{{Short description|Dried and pickled hand of a hanged man}} {{other uses}} [[File:Hand of Glory.jpg|thumb|right|A hand of glory on display at Whitby Museum]] A '''Hand of Glory''' is the dried and pickled hand of a hanged man, often specified as being the left ({{langx|la|sinister}}) hand, or, if the person was hanged for murder, the hand that "did the deed."
Old European beliefs attribute great powers to a Hand of Glory. The process for preparing the hand and the candle are described in 18th-century documents, with certain steps disputed due to difficulty in properly translating phrases from that era. The concept has inspired short stories and poems since the 19th century.
==History of the term== Etymologist Walter Skeat reports that, while folklore has long attributed mystical powers to a dead man's hand, the specific phrase ''Hand of Glory'' is in fact a folk etymology: it derives from the French ''{{lang|fr|main de gloire}}'', a corruption of ''mandragore'', which is to say mandrake.<ref name="Skeat">{{cite book |first=Walter William |last=Skeat |author-link=W.W. Skeat |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d5oVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA109 |title=Notes on English Etymology, chiefly reprinted from the Transactions of the Philological Society |publisher=Clarendon Press |year=1904 |chapter=Glory, Hand of |page=109 }}</ref> Skeat writes, "The identification of the ''hand of glory'' with the ''mandrake'' is clinched by the statement in Cockayne's Leechdoms, i. 245,<ref name="Cockayne">{{cite book |first=Thomas Oswald |last=Cockayne |url=https://archive.org/details/leechdomswortcu02pedagoog |title=Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England |location=London |publisher=Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green |year=1864 |chapter=Mandrake |page=[https://archive.org/details/leechdomswortcu02pedagoog/page/n364 245] }}</ref> that the mandrake 'shineth by night altogether like a lamp{{'"}}. Cockayne in turn is quoting ''Pseudo-Apuleius'', in a translation of a Saxon manuscript of his ''{{lang|la|Herbarium}}''.<ref name="Skeat"/>
==Powers attributed== [[File:La_Main_de_Gloire.jpg|thumb|A hand of glory holding a candle, from the 18th century grimoire ''Petit Albert'']]
According to old European beliefs, a candle made of the fat from a malefactor who died on the gallows, lighted, and placed (as if in a candlestick) in the Hand of Glory, which comes from the same man as the fat in the candle, would render motionless all persons to whom it was presented. The method for holding the candle is sketched in ''{{lang|fr|Petit Albert}}''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.esotericarchives.com/solomon/petitalb.htm#chap45 |trans-title=The Hand of Glory, and its effects |title=La main de gloire, & ses effets |at=Chapter 45 |language=fr |access-date=March 15, 2015}}</ref> The candle could be put out only with milk.<ref>{{Citation |last= Frazer|first=James G. |year=1923 |title=The Golden Bough : A Study in Magic and Religion |publisher=MacMillan and Co, Limited |publication-place=London |page=31 |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.61728/page/n45/mode/2up |access-date=2021-07-18}}</ref>
[[File:Main de gloire, detail of print (cropped).jpg|thumb|A hand of glory on a mantlepiece, in a detail of the 1565 artwork ''The Elder Saint Jacob Visiting the Magician Hermogenes'' by Pieter van der Heyden]]
The Hand of Glory also purportedly had the power to unlock any door it came across.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Baker |first1=Frank |year=1888 |title=Anthropologocal Notes on the Human Hand |journal=American Anthropologist |volume=1 |issue=1 |pages=51–76 |jstor=658459 |doi=10.1525/aa.1888.1.1.02a00040 |doi-access=free }}</ref> The method of making a Hand of Glory is described in ''{{lang|fr|Petit Albert}}'',<ref>{{cite book |editor=Joseph H. Peterson |title=Secrets merveilleux de la magie naturelle et cabalistique du petit Albert |trans-title=The Marvellous Secrets of Natural Language and Cabalism of Little Albert |url=http://www.esotericarchives.com/solomon/petitalb.htm |orig-year=1782 |year=2006 |publisher=Héritiers de Beringos fratres |location=Lyon |language=fr |oclc=164442497 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Owen Davies's top 10 grimoires |newspaper=The Guardian |date=2008-04-04 |last=Davies |first=Owen |author-link=Owen Davies (historian) |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/apr/08/history |access-date=2009-04-08 }}</ref> and in the ''{{lang|la|Compendium Maleficarum}}''.<ref>{{cite book |author=Francesco Maria Guazzo |title=Compendium Maleficarum |year=2004 |orig-year=1626 |publisher=The Book Tree |location=San Diego |isbn=1-58509-246-0 |pages=83–90 |chapter=Of Soporific Spells}}</ref>
==Process== thumb|A papier-mâché hand of glory The 1722 ''{{lang|fr|Petit Albert}}'' describes in detail how to make a Hand of Glory, as cited from him by Émile-Jules Grillot de Givry:<ref name=PetitAlbert/>
{{quote|Take the right or left hand of a felon who is hanging from a gibbet beside a highway; wrap it in part of a funeral pall and so wrapped squeeze it well. Then put it into an earthenware vessel with zimat, nitre, salt and long peppers, the whole well powdered. Leave it in this vessel for a fortnight, then take it out and expose it to full sunlight during the dog-days until it becomes quite dry. If the sun is not strong enough put it in an oven with fern and vervain. Next make a kind of candle from the fat of a gibbeted felon, virgin wax, sesame, and ponie, and use the Hand of Glory as a candlestick to hold this candle when lighted, and then those in every place into which you go with this baneful instrument shall remain motionless}}
