Sunday, April the 16th, 2006

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How to Stick Pins Into a Wax Doll of Your Enemy

Here is a simple and cost-effective way to cause harm to your enemy. All you will need is some wax, a few pins, and a hank of your enemy's hair or a scrap from clothing they have worn or some other item imbued with their spirit or Geist.

You may protest, as so many people do, that you have not an enemy in the world, that your sunny disposition and acts of alms-giving mean that no one wishes you ill. Much as I would like this to be true, it is extremely unlikely. At one time or another, all of us have made enemies. Perhaps there was a time when you struck clunk rather than clang during bell-ringing, and so offended the ears of your captain that he has hated you ever since with a loathing that grows by the day. Or you may have inadvertently bashed into and maimed a goat while cycling at high speed—remember that collision?—and there is a farmer who spends his lonely nights cursing you to hell. You could even have made an enemy by stealing a bonbon from the mouth of a tiny tot, a mischievous deed that you have since forgotten but has led that infant, now a grown adult, to harbour a burning indignation which has quite distorted her life. So do not think you have no foes, and do not think yourself innocent and safe. There are people bent on revenge, and they will stop at nothing, and the best way to protect yourself is to cause them harm before they steal upon you at dead of night and smother you with your own pillow.

Obtaining your wax and pins couldn't be easier. You can get wax from a wax chandler, or you can just melt a few candles until they are soft enough to mould. You do not need a great deal of wax, as your doll will only be a tiny thing, like a little incubus. Ideally you should be able to hold it in one hand while, cackling and slobbering, you drive the pins home with the fingers of your other hand. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

I will assume you have the wax, and a means of heating it. Bunsen burners, as found in the laboratories of boffins both mad and otherwise, are useful for this part of the project, or you may prefer to use your gas cooker at home. Do remember to pay your bill, though, for if you neglect it your gas provider may cut off your supply, and you will be left with wax too hard to mould into a doll. When you have malleable wax, fashion it with your fingers and thumbs into a basic simulacram of a human being. It need not be an accurate representation of your enemy, unless they have a particularly noticeable physical flaw, such as a missing limb or a giant swollen head. In most cases, a standard humanoid shape will do.

Some correspondents have asked me if the little doll which you will pierce with sharp pins to harm your foe can be made out of plasticine, or some other proprietary modelling clay suitable for infants and for those embarking on a course of physical therapy in an institution for the bewildered. The straightforward answer is “No, No, a thousand times No!” You must always, always use wax, for there is something weird and even sinister about wax.

Now, about those pins. You can get pins from any old haberdasher or needlework shop, from anywhere in fact which sells pins for innocent domestic purposes. So long as the pins are of metal, you can't really go wrong. But if you have a flair for wickedness, you might want to use special Zoltan™ pins. These are manufactured especially for plunging remorselessly into waxen images for nefarious purposes, and the makers promise faster and more decisive results. Independent studies have not been able to uphold such claims, alas, and it may be that the Zoltan™ pins people are guilty of hyperbole and guff. I leave the choice to you.

One parenthetical note. You must use pins and not nails. If you try to press nails into your wax doll, you are making a category error. Nails exist to be driven into mud idols for quite other purposes. There was a time when children learned the useful phrase “Pins for wax, nails for mud” as soon as they could speak, but that seems to be one of those pieces of traditional wisdom we have lost in our pap-engulfed world. It ought to be revived, starting now.

So, you have your doll and you have your pins. Most important of all, you have your enemy, whether it be the village wrestler who once scolded you as you frolicked in the graveyard, or the pilot of a jet aircraft whose uniform cap you tipped off his head and kicked along the street as he made his way home after flying his spy plane deep into enemy airspace. Now you have to imbue that little wax doll with the spirit of your foe. You will not be bringing the doll to life exactly, like some sort of waxen Pinocchio, but it needs to lose its anonymity and be clearly identified with your enemy. You can do this by attaching to it that hank of hair or scrap of clothing I mentioned earlier, or some other unique item. I shall leave it to your finely-honed wits to work out how to obtain such a thing. Unless you are the village barber or dry cleaner, you may need to employ a private detective or, as a cheaper option, hire the services of a ne'er-do-well hobbledehoy.

Having somehow instilled your doll with the Geist of your foe, you are now at last ready to pierce it with pins. Go on, stick them in! Your face ought to take on an expression of evil concentration, and you may even cackle, but you do not need to have a bubbling cauldron of some foul eldritch potion at your side. That is mere whimsy.

Opinions differ as to how you may judge the efficacy of the operation. Some hold that success consists in gaining immediate results, so that at the very instant you stick a pin into your doll's leg, your enemy feels a sharp pang in the same spot. Others contend that a pin so placed will lead to your foe breaking their leg in the near future. There is no foolproof way of influencing the precise kind of harm your enemy will come to. You need to trust to the invisible powers of the cosmos, in much the same way as loveable disc jockey and television personality Noel Edmonds does, through his adherence to the Cosmic Ordering Service.

Next week, we will be looking at evil things to do with the help of toads.

DETOURS : The Circles Of Hell … Rudolf Leuckart Wall Charts … The English Emblem Book Project