EXHIBITIONS
HUON MALLALIEU
SPELLBOUND: MAGIC, RITUAL & WITCHCRAFT
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford to 6th January
It seemed reasonable to our ancestors to attribute any plague, blight or lesser misfortune to the malign conjurings of some ugly neighbour, and accuse them of witchcraft. And, today, it is automatic to assume that any skull found beneath the floorboards is evidence of past satanic practices.
That is not always the case. Skulls – in particular horse skulls – together with pots, were sometimes placed under boards and under threshing floors as acoustic devices. ‘To enhance dancing and the rhythmic beat of threshing wheat and barley’, according to the book accompanying this fascinating show.
It’s also easy to assume witchcraft is ‘a delusion exploded by the Enlightenment’ even if ‘the supernatural was not exactly dismantled in the 18th century, but it was made to conform to rational principles’, rendering the universe mechanical and comprehensible.
To discover how much we are still prone to what the organisers call ‘magical thinking’, they pose six questions at the outset. Do you have a lucky object? Do you believe in mysterious forces in the world? Does performing rituals stop you feeling anxious? Could you stab the image of a loved one? Do you worry about tempting fate? Visitors may then choose whether or not to pass under a ladder when entering the exhibition.
To the medieval European mind, the cosmos was thronged with spirits, both
demons and angels, through which the inexplicable could be explained. The cauldron of magical thinking contained a seething brew of pagan cosmology, as propounded by Aristotle, and biblical and Christian principles, natural medicine and folk wisdom. According to Charles I’s official herbalist, vervain was not only a remedy for inward pains and bodily torments, but equally effective ‘against all poyson, and the venom of dangerous beastes and serpents, as also against bewitched drinks or the like’.
In parts of the world today, mixtures of medicine, magic and sometimes religion cause, or at least contribute to, the slaughter of elephants, rhinos and albino Africans. For us, less malign rituals – coins in wells and fountains or attached to trees, love padlocks on bridges, and birthday cake wishes – flourish despite reason.
Among the illuminated manuscripts, unicorn horns, nail-pierced hearts and toads, talismans, votive offerings, prints, poppets, shoes, horseshoes, witch bottles, charms, magic mirrors, crystals, armillary spheres, images of St Michael the Archangel, mummified cats and rats, tracts and treatises, are works of art and objects of beauty and fascination.
I did not know that, in the 17th century, Bellarmine stoneware jugs (named after the now sainted theologian Cardinal Robert Bellarmine) were used as witch bottles. And witches are often assumed to be female. In places such as Finland and Iceland, though, they were predominantly male, because male shamans were persecuted as witches during Christianisation.
Installations by contemporary artists Ackroyd & Harvey, Annie Cattrell and Katharine Dowson are, for once, relevant and provide a worthwhile commentary.