17th century urine-filled 'witch bottle' found

Ok...who wants to follow Coulter and Malkin around, waiting for them to take a leak?

Discovery provides a unique insight into witchcraft beliefs of that period

During the 17th century in England, someone urinated in a jar, added nail clippings, hair and pins, and buried it upside-down in Greenwich, where it was recently unearthed and identified by scientists as being the world's most complete known "witch bottle."

This spell device, often meant to attract and trap negative energy, was particularly common from the 16th to the 17th centuries, so the discovery provides a unique insight into witchcraft beliefs of that period, according to a report published in the latest British Archaeology.

Lead researcher Alan Massey, a former chemist and honorary fellow of Loughborough University, believes "the objects found in witch bottles verify the authenticity of contemporary recipes given for anti-witchcraft devices, which might otherwise have been dismissed by us as being too ridiculous and outrageous to believe."

An Old Bailey court record from 1682 documents that a husband, believing his wife to be afflicted by witchcraft, was advised by a Spitalfields apothecary to "take a quart of your Wive's urine, the paring of her Nails, some of her Hair, and such like, and boyl them well in a Pipkin."

More: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31107319/

Calling them witches is an insult to half the people I know.

or waterboarding her.

that a disagreeable woman must be a witch. :eyes:

but each to his own.

It's still fine to bash Pagans on this board because our ideas are so "crazy".

I think just about any religion on here with the exception of Islam has been bashed here at one time or another...Christianity seems to get it's fair share as well!:shrug:

Things were simple back then for women. Do what your husband says and he won't beat you.

People evacuated into pots and threw the results into the gutters (or out of windows - hence the term "gardez l'eau" (mind the water)).

He just needed to make sure he didn't add his own contribution during the night.

I wondered where the term "Gardy-loo!" came from.

People on DU know all sorts of good stuff!!! :D

I am a veritable font of mostly useless knowledge - and not perky enough to try out for Jeopardy . . . :eyes:

And isn't that phrase the great understatement of all time? 'Watch out for the water'??? The water? Even if you accept urine as 'water', they did other things in those pots!

Were I able to time travel, I think I'd skip the urban areas in the Middle Ages.

He doesn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.

17th century, 20th century, not so different.

I thought they meant that the Wise Women had placed them to protect themselves from those foolish enough to be cowed by the ministers of the time and think they were "evil witches".

who happens to follow the Old Ways, and she says that yes, that is what it was. Told me about a modern version, where you take a Mason jar, put into it shards of a broken mirror and nails. You bury several of these jars around your property and they are a form of protection--the mirrors attract negative energies and that sharp objects in the jar keep them in the jar.

Except I read you should still use urine as well.

Thanks! :hi:

It's whatever works for the person. There are other, easier ways to put your "essence" into a spell.

And yet I'll bet there are DUers who are thinking "hey, I bet that works!"

:)

But Wicca is a recognized religion and many of its members are a little sensitive to the whole Wizard of Oz Witch stereotype. Or is it cool if I make a picture of Zombie Jesus?

Found two large, antique glass jugs filled with yellow liquid in the basement when we moved into our house. Yeah, two giant bottles of pee. Apparently the idiot--er, previous owner--shut off the toilets to "save water" (WTF this was a rental but not a summer cottage!) and while he worked on clearing all the junk out of the house and pitching it into a dumpster in the driveway, he emptied his bladder into two antique gallon jugs. Didn't run me off, but I have wanted to steer clear of him ever since (otherwise it'd be too tempting to turn him into a toad).

It wasn't witch's urine - it was the urine of a person thought to be afflicted by witchcraft.

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