From the book
The Anatomy of Melancholy
Robert Burton · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordCharms, Charmes, and charme name means credited with an extraordinary power to influence, protect, injure or heal.
- In the Anatomy of MelancholyThe witchcraft subsection first lists the means through which practitioners are said to act: charms, images, metal signs made under chosen constellations, knots, amulets, words and love potions.
- In this editionThe modern rendering commonly retains charms, while clarifying the surrounding terms: Characters becomes “written symbols” or “inscribed signs,” and strong conceipt becomes “powerful conviction.”
- A place to readCharms appear among reported country treatments for hydrophobia, followed by a preference for approved physicians.
Meaning
Charms, Charmes, and charme name means credited with an extraordinary power to influence, protect, injure or heal. Their immediate company often clarifies their sense: spells, spoken words, incantations, written signs, images, knots and amulets. A charm may thus belong to a verbal or ritual practice rather than denote a particular medicinal substance. Burton does not supply one rigid distinction between all the items in these overlapping lists.
The word also moves outside literal magical practice. A friend’s counsel can be a charm that eases grief, while travel charms the senses by delighting them with variety. Scripture, divine mercy and repentance supply further positive uses in religious consolation. A woman’s beauty, upbringing and accomplishments can be called the “true charms” that attracted a lover. At the end of the work, Christ’s name is called the “best and only charme” against diabolical illusions, after elaborate exorcisms have been rejected. These are important changes of use. The word alone does not determine either the proposed mechanism or Burton’s judgment of it.
Use in the book
What is doing the work
The witchcraft subsection first lists the means through which practitioners are said to act: charms, images, metal signs made under chosen constellations, knots, amulets, words and love potions. It then denies intrinsic power to the spells, charms, characters and unintelligible words. The Devil uses these means to deceive practitioners and keep them faithful to his service. Within this explanation, the attributed result and the practitioner’s account of its cause are separated. Something might occur while the charm receives a credit that belongs, in Burton’s demonological account, to a different agent.
Combat supplies a protective use. Burton says that participants in ancient single combats were searched for “Magical charmes,” then describes the alleged ability to make people “stick frees,” proof against stabbing or shooting. The connection is between carrying a supposed protection and gaining an unfair advantage in combat. These claims belong to the supernatural-powers catalogue, before its later qualifications about efficacy.
The same distinction appears in the love-charm debate. Burton reports that Erastus, Weyer and others grant that the supposed effects may occur, but attribute them to the Devil himself rather than charms, incantations or potions. This position differs from the stronger denial attributed earlier to Crato and some theologians, who reject the Devil’s ability to produce the effect in question. A denial of the charm’s own power is not automatically a denial of every supernatural event.
Imagination and bodily change
In the discussion of imagination, Burton again describes illnesses supposedly relieved by spells, words, symbols and charms, alongside the disputed weapon salve. His next sentence locates the power in “a strong conceit and opinion alone.” The explanation attributed to Pomponazzi is bodily as well as mental: imagination moves humours, spirits and blood, which remove the cause of the malady from the affected part. Conceit means a conception or powerful belief here; virtue means efficacy or power. Neither word should be read merely as a moral judgment.
The continuation makes the patient’s confidence central. An empiric or simple surgeon may achieve more striking results than a learned physician because the patient trusts him. Burton brings together authorities who give conviction a powerful role in treatment. This helps explain why a charm can appear in a report of relief while its inherent efficacy is denied. It is a historical account expressed through humours and spirits, not a demonstration that the listed practices cure the named conditions, nor a fully developed modern theory of placebo effects.
This passage also contains a textual disagreement that matters to its argument. The English body says people are harmed by wicked incredulity, or disbelief. The marginal Weyer quotation instead has credulitate, credulity or ready belief. The latter makes harm and relief effects of belief; the former states a different relation. The edition preserves both. A smooth summary must not silently make the English say what the Latin says.
An amulet is not automatically a verbal charm
Burton’s later treatment of amulets complicates any simple rejection of everything carried or worn as a remedy. He first describes finding his mother’s spider amulet absurd. Reading authorities and seeing it apparently answer to experience in some people lead him to a more favourable opinion. His explanation seeks an antipathy, a hidden opposition in nature, between the supposed remedy and the ailment. The sequence records a change of judgment, not an unqualified endorsement of every amulet.
