Much amused by this. Spells of that sort are widespread in many cultures across our world. There are also some done in Autumn or at Midwinter with nuts and what happens when they are roasted in the fire, or with apples, which should be peeled in one long strip and the peel thrown over the shoulder. The thrown peel was then inspected to see if it formed a pattern or letters, which were meant to be the initials of the hoped for lover, or a tool of his trade (like a plough or a sheep for a farmer, a boat or net or hook for a sailor or a fisherman, a hammer for a smith).
Some such piseog, small spells, required that the woman work it while naked (or ‘skyclad’ as the wiccans phrase it, including the seed-sowing spells. The implications are obvious). In those spells the woman would walk three times around some sacred object (originally something like a standing stone or sacred well, in more recent centuries a church) while scattering behind her the seeds of some useful plant and chanting a calling spell, something like ‘Hempseed I sow, hempseed I sow. Now, my own dear, come after me here, and mow, and mow’. At which point, if she looked back, she should see the young man harvesting her crop.
Some English spells invoked saints, for example, the one for inducing a true dream of the lover. Suitable flowers were gathered into a bouquet, tied with a ribbon, and placed under the maiden’s pillow with the invocation ‘Saint Luke, Saint Luke, be kind to me! In dreams, let me my true love see’.
The local Aboriginal tribes have a version which uses the flowers of the meemeei tree woven into the woman’s hair while singing a spell, which is rather lovely. And my folk may comb their hair at a man, with intent.
Have you seen the piece that Unlos and I did a few years back, ‘Nine Flowers’, with her glorious art and and my poetry, in which Tuuri is depicted working such a spell? It should be on both the art and poetry threads, with the skyclad version on the mature board.
