witch bottles, bellarmines and Grego

(Bellarmine or witch bottle!)
I am sitting around down in the chilly studio grooving on the Offspring and finishing mugs, but I need a break from both and a chance to warm the hands. Grego brought up the subject of Bellarmine bottles yesterday, and look what we discover!
WITCH BOTTLES!!! I am so excited. They look funny, they are fun, and now we find out they are witchy too? Greg tells us:
"Bellarmines came in a variety of sizes, shapes and colors, ranging from four to twenty-two inches high, and usually made of salt-glazed earthenware. Bellarmines had a globular body with a long vertical neck with one lug (ring), at the base of which is a raised representation of a bearded or scowling man's face, believed to have been originally an effigy of the Roman Catholic Cardinal named Bellarmino. Indeed, the ideal of a Catholic full of wine or ale must have been very entertaining to the Protestants in England! The Bellarmine enjoyed widespread use for ale or wine, as well as for storage of other household liquids. Bellarmines were the most ubiquitous bottle of the period, being found in great quantities at period alehouses, colonial and ECW battle sites (one historian has stated that they seemed to have been the soda pop bottle of the seventeenth century!). "
and Wiki tells us their historical importance in making spells!!!!!!!!!!!
"The witch bottle is a very old spell device. Its purpose is to draw in and trap evil and negative energy directed at its owner. Folk magic contends that the witch bottle protects against evil spirits and magical attack, and counteracts spells cast by witches.
A traditional witch bottle is a small flask, about 3 inches high, created from blue or green glass. Larger and rounder witch bottles, up to 9 inches high, were known as Greybeards, Bellarmines, or Bartmanns. Bellarmines were named after a particularly fearsome Catholic Inquisitor, Robert Bellarmine, who persecuted Protestants and, in consequence, was labeled as a demon by his victims. Greybeards and Bellarmines were not made of glass, but of brown or gray stoneware that was glazed with salt and embossed with severe bearded faces designed to scare off evil.
A witch, cunning man or woman, would prepare the witch's bottle. Historically, the witch's bottle contained the victim's (the person who believed they had a spell put on them, for example) urine, hair or nail clippings, "

my goodness, isn't pottery the coolest???????????????????/