#wortcraft

[herbalisyl444]

permaculture + witchcraft 🌳🕸️🗺️

i want to make a larger substack post on this subject soon, but i'm finalizing my permaculture design for my property right now and this is on my mind!

first of all, what is permaculture? in Practical Permaculture: For Home Landscapes, Your Community, and the Whole Earth, the author describes it as "meeting human needs through ecological and regenerative design".

permaculture design is already based around using natural systems as a frame of reference, such as fractals, spirals, grids, networks, & tessellations. building systems based on a bee hive or on leaf veins gives an extra connection to that source which we can imbue and utilize magically.

i also think that the entire property design process can become a hypersigil, alike any "art form". enchanting while designing, and integrating enchantments into the designs, can be done throughout the length of the design process.

specific locations and species/cultivars of trees and plants may be used as a wide-ranging hypersigil, or features may be designed to be specific altar spaces.

when you eventually set up gardens, or other designated areas of vegetation, you can also enchant and commune with the plant and seed spirits as they are planted. identification and pilgrimage through wooded areas may be followed by devotion. wards and other spellwork can be planted or affixed within structures and gardens put in.

i hope this post provided any of you with some ideas! if you are a witch interested in permaculture, i have some book recommendations under the cut:

Practical Permaculture: For Home Landscapes, Your Community, and the Whole Earth; by Jessi Bloom & Dave Boehnlein

Holistic Homesteading: A Guide to Sustainable and Regenerative Lifestyle; by Roxanne Ahern

The Vegetable Gardeners Guide to Permaculture: Creating an edible ecosystem; by Christopher Shein (available on Internet Archive)

if you are an urban witch i'd highly recommend Toolbox for Sustainable City Living; by Scott Kellogg & Stacy Pettigrew (available online)

thorn dividers by @pixopix

[wherenymphsplay]

MUGWORT

Also found in a BOOK OF SHADOWS:

Mugwort is known as the Queen of Herbs.

Una your name is, the mightiest of herbs Of might against thirty, and against three

 So says the Anglo-Saxon  ‘Lay of Nine Herbs’

This is part of the herb lore of mermaids who would whisper :

Would ye let the bonnie one die in your hand When there is mugwort flowering on the land?

So also the verse

If they would drink nettles in March And take mugwort in May So many young maidens wouldn’t lie in the clay.

But to hear these things you have to know how to speak to mermaids.

Other lore says that if it is picked at midday at the Summer Solstice the root nodules can be hung around the neck as an amulet against sickness.

It was also thought that keeping it in the house would ward off evil spirits so that “no wycked sprite abide within” according to a herball of 1525.

So make sure you don’t have any in the house if you are thinking of entertaining any such sprites.

[wherenymphsplay]

Discovered in a Book of Shadows

When we think of the early herbalists, we think of them preparing plants for medicine. This is true. But many of them were just as interested in the administration of poisons. Take this from the Greek Theophrastus in the 3rd or 4th century bce:

“Of the different plants called strykhnos one is edible …. and there are two others, one brings on sleep while the other causes madness. The one that causes madness has a white hollow root about a cubit long. A little more than a tenth of an ounce will make someone frisky and boastful, double this dose will produce delusions, three times the dose will bring on permanent insanity, four times the dose if the person is to be killed.”

Here is the same writer again on WOLFSBANE:

“It has a leaf like chicory, a root like in shape and colour to a prawn, and in this root is its deadly property. But the fruit and leaf are harmless. So they say. But they can be compounded to cause death in months or even years and this is a more painful death as the body wastes away, but if the person is to die quickly it will be painless. Wolfsbane is useless to those who do not understand it especially as it is illegal to possess it …. the length of time it takes to kill someone depends on when it is gathered and the time that has elapsed since it was gathered.”

So it is important not only to know your poison, but how to prepare and use it to the intended effect, when to gather it, how long to keep it and other such shadowy knowledge best written in your Book of Shadows at the Dark of the Moon.

[julevanwilde]

I started some new herbs this year, and they needed a trim! There's not much but it's worth drying all the same. Hanging here are lavender, variegated sage, and thyme.

[askdusty]

I'd tell you an Alchemy joke but I'm not sure if I'd get a reaction.

Dust gives a wide grin at that, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Not bad. Let me offer one of my own, dear. What does an alchemist say after finding a new type of ingredient?”

A pause. She’s smirking ear to ear now, barely able to contain herself. “Nothing. It’s not polite to talk with your mouth full.”

[batwitch]

Ok, so as much as I love studying medieval and early modern occult texts, sometimes it is really difficult to take them seriously. Example in point, The Book of Secrets of Albertus Magnus:

The Twelfth herb is named of the Chaldees Colorio, or Coloricon, of the Greeks Clamor, of the Latins commonly Salvia, of Englishmen Sage. This herb, being putrefied under dung of cattle in a glassen vessel, bringeth forth a certain worm or bird having a tail after the fashion of that bird called a Black Mack or Ousel, with whose blood, if any man be touched on the breast, he shall lose his sense or feeling the space of fifteen days and more. And if aforesaid Serpent be burned, and the ashes of it put in the fire, anon shall there be a rainbow, with a horrible thunder. And if aforesaid ashes be put in a lamp, and be kindled, it shall appear that all the house is full of Serpents, and this hath been proved of men of late time. (Best & Brightman, 1973)