Imagine the first people on Earth, wandering through primordial forests, overwhelmed by this green world. In the beginning, there must have been too many plants of which to keep track but after a while, as with anything, individual natures would emerge. Some plants were discovered to be wonderfully nutritious or seductively delicious. Others were sources of water when none else could be found. Some plants were fonts of healing. Some eased labor pains, stimulated milk supply, or discouraged pregnancy when it was unwanted. Some plants just made you feel good. Inhaling their fragrance relieved your mind of worries. Inhaling other fragrances made you drop whatever else you might be doing and focus single-mindedly on romance instead. Other plants turned out to be the equivalent of keys: they opened the doors to other realms. Some provided portals to the spirits. And then there were those dangerous plants: should you taste even as little as a berry or perhaps just touch the wrong leaf before putting your fingers in your mouth, the results could be fatal. One definition of modern witchcraft is that it is the surviving remnants of Paleolithic spiritual traditions focused on sacred plants and the beverages brewed from them. Witches, then, are devotees but also ritual leaders—those experts who understand the nuances, gifts, and dangers of the most volatile plants.
Formerly sacred plants evolved into witchcraft plants. The plants didn’t change but attitudes towards them did. These plants, for one reason or another, tend to be ones that must be handled with care and expertise so as to avoid danger, damage, death, and disaster. Once upon a time, the skill and knowledge required to safely handle and manipulate these plants was admired.
In general, “witchcraft plants” fall into several categories. The following are not mutually exclusive. Many witchcraft plants fall into several categories at once.
Witchcraft plants offer power over life and death. Some exert powerful influences over the human reproductive system. These include fertility enhancers, menstrual regulators, herbal contraceptives, and abortifacients. Aphrodisiacs, those plants that promote sexual interest and ability, may be included in this category too.Just as some plants are identified with birth and life, others have associations with death, whether for spiritual reasons or because the particular plant is deadly poisonous, or both.
Some plants possess the power to intoxicate; they stimulate the euphoria sometimes crucial to shamanism, witchcraft, and some spiritual rituals. They stimulate joy, exultation, and feelings of well-being, at least temporarily.
The modern term “entheogen” describes substances that are gateways to visionary experiences. Used with knowledge, skill, and experience, these substances may unlock portals so that the shaman and witch can journey and fly.
Witchcraft plants include wild, uncultivated plants that resist domestication, prickly, stinging plants that assert powerful boundaries, and poisonous and psychoactive plants. Many witchcraft plants are associated with the moon and with female reproduction and sexuality.
Warning
With the exception of linguists, most people’s current knowledge of Anglo-Saxon extends no further than a few select four-letter words. However, it’s vital to be familiar with at least one other four-letter word, at least before you play with any plants: BANE. Pay attention when you see or hear that word: it is a warning of danger. Bane derives from the Old German bano meaning death. Bane implies that a plant is poisonous enough to cause death.
Folk names tend to describe something about a plants’ use; plants with “bane” in their name frequently recall the identity of those plants’ primary victim, hence henbane or wolfsbane. However, beware: any plant with “bane” anywhere in its name is poisonous to some degree. That’s how it earned that name.
Important: the plants in this section are included for historical purposes. Experimentation with plants, particularly with those known to be dangerous, is not encouraged. Those who are fascinated with plants might consider enrolling in the various academies of botanical knowledge or an apprenticeship with an acknowledged master.
Poisonous plants may be even more lethal today for two reasons. Firstly, lack of knowledge. We don’t really know how or even if our ancestors administered the following plants. Practitioners were killed and chains of transmission destroyed. Their methods may have been very different from our own. Although they lacked our technical capacity, their knowledge of fine botanical nuances was almost certainly greater.
As an example, to this day traditional Chinese medicine, a still-thriving millennia-old discipline, discourages treatment by one single herb. Botanicals are almost always combined to create a buffering, synergistic effect. (Synergism means that the whole, the end result, is greater than the sum of its parts.) It is very possible that once upon a time ancient practitioners, skilled herb-witches, knew how to combine dangerous plants in such a way that they buffered each other, antidoted each other and made administration of individually poisonous substances possible. We no longer have this knowledge; it may be lost for ever.
