Witch's ladder
A cord with knots and feathers, reported in folklore and now used in modern witchcraft.
Also: knotted cord, feather cord, knot magic, cord of knots
A witch's ladder is a rope or string with knots tied in it, usually with feathers or beads worked into the strands. Nineteenth-century reports from England described cords of this kind, with feathers, found in rural houses and said to have been used by witches to cause harm. Folklorists have questioned how much of this was old practice, and writers on modern witchcraft in the twentieth century popularised it as a counting aid for spells and prayers, comparable to a rosary. Knots tied for luck, wind or binding appear in many places, from the sailors' wind knots of the Isle of Man and Finland to Slavic and Hindu customs. The ladder is mostly a modern craft object today.