Sacred earth or biolab?
Boho earth: not a miracle cure - but a microbiological discovery. When chance combines ritual, search for meaning and research.
Sacred earth and chance hits - What an Irish village believed about healing effects - and science only discovered much later
Sacred earth or biolab? What's really behind the boho legend
It sounds like a film plot, but it's a strange mixture of superstition, remembrance culture and microbiological sensation: in a remote village in Northern Ireland, earth from a priest's grave was revered for generations as a cure for infections. People would take it home, wrap it in a cloth and place it under their pillow for four days before returning it to the cemetery. Meanwhile, relied on the effects of the sacred earth to treat toothache and infectious diseases - long before antibiotics were available.
What nobody realised was that a previously unknown strain of bacteria with an antibiotic effect actually lived in this earth. A chance discovery, a kind of cultural fluke - superstition apparently with a flair for the real thing.
Why is this more than just a bizarre anecdote?
Because it touches on three big questions:
Antibiotic resistance - While laboratories around the world desperately search for new agents, a potential candidate lay unnoticed in a graveyard for centuries.
Biocultural knowledge - Traditions, myths, rituals may contain clues to useful natural substances, although not in this case.
The psychology of healing - What happens when people believe in the effect of a ritual and an effect actually occurs.
The legend of Boho is not a success story of magical thinking. Rather, it tells the story of how cultural practices and scientific hits meet by chance. Cemetery soil does not heal, but microbes in it might.
The scientific find - how a myth became a pharmacological lead
What began as a local healing narrative unfolded in the 21st century as an unexpected research agenda. The legend of Boho is not a scientific theory. It linked a world view with a magical ritual and kept alive the memory of a special place, the churchyard of Boho.
From superstition to bioprospection
The boho earth initially came into focus not through targeted pharmaceutical planning, but through ethnomedical interest. Bioprospecting - the targeted search for biological resources with medical potential - is now increasingly being considered in an interdisciplinary way: ethnobiology, ecology, microbiology and pharmacology come together in those zones where cultural knowledge and ecological niches meet. The decisive impulse in Boho: without the cultural narrative surrounding the healing cemetery soil, this place would never have been sampled. The legend was the signpost.
Microbial ecosystems as pharmacological treasure troves
The soil of the Boho cemetery has exceptional properties: an extremely high pH value (over 10), which is rare for soil and provides a habitat for only a few microorganisms. Specialised bacteria thrive in this environment, such as Streptomyces, a genus of soil bacteria that is responsible for over two thirds of all antibiotics known today - including streptomycin, erythromycin and tetracycline.
In the case of Boho, it is a particularly resistant strain: Streptomyces sp. myrophorea. These microorganisms not only survive extreme conditions such as ionising radiation, but have also developed sophisticated chemical warfare strategies in the course of their evolutionary development. In order to prevail against other soil microbes, they produce antibiotically effective substances - a self-protection that can be specifically utilised in the laboratory.
The discovery: McG1 against multi-resistant pathogens
In 2016, a research team led by Dr Gerry Quinn at the Ulster University Institute for Biomedical Sciences examined samples of boho soil. The bacteria were extracted from the soil, cultivated, sequenced and tested for their antimicrobial activity. Particularly striking was the isolate McG1, which showed strong inhibitory effects in the laboratory against a whole range of multi-resistant pathogens - including
· MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus)
· VRE (vancomycin-resistant enterococci)
· CRAB (*Carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii)
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), these pathogens are among the greatest threats to global health. Infections with such germs can hardly be treated with conventional antibiotics. Every newly discovered active ingredient is therefore of immense importance - not only medically, but also geopolitically.
The boho isolate contains genes that encode bioactive substances such as peptides, polyketides and terpenes. Such substances are among the most promising classes of future drugs. The ability of microbes to compete and communicate via chemical signals opens up new approaches in drug research - precisely because these signals are evolutionarily proven and selectively effective.
The Boho case shows how medical innovation sometimes arises at unexpected interfaces: between history and geochemistry, between village narrative and DNA sequencing. The legend was not true - but it was a valuable lead.
