Witch Words and Spirits Beyond the Circle’s Edge

2 days ago
9 min read

There are classrooms older than any hall of learning and libraries older than any archive of parchment or print, and one of them is the circle drawn upon earth or hearthstone, formed whenever people gather within shared attention, shared breath and shared memory. Across Ireland, long before literacy travelled into rural communities, knowledge moved through such circles at firesides, at wakes, at seasonal gatherings and at the quiet domestic thresholds where charms, blessings, warnings and stories passed between generations, carried not as performance but as a living current of belonging.

The circle has never belonged solely to what modern language might attempt to label as ritual or magic, for within Irish cultural memory it emerges as a way of organising protection, communication, listening and relationship with land, animals, ancestors and the unseen presences understood to move alongside human life, and within these gatherings words were never regarded as casual or disposable. Speech itself was understood as a living force capable of shaping health, fortune, fertility and misfortune, so that to speak was to set vibration into motion, and that vibration was believed to travel far beyond the moment in which it was uttered.

Within Irish cosmology this understanding settles naturally within the season of spring and the element of air, an element that governs breath, speech, poetry, song, incantation and the delicate forms of communication that move between visible and invisible worlds, yet speech within Irish tradition has never been confined to voice alone, for communication also unfolds through placement, gesture and material action, allowing the laying down of salt, the circling of ash or the marking of a threshold with iron or pigment to operate as language expressed through movement and intention carried through the human hand.

Among the materials that have long held protective and ceremonial significance, ash occupies a particularly revered place in Irish domestic and agricultural life, especially ash gathered from a turf fire, since turf cut from bogland carries within it the compressed memory of ancient plant life preserved across millennia. The bog itself occupies a profoundly liminal presence within Irish cosmology, existing neither fully as land nor fully as water and standing instead as a landscape where preservation and transformation meet, and when turf drawn from this ground was burned within the hearth it was believed to release deep time into the home, carrying warmth that was at once practical and ancestral. The ashes from such fires were therefore rarely treated as residue to be discarded, and when the hearth had burned during seasonal thresholds they were gathered carefully and stored, later used to bless new homes, mark protective boundaries around property, safeguard cattle and protect butter and milk from interference both human and otherworldly.

Irish folklore preserved within the Schools’ Collection and the National Folklore Collection records numerous piseoga relating to the vulnerability of dairy production, which was understood as essential to survival and therefore particularly susceptible to disturbance. Accounts describe instances where sour or spoiled butter might be discovered deliberately thrown into a field, an occurrence interpreted as a sign that ill will or misfortune had been directed toward a household, and protection against such disruption often required renewing the hearth fire, blessing the boundary with ash and walking livestock deiseal around field or flame; aligning the body and its movements with solar order and seasonal continuity.

Deiseal ort agus gach rath ort

(Sunwise upon you and every prosperity upon you)

This phrase appears in several variations across Irish blessing traditions and reflects the understanding that protection arose not from isolated action but from alignment between human gesture, celestial movement and the living rhythm of landscape itself. Iron carried similar protective resonance throughout Irish cultural memory, appearing in the placing of horseshoes above doorways, the burial of iron nails beneath thresholds and the positioning of blades near cradles, where the material was believed to repel disruptive presences or harmful intention, and iron was rarely treated as decorative or symbolic alone, being instead recognised as elemental strength drawn from the earth’s fiery core.

Red ochre deepens this lineage of earth and iron by carrying archaeological evidence of ceremonial use stretching back into prehistoric Ireland, where burial sites reveal bodies dusted or surrounded with iron rich pigment before being returned to the ground, and the colour of ochre, simultaneously evocative of blood and soil, forms a bridge between human mortality and the promise of renewal.

Although later vernacular folklore records more references to ash and iron than to ochre itself, the archaeological continuity reveals an older ceremonial language in which earth pigment marked transition, protection and ancestral passage, and to adorn the body with ochre within these earlier practices was not ornament but invocation, blessing and acknowledgement that the individual stood within the ongoing continuity of land and lineage.

Beannacht na sinsear ort

(The blessing of the ancestors upon you)

The presence of such invocations reveals how protection in Irish tradition extended beyond personal effort and rested within a network of ancestral participation and landscape relationship, and this worldview becomes equally visible within folklore concerning natural circular formations, particularly fairy rings appearing in pasture or woodland and widely regarded as thresholds where the sídhe gathered. Folklore repeatedly cautions against disturbing such rings or stepping within them without acknowledgement, suggesting that the circle marks a place where ordinary time thins and the boundary between visible and invisible realities becomes permeable.

Imigh uaim, a olc, agus fan amuigh den chiorcal seo

(Leave me, evil, and remain outside this circle)

Protective speech frequently addressed unseen forces directly, revealing a relational cosmology that recognised negotiation and communication with presences rather than simple fear of them. Practices such as these were woven quietly into everyday Irish life long before the language of witchcraft was imposed upon them, and the reinterpretation of vernacular protective traditions as sorcery intensified during periods of English governance and imported legal frameworks that sought to categorise inherited domestic knowledge as superstition or threat. The case of Petronella de Meath remains one of the earliest documented examples of how community based ritual knowledge could be recast through fear and political authority, yet despite such persecution land based practice continued through oral transmission, seasonal observance and the quiet persistence of domestic ritual acts.

