You can coax a daisy into revealing the secrets of a man’s heart by timing up the chant “He loves me. … He loves me not. …” with the plucking of each petal.
But to learn the future of a man’s heart, you’ve got to get your hands dirtier than that – and you need a more discerning plant than a daisy; you need cannabis.
Here’s how Victorian ladies used cannabis in the 1800s to predict whom they would marry.
Head Magazine examines another form of cannabis-involved fortune-telling in “Entheogens and the Clair Senses: Can Cannabis Tap Into Your Psychic Abilities?”. Photo by Roman Odinstov / pexels.com
Why did people do this?
Divination games, an offshoot of the Spiritualism movement in the mid-1800s, were wildly popular in 19th century England for all kinds of things. These were typically reserved for Christmas and All Hallows’ Eve parties, but some were played on other special days too. For young ladies, there was a particular fixation on discovering all you could about your future husband.
In small, rural communities in the pre-Industrial Age, marriage could be the most important event in a girl’s life. Today, single girls in their late teens map out their futures by deciding what they want to do for a living, often based on where they want to go to school and what they want to study. But back then, marriage was often the predominant deciding factor for their path in life. So, they spent a lot of time thinking about it, and their curiosity about it manifested in creative ways.
To meet someone outside your bloodline in the days before bars, gyms, dating apps and all the other ways to encounter strangers, you had to wait on elaborate social gatherings. Harvest time and Christmas presented opportunities for farming communities to convene numerous families for celebration and socializing, and these routinely emphasized matchmaking. During the rest of the year though, the girls could at least imagine the matchmaking that awaited them.
If you’ve already got marriage locked down and are planning the event, check out “Weed Weddings Hit the Mainstream” for inspiration and ideas. Photo Credit: Anneli Adolfsson
What did they expect to learn about their future husbands?
Different divination games revealed different aspects of a girl’s groom-to-be.
What He’ll Look Like
Cannabis was used for this particular husband divination, and its game was played on numerous holidays, not just on Halloween and Christmas like many others. Folklore expert Icy Sedwick observes that people often used saints’ days (including the day for Saint Valentine) for divination because these days are imbued with additional power. The game dates back to the 1500s, according to historian Laura Mitchell, who cites a manuscript from medieval Northamptonshire that contains it. Also, cannabis journalist Dana Larsen notes that Scottish poet Robbie Burns included a version of it in his 1785 poem “Halloween.”
To use cannabis to have the apparition of your future husband appear, you would go to a churchyard the night before Valentine’s Day and sow hemp seeds at midnight while reciting this charm:
“Hemp seed, I sow thee.
Hemp seed, I sow thee.
He that is my true love,
come behind and harrow me.”
The sowing was more symbolic than practical though; you simply scattered the seeds while walking and dragging a rake behind you. The actual ploughing, or harrowing, to prepare the soil for planting was meant to be done by the specter of your future husband.
Some historians read sexual inuendo into the charm by comparing it to a Victorian-era colloquialism for today’s equivalent expression, “getting ploughed.” In some cases though, nothing was left to conjecture. As “Marihuana: The First Twelve Thousand Years” author Ernest Abel reports, the girls who played a similar game in the Ukraine didn’t stop at depositing seeds and hoping for a discreet ploughing. Instead, after whispering spells while carrying hemp seeds, they stripped naked and “scampered around their homes to complete the magic.”
If you’ve already got someone to “harrow” you on Valentine’s Day Eve, make it a night to remember with “Hot Sex and Weed: Our Guide to the Best Strains and Products.” Photo by Yan Krukau / pexels.com
Mitchell shares speculation that hemp seeds were chosen for their association with rope and the resultant symbolism of tying two people together. Susan M. Drury, author of “English Love Divinations Using Plants: An Aspect,” opines that the ritual likely was about giving a secret admirer a way to declare his love:
“The supposed appearance of the lover as a ghost … may have in fact been the real person. In most cases, I believe, the girl would probably already know the man, who in turn would reveal his feelings by taking part in the little drama, by raking or mowing the seed thrown by the girl. These actions may be seen as an attempt by the couple to formalize their relationship or give it endorsement by a supposed supernatural occurrence.”
Another way to see what your future husband would look like was to use mirror games. You could summon the image of your future husband in a mirror in a number of ways. One was to light a single candle by a mirror and look into it while combing your hair by yourself. Another was to use a handheld mirror outside at night, looking into it while walking backward and chanting a spell. Another was to sit in front of a mirror with an apple, a lighted candle and a knife. You would cut the apple into nine slices, and your future husband, after watching you eat eight slices one by one, would appear in the mirror to grab the ninth slice.
Yet another option was to induce a dream about your future husband. One way of doing this was to pin bay leaves to your pillow: one at each corner, and one in the middle.
What His Name Will Be
For this game, you would skin an apple with a paring knife to create a single, long peel that you would then throw over your left shoulder. The initial of your future husband’s name would reveal itself in the shape that the peel took when it hit the ground.
What His Job Will Be
One way to predict your future husband’s job was to analyze the shape made by melted lead after you had poured it through the handle of a key into a pan of cold water. If it looked like a sword or gun, you would marry a soldier; a ship, a sailor; a plough, a farmer; and a book, a professor or minister. If no clear shape emerged, you might die a spinster.
Where He Lives
You could find out where your future husband lived, relative to where you were standing. To do this, you simply went outside, pulled out one of the hairs on your head and released it into the wind. The direction the hair traveled pointed the way toward your future husband’s house.
What His Marital Status Will Be
To determine whether a girl would marry a bachelor or a widower, or would remain single the rest of her life, a game called Three Luggies was used. For this, three bowls were used: one with water, one with milky water and one with nothing. A blindfolded girl would be led to the bowls and instructed to put her left hand into one. If her hand went into the clear-water bowl, she’d marry a bachelor; the milky-water bowl, a widower; the empty bowl, no one.
Good luck!
Whether you’ll have a husband or a wife in your future, you can use cannabis to get a sneak preview. Find a churchyard, be there at midnight (if there’s not a NO TRESPASSING sign), and recite the charm (substituting “she” for “he” if applicable) as you scatter hemp seeds and drag a rake behind you. Then, wait and see what happens …
Kathleen Hearons is a writer, editor, linguist and voice over actor from Los Angeles. She specializes in creative writing and research-intensive analysis and reporting.
Sources & Suggested Reading: Cited
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Ashliman, D.L. “Charms to Predict Future Bridegrooms and Brides.” Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts, University of Pittsburgh. Last revised June 21, 2021. Accessed Feb. 6, 2026. https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/type0737.html.
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Brittingham, Kim. “The Romance of Halloween in Turn-of-the-Century Ocean Grove.” Curiosities of Ocean Grove. Oct. 24, 2014. Accessed Feb. 6, 2026. https://curiositiesog.wordpress.com/tag/divination-games/.
Drury, Susan M. “English Love Divinations Using Plants: An Aspect” in “Folklore” Vol. 97, No. 2 (1986): 210-214. Accessed Feb. 6, 2026. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1259527.
“Frivolous Follies and Fancies Fantastic That Fascinate Halloween’s Maid.” Evening Ledger (Philadelphia), Oct. 31, 1914. Accessed Feb. 6, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83045211/1914-10-31/ed-1/?sp=12&r=0.206,-0.143,0.88,0.697,0.
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Hearons, Kathleen. “Entheogens and the Clair Senses: Can Cannabis Tap Into Your Psychic Abilities?.” Head Magazine. Accessed Feb. 6, 2026. https://headmagazine.com/entheogens-and-the-clair-senses-can-cannabis-tap-into-your-psychic-abilities/.
