IAA Project Blog: Toward a Museum Object Word Key for Cataloguers of Magical Items

As part of his Impact Acceleration Account project ‘Amulets, charms, and witch bottles: Thinking about ‘magical’ objects in museum collections through collaborative interaction between academics and curators with Pagans, witchcraft practitioners and other communities with spiritual investment’, supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Nigel Jeffries (MOLA medieval and later pottery specialist) organised a 2-day workshop at the Pitt Rivers Museum.

In this second of two blogs, project participant Dr Christina Oakley Harrington, founder of Treadwell’s Bookshop reflects on the language and semantics of online catalogues for ‘magical objects’:

In late January 2024, I had the delight of being part of an important workshop at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, at which half a dozen Pagans spent two days with about as many archaeologists, academics, and museum curators, sharing experiences of working with objects in our respective practices. Out of the fruitful discussions that emerged during the first day afternoon workshop came the challenges that curators face when describing a magical object coming into their collection. Then there are other challenges posed by the descriptions made years ago for existing holdings, in which an object may be described in any number of ways.

As I set myself the task of starting a word key for this complicated area, to make a resource available to museum professionals doing catalogue descriptions, it quickly became clear that two terms are difficult, even though they are the most widely used in the 19th and 20th centuries. These are the words ‘witchcraft’ and the word ‘magic’. Neither are unhelpful because of being disrespectful, but rather they are words which have had such a wide use that they do not really aid in describing an object.

I am a practicing pagan witch who has a background in academic research, and I spend a great deal of time in the hand lists and catalogues of archives, special collections and museums. And what I have noticed is that in these earlier eras the institutional workers assigned to describing a text or object were inclined to use one or both these words and for a vast range of meanings. To explain a little: a witchcraft object might be an object used by a worried individual to prevent psychic attack, an ill-wisher might use it to enact a psychic attack. Equally the object thought to be possessed by a spirit; or the object might be thought to have a consciousness which has supernatural agency. I have seen witchfinders’ torture instruments described as witchcraft objects, and these are another thing yet again. Maybe the user was an accused witch, a self-described witch, and maybe neither. The actions associated with the object might well never have been called witchcraft or, if they were, it could be a good thing…. Or a bad thing. The broadness, to restate the point, is the problem. And a so-called ‘magical’ object might have any of an equally large number of possible meanings.

For the researcher who practices magic, or even one who has a sensitivity to its mechanisms, more specifics are wanted. I have therefore started the following Draft Word Key. The aim is to help museum professionals describe their object with more specific information on the nature of the magic, the practitioner, and the context. Where information is unknown, as is often the case, it is helpful to say as much. This allows the visitor / researcher to know they need to do their own digging in the existing scholarship, whatever their generation.

Too unspecific, so please do not use on its own

Magical object - this is a great general keyword for searchers who are pagans and magical practitioners. A magical object is one which is believed to do something by a mysterious force. The term can also be applied to an object that is used in a magical operation, even if in itself does not have special power.
Witchcraft - This word is used to mean so many different things that it is an unhelpful term for cataloguing or describing objects. Instead, try one or more of the words below.

Types of Magical Power the Object May Have

Protective - the object keeps the space, wearer, etc. safe from harm. See also ‘apotropaic’.
Apotropaic - the object protects from harm the wearer or the space. See also ‘protective’.
Luck-bringing - the object has the power to bring good luck to the owner, wearer etc. ‘Luck’ is associated with gambling and happenstance.
Prosperity-bringing - the object makes wealthy or prosperous to the owner / wearer / user.
Love-attracting - the object brings love, sex or marriage to the owner / wearer / user.
Beneficent - the object brings good things in a general sense, to the owner / wearer / user.
Malefic - the object has evil potency and brings harm A malefic magical object can mean one which will bring harm to victims against whom it is directed. A malefic object can also mean an object that brings harm even to people who are simply in its presence, because it emanates its innate evil energies.
Ancestral - the object brings the presence of an ancestor. In Western magic the mechanism is often unspecified, simply intuited and not theorised. These objects are in the order of mementoes or heirlooms which serve to help the individual connect with their late family member. Here, the practices common to many non-magical folk have little surface difference – photos of one’s late grandfather sitting on the mantelpiece, wearing a late grandmother’s wedding ring.
And none! -There are some objects used in magic which are not understood to have any power in themselves but are considered by their community to be inert tools. Other objects used in magical practices might be deemed inert because they were used in a spell which is now complete, so they are dead remnants.

Kinds of Practices the Object Might be involved in

Spirit possession - in which the operator is taken over by spirits.
Deity possession - in which the operator is taken over by a god.
Trance possession - this is a general term for possession, focusing on the fact the operator is in a blanked-out state. It does not address what kind of being might be overtaking the body of the operator.
Prophecy - in which a specially gifted individual sees the future, usually implying a revelation for the wider community.
Fortunetelling - practices for telling the future or fate of an individual, the word loosely implying that the seeker is a paying client, and the practitioner is a paid service provider, a ‘fortuneteller’. Fortunetelling can include crystal gazing, tarot card reading, reading playing cards, tea-leaf reading, reading the dregs in coffee cup.
Divination - practices involving tools, whose aim is the telling of the future (examples of divinatory practices: pendulum dowsing, casting of bones, dropping molten lead into cold water, and analysing shapes of twigs burning in a fire. Divination, a subset of fortune telling, loosely implies visually gazing at shapes or movements.
Shamanism – to be strictly accurate, one should use this term only for the peoples of Central Asia, whose magico-religious practitioners are actually called shaman in their own language.

This is a work in progress, and I welcome feedback and suggestions, along with questions, from both my fellow Pagans and museum professionals. You can contact me by emailing info@treadwells-london.com