Brazen Heads and Fortune Telling

So, I was looking up some information about the 13th-century thinker Roger Bacon the other day (as one does), and I came across a popular legend associated with the scholar in the Early Modern Period. It was a story about a magical automaton made of brass in the shape of a man’s head that could answer any question posed to it. To my great delight, I learned that Bacon was merely the owner of the most famous Brazen-Head automaton: Brazen Heads were an actual *thing*, and that there were wildly popular legends about them in the Medieval and especially Early Modern Period. 🤓.

Bacon had been an alchemist but also a pioneer of the scientific method, advocating the need for empirical evidence to establish theories. But hundreds of years after his death, the English friar was more remembered for his dabblings in the occult, and the talking head thing was part of this.

In a story from the 16th century called _The famous historie of Fryer Bacon_, Bacon is said to have summoned the Devil to get assistance in building the magical head. And in a very popular play from 1589 named _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_, Roger Bacon fashions his brass, omniscient head to try to protect Britain against invasion by building a magical wall of brass around the island. Using “necromatic charms,” Bacon makes the head but then falls asleep before it speaks. When it does, Bacon doesn’t hear it say “time is,” “time was,” and “time is past”. And he misses his chance to talk to the Brazen Head, which explodes.

Centuries later, we still fortune-telling automaton heads in our culture. Frequently they use stereotypes about gypsies, Central European mystics, or Eastern magicians, but the origin of the tradition comes originally from the Middle Ages and Early Modern folklore about the Brazen Heads.