Bearberry

Description

Used in magic by those wishing to increase their psychic ability, it can be added to sachets and ingested in a tea to increase psychic abilities and divination. Powdered herb can be sprinkled around the alter area or into burning candles in divination rituals, and leaves can be made into sachets to help increase psychic powers

Also known as Uva ursi it is an evergreen shrub with small, tough, shiny leaves found growing in hilly areas of upper midwest North America and Canada but Bearberry was first documented in The Physicians of Myddfai, a 13th-century Welsh herbal. It was also described by Clusius in 1601, and recommended for medicinal use in 1763 by Gerhard and others. Often called uva-ursi, from the Latin uva, “grape, berry of the vine”, ursi, “bear”, i.e. “bear’s grape”. It first appeared in the London Pharmacopoeia in 1788.

Folk tales suggest Marco Polo thought the Chinese were using it as a diuretic. Bearberry leaves are used in traditional medicine in parts of Europe, and are officially classified as a phytomedicine. Native Americans use bearberry leaves with tobacco and other herbs in religious ceremonies, both as a smudge (a sacred indigenous practice) or smoked in a sacred pipe carrying the smoker’s prayers to the Great Spirit. When mixed with tobacco or other herbs, it is referred to as kinnikinnick, from an Algonquian (probably Delaware) word for “mixture”. Among the ingredients in kinnikinnick were non-poisonous sumac leaves, and the inner bark of certain bushes such as red osier dogwood (silky cornell), chokecherry, and alder, to improve the taste of the bearberry leaf.