The “Book of Magical Charms” is small, a bit larger than a hotel Bible. Each of its 117 pages were written by hand, in a script so dense and dark that, when the book is closed, its edges look splotched. The author used standard European iron gall ink, and probably a quill. The book, which dates to the 1600s, arrived at the Newberry Library in 1988, bundled with old medical texts. It was not signed, and nobody knew who had written it. For years it existed at the Near North institution as a curiosity, a mysterious antique without authorship — one so eerie it would be at home in an “Evil Dead” movie.
The “Book of Magical Charms” is navy blue, with nothing on its cover or spine; it received its name from Newberry librarians, who needed an in-house description to file it away.
“Occult manuscript” — that’s how they filed it.
Which sounds about right. The handwriting — in English, with Latin sprinkled throughout — cascades in a tight, frantic hand, serifs at the end of each stroke bleeding out sloppily. But your eye stops cold at the illustrations, which look cryptic at best: pentagrams, runelike lettering, hieroglyphic-esque figures, circular symbols ringed by navigational forks that resemble gothic weather vanes, medieval sports gear; two of the pages are dominated by images that appear to be satanic telephone poles, sprouting arms, wings.
Then there are the charms.
Doth ye a toothache?
“Take a tooth out of a deadman’s skull and hange the same about the partie’s neck …”
Lost ye voice?
“Dip 5 Sage leaves in mustard, lay them under his tong, closing his mouth agayn. This will cause him to speake …” (Only do this, the spell warns, if the ailing soul is still alive.)
“People who knew about the ‘Book of Magical Charms’ have always come in to take a look,” said Jill Gage, the Newberry curator on the history of printing and a specialist in British literature, “and for as long as they have been coming, many have tried to piece together some picture of who the author might have been. Yet nobody knew its origins.”
And so, six months ago, the Newberry plastered all 117 pages on the library’s website, and asked whomever was interested to take a stab: Transcribe and translate this unusual thing, this tome of spells and potions, should ye dare. Essentially, they created a WikiMagic, a site for crowd-sourcing its translation. Partly they did this to encourage the public to engage more with the 130-year old research library’s venerated collections. And partly they did this because — though the book is mostly in (very old) English, and others have tackled pieces of it — the Newberry itself never had a definitive translation.
Here’s what happened:
Since May, the “Book of Magical Charms” has been read on the library’s website more than 300,000 times. Matthew Clarke, the Newberry’s digital initiatives assistant tasked with overseeing the response, said thousands have tinkered a bit with the online text — while roughly a thousand of those have contributed seriously to the transcription and translation of its pages. Indeed, by the end of summer, every page was transcribed and translated — often with multiple variations and readings. Moreover, the library learned some surprising things. Oh, and as for who exactly is doing this online translation: Many of the book’s most active translators have been self-identified witches and warlocks.
Sabrina the Ink Witch — more than happy to help.
Jeff the Canadian Alchemist — could lend insight on magic influences.
Gary the Wiccan from Kentucky — prefers the name “Book of Shadows.”
All of which invites a question:
Hasn’t anyone at the Newberry ever seen a horror movie?
A single episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”? Don’t they know: Thou shall not mess with that which shall not be, you know, messed with? On a rainy weekday in October, as yellow leaves fall across its stairs and dark skies gather above, the Newberry is exactly where you would expect someone to open the Gates of Hell in Chicago. It’s stony, imposing, and inside, in a room also holding a book of prayer from the Spanish Inquisition and a book on witchcraft from Increase Mather (one of the architects of the Salem Witch Trials), the “Book of Magical Charms” awaited placidly behind glass.
Chamber music played lightly.
Gage leaned toward the “Book of Magical Charms” and spoke low. “The page it’s open to,” she said, “this is about how to speak with the spirit world, and I believe it’s telling you names that conjure up certain spirits — something like, ‘I conjure you by the name of, uh … angels’? Something something ‘Send a spirit called … Sagrit? Or — Sangit?’ Something then about ‘Fulfilling his commands,’ then something, something …”
Wait, what? Whose commands?
