Pagan Magic of the Northern Tradition: Customs, Rites, and Ceremonies - Nigel Pennick 2015

The Craft and Magic of Buildings

In 1210 the poet Geoffrey de Vinsauf wrote in his Poetria Nova, “If a man has to lay the foundations of a house, he does not set his hands to work in a hurry. It is the inner line of the heart that measures out the work in advance. The inner man works out a definite scheme of action. The imagination designs everything before the body performs the act. The pattern is first the idea, then the physical reality.” Successful construction of anything can only be achieved through harmonious cooperation. There is no place for destructive competition in the achievement of the work. For through peace and concord small things increase; through discord great things diminish. Traditional crafts always take the time necessary to accomplish the task. Apprentices are taught not to hurry or skimp the work just to finish the job quickly. Something that is nearly right is wrong.

Timber-frame buildings were not made on site, but as prefabricated frames made by carpenters working in a yard at a saw pit. As the timbers were measured, cut, and planed to size, they were assembled on the ground as individual frames. Four types of frames (plates) were created: ground frame (sill), wall frame, floor frame, and roof frame. When frames were assembled at the carpenters’ yard, care was taken that the side intended to face outward was laid facing up, not touching the ground. The outer face of the timbers of a building should never have touched the ground. Also, all vertical timbers were erected in the direction they grew.

Fig. 11.1. Timber-frame buildings, Shrewsbury, England.

The only exception to this was the “dragon post” supporting an overhanging corner, which was erected with the lower part of the tree uppermost. Overall measurements in traditional northern carpentry were taken over the outside “face edges.” Unlike the craft of stone masonry, whose internal dimensions define the geometry, the distances between edges define carpenters’ techniques.

Design and production of a timber-frame building is not a simple matter. The early art of line involved drawing out the pattern to be cut, full size, upon a flat surface. Outdoors, this is called the framing ground; indoors, the tracing floor. In France this surface is called épure (Faucon and Lescroart 1997, 77—79). Each shape is drawn simply with a straightedge, line, and compasses. By these means, basic geometries and harmonic proportions can be achieved. One or the other of the two basic geometrical systems of building—known by their Latin names of ad triangulum (geometry according to the triangle) and ad quadratum (to the square, in German acht ort)—is selected as appropriate. The timber is worked directly from the pattern on the ground, without any drawing on the wood itself. The timbers were numbered, and special carpenters’ marks indicated where they fitted in the frame and how they were to be jointed to the adjoining timbers. Then they were transported to the building site and erected. The remains of timber buildings excavated at Trelleborg in Denmark show the high level of geometric accuracy of the late-tenth-century carpenters who built the castle (Nørlund 1948).

A medieval example of ad triangulum design is the Rathaus (town hall) at Markgroningen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, circa 1450, is constructed in Allamannic fachwerk. Its ruling geometry is based on equilateral triangles. The ground plan is based on two equilateral triangles centered on the outside of a central pillar. The height of the Rathaus is equal to half its external length, measured from the outside faces of the sill (ground frame) (Rohrberg 1981, 82—83). The placement of significant features, such as the center line of the middle story, are determined by the art of line. In the same region as Markgroningen, the medieval fachwerk town halls at Besigheim, Esslingen-am-Neckar, Kaye, and Strümpfenbach all have the same geometric ruling principles (Rohrberg 1981, 53—55).

Fig. 11.2. Ad triangulum geometry of the timber-frame Rathaus at Markgroningen, Baden-Württemberg, germany, ca. 1450.

