Fern seeds
From Traditional Witchcraft Wiki Project
Fern Seeds, once widely believed to grant those in possession of them invisibility, the asexual spore of the Pteridophyta (ecological division of the Plantae kingdom)is dropped from small containers on the underside of the fronds called sporangia (the part most usually mistakenly referred to as seed). Under ideal conditions the spores are released, resembling a fine dust, then being transported in a variety of ways to various favorable and unfavorable locations for the production of a prothallus or gametophyte (an early infant-like stage of a ferns development).
Fern Seed In Magic and Folklore
The most famous ability of fern seed is its ability to make those who carry it invisible, especially when collected on Midsummer night betwixt midnight and one o'clock. The spore powder is then sprinkled over the person like a dust, thus conferring the invisibility. It is also said that those able to gather fern seed would be able to daunt even the devil; an English folkname for the fern being Devil Brushes.
Fern seeds were and are common additions to philtres, but should to be gathered on the eve of St. John's Day. When fern seed is sprinkled upon the floor as a dust, those travellers who walk across it are said to become confused and lose their way. Such a dust when applied to the eyelids is also said to enable a person to see the Fair Folk. Seed harvested from a fern growing upon a tree, when crushed and compounded with water, is said to make a philtre capable of alleviating stomach pain.
Fern seed is said to bloom like gold or fire on Midsummer Eve, which identifies the golden hue of fern seed with the fiery festival that marks the height of the sun. By sympathy it is said that to hold such golden seeds within one's hand will enable them to find a vein of gold or the treasures of the earth, whose whereabouts will be revealed by a shining blue flame. In Russia the treasure is said to revealed by throwing the seed up into the air, and it will fall like a star on the very spot where a treasure lies hidden. Others believed that treasure would be brought to them by the Devil if they sat beside a fern on St. John's night. Placed in the purse, fern seed is said to ensure one never wants for money.
Frazer suggests that the association between fern seed and fire came before the identification with gold, which links it to both the Midsummer and Midwinter solstices. He relates an intriguing German story where a hunter is said to have shot the sun on Midsummer Day at noon, and from the sun three drops of blood fell down, which he caught in a white cloth, and these blood-drops were the fern-seed; this identifies fern seed as the blood of the sun and as an emanation of the sun’s golden fire.
