Nine Herbs Charm: Woden’s Cure for Poison and Pain

They used to bind sickness with plants and poetry. Not with handfuls of herbs tossed together… but with nine chosen for their power and their names. And words sharp enough to strike.

The Old English Nine Herbs Charm comes from the 10th century. It calls on Woden, the same god the Norse knew as Óðinn, to strike a serpent with nine “glory-twigs.”It names each plant in turn, praises its virtue, and commands the poison to flee. Mugwort. Plantain. Lamb’s cress. Chamomile. Nettle. Crab-apple. Chervil. Fennel. And one more whose name still stirs debate among scholars. Nine is not random here… in Germanic magic, it’s a number of power, echoing through charms, laws, and myth.

If we step into Norse ground, this logic fits. Óðinn is the spell-master in Hávamál, boasting of cures for wounds and poisons. A völva could weave these plants into her Seiðr, each herb carrying both its physical virtue and its spirit-name. In the sagas, healing runes are carved onto bark, dipped in liquid, and drunk. The same could be done with herbs, words chanted over them until the air itself seemed to hum.

I picture a summer’s edge, the herbs fresh, roots still damp from the soil. A low table set outside, so the plants breathe the open air. The völva speaks their names, touching each one in turn. Her staff rests nearby, a reminder to the unseen that this work is witnessed. A pot of water steams over a small fire. When the chant ends, the herbs are crushed, steeped, and poured into a horn cup. The patient drinks under the sun, the last drop marked with a whispered rune.

And here’s the part that still speaks now. Nine is not just a number. It’s a rhythm. A way to move through the work, plant to plant, word to word, until the binding breaks and the body remembers its own strength. The herbs change. The place changes. But the pattern… the pattern stays.