This listing is for one of four limited edition 'Nine Herb Charm' Ritual Talismans created for Winter 2024, by The heART of Ritual.
Each is lovingly crafted from the naturally tanned skin of wild West Cork Salmon and sewn together with plant fiber cordage made from mugwort, wild nettle, and rose. Each is adorned with a miniature limpet shell gathered along the shores of Bantry Bay, a mini posey of wild lunar botanicals, and a hand written plant fiber paper label embossed with our Celtic Wheel of the Year mandala art. These are lovingly held in place with a beautiful plant fiber cordage made from mugwort and rose.
ABOUT THE NINE HERBS CHARM
This ancient healing charm is recorded in the tenth century Lacnunga manuscript which can be viewed in the British Museum. The Lacnunga is a collection of folk medicine, charms, and prayers that are believed to date from as early as the fifth or sixth century. The manuscript itself came to be named the Lacnunga, however a special passage of text included has come to be known as the Nine Herbs Charm. You can read the full original text together with an excellent translation here.
In addition to referencing Woden himself, the Nine Herbs Charm lists nine different medicinal herbs, which translate into the modern mugwort, betony (although some scholars say it’s cockspur), nettle, ribwort, thyme, fennel, crabapple, hairy bittercress, and mayweed.
I came across this charm some years ago while researching ritual talismans and protective amulets in Irish folklore, specifically those used to ward off 'undesirable attention' (aka hexes). It was during this time that I came across witch bottles that were uncovered in Ireland, and this led me on to discover this ancient herbal talisman, the nine herb charm!
All nine of these herbs were gathered and dried on the full moon eclipse, and combined with hand gathered ground azurite (for insights), malachite (to cleanse/purge, and due to its high copper content, it will speed up healing process), and almadine garnets to assist with protection, release/transmutation, and earthing. All of the ingredients in these charms were hand gathered here in the Alps, in the mountains around our nest.
The Nine Herb Charm was considered some pretty powerful healing magic. Essentially, a practitioner would sing a chant calling out the names of these nine herbs and their various attributes, and then crush them into a powder. This powder could then be used in a salve which was applied directly to the patient in an effort to heal or stave off infection and illness, as well as any curses and hexes cast upon their person.
Releasing, realigning, reassessing our needs, and evaluating our current state of our physical, conscious and subconscious BEing are aspects of the reflective/inner self healing work that relates with the earth element, the dark, and lower personal chakras (energy centers in the body). Winter is a time of dream journeying and traveling the dark, and to do so in full knowing of the need to be protected and earthed whilst doing so. This is what inspired me to create my own version of this ancient talisman.
Each of these hand sculpted vessels contains the above list of offerings and medicines, and I have also included sea salt that I have made from sea water gathered and dried in Bantry Bay, my home in Ireland. This part of the world is very dear to me, and incredibly wild in its medicines, so there was never a doubt about what salt to make and use if adding one to a protective talisman. Bantry bay, for those who are interested, is the second deepest bay in Europe, and Europes most southerly fjord. The land around it has the most dense concentration of sacred sites and megaliths in Europe.
Each of these hand sculpted ritual vessels is sealed with a cork seal and dipped in wax seven times (one for each direction). Each is ritually anointed with a special anointing balm made with wild rose, mugwort and yarrow, which not alone blesses each talisman, but also conditions the salmon skin and leaves a beautifully fragrant finish.
The Nine Herb Charm is not Irish or Celtic, however I came across it some years back in my research into Irish, middle European, and northern Germanic folk traditions (which includes where we live in the Alps) and was absolutely enchanted by it. Although I have included all nine of the original herbs in this charm, I have added my own twist to this by including crystals, minerals, salt, and making this into a hand crafted talisman rather than a salve. This way it becomes an intimate form of protection that you can include as a beautiful altar piece, but its also the perfect size to slip into your pocket, or even bra, when you need to carry it on your person.
Those of you interested in further reading on old charms and early folk medicine might like to visit the following resources:Various Metrical Charms - https://oldenglishpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/the-metrical-charms/Old English herbal book of Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of early England (fully digitalized) - https://archive.org/details/leechdomswortcun02cock/page/n17/mode/2upBoth make for absolutely riveting reading! A word of warning though, you will literally lose time with these two resources, they're great.
