Fighting Witches & Demons with bottles and other things ever since the 1600s
The year is 1644. You left your home in a bustling town in England and now find yourself living in a small house – not much more than a cabin – in the woods of the Massachusetts Bay Colony not far from Salem. All you can see beyond the land you’ve cleared is woods – on all sides. Your nearest European neighbor is a quarter mile away, but you and your family catch glimpses of the people you call Indians in the shadows of the trees, or even brazenly coming out in the open, walking up to one of your farm animals, or looking in a window, or even an open door. You sometimes refer to them as “savages” because their clothes, language, homes, and lifestyles are so different from yours; your minister has preached that they are servants of the Devil.
There’s much more to fear in the wilds of original Lynn, like bears, cougars, bobcats, moose, rattlesnakes, and wolves. Any day can become a nightmare. But nighttime makes it still worse.
Your house provides some safety from the wild animals and Indians at night, but evil can still find its way inside. In spirit form, witches and their familiars (animals like cats, rats, squirrels, and mice) can get into the house through the smallest openings: under the door, a hole in the wall, or even the keyhole, and most easily, down the chimney (Figure 1). Then nothing can stop them from cursing your child or spouse with sickness, pain, and even death.
The Bible Told Me So
Colonists had no doubt that witches and the devil were real because the Bible told them so. Exodus 22:18 reads, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” It was a clear statement that witches existed. And the Bible also stated many times that the Devil was very real and dangerous: “Be sober; be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walketh about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” 1 Peter 5:8
When a sickness seemed unusual or didn’t yield to available medicines, it was called “unnatural” and suspected to have been caused by a witch’s curse. The doctor who authored this book (Figure 2) had no doubt about the source of several unusual and uncommon sicknesses and diseases; they couldn’t be explained or cured and thus, he stated without any doubt, they were the work of witchcraft.
The fear of witchcraft was not simply a phenomenon of 1692 – it was widespread throughout New England and the limited existing records document over 200 cases starting as early as 1647 and there are 33 known executions (of which Salem accounts for only 19). The records for the fate of 69 others have not yet been found, so those put to death could be a higher number. 59 confessed to being witches, largely the result of fear, interrogation techniques, and the miseries of incarceration.
Their ministers preached that faith, obedience, and prayer were the proper defense against witchcraft, but terrible, unexplainable things were still happening to the faithful and some felt the need to do more than just pray. You might pray that a fox wouldn’t attack your chickens, but you were still going to get your gun and shoot, if it tried. So how could they better defend their loved ones? And how could they protect their families at bedtime, When the candles were all blown out?
One option was turn to the Bible for God’s clues for protection. The Bible was considered to be full of symbolic messages like the power of certain numbers:
For example: 3 for the Holy Trinity (the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost), 5 for the wounds of Christ, 12 for the apostles, and more.
Bushes of mountain ash were often planted around the outside of the house because the 5-pointed pentagram pattern on each berry was believed to be a sign that God would protect the house against evil.
A braid of 12 garlic bulbs hung behind an outside door was hoped to ward off witches and thieves.
Colonists also turned to the secret practices of family and friends. Some used methods of ritualized protection to keep their family and farm animals safe. When they had lived in Great Britain, they and their relatives and friends had folklore traditions for generations – of carving or drawing special protection symbols and hiding ritual objects in their homes and barns – all to keep their families and animals safe from witches. The protective marks and objects were designed to either trap or repel evil spirits.
But ministers like Increase and Cotton Mather called it counter-magic and white magic. They warned that using white magic to fight a witch’s black magic was playing into the Devil’s hands because ALL magic was of the Devil … but the fearful were desperate.
Ritual Protection Marks
The hexafoil is just one example of protective marks that have been found in homes still standing in what was Massachusetts Bay Colony (Figure 3). Also known as the “daisy wheel,” it is a solar symbol that has been traced back to Roman antiquity (the petals representing the sun's rays) [Hexafoil stems from the German word hexen, which means witches.]
Protective marks like the hexafoil were placed near doors, windows, and around fireplaces, the openings where evil could easily enter the home. Protective objects were hidden behind walls and under floors, the fireplace hearth, or the threshold of doors.
Protecting one’s home or barn from witches required no expense or special skills. The marks were easily made with the sharp point of a knife, scissors, compass, or nail, and ritual objects were items around the house and barn that were being repurposed instead of discarded. It was believed that these simple marks and ordinary objects magically transformed in the spirit world into weapons and traps to catch, repel, and even kill witches.
The early colonists believed broken items in this world were whole in the spirit world; weak things became strong; what was dark here was light there; “dead” (or nonfunctioning) here became “alive” in the world of spirits, just like the crucified Jesus Christ was resurrected from death and became alive again. Thus, a hexafoil solar symbol carved into the wall around your fireplace was glowing like the sun in the spirit world, keeping witches and other demons (Satan’s minions loved darkness but hated light) away from the house and your family.
The protective marks are rarely dated but the protective objects often can be. Many ritual protection marks been found in the few 17th century New England homes still standing, but objects have been found in them that date as late as the 1890s. Other New England homes built after the 1720s have also been found to have ritual protection marks and objects. After 1692, the church and the law backed away from accusing and convicting suspected witches. Without the church and the courts protecting them, some people continued to protect themselves from evil and “bad luck” throughout the 1700s and 1800s, and even into the early 20th century. Here are a few examples.
In 1846 the Salem Register described supernatural events occurring in the 1600s very near the Corning family’s home in Beverly.
