#gloaming intercession

[lailoken]

The Wicken-Rod:

A Pellar’s Rowan Stave of Gloaming Intercession

This is an implement of mine, which I have been somewhat reticent to share here, even after finally being given leave to do so within reason, but I think I’m ready now.

It is a stave made from the wood of the Rowan Tree (also called the Rown Tree, Rune Tree, Service Tree, Wayfarer’s Tree, and Wicken Tree,) naturally engraved with the spiral of a Honeysuckle Vine, which came to me in a special way, and during a very special time. It has since come to represent one of the central instruments I employ in the execution of my work as a Faerie Physicker. It has also become a trusty companion, in general.

In preparation for what would prove to be the single most difficult piece of Faerie Physic I have yet to undertake—a piece of Gloamimg Intercession that not only challenged the scope of my abilities, but threatened the safety of myself and my physically immediate loved ones—a peer of mine in Britain helped me to locate and harvest the wood in question from the periphery of a churchyard in Lancashire, which is one of several areas in the British Isles I have particularly strong ancestral connections to. The idea was to receive it, work on it, and hallow it for use in the previously mentioned magic, but due to some unknown misfortune, the piece was apparently indefinitely lost in transit. However, the day that immediately succeeded the completion of my work, I was pleasantly surprised to have the wood arrive out of whatever mysterious mail vortex it had been dithering in.

Having successfully completed the rite in question, even without the use of the stave, it was hard to not see its oddly timed arrival as a mark of my triumph, and my evolution along the path of my calling—bringing ancestral ties full circle, and arming me against the forces I was born to shepherd.

[lailoken]

A Remedy for Elfshot

If an initiated Faerie Intercessor has determined, through proper diagnostic techniques and practices, that a person struck with mysterious and troublesome physical symptoms is under the influence of a Faery Blight, as opposed to sickness of a purely mundane variety, there are numerous methods by which said Intercessor might remedy the situation. In the case of Elfshot, specifically, a Faerie-touched healer may perform a Remedial Ceremony to rid the patient of their affliction. The following is one such ceremony, explained as candidly as oaths will alow:

The following nine herbs are gathered beneath the light of a Waning Moon:

Betony

Garlic Shoots

Rue

Wormwood

Agrimony

Woodbine

Vervain

Lady’s Mantle

St. John’s Wort

The herbs are bound together in a bundle using a plain cord of natural fiber, all the while invoking the tutelary guardians of each plant gathered, and when finished, the herb bundle is blessed nine times using an Orison of Fae Power. The patient is then blessed with the same nine repetitions, while having the bundle rubbed along their body as the sacred verses are murmured. It is traditionally ideal for the patient to bear as much exposed skin as they are comfortably able to during this procedure

When the ninefold blessing is complete, the bundle is burned, and the smoke is wafted along the perimeter of the patient’s body as a Cleansing Fumigation. The ashes from the bundle are continually collected as the herbs burn.

The Healing Ceremony is concluded by marking the brow of the patient using living freshwater that has been ritually hallowed by the Fae. The patient is thereafter instructed to dispose of the ashes in the same body of living water from whence the hallowed water was drawn, making sure to dispose of them in a place where the water flows away from the patient, rather than towards them.