The Witch Bottle

Witch bottles were common in early modern England, especially in East Anglia and the south-east, and spread to colonial America. A stoneware "Bellarmine" jug with a bearded face, or later a glass bottle, was filled with the victim's urine together with bent pins, nails, hair or nail parings, and sometimes thorns, felt hearts or thread. The bottle was sealed and buried under the hearth or threshold, or hidden in walls, where it was thought to trap or torment the witch's power through the sympathetic link with the victim. Blagrave's 1671 manual describes the procedure. Archaeologists have recovered over two hundred examples in Britain, among them a corked bottle from Greenwich analysed in 2009 that still held urine, pins and nail clippings.

Purpose

Witch bottles were counter-magical devices made by people who believed themselves bewitched, intended to break the spell and turn it back on the witch.

Timing

No fixed astrological timing in the main sources; made when bewitchment was suspected.

Materials

• stoneware (Bellarmine) jug or glass bottle
• bent pins
• iron nails
• hair
• nail clippings
• urine
• salt
• thorns
• cork or stopper

Omitted

Accounts such as Glanvill's describe heating a sealed bottle in the fire to make the witch suffer, which caused the bottle to burst violently; the practice was also meant to injure a suspected person. This is described for historical understanding only and should not be performed.

Never heat a sealed container: it can explode.