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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
    Primula veris

    Cowslip

    The cowslip is a small perennial of the primrose family, native across most of temperate Europe and western Asia, where it favours open fields, meadows, coastal dunes and clifftops. From a rosette of wrinkled, oval leaves it sends up a stem, growing to about 25 centimetres, that carries a nodding cluster of ten to thirty funnel-shaped, honey-scented flowers: deep or lemon yellow, each petal marked with a reddish spot at its base. Its English name may come from the Old English for cow dung, perhaps because it grew among the dung in cow pastures, and its species name means "of spring". In Britain it declined with the farming changes of the 1970s and 1980s and has since recovered, partly because its seed is sown on motorway banks. In English cookery the flowers flavour country wine and vinegar. Norse legend gave the key-shaped flower heads to Freya; in Germany they were thought to open an enchanted castle or a hidden treasure chest, European legend says the red spots mark where elves touched the petals, and faeries were said to brew cowslip wine for their Midsummer Eve revels. Magically it serves healing and love: worn to keep or restore youth, held in a bunch to find hidden treasure, and woven into a tossed ball of flower heads for love divination.

    Caution

    AHPA safety class 2d: not for use by people with gastritis or gastric ulcers, and to be used with caution by anyone hypersensitive to Primula species. Occasional stomach discomfort and nausea have been reported from both the root and the flower. No concerns were found for pregnancy or nursing, but its safety in either has not been conclusively established. Cunningham codes it as currently recognised as safe.

    The Flower and Root forms carry their own cautions; the ingredient's page shows them.

    Forms

    • Flower
    • Root

    Correspondences

    Elements
    Water
    Celestial Bodies
    Venus
    Zodiac Signs
    Aries
    Deities
    Freya (Norse)

    Folk Names

    • Artetyke
    • Arthritica
    • Buckles
    • Candle of the Woods
    • Common Cowslip
    • Cowslip Primrose
    • Crewel
    • Cuy
    • Cuy Lippe
    • Drelip
    • English Cowslip
    • Fairy Basins
    • Fairy Bells
    • Fairy Cup
    • Fairy Flower
    • Herb Peter
    • Key Flower
    • Key of Heaven
    • Lady's Key
    • Lippe
    • Luck Flower
    • Our Lady's Keys
    • Pagil
    • Paigle
    • Palsywort
    • Paralysio
    • Password
    • Peggle
    • Petrella
    • Petty Mulleins
    • Plumrocks
    • St. Peter's Herb

    Categories

    • Divination
    • Healing
    • Love
    • Peace
    • Prosperity
    • Protection
    • Strength
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