Nine Herbs Charm
The "Nine Herbs Charm" is an Old English charm recorded in the tenth-century CE Anglo-Saxon medical compilation known as "Lacnunga", which survives on the manuscript, Harley MS 585, in the British Library, at London. The charm involves the preparation of nine plants. The numbers nine and three, significant in Germanic paganism and later Germanic folklore, are mentioned frequently within the charm. The poem contains references to Christian and English Pagan elements, including a mention of the major Germanic god Woden. According to R. K. Gordon, the poem is "clearly an old heathen thing which has  been subjected to Christian censorship." Malcolm Laurence Cameron states that chanting the poem aloud results in a "marvellously incantatory effect". Poem contents. Plants. The charm refers to at least nine plants. Scholars have proposed various translations for the plant names, including the following: At the end of the charm, prose instructions are given to take the above-mentioned plants, crush them to dust, and to mix them with old soap and apple residue. Further instructions are given to make a paste from water and ashes, boil fennel into the paste, bathe it with beaten egg – both before and after the  prepared salve is applied. Further, the charm directs the reader to sing the charm three times over each of the herbs as well as the apple before they are prepared, into the mouth of the wounded, both of their ears, and over the wound itself prior to the application of the salve. Woden. The poem contains one of two clear Old English mentions of "Woden" in Old English poetry; the other is "Maxims I" of the "Exeter Book". The paragraph reads as follows: Suggestions have been made that this passage describes Woden coming to the assistance of the herbs through  his use of nine twigs, each twig inscribed with the runic first-letter initial of a plant. In the charm, the parallels between Christ and Woden/Othinn (the Norse version of Woden) illustrate the mixing of paganism and Christianity in order to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. The significance of Othinn is that he gained knowledge of runes by hanging himself of Yggdrasil in self sacrifice. Christ gained his knowledge of the charm while hanging on the cross in his own act of self sacrifice. Here, the lines are blended between what is completely Christian or pagan. Nine Herbs