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Demonic dolls and puppets

Posted on Tuesday, 27 October, 2009 | 0 comments
Columnist: Patrick Bernauw

Dolls of Death, manufactured to avenge a broken heart or to have an enemy dying in great torment; the mystery of a doll that grew old in the attic, the stuff Hollywood horror films are made of; how a young student was possessed by a demon raised by the famous magician Cornelius Agrippa and went wandering through Louvain like a puppet on a string; and a story about the Golem of the Old Prague… Meet some Demonic Dolls and Puppets now!

It is said that a French lady was once playing a little serenade for her lover in this most haunted house of Bruges-la-Morte. He was a descendant of the Menapic druids who used to live there. He was a witch and a warlock, specialised in the manufacturing of the Dolls of Death. People often asked him to win a great love or to avenge a broken heart, to get a husband out of their way or to have an enemy dying in great torment. And then he put a spell on you.

He wrote the name of his victim in the heart of the doll and stabbed it with his hot and poisonous needles, and you were forever cursed. It is said that this French lady requested her lover with the snow-white locks to use a Doll of Death on her husband. But this grumpy old man suspected something and replaced this pubic hair of his by a snow-white lock of the wicked druid he had found in their bed…

Read what happened then in:

The Dolls of Death

An unnamed family, similar to any other average family, did what all families do as the children start to grow up. They had to decide that the outgrown toys, cluttering the kid’s rooms, should be got rid of or stored away. As usually happens, with many things that were cherished by the children, several of them were stored away in the attic. Amongst them was a doll. An ordinary baby-faced doll.

Run the clock forward eleven years… and see the thing that Hollywood Horror films are made of. Even more particularly it is reminiscent of Oscar Wilde’s The picture of Dorian Gray:

The Mystery of The Doll That Grew Old in The Attic

Martín Antonio Del Rio, the Jesuit theologian who was partly responsible for the witch-hunts in the Southern Netherlands, taught for several years theology in the Flemish city of Louvain when the famous magician Cornelius Agrippa lived there. He accused the Magister of practising diabolical magic, the awful Black Art. For instance, Agrippa would have paid at inns with pieces of horn and casted an illusion over the senses whereby those who received the pieces took them for real money.

It also was Del Rio who told the story of the Demon of Louvain, raised in Agrippa’s study. Or how a young student got possessed by a demon and walked through Louvain like a puppet on a string:

Cornelius Agrippa and the Demon of Louvain

In Jewish folklore, “a golem” is an animated being created entirely from inanimate matter. In modern Hebrew the word literally means “cocoon”, but can also mean “fool” or “stupid”; in Yiddish it is a slang insult, meaning “clumsy” or “slow”. The name appears to derive from the word “gelem”, which means “raw material”. In the Bible, “a golem” refers to an embryonic or incomplete substance, an “unshaped form”. Today, “a golem” stands for an entities serving man under controlled conditions but hostile to him in others.

Read all about it in: The Golem Meets Meyrinck in the Old Prague

Copyright by Patrick Bernauw & GhostWritings

Article Copyright© Patrick Bernauw - reproduced with permission.

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