It apparently took some seriously bad mojo to go up against 17th-century witches. According to the Sept.-Oct. Archaeology magazine, U.K. researchers opened and analyzed the contents of a rare intact “witch bottle,” which was buried to ward off spells. Inside were “bent pins, a nail-pierced heart made of leather, fingernail clippings, belly-button lint, and hair, all swimming in a bath of 300-year-old, nicotine-tinged urine.” I don’t know about witches, but I’m certainly going to stay away from it.

British Archaeology magazine, which originally reported the witch bottle story, writes in a follow-up that witch bottle beliefs apparently live on in the U.K. and beyond:

A builder wrote to say he had renovated a house in Cardiff, built in 1895, that had witch bottles buried under two of its fireplaces. Even more astonishing, a police inspector in Sebringville, Ontario, Canada, wrote to say he had–just weeks ago–apprehended a man with a plastic bottle containing urine and razor blades, “for protection from bad people.”

Sources: Archaeology, British Archaeology

Image by the Greenwich Foundation, courtesy of British Archaeology.

Utne Reader has partnered with Link TV to present Global Spirit, an "internal travel series" covering the spiritual, mental, and physical practices that define us as human beings. Watch excerpts from the series here, or view entire episodes at the Link TV website. 

In this excerpt from Link TV's Global Spirit program, Dr. Ed Tick leads a group Vietnam veterans back to Vietnam in search of healing.

Taiwan’s Pacific Department Store is the unlikely home of an unlikely homage to the world’s faiths. At the Museum of World Religions visitors wander a great hall, watch video footage of funerals in other countries, leave a handprint blessing on the heat-sensitive wall, partake in a purification ritual at the water curtain, and marvel at the wall of gratitude. This “spiritual supermarket” is the brainchild of Buddhist monk Master Hsin Tao, who came up with the idea after renouncing the world and living in isolation for more than a decade. Spirituality and Health reports, “Master Hsin Tao believes that today’s tech-savvy kids are not interested in dusty cultural artifacts. They want technologically sophisticated displays that allow them to experience all the religions of the world and feel the concept of universal love.”

Source: Spirituality & Health  (article not available online)

Utne Reader has partnered with Link TV to present Global Spirit, an "internal travel series" covering the spiritual, mental, and physical practices that define us as human beings. Watch excerpts from the series here, or view entire episodes at the Link TV website. 

This episode, The Spiritual Quest, explores the personal, spiritual journey with Karen Armstrong, best-selling author of A History of God, and Robert Thurman, the first American ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk.

Utne Reader has partnered with Link TV to present Global Spirit, an "internal travel series" covering the spiritual, mental, and physical practices that define us as human beings. Watch excerpts from the series here, or view entire episodes at the Link TV website. 

This episode, In Search of Ecstasy, explores the ecstatic state—a global phenomenon found in all kinds of spiritual and religious traditions. How is ecstatic trance practiced around the world, and why are so many people today fascinated by it?

Jalaluddin Rumi, "The Shakespeare of the East": Follow Andrew Harvey on a Sufi pilgrimage to Turkey, as he celebrates the 800th anniversary of the 'wedding night,' or passing, of Jalaluddin Rumi, the internationally-beloved poet and mystic...

Zikr and Divine Ecstasy: Observe a Sufi zikr ('zikr' means remembrance) in Istanbul, Turkey, led by Shaykh Sherif Baba...

Matheus Moraes is an 11-year-old rock star for God. He started preaching when he was six. In 2006, at the age of nine, he preached 250 sermons all over Brazil. Vice magazine talked to Matheus Moraes and two other child preachers in the country. The conversations are bizarre, sad, and, at times, profound. Here's an excerpt:

Vice: Was there anything especially religious about your birth?

Matheus: I was born in Rio on the 18th of May, 1998, after a promise. God sent a prophet to earth who told my mom that she would get pregnant very soon and that the baby she was going to give birth to would have a very special gift. He would be a son of God.

At what age did you start preaching?

Officially, I started preaching in 2003. My parents told me that I mumbled Bible phrases when I was a baby—even when I wasn’t able to read. I spent most of my childhood in church and had a pretty close connection to the pastor. At some point he asked me if I would like to give sermons, and so I started to walk the path to God.

Do you have a lot of fans?

Every time I go back to a city there are always people with signs and posters. They ask me for signatures, too, and bring me gifts. Most of them buy my DVDs, and that is really good because I can make some money and give it to my parents.

Here's Matheus in action:

Source: Vice

Tourism is this day and age’s dirty word, with rightful concern for the environmental impact of travel looming over alluring vacation plans. In this line of thinking, spiritual journeys pose a special quandary, writes Philip Carr-Gomm for Resurgence.

“Our desire to visit sacred places has resulted in the creation of yet another industry that is pushing us to the brink of environmental collapse,” Carr-Gomm writes. “And yet doesn’t visiting sacred sites help us to appreciate our world? . . . Isn’t pilgrimage often a key component in many religions and an important spiritual practice in itself? . . . How can we honor these concepts and respect the Earth at the same time?”

Carr-Gomm has done serious thinking about the matter. He is the author of Sacred Places, a book detailing 50 spiritual and religious sites around the world. In the book, he endeavors to include both the ups and downs of any particular location. “Like any relationship, our interaction with sacred sites can either be harmful or beneficial, depending on the awareness brought to the relationship,” he writes.

To foster awareness, Carr-Gomm proposes building our relationships with sacred sites at the “soul level.” Visit them when one must, but focus on “building the bond primarily in the soul world and in consciousness.” Make use of Google Earth, virtual museums, and other rich writing and photography on the Internet—the wealth of information that, in part, is responsible for spurring this unprecedented interest in traveling to spiritual sites in the first place.

And if reinterpreting armchair travel isn’t satisfying spiritual hunger, well, Carr-Gomm has another idea: “We can turn our attention to our own landscapes—take care of a local sacred site, clearing it of rubbish and visiting it often.”

Source: Resurgence (article not yet available online)

Esperanto began as a stab at linguistic utopia. Imagining a world unfettered by communication barriers, Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof invented the grammatically simple language in late-19^th century Poland. He dreamed that it eventually would be adopted worldwide as a universal second tongue. While these ambitious plans never reached fruition, the Boston Phoenix reports that a small, but tight-knit, international community of speakers keep Esperanto alive.

These loyal fans translate books, write songs, and hold annual conferences. They’ve also benefited from a host of web resources, using services like Skype and Facebook to stay connected and practice conversation. It helps that the language has only 16 basic grammar rules; the simple structure makes it easy for budding Esperantists to learn quickly.   

Check out the article to learn more about the language and read comments by some enthusiastic speakers. Wikipedia’s also got an extensive page on Esperanto, with plenty of historical info and good links for further exploration. 

(Thanks, AltWeeklies.)