Foreword Magic is a perennially fascinating subject. This catalogue, and the exhibition it accompanies, considers the history of magic and magical thinking over eight centuries – but it also challenges us to consider the extent to which, in our apparently rational age, we continue to think magically. The complex and involved cosmology of the medieval world or the witchcrazes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries unquestionably appear strange and alien today. Through a wide variety of bizarre, macabre, mysterious and beautiful objects this exhibition explores these phenomena, whilst focusing on the emotions of love, fear and rage that gave rise to them. But at the same time through questions and examples of contemporary practice, and through the imaginative responses of contemporary artists, the exhibition stimulatingly challenges us to consider the limits of our rational worldview and to question the extent to which magical thinking continues to have a place in the way we negotiate the world. All exhibitions involve collaboration, but this is particularly the case here. I would like to thank all those individuals and institutions who have been instrumental in its creation. The exhibition arose from a collaborative research project funded by the Leverhulme Trust (Inner Lives: Emotions, Identity and the Supernatural 1300–1900) between the historians Professor Malcolm Gaskill, Dr Sophie Page and Professor Owen Davies from the University of East Anglia, University College London and the University of Hertfordshire respectively. All have been involved in the shaping of the exhibition, together with Dr Ceri Houlbrook from the University of Hertfordshire. The curatorial team has been led by Dr Sophie Page together with Professor Marina Wallace, both of whom I would particularly like to thank for the energy, imagination and dedication they have brought to the project. Heartfelt thanks are also due to the artists Ackroyd & Harvey, Annie Cattrell and Katharine Dowson for the depth of their engagement and for the works they have created. As well as the many members of the Ashmolean team who have helped deliver the exhibition, I would also like to thank Paul Williams and Sanjay Ghodke from Stanton Williams Architects for the exhibition design. As ever, I would also like to thank the many individuals and institutions who have lent so generously to the exhibition. We have also received generous financial support from the Wellcome Trust, the Bagri Foundation, the University of East Anglia, the Ashmoean Patrons and the members of the Spellbound Magic Circle led by Philip Pullman, to all of whom I extend sincere thanks for their faith in the project. Xa Sturgis Director
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Introduction Sophie Page and Marina Wallace
Fig.1 Archangel Michael coral brooch, Italy, 1600–1800. 13.5 cm. © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Spellbound brings together more than 200 exhibits from more than 800 years of magic in Europe. Some of the items are exquisite, such as engraved rings and illuminated manuscripts; others are unsettling (a mummified cat, a bull’s heart pierced with nails). Many were once part of secretive and illicit activities. Our aim is to reveal the thinking behind activities and objects that were concealed, destroyed or misinterpreted, such as rituals to summon angels and demons, harmful magic in the age of witch-hunting and objects deliberately hidden in homes. The concept originated in a project funded by the Leverhulme Trust entitled Inner Lives: Emotions, Identity and the Supernatural, 1300–1900, a collaboration between the historians Malcolm Gaskill, Sophie Page and Owen Davies. By exploring past beliefs and practices related to the supernatural, the project sought to understand better the emotional experiences and interior lives of ordinary people – from medieval to modern times, and from households to the cosmos. Spellbound also uses contemporary ideas about magical thinking and artworks to make connections between the ideas, practices and experience of magic in the past and in the present. The exhibition was co-curated by Sophie Page (University College London) and Marina Wallace (Artakt). The Associate curators were Malcolm Gaskill (University of East Anglia), Owen Davies (University of Hertfordshire) and Ceri Houlbrook (University of Hertfordshire). Spellbound is organised into three distinct areas that evoke a journey through particular times and spaces: the medieval universe, the early modern community and the modern home. In each space objects, images, projections and sound installations take our visitors back into the inner lives of their ancestors, focusing on magical practices driven by the key emotions of love, fear and rage. In our rational, scientific age we often dismiss magical thinking as illogical, but we think magically whenever we believe that our thoughts and wishes might influence the world around us, or that one event happens as a result of another with no plausible link of causation. Magical thinking is a powerful applied fantasy, often worked out in rituals. An individual’s way of thinking magically is very personal and influenced by many things, such as age, experiences and emotional state. Particularly at times of stress or in places where we are fearful, we may become preoccupied with ‘lucky’ or ‘unlucky’ numbers, colours, objects, words and rituals, linking them to good or bad things that have happened or may happen to us. To explore the place of magical thinking in our lives, and to connect this to magical thinking in the past, we begin with six questions, each of which is connected to a historical object. The first question, Do you have a lucky object?, is linked to an image of the Archangel Michael overcoming the devil that was 9
