Through a media‑specific analysis of Ethiopian healing scrolls, books become most meaningful when they are worn, carried, and embodied. The scroll’s stitched construction, tailored length, and bold imagery position it within a long lineage of wearable books, demonstrating that portability and customization are not secondary features but central mechanisms through which texts produce identity, mobility, and spiritual efficacy.
Part 1: The Bibliography
At the San Diego State University Library’s Special Collections and University Archives, Ethiopian healing scrolls sit quietly in their boxes, but everything about them suggests movement. They are long, narrow composite objects made from parchment strips sewn end‑to‑end. Each strip is thick and stiffened, lighter on the flesh side and darker on the hair side. The joins are stitched with leather using simple overcast or paired‑hole sewing, forming a continuous roll that can stretch several feet while remaining only a few inches wide. Rolled inward, the inscribed surface is protected, as if the scroll curls around its own meaning.
The vellum is coarse and rigid with age. Edges cockle, some strips crease from repeated rolling, and occasional thinning appears near stitch sites. Despite surface wear, the substantial thickness of each strip keeps the structure sound. The scroll is thick and stiff, wanting to stay curled up due to being unused for years. Text runs vertically in single columns along the length of the scroll. Decorative ruling separates text from pictorial fields, and faint guidelines help maintain margins. The Ge’ez script is written in black ink, with a secondary pink pigment used sparingly to highlight names or details. The consistent hand and occasional corrections suggest a single scribe working directly on the parchment.
Horizontal decorative bands—zigzags, triangles, chevrons—divide sections and frame images. Illustrations appear between these bands and are typically schematic: haloed figures, crosses, protective talismans, or anthropomorphic spirits. Bold outlines and selective color accents emphasize heads, eyes, or symbolic attributes. Marginal talismanic signs and small diagrams inhabit the spaces between text and image.
The scroll’s narrow width and considerable length reflect its purpose as a portable ritual tool. Handling wear appears along the edges and outermost layers, while repeated creasing marks frequent unrolling. The reverse side sometimes contains practice strokes or ingredient lists, suggesting practical use by a healer. Alternating text blocks and pictorial vignettes create a ritual sequence, guiding the practitioner through incantations and protective images.
Ownership marks vary: small inscriptions, seals, or later annotations. Repairs—patched holes, re‑stitched joins, added cloth or leather—demonstrate long-term use and value. As material objects, these scrolls sit at the intersection of manuscript, talisman, and ritual implements. Their stitched construction, combined inks, and clear signs of handling identify them as portable healing tools maintained by practitioners rather than books intended for passive reading.
Part 2: The Analysis
Ethiopian healing scrolls are religious objects designed to move: long, narrow rolls of parchment whose images, texts, and physical form work together as portable technologies for purging illness and restoring mobility. As Amaranth Borsuk notes, a book’s meaning emerges through how it is handled, and the scroll’s form is inseparable from the ritual actions it enables. Tailored to individual wearers, the scroll alternates Ge’ez text with pictorial plates exposed sequentially during rites meant to expel harmful forces.
The scroll’s construction emphasizes durability and portability. Thick parchment strips sewn end‑to‑end allow the roll to be tightly wound for transport and repeatedly unrolled for ritual display. Its narrow width minimizes bulk, while the long linear format provides a staged sequence: the healer unrolls to the next image, performs the invocation, then rerolls the scroll. Unlike a codex, which favors stationary reading, the scroll’s rolled format is optimized for motion—carrying, wearing, and field use. Jessica Pressman’s argument that new media revive older forms helps illuminate this contrast: the scroll’s mobility and image‑text hybridity anticipate contemporary portable media that merge functionality with embodied interaction.
Many healing scrolls are bespoke objects made to a client’s height so the unrolled sequence corresponds to body zones. The client’s name often appears, confirming the scroll’s directed purpose. This personalization allows the scroll to be wrapped around the body, converting it into a wearable talisman. Image placement follows a bodily logic: protections for the head appear near the top, those for the torso or abdomen appear mid‑scroll. Michelle Levy and Tom Mole emphasize that books acquire meaning through “the conditions of their use,” and the scroll’s customization demonstrates how its physical form is shaped by the needs of its wearer.
The pictorial program is central to the scroll’s function. Images are schematic and bold—emphasizing heads, eyes, haloes, or geometric talismans—so they read quickly during ritual exposure. High‑contrast outlines and selective color accents highlight operative features. Decorative bands frame each plate and act as tactile markers, enabling quick navigation. The imagery functions as both symbol and instruction, signaling which spiritual agent to invoke and which gesture to perform. Johanna Drucker’s work on artists’ books clarifies this dynamic: material structure shapes how readers navigate and interpret a book, and the scroll’s alternating bands of text and image direct ritual performance.
