The sister of Mary and Lazarus in the Gospel of Luke, who receives Jesus into her house and is rebuked for being busy. The medieval legend of Martha taming the Tarasque dragon is a later accretion and is the source of her folk-magic authority over unruly forces.
Modern Practice
In folk magic she is 'Martha the Dominator', called on to bind a situation or a person who will not listen. The corpus records the devotion and marks that the domination reading is a folk extension of the dragon legend, not the Gospel.
Referenced by
2
Every entry that names Saint Martha, grouped by the system it comes from.