Evidence of this endurance also survives archaeologically through objects often described as witch bottles, which have been discovered beneath hearthstones and thresholds within Irish homes containing hair, iron pins, nails or thorn fragments assembled to trap harmful intention or repel interference, functioning as material language that held protective purpose within enclosed space. Irish mythology further extends the symbolism of circles across the landscape through the presence of ringforts, stone circles and burial mounds, many of which remain associated in folklore with entrances to the realms inhabited by the sídhe and were understood not as abandoned ruins but as inhabited thresholds where ancestral and Otherworld presences continued to move alongside human life.

Beyond spoken word there exists another form of communication that emerges through matter itself, and it is here that personal practice begins to mirror ancestral pattern. There is a photograph that accompanies this essay in which my fingers carry a red earth pigment that holds within it the remains of two decommissioned firearms whose metal was broken down through a slow alchemical process until it returned to elemental iron oxide before being blended with red ochre gathered from the land. What once existed as instruments of violence was reduced to mineral ash and returned to earth, and within Irish tradition iron has long carried protective meaning, yet when returned to oxide it becomes visually aligned with blood drawn not from flesh but from soil, and when combined with ochre it holds both fire and ground within a single material presence.

When this pigment first touched my skin the metallic scent rose sharply, and the colour mirrored blood in a way that stirred a physical response, bringing a sudden wave of nausea followed by deep stillness, as though the body recognised something older than conscious understanding. Ritual practice, particularly when rooted in land and elemental memory, is not always gentle or lyrical, and there are moments when it releases grief or knowledge that has waited quietly beneath everyday awareness. Working with earth materials in this way feels less like individual ceremony and more like participation in communal healing, since earth carries collective memory across generations, holding within its layers ancestral histories, inherited grief and unresolved conflict, and to place this pigment upon hands and feet felt like entering conversation with that memory, allowing the hands that shape and the feet that walk to carry visible acknowledgement of inheritance and responsibility.

Within Irish cosmology the darker lunar half of the year, governed by descent, ancestral presence and gestation, mirrors such transformation, allowing the symbolic presence of the Mórrígan to emerge where confrontation with violence and shadow cannot be bypassed, while the presence of the Cailleach follows, holding bone memory, stillness and restoration within winter ground, and between these archetypal presences lies the threshold where endings begin to turn toward renewal. The circle described throughout this essay therefore exists not only as symbol but as enacted transformation whenever harm is returned to earth and remade through intention, patience and relationship, and ash from the hearth, iron from buried tools and pigment drawn from soil all speak a shared language that articulates through action what speech alone cannot contain.

To gather in a circle, to speak carefully within it, to mark boundary with ash or ochre and to move deiseal with conscious awareness reflects not relics of superstition but expressions of a cosmology that recognises continuity between land, body, ancestor and breath. The circle continues because breath continues and story continues, and even when voices fall silent their words remain moving through land and lineage, waiting for the moment when the circle forms again and the old knowledge finds its way back into sound.

For readers who feel drawn to the old understanding of voice as threshold work – where blessing, charm, lullaby, work song, and protective utterance formed part of daily tending – there is a deeper body of folklore material where these traditions are explored in their wider cultural landscape.

Within the Online Hedge School’s folklore series, What the Wind Carries – Charms, Warnings, Messages, and Folk Magic in Irish Tradition™ enters this listening tradition through the living presence of air, breath, and spoken word.

This programme is an immersion in Irish folklore carried on the air. It moves through wind and weather, wing and voice, spell and silence – gathering the ways people once listened for guidance, protection, and warning through spoken blessing, sung invocation, and attentive silence. It is shaped by the understanding that air is not empty, but alive with movement, message, enchantment, and change.

Here you enter a landscape where voice was never separate from land or household life. Blessings spoken over doorways, animals, tools, and newborn children sat alongside charms whispered in times of illness, fear, or uncertainty. Birds and small winged creatures carried meaning through behaviour and song, while night was understood to hold its own movement of presence and disturbance. Folk magic is encountered as it lived at hearth and threshold – through spoken charms, protective sayings, songs, withheld words, and carefully chosen phrases woven into the ordinary rhythms of living.

Across nine chapters, the material moves from listening into naming, and from naming into story. Long-form tales hold what explanation cannot – wind as an active presence, changeling lore and the fragile labour of care, and enchantment carried through endurance, flight, and song. Story is not used to illustrate ideas, but to root them, allowing folklore to work at its own depth and pace, much as song and blessing work through repetition, cadence, and breath.

The programme also gathers quieter strands of oral tradition – communal rhythm, hand gesture, protection offered through voice and movement, and archival fragments that anchor the material in lived cultural memory. It is not presented as a belief system, ritual manual, or symbolic framework. It is a carefully held body of folklore material, approached with cultural and ethical care. The work is self-paced, with lifetime access, and is designed to be returned to as understanding deepens.

It is offered for those drawn to spoken blessing, sung protection, and folk enchantment not as performance or nostalgia, but as the imaginative, protective, and practical ways people once steadied themselves within uncertainty – and how those ways of knowing continue to move quietly through breath and air today.

For those who wish to remain in seasonal conversation with this work, the seasonal newsletter is where the full-length writings are shared and where exclusive invitations to view each seasonal collection are quietly extended. This is where Irish cosmology, the Celtic Wheel of the Year, elemental philosophy, archetypal psychology, mythology and folklore, land-based practice, and traditional ways of making are carried in depth throughout the year.

It is not a mailing list, but a steady correspondence – written for those who value continuity, craft, and a slower, more faithful relationship with the seasons. This is where the work is received in full, and where each collection is revealed.

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