Book of Magical Charms

The Book of Magical Charms, also known as Newberry 5017, is a handwritten occult commonplace book composed in England in the seventeenth century and currently in the holdings of the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois. The original volume, which has dos-à-dos binding, has no title nor any named author— "Book of Magical Charms" is the title assigned to it by the library staff who acquired it in 1988 along with a bundle of medical texts. Its pages were written using iron gall ink and likely a quill pen using Latin and archaic English, and contain numerous passages regarding charms for things such as healing a toothache or recovering a lost voice as well as how to talk to spirits. Although the book's principal author is not named, he was identified in 2017 from his handwriting as a London lawyer named Robert Ashley. Ashley likely composed the book over the course of his lifetime. No copies of the book were ever made.[1]

Page 7 of the Book of Magical Charms, depicting a strange kind of cross

The Newberry Library has made the book's pages available for the public to read and transcribe/ translate[2]

References
  1. Christopher Borrelli (30 October 2017). "Newberry Library's 'Book of Magical Charms' is the 'stuff of nightmares'". Chicago Tribune.
  2. Lauren Tousignant (14 July 2017). "Library seeks witches to translate 17th-century spellbook". New York Post.
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