Love Potions Through the Ages: A Study of Amatory Devices and Mores
CHAPTER VIII
INGREDIENTS OF POTIONS. RECIPES. ANECDOTES.
_Ingredients_
What were the elements that, in combination, constituted the potion? Was there a formal, hieratic prescription for its composition, faithfully followed, scrupulously administered, uniformly conclusive? Or was it a more or less haphazard matter of collecting various essences and grasses, roots and drugs and far-sought items, and then hopefully thrusting them upon the tremulous suppliant, the desperate lover, the urgent princeling or vagrant poet? The ancients, both in the Mediterranean area and in the far-flung Asian territories, used virtually the same species of ingredients, the same or analogous roots and extracts, enwrapped, to strengthen the efficacy, in goetic chants, in awesome invocations, supplications, persistent pleas, and even menaces.
Sometimes the ingredients were abominable and repulsive in character, for all growing and living things were grist to the occultist’s mill. Animal and human excreta and genitalia were frequently brought under contribution. Not rarely, exotic spices were garnered: or leaves from trees that grew in distant regions: or objects otherwise difficult to obtain? such as the hair, or nail parings, or even more intimate and less mentionable items from the human body. The traditions associated with the ingredients were manifestly read and studied and pondered over and memorized through the ages, and subsequently transmitted to later centuries. So that by the Middle Ages there had been accumulated an immense reservoir of available constituents: human and animal matter, herbs, genitalia, liquefied elements, excrement of ox and pig, of wolf, goat, dog, and goose, of sheep, hen, mice, pigeon, and cow. To ensure the validity of the potion, there would be a bewitchment of the entire compound, accompanied by certain formal rituals. Formulas would be inscribed on certain phials and objects. Frog’s bones were popular in this regard. The mandrake, that mystic root that was associated with sinister human origins and characteristics, the plant that was reputedly endowed with male and female properties, was a popular ingredient in the love potion. Bryony was long used for the purpose, and, in later days, tobacco as well. Entrails of animals were no rarity. The more repellent the object, the more salacious and lewd and priapic would be the effect. For the gasping, excited recipient, nothing was too foul, nothing too obnoxious, nothing too horrendous. What did matter was its aphrodisiac value. Hence the powdered heart of a roasted humming bird had its potency. Or the liver of a sparrow. The kidney of a hare was a frequent addition to the sum total of decayed and decaying tissue. Or the womb of a swallow, that itself required minute preparation, was a prompt aid. Human blood came into the picture, and the human heart and the fingers, as well as viscera, excrement, and urine, brain and skin and marrow. Even the Roman poets give a literary shudder at the mention, and in the medieval chroniclers and encyclopedists there is equally a sense of repulsion yet attraction. For love and passion generated from death and offal, and desire sprang from decay. Sappho, that ancient Greek poetess of Lesbos, knew the supremacy of this passion. She called Aphrodite deathless, because love and life are co-eval and co-existent. The sweetest thing of all, she declares in one of her pieces, is to find one’s lover. Ages later, Titus Lucretius Carus, the Roman Epicurean poet who, in the first century B.C., produced that remarkable, profound epic, _De Rerum Natura_, The Nature of Things, begins his poem with an invocation to fostering Venus, the delight of men and of gods.
The Orient, permeated by the same passions, had its own range of contributory aphrodisiac elements. Betel-nut, chewed and blood-red, was commonly a base for the philtre. Ambergris, touched with something mystic and elusive, played its creative, kinetic part. Some concoctions had more earthy associations: for instance, the brains of a hoopee, pounded into a cake, and devoured with hopeful zest. Or the wicks of lamps were inscribed with thaumaturgic invocations and then burned to ensure their amatory efficacy.
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Despite the motivating force of love, it was, in some instances, an object of dread. For it was a widely disruptive agent, involving elements and features dangerous to the succumbing man and also to man’s supremacy in his masculine context, his virile world. Hence in Euripides’ tragedy _Medea_ the chorus, speaking for the heroine, chants:
When in excess and past all limits Love doth come, he brings not glory or repute to man; but if the Cyprian queen in moderate might approach, no goddess is so full of charm as she. Never, O never, lady mine, discharge at me from thy golden bow a shaft invincible, in passion’s venom dipped.
Again, in confirmation of this view of passion, in Sophocles’ _Antigone_ the tragic and cataclysmic impact of love is bewailed by the murmurous chorus:
Love unconquered in the fight, Love, who makest havoc of wealth, who keepest thy vigil on the soft cheek of a maiden; thou roamest over the sea, and among the homes of dwellers in the wilds; no immortal can escape thee, nor any among men whose life is for a day; and he to whom thou hast come is mad.
