Not sure if this is the best place to post this but I don't want a bunch of new age hippie bs.
I keep coming across the concept of attaching a chain or a bit of wire to your boot to ground yourself and redirect magical spells in fantasy literature and historical fictions and I'm curious about where the origin of this idea comes from? (besides the obvious concept of grounding against electricity)
I get that it's not real but neither are vampires and people have every answer for their real world origin. I figure this must have started somewhere too.
I've never heard of this particular ritual, if it existed at all, but this doesn't sound especially unusual as far as magical rituals go. The connection of magic with chthonic spirits and power is extremely ancient--hence the burial of curse tablets (sometimes in graves), the use of lead objects, and the invocation of decidedly chthonic deities (or chthonic aspects of other gods) in ancient magical ritual. While this particular ritual sounds more medieval than ancient the idea of maintaining a direct contact with the chthonic powers through metal--itself of chthonic origins--would not be at all hard to understand for an ancient person