Relics are, for many, vessels of a dark and powerful magic. Sacred (or profane) body parts, preserved and used for the power they contain, have existed throughout human history, from the bones of saints to the Canadian thumb shot.
The Hand of Glory is certainly one of the most unique and rare relics. Dating from the 18th century, the Hand of Glory is the dried and pickled hand of a hanged man.
Sometimes stories mention using the left hand due to its association with being sinister and the word’s Latin origins, which translates to “on the left side.” Other stories state that it must only be the right hand of the hanged man. If the individual was hanged for murder, the hand you should retrieve was the “hand that did the deed.”
The Power of the Hand
The hand of a dead man has been considered to have magical powers in folklore from many different countries across Europe for over 400 years. The name “Hand of Glory” comes originally from folk etymology.
It derives from the French term “man de gloire” which became glossed to “mandragora”, which means mandrake. While most people might associate the mandrake with the hideous screaming baby plant roots whose cry can render someone unconscious or kill them from Harry Potter, they are, in fact, real.
They do not scream or have faces (thank god), but it was a common folk belief that the mandrake was the plant that would grow beneath the gallows of a hanged man. The leaves of a mandrake resemble hands, and the Saxons believed that mandrakes would emit light at night, which is one of the magical properties associated with the Hand of Glory.
What kind of person would want a hanged man’s dried and pickled hand? Burglars, for a start, were interested in possessing their own Hand of Glory for the magical powers the macabre memento was said to have.
According to old European folk beliefs, the Hand of Glory could unlock any door allowing the thief to slip into a home or shop with little to no physical effort on their part. The Hand of Glory wasn’t only a creepy master key; the Hand of Glory was said to render a person motionless when waved at them.
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The Hand of Glory had the ability to render all individuals in the home into a coma that they were unable to wake from while the burglars were at work. A candle made from the fat of the dead man was sometimes placed on the knuckle of the middle finger after manipulating the hand into a fist to fashion a candle stick.
The candle was said to burn forever, and whoever held the Hand of Glory with the fat candle while lit would be the only person who could see the light. This candle, which sometimes used the hanged man’s hair as a wick, could only be snuffed out with milk.
Other stories mention the Hand of Glory would catch flame on the fingertips to indicate how many individuals were asleep or in the home that would be broken into. Clearly we are dealing with a powerful relic here.
How to Make a Hand of Glory
The instructions most commonly cited for the creation of a Hand of Glory come from a 1722 grimoire known as the Petite Albert. The instructions are as follows:
“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 in which you go with this baneful instrument shall remain motionless.”
The Petit Albert also helpfully includes a way in which a homeowner could protect their home and family from the effects of a Hand of Glory.
“The Hand of Glory would become ineffective, and thieves would not be able to utilize it, if you were to rub the threshold or other parts of the house by which they might enter with an urgent composed of the gall of a black cat, the fat of a white hen, and the blood of a screech-owl; this substance must be compounded during the dog-days.”
The Whitby Museum in North Yorkshire, England, has a legitimate Hand of Glory in its collection, which came with text from an 1832 book that explains how to make a Hand of Glory.
“It must be cut from the body of a criminal on the gibbet; pickled in salt, and the urine of a 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 one, and it be yours.”
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It would seem prudent to note at this point: please do not attempt to make your own Hand of Glory. Removing the limb of a deceased individual (even if the individual was a hanged man who was guilty of a crime) in most countries is a crime with serious repercussions.
How Many Were Made?
The exact number of such relics that had been created is unknown. We know that the Whitby Museum has their Hand of Glory, which they call “the last remaining Hand of Glory.” While it isn’t a typical Hand of Glory, a 400-year-old mummified arm hangs from the ceiling of the Kostel Sv. Jakuba Vetshio (Church of St. James the Greater) in Prague.
According to legends, a thief attempted to steal the jewels from a statue of the Virgin Mary. The moment the thief touched the jewels, the statue came to life, and it reached out and grabbed him by the arm and held him where he stood.
The parishioners could not free the thief from the statue’s grasp, so they were forced to amputate the arm. As soon as the limb had been severed, the statue dropped the arm and returned to her original pose. As a warning to all who attempt to steal from the church, the arm was hung from a meat hook and still remains today, a not-so-glorious Hand of Glory.
A 684-year-old pub in Wiltshire, England, was also well known for displaying a Hand of Glory from a cheating gambler. The cheater had his hand chopped off by a butcher and had it thrown into a fireplace as punishment for cheating in a card game.
The hand was not discovered until 1911, when the pub was being renovated. This Hand of Glory was placed into a locked glass vitrine along with a pack of 18th-century playing cards as a warning to all patrons. Sadly, this Hand of Glory was stolen in 2010 and has not resurfaced. This isn’t the only Hand of Glory that has been stolen.
A Hand of Glory preserved in limestone was discovered by a demolition team working on an old town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. This Hand of Glory, also known locally as the “perjury-hand,” was stored in a wooden box at St. Brigida’s Catholic Church and kept there starting in 1907 until it was stolen in 2012.
Unfortunately, with this Hand of Glory, the theft came at the worst time. The people in the town finally raised enough money to send the hand to Düsseldorf University to have tests performed in order to learn the age and sex of the individual the hand came from.
Top Image: A Hand of Glory found in the rafters of a cottage in England, thought to come from a nearby gibbet. Source: www.badobadop.co.uk / CC BY-SA 4.0.
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