These scrolls are explicitly religious instruments whose therapeutic mechanism is spiritual. Christian iconography—crosses, haloed figures, archangels—combines with apotropaic geometries to anchor authority and repel harmful forces. The healer’s use of the image—exposure, touch, movement over the afflicted body—constitutes a ritual technology that enacts exorcism and restores mobility. Portability is integral: the scroll must travel to the afflicted, act upon their body, and accompany them back into social life.
Wear patterns and repairs document frequent handling. Darkened edges, creasing, and re‑stitched joins reveal repeated use. Leah Price notes that books often circulate as objects valued for their handling as much as their content, and the scroll’s accumulated wear makes visible its social life. Marginal additions and later hands mark episodes of adaptation for new clients. Mark Marino’s discussion of marginalia as evidence of a text’s evolving social life resonates here: added marks document the scroll’s movement through households and communities.
Mobility is also social and economic. Scrolls circulate as commissioned goods, gifts, or loaned items. Their production and repair involve craft resources and payments, creating ties among clients, healers, and suppliers. Ownership inscriptions and seals trace networks of care. Borges’s vision of an immobilized library contrasts sharply with the Ethiopian scroll, a book designed to circulate and act in the world.
Ultimately, the scroll’s purpose is to restore the patient’s capacity to move. In societies where mobility links to livelihood and social participation, a portable ritual technology that travels to the afflicted is especially significant. Wearing a scroll made and named for you aids reentry into everyday movement, signaling protection and documenting intervention. Viewed through mobility, Ethiopian scrolls appear as engineered objects whose structure, imagery, and repairs make them effective tools for itinerant spiritual care. Tracking scrolls as moving things recasts them not as static artifacts but as active participants in networks of healing, exchange, and movement that sustained religious life in Ethiopia for centuries.
Part 3: Books as Clothing, Books as Accessories: Embodied Reading and the Mobility of Text
Extending this analysis of mobility, Ethiopian healing scrolls also invite us to consider a broader and often overlooked dimension of book history: the ways books function as clothing, accessories, and wearable media. When a book is worn rather than held, its meaning shifts. It becomes not only a vessel for text but an object that participates in the shaping of identity, movement, and embodied experience. The Ethiopian healing scroll makes this dynamic unmistakable. Its form—long, narrow, stitched, and tailored to the wearer’s height—transforms it from a manuscript into a garment of protection, a piece of spiritual equipment designed to inhabit the body as much as accomExtending this analysis of mobility, Ethiopian healing scrolls also invite a broader reconsideration of what books are and how they inhabit the world. Their stitched parchment bodies, tailored lengths, and bold image‑text sequences reveal that books do not merely sit in hands or on shelves—they inhabit bodies. They wrap, touch, travel, and accompany. They are worn as much as they are read. When a book becomes something that can be carried on the body, wrapped around it, or displayed upon it, its meaning shifts. It becomes not only a vessel for text but an object that participates in shaping identity, movement, and embodied experience.
Amaranth Borsuk’s claim in The Book that books are “mutable interfaces” becomes especially resonant here. The Ethiopian scroll is not an interface between reader and text alone; it is an interface between body and world, mediating spiritual danger and physical vulnerability. Its portability is not incidental but essential: the scroll must move with the wearer because its power is activated through movement, wrapping, and bodily proximity. In this sense, the scroll is not simply read—it is embodied. Its meaning emerges through touch, motion, and the intimate contact between parchment and skin.
This embodied quality places Ethiopian scrolls within a much longer history of books as wearable objects. Michelle Levy and Tom Mole remind us that book history is shaped by “the conditions of [books’] use,” and those conditions have often included being worn, displayed, or carried on the body. Medieval girdle books hung from belts; miniature prayer books were tucked into pouches or suspended from rosaries; locket‑books held tiny devotional texts worn against the chest. In each case, the book’s portability shaped its function and its social meaning. A girdle book signaled piety and literacy; a locket‑book signaled devotion and intimacy. Ethiopian healing scrolls similarly signal protection, vulnerability, and spiritual identity. They are not merely texts but accessories of faith, designed to be seen, touched, and carried as part of the wearer’s daily life.
Understanding why people might want to wear books requires recognizing that books have always been more than repositories of information—they are objects that confer identity, intimacy, and agency. Wearing a book transforms it from a tool of reading into a tool of self‑fashioning. As Leah Price argues, books often circulate as objects whose value lies in their handling and display as much as in their textual content. While Ethiopian scrolls are not fashion accessories in the modern sense, they participate in a similar logic: wearing a scroll is a visible declaration of one’s spiritual needs and protections. It communicates vulnerability, faith, and the presence of ongoing ritual care. The scroll is not hidden away but worn, displayed, and recognized. Its presence on the body is itself a form of communication.
