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Sacred Correspondences
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This page groups incantations by who or what the words are actually aimed at. Wikipedia notes that an incantation "is a magical formula intended to trigger a magical effect on a person or objects." Browsing by addressed-to lets a visitor find every incantation aimed at the same target.

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Three Old English Verse Charms Preserved in the British Library

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Old English Metrical Charm gathers three of the atlas's Old English charms, verse remedies preserved in manuscripts now in the British Library, and together they are the standard exhibit for what survived of pre Christian belief in written English and what that survival actually means.

Æcerbot, a remedy for land that will not yield, is the most elaborate and the most thoroughly churched of the three: turf is cut and taken to a church, masses are sung over it and Latin prayers said before it is returned to the ground, and within that Christian frame the charm still addresses the earth itself, including a figure called Erce, named as the mother of earth and otherwise unattested in any surviving text. The Nine Herbs Charm, preserved in the Lacnunga, addresses nine plants one by one and then narrates Woden striking a serpent with nine glory twigs so that it flew into nine pieces; it is one of an extremely small number of Old English texts naming Woden outside royal genealogies, and it names Christ in the same composition.

Wið Færstice, against a sudden sharp pain, is the most discussed of the three and one of the very few Old English poems in which pre Christian material appears without an obvious Christian frame around it, describing the pain as a projectile sent by riders and mighty women and smiths at work, before turning the projectile back on whatever sent it. Read together, the three charms show Old English verse magic surviving mostly inside a Christian frame, with Wið Færstice the clearest exception rather than the rule.

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1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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