For over eleven hundred years in northern Europe, buildings have been transported by ship over long distances. In the early medieval period, the first Norwegian settlers of Iceland (870—930 CE) shipped prefabricated holy buildings across the North Atlantic. Eyrbyggja Saga tells how the goði Thorólf Mostur-skeggi dismantled his temple in Norway, dug out the earth beneath it, and had them shipped to Iceland. When the ship drew near the coast, Thorólf ordered the high-seat pillars to be thrown overboard so that the location could be divined where the temple would be reerected. On one of the pillars was an image of the god Thor. The tidal currents carried the pillars ashore, and at that point Thorólf had the carpenters reerect the dismantled Norwegian temple (Eyrbyggja Saga, chap. 4). The Laxdæla Saga (chap. 74) recalls that at Trondheim in the reign of King Olaf (1015—1030), Thorkel Eyjólfsson made a church for transportation to Iceland.

The Norse practice of making large prefabricated timber structures was carried on by the Normans in their invasion of England in 1066, when the forces of William of Normandy shipped a timber castle across the English Channel. They assembled it at a strategic position shortly after they began their conquest of England. The prefabricators of the Norman castle in 1066 were clearly master carpenters of the highest order, skilled in geometry and measurement. In later times it was commonplace to move timber frame buildings from one site to another. Because they were prefabricated structures, fully numbered and marked, they could be disassembled and reassembled (see West and Dong, 177—79). The Postgate Farm heck post (see page 187) dated 1664 in a building of 1784 indicates transference of timbers considered to be important from building to building, similarly to what is described in Eyrbyggja Saga. In the nineteenth century, two medieval stave churches were dismantled and exported from Norway: the church from Vang was taken to the Sudeten Mountains region (now in Poland) and reerected at Karpacz, and another timber church was removed to Hedared in Sweden. Three other stave churches were relocated inside Norway: one was removed from Fortun to Fantoft by the Kjøde family, and two others, from Gol and Holtålen, were dismantled and reerected at the open-air museums of Borgund and Trøndelag (Gielzynski, Kostrowicki, and Kostrowicki 1994, 133; Valebrokk and Thiis-Evensen 1994, 75, 89).

WINDMILLS

Water mills existed in the north long before the invention of windmills, which was a major technological breakthrough. Vertical windmills—mills with sails that rotate in a vertical direction on a horizontal wind shaft—appeared first in the north of France during the twelfth century (Notebaart 1972, 96). The original windmills were post mills, timber-frame structures pivoted on an upright mast, which in turn was supported by a ground frame in the form of a cross connected to the post by supporting struts. The whole body of the mill (the buck) is supported at a single point on a crossbeam called the crown tree, upon which the mill can be turned to face the wind. The idea of the supporting mast may have been derived from shipbuilding, or from stave-church construction. With the new windmills, the old water-mill cosmology was still evident with the millstones, and to this was added a second cosmological element, the vertical post that supported the mill, arising from crossbeams supporting a trestle that supported the whole structure. To withstand the considerable forces upon the structure during operation, windmills must have a very robust structure. Hardwood timber is an ideal material, flexible enough to transmit stress without breaking the joints. The wind shaft transmits the energy from the rotating sails to the millstones through gearing. Like the water mill, a windmill cannot be run backward, because the sails are constructed to operate in one direction. The physical form of the buck may be derived from earlier timber storehouses and granaries, raised off the ground on posts to keep out vermin.

Millwrights built their mills at places specially chosen for optimal operation, and each mill was built specifically for the place where it was set up. The earliest extant windmills are designed to enable the miller to make the best use of the wind under all conditions. In the Netherlands, where the Dutch millwrights refined traditional windmills to their greatest level of sophistication, some mills were fitted with indicators of wind speed and direction. These were not the mechanical gauges later invented by engineers of the industrial revolution, but from the tradition of direct experience. They are practical tools that enable millers precisely to judge the prevailing conditions without any need to read an instrument. Experienced millers can determine changes in wind direction by the alterations in sound that the wind makes blowing through specially designed apertures in the sides of the mill, enabling them to turn the mill to face the wind when the wind direction alters.