Scientific knowledge - what is proven, what remains open
As impressive as the symbolic power of the boho legend is, its medical-scientific assessment is equally sober. The current state of research allows a clear distinction to be made between cultural significance and biomedical evidence.
1. no clinical studies for use on humans
To date, there are no controlled clinical studies that have tested the use of boho soil or its microbial components on humans. The observed antimicrobial effects originate exclusively from in vitro tests, i.e. laboratory tests on isolated bacterial cultures. Whether the substances would even be effective, tolerable or stable in the human organism is completely open.
2. no market-ready therapy based on Streptomyces sp. myrophorea
Although Streptomyces species play a central role in the development of modern antibiotics, the boho-specific strain myrophorea is still in the early stages of research. No active substance has yet been isolated or authorised for drug development. The necessary steps - safety testing, bioavailability studies, efficacy in animal models - are still pending.
3. effect only in the laboratory, only through purified isolates
The antimicrobial effect could only be demonstrated with purified isolates under controlled conditions. Raw earth - i.e. the unsterilised substance as used in a ritual context - on the other hand poses health risks.
4 "Healing through soil" as a cultural metaphor, not as a form of therapy
In medical terms, the mythological soil is a non-standardised, contaminated carrier of unknown substances. The microbes of Boho's soil have shown antibiotic effects in controlled laboratory tests - but not in their raw, non-sterile form. Sprinkling this soil on wounds, for example, could even have caused serious infections. In addition to potentially beneficial microbes, the soil also contains pathogens such as Clostridium tetani (tetanus), Clostridium botulinum (botulism) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (purulent wound infections).
Boho's earth has never healed anyone. But belief in it has helped people - through a story that gave them meaning, comfort and enabled action. Its power lay not in the chemical molecule, but in the cultural symbol. And it was precisely this symbolic effectiveness that finally drew the attention of scientists to an inconspicuous churchyard in Northern Ireland - and thus to a previously unknown drug candidate against resistant germs.
Sacred earth, sacred place, sacred priest - cult and context
The idea that a place has healing powers is deeply rooted in the collective consciousness of many cultures. These are not naïve misinterpretations, but highly symbolic narratives that structure interpretations of the world. Boho combines three levels: a sacred place (the churchyard), a sacred person (the priest) and a visible medium (the earth). They form the semantic backbone of the legend.
Earth as a carrier of power - a global cultural motif
In Africa, for example, healing earth is also used for medicinal and spiritual purposes - in the form of white clay (kaolin) for ritual ablutions or internal cleansing. In Latin America, earth from some burial sites is considered to bring healing, especially in syncretic traditions in which indigenous, Christian and African elements merge. In India and Nepal, ashes (vibhuti) from sacred fires play a similar role: they are spread on the forehead, ingested or scattered during prayers.
None of these practices follow a pharmacological logic, but rather a symbolic order. The material - earth, clay, ash - does not stand for itself, but embodies something: the transition from life to death, the presence of divine power, the legacy of an ancestor. In this sense, the boho earth is not a substance with an effect, but a symbol that embodies effectiveness.
Cultural practices as a mirror of world views
If cemetery soil is considered healing, it is because it is more than just soil. It symbolises permanence, connectedness and a return to the origins. The churchyard becomes a liminal space where this world and the hereafter meet. The fact that healing is expected there of all places is an expression of a deeply rooted world view: the healing of the body does not begin in the cell, but in the cosmos of meanings.
The boho legend thus joins a multitude of ritual practices that are less about direct effect and more about symbolic action. These actions generate orientation, hope, collective bonding - psychological impact factors that have real consequences.
Between effect and meaning - ritual as a resonance chamber
The idea of doing something good with sacred earth is not merely an expression of superstition, but a complex psycho-cultural process. As we have seen, the therapeutic content of the boho legend lies in its ritualised use. The symbolic framework creates a space of possibility in which psychosomatic processes can be stimulated: via expectation effects, social cohesion, structuring of behaviour and the feeling of control.
These processes are not an illusion, but they are not based on pharmacological efficacy, but on culturally coded symbolic actions. The discovery from Boho makes it clear that there is no causality between microbiological reality and cultural ritual, but there is an epistemic point of contact.