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carved in coral and worn as a brooch (fig.1). This image combines a striking depiction of good defeating evil with a vivid natural material that was thought to protect against harm. Magical thinking can provide us with a sense of control or a sense of optimism. Throughout history people have felt themselves beset by cosmological and supernatural forces, their bodies exposed and vulnerable to the influence of the heavens, natural disaster and the wiles of demons. We use magical strategies to try to take control of our destinies and to feel that our bodies or households are secure. But what if we believe that we can only achieve our own safety and wellbeing at the expense of others? Our second question, Do you believe in mysterious forces in the world?, is linked to a ‘Ghirlanda’ – a beguilingly soft but eerie wreath made from feathers and bits of bone that was intended to cause harm to enemies (fig.2). Magical thinking can have a positive or negative impact on our lives. If we believe in the power of a lucky object, it may give us the confidence to perform better in a test or sporting contest. The sense of control produced by ritualistic behaviour can be psychologically comforting when we experience strong physical or mental pressure. For example, soldiers have rituals to help them get through significant periods of fear and stress, and their ritual behaviour – often invested in lucky charms and talismans – increases as levels of stress grow. Our third question, Does performing rituals stop you feeling anxious? (fig.3), is placed next to a toad stuck with thorns. In early modern Europe piercing a natural object, such as an animal’s heart or a lemon, was a common response to
Fig. 2 Ghirlanda delle streghe (Italian witch garland of feathers), Tuscan magical charm, nineteenth century. © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1911.32.6).
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Fig.3 A toad stuck with thorns, probably for use in witchcraft. © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (191753-601).
concern that a witch was causing harm to a household. Some magical thinking is retained from the way in which we saw the world as children, while some is passed on to us by our families or communities. Yet others we find on our own: a life-threatening illness may also elicit ritual behaviour, and the death of a loved one can cause a strong attachment to the objects they leave behind. Stress and events of personal significance push us towards finding magical meanings because we are reluctant to accept the idea of arbitrary pain or suffering. However, too much or too little magical thinking – reading meaning into everything or struggling to find value in anything – may bring problems of its own. Magical thinking is emotional: we think magically in response to desire, fear, guilt, anxiety and joy, but also, and perhaps most fiercely, to love and hate. In Spellbound we explore the emotions infusing rituals that use substitutes to represent an individual and his or her body, such as making votive offerings of body parts, preparing individual organs for burial or piercing magical figurines (fig.4). But this substitution is not exclusive to voodoo and magic. Could you stab the image of a loved one? Even when we know that there is no physical correspondence between a person and their image, the emotional connection created by an effective material substitute is very powerful. In spite of our publicly expressed scepticism, we may engage in magical thinking when we think no one is watching, when there is most to lose or gain or when the magical thinking is rendered ‘invisible’ to us because it introduction 11
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is such an accepted part of social or religious life. Can an object bind love? The twentieth- and twenty-first-century practice of placing padlocks on urban structures, especially bridges, is intended to symbolise – and ritually to ensure – a strong and lasting love between the two people who ‘lock’ their love in this way. Cumulatively they are expressions of a social activity that is resonant and persuasive because large numbers of couples lock their love onto the same structures (fig.5). To look for meaning in evocative objects is an innate human desire. This small glass flask, silvered on the inside, is very popular with visitors to the Pitt Rivers Museum (fig.6). The label attached to it relates that the old lady living near the village of Hove, from whom it was obtained in 1915, remarked, ‘They do say there be a witch in it, and if you let him out there’ll be a peck o’ trouble’.
