Chimney
From Traditional Witchcraft Wiki Project
The chimney is the flue of a fireplace, and is thus intrinsically associated with the hearth of a home. As such it is considered the heart of the household, and is accordingly a common place of interment for those magics seeking to protect, harm or heal the house and its occupants, such as written charms, dolls and so forth. Such charms are also intended to stop witches from descending down people's chimneys.
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Chimney Interments
Many items have been found interred in chimneys, especially those of an apotropaic nature. Indeed, Agrippa said of charms that "sometimes they hang them in a chimney over smoke". Coins are often placed under the hearthstone or in the chimney, but more unusual are things such as the wooden wigmaker's block, carved with the face of a man, that was recovered from a chimney in Bradford Abbas, near Sherborne, in 1749. The purpose of this may have been similar to a chimney doll.Other items found in chimneys include:
- A Stone - "A house at Littlewindsor had a large stone bricked into the chimney; if the stone were taken out of the house, poltergeist manifestations would occur" - Edward Waring, Ghosts and Legends of the Dorset Countryside (Compton Press, Tisbury, 1977).
- Onions wrapped with a piece of paper, scribed with the victim's name, and held in place with pins.
- An effigy of a penis stuck with pins (fashioned by a spurned lover).
- A concealed shoe, normally used as a decoy for malefic magic.
Chimney's And Witch Bottles
The chimney is a natural place of interment for the witch bottle, as this extract from Folklore magazine attests:
A neighbour that had the palsy so terr'ble bad he couldn’t walk nor guide hisself, and said as he were overlooked, and twold it to a travelling man, and he said if we could say who ‘twere as doned it he’s cure un. So the poor man said ‘twere a woman as lived a long way off. ‘Never mind’, says the travelling man, ‘I’ll bring her here in the form o’ a hare, and make her cure thee.’ So he bid un get a odd number o’ folk, and my father were one, to sit up at night and do what he twold un. And he did say as there were a bottle o’ summat hanged up in chimney. And the fire were blinded off, and the travelling man were a-reading verses out of the Bible backward, when just as we was outside the string broke, and the bottle fell, and it broke, and what come o’ the hare I can’t say.'
H. Colley March, ‘Dorset folklore collected in 1897: I’, Folk-Lore 10 (1899) pp478-489: p488.
Chimney's And Hearts
Bullock's hearts have also been found in chimneys, often full of pins. Frederick Elworthy in his book "The Evil Eye" (1895) speaks of how when a pig died of overlooking, the heart was stuck full of pins and thorns from a whitethorn (hawthorn). This was then put up in a chimney so that is dried out, and as it withered so would the person who cast the malefic magic. Furthermore, whilst the heart lasted no witch could have power over that household's pigs. Here follows an illustration of this type of magic:
"A bullock’s heart, into which was stuck a quantity of the prickles of the white thorn, some nails, pins , and other things… It presented a very dry, shrivelled, and almost mummified appearance, evidently having been in the smoke for many years"
John Symonds Udal, Dorsetshire Folk-Lore (Hertford, 1922) citing Bridport News March 1884.
Such magic didn't just use hearts, George Roberts in his "Social History of the Southern Counties of England" (Longmans, 1856) recounts how "a piece of bacon stuck with pins used to be suspended in chimneys to interrupt witches in their descent, and so avert their visit."
Chimney's And Toads
Francis Barrett in his book "The Magus" outlines the following method of making an amulet against many ailments:
"Paracelsus and Helmont both agree, that in the toad, although so irreverent to the sight of man, and so noxious to the touch, and of such strong violent antipathy to the blood of man, I say, out of this hatred Divine Providence hath prepared us a remedy against manifold diseases most inimical to man's nature. The toad hath a natural aversion to man; and this scaled image, or idea of hatred, he carries in his head, eyes, and most powerfully throughout his whole body: now that the toad may be highly prepared for a sympathetic remedy against the plague or other disorders, such as the ague, falling sicknesses, and various others; and that the terror of us, and natural inbred hatred may the more strongly be imprinted and higher ascend in the toad, we must hang him up aloft in a chimney, by the legs, and set under him a dish of yellow wax, to receive whatsoever may come down, or fall from his mouth; let him hang in this position, in our sight, for three or four days, at least till he is dead; now we must not omit frequently to be present in sight of the animal so that his fears and inbred terror of us, with the ideas of strong hatred, may encrease even unto death. So you have a most powerful remedy in this one toad, for the curing of forty thousand persons infected with the pest or plague."
Chimney And Kites
Cecil Williamson relates how a kite is used by witches in the south-west as a form of curse. The basic method is to take the kite to the victim's house at night and fly the kite over the chimney so that it is borne up by the heat from their fireplace; in this position the witch can sap away the strength from the household, weakening the will of the occupants so that the witch may have power over them and attain their desire.
