Real Magic Ring? March 21, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
This ring perhaps no longer survives, but when it was sketched in the mid nineteenth-century it was rendered thus. The ring divides. The block on the left was apparently a set of jewels that when pressed made the ring open in this fashion: a common trick? Within the ring were written a series of words. No one alive today, no one who has ever walked this earth could ‘translate’ these words as they are nonsense: but they are magical nonsense. I can’t copy out the words for the simple reason that some of the letters do not belong to the Latin language and, indeed, some of the letters do not belong to any language. A scan is included then below, but even neophytes will recognise and tremble at such words as Asmodiel (the angel), Venus (broad-hipped Greek goddess) and Mago (sorcerer?).
The ring appears in a collection of rings put together by the Irish writer Thomas Crofton Croker in 1853 entitled Catalogue of a collection of ancient and mediaeval rings and personal ornaments formed for lady Londesborough: Croker incidentally believed that the ring was seventeenth-century. However, Croker makes clear that he did not own the ring. He did though have another similar object: #63 in his collection described as a Cabalistic Bracelet (originally from Lincolnshire), which from a brief glance seemed to include several of God’s secret and not so secret names.
Four pendants hung off the bracelet, three of which had survived: a brownish pebble with a small face polished on; a pebble of greenish brown colour set in silver with three small brown pebbles on the reverse; and an oval cage of silver wire with some organic matter inside. Early modern wizards liked to imprison fairies, sylphs and demons in stones, mirrors and the like. These pendants might have served this purpose: at least Croker hints at this via Walter Scott.
Croker also mentions another ring found in a garden at Devizes in the mid eighteenth century with the words Ala, Thalcut, Calcut, Cattama inscribed.
A brooch from Devizes, meanwhile, of similar date, had five gems and the inscription oAoGoLoAo (Chthulu with a hangover?) and, on the other side Io Fas Amer e Dos de Amer (which almost sounds that it might be from a real language).
There was clearly, then, a tradition of writing magic on jewelry in the seventeenth century and perhaps before. It is very difficult to find anything on the net because write ‘magic ring’ and you get earnest descriptions of the one true ring, and write ‘real magic rings’ and you get folk from the Carolinas trying to sell you dubious things made in their garage. Any scholarly insight on this stuff or was poor old Crofton Croker the last to touch it? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
25 Mar 2016, KMH writes in ‘Your ring picture appears to be palpable evidence of a seemingly long tradition of magic rings going back at least as far as the legendary ring of King Solomon, believed to give him control over demons.I suggest you glance at the wiki entry “magic ring.” I was surprised the article mentioned nordic rings with runic characters.
25 Mar 2016: An American Reader offers this, ‘In 1979 after she and her “coven” were expelled from college for some weirdness in a graveyard, yours truly had to drive 400 miles to get her and her possessions, one item which was a trunk with her ritual clothing and kit in it. My attitude then was “She’s finally gone around the bend”, which I still stick with. I didn’t give a thought to the contents of the trunk. My mother did and would rummage through it every chance she got. She never found much of any thing other than books and the normal Wiccan kit. However my sister came home wearing a silver ring on her left ring finger with a lapis colored stone. This piqued Mom’s curiosity and she finally got her hands on the ring when my sister was bathing. I get a call from Mom, apparently there was some half-assed Latin and some runes on the inside of the band. She and my sister had a huge fight over the thing and it comes out it was an initiation gift from the lady who inducted my sister into the said coven. My sister storms out to stay with her best friend and her friends mother. This is where it gets interesting. My sister’s best friends Mother, was my Mother’s close friend. As the daughter was an associate of the coven, the head warlock’s girlfriend, and her mother a bit of a loon, they were more sympathetic to my sister’s beliefs. My sister showed them an interesting feature of the ring. If one pressed on the lapis stone and gave it turn, it revealed that there was an inner and outer band. The inside band containing another inscription for initiates only. Her Mother got on the phone to our Mother and literal Hell broke loose, ending with my sister and her friend making the long trek back to the college town that was home to the coven. Being a slightly older brother I found the whole thing highly entertaining. My sister still wears the ring, in fact you would have to cut off of her. I’ve never been able to pry the significance of the ring or it’s messages out of her. When I ask why she still wears it her answer is, “I like the way it looks”. Do I think it’s a ring from the early modern period? No. Do I think it’s modern continuation of an old custom? Possibly, but very unlikely. What I actually think it comes from is the knocked up revival of the “Old Religion” around the turn of the 20th Century and the material culture that was part of it, and then generated by neo-offshoots as baby boomers rediscovered the Crowley set et al; in the late 60’s. As for the rings in your article, they strike my as a way to identify members of the groups using them, whether they were “witches” or local members of an early modern lodge or guild. Early Rotarians, perhaps.There were various companies in the 19th and 20th Century that dealt in occult charms and regalia on an industrial scale. The one that stands out clearly to me was a company called DeLaurance in New Jersey. They supplied both mainstream religious items and items used in Hoodoo in the American South and Obeah in the West Indian community. My sister’s ring makes me wonder if companies like this weren’t cranking out jewelry and charms for the the Neo-Pagan crowd, too? Good luck on finding out what the source of the older rings were.
