The Ancestral Power of Amulets, Talismans, and Mascots by Nigel Pennick

Author:Nigel Pennick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Magic
Publisher: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Published: 2021-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 29

The Amuletic Body

Amulets of the human body take two forms: the actual body and its parts and representations of the body and body parts. Dead bodies may be preserved whole and serve as amuletic objects for devotees, but these, naturally, are relatively uncommon. The more or less intact remains of saints of religion and secular heroes of authoritarian regimes can be seen preserved visibly in churches and Communist pantheons. More common are the body parts of preachers and notable devotees preserved in certain Christian, Buddhist, and Islamic traditions. The skull, being the most characteristic human remain after death, features large in magic and symbolism. However the representation of parts of the body in various nonhuman materials is by far the most common element of this, with eye, hand, and heart images and the head having their own particular function.

Tattooing has been practiced for thousands of years, although its name—tattoo—was not used to describe this technique outside Polynesia until the eighteenth century, when it was described by European travelers returning from the islands of the Pacific. A predynastic mummy from Gebelein in Egypt that was radiocarbon dated to between 3349 and 3018 BCE had a tattoo of two horned animals. Many mummies from 3900 to 1069 BCE have various patterns tattooed on them. In this period Egypt and Nubia to the south had two distinct schools of tattooing (Krutak and Deter-Wolf 2017, 5).

There was a biblical prohibition on tattooing, that Israelites “should not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you” (Leviticus 19:28), which meant that it was seen as unchristian by the later church. However it is uncertain what Saint Paul meant when he discounted the Jewish practice of circumcision as unimportant, writing “for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus” (Galatians 6:17). It is questionable whether he meant this literally in the form of tattoos. But Procopius of Gaza, writing in the fifth century, tells of branding or tattooing the body (Fleming 2000, 78).

When the British ship Endeavour visited Tahiti in July 1769, Captain Cook wrote in his journal, “Both sexes paint their body, Tattow as it is called in their language” (Price 1971, 37). This is the first known use of the word in English. When the intrepid Scottish traveler William Lithgow wrote of a visit to Jerusalem with pilgrim companions in 1612, he noted, “One Elias Areacheros, a Christian inhabitour at Bethleem . . . did ingrave upon our severall Armes upon Christ’s Sepulcher the name of Jesus, and the Holy Cross . . . but I, deciphered and subjoined below mine, the four incorporate crowns of King James.” Lithgow also had a patriotic poem tattooed there (Lithgow [1640] 1906, 253).

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