Wart Charming

Wart charming was one of the very first magics I learned how to perform. By third grade, I'd learned all about wart charming, water witching, the SATOR square and Abracadabra pyramid, various herbal cures, astrology, and a whole host of folk remedies and "superstitions". I freely shared this knowledge to help friends and classmates. Yep, I was conjuring in only grade school.

Warts are caused by several strains of human papillomavirus, HPV for short. That's right, they don't come from toads. I provide this information as what it is: folklore, folk medicine, and folk magic.Your absolute best best for getting rid of warts is to see your medical doctor. Of course, that doesn't mean you can't charm them away in conjunction with treatment.

I'd be writing until my hands were cramped if I tried to cover every single wart charming method I know, so I've decided to only include methods I was taught first-hand. The methods I've read about in books are already preserved for history. This is my history.

The important thing to remember here is that prayer is always involved. Sometimes it's as simple as "In the name of The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit".

-Rub the wart with a sliced potato/apple/tomato and bury it.
-Rub each wart with a tomato seed/an apple seed/a pebble/a penny/a bean. Bury the items off your property or at a crossroads, or toss them over your shoulder into a crossroads/running body of water/old well/rotting tree or tree stump and walk away without looking back.
-Strip away the bark from a switch (usually hazel, sassafras or willow) to reveal the inner green part, rub the wart with it, and stick it in the ground. Walk away without looking back at it.
-Cut as many notches as you have warts into a switch, rubbing each one on the wart it was made for, and stick it in the ground. Walk away without looking back at it.
-Cut as many notches as you have warts into a root cutting (sassafras is one) and bury it.
-Rub it with bacon fat, and either bury it (when it decays, so will the wart) or leave it somewhere where it will be eaten by animals or insects.
-Wash it with water that has collected in an old stump.
-Wash it away in a running creek/stream/spring.
-Rub it with a bone and bury it.
-Sell someone your warts. Literally, you get another person to agree to buy your warts for a penny/button/pin/pebble each. Get rid of whatever they pay you with.
-Touch it to/rub it on a corpse or something that has touched or been rubbed on a corpse. (People would do this discreetly at a funeral.)

Ok, now this last one is disturbing and gross. I've heard it only once, and I was really young at the time and did not want to know more!

-Kill a toad, cut it open, and rub it on your warts.

I know, ugh. Please don't hurt animals! I guess it's in the same vein as other "hair of the dog" treatments, believed to work in the same way that some people believe doing the same with a snake cures snakebite.