A woman whose children have died (KYP T1328)

Content note: the death of children.

21. A woman whose children have died. Draw the seven powers on a sheet. Bind ⟨it to⟩ her right forearm. Bind another ⟨to⟩ her left forearm. Certainly, her child will ⟨not⟩ die. Offering: mastic.

Recipe number twenty-one, in a handbook written over a scraped-off book of church readings. It was written for any mother who had already buried children and was afraid to love the next one. Whether it worked is not the point. What lasts is the binding: arms held, a promise written down, someone saying certainly when nothing was certain.

Edition by Edward Love, edited by K. Dosoo and M. Preininger, team revision. KYP T1328, P. Heid. Inv. Kopt. 686, 951–1000 CE. Link: KYP T1328; the manuscript can be seen at Heidelberg.

Contains information from the Kyprianos Database, which is made available here under the Open Database License (ODbL). Line numbers omitted.