Balmony

Balmony is used for Hexing, Steadfastness, patience, and perseverance. Associated with the tortoise or turtle.  Wrap a persons name in Balmony or sprinkle the herb on a picture of them to make them become sick. Carry the herb and it will help you to get over a lost love. Keep near the sick and it will help cure eating disorders.  Make a wash of it and wash your 3rd eye to see truth clearly.  Burn it to make people choke on lies.  Burn to cause someone harm.   For those who sought revenge, this had been put with the bully’s name in a black cloth, and then bound and buried at the foot of a grave.

Balmony is named after the Greek nymph, Χελωνη (Khelone), who was punished because she didn’t want to go to the wedding of Zeus and Hera. In one version, she laughed at the very idea of these two marrying, and in another, she said she just preferred to stay home. She was changed into a tortoise, which has no voice and carries its home on its back. Chelone was one of the Oreiades (nymphs of mountain pines), who were followers of Aphrodite. The most famous is Echo, who was also deprived of independent speech, this time by Hera.

Cherokee drank the bitter infusion of this plant’s leaves for worms, to increase appetite, for fevers, and as a laxative. They also parboiled the young shoots and leaves, rinsed them off, and then panfried them to eat (probably a famine food). The Iroquois drank a tea of turtlehead as a protection against witchcraft, and the Algonquin made a medicinal tea of this plant combined with cedar bark.

European Americans once used turtlehead in very small amounts as a laxative and tonic purgative, as an antidepressant, for people recovering from fevers, and as a bitter tonic for the liver and gallbladder. In the past, 1 teaspoon of dried herb was steeped in 8 oz water for one hour, and half of this was drunk before meals to increase the metabolism of fats and other hard-to-digest foods. It is harvested when flowering.

This native to eastern North America is also known as balmony, white turtlehead, turtle bloom, fishmouth, codhead, salt-rheum weed, snakehead, bitter herb, shellflower, and Chelone obliqua.