Ritual as a response to uncertainty
At first glance, the gesture of wrapping soil in a cloth, placing it under the pillow and returning it to the grave four days later seems harmless, folkloristic, perhaps even childlike. But this act is more than just an anecdote. It formulates a symbolic response to powerlessness and uncertainty. It establishes order where no medical control is possible.
Claude Lévi-Strauss: The myth as a structure for the incompatible
For Claude Lévi-Strauss, myth was not an outdated world view, but a specific form of thought: a language with which societies organise, classify and symbolically reconcile fundamental opposites. In his structural approach, he assumes that human thought is not primarily organised in a rational-logical way, but in binary terms - it operates in pairs of opposites such as:
· Life / Death
· nature / culture
· illness / health
· order / chaos
· purity / pollution
These antinomies cannot be completely resolved in any society. According to Lévi-Strauss, myth shifts the problem to the symbolic level and establishes a temporary order there. It does not "solve" antagonisms, but translates them into narrative form that can be processed collectively.
The boho legend as a mythical narrative
In the case of the boho narrative, we see precisely this structural work at work:
· Location: The cemetery as a place of transition between life and death
· Material: Earth as an elementary substance, simultaneously a carrier of life and decay
· Actor: The deceased priest as a double figure of holiness and transience
· Ritual: The wrapping, storing and returning of the earth as a cyclical scheme of action
These elements form a narrative system in which the irresolvable tension between illness (loss of order) and healing (restoration of order) is symbolically expressed. The earth from the priest's grave functions as the cultural equivalent of purification - not pharmacologically, but structurally.
In La pensée sauvage, Lévi-Strauss describes mythical thinking as "bricolage" - thinking as a kind of "tinkering" with given cultural materials. In contrast to scientific thinking, which strives for universal laws and causalities, the bricoleur works with what is culturally tangible: with images, rituals, narratives and associations.
The boho narrative is such a bricolage myth: it takes the place (churchyard), the figure (holy priest), the substance (earth), the need (healing) and puts them together to form a symbolic structure that creates meaning in itself - even if it is by no means verifiable in reality.
Myth as a "machine for deciphering the real"
In the Mythologiques, Lévi-Strauss again describes myths as semiotic machines: they process incomprehensible reality by translating it into narrative formulas. The boho legend works in exactly the same way: it creates a pattern of interpretation from the real threat of illness that provides orientation - without explaining the cause or actually bringing about the cure.
The myth is not disqualified as irrational thinking, but as a different form of rationality: relational, ordering, stabilising. It provides a framework with which the culturally unbearable - such as the suffering of a child, an incurable infection - is symbolically framed.
Healing as reconciliation, not as a solution
The decisive factor in the myth is not the result, but the form of processing. The action - taking the earth, keeping it, returning it - forms a symbolic circularity that symbolises a reset order: suffering is given a place, a narrative, a direction. In Lévi-Strauss' words: "Myths think themselves into us" - they are not narratives about the world, but structural acts of processing the world.
In the spirit of Lévi-Strauss, it can be said that the boho legend is not false, but "differently true" for its followers. It does not attempt to change nature through technology (like science), but to respond to nature with culture. It does not create an active ingredient - but a cultural matrix in which illness has a place.
Rituals that work - even without an active ingredient
The fact that rituals "help" is therefore superstition and magical thinking. However, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss added to this idea - not by claiming supernatural powers, but by describing a new form of effectiveness: a symbolic effectiveness that is not based on molecules, but on meanings. In his influential essay "The Effectiveness of Symbols" from 1958, Lévi-Strauss tells of a seemingly hopeless medical situation: a woman in an indigenous society is suffering from a dangerous labour complication with heavy bleeding. A shaman is called in. But instead of treating the body, he tells a story.
This story is highly symbolic. In it, the birth canal and womb become a cave landscape with dark forces, demonic birds and resistant elements. Healing occurs through the journey of helpers through a dangerous landscape and their subsequent return, through which life must be reclaimed. As the shaman speaks, the afterbirth begins to detach. It is not medicine, interventions or technical knowledge that have helped - but the symbolic dramaturgy of a ritual narrative that has transformed the pain into an order.