Some mills have a small vane with rotating blades, called a spinnertje or spinmolen, a “spider mill” or “whirligig” that indicates both wind direction and speed. Often, it carries the name of the mill, for all windmills in the Netherlands and Flanders have names. Also, the gable ends of some post mills and most wipmolen and paltrokmolen (saw mills) have a hip knob called the makelaar (agent) at the opposite end of the roof from the sails. This is a carved post with apertures that make a whistling sound in the wind. The miller can estimate the wind speed from the sound coming from the makelaar and adjust the sails accordingly. The makelaar is related to some medieval weathercocks in England that had built-in whistles (Mockridge and Mockridge 1990, 35, 57). Winds are always unpredictable, and very strong winds such as the gale force winds called blote bienen (bloody bees) and geknipte nagels (clipped nails) by Dutch millers pose a material threat to windmills.

There is a code of sail positions in milling in Holland and Friesland. Of course, wind pump drainage mills had to operate at all times, especially when water levels were high. Mills milling corn or for other industrial purposes, such as sawmills and color-grinding mills, had a code by which the stopped position of the sails indicated the status of the work. Vertical sails indicated the working day was over. An X-form indicated that the miller had nothing to do and needed work. Other subtle positions from the vertical indicated the mill was out of service from malfunction, or because of a family event such as a wedding, death, or funeral (Notebaart 1972, 145). Deaths in the Dutch royal family are marked in the Netherlands to this day with black fabric on the sails of working windmills, and with stopped mills at the death position.

Fig. 11.3. Paltrokmolen (sawmill) De Gekroonde Poelenburg, Zaanse Schans, Zaandam, the Netherlands, showing the makelaar on the rear gable.

Mills and milling are not unexpectedly a repository of magical lore. Mills were the first heavy machinery that worked without animal or human power driving them. To people with no idea of how they worked, they must have appeared to run by magic. Mills are viewed almost as living entities, as the naming of them suggests. Both water mills and windmills are traditionally inhabited by a certain kind of house sprite, in Swedish called the kvarngubben (the old man of the mill). In Norway and Sweden these mill spirits were evil and controlling; they could stop a mill if it was operated against custom, such as at night or on a Sunday or another holy day.

In Britain there are nineteenth-century documents that deal with the magical powers of the Miller’s Word, transmitted to those belonging to a secret grain-millers’ guild. Those having the Miller’s Word were said to have the power to stop or start a mill at will without touching it as well as stopping horses, influencing women, and becoming invisible (Singer 1881, 11; McAldowie 1896, 309—14). As with other craftsmen’s mysteries, entry to the guild was by a terrifying initiation, and as in horsemanry, a man impersonating the Devil appeared to frighten the novice (Hutton 2001, 62). In 1920 Glasgow police superintendent John Ord wrote that the millers “taught their members nothing but evil.” They were reputed to have powers to cause telekinetic phenomena; “members of the ’Millers’ society claimed the power to raise and stop such proceedings at will,” but, Ord commented, “So far as I could learn, there was nothing in their senseless tricks that could be attributed to the supernatural” (Ord 1920). Scottish magical rituals to stop a water mill from working had been revealed by William Singer in Aberdeen in 1881 in his book titled An Exposition of the Miller and Horseman’s Word, or the True System of Raising the Devil. One rite was empowered by graveyard dirt and another by a bone from a man who had committed murder (Singer 1881, 10).

THE HOLY CORNER

A tradition that continues into the present day in house interiors is the holy corner. In central and eastern Europe and Scandinavia, the traditional living room of farmhouses is arranged on a diagonal axis. This is having the corner diagonally opposite the stove with built-in benches and the family table. Russian lore teaches that one must not sleep in the path used by the domovoj house spirit, which runs diagonally across the room (Ivanits 1989, 54). Archaeological evidence from Poland shows this to be a pre-Christian room division (Pokropek 1988, 46). The triangular sacred corner indoors parallels the eldritch land triangles such as the Scottish Halyman’s Rig (see Scott 1885, 78—79; McNeill 1957—1968, I, 62). The rectangular, parallel system of room division is more recent. In Poland and Scandinavia the traditional layout was gradually overtaken by the parallel system between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries (Nodermann 1973, 328). In Sweden the diagonal arrangement was abandoned when standardized factory-made furniture superseded local carpenter-made furniture. Later the introduction of television sets effected a major reorganization of room layout.

