A Witch's World of Magick (13 page)

The puncturing of clay effigies as a magickal technique was also employed by the Scottish. In Donald A. Mackenzie’s 1917 work
Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe
, the author describes an act of sympathetic image magick performed by the Scottish Highlanders, involving the puncturing of a doll with sharp objects:

The Scottish Highland corp chreadh (clay body) was an image of an individual whom the maker desired to afflict or slay magically. Pins or nails were stuck into it so that the victim might suffer pain, and it was placed in running water so that he might “waste away.”
⁶⁷

Here, we again see that the insertion of the pins or nails operates on principles of sympathetic magick: a sharp object inserted in the doll is assumed to cause sharp pains in the person whom that doll represents. We see also the mention of running water being used to “erode” the victim, and in this mention an advantage of puncturing is highlighted. While the running water causes the whole body of the victim to “waste away,” the insertion of a pin or nail can be done precisely, affecting concentrated areas of specific interest to the intention of the spell.

Practitioners of Brujería, a form of nature-based witchcraft originating in Mexico, also made rather shadowy use of puncturing and insertion in their rituals. An article written in 1939 relates the following method of cursing an enemy:

A method of laying spells used at San Pablito is as follows: A doll is made to represent the intended victim. In the body little stones taken from the river are inserted and made fast with wax. A pin is stuck in the neck, and a splinter of orange wood in the head. The doll is then either thrown into the river or buried in the victim’s field or in the sacred hill behind the village.
⁶⁸

We can see in this method many similarities to the Scottish method of making a
corp chreadh
. In both cases, we find that pins are stuck into an image fashioned to represent the unfortunate individual targeted by the spell. Further, we find that both methods recommend throwing the cursed doll into water, though in the Brujería method, burying is also a recommended option. Another interesting feature we find in the Brujería method is the inclusion of stones within the mock body, inserted much like a thorn or pin in an imitative act intended to further plant undesirable energies within the enemy.

In Mecklenburg, a region of northern Germany, puncturing and insertion were also used sympathetically, and it was believed that driving a nail into a person’s footprint would render them unable to walk. A similar belief was common among indigenous people of southeastern Australia, where sharp bits of bone, charcoal, glass, and quartz were inserted into the impressions made by a resting body of an enemy in order to cause arthritis and other complaints.
⁶⁹

We find the same principles of sympathetic puncturing magick at play also in the once common folk practice of sticking pins or nails into a piece of fruit or animal heart charmed to symbolize the heart of the living human victim. In
The Evil Eye: An Account of this Ancient and Widespread Superstition
, Frederick Thomas Elworthy quotes a letter written by a J. L.W. Page, dated October 20, 1890. The letter describes the discovery of a sheep’s heart stuck full of pins in an old kitchen in the courthouse at East Quantoxhead, in England. Elworthy reports that animal hearts filled with pins or thorns were a common charm used to defend against witches and witchcraft throughout England. He connects the English practice with an Italian practice that appears very similar, writing about an 1892 discovery of a green lemon stuck full of nails, found on top of a valence board above a window in a home in Naples, Italy. It was a common charm in Italy; so common, in fact, that it had a special name—the
fattura della morte
, or “deathmaker.”
⁷⁰
Such magick works sympathetically. By charming the fruit or heart to symbolize the victim, the imitative act of puncturing is thus conveyed and transferred to the magickal victim the fruit or heart represents.

A further example of puncturing magick comes to us by way of an old Roma charm. In his 1891 work
Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling
, Charles Godfrey Leland recounts a charm used to punish a faithless lover:

The deceived maid lights a candle at midnight
and pricks it several times with a needle, saying:—
“Pchâgerâv momely
Pchâgera tre vodyi!”
“Thrice the candle’s broke by me
Thrice thy heart shall broken be!”
⁷¹

These examples are pretty straightforward: puncture the tablet, puncture the figurine, puncture the footprint, puncture the candle, and the flesh-and-blood man or contrary idea or institution whom the object or footprint represents will likewise experience a similarly injurious effect. This is sympathetic magick in its most basic, straightforward, and simplest form.

However, puncturing and insertion aren’t always applied for clearly sympathetic purposes. Sometimes, the techniques are employed instead to cause a transformation or transference of energy. In
Tom Tit
Tot
, an 1898 work by Edward Clodd, an old English charm to get rid of a wart is thus described:

In Suffolk and other parts of these islands, a common remedy for warts is to secretly pierce a snail or ‘dodman with a gooseberry-bush thorn, rub the snail on the wart, and then bury it, so that, as it decays the wart may wither away.
^72
,
73

Here, the puncturing of the snail with the gooseberry thorn is used as a way to insert the healing properties of the gooseberry into the snail, which then keeps these healing properties when it later “becomes” the wart, having been rubbed across the affected part of the body. Through the act of puncturing, the energy of the gooseberry thorn is first transferred into the snail, mixing with its energies to transform it into a fitting ingredient for a healing spell. If the action of piercing the snail with the gooseberry thorn was carried out as a purely sympathetic action, meant to injure the symbolic stand-in for the wart, it seems more likely that the puncturing with the thorn would occur
after
the snail had been rubbed on the wart rather than before. By puncturing the snail before it ever makes contact with the wart, the snail is infused with qualities that make it easier to heal or to “transfer” the blemish. The primary object of the puncturing action here seems to be the transformation of the snail rather than the injuring of the wart. If the action of puncturing
is
meant purely sympathetically, as a way to injure the wart by injuring the snail that comes to represent it, we can gather that puncturing and insertion can have a retroactive effect. The snail is punctured before it becomes a representative of the wart itself, yet the puncturing still has its intended effect once the snail is rubbed on the wart and the transference of energy from wart to snail is complete.

