Ferrous Friend or Foe?

Anyone who has seen Disney’s 2014 movie Maleficent will know that iron burns fairies and iron chains can hold a dragon captive. Iron frames were once popular for children’s bedsteads, because it was said that fairies could not approach to snatch or swap the infants who slept upon them. Iron bands around the coffin of a witch or a vampire were believed to prevent them from escaping their tombs. Many of the classical texts on Qabalistic ritual warn the magus to keep iron out of their ritual circle, because it ‘earths’ the ‘Magickal’ powers they attempt to invoke. <img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/0*J6RouySfEiRakIZV.jpg" style="height:510px; width:700px" /> Odin consults a Vǫlva Shaman [<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Odin_og_V%C3%B6lven_by_Fr%C3%B8lich.jpg" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">view license</a>] Yet iron has also been the saviour of many a church bell ringer, by ‘magically’ attracting lightning and diverting its path down to the earth outside the church, rather than down the bell pull and to the puller. There is earlier evidence of tall buildings using iron as lightning conductors, though use by the Christian Church was not recorded until the 1750s when they were ‘invented’ by Prokop Divi&scaron;, a Bohemian priest in Přímětice. This was around the same time as Benjamin Franklin’s more famous experiments with making lightning rods. <a href="https://medium.com/signifier/ferrous-friend-or-foe-6e25355038a1">Website</a>