Episode 15: What Keeps the Harm Out? 

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This episode takes on the Irish tradition of protection said aloud, the lorica or breastplate, the lúirech in Irish. Drawing on Lora’s own A Practical Guide to Irish Magic, on Jacqueline Borsje’s work on the Faíd Fiada, the Deer’s Cry, and on the night protection prayers of the Schools’ Collection kept on Dúchas, it sets out how Irish protection is relational and spoken rather than a visualised force field, and why naming the threat plainly is half the work of turning it aside.

This Episode’s Practice: The Spoken Shield

This wants nothing but your own voice and a minute of quiet, last thing at night if that suits. Stand on your own two feet and lay one hand flat on your chest, over the breastbone, where the lúirech, the breastplate, would sit. Name the harms you actually mean to keep out tonight, and name the real ones, not a vague notion of negativity but the true things: the worry that has been at you, the person whose ill will you can feel, the fear you would rather not say out loud.

Take them one at a time, and for each one speak a guard between yourself and it, in the old formula, this guard between me and that harm, naming your own guard as you go, whether that’s the cross, the God you hold to, or the plain strength of the ground under your feet, whatever it is you actually keep. Work through them one by one until every harm you’ve named has a guard set in front of it.

Then close it by saying plainly that it’s done, the shield’s up and the words are said, because with a lúirech the saying is the shielding. Close with Beir Bua (pronounced: BARE BOO-ah). Naming a person’s ill will to set a guard between you and it is protection, not cursing, which is its own road. You name the harm only to turn it aside, never to send anything back.

Irish Terms in This Episode

• lúirech (pronounced: LOO-rykh): a breastplate; the Irish name for the spoken protective spell, from Latin lorica, that names each harm and sets a guard between the speaker and it.
• lorica (Latin, pronounced: LOR-ih-kuh): a breastplate; the wider name for this protective charm type, drawn from biblical descriptions of spiritual armour.
• Faíd Fiada (pronounced: FAWDH FEE-uh-duh): the ‘Deer’s Cry’, the long breastplate attributed to Patrick and read by scholars as the most pagan of the Irish loricae.
• féth fiada (pronounced: FAY FEE-uh-duh): the ‘art of semblance’, the cloak of concealment that kept the Túatha Dé Danann unseen; tied by wordplay to the Faíd Fiada.
• Túatha Dé Danann (pronounced: TOO-aha DAY DAN-an): the divine race of Irish tradition, the people of the goddess Danu.
• cúairt comgi (pronounced: KOO-irt KOM-ee): a ‘circle of protection’; the name given to several of the lorica type charms in the manuscript record.
• Beir Bua (pronounced: BARE BOO-ah): ‘take victory’; the closing phrase of the practice.

Sources

• Lora O’Brien, A Practical Guide to Irish Magic (2015), ‘Loricae’, on the lúirech, the Faíd Fiada, the féth fiada, and the cúairt comgi
• Jacqueline Borsje, ‘Celtic Spells and Counterspells’ and her work on the Faíd Fiada (2008), including Maartje Draak’s reading of the Deer’s Cry as a charm rather than a prayer.
• I. Best, ‘Some Irish Charms’, Ériu 16 (1952), on the cúairt comgi, the circle of protection.
• The Schools’ Collection night protection prayers, National Folklore Collection (Dúchas.ie), ‘between me and all harm’ and ‘to be said in time of danger’.

Living Irish Witchcraft is hosted by Rev. Lora O’Brien, MA. Find more at irishpaganschool.ie