Compendium

Lead is the chemical element Pb, atomic number 82, a heavy metal denser than most everyday materials, soft and malleable, with a low melting point. Freshly cut or melted it shines silvery with a bluish tint, then tarnishes to a dull grey in air. It is easily won from its ores, chiefly galena, which often carries silver, so prehistoric peoples of the Near East knew it, and the Romans mined it widely in their search for silver. Cunningham gives lead to Saturn and earth and calls it receptive. He notes that ancient Greeks inscribed charged lead tablets with words of power, mostly for harmful spells, because the metal was thought to make a spell last, and that in eleventh-century India charms for conception and for fruitful gardens and orchards were engraved on lead. In his own practice lead serves protection and defensive magic, set near the entrance of a house to keep negativity out. He also gives a divination recorded in nineteenth-century Italy by Charles Godfrey Leland, in which melted lead and the ashes of rose seeds, nettle, rue and cumin are poured into water and the cooled shape is read.