Immediately afterwards he rejects medicines consisting of words, characters, spells and charms. They can do no good, he says, except through strong conviction or the Devil’s contrivance. Thus the neighbouring paragraphs distinguish a proposed hidden natural power in a material object from efficacy assigned to a formula or sign. Exploded in the original means rejected or discredited. Reading it as a physical explosion would destroy the point of his verdict.
This distinction should not be converted into a perfectly uniform taxonomy for the whole book. Earlier catalogues place amulets beside charms in a question about diabolical cures. Burton arranges a disputed field of practices and explanations, and the local argument determines which distinction is active. The comparison is most useful when its limits remain visible.
Whether it works and whether it is allowed
The second partition begins its treatment of cures by asking two questions. Can the disease be cured through the listed magical means? If it can, is it lawful to use them? The list includes cabalistic words, charms, signs, images, amulets, bindings, potions and incantations. Burton reports opposing answers about their power, with long catalogues of authorities that are not always consistent with his placement of the same writers elsewhere.
He also asserts that celebrated cures of this kind occur daily and that such cures may be performed, before taking that efficacy premise into the question of lawfulness. The stronger claim that these diseases can be cured only by spells, seals and spiritual medicine is specifically attributed to Paracelsus. Paracelsus is represented as arguing that relief matters more than whether the rescuer is friend or enemy. Other writers allow a practice if it serves the patient’s health. Burton rejects this permission: in his theological argument, a desired benefit does not justify an unlawful means. The rejection is not dependent on proving that no benefit ever occurred. It belongs to his account of religious duty, rather than present-day clinical guidance.
Other passages show why the same reading discipline is needed in shorter lists. In the account of hydrophobia, “some use charmes” reports a country practice, after which Burton directs readers to reputable physicians. In the cures for love melancholy, charms appear among means expressly called unlawful, and their prohibition is repeated after the authorities are rehearsed. In the prevention of jealousy, recipes intended to secure fidelity are called mostly pagan, impious and absurd. Mere inclusion in a medical chapter does not settle Burton’s recommendation.
Counsel and occupation as charms
“A friends counsel is a charm”: the word also describes relief through a discreet, trustworthy and loving listener. Burton compares counsel to mandrake wine lulling cares to sleep and to kind words softening a hardened heart. Sharing the trouble enables another person to offer wisdom, persuasion or practical help that the sufferer could not readily supply alone. The drug image conveys the soothing effect claimed for conversation; it does not turn the conversation into a literal potion.
The following treatment of persuasion develops the comparison. Gentle speech, wisely administered, eases grief as medicines ease bodily diseases. It is “incantationis instar,” like an incantation, and the true nepenthe, the grief-banishing remedy of Homer, which the cited interpreters explain as speech suited to the occasion. A friend's words or letters can do what the mythical instruments of Helen, Medea, Venus and Circe are said to do. The timing and wisdom of the speech matter: the praise of eloquence should not be detached from these conditions.
Travel provides a related verbal use. Peregrination “charms our senses” through its pleasant variety of sights and company. Here charms means delights or captivates, within an argument for changing the objects that occupy a melancholy mind. In the discussion of reading, Origen is cited for calling Scripture “a Charme”; the margin compares the expulsion of evil through reading to the expulsion of poison through an incantation. Burton then recommends both secular and religious reading as purposeful occupation. The figurative vocabulary belongs to a wider account of how attention, speech and company may bring relief.
Attraction and religious protection
The phrase “true charms” can replace a magical explanation with ordinary attraction. When Olympia sees the girl said to have bewitched King Philip, she identifies her beauty, upbringing and accomplishments as the effective attractions. Drayton’s lover similarly values one sound from his beloved’s lips above all potions, exorcisms and charms. These passages retain the language of extraordinary power while relocating its force in a person’s qualities or speech. They are not a new recipe for a literal charm.
In the consolation against despair, divine mercy is “a charm for the Divel” among images of a balm, a universal remedy and an antidote. Repentance is then “a charm for our miseries,” a protective amulet and an attracting lodestone. The objects of these expressions are mercy and repentance, not prepared magical things. Burton uses the familiar imagery of protection and medicine to explain his religious counsel.
The closing religious argument gives the word another positive use. Burton calls elaborate exorcisms a “counterfeit charme” and, through Lemnius, opposes their costumes, chosen times, grand language, signs and formulas to the simple invocation of Christ’s name. “His Name alone” is then the “best and only charme” against such diabolical illusions. The exclusiveness belongs to that stated protection. The following counsel, attributed to Augustine, directs the sufferer to God through faith working by love. Athanasius is then cited for prescribing the opening of Psalm 67 as a “present charme,” meaning an immediately effective protection. Burton follows this with his own preference for turning to God in hope, prayer and trust. The passage reuses a disputed word for trusted religious reliance; it does not reverse the earlier explanation of every material or verbal practice.