Lévi-Strauss does not interpret this event as a miracle or a psychological trick. According to his analysis, what is at work here is a symbolic operation that brings the subjective experience of pain and chaos into a form. The narrative links body and language, subjective experience and collective knowledge, inner experience and outer meaning. According to his thesis, the body becomes malleable through meaning. Not because it can be rationally persuaded, but because it is part of a field of meaning - embedded in stories, images and rituals.
This anthropological perspective can also be applied to the story of Boho. For generations, people in the Northern Irish village believed in the healing power of a very specific type of earth: earth from the grave of a Catholic priest who was considered particularly pious and pure. Anyone who was ill was allowed to take a small bag of this earth home with them, place it under their pillow for four days - and then bring it back. No direct application to the wound, no ingestion, no medical supervision. And yet the ritual was deeply rooted in the collective experience of the village. People trusted it, talked about it, recommended it to others. The earth became a cultural remedy - not because it was proven to help, but because it carried meaning.
With Lévi-Strauss, this ritual cannot be described as irrational, but as culturally highly functional. In the pre-scientific view, everything, including the body, was always a carrier of symbols. Every illness is thought of in a certain language, described in certain images and embedded in social contexts of meaning. In Boho, illness did not simply stand for a disorder in the organism, but for an impurity, a deviation from order, perhaps even for a spiritual imbalance. The earth from the grave symbolised the opposite: purity, continuity, salvation.
The ritual itself - taking the earth, keeping it, returning it - symbolised a journey. It structured time (four days as a transitional phase), space (from the grave to the house and back) and action (taking, leaving to rest, returning). It thus offered a cultural counter-model to the formless, uncontrollable experience of illness. It provided orientation in a situation characterised by uncertainty. People were not cured, but they were reintegrated into an order that made suffering comprehensible.
For Lévi-Strauss, this was precisely the essence of symbolic effectiveness. A ritual does not work by eliminating a cause. It works because it creates a pattern - an explanatory framework, a scheme of action, a symbolic structure that makes suffering legible. This structure is no substitute for medical therapy, but it fulfils another function: it puts things in order. It enables a psychological understanding of what is happening in the body. And it binds the individual back to a larger whole: to the community, to history, to meaning.
It is important to emphasise that Lévi-Strauss does not imply any deception. He does not describe shamanistic rituals as deception - that is, as deliberately ineffective measures that exploit hope or imagination. For him, ritual is a genuine psychosomatic practice. It addresses not only the mind, but the whole person - through language, images, repetition and atmosphere. It does not change the tissue of a wound, but it changes the way pain is experienced, how healing is hoped for, how illness is interpreted.
Understood in this way, the boho earth is not a medicine - but it is not an empty gesture either. It is the bearer of a cultural structure that embeds suffering. It stands for a form of order in which the body does not suffer in isolation, but remains part of a context. Lévi-Strauss would say that ritual creates a bridge - between the subjective chaos of illness and the collective order of meaning.
The symbolic order is not a scientific explanation of the world. But it creates something that is at least as important for many people: a habitable reality. A world in which fear and pain do not simply happen, but are embedded in a story in which they have a place.
Psychology of religion: rituals as a protective layer against loss of control
From the perspective of religious psychology, rituals have a profoundly human function: they stabilise. Not the external state, but the inner experience. In times of collective uncertainty - for example during pandemics, political upheavals, environmental disasters or the collapse of familiar world views - symbolic actions become more important again. This applies not only to religious contexts, but also to secularised variants such as collective gossip, minutes of remembrance, candle rituals or the daily sharing of "sacred moments" on social media.
Scientists such as Thomas Bering and David Utsch have shown that rituals fulfil several psychological functions simultaneously in such moments. They help to externalise the inexplicable - i.e. not to perceive it solely as a personal failure or individual misfortune. Those who embed the cause of suffering in higher contexts can protect themselves from excessive self-responsibility. At the same time, rituals enable a form of affect regulation in which emotional tension is reduced through repeated, predictable actions. Rhythmic action - whether through prayer, movement, speech or silence - has a calming effect because it gives form to chaos.
