Glass Knitting Needles

by Kerriann Godwin

Knitters have always known the magic of taking a single strand of yarn & transforming it into an object of love, skill, & pride. But few people know that in the past, knitting was used as a method of magic.

Over the centuries knitting, knotting & weaving have played an important role in religious & magical practices. From ancient Egypt through the Middle Ages to recent times these crafts have come to represent the creation of life, wealth & growth.

In The Museum of Witchcraft, Boscastle, you can find a pair of large glass knitting needles dating back to the late 18th Century, which were used by a 'Village Wise woman' in the casting of spells. Around this time it was common for villagers to ask the local wise woman to cast a spell for love or money, to heal farm animals, or to curse an enemy.

Integral to spell casting & incantations is the repetition of a specific word, thought or phrase over & over again, while focusing the mind. Knitting offers a perfect basis for repetition & focus!

Other materials were used for knitting needles at the time: wood; tortoiseshell; ivory - but for magic the needles had to be glass. The reason for this remains unclear - perhaps it lays in the nature of glass & its formation by the four elements: sand (earth) is transformed from stone by the sea (water), & the sand itself is transformed by heat (fire) and bellows (air) into a structure of clarity & strength. The needles are themselves wand-like, the natural tool of the magician.

At the time these needles were used, travelling glassblowers were the likely providers. These craftsmen wandered the countryside demonstrating their skill at country fairs & cottage doors with a simple kit of multicoloured glass canes & a small furnace heated by a tallow flame. They also made witch balls (credited with supernatural powers) & glass rolling pins inscribed with sentimental verses, which sailors gave to their sweethearts as parting love tokens.

When casting a spell, associations are made to enhance the magic, eg, the appropriate colour yarn is used to give the spell more power: red for love magic; blue for healing; green or brown for material success; & black for cursing. It is also important to carry out the workings on a relevant day & phase of the moon. Love spells, for example, are best performed on a Friday (ruled by Venus, Goddess of love) & curses on a Saturday (ruled by malevolent Saturn). The spell to attract wealth or love would be done on a waxing moon, the curse at the dark of the moon. All these considerations would be made to ensure the spell had the best chance of success.

With all this in place, the spell was repeated stitch by stitch until a trance like state was achieved - just like a mantra in a meditation. When the time was right, the knitting was pulled from the needles and hurled into a fire, thereby releasing the spell to the universe.

Knitting magic is simple magic - there are no robes involved, no complex rites, just a wise woman & her tools, her thoughts & her intention.

This article is adapted from one first published in Vogue Knitting

HORSE BRASSES

Part of a Long Tradition of Harness Ornaments

As part of last winter’s refurbishment of the Protection display, the museum acquired a number of horse brasses.

Horse brasses as we know them today first appeared in the 1860s, but very similar harness decorations are both widespread and ancient. Cattle in India are often protected with circular brass amulets with a sun design, which are remarkably like some British horse brasses. And a Roman bronze harness ornament, found near Cirencester and dating to the 2nd or 3rd century AD, although it has an openwork design consisting of abstract curves, bears a strong general resemblance to modern brasses.

Harness ornaments are probably as old as harness itself. Of course it is often difficult to say whether they are purely decorative or have some magical element. However, horses are highly valued animals, and many cultures today protect them with amulets, such as blue glass beads or tassels of red thread. Frederick Elworthy, writing in 1895, describes brass crescent moon amulets attached to the harness of cab horses in Naples to protect them against the evil eye: ‘The pendent crescents are often worn fastened upon the loin strap on each side, as well as on the forehead – a favourite place for a half-moon, just as it is here in Somerset.’

Polished metal is often regarded as having protective power, as it is believed to reflect away misfortune or the glance of the evil eye. It may not be coincidence that so many harness ornaments, including modern horse brasses, are so bright and shiny. Most ancient bronze harness fittings, which now have a dark patina, would originally have been gilded and have shone dramatically. Rattling or tinkling noises have also long been believed to frighten away evil, and it is likely that many simple disc-shaped harness mounts were attached in pairs so that they would jingle with the horse’s movement.

Curving shapes also send bad luck whirling away (one of the reasons horseshoes are considered lucky), which may be the significance of the design of the Roman harness ornament. Similar designs occurs on earlier Celtic horse gear, notably the extraordinary horned pony cap, from the 2nd century BC, found at Torrs Farm, Kirkcudbright.

The Scythians, a nomadic people who roamed the Steppes from around the 7th to the 3rd centuries BC, were both great horsemen and great artists – and also patrons of Greek metalworkers. Animal designs are an important feature of their jewellery and horse gear, and archaeologists think that these objects had magical properties and were intended to invoke the powers and attributes of the animals concerned. The Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg has many beautiful examples. One, a bronze bridle plaque, features a reclining stag with impressive antlers. The stag is a popular subject for modern horse brasses, and again the similarity is striking.

