Living Irish Witchcraft Ep 19: What's in a Name?

September 07, 2026

Episode 19: What's in a Name?

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This episode takes on naming in Irish magical practice, and what a name is actually doing when it turns up in a charm. It follows the name through the written charms, where the letter N sits waiting for the name of whoever the working is aimed at, into the folk cures, where the name of the afflicted person gets written out as part of the cure itself, and across to the harming side, where a satire or a curse names its target so the words can find them. It closes on the other half of the same belief, the Irish care about what gets named out loud and the guard the tradition throws around a naming.

This Episode's Practice: Writing the Name

You need a scrap of plain paper, something to write with, and a few minutes on your own.

Pick the one trouble you want dealt with. It doesn't have to be a thing in your body: it can be a situation you're stuck in, a piece of work that has gone wrong on you, or something you want cleared out of your life.

Say the name of the person the work is for out loud first, which is your own name unless somebody has asked you to do this for them. Say the whole of it at an ordinary speaking volume rather than under your breath. If the name on your birth certificate isn't the name you go by, use the one you go by, because that's the name you'd answer to and that's the one that's yours.

Write the name out on the paper by hand, the full name and nothing else on the page beside it, forming every letter properly rather than scribbling it.

Name the trouble out loud while the paper is in front of you, and say what you want done, keeping the name inside the sentence so the work is fastened to a person rather than drifting off into the room. It runs along the lines of this is [your name], and I'm putting this out of my life.

Fold the paper once, put it into your right hand, and close your hand over it, the way the old charm collections have a written charm held in the closed right hand. Hold it shut until the paper has gone warm from you, and say your words over it once more while you're holding it.

Close with Beir Bua (pronounced: BARE BOO-ah).

Put the paper away out of sight, in a drawer or a box, and leave it be while the thing works itself out. When the trouble is finished with, take it out and burn it or tear it up small, and don't leave a written name lying around the house for anyone to lift.

Use your own name, or a name the person themselves handed to you and asked you to work with. Writing another person's name into a working they never agreed to is you making a decision about their life that they didn't make themselves. Be careful with your own name as well, in the way the old people were.

Irish Terms in This Episode

draoi (pronounced: DREE): an Irish druid, a practitioner of the native magical and spiritual tradition; Lora's own word for what she is.

the Mórrígan (pronounced: MOR-ee-gan): a great goddess of Irish tradition, tied to sovereignty, war and fate; Lora has been her priest since 2004.

Beir Bua (pronounced: BARE BOO-ah): 'take victory'; the closing phrase of the practice.

Sources

Jacqueline Borsje, 'Celtic Spells and Counterspells', in Katja Ritari and Alexandra Bergholm (eds), Understanding Celtic Religion: Revisiting the Pagan Past (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2015). The letter N in the written charms, standing for Latin nomen, as the slot into which the name of the target of the charm's effect is substituted.
Bairbre Ní Fhloinn, 'The Cure for Bleeding: Charms and Other Cures for Blood Stopping in Irish Tradition', in Ilona Tuomi, John Carey, Barbara Hillers and Ciarán Ó Gealbháin (eds), Charms, Charmers and Charming in Ireland: From the Medieval to the Modern (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2019), pp. 131 to 144. Writing out the name of the affected person listed among the ritual acts used to stop bleeding, recorded from Cullenagh, Kiltartan, County Galway (NFC 405:377).
Ksenia Kudenko, 'In Defence of the Irish Saints who Loved Malediction', in the same volume, pp. 65 to 78. Coirpre's satire against Bres set beside Patrick's curse on Bécán, with the observation quoted in this episode: 'Both verses invoke the name of the victim'.
RI. Best, 'Some Irish Charms', Ériu, 16 (1952), 27 to 32. The virtues attached to the hymn charm from Trinity College MS H.3.17, including placing it in the closed right hand, which is the hold used in this episode's practice.

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

Episode Transcript

Living Irish Witchcraft: What's in a Name? 19
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[00:00:00] There are four cats in this house, and not one of them is anything like the others. Hope is the eldest. She's a black cat. She is the most affectionate of the four on her own terms because she's also the most nervous along with it, really. Nala is friends with everyone she's ever met. She's our calico, and she will be into everything.

She breaks down doors if she wants to get into a room that you're in. And then Mac is a classic tabby, very regal, very Egyptian heritage, and he'll come to you only when it's his own idea, but he does get quite affectionate when it is his idea as well. And then Pippy, who's the youngest, she's our failed foster.

She has long white socks, hence her name, and spends any warm day stretched out flat on the tiles. She's also our most vocal of cats. But the four of them arrived with [00:01:00] nothing but themselves, and the single thing about any of them that came from us is their names. Everything else about a cat belongs to the cat, as anybody who has cats will know.

