#wortcraft

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:

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.

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.”

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?”

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: