Raising Hell by Robert Masello Read Free Book Online

security system you could install to ward off anyone using the Hand of Glory. During the dog days of summer (generally reckoned From July 3 to August 11), you had only to prepare an unguent from three ingredients—the gall of a black cat, the blood of a screech owl, and the fat of a white hen—and then smear it over the thresholds, window frames, chimney stack, and any other place that someone might use to get into the house. Once the unguent was down, the house was impenetrable to anyone attempting to use the Hand of Glory.
    CURSES AND INCANTATIONS
    The resourceful sorcerer always had at hand a variety of spells, culled from his manuals and his own experiments, with which he could achieve his desired aims. Sometimes these aims were indeed diabolical—raising the dead, conjuring demons—but sometimes they were more mundane, such as predicting a needed change in the weather or helping a “client” to find a lost object. Selling their services, sorcerers could be called upon to inflict a curse or remove one, to do evil or ward it off. In a way, they were something like brokers, making money off the transaction whichever way it went. An unscrupulous sorcerer

    (never very hard to find) could even cast a curse on someone, rendering him impotent or his fields barren or his prospects ruined, and then offer to put things right again—for a fee.
    It might be thought of as an early form of the protection racket.
    If someone was truly unlucky, he might find himself caught between two competing sorcerers, one laying a curse on him and the other trying to get it off. Setting things straight could cost the patient a pretty penny.
    And then, on occasion, sorcerers found themselves in direct conflict with each other, testing their powers against a member of their own secret fraternity. In a celebrated case recounted by Olaus Magnus in his Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (1555), a magician named Gilbert challenged his master, a powerful sorcerer named Catillum, who responded by imprisoning Gilbert in an underground cavern, where he was “shackled by two wooden bars inscribed with certain Gothic and runic characters in such manner that he could not move his limbs.” According to the legend, Gilbert would remain a prisoner there until another sorcerer, one even more powerful than Catillum, could break the spell.
    Sorcerers also tended to specialize, to some extent based on where they lived. Those who lived near the sea, for instance, were often called on to do something about things like winds and currents. They were asked to speed some ships on their way, and sink others, to stir up tempests or calm the turbulent waves. In seafaring nations, particularly the Scandinavian countries, sorcerers did a lively trade selling favorable winds; it was thought possible, for example, to tie up the winds in a knotted rope. A ship’s captain could buy such a rope, and when he needed a gentle west-southwesterly breeze, he had only to undo the top knot; for a strong northerly wind, the second; for a terrible storm, the third. (That third knot, presumably, was seldom untied.) In Scotland, the wives of sailors thought they could conjure up favorable winds on their own; stealing into a chapel after the regular service had been performed, they blew the dust onthe floor in the direction that their husbands’ ships were traveling.

    Witch brewing up a storm. From Olaus Magnus’ Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, Rome, 1555. *
    Magicians who lived inland were called on to do everything from improving the crops to sweetening the milk of the herdsman’s cows. In times of plague, they could be accused of having caused the epidemic—or they could be begged to eradicate it. In times of war, they could be asked to inflict curses on the enemy—or heal the wounds of their compatriots. Sorcerers were thought capable of stanching the flow of blood from a wound or magically removing a bullet or arrowhead. They could start a fire, and they could put