Secondly, concentration and isolation. Modern understanding of plants and nature is very different from what it once was. Today we know that every botanical contains various phyto-hormones and chemical constituents including alkaloids that provide its various physical effects. In other words, once upon a time we knew that belladonna was toxic; now we know why it’s toxic, which chemical constituents are responsible for its poisonous effect. These chemical constituents can now be isolated and concentrated. The effect of the chemical constituent on its own is almost certainly more potent and concentrated than when left as part of a complex system of interlocking components. There are herbalists who will only work with whole plants believing that any form of concentration of plant powers, including essential oils, is dangerous.
Modern scientific inclination is to isolate individual chemical constituents, refine and concentrate them, so that medicine can be standardized. Standardized synthetics may also be created that are even more potent than the whole plant. The disadvantage is that by isolating a single chemical constituent, we may remove buffering that provided a measure of safety. These standardized, concentrated forms do not occur in nature and may, in fact, not be safer. The classic example is ephedrine, the nowbanned dietary supplement derived from ephedra, a plant used medicinally since at least Neolithic times.
Safety Tips
Never use any botanicals without expert professional supervision. This extends to more than just standard internal administration. Even handling certain plants can be dangerous.
Do not wildcraft (i.e., don’t harvest from wild places), for two reasons:
1 This is the botanical equivalent of poaching animals; many botanicals are severely endangered in the wild.
2 Plants can be deceptive. It’s very, very easy to assume that one is picking one plant when one is, in fact, picking another. This is particularly true with mushrooms, who bear reputations as tricksters, sometimes deadly ones. The classic example occurred in Northern California. Japanese mushroom experts, visiting the area, brought their harvest home and prepared them for dinner and were promptly poisoned, some fatally. They were genuinely experts: what they picked was absolutely identical to mushrooms that were safe in Japan, except that the Californian variant was lethal.
Botanicals have local and folk names; these are the names they’ve been called in a specific language or region. Many of these folk names are very revealing; they tell you something about the plant’s nature and uses. However, many folk names are shared. Half a dozen plants are known as motherwort; the only thing they may have in common is that they’re beneficial in some aspect of maternity, whether conception, birth, or nursing. If you ask for motherwort, you may receive any one of these half dozen plants, at least one of which is also a powerful cardiac stimulant. However, each and every plant has only one Latin designation. That Latin designation is used internationally to describe only one single plant. Latin designations are the lingua franca, the common language of the worldwide botanical community. For safety’s sake, because otherwise you may have no idea what plant you’re working with and many plants have profound and sometimes dangerous physical effect, always use the plants’ Latin classification.
Corn, rye, and other grains, as well as ergot fungus, are discussed in ERGOT. Fly agaric mushrooms (Amanita muscaria) are discussed below.
Alder
(Alnus spp.)
Other English names include: black alder, red alder, and owler. In Danish, its name is synonymous with “elf king” while in German it’s called the Walpurgis tree or Walpurga.
Despite the confusing similarity in names, alders are not the same as elders, although both species of trees have powerful associations with witches and elves.
Alder is a moderately sized tree indigenous to the British Isles and most of Europe, all the way across Russia to Siberia. Alder is also native to the Caucasus, Turkey, and North Africa, from Morocco to Tunisia. It was introduced to the Western Hemisphere during the Colonial Era and is naturalized in eastern Canada and the United States. (Some species of alder are also indigenous to the Andes region.) It is an extremely common tree and is now understood as an ecologically valuable tree because of its ability to improve the fertility of soil by fixing nitrogen from the air, although for centuries alder was a tree of ill repute.
Alder is unique for several reasons:
Alder is renowned for its proclivity for water. Alder thrives in bogs, marshes, and swamps where other trees can’t grow. Alders are allegedly attracted to water, hence the use of its wood for dowsing rods. Because its wood doesn’t rot in water, it was perceived as a particularly powerful and valuable tree. Neolithic houses were built on alder stilts, as are the shacks of swamp witches. The city of Venice was built on alder. Alder loves and is beloved by water spirits and is believed to provide safety to their devotees.
