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Poems,
Charms, and Curses
Healing with
Galdr
The cold told me a tale
The rain blew me some poems:
Another tale came to me in the winds,
Carried by the swell of the sea;
Birds added words,
The tree tops, sentences.
(Kalevala)
The charms that you find here are
part of the collection of charms gathered for Nordic Magic
Healing. The chapter begins by discussing the
bonds between magic and poetry in Nordic civilizations. Throughout
the Kalevala, the words for "to cast a spell" are "to
sing" or "to declaim", which shows us that the vocabulary
itself does not dissociate magic and poetry. In English, we still
use ‘enchantment’ and ‘incantation’ which maintain
that a spell was sung . This connection is thoroughly discussed
in Chapter 4 of Healing Galdr, Healing Runes, the
first volume of Nordic Magic Healing. The chapter also goes into detail on
how to create and use galdr and the runes for healing. On these
pages you will simply find the poems and charms themselves, without
discussion.
Runic charms;
The Magical Healing Charms of Hildegard von
Bingen; Lithuanian Charms; Anglo-Saxon
Charms; Charms from the Scottish Highlands;
Charms from the Kalevala
Baltic Charms
Baltic Healing Charms
These charms are a rather rare
find. They are more appropriately called Baltic charms (or Baltic-Slavic
if you prefer), since they come from the Baltic region and include
some Latvian and Russian charms as well.
Charmes
Baltiques pour la guérison
Vous trouverez
ici principalement des charmes Lituaniens, mais aussi Lettons
et quelques charmes Russes.
Runic
Charms
The Canterbury
Charm
is found in an Anglo-Saxon
manuscript written in 1073. It is translated as:
Kuril wound-causer,
go now, you are found. Thor hallow you, Lord of Troll, Kuril wound-causer.
Against blood-vessel pus.
The Ribe Stick Charm is a long poem in
written runes from the beginning of the fourteenth century.
Earth I pray
guard
and the heaven above,
sun and Saint Mary
and himself the Lord God,
that he grants me hands to make whole
and healing tongue
to cure the Trembler
when treatment is needed.
From back and
from breast, from trunk and from limb, from eyes and from ears;
from every place where evil can enter.
A stone is
called swart; it stands out of the sea. On it lie nine Needs.
They shall neither sleep sweet nor make warm until you are better
of it; for whom I have caused runes to utter words. Amen. And
so be it. [ends with a sign of cross].
The Ribe Skull
Fragment was found in an archaeological context that dates
it before the year 800. It has a hole that clearly served as passage
for the cord that held it to the neck of its owner. The runic inscription
has been translated as:
Ulfur and Odin and Hydyr!
Help Bur against pain and strikes of dwarves [=
of fever]. [signed] Bur
The Charms of Hildegard von Bingen
Against mental
illness
If someone falls ill with paralysis
and one of those sicknesses that increases or decreases according
to the moon, as with the case for lunatics, you must find a place
where a donkey has been killed or where one has died on its own,
or where it is still rolling on the ground: make the patient lie
down on the ground for a short time, covered by a blanket ;
he or she will sleep, if they can; then take his or her hand and
say:
" Lazareth slept and rested,
then he raised; and, just as he was pulled by Christ from his disgusting
stench, you also relieve yourself of this harmful sickness and these
changing fevers, you who finds yourself in the situation where Christ
was found, sitting on this kind of donkey at the entry to Jerusalem,
before the resurrection of Lazareth, meaning he would redeem man
of his sins and would straighten him ".
A few minutes later, start over
in the same place, and do this three times; then three times the
following day or two days later; then three times again the following
day or two days later, and he or she will be healed.
Against uncontrolled
loves
And if even the devil pushes a
man to desire a woman, to such point that, without magical practices
and invocations to demons, he becomes mad with love, and if that
is disagreeable for this woman, let her pour a bit of wine on
a sapphire three times, each time saying: "I spill this wine
on your fiery forces so that, just as God took away your shine
when the angel sinned, take away the fiery love that this man
feels for me". If the woman does not want to do this, another
man who feels threatened by this love can do it in her place :
he will make him drink the wine on an empty stomach or not, whether
he tells him or not, and this must last for three days in a row.
