Plants, stones and substances of the world

Substances are the materials magic works with: salt, iron, frankincense, myrrh, mugwort, rue, garlic, mandrake, quartz, amber, ash, red ochre, copal and the rest. Plants, minerals, metals and animal parts appear in rites and charms in every culture, usually because of how they look, smell or behave. This page treats them as traditional associations, not as medicine, and nothing here is advice to use any of them. Each section keeps to what people have believed and done.

Why these materials

Reasons repeat across cultures. Salt preserves, so it is linked with purity and with warding. Iron is hard to forge, so folklore across Europe, the Middle East and Africa gives it power against spirits. Frankincense, myrrh and copal give smoke, and smoke carries prayer upward in Greece, Mesoamerica, India and China alike. Red substances such as ochre and cinnabar often stand for blood and life. Every culture has its own list, from the amber and jet of Britain to the cowries of West Africa, and the lists often differ even between neighbouring villages.

Plants and the senses

Plants appear by their traits: thorny, bitter, strongly scented or poisonous. Mandrake, with a root said to look like a person, collected legends in medieval Europe. Rue and garlic were hung up against harm. In the Amazon and Andes, plants used in ceremony are held as teachers in their own right. Please remember that many of these plants are toxic or illegal, and tradition is not a safe guide to using them.

Trade, harm and law

Magical materials have shaped trade routes, from incense across Arabia to amber from the Baltic. Some trades now do harm. Parts of endangered animals such as rhinoceros, pangolin and tortoise are sought for charms and remedies, and in parts of East Africa albino people have been killed for body parts believed to bring luck. Possession of sacred or protected materials can be a crime. Nothing in tradition makes a plant safe, and substances said to protect or heal can be poisonous when handled or swallowed, so this guide describes them and does not recommend them.

Commerce and appropriation

White sage and palo santo, used in Indigenous ceremony, are now sold as wellness items, and overharvesting has become a concern for the communities that hold them sacred. Crystal markets raise questions about mining and labour. Scholars of material culture observe that substances carry meaning through use, and that meaning changes when they are moved from a ritual to a shop shelf. Pharmacologists and historians of science add that many of these materials led to real chemistry and medicine, but through testing and not through ritual, and that the two histories overlap without being the same.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

Wild rue: Yuriy75, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Mugwort: Prahlad balaji, CC BY-SA 4.0, source

Precious coral: Géry PARENT, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Amber: uploaded with permission, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Amrita: http://picasaweb.google.com/injamaven, CC BY 3.0, source

Californian white sage: Stan Shebs, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Heliotrope: Ra'ike (see also: de:Benutzer:Ra'ike ), CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Florida Water: Unknown artist(s), Public domain, source

Palo Santo: Haplochromis, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Dragon's blood: Andy Dingley, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Unicorn horn: Unknown author, CC BY 4.0, source

Lodestone: Ryan Somma, CC BY-SA 2.0, source

Plants, stones and substances