Alder is identified with water and with the color red. Water is the element most associated with magic, with the moon, witchcraft, and feminine power. Red is the color of blood and hence identified with birth (babies arrive amidst blood), death, menstrual mysteries, witchcraft, and women’s power.
Alder “bleeds.” When alder is struck or cut, its pale heart wood gradually turns red. The modern scientific explanation is that this phenomenon is caused by the effects of nitrogen. The obvious nonscientific explanation is that the red color represents blood, although whose and under what circumstances has been subject to interpretation. The initial explanation, based on folklore, herbal, and magical traditions, seems to have been that alder menstruated like a woman, making it a rare, magically powerful and protective tree, and leading to its association with female deities and women’s enchantments.
Later, particularly in Northern lands alder came to be understood as inhabited by spirits. It is the spirits who bleed and mourn (and are angered) when the tree is cut. These spirits include the elven king but especially his daughter.
Alder’s identification with the color red is increased by its annual production of red catkins—so-called because of their perceived resemblance to cats’ tails. (In actuality, these are the tree’s berries.)
Alders represent the goddess or the witch in her guise as hag or crone. The Earth Mother, the Great Mother, both gives birth and accepts the dead back into her womb, her cauldron of regeneration where souls are renewed and born again. The alder shares the essence of the Great Mother who welcomes the dead. It is a tree of death but also of resurrection.
Traditionally witches meet beneath alders. Alders, like elder, contains portals to other realms, such as those of the elves, fairies, and the dead. These thresholds are concealed within the tree but will open to those who know how to find them (and even perhaps, by accident, to innocent bystanders!).
Alder is known as the Walpurgis tree because German witches allegedly ate alder buds during their flight to the Brocken mountain on Walpurgis Night.
Witches used alder branches to stir up and control the weather.
Alder was particularly associated with red-haired witches. Allegedly, alder wood in the hands of a red-headed woman supernaturally boosted her own magic powers.
Italian witches blended alder sap with madder to produce vivid red dyes that were used to color the scarlet ribbons, charm bags, and clothing so prized by Italian witchcraft.
In Italy, alder wood is incorporated into the May Eve bonfires.
In Ireland, the tree was used for divination, especially for diagnosis of the magical or spiritual roots of illness. In Irish tradition, it is forbidden to cut an alder. Many still hesitate today.
Magical flutes, pipes, and whistles were carved from alder. Oracle flutes, instruments of divination, previous to being carved from alder, were formed from the bones of sacrificial victims.
Post-Christianity alder’s reputation grew ominous and negative. The bleeding tree’s magic blood was explained as a reminder of the crucifixion.
Most of alder’s uses were for ritual and magic (and feminine magic at that) and so it wasn’t considered a “practical” botanical. Hildegard of Bingen described it as a “useless tree.” There were a few exceptions: in Scotland, alder was prized for fine furniture. Scottish Bog Alder was also known as “Scottish mahogany” and was considered a luxury wood.
Alder is also a crucial component of many natural dyes. Depending upon the part of the plant, alder is used to make black, green, and red dyes as well as to tan leather.
According to the old medicinal law of similars, like is used to cure like. Just as with the similar-sounding elder, alder, the tree of witch-craft, is used to prevent and ward off witchcraft. Alder’s main medieval uses were to protect against witches and vermin (fleas, lice, and mice; the sticky leaves may catch resident fleas).
A traditional remedy suggests that inner alder bark simmered in wine serves as an antidote against magic potions. On Walpurgis Night, branches of alder were crossed and placed against doors to prevent witches flying overhead from landing and entering. (Although the Walpurgis tree is so identified with witches’ activities on this night, one wonders if this tradition isn’t a distortion of some old witchcraft practice.)
See also Elder; CALENDAR: Walpurgis; PLACES: The Brocken.
Amanita Muscaria or Fly Agaric
(Amanita muscaria)