Fig.4 Wax figure of a Chinese man stuck with pins. Collected in Malaysia, 1896. 21.5 cm. © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1896.52.1).
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of the bed. During the First World War a London shopkeeper told the folklorist Edward Lovett that he and all his friends kept a horseshoe, sometimes covered in red fabric, over the heads of their beds to provide the best cure in the world against nightmares (fig.60).6 Other apotropaics might be placed in the roof space above. People kept Bibles under their pillows and put religious texts, known as Celestial Letters and purportedly written by Jesus, above their beds. In doing so they hoped to prevent complications in childbirth, as well as to avert bad dreams and acts of witchcraft. Perhaps the ‘doll’ and Bible pages found in the wall plaster of a home in Anstruther in Scotland were likewise placed there for the protection of mother and child (fig.61).
Keeping witches away
Fig.61 Cloth ‘doll’ and pages from the Bible concealed in a house in Anstruther, Scotland, possibly to protect its inhabitants. Private collection.
Homes today are full of concealed communications from the past, some the result of laziness, sentimentality or anxiety. Yet others, as this chapter reveals, were undoubtedly acts of popular magic, deliberately performed to keep the home and its inhabitants safe or to promote good luck. Such objects reveal how our ancestors viewed the home as a spiritual place – not necessarily in religious terms, but as a personal sanctuary where they could enjoy comfort and security. A well-protected home was a defence against the myriad misfortunes that beset life in a precarious and supernatural world. Witches were one of the greatest threats to the home and those who lived there. We know from the archives that some concealed objects were the result of anti-witchcraft rituals conducted by people known as cunning folk, or wise women and wise men. For centuries these individuals offered magical services
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to their local communities for myriad purposes. They detected stolen property, revealed the identity of thieves, healed with herbs, consulted the stars, told fortunes and dealt with affairs of the heart. Above all, cunning folk were the formidable foe of witches and their spells. With the knowledge and power they had gained through grimoires (magic books) or through relations with the fairies, cunning folk conducted rituals and created charms for their clients’ needs.7 Witch bottles were one of their numerous inventions. Numerous bottles have been found concealed in and around houses dating from the mid-seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. Some were clearly magical in purpose, as revealed by their contents and archival accounts of the rituals employed by physicians and cunning folk in their creation. The mysterious-looking stoneware Bellarmine or Bartmann bottles, with their angry bearded faces and embossed medallions, were early examples of the practice. They were produced in Germany and became popular in England during the second half of the seventeenth century. Bellarmine bottles have been found under floorboards, hearths and thresholds, and analysis of the contents of a few of them has shown they contained urine along with human hair and nail clippings, as well as small sharp objects such as nails, pins and thorns.8 Sources from the era – most notably a book by the Berkshire physician William Blagrave (1610–82) entitled Astrological Practice of Physick (1671) – describe how the bottles were created as an act of sympathetic magic; sealed with their contents they were buried or placed in a fire. The urine, hair and nail clippings belonged to a person considered bewitched, while the sharp objects were included to cause pain to the suspected witch. The magical ‘law’ of sympathy deemed that any two or more things that had been in contact with each other, such as a witch and the bewitched, or that shared a likeness had an enduring invisible bond. Such a bond could be manipulated for good or evil. In the case of witch bottles, the nails, thorns and pins agitated in the victim’s urine would cause stabbing pains to the suspected witch, forcing him or her to reveal themselves and retract their witchery. The Bellarmine bottles went out of fashion by the early eighteenth century, but other vessels continued to be used for similar rituals. A glass bottle from the mid-eighteenth century has been found containing iron nails, for example (fig.62). But from the literary evidence it is clear that not all concealed bottles concerned witchcraft and not all witch bottles were buried in the home. Some were buried in graveyards and gardens. In the West Midlands during the nineteenth century bottles containing urine, pins and a red resin, known as ‘Dragon’s blood’, were buried as a ritual to arouse love.9 Animal hearts that were pierced by sharp objects served a similar function (fig.63). They were found hidden up chimneys in various parts of the country and mostly date to the nineteenth century. If a cow, sheep, pig or horse was thought to have died from
Fig.62 Glass witch bottle found containing iron nails, c.1751–70. © Museum of London (A27800).
