Two corked seventeenth-century wine bottles, one found on a wreck off the coast of the Netherlands, the other in the foundation of a demolished house in England, have yielded strikingly different contents: a rare example of 350-year-old Portuguese wine, and a putrid concoction of urine and hair designed to harm witches who cast spells.There are a large number of apotropaic deposits on show in the Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle, including a witch-bottle with urine in it. The Archaeology article claims that this is the first time that it has been definitely proven that witch-bottles contained urine. As most of the Museum of Witchcraft ones were found in walls and so on, that can't be the case, surely? (Unless amateur finds don't count...)
There's also a website devoted entirely to apotropaic objects, including shoes, dead cats, horse skulls, apotropaic marks (which I have written about before), written charms and witch-bottles.
4 comments:
Its says in the article that its rare to find bottles with their contents intact.
Yes I know but that doesn't tally with the collection they've got at the Witchcraft Museum!
They have found someones protection bottle. As old as it is, it no longer serves the purpose it was made for, at that is to protect the owner from harm.
Yep.
And your point is?
Post a Comment