Hand of Glory  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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The Hand of Glory is the dried and pickled hand of a man who has been hanged, often specified as being the left (Latin: sinister) hand, or else, if the man were hanged for murder, the hand that "did the deed."

According to old European beliefs, a candle made of the fat from a malefactor who died on the gallows, virgin wax, and Lapland sesame oil (the candle could only be put out with milk), and the hand having come from the said hanged criminal, lighted and placed in the Hand of Glory (as in a candlestick) would have rendered motionless all persons to whom it was presented. The Hand of Glory also purportedly had the power to unlock any door it came across.

The legend is traceable to about 1440, but the name only dates from 1707. It was originally a name for the mandrake root (via French "mandragore" and thus "hand of glory") that became conflated with the earlier legend. The confusion may have occurred because mandrakes are said to grow beneath the bodies of hanged criminals.

In popular culture

The Hand of Glory makes numerous appearances in popular culture including:

• Guy De Maupassant's fantastic novels "La Main" and "La Main D'Ecorché"
• The Hand of Glory makes an appearance in the Hellboy graphic novel, The Right Hand of Doom, in the story Box Full of Evil. The Hand in this case was from "a hanged man, dried, dipped into wax, and made into a candle", and could "unlock doors and immobilize everyone in a house".
• The Hand of Glory appears in the graphic novel series The Invisibles by Grant Morrison, although here it is an extradimensional tool used to warp spacetime. There is a suggestion in the final issue that the Hand is actually that of Jack Frost, who uses a fold in time to project it backwards as a kind of "cursor".
• In the Harry Potter book Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Draco Malfoy comes across the Hand of Glory in the Borgin and Burkes pawnshop located in Knockturn Alley. It makes another appearance in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when Draco uses it to make a quick get-away. In the book, the Hand doesn't render people immobile, but gives light only to the person using it. (Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (2005 edition) mentions this variant of the superstition under "Dead Man's Hand", but only refers to unspecified "magic powers" under "Hand of Glory").
• The Hand of Glory has been adopted as the nickname of several groups of Harry Potter fans around the world, the most important of such groups being based in San Bruno, California.
• Glory Hands appear in computer role-playing game Betrayal at Krondor. They're specifically hands of thieves hanged at midnight. When used with a spell called "Nightfingers", they can be used to steal items from characters in combat.

• The Hand of Glory appears in the film The Wicker Man, where it is placed next to the bed of Sgt. Howie, apparently in order to keep him asleep.
• The Hand of Glory appears in the film Angel Heart.
• A Hand of Glory appears in the computer game Thief: The Dark Project, in the second mission, "Break From Cragscleft Prison". The protagonist, master-thief Garrett, needs to retrieve his lucky hand of glory from Yssit the beggar, who is imprisoned in Cragscleft prison, while breaking out his fence, Cutty.
• The Hand of Glory is also mentioned in the short story "The Mangler", in the book Night Shift, by Stephen King.
• The character of the Hand in the children's book The Haunting of Hiram C. Hopgood by Eva Ibbotson is a sentient severed hand who dreams of becoming a Hand of Glory, capable of giving off light and immobilising people at will
• In Graham Taylor's novel Shadowmancer, the sorcerer Obadiah Demurral also used the Hand of Glory, which put to sleep everyone in the house except the one who held it.
• A Hand of Glory is created and used by the evil sorceress Selenna Izard in John Bellairs' children's book The House with a Clock in Its Walls.
• The Los Angeles punk rock band, The Flesh Eaters, include references to the Hand of Glory in the title of their song "Hand Of Glory", from the 1982 album, Forever Came Today, and in the lyrics of "Dove's Blood Ink" ("he had the left hand of a murderer in his pocket") on the Dragstrip Riot double LP.
• In Patrick O'Brian's novel "The Hundred Days", naval surgeon Stephen Maturin is given the gift of an interestingly deformed preserved hand by a fellow physician. The sailors on board his ship mistakenly assume that this is a Hand of Glory, and therefore a powerful lucky talisman.
• In Neil Gaiman's comic Sandman The Hand of Glory is a book written in dreams by fictional cult author Erasmus Fry. The book is found in the library of dreams which contains many books (some by popular authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien) that were only imagined by their authors but never written. A Hand of Glory also appears in Gaiman's work Neverwhere.
• Witches were supposed to employ the Hand of Glory for their own dire and secret purposes, and were sometimes accused of doing so at their trials.
• In the novel Faerie Wars by Herbie Brennan, the Hand of Glory is present with Brimstone as he flicks it and it ignites then tries to crawl away but he uses a paper knife to stop it from getting away.
• A version of the Hand of Glory appears in the second book of the Bartimaeus Trilogy, The Golem's Eye. The morbid agent Harlequin owns a candle wedged in the remains of a man's extremities. He is able to use it to "send his enemies into a stupor and detect watchful magic at fifty paces".
• The Hand of Glory appears in Charles Stross's The Atrocity Archives as an object which warps light around it. It is used defensively to render a user invisible or offensively, focusing the warped light through a lens to create a laser weapon.
• The Hand of Glory also appears in the Interactive Fiction game The Hound of Shadow.
• The Hand of Glory is mentioned in the song "Measuring Cups" by Andrew Bird
• In the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, a Hand of Glory is a mummified human hand that is worn around one's neck like a medallion or an amulet. A magical ring may be placed on one of the hand's fingers. The wearer will benefit from the ring's enchantment as if wearing it himself, and it does not count against his two-ring limit. (Under the game's normal rules, only two magical rings may be used at any given time, wearing one on each hand. Any additional rings worn will not function.) It can also be used to emit a bright light or to see invisible creatures.
• A slightly different spin on the Hand of Glory was used in the television series Poltergeist: The Legacy where it was used to summon a powerful demon known as 'The Warden', a practitioner of black magic.
• In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode No Place Like Home, Anya Jenkins mentions to the Watcher Rupert Giles that the Hand of Glory should have a 7 day waiting period for a background check, due to the raw power it possesses.
• In the Dresden Files, the Hand is also referenced. However, in this case, the Hand was possessed by the spirit of the criminal whom it was made from, and slowly rotted the user from the inside after each use.
• The Inn in the film 'A Canterbury Tale' is called the 'Hand of Glory'.
• A metal band from Germany is called The Hand of Glory.

References

• James George Frazer, The Golden Bough.