We see the transference principle at play in other acts of ultimately sympathetic puncturing and insertion magick, as well; take a look at the Malay love spell below and note how the jasmine, with its love-bringing properties, is incorporated:

… take a lime, pierce it with the midrib of a fallen coconut palm, leaving one finger’s length sticking out on either side whereby to hang the lime. Hang it up with thread of seven colours, leaving the thread also hanging loose an inch below the lime. Take seven sharpened midribs and stick them into the lime, leaving two fingers’ length projecting. The sticking of the midrib into the lime is to symbolise piercing the heart and liver and life and soul and gall of the beloved. Put jasmine on the end of the midrib skewers. Do this first on Monday night, for three nights, and then on Friday night. Imagine you pierce the girl’s heart as you pierce the lime.
⁷⁴

We see in this example that in addition to the sympathetic action of piercing the “heart,” i.e., the lime, with the midribs, there is also an act of magickal transference and transformation going on, the energy of the jasmine mixing with the energies of the midribs, which then combine with the energies of the lime, and in turn, affect the energies of the target of the magick spell. Here, puncturing is used to transfer, combine, and transform just as much as it is used to affect a sympathetic piercing of the lime made heart. Our witchy intuition naturally surmises that without the jasmine, or perhaps with a more baneful sort of herb such as cayenne pepper, the charm would have an entirely different effect. The attributes of the jasmine, a gentle, peaceful, sensual herb, make the midribs used in the spell appropriate for the love-inducing magick at hand. Without it, the sympathetic action of piercing the lime could have a much more malignant outcome.

Hinduism is prevalent among the Malay, and in an incantation for love found in the
Atharvaveda
, an important Hindu magickal and spiritual text dating from around the twelfth to the tenth centuries BCE, we find further insight into the use of puncturing to obtain love:

May love, the disquieter, disquiet thee; do not hold out upon thy bed. With the terrible arrow of Kama I pierce thee in the heart!

The arrow winged with longing, barbed with love, whose shaft is undeviating desire, with that well-aimed Kama shall pierce thee in the heart!

With that well-aimed arrow of Kama which parches the spleen, whose plume flies forward, which burns up, do I pierce thee in the heart!

Consumed by burning ardour, with parched mouth, come to me woman, pliant, thy pride laid aside, mine alone, speaking sweetly and to me devoted!

I drive thee with a goad from thy mother and thy father, so that thou shalt be in my power, shalt come up to my wish!

All her thoughts do ye, O Mitra and Varuna, drive out of her. Then having deprived her of her will put her into my power alone.
⁷⁵

The incantation was to be accompanied by a ritual in which the heart of a clay effigy was pierced with an arrow made with a thorn and an owl feather, shot from a bow with a hemp string.
⁷⁶
We find here in the puncturing of the effigy the use of straightforward, sympathetic magick: just as the image is pierced and constrained by the arrow, so too is the target of the spell constrained, “deprived of her will” and put entirely under the power of the magician.

In the use of the owl feather and the hemp string, however, we find traces of something else going on, as well. Owls were associated with the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, a gentle and loving goddess believed to preside over fortune, luck, victory, beauty, spiritual wealth, material prosperity, and other auspicious aims,
⁷⁷
while hemp was associated with the god Shiva, a supreme deity connected with transformation, healing, and purity.
⁷⁸
The choice of materials used in this formula provides a positive tone for the spell, adding a layer of luck and good fortune with which to further transform the affections of the one desired. Just as in Suffolk where a gooseberry thorn transfers healing energy into a snail, here too we see elements of transference and transformation incorporated into the magickal act of puncturing. Perhaps the jasmine used to anoint the coconut palm midribs in the Malay lime charm acts in a similar manner, to simulate an “arrow winged with longing, barbed with love,” able to transform the lime-made heart of the beloved through the sympathetic action of piercing as well as through the transference of the jasmine into the lime.

Common Threads and New Perspectives

In this chapter, we’ve examined how puncturing and insertion can be used to restrict, bind, harm, combine, transfer, and transform, and we’ve learned that one advantage of this technique is that it can be applied very precisely and acutely, delivering the desired dose of magick to exactly the right spot. To the modern witch, this magick might sound rather sinister, but the thing is, ugly or not, the techniques work. As a more enlightened witch of today, you can use similar techniques in good ways, positive ways, to combat major evils of the world, to help end suffering around the planet, or to help you achieve other worthy goals. Open your mind to the positive possibilities, and don’t be afraid to peer into the shadows now and then to find the light.

Before we take a look at some modern applications for puncturing and insertion magick, let’s review the principles underlying the techniques and discuss also a few tips that can help make your puncturing spells more potent. We’ve seen through our varied examples how puncturing and insertion primarily operate either sympathetically through imitative or symbolic actions, or through a transference or combining of energies. When the techniques are used sympathetically, both the choice of actions and the selection of materials may play a role, though the actions will likely take a starring role. For example, if a person was attempting to stop a foe through the magickal act of nailing a doll-made mock enemy to the floor, the imitative act of nailing down the danger is at the heart of the magick, while the choice of nail is less important. The magician might very well select a nail with sympathetic attributes in mind. He or she might choose an iron nail for its strength, for instance, or perhaps use a gold-toned nail to imbue greater protection. As long as the sympathetic action in the puncturing spell is strong, well-chosen nails add a helpful, but not strictly necessary, extra punch. A witch might just as well choose a tin nail because that’s what happens to be available in the toolbox at the moment. Since the spell is operating primarily through sympathetic magick, a sympathetic action will suffice just fine when ideally sympathetic materials are not available. When puncturing and insertion techniques are used instead to cause a transference or combining of energies, the choice of materials is more important. Such spells operate by introducing or inserting a specific energy into the image or other token meant to represent the specific target of the spell.