Magic from rags

This photo of Medicine Wheel National Historic Landmark is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Around the world, people have traditionally used rags, small flags, torn strips of clothing and other bits of cloth to anchor and reinforce their prayers and magical petitions. In this post we'll look at some of these traditions and how we can use cloths in our own magical working.

Holy Places

When people make a pilgrimage to a sacred site to make a petition to the resident deity, saint or spirit, they often leave behind a token to mark their visit and as an offering. In some places these will be statues, small ex voto charms, written petitions or even stones, but at many holy places around the world, visitors leave strips of cloth. This practice is found among cultures as diverse as Native American, Celtic, Tibetan and Japanese. Usually the cloth is more than just a marker to say "I was here" - it embodies a prayer and leaves it at the site to continue its work long after the petitioner has returned home.

Photo taken in Bhutan by Jean-Marie Hullot,  via Wikimedia Commons

In some places, like the Himalayas, this is made more explicit by using small flags with specific prayers printed on the cloth. The idea is that, as long as the prayer flag continues to flutter, the winds will carry the prayer to the gods. In Ireland and other Celtic countries, visitors to holy wells will often dip a cloth into the water as they make their prayer (formerly to local gods, goddesses or water spirits, now usually to saints) and tie it to the branch of a nearby bush. Often this bush is a hawthorn, one of the sacred trees of the ancient Celts. The Scots and Irish call these rags "clooties" (from the Gaelic for "cloth") and the wells at which they are left are known as "clootie wells". Sometimes the well is long gone, its place now marked only by the continuing presence of a "clootie tree" still being visited by the local people to convey prayers and wishes to the spirits.

You can have a clootie tree in your own yard, and tie strips of fabric to it as you make a wish or speak a charm. Use lightweight cotton or other natural fabric, so the clooties will decay quickly. You can also hang charms, papers and other small objects from the branches along with the cloth. Your clooties can also be hung as offerings to fairies, elemental spirits or just the genus loci or spirit of the place. There may even be a spring in a park or natural area near you; look for small streams of water and try to follow them back to their origin. You may find one that just comes from a tiny pool that isn't fed from any other water source. This is probably a natural spring, and you can pay your respects to its resident water spirit by hanging a clootie from a nearby branch. This is also a way you can honour a special tree or bush in your neighbourhood.

Rags in spell work

Cloth has many characteristics that makes it especially good to incorporate into spellcraft. Colours can be chosen to correspond with the type of spell (green or gold for money, red or pink for love, etc.), a deity whose aid you're requesting, or the zodiacal or planetary correspondence. You can write a petition, name or sigil onto a cloth and either use it to contain herbs or other elements of the spell, or incorporate it into the spell as you would a paper. Rags can be pieces of new cloth, bought specially or taken from your stash, or they can be remnants of old clothing or other possessions, in which case they are a powerful magical link to the original owner. Traditionally, rags with the strongest personal connection come from shirts or undershirts (because they're worn against the heart), underwear (because it contacts the genitals) or scarves (because they're worn on the head), but any piece of clothing will retain a link to the person who's worn it. Even leftover scraps from fabric have a connection to the rest of the fabric and therefore to the person wearing the garment made from it.

You can work backwards from this idea too, and perform a spell onto a piece of fabric that is then incorporated into a garment or other item for someone. A protective charm can be made and sewn inside a shirt, for example, or a love charm into a bag.
Quilts are a perfect place to include magically-prepared cloth, for example. And incorporating scraps from the clothing of loved ones and ancestors has always been a traditional practice of quilters even when there was no overt magical intent.

Poppets

The use of poppets as magical stand-ins for specific people is extremely ancient. Its most well-known form is in cursing or causing harm, but poppets are very often used in magic for healing, protection and especially love and relationships. Of course poppets can be made of any materials, including wood, wax or straw, but are most often sewn out of scraps of fabric. This allows them to be stuffed with suitable herbs, charms and other materials, and most significantly, to be made out of fabric that was once worn by the person represented. This creates a uniquely powerful connection that will amplify any spell worked with the poppet.

If your poppet is made of wood, clay or other material, you can still use a personal scrap of fabric to dress it. The ideal, of course, is to use fabric from the clothing of the person represented to make similar clothing for the poppet, so it will resemble its subject even more closely. But even just a scrap of personal fabric tied on as a sash or scarf will greatly enhance the power of the poppet.

A poppet could be used for ancestor work, too. We often have small scraps of fabric, handkerchiefs, lace or odd garments from our great-grandparents or even more distant ancestors. You could create a poppet to represent either a specific ancestor from whom you have a piece of fabric, or simply "my ancestors known and unknown". Dress the doll in a style that suggests the right period of the past (it doesn't have to be historically accurate - just a few period touches is enough) and incorporate any bits of actual ancestral fabric you have. Add an inherited button, hat pin or brooch to finish it off. Give your poppet a place on your ancestral altar, and treat it as an honoured member of the family.

