Job’s Tears

Job’s Tears, Coix lachryma, are the seeds of a lovely ornamental grass. I grow them myself and harvest them ritually for Natural Magick Shop. They are carried for healing, wishes, and luck. If you have a wish, you can carry seven Job’s tears for seven days while concentrating on your wish being fulfilled. Then throw them into a moving body of water, or try planting them in your own garden. If they grow well for you, try stringing them into a necklace. These necklaces were traditionally given to teething babies to chew on, and similarly worn by adults to try to heal a sore throat. Job’s tears are said to be very lucky. You carry three for this purpose, or put three into a luck mojo bag.

In China, Job’s Tears are called Semen Coix, and the hull is removed just like the hull of rice is removed to make rice edible. It is used as a nutritional food tonic or medicine for inflammation and pain, water imbalances, skin health, and to treat side effects of some sorts of radiation treatments. It is sometimes called “pearl barley,” which leads it to be confused with pearled barley. It is easy to see how these traditional Chinese medicinal uses translated into the magickal associations for health and teething babies and for grown-ups with toothache. Everything about this herb is soothing and healthy-feeling.

The below correspondences are vis Cunningham, Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs in plain text, C.L. Zalewski, Herbs in Magic and Alchemy in brackets, or my own interpretations in parenthesis.