"Get you of the skull the bone part of a gibbetted man so much as one
ounce which you will dry and grind to a powder until when searced it be as
fine as wheatenmeal, this you will put away securely sealed in a glass
vial for seven years. You will then about the coming of the end of that
time (for your cube must be made on the eve of the day come seven years of
his gibbetting) get you together these several matters, all well dried and
powdered and finely searced so much as three barley corns weight of each
Bullock blood.
Moudy [mole] blood.
Great Flitter mouse blood.
Wild Dove blood.
Hag-worm head.
Toade heart.
Crab eyes.
Graveyard moss and worms.
These being all gotten together on the eve of that day make a stiff dough
of wheaten meal to the which you will add all the other powders working
them to a stiff mass and into cubes of one inch square, to be pressed to a
hollow, then they are to be set away to dry in a warm place for seven
months to the day when with a sharp screever you shall deeply screeve the
like of these upon each side, but be you mindful to screeve in the order
as here ordered always turning the cube over and towards the left hand,
the fifth side by turning the cube towards you, the sixth from you and
thus you make your magic cube."
"The proper way to draw the virtue from and read a forecast with such
cubes," says Calvert, "as yet I know not, but I learn that one Jane
Craggs, a mantu maker of Helmsley, not only owns a cube but does at times
play the craft for the entertainment of her lady visitors who wish their
fortunes casting. I learn from Betty [Ellis] that these cubes were tossed
upon the table and then used by the consultation of a book like unto that
of the witche's garter but this book Betty kens nothing of its
whereabouts. She aims one of her grandchilder must have gone off with it."
In the chapter devoted to Tudor times I have given an Elizabethan cure for
an "ill caste" by a witch, but Calvert also tells us of a method for
removing the spell from a "witch-held" house. "Of one thing I hear," he
says, "which be minded unto this present day the which be that a bunch of
yarrow gathered from off a grave and be cast within a sheet that hath
covered the dead and this be setten fire to and cast within the door of
any house thought to be witch held or having gotten upon it a spell of
ill-luck, it shall be at once cleansed from whatsoever ill there be come
again it as I hear even fevers and the like are on the instant driven
forth. And this," he quaintly adds, "be worth while of a trial."
Of the awesome sights to be seen at night time Calvert gives many details.
"There be over anenst Cropton towards Westwood seen now and again at times
wide asunder a man rushing fra those happening to cross his road with
flaming mouth and having empty eye sockets, a truly terrible apparition
for to come across of a sudden.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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