Cranberries Wiccan Correspondences

Element: Water.
Planetary association: Mars.

Good for: healing, protection, love, lust, positive energy, courage, passion, action.

Cranberry juice or cranberry wine can be substituted for red wine in rituals. With its deep, sensual red color, they are associated with love, and if you are cooking a meal for a loved one, consider incorporating cranberry into the meal.

The cranberry’s beautiful red color has associated it with the planet Mars, and as a result, its magickal correspondences are similar to that of Mars. Cranberry can be used for protection, positive energy, courage, passion, determination, goals, and action. Similarly, the deep, erotic red color of cranberries make them useful in magick for love.

A glossy, scarlet red, very tart berry, the cranberry belongs to the same genus as the blueberry, Vaccinium. (Both berries also belong to the food family called Ericaceae, also known as the heath or heather family.)

American Indians enjoyed cranberries cooked and sweetened with honey or maple syrup—a cranberry sauce recipe that was likely a treat at early New England Thanksgiving feasts. By the beginning of the 18th century, the tart red berries were already being exported to England by the colonists. Cranberries were also used by the Indians decoratively, as a source of red dye, and medicinally, as a poultice for wounds since not only do their astringent tannins contract tissues and help stop bleeding, but we now also know that compounds in cranberries have antibiotic effects.

Although several species of cranberries grow wild in Europe and Asia, the cranberry most cultivated as a commercial crop is an American native, which owes its success to one Henry Hall, an observant gentleman in Dennis, Massachusetts. In 1840, Mr. Hall noticed an abundance of large berries grew when sand was swept into his bog by the prevailing winds and tides. The sandy bog provided just the right growing conditions for the cranberries by stifling the growth of shallow-rooted weeds, thus enhancing that of the deep rooted cranberries.

Cranberry cultivation soon spread not only across the U.S. through Wisconsin to Washington and Oregon, but also across the sea to Scandinavia and Great Britain. The hardy berries arrived in Holland as survivors of a shipwreck. When an American ship loaded with crates filled with cranberries sank along the Dutch coast, many crates washed ashore on the small island of Terschelling; some of the berries took root, and cranberries have been cultivated there ever since.
In terms of scientific classifications, one of the most common cranberry types is Vaccinium oxycoccos, sometimes referred to as European cranberry. This species of cranberry is native to the Northern Hemisphere and found not only in Northern Europe but also Northern Asia and Northern North America.

Another common type—Vaccinium macrocarpon is larger and more common along the eastern parts of the United States and Canada. This is the cranberry species that is most widely commercially cultivated.

Vaccinium microcarpum is a smaller cranberry species that is most widely found in Northern Europe and Northern Asia.