Sorrel & Salt
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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

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    Botanical Name
    Aletris farinosa

    Ague Root

    Ague root is a perennial herb of eastern North America, found through most of the eastern United States and reported from southern Ontario, where it favours damp ground that is peaty, sandy or gravelly. It spreads by underground rhizomes and forms a star-shaped rosette of narrow, yellowish-green leaves, from which a single slender stalk rises as high as a metre, bearing small white flowers shaped like urns and dusted on the outside with a mealy bloom. Several Native American peoples, among them the Catawba and Cherokee, used it as medicine, and settlers in Appalachia took it up after them; in the nineteenth century it entered the United States Pharmacopeia. Grieve describes the dried rhizome as intensely bitter and valued as a tonic for the stomach. Its names have long been tangled with those of false unicorn root, Chamaelirium luteum, so that 'true' and 'false' were attached to each plant at different times. In magic it is a herb of protection: it is scattered around a home to keep evil away or carried in a sachet, it is used in hex-breaking and uncrossing work, and it is called on for banishing, psychic abilities and success.

    Caution

    AHPA safety class 1 (its interaction class is A): no contraindications, other cautions, drug interactions or side effects are known. One early animal study found that it depressed the uterus and countered the oxytocin-like action of the pituitary, but AHPA finds no evidence that this would matter when oxytocin is given in labour; its safety while nursing has not been conclusively established. Cunningham flags possible drug interactions and says it may work against some oxytocins (Pitocin). Kynes advises against taking it in pregnancy or while breastfeeding, and warns that swallowing the fresh root is mildly poisonous.

    Forms

    • Powder
    • Root

    Correspondences

    Elements
    Earth
    Celestial Bodies
    Saturn

    Folk Names

    • Ague Grass
    • Bitter Grass
    • Black-Root
    • Blazing Star
    • Colic Root
    • Crow Corn
    • Devil's Bit
    • Star Grass
    • Starwort
    • True Unicorn Root
    • Unicorn Root
    • White Colic Root
    • White Stargrass

    Categories

    • Banishing
    • Hex-Breaking
    • Protection
    • Psychic Work
    • Success
    • Uncrossing
    See in Compendium