But in Roman Catholic south Germany and Austria the diagonal tradition continues in the twenty-first century, where the built-in house shrine called Herrgottswinkel and Herrgottseck (Lord God’s corner) or heilige Hinterecke (holy back corner) is located in the corner of the living room. In it are holy images, religious texts, crosses, and offerings. Salt and pepper are kept in a cupboard beneath the niche. In many modern houses, the Herrgottswinkel is represented by a crucifix attached in the corner near the ceiling on the diagonal. The equivalent in traditional Scottish farmhouses was the corner cupboard, protected by charms, such as bundles of rowan twigs (Corrie 1890—91, 76).

MAGIC OF THE HEARTH AND FIRE

The fireplace and the fire burning in it were considered to be the center and soul of the house. In building a house, particular care had to be taken of where the fireplace or stove was to be. The chimney required caution, too, even down to the day of the week it should be built (Bächtold-Stäubli 1927—1942, III, 1562). Objects were deposited beneath the hearthstone when it was laid, horse skulls having been found in Ireland and Wales (Hayhurst 1989, 106). The hearthstone on which the fire burned was protected with spiritual glyphs, crosses, circles or binding patterns to bring good fortune and ward off harm. In 1991 Alan Dakers reported a tradition from Shropshire on the border of England and Wales that such signs were made to prevent the Devil from coming down the chimney (Dakers 1991, 169—70). The Scots word for fire, ingle, recalls the rune name ing. In Scotland the ingle end of a room is the end where the fire is and the corner by the fireside is the inglenook, a name also used in England.

Tending the fire was a ritual practice in the past, and in more recent times some of these traditions have continued on as customs and superstitions, such as the belief that a fire should be kindled by only one person. If two people were to kindle a fire together, they would quarrel (Burne 1883, 275). In Kildare, Ireland, it was reported that

during the whole month of May no fire was allowed to leave the house under any pretext not even “a live coal” could be handed over the half-door to light a passer-by’s pipe, nor could anything be lent or given away out of the house; even if a neighbor or a stranger called for a drink of water, he or she would have to enter the house, help themselves, and then replace the vessel on the “dresser.” (Omurethi 1906—1908, 446)

At Yule (midwinter) a special log was burned in the fireplace. In volume II of The Book of Days (1869), R. Chambers wrote:

Fig. 11.4. Yule Log 1869. The Library of the European Tradition.

“The burning of the Yule log is an ancient Christmas ceremony, transmitted to us from our Scandinavian ancestors, who, at their feast of Juul, at the winter solstice, used to kindle huge bonfires in honor of their god Thor. . . . This venerable log, destined to crackle a welcome to all comers, was drawn in triumph from its resting place . . . in the woods.” The log was lit from the remains of the previous year’s log, stored away for the purpose. So continuity was maintained (Chambers 1869, II, 735).

THE POTHOOK

The pothook is an implement from which pots, kettles, and cauldrons can be suspended over the household fire. Before the invention of stoves, this was the only way of boiling water and cooking food. Other English names for the pothook are hanger, hake, chimney hook, and the Scots lum cleek. In the German and French traditions, it is called Hausherr and le maître de la maison, both meaning “the master of the house.” It is the locus of the house spirit (Bächtold-Stäubli 1927—42, IV, 1271). It is a very ancient implement, made of wood in very poor households that could not afford iron, and indeed all were wooden before the production of iron improved its effectiveness. It appears that yew (Taxus baccata) wood was very good for making pothooks, being hard, with a good tensile strength and durability (Johnson 1912, 362—63). The shape of the pothook is the Anglo-Saxon yew rune eoh ( ), or eihwaz in the Common Germanic Futhark, so the pothook partakes of the runic meanings and powers. In Ireland pothooks were made from holly (Ilex) (Evans 1957, 68). The form of the pothook is linked in rune magic with the vertical axis of the world, the Norse cosmic tree Yggdrasill, which appears in some accounts as an evergreen yew tree (Thorsson 1984, 44).

