Nine Plants Spell "Nigon Wyrta Galdor"
Introduced by Danielle Cudmore (Halmstad University, Sweden) and featuring illustrations by Rim Baudey, Anneke Wilder, and Jacqui Alberts Lund.
The Nine Plants Spell: Anglo-Saxon plant animism, historical paganism, & folk healing
Vibrantly animistic and remarkably hypnotic, The Nine Plants Spell, (Nigon Wyrta Galdor, popularly known as the Nine Herbs Charm) is an Old English healing galdor, a spell, that invokes nine personified plants and the pagan god Woden to defeat a serpent before exploding in a psychedelic climax.
One of the most mysterious items in the Old English corpus, and originally sung, chanted, or otherwise performed to treat an unknown malady, the Nine Plants Spell provides a rare window into a living landscape from a lost time, dripping with mysticism and mystery, humming with life.