Related entries
Imagination, for conviction, bodily motion and disputed causal accounts; Spirits, for bodily intermediaries and demonic agents; Witchcraft, for practitioners, apparent command and service; Philters, for potions and the figurative force of attraction; Jealousy, for remedies intended to enforce fidelity.
Related articles and topics: Amulet; Characters; Conceit; Confidence; Ligation and ligature; Occult; Nepenthe; Persuasion; Friendship; Virtue.
Places to read
- The catalogue of diseasesCharms appear among reported country treatments for hydrophobia, followed by a preference for approved physicians.
- Protective magic in combatThe search for magical charms before single combat precedes a claim about immunity from wounds.
- Witches and magiciansRead the list of supposed means together with the following denial that the named spells, charms, signs and words have power in themselves.
- The power of imaginationReported cures, the motion of humours and spirits, patient confidence, and the body–margin disagreement over disbelief and credulity.
- Unlawful cures rejectedPossibility and permission are separate questions.
- Travel and varied occupationTravel charms the senses through variety; the verb names delight and captivating attention.
- Reading as occupationScripture as an apothecary’s shop and, through Origen, a charm; meditation and purposeful study carry the argument forward.
- Sharing distress with a friendCounsel as a soothing charm, with images of relieving a burden and softening a hardened heart.
- Persuasion and timely speechGentle speech wisely administered, nepenthe interpreted as appropriate conversation, and the charm of a dear friend.
- Amulets and related remediesBurton’s revised opinion of the spider amulet is followed by his rejection of words and signs as intrinsically effective medicine.
- Philters and other unlawful means“True charms” of beauty and character, literary comparisons, reported powers, and the account assigning agency directly to the Devil.
- Cures for love melancholyThe prohibition frames the catalogue of magical remedies and is explicitly repeated.
- Prevention of jealousyProposed fidelity potions, spells and charms receive a qualified but emphatic rejection.
- Consolation against despairDivine mercy and repentance are called charms within a network of medical and protective images.
- The closing remedies for religious melancholyCounterfeit ritual charms, Christ’s name as protection against diabolical illusions, the psalm called a present charm, and the final preference for trust in God.
In this edition
The modern rendering commonly retains charms, while clarifying the surrounding terms: Characters becomes “written symbols” or “inscribed signs,” and strong conceipt becomes “powerful conviction.” These phrase-level choices identify the local meaning. They do not supply an independent confirmation of the claimed cure.
At the passage, “incredulity” remains “disbelief” in the modern body, while the Latin margin’s credulitate is translated as “credulity.” The supplied editor reports checking the same disagreement in a second 1651 copy. This lexicon preserves that reported comparison without claiming a new examination of those copies or of Weyer’s own text.
At the passage, “opportunity of speech” becomes “speech suited to the occasion.” The accompanying Latin incantationis instar means “like an incantation”: the comparison does not identify every act of counsel as a magical ritual. At the passage, “present charme” becomes “immediately effective charm.” Psalm 67 uses the Septuagint and Vulgate numbering; it corresponds to Psalm 68 in the King James Bible, as the supplied note explains.
And 22, “counterfeit charme” becomes “counterfeit charm,” and “best and only charme” becomes “best and only charm.” Retaining the noun in both places allows the reader to see Burton’s deliberate contrast between rejected ritual and the protection he commends.
Characters
Printed “Characters” (English). Citation key: character.
Printed form, Source wording: Characters
Written or inscribed signs used in a claimed magical cure.
Source: original body
Charm and belief
Printed “Charms” (English). Citation key: charm.
Printed form, Source wording: Charms
A supposed means of curing or influencing. At this passage the claimed efficacy is assigned to strong conception and belief rather than an inherent power in the charm.
Source: original body
Charm in magical practice
Printed “Charmes” (English). Citation key: charm.
Printed form, Source wording: Charmes
A magical formula or practice, listed with signs, objects and other means. The following paragraph denies intrinsic power to the named spells and signs.
Source: original body
Charm the senses
Printed “charms” (English). Citation key: charm.
Printed form, Source wording, Modern rendering: charms
Delight or captivate the senses. Travel does so through varied sights and company in this therapeutic argument.
Source: original body
Layer: paired modern body
Aligned context: charms our senses
Christ’s name as a charm
Printed “charme” (English). Citation key: charm.