The chimney is a vertical axis that links the interior of the house with the air above, the abode of aerial spirits that are warded off other parts of the house by apotropaic devices such as animal figures on the roof ridge, gable patterns, and hip knobs. Above the fire, at the place where the chimney enters the living space, the pothook serves to protect the interior of the house against the entry of harmful sprites down the chimney.

Fig. 11.5. Blacksmith-made pothook.

The shape of the pothook is also an apotropaic device for house protection. It appears in the English craft of pargetting patterns on the external plaster of house walls in East Anglia. There is a swastika made in pargetting work by a pothook pressed into the plaster on an old timber-frame house in Dunmow, Essex. The power of the pothook was used to empower the protective glyph.

Fig. 11.6. Pothook swastika in pargetting work. Great Dunmow, Essex, England.

Blacksmiths use the same form for wall anchors whose S shape is sometimes made in the form of a snake, or crossed to make a swastika. The noted folklorist Ella Mary Leather noted that at Garway in Herefordshire, western England, a blacksmith had asserted that they were made in that form to prevent lightning from striking the house (Leather 1912, 14—16). The pothook is a symbol of ownership of the house, and it was an implement of such spiritual meaning that oaths were sworn upon it (Lecouteux 2013, 73). In the Languedoc, the Eifel, Rhineland, Siebenbürgen, and Westphalia, the pothook played an important role in weddings, as the bride and groom had to make a threefold turn around the hook to ensure good luck. Where the hearth was against the wall, as in later buildings, and it was impossible to circle the pothook, the bride was swung at it three times (Bächtold-Stäubli 1927—42, IV, 1274; Lecouteux 2013, 74). The pothook was an emblem used in the heraldry of the Holy Roman Empire. The original function of the shield in combat is protective, and the emblem of the pothook upon it is an eminent symbol of ownership and protection. The arms of the von Bidenfeld family in Hessen; Schenk von Wetterstetten in Swabia; and Komanski in Silesia have the pothook (Appulm 1994, 95, 159, 131).

HORSESHOES, WALL ANCHORS, AND SPEER POSTS

Another archetypal object manufactured by blacksmiths is the iron horseshoe. In 1894 the folklorist George Day recorded the saying, “Good fortune will follow you if you pick up a horse shoe” (Day 1894, 77). That was in the days when almost all transport was by horse, and lost horseshoes could be found in everyday travels. Folklore collectors all over Great Britain have noted the tradition of setting up a horseshoe over a door or upon it, and this of course continues today, even when horseshoes have become rare items. The horseshoe must be nailed with its horns pointing upward, then bad luck or a witch cannot pass the threshold (Glyde 1872, 50). George Day saw a horseshoe nailed to the door of a cow house in Ilford, Essex, England, and asked the lad there the reason for it. He was told it was “to keep the wild horse away” (Day 1894, 77). In Dumfriesshire, Scotland, John Corrie noted, “A horse shoe nailed over the threshold was supposed to afford perfect immunity, neither witch nor warlock being able to enter a dwelling where this mode of protection had been adopted. By some a branch of rowan was looked upon with equal favor, and bundles of small rowan tree twigs were constantly kept suspended over the doorway, or attached to the box bed or the corner cupboard” (Corrie 1890—91, 76). The seven holes hammered in the classic design of horseshoes to take the nails were seen by members of the horsemen’s society as the seven stars of the north (Rennie 2009, 160).