And if it is a woman who has a
burning passion for a man, and that, for him, this love is disagreeable,
he must act on the woman with wine and a sapphire as I have described
it above, and the fire of the passion will burn out.
Remedies and incantations
against bewitchments.
If someone has been bewitched by
the devil, or by magic, take the same wood that is at the center
of this tree (the cypress), hollow it out with
an auger and then collect, in an earthen jug, water from a living
source by making it flow through the hole in the wood. While pouring
say: "I pour you, water, through this hole and in this virtuous
virtue, so that, thanks to the force that is in your nature you
flow in this man whose senses are bewitched, and so that you destroy
all contradictions that are in him, and that you straighten him,
and give him back the just feelings and just knowledge that God
gave him in the first place." Let this water be given to drink
on an empty stomach, nine days in a row, because he is tormented
or bewitched by the devil by ghosts or by magic, and he will get
better. And thus, during nine days, this formula must be recited
in the same manner.
An other charm
against bewitchments
If someone is bewitched by
spells or by magical formulae, to the point that he or she
loses reason, you must take hot rye bread and split the crust
at the highest part in the form of a cross, without dividing
the loaf completely; then slip the precious stone (the
hyacinth) along the length of the crack and say:
"Let God, who removed from the devil, when he went against
his commandment, the bright light that he pulled from precious
stones, pull from you, N..., all the spells and magic formulae,
and let him free you from the pain of this madness".
Then, while sliding this same stone from one side of the bread
to the other, add: "Just as the devil, because of his
sin, saw his bright light removed from him, in the same way,
let the madness that torments N..., because of spells and
magical formulae, be removed by you and disappear". To
finish, make the patient eat the part of the bread that is
the length of the crack where the hyacinth has been placed.
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Against bewitchments
If someone is possessed by
the devil, spread a bit of water on a chrysoprase and say:
"Water, I sprinkle you on this stone with the power by
which God has made the sun as well as the wandering moon".
Then you give the possessed this water to drink, as you can,
since he will only drink it if forced to. And all day the
devil will struggle in him and will weaken; he will no longer
show his strength in him as he did before. You will do this
for five days. On the fifth day, using this water, prepare
a kind of bread that you will give him to eat, as you can.
And, if it is not a persistent demon, it will leave this man.
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To heal jaundice
When the leaves of the beech
have not yet returned completely, go near this tree, seize
a branch with your left hand, and holding a small knife with
your right hand, say : " I cut your tartness,
because you purify all the humours that lead man on paths
of wrong doing and injustice ; by the living word that
made man without regret ".
With your left hand, hold
a branch while you say this, then cut it with a steel blade
and keep this branch the entire year; and do this each year.
If during the year, someone suffers from jaundice, cut some
bits of this branch, put them in a small vase, sprinkled with
a bit of wine three times, each time saying these words: "
By the holy womb of the holy Incarnation, thanks to which
God has made man, take from this man the pain of jaundice ".
Then heat the wine with the small branches that you have cut,
in a pan or a pot and give this drink to the patient on an
empty stomach, for three days, and he will be healed, unless
God does not want it.
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Against fevers
If someone has sharp pains,
take the fruit of the beech when it starts to grow and put
it in pure water while saying: " By the holy womb of
the holy Incarnation, thanks to which God has made man, you,
sharp pains, and you, fevers, lessen and weaken your cold
and your heat in this man". Then give him this water
to drink. Do this for five days and if he has a daily fever
or ague, he will be quickly relieved ; or else God does
not want to free him.
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To give life
to a dying patient
Find a beech root that is
breaking through the ground, remove the outer bark of this
root and cut it in such a way that you can do it in one cut
and say: " By the first revelation in which God
sees a man in the Mambré root (Genesis, 18,1),
[or at least Hildegard says so], break the waves of poison
in this man and push death away from him". Cut as much
as you can with a second cut and say the same words; in the
same way, make a third cut in this same root, so that it does
not fail you during the year, and you will keep it throughout
the year and you will do this each year. And when, during
the year, someone has some boilings (sic) in their body, take
a small piece of these cut roots and put it in a vase. You
will then pour a bit of water over it three times, each time
saying these words: "By the first manifestation during
the course of which God was baptized in the Jordan (Mark,
1) push death away from this man, thanks to this
remedy, and remove all of his apparent stains, just as the
life of Jesus was pure". Give the water to the
patient to drink on an empty stomach for three days, and prepare
it each time as was said: he will be thus liberated from these
boilings, unless God does not prevent it.
