Curse-tablet

From Traditional Witchcraft Wiki Project

A curse tablet or defixio is a small sheet of tin or lead on which a message wishing misfortune upon someone else is inscribed; they might also have been etched on wax, paper or wood, but the perishable nature of these materials means they rarely survive intact. The tablet was subsequently rolled up or folded, normally being pierced with nails to hold in place, and thrown into a well or spring, buried in the earth, interred in graves, or nailed to the walls of temples. They are sometimes found alongside small dolls or figurines, which are sometiems also pierced with nails. Hundreds of such tablets have been recovered from places such as Aquae Sulis, a Roman bath in England (where 130 were found, many cursing those who stole their clothes whilst bathing); indeed south-west Britain seems to have hoarded an unusually large number of these tablets.

Such a curse or binding spell that asked the gods to do harm to others was a common practice in the Graeco-Roman world. The gods typically called upon were infernal or liminal gods such as Hermes, Hecate, and Persephone, sometimes via the mediation of a dead person (probably the corpse in whose grave the tablet was deposited). Some tablets do not invoke gods, but rather list the targets of the curse, the crimes or conditions upon which the curse is valid, and/or the intended ill to befall them. Some tablets are inscribed with nothing more than the names of the targets, which suggests that an oral spell may have accompanied the manufacture of the curse. The language of those texts that do give context is often concerned with justice, either listing the targets crimes in great detail, handing over responsibility for their punishment to the gods, using indefinite grammar ("whoever committed this crime"), or conditional ("if he is guilty"), or even future conditional ("if he ever breaks his word"). Others include erotic binding-spells, and spells against thieves, and business and sporting rivals.