There is also an important semantic function: rituals create meaning. They frame the incomprehensible in a story, turning a chaotic experience into a comprehensible event. They place the experience in a larger context - be it religious, familial, historical or symbolic. And they don't do this on their own, but in the mode of sharing: Those who perform a ritual are rarely alone. The experience is socially embedded - be it in the village, in the religious community or in the digital network. This is precisely what creates a sense of belonging, which is particularly valuable in threatening situations.
The ritual with the earth of Boho can be interpreted in exactly the same way in terms of religious psychology: It does not respond to objective medical necessity, but to the need for inner order in the face of external uncertainty. The return of the earth to the priest's grave is not therapeutically effective in the modern sense, but it conveys an idea of cyclical sequence, of reintegration, of ritual control over the unavailable.
However, research into the psychology of religion also points to a possible dark side. If rituals are not understood as a symbolic form of processing, but as supposedly "real" solutions, a regressive effect can occur. Uncertainty is then not overcome, but repressed. The ritual act does not become support in dealing with powerlessness, but rather a denial of this powerlessness. Especially when rituals are charged with concepts such as "ancient knowledge", "sacred earth" or "natural healing", a dangerous proximity to magical thinking arises - which no longer distinguishes between symbolic meaning and real effectiveness. What was intended as protection then becomes a simulation of control. And the willingness to deal with the actual causes of crisis, illness or insecurity dwindles.
Religious psychology therefore warns us to differentiate: rituals work - but differently to medication. They help to interpret, stabilise and connect. However, they do not replace the confrontation with complex realities. Anyone who blurs this boundary runs the risk of the healing function of rituals tipping over into the opposite - into a sham solution that doesn't work.
The return of ritual - and why it is not a return
In many Western societies, we have been experiencing a striking revival for years: rituals, manifestation, connection to the earth, 'ancient wisdom', goddess cults, circle dances, ancestor honouring and neo-shamanism can be found in podcasts, bookshops, Instagram stories and retreat advertisements. What used to be considered esoteric fringe is now celebrated as a new form of mindfulness, a deeper self, a 'lived spirituality'. Particularly popular: the earth ritual - touching, collecting, burying, returning "sacred earth" as a connection with nature, origin, inner strength.
Why do people still resort to rituals today in times of crisis - even if they have no demonstrable benefit? What gives an act such as manifesting, scattering sacred earth, burning herbs or returning a cloth to a grave such emotional power, especially when the world is shaking?
Jean Baudrillard on spirituality in the age of simulation
At first glance, this looks like a return to old meanings. But Baudrillard would say that it is not a return. It is a simulation. The rituals that are sold as spiritual today may bear the form, the language, the aesthetics of the past - but they no longer have their social or symbolic anchoring. They are not part of a common interpretation of the world, not part of a lived belief system, not part of a concrete cultural context. They are isolated signs, detached from the social body, stripped of their history and reinterpreted in new narratives.
The healing clay of Boho provides a clear example. What was once a village ritual - embedded in Catholic religious practice and linked to local authorities, death, community and hope - now appears as sacred soil in blogs, online shops and festival programmes. The scarf under the pillow is no longer a link back to a collective myth, but part of a personal "spirituality kit". The priest has been forgotten, the illness abstracted, the pain individualised - what remains is the image. The sign. The gesture. Only without reference.
This is the essence of the neopagan simulation: it looks like a ritual, speaks like a ritual, feels like a ritual - but it no longer stands for anything in particular. There is no common horizon, no shared history, no binding order. The ritual no longer refers to an order outside the self - it revolves around the self. Not about healing, but about identity. Not about restoring a symbolic structure, but about an emotional sense of style.
Baudrillard speaks of hyperreality - a world of signs that no longer lie because they no longer aim at truth. The new spirituality is not false - it is empty. Not because it does not trigger feelings, but because it transforms the function of the ritual into a simulation of the ritual. It replaces the unspeakable with design, the collective with the private, the unavailable with the selectable.
