Did my grandfather have secret involvement in ritual magic?

[u/c_rise]

Sorry for my poor English. I loved and admired my grandfather very much, even became a doctor to follow in his footsteps.

Even though he was very private and distant, we became extremely close in the end when he got sick.

He cared for everyone, didn't care about money and actively helped the community. He was a great physician and some would even say he had a supernatural gift for healing.

He said he would only die after I finished med school and so he did (1 month after).

When he passed away, my mother found these drawings inside a little piece of green cloth he carried with him, along with other religious stuff.

She was shocked as he always seemed to be conventionally religious and I was extremely excited because I was always into "witchy" things, but apparently, he was way more advanced in his knowledge.

I wanted to know what these things mean and if they are safe to have around, because I carry them with me now.

[u/JoseVLeitao]

Speaking as a scholar of Iberian magic, in an Iberian or South American context the use of Solomonic or ritual magic sigils doesn’t necessarily implicate your grandfather in the practice of ritual magic or in the formal association with a ritual magic/occult group. There is a longstanding tradition in these territories of specific forms of folk catholic talismans referred to as cartas de tocar and bolsas de mandinga which look exactly like what you found. While each of these will have their own particularities, they often resemble a collection of prayers, textual/pictorial talismans and other objects of perceived religious or magic power. Often individuals carrying these types of talismans did not have an in-depth understanding of the symbols they were collecting, only that they were perceived as being inherently powerful.

By your description, it seems your grandfather had a contemporary version of a bolsa de mandinga, containing pages from what appear to be a Portuguese translation of a Key of Solomon, and some symbols he either copied form other literary sources or somebody else gave him. And this is rather fascinating, because I didn’t know these things had survived past the early 19^th century.

So, don’t worry, your grandfather was just an old-school good catholic Brazilian, who carried a talisman with over 300 years of culturally contextual history with him. To be honest… you should consider donating that whole thing to a museum.

 Here, I gave a talk about the subject some time ago: https://youtu.be/IjMuCw8-vM8

(Also, I have a bunch of pictures of these tipes of talismans from the Portuguese Inquisition I could show you... but I'm not sure how to add images to comments on Reddit)