An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Images used in Magic

From the earliest times, the idea that by means of an image or likeness, the person or animal that image represented could be influenced, has been one of the fundamentals of magical belief.

An Egyptian papyrus tells us of a palace conspiracy against the Pharaoh Rameses III, which called in the dubious aid of black magic in this way. One of the conspirators, an official named Hui, managed to steal a book of magic spells from the royal library. With the aid of this manuscript, he made wax images, with the intention of destroying the Pharaoh by their means. However, the plot was discovered, the conspirators punished, and Hui committed suicide.

It is notable that this powerful book of magic was in the royal library. Perhaps the plot failed because the Pharaoh was a better magician than his attackers; in which case their efforts would have rebounded on their own heads.

This story from Ancient Egypt is only one of many conspiracies in high places which have involved black magic, and the use of the image or puppet, made in a person’s likeness, and pierced with pins or thorns to bring about their death.

In the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth, the Court was once greatly excited and alarmed by the news that a wax image of the Queen had been found lying in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Black magic was obviously intended, because the image had a great pin struck through its breast. In those days, most people believed implicitly in the power of such things to cause sickness and even death.

Messengers were sent to summon the famous occultist, Dr. John Dee, to advise the Queen on what should be done. He went to Hampton Court, and met the Queen there in her garden by the river. The Earl of Leicester and the Lords of the Privy Council were in attendance also; and the fact that the latter had been sent for shows how seriously the affair was taken.

Dr. Dee reassured the Queen, and told her that the image “in no way menaced Her Majesty’s well-being”, which, says the record, “pleased Elizabeth well”. We are not told what was done with the evil puppet; probably Dee took possession of it, and took steps of his own to neutralise its baleful power. (See DEE, DR JOHN.)

In humbler circles, too, the image, made of wax or clay, played its secret part in spells. It is, like the burning of incense, the drawing of magical circles, and the practice of divination, part of the general heritage shared by witches and magicians all over the world.

A very frank description of this spell was given by one of the Lancashire witches, Mother Demdike, when she was examined in 1612. She confessed as follows: “The speediest way to take a man’s life away by witchcraft is to make a picture of clay, like unto the shape of the person whom they mean to kill, and dry it thoroughly. And when you would have them to be ill in any one place more than another, then take a thorn or pin and prick it in that part of the picture you would so have to be ill. And when you would have any part of the body to consume away, then take that part of the picture and burn it. And so thereupon by that means the body shall die”.

Sometimes the waxen image was melted, bit by bit, at a slow fire, to cause the person it was intended for to waste away. Sometimes, if the image was made of clay, it would have pins stuck into it, and then be placed in a running stream, so that it would slowly but surely be worn away by the water, and the person with it. This clay image was known in Scotland as a corp chreadh, and specimens of these can be found in some of our museums.

In the English countryside, the old word for these images was ’mommets’. In France, they were sometimes called a volt, or a dagyde. The first word comes from the Latin vultus or voltus, an image or likeness. The practice of envoutement, or psychic attack, usually by means of a volt, was widely believed in, and still is. Many French books on occultism discuss it.

Cottage and castle alike feared the spell of the pierced image; and when anger and a sense of wrong burned in someone’s breast, then the peasant and the noble, even the highest in the land, might be tempted in their turn to resort to it.

There is an extraordinary passage in The Diary of a Lady in Waiting, by Lady Charlotte Bury (4 Vols, London 1838—9; a later edition by John Lane, London, 1908), referring to that unhappy woman, Princess Caroline, the estranged wife of the Prince Regent. When her husband became George IV on his father’s death, she was given the title but never the position of queen. Apparently she disliked her royal husband as heartily as he detested her. Lady Charlotte tells us:

After dinner, her Royal Highness made a wax figure as usual and gave it an amiable addition of large horns; then took three pins out of her garment and stuck them through and through, and put the figure to roast and melt at the fire. If it was not too melancholy to have to do with this, I could have died of laughing. Lady—says the Princess indulges in this amusement whenever there are no strangers at table; and she thinks her Royal Highness really has a superstitious belief that destroying this effigy of her husband will bring to pass the destruction of his royal person.

