This week I'll talk about spirit traps, specifically witch bottles, how they're made, and their use in historical and modern times.
Folk magic is as old as humanity itself; in a scary and often hostile world, the people in charge of a community- political and religious leaders- might or might not be especially interested in protecting those they supposedly served. Ordinary people would often turn to forms of protection for themselves, their families, and their livelihoods which were within their own power to obtain, create, and use. Including the magical.
Centuries later not much has really changed in that regard.
With the coming of Christianity folk magic was suppressed. Nevertheless many practices continued, including use by Christian people. In our times such practices endure as actual folk magic, and appear in popular culture. Where it's often produced and used by people who may have little to no knowledge of it's original intended purpose. They just enjoy the look of it.
Many popular forms of protective folk magic are intended to ward off negative energies and entities- think nazar "evil eye" amulets, hamsa hand amulets, or horseshoes hung above doors. These are commonly known as good luck charms. Others work by luring, containing, and neutralizing spiritual sources of harm. These are called spirit traps.
Witch bottles are often found in archaeological sites and during renovations of old buildings in England, and occasionally in the eastern United States. The oldest examples and written mentions of witch bottles date back to the 17th century. It's believed that this form of folk magic was brought to the New World by English settlers.
A witch bottle may be glass or ceramic, is commonly filled with nails, pins, glass shards, tangled threads or string, nail clippings, hair, and urine. The bottle is then tightly sealed and hidden, buried under a doorstep, placed inside a wall, or under a hearth. The sharp objects and strings are meant to entrap, injure, and weaken harmful entities or baneful spells; hair, nail clippings, and urine are the "bait" to lure such negative energies into the bottle and away from their intended target.
The Holywell witch bottle, discovered in London in 2008, dates to 1670-1710.
Before their causes were clearly understood, illnesses were often attributed to the spells of malicious witches; old witch bottles may have been an attempt to avoid falling ill, or to recover health by intercepting and breaking a spell causing an existing malady. One of the oldest known descriptions of witch bottles being used for this purpose is from 1681; written by an Englishman named Joseph Glanville, his book "Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions" includes the story of a man's use of a witch bottle to cure his sick wife-
"Take your Wive’s Urine as before, and Cork, it in a Bottle with Nails, Pins and Needles, and bury it in the Earth; and that will do the feat. The Man did accordingly. And his Wife began to mend..."
That same book influenced Cotton Mather. Who went on to write a book of his own, "Wonders of the Invisible World" in 1693, in defense of the Salem Witch trials.
Any time you see an article online about the discovery of another old witch bottle the comments will include people urging that the bottle be returned to where it was found, or at least left unopened. (In 2016 a bottle expert on Antiques Roadshow famously sipped what he thought was 150+ year old wine, which turned out to be pee, hair, and nails). Occasionally it's too late for that when a witch bottle is found already broken, as with this example found last year under the hearth of a Civil War era fort in Virginia-
A broken Civil War era witch bottle containing rusted nails.
By the mid 19th century a variation of the witch bottle, known as a witch ball, became popular. These were hollow glass balls that were hung in the windows of homes; they were made to be pretty, sometimes with a mirror-like finish such as mercury glass, often filled with colorful ribbons, glitter, or silk thread like this example-
19th century glass and silk witch ball, Suffolk, England.
Witch balls continue to be popular decor items in our time and are readily available for use in homes and outdoor spaces.
A modern blown glass witch ball sold on Etsy.
Today people still make their own witch bottle spirit traps, or buy them ready-made online (although many of those appear to be more decorative than anything else). Online vendors tend to use the terms "witch bottle" and "spell bottle" interchangeably, which probably explains some things.
Ready-made "witch bottles" sold on Etsy.
Witch bottle spirit traps resemble what are commonly known as sour jars, which are a form of spell bottle. Many of the ingredients are the same- broken glass, nails, thorns, pins, and similar things. A sour jar will contain a liquid like vinegar, ditch water, or something similarly nasty, but not urine or other things like hair linking it to it's creator. Sour jars aren't kept in one's own home once the spell is completed.
There are other kinds of spirit traps which I plan to cover in future.
Thank you for reading. This is an open thread.
