The Owl's Eye

By Corinne Boyer

The Owl’s Eye is a collection of one hundred and forty two charms, spells and procedures that have been taken out of historic fortune telling books. Fortune telling books have been a part of European and American popular magic since the seventeenth century, with some even earlier examples surviving. Along with traditional fortune telling information such as how to read palms and interpret playing cards, around two thirds of the books also contained divinatory charms and spells. Though some of these are represented in dictionaries of superstitions and different folklore collections, many of them remain unknown and have never before been brought together all in one book for ease of reading.

The dates of the forty books utilized in this work range from 1685-1935 or so. Though the early books referenced for this project all came from England and a few from Scotland, most of the sources (29 out of 40) are actually from the United States, with the earliest being from 1841. These books therefore influenced American folk magic and also contributed to the belief in different superstitions, as many of the books additionally contained various beliefs and omens scattered in numerous sections throughout the text.

Though the charms and spells are mostly divinatory in nature, some of them are protective or warding. Love magic comprises the majority of the spells and rites, there are many dream divinations and numerous manipulative love magic procedures. There are also a handful of graveyard spells that in some way utilized the power of the dead for prophecy. Plant charms abound, using not only common flowers and herbs but also foods and spices, truly showing how folk magical operations use what it is on hand.  The use of human and animal blood also make their way into the charms, at times in surprisingly transgressive operations. Some of the spells are simple and some are complex, but they all form the genre of charms used in popular magic. Because many of the charms were repeated throughout many different books, we can see how influential some of them likely were.

The beautiful cover art of these special books is also shown in photographs to convey a sense of the magic of the times. The end of the book gives a detailed bibliography on each fortune telling book used, its potential availability, a commentary and a list of all that each book contains, which is divided up into common and uncommon fortune telling categories. A short-hand list of charms is also included for each work in the bibliography.

This is a very special book that contains details about folk divinations directly from their sources, with no modern interpretations. The hope is that by bringing these entries out of many old and out of print or hard to find books, that these spells and old ways can be utilized once again by people seeking to know more of the mysterious and veiled pathways, that at once connect us to our past, present and future.

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