CHAPTER VII

POTENCY OF PHILTRES

The potion is primarily the instrument of lust. Lust is the universal driving force, the cosmic mainspring. The pudenda muliebria, states the Bible, are among the insatiable things on this earth. Plato, the Greek philosopher, in his dialogue entitled _Timaeus_, confirms this eternally unappeased genital passion:

In men the organ of generation, becoming rebellious and masterful, like an animal disobedient to reason, and maddened with the sting of lust, seeks to gain absolute sway; and the same is the case with the so-called womb or matrix of women; the animal within them is desirous of procreating children, and when remaining unfruitful long beyond the proper time, gets discontented and angry, and wandering in every direction through the body, closes up the passages of breath, and, by obstructing respiration, drives them to extremity, causing all varieties of disease, until at length the desire and love of the man and the woman bringing them together and as it were plucking the fruit from the trees, sow in the womb, as in a field, animals unseen by reason of their smallness and without form; these again are separated and matured within; they are then finally brought out into the light, and thus the generation of animals is completed.

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Of all potions, satyrion is associated, in legend and mythology, with the most numerous and consecutive effects. There was a story of an oriental king. It is related in Book 9 of the _Enquiry into Plants_, by Theophrastus, who flourished in the third century B.C. The king had sent a gift of satyrion to Antiochus, ruler of Syria. The slave-messenger who carried the plant was himself so affected by it that he performed seventy coital operations in succession.

In respect of this same root there was another anecdote about a certain Proculus. After drinking a satyrion concoction, Proculus performed on one hundred women in fifteen days.

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Wines, liqueurs, and in general all kinds of spirits are, both in fictional contexts and in the chronicles of the eighteenth century, considered as salacious tonics, and were so used specifically. Even an occasional drink of wine had an erotic repute.

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In the salacious and scatological novels of the Marquis de Sade, especially in Justine and in Les 120 Journées de Sodome, food is repeatedly stressed as immediately contributory to high amatory potency. Repletion, it appears, corresponds directly to amatory responses. De Sade describes, in lavish and appreciative detail, with a kind of personal gusto and even participation, dinner after dinner, in which courses follow each other in almost numberless and uninterrupted sequence: roasts of all varieties, game in season, and also out of season, hors d’oeuvre, pastries of fantastic shape and ingredients, ices and chocolates. Each course is accompanied with appropriate wines and brandies. Rhenish and Greek and Italian vintages, burgundy and champagne, tokay and madeira.

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And, both synchronously with the meal, and as an aftermath of the banquets, the plenitude of food and drink and the total satiety of the diners produce an enormously exciting, urgent, and effective erotic reaction, in which not only the guests but the maidservants as well are involved.

A soup compounded of celery and truffles was a favorite and popular dish in eighteenth century France, when every possible aphrodisiac aid was eagerly sought and tested.

No less so was lentil soup in great demand for the same purpose. Bean soup, also, pea soup, and other vegetable assortments were regularly employed in culinary ways, but with a decided erotic suggestiveness.

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Eighteenth century France, in fact, experimented in both amatory and gastronomic directions, for one practice was manifestly associated with the other. All manner of compounds, then, prepared for amatory vigor, were produced on a large scale. These concoctions invariably included vinegars, perfumed lotions, electuaries, and strengthening elixirs.

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A Portuguese potion, that was in frequent use in the eighteenth century, consisted of a pint of rose water, shaken together with a pint of orange flower water and a half pint of myrtle water. To this were added two thirds of spirit of ambergris and two thirds of distilled spirit of musk. The result was reputedly a potent concoction.

Asiatic races were long known for their sexual prowess. Hence the West, through travelers and explorers and adventurers, was eager to acquire such knowledge in its own interests. In the case of the Asiatic Tartars, there were accounts of their strange practices. In one instance, they used the membrum of the wild horse for its reputed high content of vital fluid. The genitalia of the stag, itself considered an extremely libidinous animal, were similarly regarded.

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In the case of highly responsive natures, a mere inhalation of a particular perfume, or the sight of a desired person, may produce extreme erotic symptoms. This was so with Antiochus, son of King Seleucus, who reigned in the third century B.C. Merely hearing the name of his mistress uttered aloud was sufficient to induce in him the ultimate amatory reactions.

The amatory urge has been, in the history of man, of such forceful and uninterrupted universality that, in special cases and in specific areas of activity, there have been devised anti-aphrodisiac means, formal prescriptions, herbal and other concoctions, and well-meant counsel. Verbena in a drink was formerly recommended as a specific preventive. Also dried mint and vinegar and the juice of hemlock. Cucumbers, too, and water melon have at various times been considered effective in diminishing or allaying sensual interests. In a general sense, whatever exhausts the body physiologically or mentally has been considered as a feasible amatory restriction. In this category are included laborious and persistent work that occupies all the waking energies: a minimum of sleep, or fasting, or a restricted diet, or exercise of the body: even castigation.

