Barberry Root Bark cut (Berberis vulgaris) wildcrafted

How to Use It

Witchcraft & Folk Magick

• Hedge ward: scatter the cut root bark along a boundary or windowsill to set a line of thorns around your space.
• Banishing jar: cover a name-paper of what must leave with the bark, close the jar and take it out of the house.
• Threshold wash: steep, strain and wipe the doorframes with the yellow water.

A Simple Working

• Light a black chime candle.
• Write what you want kept out on a slip of paper.
• Place it in a small jar and cover it with a tablespoon of barberry root bark.
• Add a pinch of sea salt.
• Close the jar and say: “No further than this hedge.”
• Bury the jar at your property boundary or keep it by the door.

Pairs Well With

• Blessed thistle, another thorned plant of protection.
• Sea salt, to seal a barrier.
• Angelica root, for protection of the household.
• A black chime candle, for banishing.

What You Receive

Cut dried barberry root bark, wildcrafted, available in 1 oz, 2 oz and 1 lb.

Origin & Lore

Berberis vulgaris is a spiny European shrub long planted as a hedge, with sour red berries made into jams and sauces. The root bark gave a yellow dye and was traditionally used in European herbalism; its colour earned it the name jaundice berry under the old doctrine of signatures.

Cut into barberry root and it bleeds gold: the bark is stained a vivid yellow that once dyed leather and wool.

Seventeenth-century English astrological herbals placed barberry under Mars, the planet of thorns and defence. Barberry hedges were a common sight across rural Europe and colonial New England.