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Against melancholy
And if someone is, by character,
always sad and always in grief and always has a heart full
of pain and sorrow, he must collect the mandrake after it
has been uprooted; he must put it in a fountain as we have
said, for one day and one night. Once it is out of the water,
he must put it in his bed beside him, so that he will be heated
by the plant’s sweat and he must say: "God, you
who has created man with the silt of the earth without putting
pain in him, here is what I put beside me, this earth, that
has never sinned, so that the earth, of which I am made, knows
the state of peace that is in it, and in which you have created
it."
And if you have no mandrake,
take the first shoots of a beech, because they have the same
happy virtues in this case. Cut off the branches with a clean
cut, without breaking them, keeping them whole; put them in
your bed near you so that they warm you and that they absorb
tour body’s sweat. Then, recite the formula stated above:
You will find joy, and, in your heart, you will feel a calmness.
You can also do the same thing with cedar and aspen, and of
that, you will find yourself well.
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Against apathy
If someone is completely exhausted
and has some kind of paralysis, another man must take a bit
of this earth (green clay) and put it
on the right and the left side of the patient’s head,
in bed, and, in the same way, put it on either side of the
right foot and the left foot; when he digs to get the earth,
he must say: "You, earth, you sleep in this man N..."
Then, after having removed the earth on either side of the
head, he must put it under the man’s head, just until
it becomes warm; in the same way he must put the earth under
his feet so that it receives some of the heat: and, when he
puts this earth under the head and under the feet, the one
putting it there must say: "You, earth, develop in this
man and be useful for him, so that he receives your tartness,
in the name of the Father, the Son and the Saint who is God
complete and living". And it must be done this way for
three consecutive days.
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Against possessions
If a man is possessed by a
crafty spirit, another man must make a sapphire fall on the
earth, then put a bit of this earth in a leather pouch, he
must hang it around the patient’s neck while saying:
"O you, unspeakable spirit, leave this man immediately,
just as, during your first fall, the bright light of your
splendor has gone as quickly as possible far away from you".
This crafty spirit will be violently tortured and distanced
from this man (at least if it does not concern a very aggressive
or very wicked spirit) and the patient will improve.
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Against migraines
If you suffer, in your head,
from several sicknesses and weaknesses, to the point of becoming
mad, you must put a sardonyx on the nape of your neck, in
your bonnet, with a linen or leather pouch; and you must say:
"As God rejected the first angel in the abyss, let him
also take away from you, N..., this madness, and let him return
to you your good sense". And you will be healed.
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To ease delivery
If a pregnant woman, overwhelmed
by pains, is not able to deliver, you must rub her thighs
with a sardonyx and say: "Just as you, stone of sardonyx,
have shone on the first angel by the order of God, in the
same way, you, child, come shine as a man who lives in God".
Then, she will place this same sardonyx at the baby’s
exit, to the exit of her sex, and she will say: "Open,
paths and doors, just as for the appearance by which Christ,
God, and man, has appeared and has opened the doors of hell;
and you, baby, cross this door without dying and without making
your mother die". At this moment, you must place this
stone in a belt around her, and she will be eased.
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Against madness
If someone goes mad, or is
in some way prey to fantasies, you must rub a magnet with
saliva, and, with the stone, rub the nape of his neck, then
his forehead while saying: "Bad madness, yield to this
power by which God has transformed the devil’s power
into kindness for man, sent forth from the high sky".
And the patient will find his spirits.
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Against
obsessions
If a person is disturbed by
demonic thoughts, night and day, awake or asleep, he must
use a belt made of elk hide, and another of deer skin, and
connect them with four small steel points, so that one of
the belts is on the stomach, one on the back, and one on each
of the sides. When he joins them at the point on the stomach,
he must say: "By the power of the all-powerful God, I
swear to you my protection." When he puts the point on
the back in place, he must say: "By the power of the
all-powerful God, I bless you to my protection." When
he puts the point that will be on its straight side in place,
he must say: "By the power of the all-powerful God, I
order and ordain you to my protection." Finally
when he puts the point that will be on his left side in place,
he must say: "By the power of the all-powerful God, I
attach to you my protection."
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