The word magic of folk tradition: write ABRACADABRA, or any word, away in Serenus Sammonicus' dwindling triangle and save it to print; read the SATOR square across, down and backwards, find its TENET cross, and watch its twenty-five letters move into the PATERNOSTER cross with Alpha and Omega; make a notarikon from the first letters of a phrase, as AGLA was read; and keep a charm book, with the Merseburg charms, the Old English charms and Hohman's Pennsylvania charms word for word — the Trotter Head, the dowsing wand, AbaxaCatabax — and your own, to save as a file. Against the eye, the nazar and the hamsa and where they come from; on the house, draw the hexafoil step by step with compasses, and see the other witch marks, witch bottles and concealed shoes.
Serenus Sammonicus, physician to the emperor Caracalla, told fever sufferers to wear ABRACADABRA written so that each line lost a letter: as the word dwindled, so would the fever. Write it, or the name of something you want to shrink away.
Serenus Sammonicus, Liber Medicinalis (early 3rd century). Worn about the neck against fever: as the word dwindles, so does the fever.
The SATOR square
“The sower Arepo holds the wheels with care.” It reads the same across and down, forwards and backwards. The oldest, at Pompeii before AD 62, began ROTAS; others were scratched at Dura-Europos about AD 200 and at Cirencester in Roman Britain.
Over 1,500 years it was written against fire, sickness and witchcraft. In Hohman's Long Lost Friend it is to be fed to cattle against witchcraft.
Make a notarikon
A notarikon takes the first letter of each word of a phrase and makes a new word of power. AGLA is usually explained as one, of Atah gibor le-olam Adonai, “Thou art mighty for ever, O Lord” — though no one gives that reading until long after AGLA was in use, and in Germany it was read as Allmächtiger Gott, Lösche Aus, “Almighty God, put out the fire”.
AGLA
The old charms
Against a fever
Write ABRACADABRA on a parchment, one letter fewer on each line until a single A is left, and wear it about the neck.
Serenus Sammonicus, Liber Medicinalis, ch. 52 (early 3rd century) · the lesson ·
To be given to Cattle, against Witchcraft
S A T O R / A R E P O / T E N E T / O P E R A / R O T A S. This must be written on paper and the cattle made to swallow it in their feed.
J. G. Hohman, The Long Lost Friend (English edition, c. 1850) · the lesson ·
For a horse's sprained foot
ben zi bena, bluot zi bluoda, lid zi geliden, sose gelimida sin
Bone to bone, blood to blood, limb to limb, as if they were glued.
The second Merseburg charm (Old High German, 9th–10th century) · the lesson ·
To loose a prisoner's bonds
insprinc haptbandun, inuar uigandun
Leap out of the bonds, escape from the foes!
The first Merseburg charm (Old High German, 9th–10th century) · the lesson ·
Against a sudden stitch
Ūt, lȳtel spere, gif hēr inne sīe!
Out, little spear, if it be in here! (Sung while a knife dipped in feverfew, red dead-nettle and plantain boiled in butter is drawn over the pain.)
Wið færstice, in the Lacnunga, British Library MS Harley 585 (c. 1000) · the lesson ·
For a field that will not bear
Erce, Erce, Erce, eorþan mōdor
Erce, Erce, Erce, mother of earth. (From the day-long ritual of the four sods.)
Æcerbot, British Library MS Cotton Caligula A VII (11th century) · the lesson ·
A good remedy to stop Bleeding
This is the day on which the injury happened. Blood, thou must stop, until the Virgin Mary bring forth another son. — Repeat these words three times.
J. G. Hohman, The Long Lost Friend (English edition, c. 1850) · the lesson ·
Remedy for Burns
"Burn, I blow on thee!" — It must be blown on three times in the same breath, like the fire by the sun.
J. G. Hohman, The Long Lost Friend (English edition, c. 1850) · the lesson ·
A very good remedy for the Wild-fire
Wild-fire and the dragon, flew over a wagon, / The wild-fire abated, and the dragon skeated.
J. G. Hohman, The Long Lost Friend (English edition, c. 1850) · the lesson ·
To banish Convulsive Fevers
Write the following letters on a piece of white paper, sew it in a piece of linen or muslin, and hang it around the neck until the fever leaves you: AbaxaCatabax, twice in full, then one letter fewer on each line down to A.
J. G. Hohman, The Long Lost Friend (English edition, c. 1850), p. 15 · the lesson ·
How to banish the Fever
Write the following words upon a paper and wrap it up in knot-grass, and then tie it upon the navel of the person who has the fever: Potmat sineat, / Potmat sineat, / Potmat sineat.
