Nature
Observing the natural world was one way to discover God’s secrets. But nature could also be manipulated more directly through rituals or potions. The most common end was healing or protective magic. A 1615 housewife’s manual described how to cure plague sores with a poultice made of ‘the yolk of an egg, honey, herb of grace chopped exceeding small, and wheat flower’, or alternatively – and gruesomely – by applying ‘a live pigeon cut in two parts’.1Gervase Markham, The English Housewife, ed. Michael R. Best (Montreal, 1986 [1615]), p. 12. Cunning-folk might use more obviously magical rituals. In the late sixteenth century, Andrew Man from Aberdeenshire confessed to putting charmed stones in the corners of fields to protect cattle from disease.2Miscellany of the Spalding Club, 5 vols (Aberdeen: Spalding Club, 1841-52), vol. 1, p. 120.
Elements of the natural world might also be used in divinatory rituals. The practice of throwing nuts on the fire at Halloween to predict one’s future spouse, or to learn who would die in the next year, was known in England, Scotland and Wales. Cheap pamphlets pitched at women described combinations of herbs and incantations that might reveal a future spouse. A 1685 text advised a curious woman to ‘take a little hemp-seed and go into what place you please by yourself, and carry the seed in your apron, and with your right hand throw it over your left shoulder, saying thus: “Hemp-seed I sow, hemp-seed I sow, and he that must be my true love, come after me and mow”.’ On the ninth recitation the woman would see her future husband, or hear a bell if she was to die unwed.3Mother Bunch’s Closet, ed. George Laurence Gomme (London, 1885 [1685]), pp. 17-18.
Witches were commonly suspected of using plants, bits of animals or the body parts of dead humans in spells. In Macbeth (Act IV Scene I), the three witches summon prophetic spirits using a fearsome concoction including ‘scale of dragon, tooth of wolf’, slips of yew, and a hemlock root ‘digged i’ the dark’. The spell also included ‘nose of Turk’ and ‘liver of blaspheming Jew’, reflecting early modern British ideas about the corruptive properties of non-Christian bodies.
Woodcut of a woman, perhaps a witch, holding a plant, from c. 1700.4Wellcome collection.
Can you brew a potion as skilfully as Shakespeare’s famous witches?
A vision of Macbeth and the witches, drawn in 1771 or 1772 by the Scottish artist Alexander Runciman.5The Witches Showing
Macbeth the Apparitions (1771/2), National Galleries of Scotland.
Macbeth and Banquo meeting the witches, after Henry Fuseli (1741-1825).6Wellcome Collection.
Advice from a 1685 pamphlet.7Mother Bunch’s Closet, ed. George Laurence Gomme (London, 1885 [1685]), p. 30.
She who desires to be satisfied, whether she shall enjoy the man desired or no; Let her take two lemon peels in the morning, and wear them all day under her armpits; then at night let her rub the four posts of the bed with them; which done in your sleep he will seem to come and present you with a couple of lemons, but if not, there is no hope.
A woodcut purportedly depicting the fortune-teller Mother Bunch with a client.8Title page of The History of Mother Bunch of the West, Part the Second (London, [1750?]), Google Books.