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Thessaly, a region in northern Greece, was anciently known for sorcery and magic potencies. It was associated with witches and mystic practices, and its reputation for goety was so widespread, so deeply embedded in the region, that it continued far down into the Roman Imperial age.
At night, the dead had to be guarded with great care, as these witches were in the habit of tearing off pieces and shreds of flesh from the corpse, and using them in concocting their potions.
Necromancy, the multiple phases of the black arts, were normally believed to have come from Thessaly or to have found their sources there. Thessaly, in fact, is, throughout ancient Greek literature, the fountain-head of magic. The Greek tragic poet Sophocles, for instance, and, later, the comic writer Menander allude to Thessalian magicians.
The Thessalian witch became almost a stock character, in bucolic poetry, in the drama, in legend. She is the supreme adept, and is so acknowledged. Among the later Romans, in particular, her stature is established. The elegiac poets Tibullus and Propertius, as well as Ovid, Vergil, Horace, and Lucan cite her for her ubiquity, her constant participation in furtive manoeuvres, her intimacy with the foul and obscene and malevolent forces of the cosmos.
The Thessalian witch had notable skill in the selection and preparation of love potions. One of the most effective elements in such philtres was catancy, a plant often mentioned in this connection. It should here be observed that many factors in the composition of the potion are no longer completely identifiable. Organic matter of course has universal denotations: but obscure herbs, roots, spices, drugs belonged to a secretive traditional pharmacopoeia that is no longer available in its original intact form.
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In the obscure depths and the furtive sinuosities of folk traditions and transmitted superstitions and rites and formulas that succeeding generations accepted and cherished, the sex motif was always pervasive, unalterably dominant. The quest for amatory power, for refreshment and recovery of the physiological apparatus, was uniformly directed to the tenebrous forces, the prescriptions and suggestions that would arouse the erotic faculties and effect consummation of the passions of love or affection or desire.
In the slow progression of time this oral corpus of knowledge and these secretive means of amorous enchantment and invigorating processes were coordinated. They became imprinted in the written word. They were now established, durable. These compilations, that were in essence erotic handbooks, were primarily intended for all the love-sick, the yearning youth, the disappointed and effete libertine, the persistent aged debauchee, the warped, distorted, and maleficent pursuers of Eros in his most naked identity, of Priapus exultant and self-perpetuating. Nor was this search for the remedial elixir delimited by time or circumstances. It has, on the contrary, been continuous, and has flowed down from shadowy ancientness through the complexities of the Middle Ages, the tumultuous era of the Renaissance, which made life and letters complementary concomitants, down into these very present days, when the search is no less unending, in the laboratories, in mystic and pseudo-mystic cults, in fantastic devices in the Chinese hinterland, in the steaming Congo, in Haiti and in scattered and sundered islands in the Pacific wastes.
In the misty ages, the formula for recovering or stimulating sexual vigor was comparatively simple. In Accadian and Chaldean, in Hittite and Sumerian rituals there was the spell, the enchantment involving mystic terms, a sacred logos, a philtre of recognized potency, a particular herb or food enwrapped in entreaty and threats and injunctions to the impalpable controlling forces and agencies.
Under the impact and influence of the esoteric science of the lands of Asia Minor and of Egypt, the prescriptions were extended, and assumed a variety of forms and ultimately were collected and embodied in corpora of relevant matter, destined for consultation, for succeeding ages.
Most of this matter, inscribed on papyrus, dates in the fourth century A.D., and is preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, in Paris.
A characteristic prescription gives directions for winning and ensuring a girl’s love. Hecate is the motivating force: Hecate, the triple goddess, the sorceress, equated with the moon-goddess Selene, with Artemis, and with Persephone, the goddess of the Underworld. The goddess Hecate then is invoked with a plea: to ensnare the girl’s love by means of torture, so that she will ultimately succumb to the urgencies of the panting lover.
Once the ingredients are accumulated, the next step is for the pleading lover to extol the effectiveness of the recipe. In the ancient Greek magic papyri, and in papyri containing particulars of love-charms, the offering itself is described in detail and its virtues are enumerated. Scrupulous adherence to the method of administering or treating the charm is enjoined. There is now the supplicative prayer to be intoned, while incense is sprinkled upon the sacrificial flames. Warnings are uttered, precautions are postulated, to prevent anything untoward from affecting the suppliant himself and bringing down upon his head any malefic consequences. Directions are given for preparations of the potion. Prayers and chants to the goddess Actiophis follow. In her semi-oriental designation the goddess is again invoked: Actiophis Ereschigal Nebutosualethi Phorphorbasa Tragiammon. Emphasis is placed on wresting the girl into a state of unconditional passion.
