Between The Sixteenth And Eighteenth Centuries, “Witch Bottles” Filled With Thorns, Nails, Urine, And Other Objects Were Thought To Protect Against Witches
Back in 2008, an old ceramic bottle– filled with rusty nails, approximately fifty bent copper alloy pins, and fragments of bone or wood– was discovered by the Museum of London Archaeology Service during an archaeological investigation.
That bottle, now dubbed the “Holywell witch bottle,” dates back to the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century– more specifically, it was likely created sometime between 1670 and 1710.
The vessel is also believed to have been used as a form of spiritual protection against witches since it was found hidden underneath a home located near Shoreditch High Street in London.
And according to Eammon P. Kelly, an archaeologist who penned Archaeology Ireland, these “witch bottles” had some strange ingredients.
“The most common contents of a witch bottle are bent pins and urine, although a range of other objects was also used,” he said.
These other objects might have included everything from hair, nail clippings, and iron nails to thorns or other sharp materials that were specifically selected in hopes of creating a physical protection charm.
Some objects, like the pins found in the London investigation, were also bent to serve specific purposes.
“It was thought that the bending of the pins ‘killed’ them in a ritual sense, which meant that they then existed in the ‘otherworld’ where the witch traveled. The urine attracted the witch into the bottle, where she became trapped on the sharp pins,” Kelly detailed.
The bottles that these obscure ingredients were held in also differed, too. Sometimes, they were made of ceramic or glass. Other times, the bottles were actually made to resemble characteristics of human faces.
Zhuravleva Katia – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual bottles
And similar to “witch marks”– or imprints that were either carved or burned onto the windows, fireplaces, doors, and other home entrances between the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries– these witch bottles were actually embedded at these exact entry points in buildings throughout the British Isles and later in the U.S.
According to anthropologist Christopher C. Fennell, supposed victims of witchcraft would first bury their witch bottles either underneath or near the hearth of their house.
Then, the heat emitted from the hearth was supposed to animate the iron nails or pins– forcing any witch to break their link to the victim or “suffer the consequences.”
“Placement near the hearth and chimney expressed associated beliefs that witches often gained access to homes through deviant paths, such as the chimney stack,” Fennell noted.
And again, akin to witch marks– which tended to rapidly increase in presence during times of political unrest or inopportune harvests– the contents of witch bottles often closely reflected real-life threats facing people during the seventeenth century, even though they were intended for supernatural purposes.
For instance, urinary problems were extremely common in both America and England during the 1600s and 1700s.
So, it is not unreasonable to assume that many of the so-called victims of witchcraft were actually experiencing symptoms of prevalent medical ailments during that time.
Nonetheless, victims of such illnesses, including bladder stones and other urinary-related ailments, would use witch bottles in hopes of transferring their pain back to the supposed witch who cursed them.
And that meant that if another person in the community began experiencing a similar ailment, it was possible they would be accused of witchcraft.
Similar to countless other anti-magical devices, though– like the witch cake– these bottle spells soon fell in popularity.
Although, that was not before migrants traveling to North America brought the concept to the United States.
And after being introduced by colonial immigrants, the witch bottle tradition persevered well into the twentieth century.
Still, there are less than a dozen concrete and documented cases of witch bottle use in the United States; meanwhile, there are nearly two hundred documented examples from Great Britain.
Researchers at the University of Hertfordshire and the Museum of London Archaeology are confident that there were more cases of witch bottle use, though.
So, in April of 2019, they launched an investigation known as the “bottles concealed and revealed” project– a three-year-long effort aimed to form a comprehensive survey of all known witch bottle examples in England.
And in addition to documenting witch bottle usage, the team also hopes to gain a stronger understanding of how this practice rose in popularity and how the phenomenon impacted medicinal ideas and beliefs.
If true crime defines your free time, this is for you: join Chip Chick’s True Crime Tribe
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
More About:Freaky
Read This Next
