Machine-assisted translation. The original Russian publication is linked below.
Preceptor Alsana, preceptorium of the Fatum school "Golden Elixir" - Grand Guild of Wizards, Relic Hunter
So we continue to look for fairly simple artifacts as examples for novice magicians and Wizards to work with.
Previous post at the link: vk.ru/wall-142690338_9362
There are very interesting and at the same time extremely unusual artifacts that can be used in work. One such artifact I use to charge healing artifacts is the Blood of Saint Januarius.
The Blood of Saint Januarius is an ampoule of dried blood that is kept in the Duomo di San Gennaro Cathedral of Naples. It is considered one of the main shrines of the Catholic Church and an object of mass popular veneration.
Accurate historical information about the life of the saint is scanty and mixed with later legends. According to legend, he was born around 272. At the age of 20 he became Bishop of Benevento. During the Great Persecution of Christians under Emperor Diocletian (about 305), Januarius openly supported his fellow believers, visited them in prison and performed services. For this he was captured along with his comrades: deacons Festus and Desiderius, reader Sossius, as well as laymen Proculus, Eutyches and Akution.
Initially, they tried to give them to be torn to pieces by wild animals in the amphitheater, but the animals did not touch the martyrs. Then, by order of the local judge Timofey, they were beheaded. According to one version, the saint’s body was secretly bought by a local woman and transported to the catacombs of Naples, where it rests today in the altar of the cathedral dedicated to him. The pious woman collected his blood in two glass ampoules.
Composition:
- the ampoules themselves are sealed pear-shaped vessels with a volume of about 60 ml, made of dark brown glass.
Blood condition:
- inside there is a brown substance, which for most of the year looks like solid dry fragments or powder. It becomes liquid only in moments of miracle.
The main ritual associated with the shrine is to demonstrate to believers the process of turning a solid substance into liquid blood.
This happens three times a year:
1. September 19 - the day of remembrance of the saint (the anniversary of the transfer of the relics).
2. The first Sunday in May - in memory of the salvation of Naples from the eruption of Vesuvius in 1631.
3. December 16 - the anniversary of the miraculous salvation of the city from an earthquake and lava flow in the same 1631.
During the solemn mass, the Cardinal Archbishop of Naples takes out a silver reliquary reliquary with ampoules, says prayers and turns them over several times in front of the altar. If the blood becomes liquid, the cathedral is filled with jubilant cries of “Il miracolo!” (Miracle!). The process can take from several minutes to an hour. Sometimes a miracle does not happen at all - such years in the history of Naples were traditionally considered harbingers of disasters (epidemics, earthquakes, wars or volcanic eruptions).
Scientists have repeatedly tried to explain this phenomenon rationally. Many hypotheses have been put forward:
- Thixotropy: the property of some gels to liquefy under mechanical stress (vibrations from crowd shouts, shaking of the reliquary) and harden again at rest. However, chemical analysis showed that the substance does not have the necessary properties for such a reaction.
- Melting by heat: heating from candles or the hands of a priest. This version is refuted by the fact that the process sometimes begins even before the ampoule is touched, and the temperature inside the closed ancient glass physically could not rise so quickly.
- Osmotic pressure: changes in air humidity in the cathedral.
At the end of the 20th century, a spectral analysis of the substance was carried out without opening the ampoules themselves. Studies have shown that the composition actually contains hemoglobin, proteins and components characteristic of human blood. However, modern science can neither fully confirm nor completely refute the miraculous nature of the phenomenon, since the main mystery remains: why exactly does this ancient blood demonstrate thixotropic properties strictly on certain days of the calendar for more than six hundred years? In addition, skeptics point to the lack of independent laboratory tests directly at the moment of liquefaction.
Saint Januarius is the patron saint of Naples. For city residents, his blood is the main indicator of well-being. The absence of a miracle causes great anxiety among the Neapolitans. The most famous mass unrest occurred in 1980, when the blood did not liquefy on the eve of the catastrophic Irpinsky earthquake, which claimed almost three thousand lives.
The longest recorded period without a miracle lasted from 1939 to 1944, covering almost the entirety of World War II.
Today, access to the historical ampoules themselves is limited even for scientists for the sake of preserving the ancient relic. For scientific research, exact copies of vessels made by modern craftsmen are used.
Let's return to the artifact and how to use it. When tuned to the blood, there is a strong resonance in muladhara and a regenerating effect. There is an inclusion in the Christian egregor, but still the main effect is increased regeneration at the cellular level. I often use the attunement mandala for this artifact and add it to treatment artifacts; it works especially interestingly with artifacts of biocenoses; now we are working with this artifact in our specialty.