Animal subjects are very common on modern brasses. They also feature on some interesting medieval British harness mounts. Estimated to date from between 1300 and 1500, they are made of enamelled bronze and would originally have been very brightly coloured. One depicts a lion, a timeless symbol of strength and courage. Another features a butterfly, which may seem like a purely decorative subject, but we do know from the writings of the time that a light, dancing gait was particularly prized in medieval horses.

Two slightly earlier bronze stirrup-strap mounts, from the 11th century, feature striking faces with staring eyes, one animal, the other human. Similar faces are a popular motif on late Celtic harness mounts from the 8th and 9th centuries. Many archaeologists believe that these faces relate back to the ancient Celtic practice of head-hunting, and were a way of trapping the spiritual power taken from slain enemies. A gentler explanation is that they represent protective spirits, perhaps ancestors. It is worth noting that in modern horse brasses with a sun design, the sun – again an ancient protective symbol – is often given a human face.

Another 11th century stirrup-strap mount features a strange and unusual design – a human figure with serpents twined around the legs. This bears a curious resemblance to another of the Scythian bridle ornaments, which depicts a female deity with serpents instead of legs. Is this similarity purely coincidence, or a case of an archetypal figure cropping up at widely differing places and times?

Perhaps the most spectacular harness decorations of all are the Iranian Iron Age artefacts at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. One, a cheekpiece from around 1000 BC, combines several of the elements found in other examples – staring faces (in this case with horns), animals, and dramatic curves and spirals. Even more dramatic still is a slightly later cheekpiece depicting a horned deity flanked by winged felines, which in turn are standing on long-eared animals resembling hares. A nature deity with power over both predators and prey species – and whose protection must be invoked by hunters – is a widespread archetype, and crops up from ancient times into Arthurian legends, medieval art (in the famous ‘Lady and the Unicorn’ tapestries) and recent folktales.

However, this is taking us rather far from modern horse brasses, where the only supernatural being likely to be encountered is a Cornish pisky. Nevertheless, it is clear that horse brasses are part of a long and noble tradition of harness decoration, which reflects and celebrates the important and complex relationship between humans and horses.

SOURCES:
Frederick Thomas Elworthy, The Evil Eye, John Murray, 1895
Lloyd Laing, Celtic Britain, Paladin Books, 1981
Sheila Paine, Amulets, Thames and Hudson, 2004
Susan Youngs (ed), The Work of Angels, British Museum Publications Ltd, 1989
David Hunt, The Association of the Lady of the Unicorn and the Hunting Mythology of the Caucasus. In Folklore, Volume 114, Number 1, April 2003
The Portable Antiquities Scheme, The British Museum (via Google Image Search)
www.coincraft.com
www.flickr.com
www.hermitagemuseum.org

This article was written by Joyce Froome and was originally published in the Friends of The Museum of Witchcraft newsletter.

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MOTHER GOOSE June 2008

The origin of Mother Goose is almost certainly the Central European Goddess Holda. Night-flying wild geese were believed to be Holda and her spirit companions flying through the sky. In some legends her companions were the spirits of the dead, but it was also believed that living humans could join her. During the witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries a number of accused witches confessed to taking part in these flights, specifically mentioning Holda by name. The term ‘Mother Goose story’ – which seems to mean ‘folktale’ – apparently originated about the same time.

Holda was a Nature Goddess, with many wild animals sacred to her. As well as taking the shape of a goose, she could appear as a beautiful young woman or a fearsome crone. She was a story-telling oracle, and also someone who tested people by setting them dangerous or misleading challenges. She is probably the prototype of many of the witch-figures who feature in fairy tales. She actually appears in one of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, as Mother Holle, a mysterious old woman with magic powers who tests two young sisters, rewarding one and punishing the other.

She was said to wear a cloak made of goose-down – which may be a reference to the shamanic practice of wearing a feather cloak to become part-bird and gain the power of spirit flight. Snow was supposed to be the down falling from her cloak (although another, perhaps more modern, version of the folklore had it that snow was Holda shaking out her goose-down quilt).

One rather charming legend tells how she was travelling through the countryside on a wagon when the axle suddenly broke. A local carpenter made her a new axle, and when Holda had gone on her way he went back into his workshop and found that all the wood-shavings had turned to gold.

The Mother Goose pantomime story is in many ways a classic example of a dark mythology transformed into a light-hearted morality tale, but the important thing is that the three crucial elements are still there: magical transformation, magical test, and magical animal.

This article was written by Joyce Froome and was originally published in the Friends of The Museum of Witchcraft newsletter. The image is taken from an object in the museum.

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