The daily life of the Gael was full of blessings, prayers and charms. There are many charms, some to get rid of a particular ailment, others used preventively from helping cure illnesses or childlessness, toothache or swellings, to repelling the evil eye.
There are powerful poetry and imagery in Charms that evoke ancient magic, something we might not fully ‘get’ yet recognize as sacred. It also invokes generations of women who worked with this energy, who delivered babies, help set bones, applied cooling poultices. These were the women who knew the right vegetables and herbs to make ointments to draw out and heal an infection. They were also the women who brought babies into this world and midwifed souls on their journey out of this world and onto the next world. They were also the communicators with the otherworlds, the ones who knew when there was faery magic afoot and could devise the ceremonies that had to be undertaken in order to set things right again.
An Element of Balance
There are some wonderfully descriptive charms in the Carmina Gadellica (a collection of Prayers and Chants collected in the 19th century from the Western Isles of Scotland – see reference in links at the bottom of the page). These people were completely sustainable, they lived by the rhythms of the seasons fishing from the sea and growing their own food. Illness was seen as an imbalance in the natural world and so charms were used to bring balance back into their life where there was an imbalance.
The following charm is recreating a balance in the natural world so that it might return the equilibrium within the body and repair the damage.
Brigid went out
Charm of the Sprain, Carmina Gadelica Hymn/Incantation #13
In the dawn of day
With a pair of horses
And one broke a leg.
That was trouble and fuss, that
Was tearing and loss but
She put bone to bone,
She put flesh to flesh,
She put sinew to sinew,
She put vein to vein. As she healed that, Let me heal this.
Power over heaven I have over thee,
Charm for Chest Seizure, Charms for Healing, Carmina Gadelica #448
Power of heaven and power of God have I over thee,
Power of heaven and power of god over thee.
A part of thee on the grey stones,
A part of thee on the steep mountains,
A part of thee on the swift cascades,
A part of thee on the gleaming clouds,
A part of thee on the ocean – whales,
A part of thee on the meadow-beasts,
A part of thee on the fenny swamps,
A part of thee on the cotton-grass moors,
A part of thee on the great surging sea –
She herself has best means to carry,
The great surging sea,
She herself has best means to carry.
Writing Your Own Charm
A power lies in feeling our connection to these women, women who also lived a relationship with Brighid, women who wove Brighid into their lives through prayers and charms as they asked for protection and used them to honor and in giving thanks.
A charm is particularly useful regarding something that you experience regularly. Something niggling that keeps coming around, wither physical or mental. I find it particularly useful in recognizing those days and acknowledging you need extra help. The following charm is one I have written for help on those days. Days when I’m just feeling down, part of its power lies in the images it evokes, engaging the imagination.
Brighid went out and found a woman feeling dark and unsure,
Jude Lally – A Charm to Find Yourself Again
like the weather of Imbolc and it’s biting cold.
So she took a thread here and a thread there,
and like the weaver woman Brighid was,
she wove the woman back into life,
mother to mother,
ancestor to ancestor,
The woman found new strength in her relations,
And a sense of place and of her lineage.
In creating your own personal charm, which you may wish to bring in a simple gesture of ritual. Here are some options to consider:
- A good starting point is to consider something you personally would like help with such as a physical illness or even something psychological.
- Adding ritual. This can be something very simple and as small as a gesture or, something more elaborate if you prefer. Example: If it is eye-related, maybe you might want to add in something soothing such as bathing your eye in water or using watery imagery.
- You may want to add or be inspired by some of the imagery from the Charm for a Chest Seizure. (You might want to evoke imagery from the landscape you live in).
- Imagine that lineage of healers assisting you as you work (these could be ancestral ancestors).
- The charm only needs to make sense to you personally so add in personal motifs and imagery.
Taking time to work on a particular personal ritual and consider what comes up as it might highlight things you don’t want to look at – such as how this issue relates to other parts of your life. You may want to consider possible causes and how you can start working around this.
(Meet Mago Contributor) Jude Lally