The “Book of Magical Charms” is being shown through Dec. 27 as part of “Religious Change and Print 1450-1700,” an exhibit about the ways print materials were used to extend (and subvert) religious influences from roughly the late Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution.
Before the Newberry put the book on display, however, it did know a few things about it: They knew that it came from Stanton Friedberg, a prominent Chicago doctor who collected rare medical books and died in 1997. They knew it was likely a “commonplace book,” a kind of traveling reader’s diary, full of notes taken from whatever its author was reading. They knew at least two others wrote in the book, but the primary author wrote in it until he was quite old — the writing grows steadily shakier. They knew this author was likely male, as literacy among women in the period was rare. They knew Friedberg would have considered the book not magical but an evolutionary step in understanding medicine, from a time when our belief in magic and belief in emerging sciences sat side by side.
And they knew “it came from a time when people were thinking a lot about the connections between science and magic and religion,” Gage said. “Think of ‘Macbeth’ and ‘The Tempest.’ The person who owned this book was living through tremendous religious change. He’s quoting from Martin Luther. He’s a voracious reader, and he’d know the debates over what’s religion and what’s science.”
Actually, the author was Robert Ashley.
You probably wouldn’t know him.
The Newberry learned of him last summer, soon after they posted the book. He was not a witch, wizard or warlock. He was a lawyer, in London in the 16th century. He was a relatively ordinary guy who had gout and was never considered a big thinker. And they know this because of Renae Satterley, librarian at the Middle Temple Library in London, who contacted the Newberry.
“I recognized the handwriting immediately,” Satterly said last week. “It was an odd feeling to be so sure of something so remote.” She had spent years working through Ashley’s life: His handwriting was distinctive — surprisingly legible for the period, she said. Ashley had filled his personal books with marginalia. He studied at Oxford and became successful enough to amass a giant collection of books, which he left to establish the Middle Temple Library. “He also left money to hire a library keeper (known now as a librarian),” Satterley said, “of which I am the latest incarnation.”
And was he into magic?
“An interest in magic, charms and spells was very common during this period,” she said. “The division between science and magic was not as clear-cut as it is now. Ashley’s library had way more books on science than magic. … Did he believe the magic stuff though? Not a question I can answer, but he did believe in prognostics and astrology.” She added: “I think he just had a very curious mind and was interested in everything.”
Nevertheless, the scouring of his text, from witches and warlocks and everyday people — from not only North America, but Spain, the Netherlands, Serbia, Germany, Argentina — has assembled a book we now know contains: prayers, seals used to ward off demons (and harm in general), instructions for making indestructible keys, charms to learn whether a husband or wife will die first and spells for curing infertility, as well as potions for handling menstrual cramps, diarrhea and “skabbie hands.” Bloody nose? Put a drop of the blood on a “fireshovel,” place over a fire, then blow it up the person’s nose.
“This seldom or never fayleth.”
What emerged is a portrait of an age when death was constant, and though church leaders violently stamped down on a belief in magic, many remained curious. It’s also striking, Gage said, how several potions veer in the direction of contemporary medicine. What’s different, she said, is the social context, seeing the supernatural and practical coexist.
One page offers relief from hemorrhoids, the next offers relief from a persistent witch: Toss a sack of poop into the witch’s backyard. Just FYI.
Need to conjure a ghost to answer your most pressing questions?
There’s a spell for that:
Put five drops of holy water on a glass, arranged into a cross, ask God for a spirit to enter the glass and answer — and then you should be good.
Anyway.
Clarke said that as of late October, the Newberry has received “very few emails concerned that we are welcoming a catastrophe” by asking anyone with internet access to tinker with the “Book of Magical Charms.” On the other hand, he said, eyeballing the book as it rested on its perch behind glass: “For an unassuming little book, it is pretty haunting. It’s got quite the aura. It’s the stuff of nightmares — or I guess, Halloween.”
cborrelli@chicagotribune.com