The analysis of signs considered magical and apotropaic in old buildings and artifacts is fraught with problems. Certain simple glyphs are used in most parts of the world, with varying origins and different accepted meanings. Apart from any magical significance, the character X stands for at least eleven different phonetic meanings in various western alphabets, as well as a Roman numeral, so context is crucial. In any particular identified system, then the meaning of signs is given in a “code of symbols, accompanied by traditions which explained them” (Lethaby 1974 [1891], 2). This applies in recognized religious iconography, heraldry, astrology, alchemy, certain currents of magic, and the working marks of particular trades and crafts. But signs and marks that appear in other contexts—such as on ironwork, pargetting, and brickwork, in knitwear and threshold patterns—are not always so readily interpreted unless they are in regions with a strong and well-understood tradition. Many such sigils in northern Europe are recognizable as runes.

A traditional door is the result of the combination of two crafts, carpentry and blacksmithing. The hinges, strap work, studding, and bolts of old outer doors often carry the blacksmiths’ magical sigils hammered into the iron when it was hot. The act of striking the pattern into the metal is in itself a magical act of will, especially when accompanied by an incantation, such as when runes are “sung” into an artifact. The most frequently encountered blacksmiths’ sigil is composed of crossbars enclosing an X shape. Sometimes they are accompanied by dots hammered in with a punch. These signs can be found on old tools, weapons, and armor, as well as on door and window fittings. In Lithuania the X sign is apotropaic against lightning, as it is the sigil of Perkūnas, god of lightning and fire (Trinkūnas 1999, 70—71).

Fig. 11.7. Wall anchor with blacksmith’s marks, Caister, Norfolk, England.

Wall anchors are the external anchor points of iron bars that bind the walls of old brick buildings and support internal floors. Frequently, they run from gable to gable and along floor lines. In Britain, the Netherlands, and Germany were specialized anchor smiths whose trade was to make the bars and end plates. The outer fittings are made from wrought iron, commonly S or X shaped, and sometimes two Ss were overlapped to make a curved swastika, which the folklorist Ella Mary Leather noted was apotropaic against lightning. The S-shaped ones resemble the pothook, though frequently the ends are forked, and sometimes the S had a head at one end in the form of a snake.

Fig. 11.8. S-form wall anchor. St. Ives, Cambridgeshire, England.

In Great Britain X- and S-form wall anchors are reputed to ward off lightning. Some wall anchors are in the form of characters, such as the initials of the owner, numbers for the date the building was constructed, or—in a few cases—merchants’ and owners’ marks. The port of Great Yarmouth on the coast of East Anglia was particularly noted for them.

Internal posts, known as speer posts or heck posts, with an X carved on them, are known from traditional houses in northern Yorkshire, England. They form the end posts of wooden screens next to the fireplace.

As with much of traditional art and magic, artifacts were just made without fuss and without record, so there is little information on how these apotropaic posts were made and empowered. Dated heck posts include one from 1664 (Postgate Farm, Glaisdale). However, the building where it is found dates from 1784, so if the year marked on the post is authentic, it may have come from an earlier building, perhaps transferred there to maintain continuity with the old one. While there is no connecting evidence, heck posts clearly recall the high-seat pillars (öndvegissulur) in Norse halls and temples, marked with sacred signs, which were taken from place to place and installed in new buildings (see Eyrbyggja Saga, chap. 5). There is a record of a second cross being incised in an old heck post from Low Bell End. It was done by a local cunning man known as the Wise Man of Stokesly (Hayes and Rutter 1972, 93). In 1927 Bugle Cottage at Egton was rebuilt with a heck post reputedly made from rowan wood, a replica of an older one (Hayes and Rutter 1972, 89).

Fig. 11.9. X carved in the top of a speer post, Ryedale, Yorkshire, England.