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Fig.63 Bull’s heart pierced with nails and thorns, found in a chimney at Shutes Hill Farm, Somerset. Animal hearts were usually placed in the chimney to smoke and shrivel, hurting those practising witchcraft. © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1917.53.600).
Fig.64 Cow’s heart stuck with pins and nails, the work of a dairyman in Bethnal Green, East London, 1870–1916. He used it as a talisman against a man he believed had put a curse on his cows. 75 x 50 cm. Cuming Museum Collection, Southwark Council (C05275).
witchcraft, its heart was sometimes cut out, stuck with pins, needles or thorns, and then hung up to roast above a fire. Sometimes the ritual was designed to incinerate the heart, but the examples discussed here were intended to remain smoked and shrivelled for perpetuity. Through the correspondences of sympathetic magic, the piercing and roasting caused excruciating pains to the heart of the suspected witch. Such treatment of animal hearts was not considered witchcraft in itself, however, because the target was a witch (fig.64). concealed and revealed 71
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We know from folklore sources and court cases that the creation, burning and concealing of the hearts were often accompanied by rituals that have left no trace in the archaeological record. The intangible was as important in the process as the material remains. In 1860, for instance, a farmer from Drewsteignton in Devon followed the instructions of a cunning man and removed the hearts from his dead horses, which he suspected had been bewitched. He stuck the organs full of pins and thorns, wrapped them in brown paper and then roasted them in a fire that had to be made of green ash wood – a tree associated with anti-witch properties. In neighbouring Somerset a cunning man advised a woman to chant the following verse as she went about piercing and roasting a heart:
Above: Fig.65 Fireback with ‘M’, ‘Am’ & ‘V’ symbols, c.sixteenth century. 65 cm (height), 103 cm (width), 3 cm (depth). © Victoria and Albert Museum, London (8951901). Below: Fig.66 Fireback, sixteenth century. © Hastings Museum and Art Gallery.
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It is not this heart I mean to burn, But the person’s heart I wash to turn, Wishing them neither rest nor peace Till they are dead and gone. The blacksmith of Piddlehinton, Dorset, explained in the 1890s that only ‘three-headed’ nails should be used for piercing such hearts. ‘Many a time I’ve got up, middle o’night, to make un, for they that comed for un.’ Each nail was made of an iron rod and the head was created with three blows – three being a potent magical number.10 A key reason for the power of the nails, like that of horseshoes, was that they were made of iron. The metal had long been seen as a strong antidote against witches and fairies. The seventeenth-century poet, Robert Herrick, described the tradition in ‘Another Charme for Stables’: Hang up hooks, and sheers to scare Hence the hag, that rides the mare, Till they be all over wet, With the mire, and the sweat.11
Fig. 67 Dagger found concealed in rafter, sixteenth– seventeenth centuries. Private collection.
It is thus no surprise that other household or farmyard items made of iron have been found concealed strategically in historic homes. The ‘Lawshall cache’ of worn iron implements, for example, was found beneath a late sixteenthcentury mullion window of a house in Suffolk. The practice has also been recorded in colonial North America, where a horseshoe and an iron eel spear were found near the chimney and front door of a late seventeenth-century house in Danvers, Massachusetts.12 Firebacks such as those shown here may have accrued protective qualities, not only because of the possible apotropaic marks on them, but also because they were iron (figs 65 and 66).13 The use of iron against witches continued into the early twentieth century. During the late nineteenth century the Somerset cunning man James Stacey instructed a man whose pigs were thought bewitched to hang a couple of reaphooks under the roof of the pigsty and to burn some powders he gave him at a specific time of night.14 Some implements were concealed because of their sharpness as well as their iron properties. Blades such as the knives found in Dunham, Norfolk and featured here may have provided a physical as well as ritual barrier to the entry of witches (fig.67). The drawing of blood from a witch was believed to be one
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Fig.68 Two homemade and unused steel-bladed knives; both small, with wooden handles and leather sheaths. Found with blades crossed in thatched roof of a nineteenthcentury cottage in Dunham, Norfolk. Norfolk Museums Service (Gressenhall Museum).