De Givry points out the difficulties with the meaning of the words ''zimat'' and ''ponie'', saying it is likely "ponie" means horse-dung. De Givry is expressly using the 1722 edition, where the phrase is, according to John Livingston Lowes "{{lang|fr|du Sisame et de la Ponie}}" and de Givry notes that the meaning of "ponie" as "horse dung" is entirely unknown "to us", but that in local Lower Normandy dialect, it has that meaning. His reason for regarding this interpretation as "more than probable" is that horse-dung is "very combustible, when dry".<ref name=PetitAlbert/><ref>{{cite book |last=Lowes |first=John Livingston |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y7imakKYtPIC |isbn=978-1443738118 |publisher=ReadBooks |edition=Second |orig-year=1930 |year=2008 |title=The Road to Xanadu, A Study in the Ways of the Imagination |location=London }}</ref>
In the French 1752 edition (called ''{{lang|fr|Nouvelle Édition, corrigée & augmentée}}'', i.e., "New Edition, corrected and augmented"), however, this reads as "{{lang|fr|..du sisame de Laponie..}}", that is, in Francis Grose's translation from 1787, "sisame of Lapland", or Lapland sesame. This interpretation can be found many places on the Internet, and even in books published at university presses.<ref>{{cite book |author=Lucius Parvus Albertus |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=M9MfIypxkvAC |publisher=Les heritiers de Beringos frates |year=1752 |title=Secrets merveilleux de la magie naturelle et cabalistique du Petit Albert |location=Lyon}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Grose |first=Francis |title=A provincial glossary:with a collection of local proverbs, and popular superstitions |publisher=S. Hooper |year=1787 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=31oJAAAAQAAJ |location=London}}</ref> Two books, one by Cora Daniels, another by Montague Summers, perpetuate the Lapland sesame myth, while being uncertain whether zimat should mean verdigris or the Arabian sulphate of iron.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Cora L. |last2=Stevans |first2=C.M. |title=Encyclopedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World |isbn=9781410209160 |publisher=University of the Pacific Press(The Minerva Group, Inc)|year=2003 |orig-year=1903 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d29Yo-UIBSwC |location=Honolulu, HA}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Montague Summers |author-link=Montague Summers |title=A Popular History of Witchcraft |isbn=9781136740183 |publisher=Routledge |year=2012 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=C9Q9kzcpkt8C |location=London}}</ref>
The ''{{lang|fr|Petit Albert}}'' also provides a way to shield a house from the effects of the Hand of Glory:<ref name=PetitAlbert>{{cite book |pages=181 |last1=De Givry |first1=Grillot |last2=Locke |first2=J.Courtenay (tr)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fzVYG-bWNssC |isbn=9780486224930 |publisher=Courier Dover Publications |year=1931 |title=Witchcraft: Magic and Alchemy |location=New York}}</ref>
{{quote|The Hand of Glory would become ineffective, and thieves would not be able to utilise it, if you were to rub the threshold or other parts of the house by which they may enter with an unguent composed of the gall of a black cat, the fat of a white hen, and the blood of the screech-owl; this substance must be compounded during the dog-days}}
An actual Hand of Glory is kept at the Whitby Museum in North Yorkshire, England, together with a text published in a book from 1823.<ref name=Whitby>{{cite web|url=https://whitbymuseum.org.uk/hand-of-glory/|title=Hand of Glory|date=|publisher=Whitby Museum|accessdate=22 June 2022}}</ref> In this manuscript text, the way to make the Hand of Glory is as follows:<ref>{{cite book |pages=455–456 |last1=Simpson |first1=Jacqueline |last2=Roud |first2=Stephen |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iTcdvd1iRXsC|isbn=9780192100191 |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2000 |title=A Dictionary of English Folklore |location=Oxford}}</ref>
{{quote|It must be cut from the body of a criminal on the gibbet; pickled in salt, and the urine of man, woman, dog, horse and mare; smoked with herbs and hay for a month; hung on an oak tree for three nights running, then laid at a crossroads, then hung on a church door for one night while the maker keeps watch in the porch-"and if it be that no fear hath driven you forth from the porch ... then the hand be true won, and it be yours"}}
==Pop Culture== In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets a hand of glory is seen on display in Borgin and Burke's, credited with producing candlelight which only the holder can see.
In Lady Midnight the Warlock Malcolm Fade tries resurrecting his late lover with a dozen hands of glory.
In The Laundry Files, the Hand of Glory is a common piece of equipment, depicted as causing a user to become imperceptible when the fingertips are set alight, or firing blasts of energy when a phase conjugate mirror is affixed to the base and a pre-programmed trigger phrase is concentrated upon by the user. The creation of a Hand of Glory is depicted as using the self-defence reflex of extra-dimensional parasites, and thus only requiring a nerve-dense limb. Consequently, most Hands of Glory depicted in the series are those of pigeons.
==See also== *Order of the Occult Hand *The Monkey's Paw
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== * [http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/hand.html The Hand of Glory and other gory legends about human hands] – Edited by D. L. Ashliman.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hand Of Glory}} Category:European folklore Category:Hands in culture Category:Medieval legends Category:Magic items Category:Talismans