Also called garlic braid charm, skorda, garlic against evil
Hanging or carrying garlic to keep harm away, one of the most widespread protective customs in the world, from Homer's magic herb moly to the Balkan vampire lore that gave us Dracula's garlic.
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Take care: Garlic is toxic to dogs and cats, so hang it out of their reach. Never store raw garlic in oil at room temperature, which can grow botulism. Garlic juice can irritate or burn skin, so do not rub cut cloves on the skin.
Hermes gives Odysseus the magic herb moly to protect him from Circe's potion. Linnaeus later named a yellow garlic Allium moly after it, though scholars still debate what plant Homer meant.
Uses: moly (unidentified plant)
Ancient Greeks left garlic at crossroads for Hecate. In modern Greece garlic braids hang in shops and homes against the mati, the evil eye, and a common saying is to repeat 'skorda', garlic, after a compliment.
Uses: garlic
Garlic was rubbed on doors, windows and chimneys or hung up against demons and the walking dead, and in Romania and Armenia cloves could be placed in the mouth of a suspected vampire's corpse. Bram Stoker made the garlic flowers in Lucy's room famous in 1897.
Uses: garlic, garlic flowers
Garlic's protective reputation is ancient. In Book 10 of the Odyssey, Hermes hands Odysseus a magic herb, moly, to resist Circe, and later botanists linked it to wild garlics. The philosopher Theophrastus describes garlic left at crossroads as an offering to the goddess Hecate. Garlic was also a staple for Greek and Roman soldiers and sailors, and bulbs were found in Tutankhamun's tomb.
In Central and Eastern Europe, folk belief set garlic against demons, werewolves and vampires, hung in windows or rubbed on keyholes and chimneys. Reports of vampire panics in Serbia and the Habsburg borderlands in the 1720s and 1730s brought this lore to Western readers, and in 1897 Bram Stoker's Dracula fixed garlic as the classic vampire ward. In Albania and Greece garlic still guards against the evil eye.
A blue glass eye bead hung in the home or worn on the body so that envious or admiring looks are caught and reflected before they can do harm.
A sealed jar of salt, iron nails, rosemary and other protective herbs kept by the door or buried near the house, the most popular modern protection spell and a direct descendant of the English witch bottle.
Two rowan twigs bound into an equal-armed cross with red thread and placed over doors, byres and cradles to keep witches and fairies out.
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