Fig.69 Written charm with a six-sided star, nineteenth century. 24.8 cm (max. length), 19.7 cm (max width of frame). © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1893.18.9).
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of the most potent means of negating a spell, and numerous court cases arose through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from the practice of scratching witches with a pin or knife. The two Dunham knives were discovered deliberately crossed in the thatch of a nineteenth-century cottage. This reflected a wider practice of domestic countermagic in which crossed objects laid on the floor or placed in front of the door, usually knives, scissors or brooms, were thought to keep witches at bay (fig.68). One of the mainstays of the business of cunning folk was the creation of written protective charms against witchcraft, and also sometimes against thieves. Drawing on magical words, invocations and symbols culled from old printed and manuscript grimoires, these charms were personalised and unique to the cunning man or woman who produced them for their clients (fig.69). While some were folded and meant to be carried close to the person for protection, others were designed to be placed in tins and bottles and then concealed around the home or farm buildings. The following example was found over the door of a house near Burnley, Lancashire: Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Trine, Sextile, Dragon’s Head, Dragon’s Tail, I charge you all to gard this hause from all evils spirits whatever, and gard it from all Desorders, and from aney thing being taken wrangasly, and give this famaly good Ealth and Welth.15
Other threats
Fig.70 Belemnite (fossil bone of a now-extinct squid-like creature), historically believed to be a thunderbolt and to protect against lightning, 1870– 1916. 8.3 x 1.9 cm. © Cuming Museum Collection, Southwark Council (LDCUM1916.001.021).
Not every such concealment was concerned with witches, spirits and unwelcome humans. The threat of fire and lightning hitting the house, particularly those with thatched or wooden roofs, was a very real concern. It could be alleviated by using thunderstones – usually prehistoric stone axes. They had long been established in popular belief to be the physical remains of bolts of lightning, with the power to ward off lightning from striking buildings. Such was the protective value of thunderstones that they were traded quite widely in Europe through the medieval period and beyond. Examples have been found concealed under stairs, thresholds and the eaves, and also immured in walls.16 The bullet-like fossil known as a belemnite, formed from a squid-like creature now extinct, was likewise interpreted as a thunderbolt and used for protection (fig.70).
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(reflected literally in Cattrell’s installation) into full-scale panics before calming down again; in many cases, by contrast, suspicion and antagonism smouldered between neighbours but never quite caught alight. Gaskill’s words on the thought processes relating to witchcraft aptly inform and support Cattrell’s work and the artist’s own long-standing concerns: ‘Witchcraft welled up inside people’s bodies, especially those of women who were believed to be intrinsically unstable, increasingly so in old age.’ The glass container can also be taken to stand for a head, with the fire inside it representing the energy of thought, continually given shape by external and internal forces.
Notes 1 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, A Book for All and None. Translation by Walter Kaufmann (New York, 1995), p.14. 2 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2. 3 Significant research started with Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error, Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain (New York, 1994). 4 We know that in Northern Europe shamans were persecuted for a period in the eighteenth century, as were witches. 5 400 Cells, an artwork by Ackroyd & Harvey, was made for the project and exhibition Lens on Life (Rome-London, Heidelberg, 2015). 6 The concept of universal cultural patterns was elaborated in the 1920s by American anthropologist Clark Wissler (1870–1947). 7 Prior to the Fraud Bill, the Trade Descriptions Act had been in force since 1968. The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations Act of 26 May 2008 was based on the EU’s Unfair Commercial Practices Directive of 1972. 8 Muti is a term for traditional medicine in Southern Africa. In South African English the word ‘muti’ is derived from the Zulu word umuthi, meaning ‘tree’. It is also sometimes used as a slang word for medicine in general. 9 Malcolm Gaskill, ‘Witch-hunts then and now’, Guardian, 5 April 2010. 10 Cathy Gere, ‘Thought in a Vat: Thinking Through Annie Cattrell’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 35 (2004), pp. 415–36..
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