J. G. Hohman, The Long Lost Friend (English edition, c. 1850), p. 15 · the lesson ·
How to walk and step securely in all cases
Jesus walketh with [name]. He is my head; I am his limb. Therefore walketh Jesus with [name]. † † †
J. G. Hohman, The Long Lost Friend (English edition, c. 1850), p. 15 · the lesson ·
To prevent Witches from bewitching Cattle … and against Bad Men and Evil Spirits, which nightly torment old and young people
Trotter Head, I forbid thee my house and premises, I forbid thee my horse and cow stable, I forbid thee my bedstead, that thou mayest not breathe upon me: breathe into some other house, until thou hast ascended every hill, until thou hast counted every fence post, and until thou hast crossed every water — And thus dear day may come again into my house, in the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen. (To be written and placed in the stable, or on the bedstead.)
J. G. Hohman, The Long Lost Friend (English edition, c. 1850) · the lesson ·
To make a Wand for searching for Iron, Ore, or Water
On the first night of Christmas, between 11 and 12 o'clock, break off from any tree a forked twig of one year's growth, facing towards sunrise. Hold each end of the fork in one hand, strike the ground with the thickest end, and say: Archangel Gabriel, I conjure thee in the name of God, the Almighty, to tell me, is there any water here or not? tell me!
J. G. Hohman, The Long Lost Friend (English edition, c. 1850) · the lesson ·
Hohman ends his book by making the book itself a charm: “Whoever carries this book with him, is safe from all his enemies, visible or invisible” — and cannot drown, burn, or have an unjust sentence passed on him.
Against the eye
The envious look that harms — the evil eye — is feared from the Mediterranean to South Asia, and amulets against it go back some five thousand years, to the alabaster eye idols of Tell Brak. The commonest answer is an eye or a hand that looks back.
The nazar 🧿
Arabic naẓar, “sight”; in Turkey the nazar boncuğu, in Greece the máti, “eye”. Handmade glass in rings of dark blue, white, light blue and black. Eye beads spread with Mediterranean glassmaking from about 1500 BCE; blue is said to shield against the eye, perhaps because light eyes were rare and feared. In India and Pakistan people say chashm-e-baddoor, “may the evil eye keep away”.
The hamsa
Khamsa, “five”: the open hand, often with an eye in the palm. It is older than Islam — hand amulets of Ishtar guarded Mesopotamian doorways — and is the Hand of Miriam among Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews and the Hand of Mary, kef Miryam, among Levantine Christians. Muslim piety links it to Fatima, though the name “Hand of Fatima” seems to have spread in modern and French colonial usage.
Words. A compliment with Māshāʾ Allāh, “God has willed it”, so praise does not draw the eye; a touch of wood, a spit, a blessing.
Rome and Italy. The phallic fascinus — from fascinare, “to bewitch”, whence “fascinate” — and today the red cornicello, the cimaruta and the sign of the horns.
Plants. Rue, kept in parts of the Middle East, including Palestine and Iran.
The oil and water. A drop of olive oil in water: if it spreads or sinks instead of floating round, the eye is on you, and the prayers that lift it are said.
Charms were cut into buildings as well as written. “Witch marks” are scratched on walls, beams and thresholds, most often where a witch might get in: doors, windows and chimneys. At Knole in Kent, in 1609, beams by the fireplaces were scorched and marked to keep witches and demons from coming down the chimney.
The hexafoil, or daisy wheel
7. The sixth arc closes the rosette — six petals from one fixed width, the same circle stepped round itself.
Six-petalled rosettes are among the oldest ornaments in Europe — on gold discs from a shaft grave at Mycenae of the 16th century BCE — and in Britain the witch mark most often found, in churches, barns and houses: a flower of overlapping circles is cut into a stone of the tithe barn at Bradford-on-Avon, another on a window sill of about 1616 at Owlpen Manor. In the Russian North it was carved under the roof against lightning as the “thunder sign”; settlers took it to Australia, and it was cut on gravestones in colonial Connecticut, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania from the later 17th century to the early 19th.
VV and MA double V, or V and M intertwined, for the Virgin Mary, Virgo Virginum, cut by doors, windows and fireplaces.
Mesh and crossed linesCrisscrossing lines, thought to confuse any spirit that tried to follow them in.
Taper burnsTeardrop scorches burned with a candle into door jambs and beams in early modern houses, also thought to be protective.
The witch postIn the North York Moors, an oak post by the inglenook carved with a St Andrew's cross; twenty are known, mostly of the later 17th century.
Witch bottles. A bottle of the sufferer's urine, hair or nail clippings, with pins, needles and nails, buried under the hearth or threshold or hidden in a wall, to draw in and trap harm sent against its owner. Joseph Glanvill told of one from Suffolk in 1681; fewer than a dozen are known from the United States.
Concealed shoes. Worn shoes, often a child's, hidden in chimneys, under floors and around doors and windows. Northampton Museum's index held 1,900 finds by 2012; the earliest lay behind choir stalls put into Winchester Cathedral in 1308.
After the Wikipedia articles on apotropaic magic, the hexafoil, witch bottles, concealed shoes, witch posts, the evil eye, the nazar and the hamsa, and the works they cite.
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