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Of Toads and Toxins

Warning: This post is super rambley and I’m sorry

(Shout out to Courir le loup-garou for being an amazing resource)

Three things have been on my mind a lot lately: ancestors, malefica, and the toad. So imagine my happiness and surprise when reading a blog post about Toads in French-Canadian folklore/folk magic being poisoners.

Since discovering French-Canadian sorcellerie via courir le loup-garou I have been trying to incorporate parts of it into my practice as a way of connecting with my Québécois roots. I’ve even recently found a language learning app that offers Canadian French/Québécois so I plan on learning the language as a way to further connect. Very very exciting!

I’ve also been slowly getting into using poisons more in my practice, specifically working with the plants spirits as allies and less working directly with them in herbal preparations. I’ve been particularly drawn to mandrake and foxglove. Foxglove specifically for its link to the fayerie folk so it makes sense to work with as someone who follows Fayerie Traditionalism.

~(I blame Coby of The Poisoner’s Apothecary for the poison path focus lol)~

In connection to the poison path is malefic magic. The idea of the witch as a poisoner, a blighter of crops, a caster of curses. Not that I’m someone who wants to just throw hexes around like they’re nothing but I’m more interested in studying them and researching how they operate magically.

The toad spirit has been one that has floated in and out of my craft for YEARS never fully leaving but not always being of high importance. I think that’s really because I’ve never figured out how to work with this spirit in a way that makes sense to my and my craft. Reading the blog on toads in French-Canadian folklore has given me some possible inspiration. I’m hoping to commune with the spirit of Toad to learn more of cursing and malefica and to employ my toad imp to carry out any curses or hexes that I may weave.

‘The Druids’ Julia Tar

Our Wish for the End, Me, Digital Collage, 2020

Agrippa ~ Of the seals, and characters of natural things.

Everything therefore hath its character pressed upon it by its star for some peculiar effect, especially by that star which doth principally govern it: and these characters contain, and retain in them the peculiar natures, virtues and roots of their stars ….

By staff, stone, flame, and bone! 🐐

Ukrainian folk haircare minute with Red: if you wish your hair to grow long, as you comb it, whisper, "Grow as long as water, as quickly as grass".

Sean Mundy

Cycles, 2020

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"The forest did not scare her; rather, she wanted to be like it: ageless and impervious, cruel and beautiful. Death could not touch it."

-Emily Lloyd-Jones, The Bone Houses

But to make a Milkhare, do the following:

On takes nine different coloured thread of woolen yarn and go with them to a crossroads on a Thursday night between twelve and one o’clock. Here, one makes a fire from nine different kinds of wood and wind counter-clockwise, around the fire, a ball of the woolen yarn threads. When the ball is ready, one drops three drops of blood out of the left ring finger with the following words: ” If you will run for me here on earth, then I shall burn for you in Hell.”

Then one takes and whips the Milkhare with a birch twig and says: ”Money you will draw, butter you will drawn (or whatever one wants the milkhare to draw.)” Everything one desires one can get the Milkhare to draw, and the Milkhare follows generation after generation.

- Svartkonstböcker; A compendium of the Swedish Black Art Tradition, Dr. Thomas K. Johnson

Oh mirror of the otherworld to what depth do you call.

Far beyond the threshold yet not that far at all.

Oh mirror of the otherworld to what visions do you see.

Stars that shine like diamonds in the blackness of the sea.