Wuldortanas: Divination and Plant Magic
The Nine Herbs Charm/Nigon Wyrta Galdor speaks to plants as personified beings, sings them in and requests their support for healing. This…
The Nine Herbs Charm/Nigon Wyrta Galdor speaks to plants as personified beings, sings them in and requests their support for healing. This medieval formula from the Lacnunga manuscript invokes the following plants: Mugwort, Plantain, Cockspur Grass, Lamb’s Cress, Nettle, Chamomile, Thyme, Fennel, Crab Apple.
These herbs were called Wuldortanas. Wuldor means glory, tanas is related to the word tanian, which means to decide by lots. Lots are cast, as in divination, as with runes. Wuldortanas are simultaneously defined as plants with medicinal purposes. In the matrix of the both we can find an ancient connection, a thread of understanding.
In literal, word for word translating of the Nine Herbs Incantation/Spell/Charm I have found it useful to seek the feminine, and magic. This is one of only a handful of pagan healing charms to survive conversion and be preserved in the historical (written) record. It invokes Oðinn/Woden, speaks to casting lots, spiritual cleansing, and singing/incanting to both the plants and the wound/illness of the patient in symbiotic animism. My translations also uncovered traditional women’s work — weaving — and menstruation threaded through this verse, which was transcribed in the tenth century CE but from materials that are likely much older. This passage focuses on a serpent:
Serpent came creeping, tear asunder it people;
That to name Woden nine glory twigs,
A pathless miry place then serpent, after that she on nine to be disbursed,
To rush to bring to an end an apple and poison,
Then she never not a day of death with a house bow down.
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The serpent too, often seen as negative in the nineteenth century translations, doesn’t appear in a literal translation to hold the same malice. In fact, the serpent could be seen as a helper, transforming and transmuting the dispersal of poison. In other lines there is a sacred place of running water where nine snakes behold and all herbs spring up.
:
Let us question. Let us explore.
Be curious.
Open the door.
By this and every effort may the balance be regained.ᚨᛚᚢ
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The verse above in Old Anglo Saxon:
Wyrm com snican, toslat he man;
ða genam Woden VIIII wuldortanas,
sloh ða þa næddran, þæt heo on VIIII tofleah.
þær geændade æppel and attor,
þæt heo næfre ne wolde on hus bugan.
All Anglo Saxon translation is thanks to the Bosworth Toller Anglo Saxon Dictionary online: https://bosworthtoller.com and the Old English Translator: https://www.oldenglishtranslator.co.uk
Sacred Art, Myth, Ritual and Story| Lara Vesta
Lara Vesta, MFA, is an artist, author, storyteller and educator transforming chronic illness into a path of healing and…www.laravesta.co
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