Chicago Library Seeks Hermione Granger
This would be Hermione Granger’s bliss.
To Speak With Spirits–not only is there a lot of that going on in The Fury Triad, but I suddenly realize it’s Persephone Fury who has a talent for languages and translating–not Hermione Granger! Alas, Persephone is very busy right now tackling Dark magics from within and without.
Chicago Library Seeks Help Transcribing Magical Manuscripts
Three texts dealing with charms, spirits, and all other manners of magical practice are now accessible online
“You don’t need a Ph.D to transcribe,” Christopher Fletcher, coordinator of the project and a fellow of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, tells Smithsonian.com. “[The initiative] is a great way to allow the general public to engage with these materials in a way that they probably wouldn’t have otherwise.”
The three manuscripts now available online reflect the varied and complex ways that magic fit into the broader religious landscape of a shifting and modernizing West. The 17th-century Book of Magical Charms contains instructions on a range of magical practices—“from speaking with spirits to cheating at dice,” according to the Transcribing Faith website—but also includes Latin prayers and litanies that align with mainstream religious practices. An untitled document known as the “commonplace book” explores strange and fantastical occurrences, along with religious and moral questions. Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits by Increase Mather, a Puritan minister and president of Harvard who presided over the Salem Witch Trials, expresses a righteous condemnation of witchcraft.
Read more at Smithsonian Magazine
Me? I definitely want to poke around in the scanned books. Don’t be surprised if something I find there pops up in Untune the Sky or some other Fury Triad work. Possibly it could slip into this final draft of The Dead Shall Live! It’s not too late.
Do you believe in magic?
I don’t disbelieve, but I also don’t worship it. Sometimes, unexplainable things happen. Magic, elves, universe, haints, divine intervention? I’m not ruling it out. **knocks on wood three times**