This is where individuality and customization become crucial. Ethiopian healing scrolls are bespoke objects: their length matches the client’s height; their inscriptions include the client’s name; their images are arranged to correspond to the wearer’s body. This degree of personalization is not decorative—it is essential to the scroll’s function. A scroll tailored to a specific body asserts that healing is not generic but individual, that protection must be fitted to the person who needs it. Levy and Mole’s emphasis on the “social lives of books” helps clarify this: the scroll’s life is inseparable from the life of its wearer. Customization becomes a form of recognition. The scroll acknowledges the wearer’s singularity, their embodied experience of illness, and their desire for protection that is literally made for them.
The scroll’s design reinforces this wearable, individualized function. Its narrow width, stitched joins, and rolled storage make it easy to carry on the body, slip into a case, or wrap around the torso. Its images—bold, schematic, high‑contrast—are optimized for quick recognition during ritual exposure. Its decorative bands act as visual and tactile markers, enabling navigation even in dim interiors or crowded marketplaces. These features are not ornamental; they are ergonomic. They allow the scroll to function as a wearable tool, a piece of spiritual equipment that moves with the healer and the patient. The scroll’s portability is therefore inseparable from its religious purpose: it must travel to the afflicted, act upon their body, and accompany them as they reenter the social world.
Johanna Drucker’s work on artists’ books helps articulate why this matters for understanding the scroll as a medium. Drucker argues that artists’ books challenge conventional assumptions about what a book is by foregrounding materiality, structure, and reader interaction. They make the reader aware of the book’s physical form and the ways that form shapes meaning. Ethiopian healing scrolls participate in this tradition long before the term “artists’ book” existed. Their form is their argument: the scroll’s healing power depends on its portability, its tactility, and its ability to be worn. Its material design is not an aesthetic choice but a theological one.
Mark Marino’s discussion of marginalia as evidence of a text’s evolving social life offers a final point of connection. The scrolls bear repairs, stains, creases, added talismans, and ownership notes. These marks are not accidents; they are evidence of movement. They show that the scroll traveled, was handled, was worn, was used. They are the physical equivalent of digital marginalia—traces of a book’s social life. Marino’s framework helps us see the scroll not as a static artifact but as a dynamic, evolving object shaped by the bodies that carry it.
Taken together, these perspectives reveal that Ethiopian healing scrolls are part of a broader history of books that move with the body, act upon the body, and become part of the body. They are wearable books whose portability is inseparable from their religious function. They are accessories that signal identity and vulnerability. They are garments that protect and heal. And they remind us that books have always been more than texts—they have been tools, companions, ornaments, and extensions of the self.
By reading the scroll through the lens of media‑specific analysis—and by engaging Borsuk, Levy & Mole, Price, Drucker, and Marino—we see that the scroll is not an anomaly but a reminder: books have always been bodies, and bodies have always been books.
Taken together, the Ethiopian healing scroll and the broader history of wearable books reveal that media are never neutral containers but active participants in the lives of the people who carry them. The scroll’s stitched construction, tailored length, bold imagery, and accumulated repairs show how a book can become a garment of protection, a tool of healing, and a record of movement across bodies, households, and generations. Its portability is inseparable from its purpose: to travel to the afflicted, to act upon the body, and to restore the very mobility that illness threatens. By reading the scroll through media‑specific analysis—and by situating it alongside traditions of girdle books, locket‑texts, and other wearable forms—we see that books have always been shaped by the conditions of their use, and that those conditions often involve touch, movement, and embodiment. The scroll ultimately reminds us that literature is not only something we read but something we inhabit: a medium that wraps around us, moves with us, and becomes part of how we navigate the world.
The Creation of a Personalized Healing Scroll
This handmade scroll functions as a wearable book—an individualized, portable, and spiritually charged media object that connects Baptist Christian heritage to the Ethiopian healing scrolls studied in class. Through stitched structure, symbolic imagery, and personalized inscriptions, the scroll enacts a media-specific theology of protection and identity, showing how books can be worn, embodied, and lived.
The scroll opens with an angel: afro‑textured hair, a halo, and a green eye on her dress. She stands at the top like a guardian, but also a witness. Beneath her, the inscription reads: “For her, Alexis Naomi, for whomst God gave his only begotten son.” The phrasing echoes John 3:16, in the King James Version, but shifts the tone toward intimacy and direction. Naming the recipient transforms the scroll into a personal object, much like Ethiopian healing scrolls that include the client’s name to anchor the work in a specific life.