One story was of a large number of black cats that tormented a man with their caterwauling “for some deed of darkness he had done”; he was only able to pacify them by psalm singing. When the man died, “these supposed agents of the other world … completely covered his coffin; and upon being disturbed, all made their exit up the chimney, bearing, as was supposed, the spirit of their victim with them” [an example of evil using the chimney as an entrance and exit from the house].
Another “eccentric” individual on the same street was also described; he practiced “witchcraft and superstition .… Among other things, he kept by him the hand taken from the corpse of a first-born male child, in which he contended he could place a light of the most brilliant character and carry it anywhere, unperceived by anyone except himself” [another example of light in the dark spirit world.]
Ritual Protection Objects: Weaponized Bottles
Bottles had a key role in ritual protection from witches and evil. The first bottles the colonists used were the ones they carried with them from Europe – sturdy salt-glazed stoneware that contained beer or wine, or sometimes mercury. Once empty, the bottles were repurposed, just like the colonist's other few possessions in this new world.
These old bottles were called Bartmann (meaning “bearded man”) in the area of Cologne, Germany, where they were made, and Bellarmine in Great Britain and the colonies, where over 100,000 were used. Bartmann’s were anthropomorphic, with its face on the neck and bulbous belly, and there was something else that made them perfect for the task: those produced in the mid-17th century most often had either an angry or fearful expression. I believe the sinister facial expressions were a graphic reflection of the public’s terror during the intensive persecution and eradication of suspected witches from among family members and friends during those decades (over 2,000 were burned at the stake as witches in the area of Cologne, which had a population of just 40,000; so about 5 of every 100 people were executed for witchcraft), as well as showing anger towards their enemies whom they suspected were witches. The early Bartmanns (made in the 1500s) were crafted with faces that were jolly and smiling or no expression at all; but by the mid-1600s, during the witchcraft persecutions, the expression had changed to angry (Figure 4) or fearful (Figure 5).
A household in the American colonies that was troubled by witchcraft would repurpose the bottle by adding the urine of the sick person and sometimes their hair, nail clippings, and a piece of fabric cut into the shape of a heart. The bottle thus filled with body parts and fluids of the family member who was believed to be bewitched with some unnatural illness was designed to trick the spirit of the witch into attacking the decoy bottle instead of the actual person. The iron nails and pins (usually in multiples of three) it contained would then impale the witch’s spirit that had dove into the bottle, causing the actual witch pain, either killing her or getting her to stop her bewitchment of the sick family member. X-rays have shown such bottles found that have been with contents that included nails, hair, and pins floating in liquid that was subsequently analyzed to be urine (Figures 6 & 7).
Continued Use of Witch Bottles: 19th-21st Centuries
The idea of putting counter-curses or charms in bottles has continued ever since the days when people had intense fear of witches and their demons. They’re still being found buried and hidden in old buildings and washing up on beaches. Just a few examples are included here from Virginia, Louisiana, and Texas.
Figure 8 shows an aqua squat soda embossed CHAS GROVE / COLA PA that was found near an old brick hearth at the site of an old fort ("Redoubt 9") in York County, Virginia. Archeologists have dated the find to 1862-1863 and the bottle was "full of broken nails"; its contents and location near the old hearth made them speculate that it was used to repel evil - a possible Civil War era witch bottle.
Suspected of being an instrument of voodoo, the bottle in Figure 9 may have been constructed to fight evil or to cast a spell. It was found in a house site dated to the mid-1800s at Algiers Point in New Orleans, Louisiana. A news report explained, "[It] may have beenused as a protection spell for the property. It also may have been used in voodoo to cast a different spell. ... [It was] said to have been found in an area formerly populated by a Catholic church, Afro-caribbean voodoo practies, and 'witchy-type fortune teller people.' " Its contents included an unknown (and not yet analyzed) liquid, hair, a tooth, and an earwig. Public reaction to the possible voodoo find has been to put the unsettling bottle back where it was found, apparently to avoid the possibility of bad mojo. (Are we really so different from our superstitious colonial ancestors?)
The final witch bottle shown in this article was found rolling in with the waves onto a Texas beach (Figure 10). It is a mid- to late 20th century light aqua whiskey bottle covered in barnacles and mollusks that have attached to the surface, but inside is a lot of unidentified plant matter and liquid, deliberately placed and sealed. Multiple bottles have been found on beaches from North Padre Island to Matagorda Island. The Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi believe these bottles that have been washing ashore likely originated in the Caribbean or South America. The plant matter and liquids have not yet been analyzed by the university. A mysterious message from another place.
WHAT DID YOU FIND??
I would like to document all possible finds of witch bottles in the United States and my bottle hunting friends are in the best position to find such bottles. If you find a bottle with any combination of liquid, nails, pins, hair, teeth, bones, thorns, hear shapes, and finger or toenail clippings inside, please let me know about your find! What was found, where, by whom, and when. Was it found behind a wall or under where a fireplace, door, or window was located? Maybe YOU have found America’s next “witch bottle”!! I will post all finds here on promisingcures.com!
Write to me at promising.cures@gmail.com and send me pictures of your possible witch bottle find!
One final point of interest: the first U.S. souvenir spoon ever made was the Salem spoon in 1891. It features a witch with just her broom – no cat, crescent moon, or bats – She seems agitated, aggressively pointing either to the name Salem or further down the stem to three round-headed pins. 2 centuries had passed since the Salem Witch Trials, but those who designed the spoon still remembered that the pins were put in bottles to fight witches – perhaps it was a little reminder, just in case Salem had another witch scare!
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