Also called sleep charm, lavender sleep sachet, bedtime blessing
A bedtime ritual for restful sleep using a lavender sachet and an old English bed blessing. It draws on centuries of bedside charms and herb-strewn bedding.
Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.
Take care: Do not ingest lavender essential oil, and keep it away from cats, which are sensitive to many essential oils. Use only culinary herbs in any drink. If you have ongoing insomnia, loud snoring or daytime sleepiness, see a doctor, since sleep disorders are treatable.
This children's rhyme calls the four evangelists to stand at the corners of the bed. Protestant writers of the 1600s criticized it as a popish charm, which is how we know it was in use. It is related to the medieval White Paternoster.
Dried herbs such as lavender were tucked into mattresses and linen chests to keep beds fresh and fleas away, and many households believed sweet smells brought calm sleep.
Uses: lavender, lady's bedstraw, woodruff
Pillows stuffed with dried hops were used as a sleep aid, helped by the reputation of drowsy hop pickers. Hops have a strong smell that some people find calming and others dislike.
Uses: dried hops
Sleep charms are among the oldest English spells on record. Anglo-Saxon medical books such as the Lacnunga, compiled around the year 1000, include charms against night visitors and fevers that came in sleep. Later, the rhyme 'Matthew, Mark, Luke and John' set the evangelists at the bed's four corners; Thomas Ady quoted lines from it in his 1656 book on witchcraft as an example of popular charm-prayer.
Herbs in the bed were practical as well as magical. Early modern households strewed dried herbs in mattresses and linen to keep beds sweet and drive away fleas, and lavender, a Mediterranean plant grown in English gardens since the Middle Ages, became the favorite. Modern research on lavender scent and sleep is limited and mixed, but the ritual of slowing down at bedtime is good sleep advice on its own.
A short calming ritual with a blue candle, slow breathing and handing your worries to something outside yourself, drawing on folk customs like Guatemalan worry dolls. It is a comfort practice, not treatment for anxiety.
A small cloth pouch of dried herbs slipped inside the pillowcase, made in different eras with rosemary against evil dreams, hops for sleep, or mugwort for vivid dreams.
An Ojibwe protective charm, a small hoop netted like a spider web and hung on a baby's cradleboard to catch harm. Later widely adopted as a dream charm. This entry explains its history and gives a respectful way to keep one.
Tell us what you need and we will craft a custom spell, charm or reading for it. Or call to book a reading or a road blessing in person.