The next section contains the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9–13), written in full. These familiar lines—often recited in church pews—take on a different presence when placed on a scroll meant to be worn. Surrounding the prayer are geometric patterns and symbolic drawings: a cross, a sun, a moon, and two open hands. These images form a visual grammar similar to the pictorial logic of Ethiopian scrolls, where symbols guide ritual action as much as text does. The hands suggest offering or surrender. The celestial symbols mark rhythm and divine order. The cross anchors the scroll in Christian iconography, while the surrounding elements expand its meaning beyond doctrine.
Further down, two closed eyes wearing makeup appear above the phrase “See no evil, child.” This line blends apotropaic logic with personal instruction. Ethiopian scrolls often use eyes, nets, and geometric traps to repel evil; here, the eyes are stylized and adorned, suggesting discernment rather than blindness. The phrase carries both protection and reassurance.
The final sections shift into prayer: “Please, protect this sinner as she is merely lost. But she will find herself at her destination, wherever that may be. Guide her safely, on the journey.” And then: “Remember your roots,” written above a tree. The tree grounds the scroll, connecting spiritual journey to ancestry, place, and growth. From angel to tree, the scroll moves vertically—heaven to earth, spirit to body.
The scroll is stitched with green thread, chosen for its personal significance. Black ink carries the words, with green highlights woven throughout. The material itself—lined notebook paper—reflects a practical truth shared across cultures: people make do with what they have. Ethiopian scrolls were made from parchment because that was available; this scroll uses notebook paper for the same reason. The choice underscores a continuity between past and present: sacred or meaningful books do not require rare materials, only intention and care.
The decision to make a scroll rather than a codex came from a desire to see whether personal beliefs could be expressed not only in words but in physical form. A scroll invites movement. It unrolls, wraps, and extends. It becomes something that can be worn, not just read. This aligns with Amaranth Borsuk’s description of books as “technologies that invite certain actions and discourage others.” The scroll is not meant to sit on a desk. It is meant to be carried, touched, and activated through motion. Ethiopian healing scrolls were tailored to the client’s height; this one is tailored to the torso, designed to be worn like a sash. Its meaning is inseparable from its physicality.
Michelle Levy and Tom Mole’s emphasis on the “material conditions that shape how books are produced and used” also resonates here. The scroll’s use is devotional, but also archival. It documents spiritual history, aesthetic preference, and emotional state. It is a record of belief and doubt, stitched together with thread and memory. In this sense, it belongs to a tradition of wearable media—girdle books, locket‑texts, and the Ethiopian scrolls studied in Special Collections. Each of these objects gains meaning not only from what is written on them, but from how they are carried and by whom.
Leah Price’s observation that books often function as “objects that circulate socially, not just texts that are read” offers another layer. This scroll is not about status in the conventional sense, but it is a declaration. It says: faith matters. Protection matters. Personalization matters. It is a visible, material sign of spiritual care. Not hidden away, but displayed, worn, and recognized. The scroll becomes a way of carrying belief outward, making it part of daily movement rather than private contemplation.
The scroll also reflects the course’s emphasis on media-specific analysis. This class taught that books are not just texts—they are technologies, objects, artforms, and archives. The scroll embodies all of these roles. It moves, protects, remembers. It is a wearable archive of Baptist upbringing, aesthetic choices, and evolving relationship to faith. It demonstrates how form shapes meaning, how material choices matter, and how books continue to matter as physical objects in a digital age.
In the end, the scroll is not perfect, and it is not traditional. But it is deeply personal. It carries meaning in its words, its images, its stitches, and its paper. It shows that interpretation does not require expertise—only attention, curiosity, and a willingness to ask why. And it proves that belief can live not only in the mind, but in the hands, the body, and the objects we choose to make.
Works Cited
Borsuk, Amaranth. The Book. MIT Press, 2018.
Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Library of Babel.” Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings, edited by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby, New Directions, 1964, pp. 51–58.
Drucker, Johanna. The Century of Artists’ Books. Granary Books, 1995.
Levy, Michelle, and Tom Mole. “Introduction.” The Broadview Introduction to Book History, Broadview Press, 2017, pp. 9–28.
Marino, Mark C. “Marginalia in the Library of Babel.” markcmarino.com, https://markcmarino.com/diigo/..
Pressman, Jessica. “Old/New Media.” The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media, edited by Marie-Laure Ryan, Lori Emerson, and Benjamin J. Robertson, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014, pp. 318–323.
Price, Leah. What We Talk About When We Talk About Books: The History and Future of Reading. Basic Books, 2019.
Windmuller-Luna, K. Ethiopian healing scrolls. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015