Footnotes

 

*1. See Davies, Grimoires: A History of Magic Books; Lecouteux, The Book of Grimoires: The Secret Grammar of Magic and Dictionary of Ancient Magic Words and Spells: From Abraxas to Zoar. Full citations for these works are provided in the bibliography at the back of this book.

†2. See Hohman, The Long-Lost Friend: A 19th Century American Grimoire, edited and annotated by Daniel Harms.

*3. Rafnsson, Angurgapi: The Witch-Hunts in Iceland, 53.

*4. In Iceland, the work of Magnús Rafnsson, produced in collaboration with the Strandagaldur museum, is of particular note. Christopher Smith has written an excellent study, Icelandic Magic: Aims, Tools and Techniques of the Icelandic Sorcerers, and Justin Foster has recently made available a translation of the nineteenth-century Huld manuscript, a stunning document that contains many examples of galdrastafir.

*5. See Pálsson and Edwards, trans., Egil’s Saga, 101.

*6. Older sources identify this as Orchis odoratissima, Satyrium albidium, or even as the mandrake (a plant that does not grow in Iceland); modern research associates the name with the northern green orchid, Platanthera hyperborea.

†7. This herb is identified in older sources as Cotula foetida, Pyrethrum inodorum, or perhaps eye-bright (Euphrasia sp.) but in modern research as an aster, the sea mayweed (Tripleurospermum maritimum, syn. Matricaria maritimum).

*8. See Simpson, Legends of Icelandic Magicians, 33.

*9. For statistics on Icelandic witchcraft trials, see Davíðsson, “Isländische Zauberzeichen und Zauberbücher,” 150–51.

*10. See Burnett and Stoklund, “Scandinavian Runes in a Latin Medieval Treatise,” 420.

*11. See Árnason, Íslenzkar Þjóðsögur, vol. I, 432.

*12. See “Fáfnismál,” prose following st. 1, in Hollander, trans., The Poetic Edda, 223. Folke Ström devoted a whole study, titled Den döendes makt och Oden i trädet, to the magical power of the speech of the dying man.

*13. The herbological element in this spell is twofold: (1) ash wood and (2) millefolium (yarrow, Achillea millefolium). In the manuscript the Latin word millefolium is written mellifolium. Ash is of well-known properties in Germanic myth and magic. Here it may signify the ability to make contact with other worlds. Yarrow, which was either ground up or its flowers made into an essential oil to be mixed with water, also is thought to have tremendous powers for making contact with “the other side,” the unconscious. Not only did the ancient Chinese know of this (see the I-Ching literature), but it was also well known among the Indo-Europeans as a divinatory tool. In later times it was widely thought to be connected to “the Evil One” and was popularly called the “Devil’s Nettle” and “Bad Man’s Plaything”; it was used in magical rites. Its common name in Icelandic is vallhumall (see Sæmundsson, Galdrar á Íslandi, 374).

*14. This threefold Odinic invocation includes the name Óðinn beside Illi, “the Evil One,” which may have been an old name for Óðinn, because he was called Bölverkr, “Evil Worker,” and was called “the father of all evil” in pagan times. Ølvir is interesting. It is our name “Oliver” and comes from Proto-Germanic Alawihaz, “the All-Holy-One.” This is similar in meaning to the name “Wihaz” (ON Vé), the third name in the primal threefold Odinic formulation of Oðinn, Vili, and Vé.

*15. Probably the name of a magical sign. It is unclear whether the two staves referred to here correspond to the stave represented in the manuscript. Homa perhaps refers to an image of the Iranian tree of life (and the ancient sacred and intoxicating drink haoma cognate to the Sanskrit soma). It is certainly possible that the galdrastafur represented here is a highly stylized version of such a treelike sign.

*16. This is a garbled representation of part of the Paternoster formula (see appendix D, pg. 124).

*17. The last two words of this formula are obvious misspellings or variants of the name Jehovah Sebaoth (Yahweh Tzabaoth), the ancient Hebrew war god. The first three words of the formula may be names of God connected by the Hebrew word for “and” (vé). These names also occur in a Swedish spell for headaches (see Lindqvist, En islänsk Svartkonstbok från 1500-talet, 28).