Bone

Bone was probably one of the first materials used by humans to create sacred objects. It's readily available, fairly easily worked, and even the most primitive societies readily recognize that bones are directly related to the person or animal from which they came. As blood has always represented Life because it comes only from living creatures, bones have always had a connection to Death because they are all that remains of us when we die. Although most of us no longer have mounds of fresh bones cluttering up the kitchen every day, modern Pagans can still use bone in many forms to connect with our Gods and especially our Ancestors.

The simplest and perhaps most beautiful way to use bone in a sacred setting is to place an animal bone or skull on your altar. At Samhain, skulls (either real or sculpted) are de rigeur, but they can be kept on an Ancestor altar year-round. Skulls and bones of animals and birds can be bought in stores or online, or even found in the wild. I have a couple of small skulls (a squirrel and - I think - a skunk) that I just found in our urban back yard. The intricacy and simplicity of skulls makes them quite beautiful, and they can be left bleached white, stained or painted. If you have a totem animal that you connect with strongly, a skull or bone of that specific animal can be a powerful bond, but ultimately all bones connect to our own ancestry at its most ancient.

Bone can also be used as a creative material in many ways. One of the oldest forms of bone craft is scrimshaw, which is simply scratching designs onto bone and staining the markings to make them visible. This is a wonderful way to make amulets and talismans, and the availability of small bone disks and plaques from craft and bead suppliers means you don't have to prepare your own from raw bones. (Which is cheap and fairly easy, but messy and not for the squeamish.) Bone is fairly hard, so you need to use a fairly sharp tool to engrave it. A short-bladed knife or a sharp awl will work, though care is needed to do a neat job and prevent accidents. A Dremel or other motor-tool is excellent for this, though grinding bone with a tiny drill does produce a characteristic smell that may invoke unpleasant memories of dentistry. When you have marked your rune, petition, sigil or other design, paint into the lines with ink or thin paint (India ink is traditional for this, and works very well) and wipe it off the surface to leave only the fine markings darkened.

While at the bead store, you can usually find other kinds of bone beads that are perfect to use in magical crafts. Cylindrical, oval and round bone beads are readily available, as are long tube beads which can be either sewn on or left hanging as pendant decorations. I particularly like these because of the lovely rattling sound they make. (Incidentally, this is the first test of whether beads are real bone or plastic - bone always knocks together with a high-pitched "click", while most plastic sounds dull.) Many suppliers have small Tibetan skull beads carved from bone, which seem inherently magical.

A simple bone craft that you can create, as part of a ritual or just by itself, is a bone cross. I made the one shown here in a workshop with the Niagara Voodoo Shrine a few years ago, and it's a protective charm that can be hung over the door (as I do) or anywhere else in your home to invoke the powers of the dead to protect your home and family. Besides the Ancestral connection of the bones themselves, the shape is a representation of a crossroads, which is a traditional place to petition the dead for help. Any large fowl bones and good for this, turkey, goose or even very large chickens, which can be kept from your next big family dinner (which connects the cross even more closely to your family) or you can buy two large turkey legs, make soup with the meat and use the bones. Clean the bones very thoroughly and put them into a pan with water and a little chlorine bleach to soak for a while. This will sterilize and bleach the bone. Hang them to dry, preferably in the sun, for several days.

To make the cross, simply attach the bones together with a dab of hot glue to hold them while you lash them together with yarn or embroidery thread. White, black or red are all traditional colours for this, or you can use any colours that seem right to you. Tie a small loop onto the top of the upright bone to use as a hanger, and decorate the cross with buttons, beads, cord or anything else that speaks to you. I used old buttons, a plastic skull, glass beads and red leather thongs. As you create the cross, concentrate on your intent to create a powerful protective amulet, and request the assistance of the dead, your own ancestors and those spirits who remain among us, to keep your home safe. The more time you take to add decoration to it, the longer you have to imbue it with your intent as you work.

Hang the cross over the main door or in a central position in your home. You can put it in an out-of-the-way place if you're worried people might think it's creepy, but mine has been hanging in plain sight over our front door for several years and nobody has even noticed it. (Many of us already have enough odd things in our homes that one more won't make much difference!)

Mabon Swap Roundup

Hi ladies (and Wulf) !
Thanks for making this blog active! At a point I thought I might be the only one posting and there you have, 8 posts, and this is my first!

I didn't participate in last swap, for some baby goodness, but here's my personal "best of" last WWP swap (round 18? I think?). So let's have some second harvest festival goodies!

(note that I favored single photographed items!)

Poem from Hawkeye_Girl to Abberroad



handmade leather running journal from Abby to HG



Amesthist necklace from Moonie to Wulf



Handmade Drum from our favorite Guy to Moonie



Clothespin Fairy from K.MichelleCraftyfea to SecretAgentStarchild



Felted Dragon from SAS to K.Michelle



Perfect Altar Salt bowl Superhooker from to Saturn



Tons of stones from StrawberryH to karmamomma



Wand from HolisticKnitter to Morgan Le Faye



Talisman from Saturn to SuperHooker


That's it for now! Hope you enjoyed and that no one's feeling is hurt not to see their favorite!

Next, Samhain! we're heading for a BIG swap (25+)!

I'll be looking for cool craft tutorial to show you (you can do the same!)
I invite you to post your favorite recipe, as well as any spell or chant or whatever you feel relative!