Herb of the week: Skullcap

 Skullcap: The herb that helps you to relax and drift off to sleep 

General Correspondences

• Elements: Water and Air
• Planets: Moon, Saturn, Mercury, Neptune, Pluto
• Astrology: Gemini and Virgo
• Energy: Feminine/Receptive
• Chakra: Crown 

Skullcap, scientifically known as Scutellaria lateriflora, is a perennial herb in the mint family (Lamiaceae) native to North America. It typically grows in wetland areas, reaching heights of 1-3 feet with square stems, lance-shaped leaves, and small, tubular blue-purple flowers that bloom in summer. The name “skullcap” derives from the flower’s resemblance to a helmet or cap, and it’s also called mad-dog skullcap due to historical folklore associating it with treatments for rabies.

This plant has been used for centuries by indigenous peoples and herbalists for its calming effects on the body and mind.

Medicinal Properties

Skullcap is primarily valued in herbal medicine as a nervine tonic, meaning it supports and nourishes the nervous system.  It is commonly used to alleviate anxiety, insomnia, and nervous tension, often in combination with other sedative herbs.   Traditional uses include inducing sleep, relieving nervousness, and easing symptoms of conditions like epilepsy.  Modern herbalists recommend it for promoting emotional well-being and relaxation during times of stress or distress. 

Research and anecdotal evidence suggest skullcap may help reduce inflammation, provide relief from muscle spasms, and stimulate blood flow, particularly in the pelvic region.   It’s often prepared as a tea, tincture, or capsule. However, it’s important to note that while American skullcap (S. lateriflora) focuses on nervous system support, the related Chinese skullcap (Scutellaria baicalensis) is used differently, such as for diarrhea and inflammation in traditional Chinese medicine.  Always consult a healthcare provider before use, as it can interact with medications and may cause side effects like drowsiness.

Magical and Folklore Properties

In magical traditions, skullcap is revered for its protective and calming energies, often incorporated into spells, rituals, and charms.

Associated with the element of water and the planet Saturn, it’s used in witchcraft, Hoodoo, Voodoo, and Wicca for binding oaths, vows, and commitments, making it a staple in fidelity spells to promote loyalty in relationships.   Folklore links it to protection against madness, evil spirits, jinxes, hexes, and the evil eye, drawing from its historical name and uses. 

 

Practitioners may burn skullcap as incense for relaxation during meditation or rituals, or carry it in sachets for emotional restoration after magical workings or trials.   It’s also employed in love magic to foster peace and harmony, or in exorcism rites to ward off negative influences.  In some traditions, combining it with herbs of similar properties enhances spells for mental clarity and nervous system nourishment.  These uses stem from folk magic and should be approached as cultural or spiritual practices rather than proven effects.

Herb or the week: Mandrake

 Then cries of the Mandrake 

In the shadowed cradle of the world, where the first gods still walked with muddy feet and the earth herself was learning to scream, there grew a root unlike any other. Men would later call it Mandragora, the sleepy apple, the devil’s candle, the hanged-man’s supper; but in the elder tongue it bore no name at all, for to name it was to invite its notice, and its notice was rarely kind.

Long before the cities of men rose like rash upon the skin of the land, the mandrake slept beneath the gallows. Where murderers swung and traitors danced their last jig upon the air, their final seed fell not as children but as roots. From the black droppings of the hanged, from the froth upon their broken lips, from the terror that soaked the soil when the neck snapped, the mandrake drank. It grew forked like a man’s legs spread in agony, and its thick taproot took the shape of one who had been stretched upon the rope. Tiny arms, a bulbous head crowned with leaves like wild hair, and always, always, the faint suggestion of a face twisted mid-shriek.

The old ones knew better than to pull it carelessly. When the moon was dark and the dogs refused to bark, the seeker came with a horn of ram and a black hound on an iron chain. Three circles were drawn about the plant with a sword that had never tasted blood, and an offering of bread, wine, and honey poured upon the ground so the earth might be sweetened against what was to come. Then the rope was tied fast around the mandrake’s neck of root, the other end knotted to the hound, and the seeker fled with fingers stuffed in ears.

For when the root was torn from its bed, the mandrake screamed.

