Blessed Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary to all on the Gregorian Calendar, and Happy Feast of St. Stephen the Protomartyr for those on the Julian! In my neck of the woods, today is Sveti Stefan Vetroviti, as our nickname for St. Stephen is “the Windy” or “the Windswept”, in thanks to his continued syncretism with the god of wind, Stribog. This is a powerful feast of the zduhać, vertovnjak, oblačar, gradobranitelj, and zmajevit čovek class of weather-manipulating healers and sorcerers, given Stribog’s enduring patronage of their arts, through his fatherhood of the Vjetreni Vojvoda spirits and his own fights against the ala, hala, german, and aždaja. Moreover, it is a day not only associated with the collection of hagstones, but their deployment in charms for knotting the wind, protecting livestock, and providing homes for spirits.
One of our recent episodes on our podcast, The Frightful Howls You May Hear, featured an overview of some of the basic lore around hagstones from the British, Germanic, and Slavic contexts. We’ve been so overwhelmed by the outpouring of support, love, and engagement on the podcast from so many of you; the warm reception and incredible feedback we’ve received has truly nourished us in our creativity and excitement to share more. We are so deeply grateful to everyone who has sent in comments, shared their thoughts on the episodes, and signed up to support our Patreon where we post bonus content such as our show notes, Salt’s incredible monthly astrological almanac, our Q&As, and far more! Over the next few weeks, we hope to share with our readers here on the blog not only a little of what we’ve been up to behind the scenes, but also new offerings to come in the form of courses, mentorships, readings, charms, and far more. It’s truly been a blast for the three of us to share more regularly, via our bi-weekly episodes, aspects of folkloric and magical research we’ve been up to, as well as tidbits of our personal adventures and sorcerous journeys.
The Hagstone episode (also adding the YouTube link since we only made the channel a few episodes after the launch, and most of our viewers are on Spotify and Apple Music—so for those of you who prefer YT, we’re finally live!) came about while the three of us were scattered over the past two months, travelling for work, spiritual training, conferences, and everything in between. Even on my travels, I had been collecting them where I could see (or, in the case of their hissing, hear) them, and asked Salt and Key if they’d be interested in contributing some German and English sources to an introductory episode on these most reliable of magical companions.
I thought it might be helpful to share some of what we went over in the episode here as well, in honour of Sveti Stefan Vetroviti. While we covered a great many names that holed stones have been referred to across Europe, “hagstone” is the name we’ve all used with each other in English from the beginning, and it’s certainly the one that’s stuck in our common parlance, as well as across occult spaces. That being said, while the list of names is especially long, a sample of our favourites from the episode include mare stones, bitch daughter stones, witch stones, and adder stones in English; Lochsteine, Trutensteine, Schratensteine (see our episode on the Schrat for more on this one!), and Hühnergott in German; and a great many coming from the South Slavic dialects, of which I’ll provide below with their translations from Serbian:
- Chicken god (pileći bog)
- Identical in meaning to Hühnergott, which itself is believed to be a German neologism form Slavic languages, referring to their use in the protection of livestock and especially chickens by being hung over their coops
- Dog’s heart (psećim srcem)
- Dog’s god (psećim bogom)
- Dog’s luck (pasja sreća)
- These dog-related motifs are a reference to Veles, lord of cattle, wolves, agriculture, the wilderness, magic, the chthonic world, and far more
- Perun’s arrow (Perunovom strijelom)
- Thunderbolt (gromovnikom)
- Thunderstone (gromovnički kamen or kamen groma)
- These three come from the belief that these stones are formed when Perun, the god of thunder, order, and the heavenly realms, strikes the holes through with his furious lightning
- Serpent stone (zmijski kamen)
- from the belief that holed stones are black eggs from which basilisks are hatched
- Snake’s poison (zmijski otrov)
- Serpent’s egg (zmijsko jaje)
- Witch’s stone (kamen veštica)
- God’s eye (božje oko)
The uses for holey stones are all but endless. They protect livestock from curses, witches, and being ridden to the point of exhaustion by fairies, heal toothaches, headaches, and all manner of illnesses (in the Balkans, a common technique is to sandwich the afflicted area with a hagstone on either side, and conjure them to pass the pain through them and away, so that they may be disposed of later), ward against nightmares, and allow for the seating and ensoulment of spirits (in my tradition, this is typically done with seven-holed hagstones, which are especially prized). Some cultures recognize classifications of hagstones and their abilities and proclivities based on number of holes (with each having their own uses), whether they are seen as belonging to fire or water (based on their shape and hardness), whether they are male or female (less commonly used, but often having to do with roundness and pointedness), and in which location and weather conditions they were found. I went over a few variations from Slavic speaking countries with regards to these in the episode, though these classifications can become so detailed and so varied that they could take up their own chapbook!
One of our favourite charms that we shared, coming from Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft, is the famous “Man of Might” rhyme:
Tha mon o´ micht, he rade o´nicht
wi´ neither swerd ne ferd ne licht.