Today heck posts with incised X glyphs are generally called “witch posts,” but this name is not traditional. There is no record of the name before 1936, when a heck post from an old house at Egton, Yorkshire, was presented to Whitby Museum as a “witch post.” In 1870 and again in 1893, Canon Atkinson had donated heck posts to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, and they were not referred to as “witch posts,” for the term does not appear in Atkinson’s writings (Hayes and Rutter 1972, 87).

Related apotropaic signs on the roofs of houses can be found on timber hip knobs in England, the Netherlands, and Germany. In the former Dukedom of Minden in north Germany, the house Geck or Geck-Paol has three-dimensional X carvings, sometimes topped with a wooden “egg” (see Wirth 1934, VI, pl. 268, 3). Painted on farmhouse doorposts, sometimes incised as well, is the X pattern called Stiepel (Wirth 1934, VI, pl. 269, 1). In the Netherlands a similar form called Steepelteeken was traditional in the Ostmarsum district of Twente province (Propping 1935, 143). Today this pattern is often called the Dag sign, a name given it by Walter Propping in 1935 (Propping 1935, 144).

These signs are close to the magical blocker made of sticks or slivers of wood used to block paths to humans and spirits alike. Known as the Schratterlgatterl or Schradlgaderl, it was used in south Germany, and in the Tyrol (Austria and Italy).

Apotropaic patterns always interlink with each other, being made from available materials. Related sigils painted on door frames were recorded in Germany at Wietersheim-an-der-Weser and in Norway at Frille, dated 1573 and 1788 respectively (Propping 1935, 145; Weiser-Aal 1947, 146). A traditional magic sigil called Old Scratch’s Gate was used in East Anglia for the same purpose, but it was always chalked on doors or above openings in buildings.

Fig. 11.10. Dag-rune shutters, Middelburgh, The Netherlands.

Fig. 11.11. Schratterlgatterl, Baden, Germany.

OTHER APOTROPAIC DEVICES

It is a widespread folk belief that mirrors reflect not only visible light but also intangible spirits and energies. All over Europe are traditions of straight “spirit paths” along which, at certain times, travel dangerous inhabitants of the Otherworld. Like light, spirits travel in straight lines and unless something is done to stop them, they will enter dwellings whose entrances (windows and doors) are approached by lines of sight. To prevent this happening, various techniques are employed by those whose expertise it is to remedy bad places and ward off harm. Mirrors, often in the form of silvered glass balls, are placed at strategic points to reflect the perceived intrusion.

Fig. 11.12. Geomantic mirror made by Runestaff Crafts, England, 1990.

Witch balls are lustrous blown glass spheres around a foot (304.8 mm) in diameter, usually blue or green, but also of silvered clear glass. Their reflective quality comes from silvering the inside glass sphere with a metallic mercury mixture, the traditional ways of making mirrors. To prevent evil spirits entering the house, witch balls are hung in a window or in the window above the door in houses without leaded glass. In recent years, with a renewed interest in Chinese feng shui, octagonal ba gua geomantic mirrors have in some cases taken their place, having the same apotropaic function (see Lip 1979, 109—13). But mirrors and other reflective devices have one weak point. During thunderstorms they are believed to attract lightning, which was viewed in the past as a material thunderbolt. In Britain wall anchors in the form of an S were believed to ward off lightning from a building. In Normandy houseleeks were planted on the roof ridges of farmhouses for the same purpose. An eastern English way to try to keep lightning away from one’s dwelling is to bury a toad in the middle of the garden, with others at the four corners. This is quincunx magic, covering an area by treating to four corners and the center. Bay trees planted around the garden, the skin of a seal, and eagle feathers are also antilightning charms (Jobson 1966, 112).

