Nine Sacred Herbs

The **Nine Sacred Herbs** are a combination of nine herbs that, when mixed with honey as a binding agent, can act as an antidote to nine supernatural venoms. It was first introduced in the series by Chris Argent, who gave the list of ingredients to Melissa McCall when he was dying as a result of the toxin coating the Ghost Riders' whips *("Ghosted")*, which had gotten into the lashes they had whipped into his body during their last battle. *("Relics")*

One of the herbs mentioned by Argent was mugwort; the others were mentioned by Melissa to be somewhat easily found between "raiding the hospital pharmacy, the homeopath downtown, and the salad bar," though Argent and Melissa did not discuss what these other herbs were onscreen.

According to Argent, if the herbs are mixed incorrectly, they can cause the venom or toxin to become more potent, killing the infected individual. Argent only knew the list of herbs by their Celtic names, and, after reciting these herbs to her, he finally said "*Mel*... you have to add... you have to add...," causing her to have to figure out how to mix them herself, at great risk to Argent's life. Though she initially thought he was simply calling her by the nickname "Mel," she eventually reasoned that Argent was not a man with a tendency to use nicknames, which then led her to realize that he was trying to tell her she needed to bind the herbs with honey, the Celtic name of which is *mel*. Fortunately, with these revelations, she was able to make it correctly, and Argent made a complete recovery.

Melissa's concoction using the Nine Sacred Herbs was then used on two other occasions—to treat the full-body burns sustained by Peter Hale when he jumped on the back of a Ghost Rider's horse and rode through the rift between the "real world" and the Phantom Train Station *("Heartless")*, and to treat the wounds caused by the Ghost Riders' attempts to exploit his ability to traverse between the "real world" and the Phantom Train Station in order to try to merge the worlds so the Wild Hunt could move on from Beacon Hills. *("Riders on the Storm")*

After her son, Scott, graduated from high school, she made sure to keep a large supply of the Nine Sacred Herbs, and likely many more medicinal and mystical herbs and plants, in order to continue her work as a healer of those affected by supernatural injuries, alongside Alan Deaton. *("Said the Spider to the Fly")*

## Real-World Mythology

The "Nine Herbs" refers to an Old English charm recorded in the 900s in *Lacnunga*, an Anglo-Saxon medical compilation in the manuscript which has references to both the Christian faith and English/Germanic paganism and folklore (despite Chris Argent's understanding of the herbs having had Celtic roots). Interestingly enough, the poem mentions Woden, the Germanic god associated with the Wild Hunt, also known as Woden's Hunt, the group of phantom beings and Hellhounds whose presence on the show necessitated the Nine Sacred Herbs' usage in the series.

The poem is said to refer to at least nine plants, and there are a variety of translations for the names of them that have been proposed by scholars over the years. The most common ones include (with some having conflicting translations):

* *Mucgwyrt* - mugwort
* *Wegbrade* - plantain
* *Stune* - lamb's cress
* *Stiðe*- nettle
* *Attorlaðe* - cockspur grass or betony
* *Maegðe* - mayweed (a genus which includes German chamomile)
* *Wergulu* - crab-apple
* *Fille* - thyme or chervil
* *Finule* - fennel

While in the series, the Nine Sacred Herbs are supposed to be mixed with honey, in the real-life Nine Herbs Charm, the reader is instructed to grind the herbs to dust and mix them with old soap and apple residue. The charm is them meant to be sung three times over each of the herbs and the apple before they are prepared, into the mouth and both of the ears of the wounded, and over the wound itself prior to the application of the salve to the wound.