'True Recipe'

A summery of a rite found in a manuscript book compiled ByGeorge Calvert of Kerby Moorside, North Yorkshire, in 1823, now stored at the Whitby museum in Yorkshire, enjoy.

"The True Receipt for the Pickling and Claiming of a Hand of Glory,and Likewise the Making of a Glory Candle."

"Cut the hand from a criminal hanging in chains on a gibbet, bynight. Keep it for thirteen days in complete darkness in a strongsalt pickle mingled with the urine of man, woman, dog, stallion and amare; turn it over every night. Take it out, and dry it in sunlightfor three days.Then bend the fingers round a stick, so that a candle thrust betweenthem will be tightly gripped, and hang the hand on a wire a good wayup inside your chimney, where it must stay for a (Luna) month. Duringthis time burn no coal on your fire, only wood. On each of the firstthirteen nights of the month, throw a bundle of moist herbs and mowngrass onto the fire, to give off `a goodly steam and fume'. The herbsshould include Sage, Rue, Green larch, Ash, Oak, Ragwort, Nightshade,Colts foot, and field Yarrow. By the end of the month the hand shouldbe hard and brown, ready to be `claimed'.Great care is needed in `claiming', otherwise it all fails. Drive anail into an ancient Oak, and hang hand there three times overnight;for another three nights lay it at midnight at the centre of acrossroads and leave it there for one hour. If neither man nor beasthas moved it from it's place on the Oak and on the crossroad, you canproceed to the third rite, which is to hang it over the keyhole of achurch door and keep watch beside it in the porch all night tillcockcrow, `and if it be that no fear hath driven you forth from theporch…then the hand be true won, and it be yours'.To make a supply of candles, take three pounds of tallow from threetypes of animal (but not Sheep or Pig), mix with a few drops of aman's blood and a pea-size lump of fat from the body of either a manor a woman. The wick must include a few strands from a hangman's rope.Only milk or blood can quench it and break the magic sleep it hascaused."