At long last, after what feels like an eternity of testing and retesting old recipes and editing entries on plant lore, The Charmer’s Root is officially available. While I love the process of weaving together a book from my old notes and folkloric research, this journey has come with more peaks and valleys than most. It’s the culmination of a long project, one that has in equal turns been thrilling and exhausting, but one that I think offers a unique window into the animist folk ways of working with plants that are not rare, difficult, or expensive, but common and abundant in North America and the British Isles, green allies who are easily found and befriended on a walk through the field, but who are also ancient and celebrated in the magical lore and texts of previous ages.
Years ago, I would never have expected to undertake writing an herbal. My approach to this aspect of the charming arts has never looked much like the most popular approaches in modern witchcraft books. I tend to favor folklore over correspondences, since for me, plants have personalities that are complex and difficult to capture in keywords. I prefer having a deep relationship with a small number of plants rather than a limited knowledge of a great many. I prefer simple herbal recipes and charms that are deceptively easy to perform over formulae that call for far-away ingredients and drawn-out processes. Most of all, while I enjoy growing plants from seed, I also enjoy foraging, since scouting out local flora is, for me, a way of connecting to local spirits. Over the years, I have realized that these preferences of mine are shared among many folk practitioners, and they are woven into this book, an approach that I have tried to define by its focus on intimacy, gentle spirit work, a reverence for local flora, and a love of folklore.
It was important to me that this book be both practical and grounded in historical magic and lore. The first section of The Charmer’s Root describes techniques for meeting the plant spirit, discerning its various magical signatures and personality, researching folklore, and performing a series of simple rituals for spirit communion, conjuration, offerings, adaptable charm-work, and ecstatic spirit flight via unguent or potion. The second section is made up of recipes, including the familiar traditions of infusions, tinctures, and the like, but also spirit waters, salts, inks, and other preparations that allow the practitioner to work with even poisonous plants in a safe way. The third section contains 36 folk-magical entries on common plants, as well as an index of over 200 plants drawn from Victorian texts.
The Charmer’s Root is available now via Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and other major book retailers, or you can order a copy through your favorite local bookstore.
Roger J. Horne 