The Works of Bramble Granny
This post is based on a piece of art by Evlyn M.
They call her the Bramble Granny or just the Crone. She was old when the old folks in their recliners were fat babies.
In the trailer parks and the low rises they will point her in the direction of where she used to live. She may live there still, in the place on the corner, the double-wide drowned in roses. Few will have seen her, and almost none have learned from her. These are the magicks of the Crone.
01: Tales of lovers lost at sea and drowned in fountains, tales of babies lost in woods and lost on mountains
This is a short song whose words will come to you as you sing it. First you must bind a handkerchief that has absorbed the tears of seven people. One must be dead, one must be broken-hearted, and one must be an infant. One of these must be you. You must carry the handkerchief at your throat for a week for the magick to take root.
The magic makes one person weep. No one is immune, be they happy, sociopathic, or bowed with ennui. The target will be racked with raw sobs and shed salt water which cannot be hidden.
02: The way is dark and getting darker, the hut is high and even higher
You must cut yourself with thorns. You must draw blood from your hands, eyelids, tongue and the skin above your heart.
For the next hour those who will seek you out will encounter nothing but obstacles. The road will seem endless, any vehicle or mount will stall or falter. The dead will rise from their graves or from guilt,weeping and accusing. No permanent harm can come to those afflicted, but they often succumb to exhaustion, fear, distraction or shame.
03: Bræmbel remedy
You must make a jelly of brambleberries, which some call blackberries. It must contain no seeds from the berries, and they must have been harvested before Michaelmas Day. Blood from at least two people must be mixed in with the jelly.
Those who eat the jelly on unleavened bread will fall into a fugue state, and will find themselves face to face with a woman. She will have freckles and her eyes will burn like a furnace. Some say this is the goddess Bridgid. She will heal all wounds and cure all diseases, if she deems them worthy. She will be kind, but will not suffer those who try to manipulate her, or show disregard for their bodies.
If the jelly is made with brambleberries picked AFTER Michaelmas Day, those who eat will meet a man instead of a woman. He will be wearing a red tuxedo and rhinestone-adorned cowboy boots. His hair will be thinning and his teeth will be very shiny. Some say this is the Devil. He too will offer health, but his remedies will be darkly humorous. New skin will be scaly and cold, Wounds will heal into hoof-shaped scars. Tumors will stop growing, but instead invade your private moments with a wet giggly voice.
04: Forget all the roses
You must eat a rose from roots to petals with all the discomfort it entails. For as long as it is in your system the person you hold in your mind will be unable to remember that good things have happened to them as a consequence of contact with other human beings.
05: Fawnlily
You must make yourself a crown of fawnlilies and a choker of roses. Until sunrise or -set you will be as attractive as you ever were. You may not know when this was. It may have been in your youth or as a baby. It may have been a September evening in your forties. Everyone will see you as you appear, but feel the way they would have felt had they seen you at your best.
06: The leaves will bury every year
This is a working which you can perform for others or for yourself.
If there is a memory you wish to push from your mind, you must make a symbolic representation of it and bury it in living brambles so that it cannot be seen. During this labor you must sing a bawdy ditty about Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. You must keep singing until a passerby hears you.
Once this is done, the memory is gone. Memories are not neatly compartmentalized though, and you may find that other things will slip your mind as well. You have pulled on a thread, and now there is no saying what unravels.
07: My garden knows what's wrong
You must make an offering to your garden every Lammas. A blackberry pie, a pitcher of wine, and a pint of human blood. You must spend the daylit hours in your garden for a week leading up to Lammas. After you have performed the sacrifice your garden will be able to tell you who passes by it, or even enters it, when you are away.
When the next Lammas draws near the garden will often grow peevish and pretend to forget what it has seen. This behavior will become more pronounced the longer you and the garden are bound to each other.
08: The Torn Man Dance
You must dance through thorns and brambles under a waning moon. As you do so, you must repeat the rhyme:
Torn man, torn man
Ragged shirt and bloody hands
Torn man, torn man
May I have this dance?