Not the thin cry of a child nor the howl of a beast, but something older: the sound the world made when it first learned death was possible. That scream could blast the wits from a man’s skull, curdle milk in the udder, wither fruit upon the bough, and strike the puller dead where he stood. Only the dog paid the price, maddened and torn apart by unseen claws, while the root (now safely cradled in cloth of red wool) was carried home by one who had never heard its voice.

Bathed in wine and milk beneath a waxing moon, the mandrake grew tame, or as tame as such a thing can ever be. Kept in a box of cedar or wrapped in silk stolen from a corpse’s shroud, it granted its keeper strange boons. Gold came unasked. Lovers forgot their vows to others. Enemies sickened and died with no mark upon their bodies. Yet the root demanded feeding: a drop of blood on Fridays, a thimble of semen or maiden’s milk beneath the new moon, and always the murmur of secrets, for the mandrake listens better than it speaks.

Some said the little man-shaped thing was a familiar sent by the Queen of Elphame, others that it was a lost soul caught halfway between grave and hell. Witches cradled them like babes. Alchemists powdered them for the Work of the Sun. Kings kept them locked in ivory caskets and consulted them before battle, trembling at the answers whispered through clenched leaves.

But every mandrake remembers the rope.

Let a keeper grow careless, let the offerings cease or the red cloth fray, and the root begins to twist in its box. It swells, it groans, it dreams of the gallows tree. One night the lid is found flung wide, the silk shredded, and in the morning the master lies cold with eyes burst and tongue blackened, while outside the window a fresh plant has already taken root beneath the scaffold, waiting for the next traitor, the next thief, the next fool who believes he can own what was never meant to be owned.

Thus has it ever been, and thus shall it be, while men hang men and the earth stays hungry. In the deep places beneath the hill where no dog dares follow, the true mandrakes grow wild and tall as a man, crowned with purple bells and leaves like poisoned laurel. There they dance when no eye watches, slow and terrible, rehearsing the scream that will greet the final neck that snaps at the end of time.

Heed the old warning, wanderer. Should you spy a forked root sleeping beneath dark leaves, pass by. Plug your ears with wax and your heart with fear. Some doors were never meant to open, and some roots were nourished on screams long before you learned to speak.

Uses of Mandrake

It is a highly toxic plant, it can cause death if it is ingested directly, and it has activity through the skin, so it is unwise to handle its leaves, fruits and, above all, its roots.

The ancient inhabitants of Africa believed that it had healing properties and therefore they used it to wash their hands and feet. 

The fame of mandrake is also linked to the Hebrew tradition, where the root of this plant was used as a powerful fertilizer. It is mentioned in the Old Testament, in the story of Rachel, the wife of Jacob, in which she was sterile and became pregnant after taking an infusion of mandrake.

One of the best known cases that encouraged the relationship between witchcraft and mandrake occurred during the trial of Joan of Arc. The judges accused her of wearing a mandrake root hidden in her clothes, which they believed gave her powers of divination. According to the legends, the mandrake root was used for invoking demons and performing divinations.

The Witch’s Flying Ointment

The mandrake root has a long history in witchcraft. Not only did the common people and royalty use it, but so did accused witches during the Dark Ages. While the mandrake grew naturally in the Mediterranean region, distribution spread through the Northern, Eastern, and Western European countries over time. The mandrake became an essential ingredient in the witch’s flying ointment, according to grimoires from that time. It was a powerful hallucinogen and aphrodisiac. If used with other toxic herbs and rubbed externally on the witch’s skin, it made the witch feel as if she is “flying”…or to put it simply got her high or sent her on a “trip”.

The Mandrake as the Folk Remember It: A Garland of Night-Whispers and Grave-Dirt

Across every land where men learned to hang their own kind, the same terror took root and flowered into a thousand different nightmares. The plant has worn more masks than the moon has phases, yet every mask hides the same screaming face.

Britain and the Germanic North: The Thief Beneath the Gallows

In England they called it mandrake or womandrake, but the country people spoke only of “the Little Gallows Man.” Every crossroads gibbet had one growing beneath it, fattened on the “poor sinner’s fat” (the dripping that fell when the corpse was cut down). To harvest it you needed a dog with a white star on its breast, bread baked on Good Friday, and a length of rope spun from a hanged man’s hair. When the root came free, the shriek was said to kill eleven living things within earshot: the dog first, then the youngest child in the nearest cottage, then the puller himself if he had looked back.

