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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
    Medicago sativa

    Alfalfa

    Alfalfa, called lucerne in Britain, South Africa and Australia, is a perennial of the pea family that usually lives four to eight years, with leaves in threes, clusters of mostly purple flowers and roots that can reach deep groundwater. It is thought to have arisen in south-central Asia and been first farmed in Central Asia; Pliny records that it reached Greece around 490 BC with the Persian invasion, and was called the Median grass. Spanish colonists carried it to the Americas in the sixteenth century to feed their horses, and today it is grown worldwide as forage, cut for hay and silage or grazed. The English name came through Spanish from an Arabic word, while lucerne was borrowed from French. Grieve describes a deep-rooting plant with spikes of violet-blue, clover-like flowers, prized for fattening horses and cattle and for raising the milk yield of cows. In magic Cunningham gives it to Venus and earth and to prosperity: a little jar of it is kept in the pantry or a cupboard so that the household never goes short of food or money, and it is added to money spells.

    Caution

    AHPA safety class 1 (its interaction class is A) for the herb: no contraindications, other cautions, drug interactions or side effects are known. Its coumarins have led some to call it an anticoagulant; one laboratory study found slight anticoagulant activity, but how that bears on human use is unknown. Safety in pregnancy and nursing has not been conclusively established. Cunningham marks it as recognised as safe. Wikipedia nonetheless names pregnancy, breastfeeding, hormone-sensitive conditions and diabetes as concerns, and says it may interact with warfarin, birth control pills and oestrogens.

    The Seed form carries its own caution; the ingredient's page shows it.

    Forms

    • Ash
    • Herb
    • Seed

    Correspondences

    Elements
    Earth
    Celestial Bodies
    Venus

    Folk Names

    • Buffalo Herb
    • Jat
    • Lucerne
    • Purple Medic
    • Qadb

    Categories

    • Prosperity
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