Lecture 2A:

The Laws of Everyday Magic

Above: manuscripts were very expensive and precious, and few had
access to them. The one above is British Library Harley Roll T 11, and
this page contains four magical diagrams. The first was supposed to
protect against enemies, the second against storms and thunder, the third
says that “by it all things were made” (the meaning of this is not clear!),
and the fourth says “This is the name of God, whoever carries it with him
will be safe.” The manuscript itself could be worn as magical protection,
so that its magical properties would supposedly be transferred to the
wearer.

In the last module we looked at two charms from everyday life: the Charm Against a
Dwarf and the Charm Against a Sudden Stitch. Those give an indication of how
elaborate charms work and of the kinds of things everyday magic was used for. Although
the charms are complex, the occasion for using them was not. They were designed to
guard against everyday things: sleep paralysis and sudden pains. These are just two of
the hundreds of everyday misfortunes that people wanted to counteract.

Stephen Wilson’s chapter “House, Work, and the Land” gives dozens of further
examples. The trouble with the book it’s taken from, The Magical Universe: Everyday
Ritual and Magic in Premodern Europe, is that it has almost too many examples. It
 2

ranges widely all over Europe and goes from the early Middle Ages up till around 1800.
There were a million magical practices during this time period, and sometimes it seems
as if Wilson has listed them all. But what they show is that magic was incredibly
widespread and commonplace. It wasn’t reserved for special holidays, such as
Hallowe’en, or important occasions such as weddings. It was also used when milking the
cow, eating bread, putting away tools, and painting furniture. Misfortune was thought to
be always impending — as indeed, especially in those days, it was. Disease could kill
people within a three-day period, and crop failure could mean literal starvation. It’s no
wonder that a common expression for most of human history was “If I live.” So it’s not a
symptom of paranoia that people wanted special protection in every way they could: it’s a
reflection of how precarious life could be.

A note on one thing mentioned by Wilson: he is misleading on the subject of witches.

At one point the chapter mentions people who blamed witches for their crop failures.
This does not mean that witches were a focus for most of the medieval period, as we will
see later. Note that most of Wilson's examples date from after the 1430s, when the
witch-hunts really began to develop. Of the two early examples he mentions, one (from
the sixth century) mentions sorcerers, which really aren’t the same as witches. The
mention from the Roman writer Lucan isn’t really about witches as we conceive of them,
but just about women trying to do harmful magic. They shouldn’t be thought of as
“witches” in the usual Hallowe’en sense — women wearing black who fly on
broomsticks, keep black cats as familiars, and all of those conventions. "Witches" as we
think of them weren't really a thing until the 1400s. (Much more on that later.)

The magic used in these examples often made use of two essential “laws” or principles of
magic: the Law of Similarity and the Law of Contagion. Understanding these helps
clarify why people tried techniques that otherwise can seem a little random and bizarre.

The Law of Similarity

This "law" is that "If things are similar, one can influence the other." So, for instance,
in the Charm Against a Dwarf, the text invokes the Seven Sleepers, an example of holy
sleep. In invoking this holy sleep, the charm hopes to influence the sleep of the victim —
become more holy, more like the Seven Sleepers, and less tormented by the evil dwarf.

As another example, let’s look at a 12th-century charm to stop bleeding:

† I conjure you, John, by the milk of St. Mary, as the river Jordan stood, so
may the blood stop, from whatever part of the body it comes. †

(The † symbol means you cross yourself at that point.) This charm refers to a Biblical
passage about a miracle in which the river Jordan stopped flowing, as described at Joshua
3:16: "the flowing water stood still. It backed up as far upstream as Adam, a city in the
area of Zaretan, while the water flowing toward the Dead Sea was completely cut off. So
the people crossed over across from Jericho."
 3

(The actual River Jordan)

So the charm hopes to stop the flowing of blood by drawing a similarity between the
flowing of the Jordan, which stopped through supernatural power, and the flowing of
blood, which should stop likewise. As the River Jordan stopped flowing, the blood
should stop flowing.

The Charm Against a Sudden Stitch has several examples of the law of similarity. The
potion has nettles in it, which is dulling the sharpness of the nettles (which resembles the
sharpness of the magical spears and knives), hoping that the evil being's weapons will
also be disabled. Then the victim is supposed to plunge a knife in this healing liquid, so
that the knife is magically disabled and the invisible spears and knives will be too.

In a very simple way, every magical rite employing things of the Church operated
according to the law of similarity. For instance, on p. 22 of “House, Work, and the
Land,” Wilson mentions that St. Grat was invoked to get rid of moles, rodents, and bugs.
The actions of pests were harmful, and therefore people assumed that the Devil was
behind them. Thus it makes sense that the holy St. Grat would make the land more holy,
which would drive out the Devil, which meant that the Devil's moles, rodents and bugs
would vanish too.

The Law of Contagion

The Law of Contagion similarly holds that there is an invisible connection between
things that have been in contact. The shorthand way of remembering this is "Once in
contact, always in contact."

This is the principle behind the so-called "voodoo doll" (although the Middle Ages
wouldn't have used the term "voodoo"). The voodoo doll often has some part of the
victim included, such as a lock of hair, and then when pins are stuck in the doll, the
victim is supposed to suffer pains in the corresponding part. The logic is: if the hair was
in contact with the victim, and the hair is moved to a doll, due to the Law of Contagion
the hair is still "in contact" with the victim, and therefore the doll is the victim.
 4

This "poppet" (doll) is from the early 1900s — we don't have any surviving examples
from the Middle Ages, although we read about them.

The law of contagion is not just bad! It could also do good. Relics of the saints, for
instance, which were bones or pieces of clothing from the saint, were thought to retain
the holy healing power of the saint, and cast a kind of "radioactivity of goodness" which
would bestow health and life on those who came near them. Often people dunked the
relics in water and drank the water, or gathered to sleep around the tomb of the
"radioactively good" saint.

(Above is a relic of St. Augustine — a piece of bone. A priest once told me there are
shops in the Vatican where you can go and they will pull out whole drawers of relics for
you to consider buying.)

Relics were thought to be so powerful, through the "Law of Contagion," that there was a
thriving trade in relics. Monasteries were reluctant to let their holiest monks travel far
from home in old age, because they might die elsewhere and someone else would get
their relics. And then people would also steal relics! It sounds crazy, but if you knew of a
small item that cured all disease, you'd probably go to a lot of trouble to get it too.
 5

And there was also a big trade in fake relics, as you might expect. If you're read
Chaucer’s Pardoner's Tale, you'll remember that the Host insults the Pardoner and says
his relic of "holy cloth" is nothing more than a pair of dirty underwear. So people were
not any more gullible then than now — they didn't automatically believe in everything,
but also they never gave up hope.

The "Law of Contagion" and the "Law of Similarity" form what is called "sympathetic
magic," or what is sometimes called "associative thinking" or even "magical thinking."
Often the magical powers of various things such as trees, plants, and so forth began as a
kind of sympathetic magic — for instance, a tree might have jagged leaves and so would
be thought to help against jagged wounds. Often these associations have been forgotten
or remain unstated, but they account for a lot of seemingly random "powers" assigned to
objects, and they underlie the working of many if not most charms and spells.

One important thing to note is that the Law of Similarity and the Law of Contagion are
not always easy to tell apart, and some kinds of magic use them both! Identifying them is
not an exact science.

The reading for this module will present a host of everyday magical practices. As you
go, think about how many things in life (in other words, practically all of them) had
associated magical practices. And keep an eye out for instances of the law of similarity
and the law of contagion. And if you think about it, you may find the same laws of
magic operating in good-luck rituals familiar from the modern day.