A couple of old-school rituals courtesy Cassell’s Dictionary of Superstitions.
The Pampered Blade
Cost:4 minor charges
If you’ve been stabbed, and you don’t have a Healer or cutter handy, this little gag might just save your life. Of course, it might also kill you down the line but hey, that’s magick for you.
Ritual Action:Wash the blade (the ritual works on any bladed weapon from claymores on down) thoroughly in a bath of hot water, salt, chalk, lye soap and ginger, reciting “Efram dula forid” aloud as long as the blade is in the mixture. The blade must be completely cleaned, including the handle. Once this is done, the blade must be polished and placed in a highly visible place in a home (not necessarily the ritualist’s), where it must be kept clean, polished regularly, and not removed from the home except under certain circumstances (see below).
Effect: Miraculous recovery. The victim recovers hits at a rate of 25 hits a day, up to the total inflicted by the blade. While good news for the pig-stuck, this is less a cure-all than a pause button. If the blade ever becomes dirtied (including cutting someone again), loses its polish, or leaves the home it has been placed in, the wound reopens, doing the same damage it originally healed. The only way to permanently heal the injury is to pamper the blade until a full moon has come and gone. Then, during the next or any successive full moon, the blade is removed from its home through the front door. The moon’s light must fall on the blade at all times from after it leaves the home until it reaches its destination – buried in the soil of a child’s grave. This latter part of the ritual is not included in most versions, which simply suggest pampering the blade forevermore.
Some mages have attempted to adapt this ritual to contemporary weaponry, without much success. It’s said, however, that a certain rapper saved the bullets from a drive-by that almost killed him, and keeps them on display in his mansion.
*Take a guess.
Life-Token
Cost: 2 minor charge
This is a popular one, being simple and cheap. Of course, by the time you know whether or not it worked, you’re too late…
Ritual Action: Take some urine from the target, and put it in a vial with some poppyseeds and a white horse’s hair. Turn clockwise three times, and say “Rell Hikom”. That’s it.
Effect: When the urine turns cloudy, the target is in decline – sick, injured, or just in dire financial straits, they all have the same visible effect on the token. When the token turns black, the target is dead. The life-token won’t show any problem the target is not aware of, so it can’t be used to tell if someone is plotting against you, and the token doesn’t clear when the problem is dealt with – it’s a one-shot effect, though the transition from cloudy to black is still possible. Still, this is useful for monitoring field agents and such, especially when a cell phone call can quickly clarify the token’s meaning. They say that the toilets in TNI safehouses are designed to separate the urine and save the samples, so that they can be added to a vast switchboard of life-tokens. They say a lot of things.