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Reference

Compendium

Ingredients for spellwork: their formal and folk names, categories, deities and forms, with the sources behind them.

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    313 ingredients

    313 ingredients

    NewCaution
    Botanical Name
    Malva sylvestris

    Mallow

    Common mallow is a herbaceous plant of the mallow family, Malvaceae, and the type species of its genus. Native to Western Europe, North Africa and Asia, it grows in meadows, hedgerows and fallow fields and on waste and rough ground, and it has naturalised as an invasive plant in eastern Australia and North America. It stands up to about a metre and a half, with softly hairy stems and palmately lobed leaves, and through the summer bears showy mauve to reddish-purple flowers streaked with dark veins. Its round fruit, likened to a little wheel of cheese, gave it names such as cheeses and fairy cheese. The young leaves and shoots are eaten from the Mediterranean to the Caucasus, the plant has long served as a yellow dye, and gardeners grow many named cultivars. The Greeks planted it on graves. Irish legend held mallow so strong that nothing natural or supernatural could harm it; in Germany it was used to cure someone bewitched, and on the Isle of Man to lift afflictions caused by faeries. In magic it is a herb of love and protection: Cunningham sets a bouquet of mallow outside the door to turn an absent lover’s thoughts homeward and carries it to attract love, and makes an ointment of its leaves and stems that protects the wearer against black magic.

    Caution

    Cunningham marks it safe. AHPA places the flower and leaf in safety class 1, with no known contraindications. It should be taken with at least 250 ml of liquid, and other medicines taken an hour before it or several hours after, since its mucilage may slow their absorption. Its safety in pregnancy and while nursing has not been conclusively established.

    Forms

    • Flower
    • Fruit
    • Leaf
    • Seed

    Correspondences

    Elements
    Water
    Celestial Bodies
    Moon, Venus

    Folk Names

    • Blue Mallow
    • Buttonweed
    • Cheese Flower
    • Cheese Plant
    • Cheeses
    • Common Mallow
    • Creeping Charlie
    • Fairy Cheese
    • High Mallow
    • Malva
    • Mauls
    • Mauve des Bois
    • Tall Mallow
    • Wood Mallow

    Categories

    • Banishing
    • Binding
    • Dream Work
    • Fertility
    • Healing
    • Love
    • Peace
    • Protection
    See in Compendium