Printed form, Source wording: charme
A positive religious use for protection against diabolical illusions; Burton calls Christ’s name the best and only charm for that stated purpose.
Source: original body
Counsel as a charm
Printed “charm” (English). Citation key: charm.
Citation key, Printed form, Source wording: charm
A friend’s soothing advice and assistance, compared to a sedative and developed as timely, wisely administered speech.
Source: original body
Counterfeit charm
Printed “counterfeit charme” (English). Citation key: counterfeit charm.
Printed form, Source wording: counterfeit charme
A sham or ineffectual ritual, Burton’s polemical judgment of the elaborate exorcisms he rejects.
Source: original body
Credulitate
Printed “credulitate” (Latin). Citation key: credulitas.
Through credulity or ready belief; the Latin ablative in Weyer’s quoted account of harm and relief. It conflicts with incredulity in the English body.
Source: Burton marginal quotation
Source wording: Ut impia credulitate quis læditur
Modern rendering: credulity
Layer: editorial translation of Burton marginal quotation
Exploded
Printed “exploded” (English). Citation key: explode.
Printed form, Source wording: exploded
Rejected or discredited. Burton applies it to medicines consisting of words, signs, spells and charms.
Source: original body
Incantationis instar
Printed “incantationis instar” (Latin). Citation key: incantationis instar.
Citation key, Printed form, Source wording: incantationis instar
Like an incantation; a Latin comparison for gentle speech wisely administered to relieve distress.
Source: original body
Locator qualification: Do not remove bracketed or repeated-page qualifier.
Modern rendering: like an incantation
Layer: paired modern body
Incredulity
Printed “incredulity” (English). Citation key: incredulity.
Citation key, Printed form, Source wording: incredulity
Disbelief. The English body attributes harm to wicked incredulity, although the Latin quotation in the margin instead says credulity.
Source: original body
Magical charms in combat
Printed “Magical charmes” (English). Citation key: magical charm.
Printed form, Source wording: Magical charmes
Supposed protective magic for which combatants are searched before single combat.
Source: original body
Mercy as a charm
Printed “charm for the Divel” (English). Citation key: charm.
Printed form, Source wording: charm for the Divel
Divine mercy imagined as protection against the Devil, among the medical images used to console the despairing.
Source: original body
Nepenthe
Printed “Nepenthe” (English). Citation key: nepenthe.
Printed form, Source wording: Nepenthe
A grief-banishing remedy. The cited interpreters here understand Homer’s nepenthe as timely speech rather than a plant or prepared medicine.
Source: original body
Locator qualification: Do not remove bracketed or repeated-page qualifier.
Opportunity of speech
Printed “opportunity of speech” (English). Citation key: opportunity of speech.
Citation key, Printed form, Source wording: opportunity of speech
Speech suited to the occasion; the favourable timing and appropriateness of consoling words.
Source: original body
Locator qualification: Do not remove bracketed or repeated-page qualifier.
Present charm
Printed “present charme” (English). Citation key: present charm.
Printed form, Source wording: present charme
An immediately effective protection; the phrase describes a psalm opening prescribed by the authority Burton names as Athanasius.
Source: original body
Repentance as a charm
Printed “charm for our miseries” (English). Citation key: charm.
Printed form, Source wording: charm for our miseries
Repentance imagined as relief or protection against misery, beside an amulet and an attracting lodestone.
Source: original body
Scripture as a charm
Printed “Charme” (English). Citation key: charm.
Printed form, Source wording: Charme
Scripture read as a spiritual remedy, in the account attributed to Origen and compared in the margin to an incantation driving away poison.
Source: original body
Stick free
Printed “stick frees” (English). Citation key: stick-free.
Printed form, Source wording: stick frees
Protected against stabbing or piercing, in the catalogue’s alleged immunity to weapons.
Source: original body
Strong conceit
Printed “strong conceipt” (English). Citation key: conceit.
Printed form, Source wording: strong conceipt
Powerful conviction or belief, offered as one explanation of the apparent efficacy of verbal charms.
Source: original body
True charms
Printed “true charms” (English). Citation key: true charms.
Citation key, Printed form, Source wording: true charms
Beauty, upbringing and accomplishments that explain Philip’s attraction in Olympia’s response to the alleged enchantment.
Source: original body
Virtue
Printed “vertue” (English). Citation key: virtue.
Printed form, Source wording: vertue
Power or efficacy. The statement denies that the charms have it inherently and turns to imagination and belief.
Source: original body