Hand of Glory
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The Hand of Glory is the dried and pickled hand of a man who has been hanged.
According to old European beliefs, a candle made of the fat from a malefactor who died on the gallows or of the finger of an unborn child, lighted and placed in the Hand of Glory as in a candlestick would have rendered motionless all persons to whom it was presented. Because of this the Hand was sometimes used by burglars to rob houses. During the 17th century robbers used to murder pregnant women in order to thus extract candles from their wombs.
Trivia
- It should be noted that in the Harry Potter book Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Draco Malfoy comes across the Hand of Glory in a pawnshop located in Knockturn Alley.
References
- James George Frazer, The Golden Bough.
External Links
- The Hand of Glory and other gory legends about human hands (http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/hand.html) : edited by D. L. Ashliman.
- Hand of Glory (http://www.traditionalwitchcraft.org/folklore/hand.html) : manufacture and use of the Hand of Glory.