A Herb of Saturn, a Light Against the Dark

Culpeper placed mullein under Saturn. Its use as a torch gave it a place in folk magic as a plant of light against darkness and of protection against evil spirits and enchantment: it was carried to keep off wild animals and the workings of witches, and some have proposed it as the moly, the protective herb Hermes gives Odysseus against the spells of Circe. Its tall pale torch of a flower-spike, standing alone on waste ground, made it a natural emblem of guidance and of light held up in dark places. The hag's taper is thus doubly named for the two sides of its lore, the witch and the light that guards against her.

Mullein seeds contain compounds mildly toxic to fish, and steeping crushed seed in a stream to stupefy and catch fish was a documented folk fishing technique in parts of Europe and among some Native American groups, a practical rather than magical use of the plant's one genuinely toxic part, now illegal as a fishing method in most places but recorded here as ethnobotanical history. The tall solitary flower-spike, sometimes reaching six feet or more in a single season, made mullein a natural boundary marker as well as a torch, so that a stand of the plant could serve, quite apart from any magic, simply to mark a path or a grave in open country.