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This is a limited edition hardcover with inlaid copper skeletal hand in both the front and back board.
Printed on 180 gsm Fabriano Ingres, a real laid paper, whereby the textures are natural product of the pulp on wire mesh frames rather than being artificially embossed with a pretend texture. The covers are bound in leather cloth, a binding material that is 85% real leather and a sheet of copper, formed into skeletal hands.
The author translated 37 manuscripts books known as "Svartkonstbuchs" [ie black art book} which Scandanavian practitioner's of folk magic were expected to possess. This work collects together all those charms and rituals dealing with spirits of the dead and human bones, with the addition of some other relevant material. What emerges is a remarkably coherent and straightforward system that can be simply described: -
1) Practitioners were solitary, they could be self initiated into dealings with the dead by means of performance on one of a number of rituals given here. The Dead were then entreated or conjoured, usually with payment, to serve the practitioner. They were particularly suited to certain kinds of workings: -
2) Being now beyond pain, the Dead were called upon relieve the living of their suffering.
3) Seeing beyond the physical, they could be asked to detect thieves and torment them into confession, or else set the stillness of death upon them, transfixing the miscreant. Curiously, the practitioner would not be able to punish or even berate the criminal thus held. All that can be done is to order the thief's release, unmasking being the only permitted sanction.
4) The Dead could be required to communicate the stillness of death to people, or animals, the latter to assist hunting.
5) They might be used for hexing, communicating death, illness or insanity to the victim.
6) They can be instructed to protect the practitioner, their client or property.
7) The Dead, being beyond time, can be called upon to predict the future for the purpose of gambling. And they can influence the roll of dice etc.
8) They can also assist with hunting by conferring lethality to ammunition and assisting with aim.
9) The spirits of the Dead, being invisible, can share this power with the practitioner
10) A spirit of the Dead can be held in a box or bottle, or exchanged for a rune stone, so as to be handy to assist the practitioner.
11) By passing through Death in the form of a belt made of a corpse's skin or sinew, the practitioner may transform into animal form
12) The practitioner must always return the bone, and therefore the spirit, to the churchyard.
180 copies ONLY!
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