Hellboy and a 17th century White Grimoire.
The following is an excerpt from a book currently being birthed. Its main theme is the careful examination and practical restoration of an original 17th century ‘white grimoire’, focussing on the use of a liturgic bell designed to call the seven Olympic Spirits, as well as through their mediation, one’s HolyDaimon.
Because this short chapter stands somewhat outside the rest of the text, and because the magic discussed seems relevant to our current time, I decided to share it here in advance… If you want, please wish me luck with my inquiry to Mr.Mignola to use some of his art in the final book.
Stay safe and healthy, my friend.
LVX,
Frater Acher
“Motse ha o na sehlare: sehlare ke pelo -
Power is not acquired by medicine: the heart is the medicine”
(…) Before we dive into the maze of the now famous Olympic Spirits, we shall take a lesson from a rather different source. Mike Mignola in his 2002 Hellboy story, The Third Wish, offers a most profound lesson on the use of sacred paraphernalia in magic. As usual with Mignola’s original comics, his stories are an expression of both, his astonishing artistic genius, as well as the extensive research he has done before he even puts the pen down. In The Third Wish Hellboy encounters the wise African medicine men Mohlomi. The latter figure is a reference to the authentic Morena Mohlomi, an 18th century African chief of the Bakoena tribe, and respected to this day beyond the boundaries of Lesotho as a wise philosopher and medicine man.
If you have the chance, we strongly recommend reading the original stories contained in Volume 3 of the Hellboy Library edition. For all others, we thankfully offer the following summary by Thom Hardman:
Mohlomi offers to Hellboy a protective talisman in the form of a bell, he claims it is his 'medicine' and that it will keep him safe. This bell, seemingly imbued with magic, is crucial to saving Hellboy's life on a number of occa- sions, even miraculously reappearing after previously being eaten by a shark. And it is on this subject that the words of the real world Mohlomi take on a deep significance for Hellboy's story.
The story goes that when a young, ambitious Moshoeshoe first met with Mohlomi, he requested magical assistance or medicine from the wise man, to help with his campaign to become a powerful chief. To this Mohlomi responded with the aforementioned quote that “the heart is the medicine.” As Hellboy lies dying on a forgotten and uncharted island; his bell lost, his heart impaled and his own blood congealing into the demonic form which he fears lies dormant inside him, Mohlomi returns to speak with him again.
In this meeting between life and death, Mohlomi hands the missing bell back to Hellboy, stating that “nothing's lost”, in doing so restoring Hellboy to life and giving him the required power to defeat the nightmare version of himself. It is not however the bell, not the medicine, that gives Hellboy this power, but it is the heart and conviction that Mohlomi returns to him. Hell- boy reaffirms that he will fight to the last against his supposed destiny, rather than a magical trinket, Mohlomi restored his heart.
The role Mohlomi takes on in Mignola’s story is the personification of a spirit guide, thus an echo of the qualities of his real-life antetype. However, Mignola’s Mohlomi appears to Hellboy two hundred years after the former’s death. Thus in the story Mohlomi appears as an ancestral spirit, a being traversing both sides of life of death. As mentioned by Hardman, it is critical that after receiving Mohlomi’s ‘medicine’ in the form of a magical bell in The Third Wish, Hellboy encounters the wise spirit again in the 2005 story The Island. Designed by Magnolia as a counterpoint to the easily digestible Hellboy movies of the time, this episode was meant to charter much of the complex cosmological back-story of our antihero from hell. Mohlomi’s spirit appears to Hellboy in the very moment as the latter lies defeated, with a pierced heart, bleeding out, on the threshold of death. Upon retrieving the magical bell from Mohlomi again, Hellboy’s personal and deeply sinister destiny is fully revealed to him. It is then that Hellboy realises that in order to not fulfil the fate from hell destined for him, he will need to lean against his own blood and into the heart-space healed by the sound of the magical bell. Finally, with the restorative forces of Mohlomi’s medicine, Hellboy overcomes his own shadow and the seed of destruction contained in the ‘right hand of the devil’.
The heart is the medicine, the real-world Mohlomi wisely said. Two hundred years after his death, through Mignola’s inspired vision, this medicine took on the form of a small liturgic bell, passed on from beyond death by an ancestral spirit to an antihero from hell. Even more than a tool of protection, Mohlomi’s bell is a tool that offers restoration of the heart.
Clearly, none of us is Hellboy. Nobody’s blood in this world carries the memories of hell. And no one of us is adorned with the ‘right hand of the devil’. Yet, our human curse also often has been likened to a gift of the dark lord. For our curse, as well as possible blessing, is free will. The figure of Mohlomi in Mignola’s stories is a wonderful symbol of the living promise that magic holds for each practitioner: Whatever mess we have gotten ourselves into, whichever one-way street we got stuck in, however dim our heart-space has grown, there is a medicine waiting for us. There is a sound out there somewhere, a call of a bell that will protect us and restore us to a better version of ourselves. It is this bell’s call that turns our blood from a bond with hell, into a river of freedom.
As we will now look at the central operation of our 17th century text, remembering Hellboy’s experience of the wise Mohlomi is advised. For it is a similar promise we encounter in this grimoire of white magic: A pathway towards a sound that will tie us closer to our holy daimon, to our protector and guide, the being that will help us hold on to our noble self, however dark the night we stand in.
(…)