The problem was equally well known to the ancients, who advised, to counteract the heat engendered by passionate excitation, a prescription involving cold. Hence the cold bath was a common and recognized procedure and was adopted, centuries later, as a regular feature in Anglo-Saxon mores. Other Greeks, among them the philosophers Plato and his successor Aristotle, suggested that going barefoot would diminish the heat-producing physiological desire. Another suggestion was to wear sheets of lead, beaten out thin, near the kidneys or on the legs. Pliny the Elder, the Roman encyclopedist and author of the monumental _Historia Naturalis_, and the eminent Greek physician Galen, both coincided in this view.

A more difficult procedure, but one commended by the seventeenth century Sir Thomas Browne, was self-restraint in the ‘flaming days,’ as he calls them. Otherwise, there remains one other remedy, that was adopted by Origen, the third century A.D. Father of the Church. He cut the Gordian knot, freeing himself from all carnal inducements: Seeds genitalibus membris, eunuchum se facit.

Ingenious inventions, activities, devices for escaping from or suppressing compulsive amatory inclinations have been proposed in every age, from the arch poet of love Ovid himself to the knowledgeable Dr. Nicolas Venette.

Shun idleness, for idleness tends to amatory thoughts, warns the erotological poet. Be active, and you will not be endangered. Occupy yourself constantly: with agricultural pursuits, or fishing, or hunting. Or even take up the study of law.

Avoid food that tends to stimulate: and, in general, live an ascetic life removed from crowds, from visual provocations, from social parties and clamorous public spectacles and dramatic performances, from pictorial or sculptural objects that induce amatory images.

Snuff taking is suggested, as well as concentrated mental study, in later centuries. Or drink a concoction of the roots and seeds of the water lily. That is soothing and cooling, as the Turks seemed to have found it.

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Aromatic herbs were, in ancient Rome, usually a preliminary to more active amatory adventures. The osphresiological sensitivity of men and women is such that in many cases particular aromas, strong unguents and cosmetics, arouse venereal impulses. In perverted and aberrational situations, in fact, even repellent but powerful effluvia and vapors, corporeal and genital, may create or induce erotic susceptibility. The Oriental manuals of erotology and certain anthropological studies confirm this view.

A strange personality who was himself European in origin but merged with the East was the writer Lafcadio Hearn. In the course of his essays, translations, and interpretations he produced a brief thesis on feminine osphresiological influence.

The Roman novelist Apuleius, who belongs in the second century A.D., was accused of marrying a wealthy widow named Pudentilla, by magic rites. He thus answered his accuser:

He said that I was the only one found capable of defiling her widowhood, as if it were virginity, by my incantations and love philtres.

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Woman became so masterful, so pervasively dominant in her relations with her masculine counterpart, that she came to reflect man’s primary physiological desire. She became equated with erotic passion and fulfillment, and her urgency grew so intense that all roads were directed toward her as the ultimate pleasure, the sensual summum bonum. She was in the medieval dialectical sense, matter in actu. And when the physiological and amatory capacities of the male became, through excessive practice or through incidental incapacities or aberrations and indiscretions, markedly weakened and deficient, there was instant and frantic resort to any means, to all means, whereby this defect or incapacity might be corrected or possibly completely remedied. Hence the febrile, the universal quest, in every land and at all cultural levels, for aids and persuasive spells and secret incantations, thaumaturgic formulas and brews, elixirs and anticipated panaceas.

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Springs, rivers, lakes, wells, and fountains have had at various times a kind of miraculous or thaumaturgic repute as an efficacious amatory stimulant. The Khirgiz of Central Asia, for instance, have a legend that a princess, after bathing in a sacred lake, became enceinte. Waters may thus be fruitful and fecundating. Aristotle himself relates that a pool had the same effect on a bathing woman.

In the Middle Ages, the philosopher and occultist Albertus Magnus describes similar instances and similar potencies.

In India, barren women bathed in a sacred well. Similarly with the waters of Sinuessa in Greece. Springs in Germany and Morocco and in France were likewise venerated for their traditional erotic efficacy.

In Hindu mythology, there are instances of women bathing in the holy River Ganges and losing their sterility. So in the aboriginal myths of Australia. In the Fiji islands barren women bathe in the river and then take a drink of saffron and carob bean.

A similar tradition lingers in China, in the history of the Manchus. The lotus often appeared in their legends as a kind of confirmatory aid. In Egypt, in fact, the lotus was known as the wife of the Nile.

In both the West and the Orient, the personal will to be admired or loved is believed to be instrumental, in a perceptible degree, in producing a corresponding impact on the object of the desire. Various procedures are specified, each having its own effective possibilities. An offering of a bouquet of red flowers, breathed upon three times by the amorous giver, may prove highly favorable to his pursuit. Or a musical serenade, equally in vogue in the Latin countries, in medieval Europe, and in the Middle East.