orgies with demons (well some of them may have but the majority were just faith healers, midwife’s and shaman) but when the torturer got a hold of them they would break and say whatever was necessary to stop the pain. The sad fact was the vast majority of these people who confessed under torture we still executed. I will now share with you what the Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft has to say about The Burning Times:

Burning Times: A term used by contemporary Witches and Pagans to refer to the period in Western History of intense witch hunting and executions, generally the mid-15^th century to the mid-18^th centuries.

Burning, one of the most extreme forms of execution, was urged by St. Augustine (354-430), who said that pagans, Jews and heretics would burn forever in eternal fire with the Devil unless saved by the Catholic Church. During the Inquisition, charges of witchcraft were used against heretics, social outcasts and enemies of the church. Such individuals were declared to have renounced God and formed a pact with the Devil.

Since fire is the element of purification, nothing less than fire could negate the evil of witchcraft. Jean Bodin, a 16^th century demonologist, stated in De la demonanie de sorciers:

Even if the witch has never killed or done evil to man, or beast, or fruits, and even if he has always cured bewitched people, or driven away tempests, it is because he has renounced God and treated with Satan that he deserves to be burned alive….Even if there is no more than the obligation to the Devil, having denied God, this deserves the most cruel death that can be imagined.

     Not all witches were burned at the stake: hanging was the preferred means of execution in England and the American colonies. In France, Scotland and Germany, it was customary to strangle condemned witches first, as an act of mercy, by either hanging or garroting, and then burn them to ashes. Nonetheless, many were burned alive, especially if they recanted their confession at the last moment or were unrepentant for their “crimes”. The expenses of the burning, along with all the expenses of the trial, were billed to the deceased’s relatives or estate. Witch lynching’s and burnings continued sporadically until the late 19^th century in England, Europe and Latin America. There are no reliable figures of the numbers of persons burned or otherwise executed for witchcraft. Estimates by historians range from a few thousand to 200,000 or more. Wiccan and Pagan authors have cited 9 million as the number of victims, but this is a grossly inflated figure without evidence of support.

The burning of a witch was usually a great public occasion. The execution took place shortly after the sentencing, just long enough to hire an executioner, construct the execution site and gather the fuel. In Scotland, a witch burning was preceded by days of fasting and solemn preaching. The witch was strangled first, and then her corpse, or sometimes her unconscious or semiconscious body, was tied to a stake or dumped in a tar barrel and set afire. If the witch was not dead and managed to get out of the flames, onlookers shoved her back in. Records of trials in Scotland report that burning a witch consumed 16 loads of peat plus wood and coal.

The term burning times also refers to any threatened prejudice against or persecution of Witches and Pagans by other religious groups, law enforcement agencies, employers, politicians and others. (Taken from The Encyclopedia of Witches & Witchcraft, 2^nd edition, Rosemary Ellen Guiley)

     I apologize for the lengthy entry, but it was necessary. So in just a few hundred years upwards of 200,000, possibly up to two million people were killed by the Catholic Church or its representatives for practicing a religion other than their own! The other thing is that it was common knowledge that any enemy of the State or Church could be accused of being a witch. Just being accused was a death sentence and it was an easy way to get rid of political enemies or just someone people didn’t like. Those in charge used fear and misinformation to cause wide spread panic and to legally kill hundreds of thousands of people. The last time a group of people were subjected to that sort of treatment were given an entire country (Jewish people after WWII) and are still given reparations to this day. Why is it okay for a church or a government to get away with killing so many innocent people? I know the Church was frightened of those wise men and women who held onto the old ways and refused to convert, and they did everything in their power to destroy them and all knowledge of the old ways. I am glad they failed but you need to keep thinking of how much control and power the Church and their allies truly had during those times. As I have stated in my last post, it has been established or at least strong evidence exists that the Salem witch trials in America was all about the local vicar wanting some land owned by a widow who refused to give it up. The entire witch thing was a cover up for an ultimate land grab by the Vicar and his church! He ended up getting a little greedy and numerous innocent people lost their lives. There are still cultures in Africa and a few in Europe who are still convinced that witches are evil and still persecute those who practice the old ways.

This is what angers me so much, how can one institute run by a group of power hungry leaders influence the affairs of people so easily? It is still happening today. As I have mentioned in prior blogs, witchcraft was illegal in Britain until the 1950’s and Canada until the 1980’s! How can anyone think they can ban a belief? The real problem is that people are afraid of the unknown and instead of taking the time to research the facts for themselves they cling to every word a peer or someone in power tells them. If the church says witches are bad, then witches are bad, no question asked. What if Emperor Constantine had not converted the Roman Empire to Catholicism? Would Catholics still be around? They were persecuted for their beliefs, thrown to lions and crucified. Hundreds of thousands to millions of people were killed just because they believed in something older than a brand-new religion created by man.

     In conclusion, there is still prejudice against Wiccans and Pagans or anyone who doesn’t believe in a “mainstream” religion. The truth is their beliefs have been around for thousands of years before the Catholic Church, Christianity or even Islam was invented. Modern religion is nothing but a crutch and an instrument of the elite to keep people in control. How can anyone put their faith in a book written by men thousands of years ago, the Bible is just a brainwashing tool created to further the cause of the Christian community. I don’t care who or what you believe in but keep it to yourself, don’t push your beliefs or religious thoughts upon others and for God’s (if he exists) sake don’t persecute or kill people just because they believe in something different! I try to put myself in the place of someone back then who practiced or believed in witchcraft, would I still do it? Would I be afraid? Could I have stayed true to my beliefs after being tortured? I am going to end this with this thought, would you still practice your beliefs if they could get you killed? Would you be able to keep your faith after torture and persecution? Could you just convert to a new idea and forget the old ways? The spread of organized religion is a true litmus test of how awful and evil humans can be just to get and keep their power. I feel very badly for all of my brethren who were killed for their beliefs, they are the true martyrs of this world. You don’t need a guy with shiny robes and a fancy book to tell you how to live and how to pray, there is only one rule all humans should follow and that is the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would do unto them. Did you know the Wiccan creed is : Do no harm and do as ye will. Or variations similar to that. It isn’t hard, just leave people alone and they will leave you alone. Pray to your God and let me pray to my Goddess. We are all the same species from the same Family tree we should be helping each other not hunting them down and burning them to death because they don’t believe in the same thing as you. I am a proud Wiccan/Pagan and I do admire anyone who isn’t afraid to stand up for what they believe in and I do feel very badly for those people who are still being brainwashed into believing what the church tells them. If the Pope really cared about people he wouldn’t sit on a golden thrown and admonish the common people for being greedy. He would live in poverty and be happy helping others. Just like all these tele-evangelists who preach the word of God while they fly around million dollar jets and live in mansions. Who do these people really work for?

Have a great day and I hope I haven’t offended too many people today. See you soon for another great chapter of Witches and Witchcraft.

above image: I'm not sure who this lady is but this is the kind of ignorant crap I am talking about. I would invite this woman to attempt to burn me at the stake. horrible people like this are everywhere and they are the reason there are things like the burning times, the holocaust, etc...