Path: typhoon.sonic.net!not-for-mail Message-ID: <39360D84.1345@luckymojo.com> From: catherine yronwode Organization: Lucky Mojo Curio Company X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (Macintosh; I; 68K) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.lucky.w,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.paranormal.spells.hexes.magic Subject: Re: Where can I find herbs that used in spells? References: <39244E98.25C7@luckymojo.com> <20000601024052.22256.00000279@ng-bk1.aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 69 Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 07:08:08 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.204.142.210 X-Complaints-To: abuse@sonic.net X-Trace: typhoon.sonic.net 959843288 209.204.142.210 (Thu, 01 Jun 2000 00:08:08 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 00:08:08 PDT Xref: typhoon.sonic.net alt.lucky.w:7510 alt.magick.tyagi:23162 alt.paranormal.spells.hexes.magic:23507 SilverLD42008266 wrote: > > I am just begining to herb spells, and would like to know how do you > prepare the herb for spells? Also, the herb that i purchase from you > would be ready to use or I need to prepare them? thanks. There are different traditions of thought on these questions. In hoodoo -- African-American folk-magic-- and brujeria -- Mexican folk-magic -- most practitioners use either fresh or dried herbs which they buy from a spiritual supply store or botanica. There is no special emphasis placed on how the herbs were gathered (other than that they be correctly named and clean). However, advanced practitioners who collect their own herbs or buy them from the person who collected or grew them., to avoid too much handling and keep them spiritually "pure" -- and this goes for some people working in Santeria, Palo, and other African-diaspora religions as well. In wicca and similar new age and European-influenced magical traditions, many people prefer to use fresh herbs rather than dried, and they often make very bold statements about the worthlessness of herbs gathered under the "wroing" moon sign or such. There is a tendency in Germano-British magic toward what i call "restrictiveness," whereby there are almost as many prohibitions and bad signs as there are encouragements and good signs. Thus wicca, which originated in Britain, carries with it some of the restrictivity found in other Germano-British folk-beliefs, such as that, for instance, a horseshoe can only be hung in ONE direction or it is no longer lucky, or that a spell must be recited a certain way EXACTLY or it won't work. When you compare magic to music -- a very useful comparison, and not a trivial one by any means -- you'll see similar trends. For instance, the Germano-British insistance on strict tempo is quite at odds with the flexible tempo of African-American music. Likewise the melismas ("bent noites") of the African tradition persist in African-American music, but are considered "bad singing" by European musicologists of the formal school who insist that each note be hit square-on, without a tonal slide. So, to get back to your question -- In most traditions of folk-magic, the herbs have a virtue that resides in them and they are fully prepared as you get them, whether dried or fresh. They may need to be boiled or powdered or such, but that would be explained in the spell and would not affect their readiness for use in a spiritual way. But in some European-based traditions, any herbs that were commerically grown or were not "properly" picked according to that traditional's rules of moon-sign, type of instrument used to gather them, or such, might need to be "consecrated" or "empowered" by the spell-caster. How much "preparation" was called for and the nature of that work would be dependent on how restrictive the tradition was. I hope these general guidelines help you. What you asked is not a question with only one answer, especially when it is asked by a self-professed newcomer to magic such as yourself who has not yet fiormly embarked upon a particular tradition and accepted its internal logic and rules of thought. Good luck, cat yronwode Free Spells Archive ------------ http://www.luckymojo.com/spells.html Lucky Mojo Curio Co. http://www.luckymojo.com/luckymojocatalogue.html Send e-mail with your street address to catalogue@luckymojo.com and receive our free 32 page catalogue of hoodoo supplies and amulets