Once safely gathered, the root was carved into a doll with a face like a wizened baby. Fed milk and blood on moonless nights, it grew restless and began to walk the house after midnight, rattling doors and pinching sleepers black and blue. If you asked it where treasure lay, it would point with a tiny arm toward the churchyard or the miser’s hearth. But woe to the house that forgot to dress it in new clothes every Yuletide: the doll would swell until it burst its coffin and the owner would be found hanged from his own bedpost, feet dancing above a fresh young mandrake already sprouting between the floorboards.

In Germany the same root was Alraune or Galgenmännlein (“little gallows mannikin”). A proper Alraune must be dug on a Friday in the hour of Venus, with the left hand only, while reciting the Creed backward. Kept in a bottle of brandy, it granted its master luck at dice and made women fall in love against their will. But every seventh year it demanded a new dog be killed in its name, or it strangled the gambler in his sleep and rolled the dice with his finger-bones.

The Slavic Lands: The Night-Crying Flower

Among the Ruthenians and Poles it was “rusałka’s candle” or “the crying Adam.” They said Adam himself, when driven from Eden, wept such bitter tears that one fell upon the grave of Abel and became the first mandrake. Its root is shaped like Adam’s body before Eve was taken from his side (whole, sexless, and howling). To pull it, a naked man must stand within a circle of burning hemp and play a fiddle carved from coffin-wood. The root will dance to the tune and follow the music out of the earth, still screaming. If the fiddler stops before sunrise, the mandrake drags him down and takes his place above the ground, wearing his skin like a coat.

In Serbia they buried a mandrake beneath the threshold so that no witch could cross. In Bulgaria they planted it upside-down in a murderer’s grave so that his soul could never leave the body and walk as a vampir. Everywhere the same bargain: keep it fed and it keeps you rich; starve it and it eats you instead.

Mediterranean and Arabic Lore: The Demon’s Lantern

The Greeks knew it as the plant of Circe and Hecate both. Sailors swore that on moonless nights they saw purple fires flickering on deserted islands (mandrakes burning like lanterns to lure men to their doom). Arab physicians called it yabruh or luffah al-jinn (“the jinn’s apple”) and claimed the only safe way to gather it was to shoot three arrows over it while reciting the Throne Verse. The third arrow would sever the root without waking the scream.

In Jewish legend it is yabruch or sefer ha-yashar, the plant Moses used to point out Joseph’s bones in Egypt. But another, darker tale says Cain planted the first mandrake in Abel’s blood, and its fruit are the golden apples that still tempt men into murder.

The Romany and the Roadside Root

Gypsy caravans would never camp near a gallows for fear of the baxt mandragora (“luck-root”). Yet some old women carried tiny shrivelled ones wrapped in red silk, claiming they were born from the seed of a man hanged while still virgin. Such a root could make a horse run a hundred miles without tiring, or cause an enemy’s wagon to lose a wheel at the worst possible ford. When the owner died, the root was buried with her left hand so that in the next world she would never be poor.

The Universal Terror

Everywhere the same laws are whispered:

•  Never buy a mandrake with ordinary money; it must be paid for with a coin bitten by a corpse.

•  Never let it see its own reflection; it will remember it is a prisoner and strangle you with your own hair.

•  Never speak its true name aloud after sunset; the name is the noose, and the noose remembers.

And everywhere the same ending: the root always returns to the gallows. Rich men, wise women, cunning thieves (all wake one morning to find their treasure gone, their door open, and a hangman’s silhouette swinging gently above a patch of disturbed earth where something small and man-shaped has just gone back to sleep, waiting for the next neck, the next scream, the next harvest.

For the mandrake is not a plant that grows.

It is a debt that ripens.

And every land that learned the rope still owes it interest, paid in the oldest currency of all: a human life, screaming as it is torn from the world.

The mandrake waits. It always waits.

Psst: it’s a hoax! The plant does not cry or make any sound when it is touched or pulled from the ground!

Herb of the week: Comfrey

 

Comfrey:

 the herb with the power to heal the broken 

Comfrey leaf is a herb of strength, healing, and transformation. Its deep connection to the earth and its nurturing energy make it a versatile tool in magickal practices.

For protection, comfrey leaf is a powerful ally. Its strong, grounding energy can be used to create protective barriers around your home or sacred space. Scatter the leaves near doorways or windows, or carry them in a mojo bag to shield against negative influences and harm.

Comfrey leaf is also a herb of prosperity and abundance. Its rapid growth and resilience symbolise thriving energy, making it a perfect addition to money-drawing spells. Place comfrey leaves in your wallet, cash box, or under a green candle to attract financial stability and growth.

When it comes to cleansing, comfrey leaf’s purifying energy can help clear stagnant or negative vibrations. Add it to a ritual bath or burn it as an incense to cleanse your aura and create space for positive energy to flow.

Gender: Feminine

Planet: Saturn

Element: Water

Powers: Divination, Healing, Luck, Meditation, Prosperity, Protection, Travel

The moon hangs low and silver over the hedgerow when you first meet Her true name: Symphytum officinale, the Bone-Knit, the Bruisewort, the black-rooted grandmother of the poison path who is not poison at all, but medicine fierce enough to frighten the faint-hearted. We call her Comfrey, and she answers with a rustle of broad, hairy leaves that smell of earth and distant rain.

She grows where the ground has been broken its own heart: along ditches scarred by floods, beside old stone walls cracked by centuries of frost, in the forgotten corners of churchyards where the dead sleep shallow. Comfrey loves disturbance. She thrusts her deep taproot into the wound of the world and drinks sorrow like nectar, turning damage into green fire. That root, black outside, milk-white within is older than any grimoire. It remembers when the first Siberian shamans bound it around spear-broken limbs and watched the bones remember their own shape. The Greeks named her symphyo, “to make grow together,” and whispered that Prometheus carried a sprig of comfrey when he stole fire, so his torn liver might mend each night and defy the eagle forever.

Nine times the wheel turns, and nine times Comfrey dies back to her root, only to rise greener, stronger, more knowing. That is her first teaching: what is cut down in autumn is never truly lost. Hang her leaves to dry when the moon is waning in a water sign, and they will keep the memory of summer in their veins. Steep them when the moon is full again, and the tea will sing to torn flesh, to bruised hearts, to wombs that weep after birthing or bleeding. But beware: she is a jealous healer. She will knit you together so swiftly that if a bone is set wrong, it will stay wrong. She demands you know your craft before you ask for hers.

In the old tongue of cunning folk, she is called Knitbone, Knitback, Backwort (words that sound like spells already half-cast). Soldiers carried her mashed root in leather pouches through every war from Agincourt to the trenches of the Somme. Midwives pressed her poultices to perineums torn by the journey of new souls into the world. Hedge-witches still murmur over her:

“Bone to bone, flesh to flesh,

Blood to blood, knit afresh.”

And the plant listens. She always listens.

Yet she keeps a secret sharp as any athame: within her leaves coils a whisper of pyrrolizidine alkaloids, silent as nightshade, patient as the grave. The mundane world, terrified of strong magic, now warns against drinking her too freely. But the wise ones have always known every great ally carries a blade along with the balm. We honor Comfrey with respect, not fear. We take her outwardly (poultice, oil, salve) where her knitting spell is purest and her shadow cannot reach the liver’s deep hearth. Only the reckless or the truly initiated dare her as tea, and even then only under the watchful eye of the moon and ancestors who have walked this road before.

Walk softly when you harvest her. Ask leave three times. Cut only the leaves of the second year’s growth, never the crown, never the root unless she offers it freely (and sometimes, in dreams, she will). Spill a little wine or milk into the soil as thanks. She likes tobacco too, if you have it, rolled without paper and laid at her feet like an offering to an old goddess wearing green velvet.

In the garden of the witchery, Comfrey stands at the crossroads between poison and panacea, between the green world and the underworld. Plant her beneath fruit trees and watch the harvest swell as she draws minerals from the bones of the earth. Place her fresh leaves in the coffin of a spell you need to mend (a broken heart, a shattered geas, a lineage cursed) and bury it at the dark moon. She will work in silence, patient as stone, fierce as love.

When your own body fails you, when joints creak like old doors and skin splits like parchment, sit with Comfrey under starlight. Lay her cool leaves on the wound and feel how gently, how inexorably, she pulls the edges of the world together again. That is her deepest magic: she remembers wholeness when we have forgotten it. She teaches that every scar is a seam where the universe has sewn itself back together, stronger at the broken places.

Hail, black-rooted grandmother.

Hail, green witch of the hedge.

May we be as resilient as you,

May we knit the world whole again,

One leaf, one bone, one spell at a time.

So mote it be.

