By Isabella @TheWandCarver
Instagram: @iseabail_witchwriter
Alkanet [Alkanna tinctorial] is derived from the root of a plant known as Dyer’s Bugloss. Do not confuse it with Viper’s Bugloss [Echium vulgare]. Both have blue flowers, however, very different. Alkanna tinctorial is originally from the Mediterranean and brought to England specifically back in the day, growing in Kent, and in the West Country, specifically Devonshire and Cornwall. It can be found throughout Great Britain today. Echium vulgare is a native of Great Britain.
It may not surprise you to know that Alkanet is known for its beautiful red dye, for if you’ve worked with it before, you can see from your fingertips! You can also use it in a tinted lip gloss, if you like. I have no doubt it was the favoured way in which women through the ages have given their pouts a bit of colour before Revlon and other make up companies came out with tubes of lipstick. Not only has Alkanet been used for lippy, but has, and still is, used to colour wood stain, cloth dye, and wine.
In some forms of magick, Alkanet is used to speed thing up a bit for those in need of a quick fix. I have never personally used Alkanet in a hurry, so I don’t know, but apparently it is the go-to plant for getting things off to a quick start and early gains.
Magickal
Spell work involving Alkanet is best used on the day of Venus, Friday and during the hour of Venus for the best effects.
Alkanet is a wonderful herb to use for anything related to money. You can carry a piece of the root with you when going gambling to increase your luck or mix the powdered root with other money-drawing herbs, flowers, and woods to carry in a sachet or talisman. It is also a fabulous anti-negativity herb and has long been used in loose incenses for that purpose. I always suggest using Alkanet in a loose incense for burning in a new home or one where trouble has been prevalent in order to cleanse away the negative energies left behind. You can use the same herbs, flowers, and woods with Alkanet as you may have created a talisman with for drawing money or luck to you in a loose incense for money spells, as well.
As mentioned above, Alkanet is a prevalent ingredient in some Fast Luck oils and such, although I am not familiar with them. If you don’t want to purchase something such as that you can probably easily make your own.
Not many mentions how Alkanet can draw love to you but based on the same principal as when women long ago rouged up their lips with Alkanet to be more appealing and to find love, it does have a magickal property of drawing love to you. If you don’t care to wear it on your lips you can make a love poppet with it or you can carry it upon your person discreetly inside a sachet or talisman which you create for this purpose.
Alkanet can protect one from negative energies which have been purposefully directed to him or her as from a hex.
Health
Per Nicholas Culpeper: “it helps old ulcers, hot inflammations, burnings by common fire, and St Anthony’s fire, by antipathy to Mars; for these uses, your best way is to make it into an ointment; also, if you make a vinegar of it, as you make vinegar of roses, it helps the morphew and leprosy; if you apply the herb to the privities, it draws forth the dead child, It helps the yellow jaundice, spleen, and gravel in the kidneys Dioscorides saith, it helps such as are bitten by a venomous beast whether it be taken inwardly or applied to the wound; nay, he saith further, if any one that hath newly eaten it do but spit into the mouth of a serpent, the serpent instantly dies. It stays the flux of the belly kills worms helps the fits of the mother. Its decoction made in wine and drank, strengthens the back, and eases the pains thereof. It helps bruises and falls and is as gallant a remedy to drive out the small pox and measles as any is; and ointment made of it, is excellent for green wounds, ricks or thursts.”
Mr Culpeper covered it all in this one paragraph over 300 years ago. To this day, many of these practises are implemented with Alkanet. Perhaps in more sterile ways but used much the same.
Warning: Careful of ingesting Alkanet if you have any known liver problems as it can prove toxic.
Correspondences
Planetary: Venus
Gender: Feminine
Elements: Earth / Air
Zodiac: Libra, Taurus
Powers: Prosperity, Purification, Protection, Luck, Love
Deity: Venus, Shukra, Aphrodite
Other Names: Anchusa, Dyer’s Bugloss, Orchanet, Spanish Bugloss, Enchusa, Lingua Bovina, Ox Tongue, Yellow Anchusa, and Blue Bugloss.
Many thanks for reading my blog today. Warmest blessings upon all whom wander this way x
Sources
Experience
The Complete Herbal and English Physician, by Nicolas Culpeper c. 1702
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