Recently I’ve been immersed in studies which I mentioned in my previous newsletter: one in Anglo-Saxon literature run by the British Library and a course called Print and the Ascent of Magic (reading occult books in the allegedly haunted library in Senate House, possibly the best way to spend an evening ever).
In the first course we looked at and translated Anglo-Saxon texts, in the second we looked at some ancient books such as Daemonologie and Malleus Maleficarum, all books that were used to oppress women and the poor, as well as learn the history of voodoo and how it was suppressed by colonial rulers. It was eye-opening to learn how many ‘magical’ systems of belief were seen as a threat to the ruling class at various points in history – we even saw how laws were made over centuries to repress travelling magicians, healers and fortune tellers, describing them as vagrants and limiting their freedom of movement.
I became very interested in runes. They were often used to name a personal object in Anglo-Saxon times (runes are different to the Anglo-Saxon language itself). They were used for magical or protective purposes, for example on funeral urns or swords. Also on this beautiful object, the Franks Casket, which we translated on our course.
Rather than allowing runes to die out along with paganism, Anglo-Saxon monks preserved them (while in the Northern European countries where they originated, they were treated as witchcraft). You can find them in the Book of Exeter, for example, which is full of spells and riddles (Anglo-Saxons loved wordplay).
Women giving birth in the medieval period used to wear a scroll with magical words on it around their waist, I learned at the Medieval Women In Their Own Words exhibition (listen to our podcast about that here).
And at the fascinating Secrets of the Thames exhibition at the Docklands Museum I encountered more runes on decorative objects, such as this pin, pulled from the Thames by mudlarks (podcast coming soon on the 1st of June).
What I have learned is that a belief in magic often went hand in hand with a belief in the power of words. Warriors inscribed them on their swords, birthing women wore them round their waists, people hand-stitched them on their clothes to fend off sickness.
Anglo-Saxons liked to give voices to inanimate things, so the inscription on a ring might say ‘I am called Ring’. Our teacher said that this might be a tendency towards animism in the Anglo-Saxon world. One famous Anglo-Saxon poem, the Dream of the Rood, gives a voice to a tree that later becomes the cross used for the Crucifixion. It was inscribed in runes on the Ruthwell Cross around 700 AD (a cross that was incidentally pulled down and broken into pieces in the 1640s during a moral panic about idolatry).
There’s something about words and their physical form which arouses strong emotions in us. Why else do people burn and ban books, as they are currently doing in America? And that is why our next live short story reading, on the 9th June, is based on the theme of ‘The Library’. We will be looking at the power and magic of words, and how others seek to limit and control them.
We will also be running a series of flash fiction workshops in June, July and August in the beautiful surroundings of the Holland Park Cafe run by Daisy Green, which is generously hosting us (and providing free teas and coffees). The workshops are £30 a head with five subsidised free places for concessions – you can buy tickets here.