To Call a Lover Who Is Meant for You

Take nine leaves of the second year’s growth, harvested at dusk when the first star appears. On the underside of each leaf, write with dove’s blood ink (or rosewater and dragon’s blood resin if the dove is unwilling) one quality you truly offer in love: loyalty, fire, laughter, refuge, courage, devotion, wildness, truth, mercy.

Lay the leaves in a ring upon a square of green silk. In the center place a lock of your own hair bound with red thread, and one rose petal for every year you have walked the earth. Speak aloud:

“Knitbone, black-root, green witch of the hedge,

Draw to me the one whose wounds fit mine,

Edge to edge, scar to scar,

That we may heal together or not at all.

Fold the silk into a packet, tie it with nine knots, and bury it beneath the comfrey’s mother plant at the dark of the moon. Water the place with three drops of your blood (or, if you will not bleed, with red wine poured from a loving cup). The lover who is truly yours will begin to dream of you within one turning of the moon.

To Mend a Broken Bond

When quarrels have torn the fabric between two hearts, gather comfrey root on a Wednesday when Mercury is retrograde (for words unsaid) and the moon is in Cancer (for the wounded home). Wash the root gently but do not break it. Split it lengthwise with a boline, leaving it joined at the base so it resembles two halves of one whole.

On one half write your name in red. On the other, your lover’s. Between the halves lay a photograph of you both in happier times, or a pair of intertwined rose thorns. Bind the root together again with green thread while chanting softly:

Flesh to flesh, root to root,

What was torn be now re-knit,

As this root grows whole again,

So our love be not undone.

Bury the bound root at the crossroads or beneath your bedroom window. As the root heals itself in the dark earth, so will the love (if it is still alive at its core). If the thread rots and the halves fall apart, know that the bond was already dead and Comfrey is only finishing the merciful cut.

To Heal the Heart After Betrayal

When love has been a blade instead of a balm, make “Comfrey’s Comfort” oil. Fill a jar with fresh comfrey leaves and a single leaf of heartsease (wild pansy). Cover with sweet almond oil on the night of the new moon. Let it sit until the moon is full again, then strain. Add three drops of your tears if you still have any left, or three drops of rainwater gathered at dawn.

Anoint your breastbone and the soles of your feet every night for nine nights, whispering:

I am not the wound.

I am the knitting.

I am the green fire that rises after burning.

On the ninth night, pour the remaining oil onto the earth beneath the comfrey plant and say thank you. You will wake on the tenth morning lighter, the scar already turning silver.

To Bind Without Harm (The Witch’s Promise)

True witches know that love forced is love cursed. Comfrey will never aid in bending another’s will, but she will fiercely protect a love freely given. If you and your beloved choose one another, make this working on Beltane eve:

Each of you take a comfrey leaf. On it, write your vow in your own blood or rosewater. Exchange leaves. Press them together, vein to vein, and wrap them in red silk with a strand of hair from each of your heads. Bury the packet beneath a comfrey plant you tend together. As long as that plant lives and is honored, your bond will be guarded by the old green magic: unbreakable from without, gentle enough to release from within if love’s season ever ends.

Remember always: Comfrey’s love magic is the magic of scars, of mending, of becoming stronger where you were broken. She has no patience for pretty illusions. She asks you to come to her honest, bleeding or already healing, and she will answer with the same honesty.

Use her wisely, use her reverently, and she will teach your heart the oldest spell of all:

To be whole again.

Medicine Properties

USE WITH CAUTION 

Comfrey's impressive healing abilities are largely due to its high concentration of allantoin which stimulates cell division and growth, thus promoting healing inside and out. It's also a natural astringent, reducing bleeding and hemorrhaging and aiding in cellular repair. Furthermore, comfrey is a demulcent, meaning it creates a protective film over a mucous membrane, which makes it great for treating ulcers, hernias, and ulcerative colitis. Comfrey should not, however, be used to treat deep wounds, especially deep puncture wounds, as it can cause the surface to heal faster than the deep tissue which can result in the formation of an abscess. Furthermore, comfrey should not be used internally unless guided by a doctor, because it contains high concentrations of pyrrolizidine alkaloids that damage the liver and can lead to death. In fact, comfrey has been deemed so dangerous that the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Germany have all banned oral products containing comfrey. While you can still purchase the herb, be mindful of consuming it, especially if you are pregnant, expecting to become pregnant, or breastfeeding.