Thorn

From Traditional Witchcraft Wiki Project

A thorn is a sharp point on a stem or branch. Although thorn is often used as a folk name for hawthorn and blackthorn, such are found on many other plants and trees, such as roses, gorse, brambles and so forth.

The word thorn comes from the Germanic thurnuz, which in turn derives from the Proto Indo-European *trnus and *(s)ter-n- (meaning "thorny plant"), from the base *ster, meaning "stiff".

Thorns In Folk Magic

The thorn is used by some as a needle to pierce the witch's doll, mommet, poppet, picture or dagyde. It is used in a similar way to pierce an animal's heart (normally from a sheep or bullock) as part of an old piece of protective folk magic, and the pierced heart is then suspended in the chimney. Other effigies and objects may be similarly pierced, such as an image of a phallus, animal testicles, and so forth, normally to cause harm.

In some traditions of witchcraft two families of the thorn tree are considered sacred in folk magic; these being the Blackthorn and the Whitethorn (Hawthorn). Where the Blackthorn was considered to represent the horned god as impregnator and the Hawthorn being representative of the Earth goddess as life-giver. In Cornish folk magic, the Blackthorn was used for cursing, in cases such as the Blasting rod, and the Hawthorn used in curing, for it's healing and poisoning properties.

The Letter Thorn

Thorn, or þorn (Þ, þ), is a letter in the Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic alphabets. It was also used in medieval Scandinavia, but was later replaced with th. The letter originated from the rune in the Elder Fuþark, called thorn in the Anglo-Saxon and thurs ("giant") in the Scandinavian rune poems, its reconstructed Proto-Germanic name being *Thurisaz.

Th can be sounded as the "th" in "thick" or as the "th" in "the". In Modern Icelandic the usage is restricted to the former. Over time the shape of the letter thorn changed, and began to become almost indistinguishable from the letter "Y". In time the letter "Y" came to be used to denote the "th" of thorn, which resulted in ye for "the". However, despite the use of the letter "Y" in the spelling, it was still pronouned as "the" and not "ye". Furthermore "ye" only ever means "the" and not "you", which is a common mistake of those seeking to create pseudo-archaic sounding phrases.