Colonial Era Grimoire

A book that received a lot of attention here at the Juggler in 2010 was Katherine Howe’s spell-binding (dare one say) Historical (Magickal) Witch-Mystery The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (Hyperion, 2009). The object of the book’s title is described variously as an almanac, an assortment of recipes for healing, and “a colonial shadow book,” derived from “book of shadows,” which is called ”one contemporary term for a collection of recipes and spells that a given witch has found to be particularly effective, often handed down from master to initiate.” (p. 222) The historical discovery of an “original colonial-era shadow book, used by an actual witch” (p. 350) is presented as a great find; as the heroine explains to her faculty advisor, “My research indicates that there are no surviving colonial North American examples of any book or instructional text for practicing witchcraft. [As opposed to manuals for finding or discovering witches.] We usually interpret this to mean that nobody was actually practicing it, right? So if Deliverance’s book is what I think it is, and if it has survived, it would be an amazing find. Its contents could change the way history looks at the development of medicine, of midwifery, of science…” Her voice trails off. (p. 128)

Again, in her Postscript, Ms. Howe reiterates, “No North American colonial-era grimoires have been found- at least, not yet.” (p. 366) My apologies to Ms. Howe, with my admiration for her writing skills and her encyclopedic historical knowledge: According to Jon Butler, “Magic, Astrology, and the Early American Religious Heritage, 1600-1760,” from Witches of the Atlantic World: a Historical Reader and Primary Sourcebook, Elaine G. Breslaw, ed. (New York University Press, 2000, p. 520): there is such a book, residing at the South Caroliniana [sic] Library, at the University of South Carolina, Columbia- the “only known manuscript of occult cures to survive from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America.”  

Known as the Joshua Gordon “Witchcraft Book,” nothing is known about its compiler; whoever he was, though, he was at great pains to “make a ritual-like arrangement of its contents.” The volume opens and closes with two pages of the “kind of charms common to the English occult tradition.” (p. 520) The first page contains the phrase “Behold him Seized Maliciously [Abused]” reproduced nine times, filling the space; the book ends in similar manner (it is conjectured that the phrase refers to the seizure of Christ.)

Between the opening and closing pages of these “ritual phrases or charms” are to be found fifteen pages of “occult cures,” mostly based upon the “traditional European notion of sympathetic attraction.” One item, an “Indian cure for the [rupture] in children,” is notable for crossing cultural boundaries; several cures link occult rituals to Christianity, such as the one that advises hunters to “discharge your gun in the name of the father, son, and holy ghost.” Another stimulates milk-production in cows by heating an iron (making it “Red hot”), and then pouring the cow’s milk over the hot iron, while “repeating the names of the blessed trinity.” (p. 521)

Magickal belief and practice is so well-established in England in the 1600s, there is no reason not to expect it to be transferred across the Atlantic Ocean. As Richard Godbeer explains in “Divining, Healing, and Destroying,” also in Witches of the Atlantic World (p. 132), folk magic “flourished in the northern colonies,” with cunning-folk, healers, and fortune-tellers cited throughout New England. “It is clear that resort to magic was not uncommon. New England court records contain many references to magical activity”; while Puritan ministers “were evidently convinced that magical practice was widespread. This is not to suggest that magical practice was ubiquitous in early New England, but those who did turn to magical techniques were clearly members of a sizable constituency.” (p. 133) Mr. Butler reaffirms: “Although the use of magic never prospered here as it had in England, a wide range of occult ideas and practices- alchemical practitioners, the availability of occult books, occult notions in colonial almanacs, and even a few self-announced cunning persons- were evident in the colonies between 1650 and 1720.” (p. 519)  

Ms. Breslaw’s book is an invaluable source for any Pagan or Wiccan with an eye towards the historical record, covering a vast array of subjects while presenting an impressive number of notable writings. Most fascinating of all is its concession that Magicke too made the journey from the Old World to the New- as a remarkable and tiny, hand-crafted volume preserved at the South Caroliniana Library attests.