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." Cucumbers gathered for pickling. ... Hanging is the suspension of a person by a ligature, usually a cord wrapped around the neck, causing death. ...

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. World map showing the location of Europe. ... These gallows in Tombstone Courthouse State Historic Park are maintained by Arizona State Parks. ...

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, "maindegloire"^[1] - "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. Mandrake may refer to: The plant Mandrake The Harry Potter mandrake plant. ...

Hands of Glory on display

The following organizations possess a Hand of Glory:

• Whitby Museum, North Yorkshire, UK ^[2]
  
• Walsall Museum, Walsall , UK ^[3]

Whitby Museum is a private museum in Whitby, North Yorkshire, run by Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society, a learned society and registered charity, established in 1823. ... , Walsall is an industrial town in the West Midlands of England. ...

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.

A Hand of Glory as depicted in The Wicker Man.

• 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.
• 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 (at the same time, Buffy was in hand-to-hand combat with the Hell God, Glory).
• 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.

Hellboy is a fictional Dark Horse Comics character created by Mike Mignola. ... Trade paperback of Will Eisners A Contract with God (1978), often mistakenly cited as the first graphic novel. ... Hanging is the suspension of a person by a ligature, usually a cord wrapped around the neck, causing death. ... candle wax This page is about the substance. ... This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... Cover to The Invisibles (v2) #1. ... Grant Morrison (born January 31, 1960) is a Scottish comic book writer and artist. ... 19th century cartoon of Jack Frost as a United States major-general during the American Civil War Jack Frost is an elfish creature who personifies crisp, cold, winter weather; a variant of Father Winter (AKA Old Man Winter). ... This article is about the Harry Potter series of novels. ... Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (film) or Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (video game) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, is the second novel in the Harry Potter series written by J.K. Rowling. ... Draco Malfoy is a fictional character in the Harry Potter book series written by J. K. Rowling. ... In the Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling, Borgin and Burkes is a shop on Knockturn alley, widely reputed to have a collection of Dark magic items, poisons and the like on sale. ... Knockturn Alley, a pun on nocturnally, is a fictional location in J. K. Rowlings Harry Potter series of novels. ... Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, released on July 16, 2005, is the sixth of seven novels in J.K. Rowlings popular Harry Potter series. ... Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable - sometimes referred to simply as Brewers - is a reference work containing definitions and explanations of many famous phrases, allusions and figures, whether historical or mythical. ... San Bruno is a city located in San Mateo County, California. ... Betrayal at Krondor is a DOS computer role-playing game developed by Dynamix and published by Sierra Entertainment in 1993. ... Image File history File linksMetadata TheWickerMan_handofglory1. ... Image File history File linksMetadata TheWickerMan_handofglory1. ... The Wicker Man is a cult 1973 British film combining thriller, existential, horror and musical genres, directed by Robin Hardy and written by Anthony Shaffer. ... The Wicker Man is a cult 1973 British film combining thriller, existential, horror and musical genres, directed by Robin Hardy and written by Anthony Shaffer. ... Angel Heart is a 1987 horror movie written and directed by Alan Parker, starring Mickey Rourke, Lisa Bonet and Robert De Niro. ... Namcos Pac-Man was a hit, and became a universal phenomenon. ... The Mangler is a short horror story by Stephen King. ... A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other material, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. ... A night shift is either a group of workers who work during the night, or the period in which they work. ... Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of over 200 stories including over 50 bestselling horror novels. ... Eva Ibbotson (born Maria Charlotte Michelle Wiesner, 1925, Vienna, Austria) is a British novelist specializing in juvenile fiction. ... Graham Peter Taylor (born 1961), pen-name G. P. Taylor, is the author of the best-selling novels Shadowmancer and Wormwood. ... Shadowmancer is a fantasy novel by Graham Taylor. ... Image:Notre Dame years. ... The House With a Clock in Its Walls is a childrens book written by John Bellairs and originally published in 1972. ... Flag Seal Nickname: City of Angels Location Location within Los Angeles County in the state of California Coordinates , Government State County California Los Angeles County Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) Geographical characteristics Area     City 1,290. ... Punk rock is an anti-establishment music movement beginning around 1976 (although precursors can be found several years earlier), exemplified and popularised by The Ramones, the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned. ... The Flesh Eaters 1980: Chris D., DJ Bonebrake, Dave Alvin, John Doe, Steve Berlin, Bill Bateman The Flesh Eaters are a Los Angeles deathrock band whose peak of popularity was in the late 1970s and early 80s. ... Year 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday (link displays the 1982 Gregorian calendar). ... Patrick OBrian (December 12, 1914 – January 2, 2000; original name Richard Patrick Russ) was a novelist and translator, best known for his Aubrey–Maturin series of novels set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and centered on the friendship of Captain Jack Aubrey and an Irish–Catalan... The Aubrey–Maturin series, also known as the Aubreyad, is a sequence of 20 historical novels by Patrick OBrian, set during the Napoleonic Wars and centring on the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and his ships surgeon Stephen Maturin, who is also a physician... Neil Richard Gaiman () (born November 10, 1960) is an English author of science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels, graphic novels, comics, and films. ... The Sandman was a comic book series written by Neil Gaiman and published by DC Comics for 75 issues from 1988 until 1996. ... John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE (January 3, 1892 – September 2, 1973) was an English philologist, writer and university professor, best known as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. ... The Bartimaeus Trilogy is a fantasy series by Jonathan Stroud and was published as a series of three novels between 2003 and 2006. ... The Golems Eye is the second book in the Bartimaeus Trilogy written by Jonathan Stroud. ... Charles David George Charlie Stross (born Leeds, October 18, 1964) is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. ... The Atrocity Archives (2004, ISBN 1-930846-25-8) is a collection of two stories by British author Charles Stross, consisting of the short novel The Atrocity Archive (originally serialized in Spectrum SF) and The Concrete Jungle, which won the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novella. ... A screenshot of the opening screen from the game. ... Andrew Bird (born July 11, 1973) is an American musician, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. ... Dungeons & Dragons (abbreviated as D&D or DnD) is a fantasy role-playing game (RPG) currently published by Wizards of the Coast. ... A roleplaying game (RPG) is a type of game in which players assume the roles of characters and collaboratively create stories. ... Poltergeist: The Legacy is a 1996 Canadian/American horror television series. ... Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated American cult television series that initially aired from March 10, 1997 until May 20, 2003. ... No Place Like Home is the fifth episode of season 5 of the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. ... Spoiler warning: Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkins (born 860 in Sjornjost, Sweden and died 2003 in Sunnydale, California), formerly Aud and Anyanka, Patron Saint of Scorned Women, is a fictional character created by Joss Whedon for the cult television program Buffy the Vampire Slayer. ... Rupert Giles is a fictional character created by Joss Whedon for the television program, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. ... This article is about the books. ... A Canterbury Tale (1944) is a British film by the film-making team of Powell & Pressburger. ...

References

• James George Frazer, The Golden Bough.

The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging comparative study of mythology and religion, written by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). ...

External links

• The Hand of Glory and other gory legends about human hands - Edited by D. L. Ashliman.
• Hand of Glory - Manufacture and use of the Hand of Glory.
• Metal Band- The Hand Of Glory website.