The other day, my Handsome Assistant and I had the chance to watch the movie Moon Garden. It’s a beautiful, strange, surreal, very dark fantasy about a (very parentified) little girl who suffers an injury and falls into a coma. While she’s comatose, she has to find her way through an industrial horror landscape to make it back to her family. The entire movie is done with practical effects, and it has some of the most striking imagery — and villains — I’ve ever seen. Particularly the main antagonist: Teeth.
(Admittedly, I was a bit disappointed that Teeth turned out to be the only villain. The Mud Witch looked extremely cool and I would very much have liked for her to have a bigger role.)
Teeth is a manifestation of emptiness. An anthropomorphization of a chattering teeth toy and her grandpa’s dentures. Human teeth can also be transient — the little girl is at the age when she’d start to lose her baby teeth, and Teeth’s decayed-looking maw is an embodiment of neglect.
Outside of Moon Garden, teeth still have meaning and symbolism. They’re useful, beyond their biological function. They’ve been at the root of myth, legend, and folklore for as long as humanity’s had any of those things (or teeth, for that matter).
Tooth Magical Uses and Folklore
In the US, western Europe, and other areas with a heavily European influence, there’s the Tooth Fairy. When children lose baby teeth, they’re told to put them under their pillows. Then, at night, the Tooth Fairy is said to come to trade a little bit of money for the lost tooth.
(Traditionally, anyway. Today, some parents have moved away from giving money and give small toys, stickers, or other treats as “payment” instead.)
In Italy, the Tooth Fairy is a little mouse named Topolino. In France, La Petite Souris. In Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries, El Ratoncito Perez. In Scotland, it’s a white rat.
Finland has a modern figure (or figures) known as Hammaspeikko, or “tooth troll.” The tooth troll isn’t a Tooth Fairy like figure, though. Instead, it’s an explanation for dental cavities that comes from a 1949 Norwegian children’s book. Eating candy lures in tooth trolls, and these trolls drill holes in teeth. Luckily, they can be scared away by brushing.
Interestingly, the Tooth Fairy doesn’t really have direct parallels in European myth or folklore. Some folklorists say that the idea comes from an old Scandinavian practice of tand-fé, a “tooth fee,” but this is unlikely. In the Norse Eddas, tand-fé is described as ritual in which a child’s mother would give them a small amount of money for the loss of their first baby tooth — no fairies involved.
Ditto for other old practices for dealing with baby teeth. In England during the Middle Ages, children were told to throw their baby teeth in the fire. If they didn’t burn them, they’d spend their afterlife searching for all of their lost teeth.
For the most part, the Tooth Fairy, tooth-burning, and tooth-purchasing do seem connected to one core belief: The idea that those teeth need to be either accounted for or destroyed. There may be a good reason behind this (and it’s not as heartwarming as needing something to put in a baby book or keepsake box).
In spellcraft, there’s the idea of including some “personal concerns” (sometimes called taglocks) in order to help the spell reach and act on its target more effectively. These can be pretty much anything — a piece of jewelry worn by the target, a scrap of fabric cut from their clothing, a shoelace — but the best are physically connected to the target. That means nail clippings, hair, or teeth.
These can be used to very good effect — like sending healing to someone through a poppet with a lock of hair inside, or creating a kind of protective magical decoy — but can also be used for ill. Hexes, curses, jinxes, and other attacks work a lot better when they have a good idea of who they’re going to!
In other words, if you didn’t want anyone to work malevolent magic on your offspring, you had better either keep hold of those baby teeth or make sure they’re totally unusable. Children were regarded as a common target of things like the evil eye or the jealousy of spirits, so it’s not a huge leap from “don’t compliment babies too much or they’ll be cursed,” to “better hide all those baby teeth from witches, just in case.”
Alternatively, children’s teeth were sometimes treated as a kind of talisman. In this case, you wanted to keep those teeth for good luck and success in battle.
Sometimes, mothers would even swallow lost baby teeth, or encourage their children to swallow them.
Another common ritual involved offering the lost tooth to an animal, typically a rodent or other animal with strong teeth. The idea was that, if the animal received the tooth along with the appropriate prayers, the child’s teeth would grow in as strong as the animal’s.
Teeth show up in more than just Tooth Fairy stories. In ancient Greek legend, the teeth of a dragon feature prominently in the story of the quest for the Golden Fleece and the tale of Cadmus.
King Aeëtes of Colchis demanded that Jason sow dragon’s teeth given to him by Athena in order to get the Golden Fleece. His daughter, knowing what was up, told Jason that warriors would spring up where the teeth were planted and, if he didn’t want them to turn on him, he needed to throw a stone between them. He did so, and the warriors turned on each other and battled to the death.
Cadmus, on the other hand, killed a dragon that served as the guardian of a spring dedicated to Ares, the God of War. Athena gave Cadmus half of the creature’s teeth and told him to sow them as he would seeds. He did so, and fierce warriors sprang up from the soil. He, like Jason, threw a stone into their midst and they all turned on each other. Only five remained standing, and they helped Cadmus found the city of Thebes.
In Chinese medicine, each tooth is said to be connected to a different organ through energy meridians. Pain in a tooth, then, indicates a problem or imbalance with that particular organ.
Using Teeth
Ideally, you have a source of baby teeth. Otherwise, I’d strongly recommend against trying to seek them out elsewhere for magical purposes because 1) it’d hurt, B) it’s likely to be wildly unethical, and III) desecrating corpses is against the law.
That aside, human teeth are great taglocks for poppets, spell jars, and other workings. Still, all things considered, you’re probably better off sticking with a lock of hair or a few nail clippings.
Animal teeth are used for animal magic, or (in the case of canine teeth from predators) protection. They can be worn as amulets or talismans on their own or included in protective sachets.
Losing baby teeth is a rite of passage for most kids and parents alike. It’s a sign of growth and, depending on your culture, potentially a source of danger. Whether you still have your teeth saved in a keepsake box somewhere, or you’re creating ways to make visits from the Tooth Fairy special for your own kids, you’re partaking traditions with ancient roots.
(No pun intended.)
Marble Crow 