The cover of the book shows Robert, the skull the author uses in magic rituals. Since Robert is missing his lower jaw, he is useful for necromantic magic, calling the spirits to perform tasks, but not for communicating with the dead.

In The Witches’ Book of the Dead, author Christian Day, a Salem Warlock, explains why and how the ancient art of necromancy should be incorporated into modern Witches’ practice.  Well-written and organized, the book is a good resource whether you are a serious magic practitioner looking to draw on energies beyond the veil or simply curious about necromancy.

Necromancy has gotten a very bad rap through the ages.  It’s association with evil-doers and Satanism has discouraged many people from calling on the dead for spells.  Even Day advises caution when summoning spirits because negative forces can come through as well.  But Day argues that there is nothing inherently sinister about death magic.  “Necromantic sorcery has usually been so feared by authorities that they tried to dissuade people from pursuing this form of magic by legislating against it and portraying Witches as agents of evil,” he writes.  “We have to strip away the hyperbole and libelous attacks to get to the core of what Witches really did and why it made authorities fear it so deeply.  The most obvious reason is that taking power into one’s on hands denies the supremacy of the God king, the Pope, the divinely ordained leader.  To walk the path of the Witch is to reclaim your inner power!” (128-129)

The dead can be summoned to help a Witch divine the future and know the past and influence others.  Alongside fascinating anecdotes about necromancers from folkloric history and mythology, Day provides practical applications for Witches looking to enhance their inner power.  He discusses the importance of building an altar to the dead in your own home and obtaining a human skull to serve as a doorway to the spirit world.

He also covers techniques to protect yourself from negative forces; communicate with the dead through automatic writing, pendulums, ouija boards, scrying and mediumship trances; and summon the dead in dreams.  Exercises, spells and recipes, including safe ways to practice blood magic, are clearly explained.

Witches’ should never call on the dead without being willing to have a relationship with them that includes honor and sacrifice.  Day explores the ways that civilizations have been revering the dead for centuries.  With the world of the living more interconnected through technology and assimilation than ever before, it’s no surprise that traditions concerning the dead from many cultures have drawn on each other and blended.  Modern holidays including Dia de los Muertos, the Japanese Obon and American Halloween, have all taken characteristics from primal rituals such as the Celtic Fire Festival Samhain, the Roman festivals Parentalia and Lemuria and the Greek festival Anthesteria.

I was moved by the depiction of the Dumb Supper, an event held in Salem around Halloween.  About a hundred people gather at this event designed to honor the dead.  The courses are served in reverse order with Robert the skull, perched on an altar, always served first.  No one speaks, but music is played.  “On a spiritual level,” Day writes, “honoring our departed loved ones keeps their energy close to us and invites them to continue to participate in the blessings of our lives.” (183)

Throughout this engaging book Day deftly navigates his subject matter and clarifies magical concepts with ease.  I appreciated concise breakdowns of abstract notions such as mediumship and casting.  ”Magic allows us to send out spiritual energy from the body while psychic ability allows us to draw it in,” Day writes. (40)  The book even includes a lengthy bibliography, an appendix full of descriptions of Deities of the Dead, suggestions for further reading, and resources for the tools mentioned.

The Witches’ Book of the Dead is available from Amazon for $13.57.

*I received this book from the publisher, but was under no obligation to post a good review.

Upon his death in Milan in 1680, the body of Manfredo Setala (b. 1600) was followed by an elaborate parade of his peers carrying rare and impressive items from his extensive collection of curiosities. He believed that his cabinet, eventually overtaking four galleries in his residence, “represented an image of the world.” Bursting with skeletons, automata, plant and mineral samples, paintings, weapons, as well as scientific instruments he engineered himself, Manfredo dedicated his life to his renowned display.  So much so that the best way to honor his accomplishment was to symbolically bring his prized possessions with him in death.

Manfredo’s quixotic quest to possess a collection that encompassed all knowledge was not unique. He was a member of an elite group of European collectors obsessed with acquiring unusual examples of objects from all disciplines. This drive to acquire the elusive is at the heart of a new book by Patrick Mauriès, The Cabinet of Curiosities.

Preserved specimen jars from Levin Vincent's collection. "Inset in the middle is a real baby's head, made more lifelike by the bizarre addition of a lace cap." pages 104-105

Much like its subject matter, the book revels in examples of the bizarre, grotesque and exceptionally beautiful. The strength of this book is the images, which invite the reader into a world gone by. The book focuses on the height of the cult of curiosities, from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. While most of these collections were dismantled long ago, many of their objects finding their way into modern museums, etchings and paintings commissioned by the collectors for posterity recreate them down to the smallest detail.

Before the Enlightenment, people believed it was possible to attain all knowledge, and perhaps unlock the meaning of life.  Thus their incorporation of items from many fields into their cabinets instead of a focused collection of one class of object.  Modern collectors tend to eschew this scattered approach in favor of a series of one or two types of objects.  Yet collectors from all periods and places are not so different.  We seek the thrill and wonder of obtaining something special, deciding how to display it, and revisiting it to recapture that magic feeling. Collectors sought meaning both by obtaining an object and by giving it a context within their greater collection.

Mauriès also examines the resurgence of the cult of curiosities.  While most modern collectors of oddities are probably not driven to possess all knowledge, there is a new class of private collector who seeks to recreate the feel of old cabinets by acquiring ethnographia, natural specimens, taxidermy and bones as well as art objects.  The cult has also had a profound effect on contemporary artists, specifically surrealists and mixed media assemblage artists as well as modern museums which do seek to demonstrate a wide knowledge of the world.  There are even a few historic landmarks where cabinets have been rebuilt for tourists to visit and learn about.  The final chapter in the book examines these modern incarnations of Cabinets of Curiosities.  I appreciated the way the author examined the history of the phenomena and then applied it to our modern world.

This Memento Mori cabinet, copied by Paul Reichel from one of Vesalius engravings, shows a skeleton looking at a book, an hourglass, a bow and an arrow. It's found in the Ambras collection. page 109

The book is inspiring and engaging on a sensory level, but often frustrating on an intellectual level. Some of the text is heavy-handed with esoteric language. It’s simply not accessible to the lay person. Here’s a typical sentence, “For the collector, the acquisition of a piece ‘is equivalent to its renaissance’: its ‘historical’ identity, the half-real and half-imaginary quality of the provenance and peregrinations that have left their mark on the piece, is overlaid with a new condition, or in substance a redefinition.” (134-135)

In addition, captions were sparsely detailed, frequently lacking basic information such as who created or owned a piece, what time period it was from, and where it was housed, forcing the reader to search back through the other text, often several pages away, to try to find those answers.

Cabinet of Curiosities is a good book, and I recommend it for the media it contains as well as the juxtaposition of the past and present motivations of the collector.  Cabinets of Curiosities is available from Amazon for $29.70.

Part of the drive to possess rarities led to collectors looking for examples of freaks of nature. Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol kept portraits of members of a family of 'cat people,' suffering from a genetic abnormality that caused them to be covered with hair, who lived near Ambras. On the right is a drawing of a man who had a lance through his eye that penetrated deep into the brain, but did not die from the injury. pages 138-139

*I received this book from the publisher, but was under no obligation to post a good review.