THE PENTAGRAM

The pentagram is an ancient apotropaic sign. It is also called pantacle, pentangle, pentagramma, Solomon’s Seal, Drudenfuss, and the rempham. It is known from Lombardic and Alamannic sources before the year 700. Medieval and later folk magic gives the pentagram protective power over thresholds. Goethe, in his Faust, makes the demon Mephistopheles gain access to Dr. Faustus’s house because the Drudenfuss is drawn inaccurately upon the threshold. A traditional English counting song known as “The Twelve Apostles” tells “Five for the symbol at your door,” which was interpreted by folk song collectors Broadwood and Maitland as the threshold pentagram (Broadwood and Maitland 1893, 154—59). The pentagram has an important place in sacred geometry because the fivefold division of the circle is the starting point for the Golden Section ratio. Before the nineteenth century, the direction in which the pentagram pointed was not considered to be significant. The concept of the evil inverted pentagram was invented by followers of French magus Éliphas Lévi. The medieval choir stalls in St. Botolph’s church at Boston, Lincolnshire, England, illustrated in figure 11.13 show the medieval use of the pentagram in this orientation, certainly not with evil intention. The pentagram at the centerpiece of a medieval rose window in Paderborn Cathedral in Germany is also oriented in that manner. The starfish is pentagrammic in shape and was used as a magical protection. The fish called stella (starfish) was to be fastened with the blood of a fox by a brass nail to the gate as a preventive against “evil medicines” (Agrippa 1993 [1531], I, XLVI).

HOUSE GLYPHS, SIGILS, AND SPELLS

When bricks began to be used in buildings, they were handmade and fired in wood-burning stacks, so they were not all the same color. Bricklayers made patterns in the walls they built, and a popular design was the diamond or ing-rune shape. The protective pattern called God’s Eye and Godsoog on English and Dutch fishermen’s ganseys (sweaters) is an array of five diamonds. The sigil was painted on wall plaques in fishermen’s inns, with the motto “God sees you,” warning the fishermen to behave properly when away from home. Traditional knitters from Arnemuiden used diamond motifs symbolizing prosperity that came from the brickwork of the buildings in the fishing port (Van der Klift-Tellegen 1987, 19, 36). In eastern England in the nineteenth century, bricks were being made on a large scale in different colors, so bricklayers chose contrasting colored bricks to make diamond and ing-rune patterns. A house in St. Ives, Huntingdonshire, is shown in figure 11.14.

Fig. 11.14. Ing runes in brickwork on Victorian house, St. Ives, Cambridgeshire, England.

On Twelfth Night in German-speaking countries, the Sternsinger (“star singers”) go around to houses carrying a paper or wooden star on a pole. They sing an Epiphany carol, then one of them writes in chalk over the door a formula consisting of the initials of the Three Wise Men in the Nativity story, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, with crosses between them and the year date on either side; for example: 20 C+M+B 15. This is said to protect the house and its inhabitants until the next Epiphany. Another German tradition is that if one draws crosses on the doors before Walpurgisnacht (May Eve, after sunset on April 30), the house is protected against witchcraft (Schmidt 1988, I, 93).

Fig. 11.15. C+M+B inscription 1999, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany.

Written talismans and charms were attached to doorposts and lintels or hidden inside them as an alternative. In sixteenth-century Wales, clergyman Lewis Morgan of Aberedw was imprisoned for writing charms and putting them over doors (Simmonds 1975, 19). In England door charms were “supplied for a consideration by the fortune-tellers, astrologers, or ’wise men’ of a neighborhood.” Harland and Wilkinson recorded a text found over a door of a house near Burnley, northwest England. It read “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 family good Ealth & Welth” [sic] (Harland and Wilkinson 1867, 62—63). Some charms were more literate, being written in Greek or Latin, or with magical alphabets, magic squares, and seals of planetary spirits. The Scots expression Arsé-Versé (English Arsy-Farcy) denotes a magic spell on the side or back of the house to ward off fire (Warrack 1988 [1911], 9). The dialect word “arsy” means “backward” so the spell refers to something written backward (as with wend-runes) or on the back side of the house. In Scotland an evil spirit called Quhaip was nevertheless protective, for it was supposed to haunt the eaves of houses on the lookout for evildoers (Warrack 1988 [1911], 436).