It may take hours of dancing, but at some point another person will join the dance.He will be tall, and the thorns will have ripped his clothes and hands. His face will be hidden under a broad-brimmed hat,and you must not be curious. If you lead him in a waltz, he will perform a task for you.
The Torn Man can find water and buried treasure. He can silence a gossip or a loud dog for good. He will even haunt an enemy of yours until next equinox. He will leave inexplicable trails of blood, hide thorns in clothes or food, and loom in the corners of rooms in the gray pre-dawn hours like a reminder of infirmity and death.
At some point in the future the Torn Man will ask you to dance. He will pick the time and place.You must not refuse.
09: Weeping Willow
Sleep under a weeping willow naked for a week. You must rise with the dawn and perform a swaying dance before you break your fast. For a fortnight after you have finished this ordeal, your bones will not break. They will bend, but return to their normal alignment with great resilience. Blunt force will bruise you, but nothing worse.
10: Rose hip
Make a pot of rose hip tea and sweeten it with honey as you sing an invocation to Eirene, goddess of peace. Those who drink of the tea will not be able to initiate any form of hostilities against another human being for as long as it takes it to pass through their system. They can't even be abusive online.
11: You brought the rain
To cast this curse you must fast for a week. You may drink only rainwater, and your ablutions must be performed with the same. Once the week has passed you must call your victim to mind, along with some local and current misfortune or misdeed. People who meet your victim the following week will believe that they were somehow involved with the misfortune, or at least benefited unfairly and immorally from it.
12: Dirt in the ground
This is cruel magick. In order to perform it you must cut off a finger with a pair of garden shears. You may not bind the wound, seek medical assistance or administer any form of pain relief.
Call a person to mind as the blood drips on their likeness. When it is obscured, the person will fall down and be dead for the next 25 hours. It is not a comatose state or an illusion. They are genuinely dead for the duration.
They call her the Bramble Granny or just the Crone. She was old when the old folks in their recliners were fat babies.
 |
| Used with permission |
In the trailer parks and the low rises they will point her in the direction of where she used to live. She may live there still, in the place on the corner, the double-wide drowned in roses. Few will have seen her, and almost none have learned from her. These are the magicks of the Crone.
01: Tales of lovers lost at sea and drowned in fountains, tales of babies lost in woods and lost on mountains
This is a short song whose words will come to you as you sing it. First you must bind a handkerchief that has absorbed the tears of seven people. One must be dead, one must be broken-hearted, and one must be an infant. One of these must be you. You must carry the handkerchief at your throat for a week for the magick to take root.
The magic makes one person weep. No one is immune, be they happy, sociopathic, or bowed with ennui. The target will be racked with raw sobs and shed salt water which cannot be hidden.
02: The way is dark and getting darker, the hut is high and even higher
You must cut yourself with thorns. You must draw blood from your hands, eyelids, tongue and the skin above your heart.
For the next hour those who will seek you out will encounter nothing but obstacles. The road will seem endless, any vehicle or mount will stall or falter. The dead will rise from their graves or from guilt,weeping and accusing. No permanent harm can come to those afflicted, but they often succumb to exhaustion, fear, distraction or shame.
03: Bræmbel remedy
You must make a jelly of brambleberries, which some call blackberries. It must contain no seeds from the berries, and they must have been harvested before Michaelmas Day. Blood from at least two people must be mixed in with the jelly.
Those who eat the jelly on unleavened bread will fall into a fugue state, and will find themselves face to face with a woman. She will have freckles and her eyes will burn like a furnace. Some say this is the goddess Bridgid. She will heal all wounds and cure all diseases, if she deems them worthy. She will be kind, but will not suffer those who try to manipulate her, or show disregard for their bodies.
If the jelly is made with brambleberries picked AFTER Michaelmas Day, those who eat will meet a man instead of a woman. He will be wearing a red tuxedo and rhinestone-adorned cowboy boots. His hair will be thinning and his teeth will be very shiny. Some say this is the Devil. He too will offer health, but his remedies will be darkly humorous. New skin will be scaly and cold, Wounds will heal into hoof-shaped scars. Tumors will stop growing, but instead invade your private moments with a wet giggly voice.
