Last night I was eating some fish and the tiniest bone got stuck in my throat. It wasn’t choking or cutting me, but it was extremely irritating, and I could feel it when I swallowed. I could not wash it down with further food and drink.
I remembered there is a spell for someone who has a bone stuck in their throat, so I checked the table of contents to the PGM and found it right away (you can find the same spell in The Leyden Papyrus Col. XIX). This spell is to be spoken seven times over some oil
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The spell:
PDM xiv. 574-85 – – *[Spell] to be said to the man, when a bone is stuck in his throat: “You are SHLATE LATE BALATE the white crocodile, which is under the foam of the sea of flame whose belly is full of bones of every drowned man. Hail you should spit out this bone for me today, it acting as a harpoon head, it making a point, it acting as a sack piercer, it doing everything without change, for I am a lion’s forepart, I am a ram’s horn, I am a panther’s tooth. Gryphon is my real name, for Osiris is he who is in my hand. The man named is the opener of my neck (seven times).
You should speak to a little oil, you should put the man’s face up; you should put it down in his mouth; you should move your finger and your thumb to the two sinews of his throat; you should make him swallow the oil; you should make him rise up suddenly and you should eject the oil which is in his throat immediately. The bone comes up with the oil.
Tr.: Janet H. Johnson from Betz, Hans Dieter. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, including the Demotic Spells, Vol.1., 2nd edition, ed. Hans Dieter Betz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997)
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I got a little olive oil, which I always have for cooking, and put a little bit in a small bowl. In the middle of my second recitation of the spell I had phlegm and spit it out and it ejected the little bone. I didn’t have phlegm before or after. I did not have to use the oil, the issue was resolved.
Central Garden Pool in the Garden of Nebamun’s Tomb Painting, British Museum, late 18th Dynasty, circa 1350 BCE (Photo in public domain)
Author: Alison Chicosky
Alison Chicosky is a scholar and practitioner of a variety of forms of thaumaturgy with a focus on results-based magic. While especially interested in both Solomonic magic and the Graeco-Egyptian magic of the Greek Magical Papyri, she is also well versed in soul-flight and psychic magic of various kinds. The founder and force behind Practical Occult (www.practicaloccult.com), she strives to provide pentacles and other enchanted items drawn from a broad background of rigorously studied ancient arts, leveraging the systems of the past for practical modern use.