The Witch Bottle

The "witch bottle" is one in a variety of container spells whose origins begin roughly in sixteenth century England and was eventually transplanted into early colonial America. Overall the purpose of the device was to trap evil directed towards its owner; this was done by thwarting magical attacks through torment. Fashioned from either glass or earthenware jars they would contain a series of unpleasant items: pins, nails, &c. Commonly found within excavated witch bottles the device would also contain a felt scrap, which usually taking the shape of heart with a series of pins stuck into the material. The whole lot would be added to the bottle or jar and topped off with urine (sometimes hair depending) of its owner.

Common examples of a witch bottle were those that were created from either Greybeards or the so-called Bellarmine jugs; the latter an earthenware container German in origin. It would come to be produced throughout Europe; allegedly named after Cardinal Robert Bellarmine. As a major export of Germany since the medieval period and well into the early modern period the Bellarmine jug was exported to Eastern Europe, Britain, as well as North America. More accurately called the Bartmann jug (Bartmann Gr. "bearded man") they are identifiable by the grimacing face of a bearded man as well as their peculiar shape. An archeological in discovery in 2009 unearthed the remains of an American witch bottle in Essington, Pennsylvania, which contained six pins; additionally buried with it a potsherd and a fragment of bird bone. In an article in Archeology (2009), Marshall Becker posits that the bearded face "resembling the face of a warlock, one probable reason for their use as witch bottles." However, more plausible is the fact they were an easily obtainable item. Whatever the case may be the Bellarmine or Bartmann jugs are exemplar of the housing structure that constitutes a witch bottle; both term are accurate, however, the reason as to why two names no one is completely sure. One possibility is that Bellarmine jars were a sort of ridicule; Bellarmine being opposed to Protestant England and Germany as well as his opposition to alcohol, which the jars usually held.

Historically how the device works is based on the understand that the afflicted party's urine is in someway connected to whoever initiated the attack. With the inclusion of pins and the like it provides torment for the tormentor, sympathetically speaking. This is seen elsewhere in other charms such as the "witch cake". Most notably utilized during the Salem Witch Trails this charm according to lore would reveal witch as well as to cure an afflicted person. A cake was prepared with the urine of one alleged to have been bewitched and fed to a dog. The witch (unknown) would suffer as the urine of the bewitched contained part of whatever the witch had sent, "The Salem justice, at least some of them, do assert, that the cure of the afflicted persons is a natural effect...instructed in Cartesian philosophy and in the doctrine of effluvia...the venomous and malignant particle, that were ejected from the eyes, do, by this means, return to the body whence they came, and so leave the afflicted person pure and whole" (Hill, 87).

Modern witch bottle have the tendency to be kinder than their predecessors containing herbs, sometimes pins, and at times omitting urine; rendering it more of a warding charm than one that is tailor to counteract witchcraft (I prefer the former as oppose to the latter). Deployment of such charms are historically hid on the property, usually the farthest corner of the home, or beneath the hearth, or in an inconspicuous spot in the home. Of course many charm especially those that are English in origins have turned up hidden within the walls of the home or even bricked into the chimney.

This was originally a discussion post that I have edited and expanded on.