The "earth" in this new religion is no longer soil, history, death and fertility. It is an aesthetically prepared projection surface, circulating in stories and workshops, often for a fee. The transition from symbolically embedded action to simulative performance takes place silently - but it changes everything. The ritual is no longer a place of meaning, but a medium of self-image.
What is lost is not just depth. It is the opportunity to go through a ritual together - through a symbolic space in which uncertainty, pain or hope find a form. In a real ritual, these forms are never arbitrary. They follow a structure that is not invented by each individual. In the simulation, on the other hand, the symbol becomes a toy. It no longer makes any difference whether it "works" - the main thing is that it has a visual, emotional, marketable effect.
Baudrillard would not interpret the new revival of spirituality as a return to the past, but as an acceleration of the decoupling of sign and meaning. What is supposedly returning was never gone - it has only become a surface. The sacred earth remains behind - as a stylistic device, as a filter, as a commodity. The ritual continues to have an effect - but no longer as a collective form of processing the world, but as an emotional subscription model of ego-strengthening.
Between longing and structure - why rituals work, even if they don't "do" anything
In the language of psychoanalysis, boho earth and the symbols of the new rituals are not a magical object, but a symbol of something that is missing. Jacques Lacan called this missing something the "object a" - a mysterious object that drives people because it embodies what they cannot name but desire. It is not the object itself that is decisive, but what it promises: wholeness, order, salvation, comfort. The ritual creates this promise - not to fulfil it, but to make it tangible. There is no solution, but a form. And comfort lies in this form.
When the world becomes uncertain, when illness or loss disrupts life, people need less facts and more support. No knowledge of microbiology, molecular genetics or bodily functions is reassuring without understanding and a symbolic promise. Rituals organise feelings. They take something that feels chaotic - fear, pain, powerlessness - and translate it into action. They say: "This has a meaning." And: "You're not alone in this." This is reassuring, even if the external circumstances don't change.
But this effect is sensitive. If the ritual is removed from its original context, it loses something. It can become a gesture that looks the same as before - but no longer means anything, as described by Jean Baudrillard: Signs that circulate without referring to anything real. A ritual that only pretends to be meaningful becomes a simulation - it conveys closeness where there is no longer any connection, and authenticity where there is only surface.
The big question is therefore not whether such rituals are "true" or "false", but rather: What do they still point to - and what do they stand for today? Are they bridges to a common order? Or are they merely an expression of an individual longing for meaning? Many contemporary forms of "spirituality" operate within this tension: they draw on old images - but in a world that has lost its old contexts.
However, this does not mean that such rituals are worthless. On the contrary: they show what really moves people. They show that the desire for meaning, for connection, for restoration is unbroken - even if the language for this has fallen apart. Perhaps that is the real core: it is not the action that heals, but the space it creates. A space in which the unavailable becomes touchable without being available - a space that gives no answers, but allows questions to be asked.
Summary: Between myth, microbe and meaning
The story of the boho earth begins with a village myth - and ends in a gene laboratory. What was practised for generations as a healing ritual - soil from a priest's grave, four days under the pillow, then returned - turned out to be the remarkable discovery of an antibiotic-producing strain of bacteria. The earth itself never healed. But it contains microbes whose metabolic products could be effective against multi-resistant germs.
This discovery marks a biotechnological coincidence. Ritual around the boho earth, on the other hand, points to a deep need: for meaning, for order, for a form that makes fear and illness legible. Psychoanalytical theory (Lacan), structuralist anthropology (Lévi-Strauss), cultural-critical simulation theory (Baudrillard) and the psychology of religion each interpret this action in their own way as a symbolic tool - for processing lack, for structuring opposites, for creating a sense of belonging.
At the same time, the case shows how easily symbolic practice can be transformed into simulation: When rituals are decoupled from their cultural location and marketed as "sacred truth", there is a risk of losing meaning while simultaneously being charged with illusion.
The boho earth thus exemplifies a double truth: it is scientifically significant, but culturally not what the myth claims. Today, its power lies in the active ingredient. In the past, it lay in the interplay of interpretation and the desire to bring the unspeakable into a form.