Cinquefoil

Cinquefoil is a European garden flower which became a favorite mojo in Southern tradition HooDoo. It is also known as Five Finger Grass, Silverweed, Septafoil, and many other names. Like many of the other herbs with palmately compound (shaped like a hand) leaves, Cinquefoil is seen as a helping hand to aid in getting us what we want, or a protective agent. It is also widely used to aid in courtroom proceedings and legal issues, to dream of a future lover, to gain favor in asking requests of employers and other authority figures, for purification, love, and of course, gambling.

There are a number of species and garden varieties of Potentilla species, Potentilla reptans, P. tormentilla, P. canadensis among them. All are used in the same way. I am not sure which one I have been growing for years, but it has more leaves of seven leaflets than five, so it may have more powers than the reputed five of wisdom, love, money, health, and power. Now, you can get Cinquefoil, or Five Finger Grass fairly easily on the metaphysical market. What I offer, as with my other home-grown herbs, is ritually harvested Cinquefoil, gathered on Thursdays in the waxing moon. Also, everyone else sells it chopped up (cut and sifted) but then you can’t appreciate the lovely hand-shaped leaflets! I dry mine pressed in a book, so you can see the mojo, the Doctrine of Signatures which gives Five Finger grass its powers.

Cinquefoil does not make an essential oil. It is a mildly grassy-smelling herb, and there is no way you could get it to produce a scent to distill into an essential oil. For any recipe that calls for "Cinquefoil Oil" here is what I would do: Get one of these Cinquefoil specimens, and crush it or tuck it ornamentally into a small bottle on a Thursday just after the New Moon. Fill the bottle with Almond oil, Jojoba oil, Apricot Kernel oil, or some other unscented base oil. Let it steep till the next Full Moon, and then use as directed.

The below correspondences are vis Cunningham, Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs in plain text, C.L. Zalewski, Herbs in Magic and Alchemy in brackets, or my own interpretations in parenthesis.

For other potions to bring Luck, see my blog article.

For other potions for protection, see my blog article on magick of protection.