Home protection spells from the old books: what people really set at their doors
When people say do protection first and never say what that means, this is what they mean: set something at the ways into the house. The old books set guards at the door, the hearth and the bed, with things already in a kitchen and a garden. Below are five home protection spells from named books with their years, and the first one takes about ten minutes tonight.
Nothing here asks you to buy anything. A sprig of rosemary, a length of red thread, a piece of iron and a clean jar cover all five.
Each one carries a label. Old means done the way the source records it. Old pattern, adapted means we say what we changed and why. We never say what a working does. We say what people did, and what they said it was for.
What the five guards ask for
Kitchen and garden things first. Everything here has an everyday stand-in.
- A sprig of rosemary From a pot on the sill, the garden, or the herb shelf at the supermarket.
- Red thread and a twig Sewing thread, embroidery floss or wool, and a short twig of rowan if any grows near you.
- A piece of iron A horseshoe if you have one, otherwise an old iron key or a plain iron nail.
- A small jar with a lid A washed spice jar, a few nails or pins, and a pinch of salt.
Step 1: A branch of rosemary at the entrance
Do this one tonight. Cut or buy a branch of rosemary. Tie a bit of thread around the stem and hang it inside the entrance, or stand it in a small glass of water on the shelf by the door.
Say what it is for in your own plain words, out loud or under your breath. Write the date on a page of your own.
Where it comes from: Levinus Lemnius, a Dutch physician whose Secret Miracles of Nature was printed in English in 1658, wrote with pleasure about English houses kept sweet with herbs set through their rooms. John Brand gathers the house herbs and the rhymes against witches in Observations on Popular Antiquities (Ellis edition, 1813). Rosemary's own old line is in Banckes' Herbal, first printed in 1525 and reprinted in 1537 and 1552: lay the leaves under the head of the bed and you will be free of ill dreams.
What we changed: the sources put the herbs through the rooms and under the bed's head. The entrance is ours, because that is where the later rhymes put the guard. Rosemary under your pillow is the older half, and it costs you nothing to do both.
Step 2: Rowan and red thread
Wind red thread around a short rowan twig until the wood barely shows. Tie it off. Hang it inside the door frame, or keep it in a coat pocket or the bottom of a bag.
The rhyme is Scottish: "Rowan-tree and red thread / Make the witches tyne their speed." Tyne means lose. Robert Chambers printed it in Popular Rhymes of Scotland (1826, enlarged 1870), and the collections print it in more than one wording, so treat the words as a family rather than a formula.
The record has rowan carried in the pocket as often as set at the door. It does not have two sticks tied into a cross. That shape is modern, and it is worth knowing as modern.
If no rowan grows where you live, carry the red thread alone and write in your book that you did. Rowan berries are not food, for you or for any animal in the house, so keep the twig above reach.
Step 3: Iron on the threshold
Lay a horseshoe flat on the threshold, inside the door, or fix it above the frame if you are allowed to fix anything. No horseshoe is needed: an old iron key on a hook by the door, or an iron nail laid on the sill, is the same material doing the same job.
John Aubrey writes in Miscellanies (1696): "It is a thing very common to nail Horse-shoes on the thresholds of doors." Note where he puts it. The old place is the step underfoot, not the lintel overhead, which is why the argument about points up or points down is a later one.
The habit was still visible long after. Brand's editor counted seventeen horseshoes nailed in Monmouth Street in London in the early 1800s.
Renting: nothing has to be nailed. A horseshoe lying flat just inside the door reads as a doorstop to anyone who sees it.
Step 4: Vervain and dill about the house
Keep a small handful of dried dill, with vervain if you grow it, in a cloth bag or a dish on a shelf near the door. Or scatter a pinch across the threshold at night and sweep it up in the morning.
Michael Drayton pairs the two herbs in Nymphidia (1627): "her Vervain and her Dill, / That hindreth Witches of their Will." Brand prints the same pairing among the house herbs in the Ellis edition of 1813.
Dill is already in most spice racks, which is the point of this one. Vervain is optional, and if you cannot confirm whether a plant is safe around your animals, keep it in a closed jar on a high shelf.
Step 5: The house jar in the back of a cupboard
Fill a small jar with a few iron nails or pins, a sprig of rosemary and a pinch of salt. Close the lid. Put it at the back of a cupboard, under the sink, or on the top shelf of a closet, where nobody goes looking.
Joseph Blagrave, in Astrological Practice of Physick (1671), describes a bottle filled with pins and nails and the sufferer's own water, stopped tight and set to the fire, to turn trouble back where it came from. Jars of nails and pins have since been dug out of English houses, buried near hearths and doorways, some still sealed.
What we changed, and why: nothing of any person goes in, nobody is named, and nothing goes near heat. A sealed container must never be warmed, because the pressure has to go somewhere. Ours is a jar in a cupboard, and that is the whole working.
Pets and fire, before anything else
The mundane part comes first. A working that sets off a smoke alarm or sends a cat to the vet is not a working, it is a bad evening.
- Rosemary and dill are on the ASPCA's non-toxic list for cats and dogs. Keep sprigs out of chewing reach anyway.
- Bay, holly, ivy, garlic, mistletoe and lilies are on the toxic list, and all of them turn up in old house customs. Keep them high, or leave them out.
- Rowan berries are not food for people or animals.
- If you cannot confirm a plant, treat it as toxic and keep it in a closed container.
- A candle stands in a jar, on a plate, away from dried herbs, and never alone in a room. An LED tea light at the door does the same job with none of the worry.
- Never heat or warm a sealed jar or bottle.
What is old in these protection spells, and what is ours
This is the part most lists skip, and it is the part that lets you trust the rest.
Old, as the sources record it: the horseshoe nailed on the threshold (Aubrey, 1696), the rowan and red thread rhyme (Chambers, 1826), vervain and dill as the house pair (Drayton, 1627), rosemary among the strewing herbs and under the bed's head (Lemnius, 1658, and Banckes' Herbal, 1525), the sealed jar of pins and nails set at the house (Blagrave, 1671).
Ours, and said plainly: the rowan cross of two tied sticks, the rosemary branch placed at the entrance in particular, and a jar that contains nothing personal and never goes near a flame.
Three mistakes worth naming, none of them yours. Waiting until you can do it correctly, when the records themselves disagree with each other. Doing all five in one night, which leaves you nothing to notice. Buying a kit, when the whole set above costs a sprig, a thread, a nail and a jar.
If you would rather have a mark than a sprig, a sigil is one sentence turned into a single sign, and it hangs behind a picture frame where a visitor reads nothing at all. Three methods are worked start to finish in Runes, Sigils & Magical Alphabets, along with the runes people reach for at a door.
We keep thirty-three of these house workings, each with its label, its source and its year, in The Practical Grimoire of Protection, with renter options and the pet and fire notes on the page where the working needs them. If you want the old way for whatever else the house asks, the purse, the people, the turning year, that is The Practical Grimoire: Complete Series.
Then write your own page. One working, one source, one line about what you changed and what you noticed. That page is worth more than forty you read.
