Amulets
Herbs are often worn or carried in order to tap their specific powers. Following are several traditional herbal amulets, some of which are questionable, some fanciful, but all fascinating and potentially useful.
To see ghosts: Carry lavender and inhale its scent.
To allay fear: Carry a mixture of nettle and yarrow.
To detect witches: Carry a sachet of rue, maiden-hair, agrimony, broom-straw, and ground ivy.
To be courageous: Wear a fresh borage flower, or carry mullein.
To avoid military service: Wear the four-leaved clover if you wish to avoid duty.
To ensure safety and protection on a journey: Comfrey worn or carried will safeguard you.
To prevent storms and wreckage while at sea: Put a garlic clove in your purse or in your pocket. In the South Pacific or in Hawaii wear a garland of ti leaves.
To guard against rape: Wear the heather to avoid all acts of passion.
To keep one from dreaming: Hang a sprig of lemon verbena around the neck.
To conceive: Wear the mistletoe, the cyclamen, or the bistort.
To prevent weariness while walking: Put mugwort in the shoe.
To keep venemous beasts and wild animals afar: Wear avens or mullein.
To keep others from deceiving you: Wear the pimpernel or snapdragon.
To keep disease afar: Wear a sprig of rue around the neck. (Rue can cause dermatitis.)
To enable a soldier to escape his or her enemies: Wear the vervain and you shall accomplish this.
To avoid being sent to the gallows: Wear or carry a carnation.
To ensure victory: Wear woodruff to win.
To ensure that friendly words are spoken to you: Wear the heliotrope.
To enter the underworld: Carry an apple, or the branch of an apple tree that bears buds, flowers, and fully ripened fruit.
To regain lost manhood: Carry an acorn or mandrake root.
To remain youthful: Carry an acorn.
To prevent drunkeness: Wear a chaplet of saffron, crocus, parsley, or rue to prolong your enjoyment. (Rue can cause dermatitis.)
To see faeries: Gather wild thyme and carry it with you, or put it on the eyelids (with your eyes closed) and sleep on a faerie hill.
To be a successful fisherman: Carry a bit of the hawthorn.
To see a unicorn: As this beast usually lives among ash trees, carry a bit of the wood or leaves and you may see one. Or lie down among ashes and place one of its leaves on your chest and wait for one to make itself known.