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HAND OF GLORY
The severed hand of a hanged murderer, magically preserved, once was used as a Charm in Black Magick and was believed to aid burglars in breaking into homes and buildings.
The hand of glory was the right hand of a murderer, ideally severed while the corpse still swung from the gallows, or cut during an eclipse of the moon. It was wrapped in a shroud, squeezed of Blood and pickled for two weeks in an earthenware jar with salt, long peppers and saltpeter. It was then either dried in an oven with vervain, an herb believed to repel Demons, or laid out to dry in the sun, preferably during the dog days of August.
Once preserved, the hand was fitted with candles between the fingers. The candles, called "dead man's candles," were made from the murderer's fat, with the wick being made from his hair. In another method of curing, the hand of glory was bled, dried and dipped in wax, so that the fingers themselves could be lit as candles.
With candles or fingers burning, the hand of glory supposedly had the power to freeze people in their footsteps and render them speechless. Burglars lit hands of glory before breaking into a house, confident that the Charm would keep the occupants in a deep sleep while they plundered the household. If the thumb refused to burn, it meant someone in the house was awake and could not be Charmed. According to lore, once a hand of glory was lit, nothing but milk could extinguish it.
As a counter-Charm, homeowners made ointments from the Blood of screech owls, the fat of white hens and the bile of black cats and smeared it on their thresholds.
Hands of glory were linked to Witches during the Witch-hunt centuries. In 1588 two German women, Nichel and Bessers, who were accused of Witchcraft and the exhumation of corpses, admitted they poisoned helpless people after lighting hands of glory to immobilize them. John Fian, who was severely tortured in his Witch trial in Scotland in 1590, confessed to using a hand of glory to break into a church, where he performed a service to the Devil.
PLEASE NOTE:
One of the major problems with 'defining' Paganism and/or its beliefs and practices is that it is an 'organic' movement, in that it is undergoing constant change and re-evaluation from within, and as such any 'one-size-fits-all' approach to understanding Paganism will be found wanting.
Due to the very 'organic' nature of Paganism, and the many differing Paths and Traditions within it, in many cases no one definition may be universally accepted by all Pagans. Therefore, where such cases of possible conflicting and/or contradictory meanings of certain terms occur I have endevoured to give not only the generally accepted meaning, but also any major 'variations' in belief and/or practice.
Christians who believe this difference in meaning of certain key terms, beliefs and practices to be unique to Paganism need to remember that such conflicts also arise within the Body of Christ - the Church. Take for instance the differing practices amongst Christians concerning Baptism and the different attitudes towards women in the clergy.
- Jean-Luc
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