Hillary Waterman: Herbs & Verbs
As part of its seasonal festivities, JStor Daily has a good (if brief) article by Hillary Waterman on spoken spellcraft entitled “Herbs & Verbs: How to Do Witchcraft for Real“. Ignore the title—the article is much better than that.
Waterman examines Anglo-Saxon spells and a spell from Papua, New Guinea. Although separated by miles and centuries, the spells are quite similar.
“Common to all kinds of magic are:
*Actors—a practitioner, a subject, and an agent (a spirit or energy source)
*A decontextualizing of the language and actions from everyday life and resituating them within a special and powerful—and abstracted (often mythic)—context
*A special-purpose language or speech register
*Rituals and taboos
*Use of herbs and talismans
*Altered states of consciousness induced by chanting, fasting, or herbal draught”
If you’re new to magic, this is a good outline for understanding spells, and creating your own spells.
Waterman cites several sources, and I encourage you to read the article for yourself and check out the references.
A frontispiece from Grete Herball, a 1526 English herbal manuscript.
via Wikimedia Commons