04: Forget all the roses
You must eat a rose from roots to petals with all the discomfort it entails. For as long as it is in your system the person you hold in your mind will be unable to remember that good things have happened to them as a consequence of contact with other human beings.
05: Fawnlily
You must make yourself a crown of fawnlilies and a choker of roses. Until sunrise or -set you will be as attractive as you ever were. You may not know when this was. It may have been in your youth or as a baby. It may have been a September evening in your forties. Everyone will see you as you appear, but feel the way they would have felt had they seen you at your best.
06: The leaves will bury every year
This is a working which you can perform for others or for yourself.
If there is a memory you wish to push from your mind, you must make a symbolic representation of it and bury it in living brambles so that it cannot be seen. During this labor you must sing a bawdy ditty about Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. You must keep singing until a passerby hears you.
Once this is done, the memory is gone. Memories are not neatly compartmentalized though, and you may find that other things will slip your mind as well. You have pulled on a thread, and now there is no saying what unravels.
07: My garden knows what's wrong
You must make an offering to your garden every Lammas. A blackberry pie, a pitcher of wine, and a pint of human blood. You must spend the daylit hours in your garden for a week leading up to Lammas. After you have performed the sacrifice your garden will be able to tell you who passes by it, or even enters it, when you are away.
When the next Lammas draws near the garden will often grow peevish and pretend to forget what it has seen. This behavior will become more pronounced the longer you and the garden are bound to each other.
08: The Torn Man Dance
You must dance through thorns and brambles under a waning moon. As you do so, you must repeat the rhyme:
Torn man, torn man
Ragged shirt and bloody hands
Torn man, torn man
May I have this dance?
It may take hours of dancing, but at some point another person will join the dance.He will be tall, and the thorns will have ripped his clothes and hands. His face will be hidden under a broad-brimmed hat,and you must not be curious. If you lead him in a waltz, he will perform a task for you.
The Torn Man can find water and buried treasure. He can silence a gossip or a loud dog for good. He will even haunt an enemy of yours until next equinox. He will leave inexplicable trails of blood, hide thorns in clothes or food, and loom in the corners of rooms in the gray pre-dawn hours like a reminder of infirmity and death.
At some point in the future the Torn Man will ask you to dance. He will pick the time and place.You must not refuse.
09: Weeping Willow
Sleep under a weeping willow naked for a week. You must rise with the dawn and perform a swaying dance before you break your fast. For a fortnight after you have finished this ordeal, your bones will not break. They will bend, but return to their normal alignment with great resilience. Blunt force will bruise you, but nothing worse.
10: Rose hip
Make a pot of rose hip tea and sweeten it with honey as you sing an invocation to Eirene, goddess of peace. Those who drink of the tea will not be able to initiate any form of hostilities against another human being for as long as it takes it to pass through their system. They can't even be abusive online.
11: You brought the rain
To cast this curse you must fast for a week. You may drink only rainwater, and your ablutions must be performed with the same. Once the week has passed you must call your victim to mind, along with some local and current misfortune or misdeed. People who meet your victim the following week will believe that they were somehow involved with the misfortune, or at least benefited unfairly and immorally from it.
12: Dirt in the ground
This is cruel magick. In order to perform it you must cut off a finger with a pair of garden shears. You may not bind the wound, seek medical assistance or administer any form of pain relief.
Call a person to mind as the blood drips on their likeness. When it is obscured, the person will fall down and be dead for the next 25 hours. It is not a comatose state or an illusion. They are genuinely dead for the duration.
(I have decided against supplying hard rules for these spells. I consider using them with the magic rules found in Wonder & Wickedness, in Macchiato Monsters, or as rituals in Unknown Armies).
Next up; the asylum where many of the people perusing her spells end up...
ReplyDeleteA likely fate! Many would-be-sorcerers are already halfway there to be honest.
DeleteShouting "Give me more rope to hang myself with!" the whole time.
Delete