Purple Locoweed
(Oxytropis lambertii) Info
The
Navajo offered this plant during the Night Chant (petroglyph below shows
shaman wearing a Bighorn headdress for this ceremony). This ceremony is actually
9 days long--4 days of purification, 4 days when the terrible but benevolent
ones arrive, and one day of healing. This elaborate ritual involves many
different songs, sandpaintings, various herbs, and the ceremonial sweat
lodge. The Night Chant is for curing insanity, blindness, warping, crippling,
facial paralysis, and deafness. It is usually conducted between the first
frost and the first thunderstorm. It can be so expensive to conduct that
whole families have been bankrupted by sponsoring a Night Chant for a sick
member. Some native people sprinkled their
corn crop with an extract of this herb to keep off grasshoppers, which were
considered to be disguised ghosts or familiars. This plant thus has
a history of being magickally protective. It is worth using as a protectant
against spirits or negative magick, especially when experienced in the winter.
Top
In
Herbalism:
Europeans have also utilized this plant as a homeopathic remedy
that in combination with other remedies is used against anxiety (please
be aware that homeopathic remedies do not involve the ingestion of the herb
itself and are vibrational in nature). I believe this use along with its
form makes purple locoweed a Mercury
plant. It has no other known herbal use.
Although this particular Oxytropis
does not usually contain the dangerous alkaloid responsible for poisoning
livestock, especially horses, addicting them and driving them mad, it should still be considered poisonous and
not ingested. However, wild animals like antelopes and mountain sheep can
graze on it without problems, and wild birds enjoy the seeds. Top
In
the Garden:
This North American perennial plant grows wild from the middle provinces
of Canada all the way south to Arizona and Oklahoma. It's found in mountains
up to 8000 ft. The base of the plant forms a clump that sends up flower
stalks, each with up to 25 flowers on it. The hermaphroditic flowers appear
May-July and can be bright blue, purple, or fuchsia; they are very attractive
to Monarch butterflies. The flowers gradually give way to the pods in August
(you will get plenty seeds if you want them). This plant likes full sun
and dryish soil, such as is found in dry prairies, gravelly areas (good
for rock gardens), and bluffs. Like many members of the pea family, this
plant helps enrich the soil by fixing nitrogen from the air and depositing
it in the ground, so it helps the transformation of rocky soil. Purple locoweed
is also known as rattleweed and Lambert crazyweed. Top
How to grow Purple Locoweed:
How to grow purple locoweed: Nick seed and soak in hot water for 24-72 hours
or until seeds swell, changing water every six hours. Sow in sterile planting
medium as deep as the seed is wide and keep at room temperature to germinate
in 30 days. Or sow outside in fall or spring and cover with 1/4" of soil
to germinate in spring. Transplant to full sun and good soil on the sandy or
gravelly side that never has any standing water or shade. It gets 6-12"/0.3
m high and is perennial to zone 3 (-40F/-40C). General growing
info Top
Uses in Witchcraft & Magick:
Healing Rituals
Repelling Ghosts
Protection
Spells
Mercury Herb
© 2004, 2014 Harold A. Roth; No reproduction without permission