Witchcraft and magic was a part of daily life in the 19th century.
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Homeowners would carve specific markings into their properties’ walls, believing them to ward off evil spirits that sought to attack.
The days of such practices have faded, but the marks themselves have not.
Historian Ian Evans has embarked on a journey to document these markings and their prevalence in Tasmania.
Throughout the course of the Tasmanian Magic Project, he also hopes to pinpoint their exact meaning and source.
Dr Evans is no stranger to the pre-1900s practices of the world.
A thesis he undertook in 2010 concentrated on the cataloging and documenting of objects found concealed in historic Australian houses and buildings.
Part of this undertaking brought him to Tasmania, where he found heavy evidence of the concealment practice at Woodbury House in the state’s Midlands.
A sweep of the property found 38 items, from shoes in chimneys to children’s clothes inside walls.
“I realised that these were just part of a lost and secret history of magic in this country,” Dr Evans said.
It’s a history that Dr Evans intends to further discover through the Tasmanian Magic Project, and a history that he says had not before been explored.
On-the-ground work for the project began earlier this year, and after a winter break, the NSW-based historian intends to return to Tasmania to explore the North.
The finding that really spurred him to take on the project was a marking called a hexafoil, which he found in horse stables at Shene, near Pontville in the South.
“It was the first recorded in Australia and stimulated me to find more of its kind and also other marks,” Dr Evans said.
A hexafoil is comprised of six overlapping arcs, surrounded by one larger circle. The end result is not dissimilar to that of a generic flower outline.
Further investigations found more.
“The seven surviving stalls in the Shene stables have no less than 58 burn marks.”
It’s in the stables of historic properties that Dr Evans believes he will find the most evidence of practiced magic.
In his investigations in the Southern Midlands earlier this year, he found “evil-averting burn marks” in all 20 of the stables he examined.
“These marks were made with the flame from a candle or taper and are so numerous that they were clearly not accidental,” he explained.
“Colleagues in England have recorded exactly the same marks in buildings there.
“At this stage we can only surmise how these marks were supposed to work as examples of the practice of magic. It may have been to inoculate buildings against fire.
“Horses were extremely valuable at that time and there were no fire brigades or home insurance.”
Dr Evans bases his theory around the value of horses, and around the grandeur of the properties under examination.
More expensive and expansive properties, he explained, typically employed specially trained horse masters to care for their steeds.
(Estates of lesser value generally just saw their horses cared for by the “man of the house”. These properties did not tend to yield evidence of magic markings.)
He believes that the horse masters were part of the Society of the Horseman’s Word, a secret society that began in the United Kingdom, and he believes, spread to Australia.
It used semblances of magic and folklore in its initiation ceremonies, and Dr Evans believes that part of those practices focused around protection of the horses from “evil spirits”.
“There was clearly word circulated about these horsemen, of the magic of doing these marks… Or at least a similar organisation,” Dr Evans said.
While it’s the theory of Dr Evans and others that these sorts of marks were deliberately etched into properties to protect the occupants from evil spirits, it’s just a theory.
“Because there are no records in the world… we are left to interpret what we find, and that can be a bit of a challenge,” he said.
“They may have thought that these [markings] would immunise the buildings against fire, and the evil beings who caused fire.
“The past was a different place. They really did not understand the world… there was the belief that there was an underworld that sometimes came through ours and affected how you lived.”
It’s on old, 19th-century estates in the Northern Midlands and Northern Tasmania that Dr Evans will be focusing his investigations when the magic project continues later this year.
He said the investigations would focus mainly on outbuildings and stables, where it’s more possible that burn marks were made.
Other marks that could be found include the hexafoils, concentric circles and merels, which he said would most likely be a building’s access points - doorways and windows.
Anyone who believes they have found marks can contact Dr Evans, via email on evansthebook@gmail.com or 0455 173 456.