The age of materialism and scepticism had dawned in Princess Caroline’s day; and well for her that it had. Ladies-in-waiting of earlier centuries would not have felt in the least like laughing. They would have been terrified of the headsman’s block, or burning at the stake for high treason—the punishment inflicted for witchcraft directed against the Sovereign.

And can we be quite sure that the fat and self-indulgent ’Prinny’ did not feel, at least, a few extra twinges of gout, as a result of his wife’s concentrated malice?

The facts of telepathy are accepted by many psychic researchers today, who would nevertheless sneer at witchcraft. Yet the image of wax or clay is simply a means of concentrating the power of the witch’s thought. For this reason, it is made as like the hated person as possible. in order to suggest their actual presence. So that it should have no connection with anyone else but the person it is intended for, the image should be made of virgin wax, usually beeswax; that is, wax that has never been used for any other purpose. Some old-time witches used to keep bees, in order to have a supply of wax without having to buy it, and so arouse suspicion.

When clay is the material used, the operator digs it himself—in the waning of the moon if the spell is to be directed against someone.

Not all spells with images, however, are intended for baleful purposes. Sometimes a love spell is attempted by this means; and I have seen an image successfully used by a present-day witch, for the purpose of healing someone of rheumatic pains. Of course, images of this kind would be the subject of very different ritual from that used in witchcraft of a darker shade. But the force behind the rite is the same; the power of the witch’s concentrated thought.

In September 1963 a considerable local sensation was caused when two images, one of a man, the other of a woman, were found nailed to the door of the old ruined castle at Castle Rising, in Norfolk. Between the sinister little figures was a sheep’s heart, pierced with thirteen thorns. On the ground, in front of the door, was a circle and an X-shaped cross; a sign used among witches as a conventionalised figure of a skull and cross bones. The symbols were drawn in soot. The rite was carried out at the time of the waning moon.

People in the village denied any knowledge of the matter, and assured journalists that “it must have been done by outsiders”. They admitted however, that they had heard of witchcraft being practised in surrounding districts.

The mystery remains unsolved, and eventually the interest evoked by it died down. But it flared up again four months later, when another strange discovery was made in a ruined church at Bawsey, 4 miles away. Two young lads found another sheep’s heart pierced with thorns, nailed to one of the walls. There was also a circle of soot, with a stump of burned-down black candle within it; but there were no figures.

The father of one of the boys told the police: but no clue to the identity of the person who used the old church ruins for this dark rite, was ever discovered. Less than a month later, traces of a third ritual in the area were found. This time, there was an even greater sensation; because the place where they were discovered was actually on the royal estate at nearby Sandringham.

In the ivy-coloured ruin of Babingley Church, were found yet another thorn-pierced heart nailed to a wall, another black circle of soot, another burnt-down black candle, and this time a little effigy of a woman, with a sharp thorn stuck in its breast. A young boy found the objects while exploring the ruin, and returned home to tell his father. When the father went to see for himself, he was overcome with a paralysing sensation of terror. He drove to a police station, where he arrived in a state of near collapse. It took him two days to recover from the experience.

Again the police investigated, but without any success, except to conclude that all three rituals were carried out by the same person. In this they were probably right. Three is a potent magical number; and someone in the area was evidently very determined to get results.

It is a long way from the remote Norfolk countryside to the cities of New York, Chicago or Los Angeles, with their highly sophisticated living—or is it? In the same year that the images were discovered nailed to the door at Castle Rising, an advertisement appeared in American magazines for a “Psychotherapy Kit”. It read: “This will definitely release stress and relax nerves as well as escape tension. A hex doll with four pins plus directions for use. Clever gag gift for husband, wife, boss, mother-in-law.” Other similar advertisements have described their wares as “Voodoo Dolls”; and one jokingly invited its readers to “Voodoo it yourself”.

Many mail order businesses in America sell these, and other magical supplies. In order to keep within the law, such goods are described as being merely a joke or a curio; what uses the buyers put them to is up to them.