Occult lore
Witch Marks
Direct answer
Witch Marks: Witch marks, or apotropaic marks, are signs cut, scratched or burned into old buildings near doors, windows and hearths, meant to keep witches and evil from entering.
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At a glance
- Also called
- witches marks, apotropaic marks, ritual protection marks, daisy wheel mark
- Found in
- Spells & Occult Terms
- Related
- Apotropaic Symbol, Witch Bottle, Hag Stone, Warding
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What are witch marks?
Witch marks are small deliberate marks found in houses, barns, churches and caves, most of them made between about 1550 and 1750. Historians prefer the name ritual protection marks. They cluster at the openings of a building: doorposts, window frames, chimney beams, and wherever a draught might enter.
Three kinds are common. The daisy wheel, or hexafoil, is a six-petalled flower drawn with compasses. The double V, often read as Virgo Virginum, a title of the Virgin Mary, looks like a W or, upside down, an M. Taper burn marks are teardrop scorches made on purpose with a candle or rushlight held to the timber. No written instructions for any of them survive, so their purpose is inferred from where they are placed.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Magic and protection.
What sets Witch Marks apart
These marks are known only from the buildings themselves. No manual, sermon or court record of the period tells anyone to cut them, so each claim about their meaning is a reading of position and pattern. Position is the strong evidence: they gather at hearths, doors and windows and are scarce on blank walls. They are also light and quick, made with a knife point, a pair of compasses or a flame, which separates them from carpenters' assembly marks and masons' signatures.
- Preferred term: ritual protection marks, or apotropaic marks
- Main period: about 1550 to 1750, with some earlier and later
- Common forms: daisy wheel, double V, taper burn, mesh and ladder patterns
- Dated example: Knole, Kent: beams felled in 1606, marked for a royal visit
- Largest group: Creswell Crags caves, hundreds of marks identified in 2019
Often mistaken for something else: The witch's mark or devil's mark was a spot on a suspect's body sought by searchers in trials; witch marks are on buildings and were made to keep witches away.
The story behind Witch Marks
Timber specialists began recording the marks systematically in the late twentieth century. At Knole in Kent, marks found under floorboards were dated by tree rings to 1606, the months after the Gunpowder Plot, in rooms prepared for James I. In 2016 Historic England asked the public to report examples, and in 2019 hundreds were identified in the caves of Creswell Crags, the largest group then known in Britain.
Why Witch Marks matters
Witch Marks are protection magic left in place, unedited: evidence of what builders and householders did, not what books said they should do.
How to read Witch Marks
Building historians log them to date alterations and trace beliefs; visitors look for them by raking a torch sideways across old beams and stone.
Witch Marks in practice: an example
A visitor to a Tudor barn who spots a compass-drawn flower beside the great door is looking at a daisy wheel cut to guard the harvest.
Where readings of Witch Marks go wrong
Witch Marks are different from the witch's mark searched for on the bodies of the accused in trials, and not every scratch is one.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
Recorded here as history and lore. No rite is taught on this page.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Spells & Occult Terms
- Aliases
- witch marks meaning, witches marks, apotropaic marks, ritual protection marks, daisy wheel mark, hexafoil
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What are witch marks?
They are protective signs scratched, carved or burned into old buildings, mostly from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, placed at doors, windows and fireplaces where harm was thought able to enter.
What does the daisy wheel mark mean?
The daisy wheel, or hexafoil, is a six-petalled pattern made with compasses. It is usually explained as an endless line that would confuse or trap evil, though no period text states its meaning.
Where can witch marks be seen?
In England well known examples are at Knole in Kent, the Tithe Barn at Bradford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's Birthplace in Stratford and the caves at Creswell Crags. Many parish churches have them too.
