Among many other interests, witchcraft and sorcery hold a special place in Macabre Gadgets' imagination. The idea of a human being potentially holding an ability to cooperate with nature is more than thrilling. And despite the fact that modern society strongly denies any sort of magic, if we are to look back, century by century, individuals and often even entire communities that believed in magic always existed.
Today, even the word magical is more often used to describe an out-of-this-world, positive but entirely real experience, rather than a supernatural one.
But it was not always like that.
Witchcraft Across the Centuries
The word magic itself comes from the Ancient Greek magikos, which is a transformation of the Old Persian magush. To be a magus back then was not equal to being an outcast. They were priests, scholars, astronomers. As the Hellenistic world clashed with the Persian Empire, the word began to gain a negative meaning, as if to represent something strange and threatening to the usual perception of things in Greek and Roman societies.
In the Middle Ages, some forms of magic — so-called natural magic — were still acceptable. But black magic and demonic magic were severely banned. It is hard for the modern eye to spot the difference, but nevertheless, we should take the win, in the fact that the natural world still received some sort of respect and spiritual admiration from early scholars, unlike the dry scientific analysis of later centuries.
By the 16th and 17th centuries, the social and intellectual landscape had shifted against magic completely. The examples of witch hunts are countless. After that, magic was dismissed more and more until, in the 19th century, the Oxford Dictionary added a new meaning to the word magic — legerdemain or optical illusion.
After that, the perception of magic was never the same.
As of today, we learn about magic from modernised and simplified fairy tales, cartoons and cinema — newly born, contemporary media, often filled with hidden modern narratives. Not the best sources to approach an ancient system of spiritual beliefs and superstitions that predates recorded history.
Macabre Gadgets’ Witchcraft
It is clear that most people today wouldn’t be able to summon a storm or influence the harvest, but we still perform small magic rituals without giving them a second thought and simply call them superstitions. Knock on wood, crossed fingers, a pinch of salt thrown over the shoulder — these are small, silly rituals that will not surprise anyone today.
We tend to think about magic not as a tool or a sequence of rituals, but more as a form of knowledge. Knowledge about the world and about ourselves. We cannot perform it; we can learn it instead.
Our entire world is made of magic, and we are a part of it. Gathering a pebble or a leaf, making a small bookmark in your day — is making small magic. Carrying a small object, a seashell, a talisman — is making small magic. Anything around us might have a certain symbolism, a deeper, personal meaning.
This is probably where our own fascination with witchcraft begins. We are drawn to objects that carry something more than their physical form — a shell picked up from the beach, a stone kept for years, an old talisman, a piece of jewelry worn so long that it becomes almost inseparable from its owner. We don’t believe an object needs supernatural powers to become magical. Giving it meaning, carrying it with you, turning it into a personal ritual — perhaps this is the closest form of magic most of us still practice.
And perhaps this is what jewelry has always been particularly good at: carrying a human touch, human artistry, a little bit of our own magic through time and space. A favourite ring or lucky charm can be as magical as we allow it to be.
Explore the Witchcraft World
The Eye — The gaze that predates language. Five thousand years of the watching eye, cast in oxidised sterling silver.
→ Shop Eye Jewelry
Celestials — Stars, moons, and cosmic forms. The night sky as a system of meaning, not a decorative trend.
→ Shop Celestial Jewelry
Alchemy — Coming soon.
Astrology — Coming soon.
Fascinus — Coming soon.
Editorials
Storm — A rococo countess, a gathering storm, and the ancient belief that certain women could command the weather. The Witchcraft editorial by Macabre Gadgets.
Éclipse Lunaire — Coming soon.
Related Worlds
Skull Jewelry — memento mori, the relic, mortality as ornament.
THEA — ancient mythology, Hecate, Circe, Medusa and the darker side of the classical world.
Bestiary — wolves, serpents, ravens and the creatures that have always belonged to the wild and the uncanny.