He socht tha mare, he fond tha mare,
he bond tha mare wi´ her ain hare.
Ond gared her swar by midder-micht
she wolde nae mair rid o´ nicht
whar ance he rade, thot mon o´ micht.
With the modern English being:
The man of might, he rode all night
with neither sword, nor army, nor light.
He sought the mare, he found the mare,
he bound the mare with her own hair.
He made her swear by mothers might
that no more would she ride at night
where once he, rode that man of might.
A common charm one can make from this cantrip is to braid horse hair (especially white horse hair, given that the “man of might” is none other than St. George in many understandings) through a hagstone while repeatedly uttering the verse, making an offering to your spirits and the good saint immediately after in thanks to empowering this anti-nightmare ward. I’ve made several of these for friends, family, and especially children’s cribs and found them to be exceptionally useful. The one which hangs over my and Salt’s bed is a two-holed hagstone, with the horsehair looping through the topmost hole, and the other being used to assist me to return to my body in dream and spirit flight.
Indeed, a very similar charm comes to us from the mid-16th century, as recorded by Thomas Blundeville of Norfolk in his The Order of Curing Horses Diseases (1566):
In nomine patris, &c. —-Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti
Saint George our Ladyes knight,
He walked day so did he night,
Until he her founde,
He her beate and he her bounde,
Till truly her trouth she hym plight,
That she would not come with the night,
There as Saynt George our Ladyes knight
Named was three tymes, Saint George.
Holed flint stones were typically hung, like iron, to ward people and horses alike from being ridden by night-mares—in the case of the latter, they could be placed around the manger or the neck of the animal. Blundeville considered this to be a “foolishe charme” that was to be written down while hanging a “flynte stone that hath a hole of his owne”, which was naught but a silly way to con money out of “playne folks purses”. Yet, much like Reginald Scot, in his very disdain he ultimately preserved for us this oral charm in writing, allowing us to make good use of it even now.
While hagstones require no special ritual to make them “work” or to activate their virtues, there exists plenty of folklore with regards to how they should be acquired. J. Geoffrey Dent’s article “The Holed Stone Amulet and Its Uses” (1965) tells us that there is evidence from the South of England of beliefs that hagstones should be received as gifts, or, even better, stolen. Generational stones, that is, those which had been passed on throughout successive owners within a family, all used for the same purpose, are perhaps the most powerful through their repeated victorious efficacies, and presumably all the more potent if stolen. Yet in the Balkans, we repeatedly encounter the lore that hagstones indeed will only properly “activate” and bond with their owner if they are deliberately found within nature by them. I shared a few charms for how to actually go about and acquire them in this way, both with regards to luring them to you, such that spirits reveal their places and that you stumble upon them naturally, as well as how to seize their fortune once they are found in the episode.
Regardless of what you choose to say out loud (for ultimately many of these “charms” are oral prayers passed on that someone may have at some point invented, or, in the case of bajalice, received from a spirit), a good way to hunt them is to take off your left shoe, and walk barefoot along the shore or river while dropping one millet seed from your closed left fist into the ground at each step and repetition of your prayer. In this way, the spirits of the land are petitioned to receive your blessing of fertility, and accept your alm in exchange for revealing your prize.
Many of the oral charms we shared ultimately serve the purpose of bonding a stone to you, especially if they are not already claimed by one of your spirits. The three of us have often had the shared experience of bringing home a great many hagstones from a hunt only to find that 2/3rds of them had been immediately spoken for by our spirits, who wanted them for their own ends, vessels, and amulets. I’ve often had to string them in groups of seven, nine, thirteen, or twenty-one as soon as I’ve brought them through my door as a saint or house spirit immediately wanted them placed over an important threshold. In cases in which I’ve bought hagstones over Etsy, specifically because I was searching for particular numbers of holes that a spirit requested, I’ve left them before my spirits in small bird’s nests that I’ve collected for them, such that they can incubate, receive the rays of the sun, and lubricate their hissing through the maws of their gates.
While different aspects of lore disagree on whether or not the thread which hagstones are hung on should be knotted or not, the notion that they should be strung up with natural material (such as wool, linen, or hemp) is fairly universal. If I’m about to use mine to scry, I will often make use of a fairly well-known technique across the Balkans to whisper through the whole what I wish to see while moving it around my left palm with my right index finger. Afterwards, I will breathe through the whole, and place it to my right eye while closing the left, and then scry for the augury—or directly at the sky in the morning to witness the rising star, that it may be captured later within that very stone.
There’s so much more that could be said on their collection, uses, and enchantments, such that we’re already planning the next edition of our hagstone episode series. If there’s anything in particular any of our readers are curious about or would like to be included, please feel free to write to us below, and we’ll do our best to include some tips and folklore on each matter in the next installment! For now, happy hunting, and thank you all so deeply for supporting our podcast!
With Cunning & Command 