Living Irish Witchcraft Ep 22: What Do You Carry?

Episode 22: What Do You Carry?

Start with the latest Irish witchcraft work from the Irish Pagan School, taught from Ireland: irishpagan.school/witchcraft

This episode is about the protective object in the Irish record, the thing made for one person and fixed onto them to keep harm off. Lora starts with the Leabhar Eoin, the written charm carrying the opening of St John's gospel, and the folk legends about what happened when one was made carelessly. From there she moves to the household charms Lady Wilde collected in the nineteenth century, which needed no priest and nothing bought. The practice can be done where nobody sees it, costs nothing, and ends on a day you choose.

This Episode's Practice: The Iron in the Seam

You need a small piece of iron or steel that's already in the house, so a nail, a safety pin, or a key that opens nothing any more, along with a needle and thread or a second pin, and none of it bought.

Say who or what you're minding, and be exact about it, so yourself, the dog, or the one driving a long road on Friday. If the house isn't private, say it under your breath.

Name the stretch of time in the same breath, with a day on the end of it, so until the exams are over, or until you're home again on the twelfth.

Fix the iron inside something the one you're minding wears or uses every day of that stretch. Sew it into a seam or a hem where it lies flat and nobody feels it, work it into the lining of a coat or a bag, or bind it on with thread if sewing isn't in your hands.

While you're fixing it, say one short line telling it what it's there for, and keep that line.

Leave it alone until the day you named, without showing it, lending it, or letting anyone else handle it.

On that day, take the iron out, say out loud that the stretch is finished, and put the iron back to its ordinary use. Close with Beir Bua.

This goes on yourself, or on something in your care, since a charm sewn into another adult's coat without their say so is a decision about their life made for them. The charm sits alongside ordinary care rather than in place of it.

Irish Terms in This Episode

• draoi: an Irish druid, a practitioner of the native magical and spiritual tradition, and Lora's own word for what she is.
• the Mórrígan: a great goddess of Irish tradition, tied to sovereignty, war and fate. Lora has been her priest since 2004.
• Leabhar Eoin: the Book of John, the Irish name for a written charm carrying the opening passage of the fourth gospel, folded and worn around the neck.
• Beir Bua: gain victory, the closing phrase of the practice.

Sources

Ó Crualaoich, Gearóid. 'An Leabhar Eoin: The In Principio Charm in Oral and Literary 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. 177 to 188.

Wilde, Lady. Irish Cures, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions. Compiled by Sheila Anne Barry. New York: Sterling Publishing, 1991.

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