Fern
- Latin name: Male Shield Fern - Dryopteris Filix-mas; Bracken Fern - Pteris Aquilina; Moonwort - Botrychium lunaria.
- Folk or Common names: Fern
- Parts Used:
- Herbal usage: The Male Fern's root can be used in a powdered form to make a remedy that will kill tapeworms . The root powder can also be added to salve for wounds and burns. Bracken Fern can be eaten - the inhabitants of Palmaand Gomera (islands of the Canary Group) use Bracken as food, grinding the rhizome to powder and mixing it with a small quantity of barley, and the young fronds are eaten in Japan. In Siberia and in Norway, the uncoiled fronds have been used for brewing a kind of beer.
- Magical History & Associations: Bracken Fern is associated with Mercury and Royal Fern with Saturn. All ferns have an earth association.
- Magickal usage: Male Fern can be used to bring luck and prosperity. If it is carried, it will attract women to the carrier and if it is burned outdoors it will attract rain. If the Fern is dried over a balefire on the day of the Summer Solstice, it can then be used as a protective amulet. The 'seeds' from a Fern are said to render one invisible - but only if the seeds are gathered on Mid-Summer's eve. Moonwort is an herb of immortality and must be gathered by moonlight if it is to work. Moonwort aids in opening locks - Culpepper says: 'Moonwort (they absurdly say) will open locks and unshoe such horses as tread upon it; but some country people call it unshoe the horse.' Moonwort was also said to have been was used by the Alchemists, who thought it had power to condensate or to convert quicksilver into pure silver.