This year, we will be showing a series of videos featuring our Hearth Guardians in their own kitchens chatting about and/or making all sorts of things to work with magically.
First up is our lovely Heather as she chats all about the magic of mistletoe. The link to the video can be found here
Viscum album (European) OR Phoradendron Leucarpum (American)
Mistletoe is considered poisonous and should not be ingested. Wash hands after touching the plant.
Considered a parasite, the mistletoe grows high in the branches of trees and gets its nutrition from the host tree rather than having to have roots in the ground like other plants. The cutting rituals of the Druids, as described by Pliny the Elder in ‘Natural Histories’, involved ensuring that the plant never touched the ground; suggesting that the Druids believed contact with the earth would corrupt it.
The mistletoe is an evergreen, revealed in winter when the host trees have lost their leaves and left it exposed, this means that the mistletoe appears to stay living through the winter which is thought to be why it is associated it with fertility, and in some country’s, immortality.
In Greek mythology, Persephone was one of the few who could travel between the realms, some sources say it was her wand, created from mistletoe, that she used to lock and unlock the gates.
In the Roman poem, The Aeneid, Virgil’s hero Aeneas wished to go into the underworld to speak with his father Anchises, it was mistletoe that provided the key for his journey.
Magical Uses
Mistletoe is a plant of male energy.
Associated with the sun and the element of air.
Connected with the Gods Apollo, Venus, Freya, Odin, and Balder.
Mistletoe is associated with both Yule and Midsummer festivals.
Use in spells to attract love, protection, creativity, luck, forgiveness, reconciliation, banishing, dream work, astral travel, to increase sexual potency in men and to help conceive.
Mistletoe can be burned to banish unwanted spirits.
Laid across the doorway of the bedroom to banish unpleasant dreams.
Hung in the home to attract love and drive away negative influence, as well as scaring away werewolves, also thought to prevent your children switched with faerie changelings.
Carried as a general protective amulet.
Its wood is useful for making wands, rings, bracelets, and other ritual items.
Sources
A Kitchen Witch’s World of Magical Plants & Herbs by Rachel Patterson
Magical Herbalism by Scott Cunningham
A Druid’s Herbal for the Sacred Year by Ellen Evert Hopman
