The Devil’s Purse
Digital Painting
Known as Devil’s purses, or mermaid’s purses, these black leathery pouches have a distinctive flattened, rectangular shape with tendrils or horns at the corners, resembling purse strings or devil’s horns, hence the name. They are actually the egg casings of sharks or rays. Folklore suggests people believed they were lost bags or purses belonging to mermaids, sailors alluded to spying volumes of them washed ashore after a storm, assuming that mermaids bring luck and healing-and some people would even carry mermaid purses to keep positive energy close. In Cornish folklore, mermaid’s purses were used as charms for protection and good luck.
They can be used as a craft item or altar tool in witchcraft; associated with prosperity and good fortune, these details took me down a rabbit hole of sea spells…….A perfect vessel for magic that involves growth, prosperity, birth, and renewal.
In my painting, a young sea witch plays with a deadly tool, and bewitches herself beneath a new moon, unaware of its transformative powers.