OUR SHOP IS CURRENTLY CLOSED, BUT WE LOOK FORWARD TO WELCOMING YOU AGAIN SHORTLY.
Our Autumn 2025 shop opening took place from 6pm on September 7th until 6pm on September 14th
All times are listed in CEST. Orders begin shipping from 22 September, fulfilled on a first-come, first-served basis. Made-to-order pieces dispatch from 6 October onward, unless noted otherwise. All orders are shipped from Europe.
WINTER 2025 COLLECTION:
Full details of each season’s collection are shared exclusively through our seasonal newsletter. This missive carries the deeper ground of the season – its energies, themes, and archetypes. Shared only four times a year, it offers original long-form writings on the mythic, elemental, and archetypal ground of the season within Irish cosmology and the Celtic Wheel of the Year, along with the creative soil from which each collection emerges. Readers also receive early access and a members-only preview of these handcrafted, ephemeral offerings.
Click HERE to receive our newsletter each season.
SEASONAL OVERVIEW
Season • Winter
Element • Earth
Direction • North
Archetype • Elder Archetype
THE FRAMEWORK FOR THIS COLLECTION
Our Winter/Earth Element Collection arrives into the season of Samhain – that threshold between the last new moon of the dying Celtic year in October, astronomical Samhain, and the first new moon of the year to come in November. It is here that endings and beginnings lie folded together – a dreamtime of moons that leads us into the deepest dark – asking us to walk slowly, to walk in Earth time.
This is not the hurried clock-time of the everyday. It is slow time – deep time – recorded in bedrock and fault-line, in layers pressed through clay and shale. As the earth keeps her history in stone and strata, so we carry memory in bone. The land is our larger body – marrow and mountain, clay and skin, each carrying memory. To enter this season is to enter those depths, to map again the contour lines of the inner ground, to feel where the body holds fractures, pressure, weight-bearing, release. The work is slow. The work is old. Stone remembers, and so do we. Our bodies are cairns of remembrance.
Between Samhain and Solstice we are pilgrims moving through inner hollows and chambers of the soul. It is sanctuary time, a time of reverence and devotion, where prayer is not passive but visceral and embodied – where we kneel not before idols but within the tabernacle of our own being. The ember of light is entrusted to us here, and it must be guarded with care – fanned in trust, sheltered in hope, nourished with care, until it kindles to flame and warmth.
Samhain is also the season of surrender. To grieve what has passed in the twelve months gone. To honour ancestors, yes, but also to lay down the burdens of the year, the losses and thresholds crossed, the shocks and griefs that linger. As leaves return to soil, so sorrow returns to earth, darkening into humus that feeds what will come. In the body, this work is felt in the earth element – in the musculoskeletal frame, in the gut’s deep work of breaking down and letting go. To release is to create space, and to hold is to become heavy. The earth teaches us this balance, for she both receives and yields in the same breath.
This is the annual pilgrimage to the soul’s inner shrine – beyond one life, beyond one line of ancestry. It is the thread that connects us with stone and to soil, with grandmother and grandfather, with all who came before and all who will come after. In this time-out-of-time we reweave ourselves into that thread, into the north, into the slow, enduring rhythm of earth itself. And from that ground – from a living tapestry of blood and bone and surrender – the Solstice light is born again. A flame at the heart of winter.
REFERENCES THROUGHOUT THIS COLLECTION
Focus for the Winter collection is the element of Earth, Embodied Ritual & Green Prayer, Illuminating the Dark & the Inner Hearth, Chakras of the Root, Knees/Elbows, Feet/Hands and Earth Star, Physical WellBEing, the Musculoskeletal System, the Digestive System & Intestinal Health, Death, Grief Processing & Trauma Composting, Vulnerability & Surrender, The Pilgrim & the Inner Journey, Protection, Connection & Roots, Hibernation & Radical Rest, Cultivating Sanctuary & Stillness, Conscious Nourishment & Nurturance, and of course, Earth Rituals for the Head, Heart and Hands.