But the name is the bit that we put on, and once it's on, it's the handle that we kind of take hold of them by, which is a fair description of what a name does in the Irish tradition as well. We might not have met before, so I'm Lora O'Brien. I'm an Irish draoi and a priest of The Morrigan since 2004 with a master's in Irish history sitting behind about 30 years of my own witchcraft practice, which is why you will also get the source alongside the working on this podcast.

This is Living Irish Witchcraft, and I make it for the Irish Pagan School When you go looking in the charm manuscripts, you'll meet the letter N sitting inside of written charms, [00:02:00] which scholar Jacqueline de Borja explains as the slot where the name of whoever the charm is aimed at gets substituted in.

It's from the Latin nomen. The charm as it sits on the page is only a shape waiting for a name, and it doesn't do anything to anyone until somebody puts that name into it. The tradition that we have here, this living Irish witchcraft tradition, was treating them as a thing that fastens onto one named person and works on them

for good or ill. When people were working on shingles cures, they would write their own name around the patch of infected skin.

So the name goes onto the trouble, or the trouble is tied to the name, and the writing of it itself is part of the cure or the curse, rather than a label just stuck on the outside. So it [00:03:00] works the same way for a cure or a curse, whether the intention is to heal or to harm. Kudenko, when they were writing on the Irish saint who cursed, set Corperus satire against Breas beside Patrick's curse on Bechan, and notes that both verses invoke the name of the victim.

A curse in this Irish witchcraft tradition is aimed, and the name is what aims it. Whether a curse is ever a fair thing to lay on somebody is a heavy question. I do have some videos on the Irish Pagan School YouTube channel if you want to look at the cursing tradition specifically. It's a road of its own, and I'm not walking it today, but it would be unfair and remiss of me not to mention it.

So if a name is a handle, then handing your name over or saying a name out loud in the wrong company gives somebody that grip on you.

Now, here's a working, a small [00:04:00] spell built on all of that, and it takes a scrap of plain paper, something to write with, and a few minutes on your own. Pick the one trouble that you want dealt with, and it doesn't have to be a thing in your body this time.

It can be a situation you're stuck in. It can be a piece of work that's gone wrong on you or something that you want cleared out of your life. For extra oomph and power, you can do it when the moon is waning or shrinking because that will reduce the thing. You can tie it up to the moon's energy as well, work with the flow of that

Rather than against it. Now, say the name of the person that the work is for out loud first, which is your own name. Unless somebody has asked you specifically to do this for them, you have to get active consent to do magic on people. Well, you don't have to, but ethically, that is what you should be doing,

so [00:05:00] ideally, you're using your own name, right? And say the whole of it at an ordinary speaking volume rather than under your breath. Just say your name normally. If the name on your birth certificate isn't the name that you go by, I would suggest that you'd use the one you go by because that's the name you'd answer to, and that's the one that's yours in your life.

And then you write it out on the paper by hand, the full name and nothing else on the page beside it, just forming every letter properly rather than scribbling it. Put a bit of mindfulness into it. And then name the trouble out loud while the paper is in front of you and say what you want done, keeping the name inside the sentence so the work is fastened to the person rather than drifting off into the room.

Now, I'll use my own here so that you can hear the shape of it, right? For example, "This is Lora O'Brien, and I'm putting this out of my life." That simple. Then you just fold the paper once, [00:06:00] put it into your right hand, close your hand over it the way the old charm collections tell you to hold a written charm in the closed right hand.

Now, I would suggest if you're left-handed that you would hold it in your left hand, but you do you. Hold it shut until the paper has gone warm from you and say your words over it once more while you're holding it. Beir Bua, gain victory. Then put the paper away out of sight into a drawer or a box and leave it be while the thing works itself out.

And when the trouble is finished with, take it out and burn it or tear it up small. Don't leave your written name lying around the house for anyone at all to lift because that is caught onto you, and a name, again, is a handle. You've just spent 10 minutes or so proving that. So if you'd like a grounded Irish practice like this one coming to you every month with the source and the story behind it, that's what our Simple Irish Spells newsletter is for. [00:07:00] It's over on the Irish Pagan School website, and when you sign up, you'll also get free bonus, my Magic for Social Change toolkit.

It's a PDF that you can download and keep. And in the newsletter, there's a free tier, so if you can't pay for it or don't want to pay for it, you could get access to free editions. That's all there. And there's also a paid tier, which doesn't cost very much and helps to support the podcast. And I'd be very appreciative if you could go and sign up if you can afford the small monthly fee.

But whichever you choose, you're getting properly sourced Irish practice that you can actually do. So you'll find it all at irishpagan.school/spells, and the links and sources and everything are down in the show notes. So slán go fóill, and I'll see you next time.

Living Irish Witchcraft Ep 19: What's in a Name?

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