In mythological contexts, certain divinities, such as Hecate, certain seers and warlocks, sorceresses and thaumaturgic adepts, are associated with rejuvenative powers. The ancient witch Medea belongs in this category. She is foremost in her capacity for restoring masculine virility and potency by means of her goetic techniques, her magical charms, potions, and incantations.
Medea, the cunning one, as her Greek designation indicates etymologically, is the universal witch par excellence. She can renew the youthful vigor of Aeson by boiling him in herbs endowed with special virtues. Thus she is described by the Roman poet Ovid in Book 7 of the _Metamorphoses_. She can re-create Aegeus, the aged king of Athens, and bestow virility on him by virtue of her secret philtres. In _Medea_, the tragic drama of the Greek poet Euripides, she makes such an assertion and a promise:
Medea: I am undone, and more than that, am banished from the land.
Aegeus: By whom? fresh woe this word of mine unfolds.
Medea: Creon drives me forth in exile from Corinth.
Aegeus: Doth Jason allow it? This too I blame him for.
Medea: Not in words, but he will not stand out against it. O, I implore thee by this beard and by thy knees, in suppliant posture, pity, O pity my sorrows; do not see me cast forth forlorn, but receive me in thy country, to a seat within thy halls. So may thy wish by heaven’s grace be crowned with a full harvest of offspring, and may thy life close in happiness! Thou knowest not the rare good luck thou findest here, for I will make thy childlessness to cease and cause thee to beget fair issue; so potent are the spells I know.
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Hedylus was a Greek epigrammatist of the third century B.C. In one of his pieces a girl makes her confession that she was overcome and succumbed to wine and words of love. The wine, in fact, was the operative potion.
Another Greek epigrammatist, chanting of love and women, warns that man’s origin is lust itself.
The lyric poet Anacreon, who was born c. 570 B.C., suggests the attendant circumstances favorable to amatory exercise:
Sculptor, wouldst thou glad my soul, Grave for me an ample bowl, Worthy to shine in hall or bower, When springtime brings the reveler’s hour. Grave it with themes of chaste design, Fit for a simple board like mine. Display not there the barbarous rites In which religious zeal delights; Nor any tale of tragic fate Which History shudders to relate. No—cull thy fancies from above, Themes of heaven and themes of love. Let Bacchus, Jove’s ambrosial boy, Distill the grape in drops of joy, And while he smiles at every tear, Let warm-eyed Venus, dancing near, With spirits of the genial bed, The dewy herbage deftly tread. Let Love be there, without his arms, In timid nakedness of charms; And all the Graces, linked with Love, Stray, laughing, through the shadowy grove; While rosy boys, disporting round, In circlets trip the velvet ground. But ah! if there Apollo toys, I tremble for the rosy boys.
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Among the vast productions of the ancients, that included poetry and memoirs, biographies and chronicles, essays and dialogues, there are anecdotes, references of various kinds, subtle hints and mere verbal references to domestic or social life, from which we may glean items that are relevant to our present purpose.
This is the case with Plutarch, the Greek philosopher and biographer. He had a long, productive span of life, extending from c. 46 A.D. to 120 A.D. Primarily he is a biographer, and he is commonly so known. But he also produced a series of literary, political, religious, and ethical studies that are comprehensively included under the heading of _Moralia_.
One of these pieces consists of marriage precepts, Advice to Bride and Bridegroom: Polianus and Eurydice. It is, as Plutarch himself states, a compendium of marital conduct, and is packed with high ethical counsel, sober injunctions, sprinkled and reinforced with pertinent comments, apothegms, and anecdotes. Yet the matter of amorous stimuli is confronted straightforwardly and adroitly. The bride, Plutarch enjoins, should, according to the wise old statesman Solon, nibble a quince before getting into bed. It was an old tradition that quince, and particularly quince jelly, exercised erotic effects. Plutarch continues:
Fishing with poison is a quick way to catch fish and an easy method of taking them, but it makes the fish inedible and bad. In the same way women who artfully employ love-potions and magic spells upon their husbands, and gain the mastery over them through pleasure, find themselves consorts of dull-willed, degenerate fools. The men bewitched by Circe were of no service to her, nor did she make the least use of them after they had been changed into swine and asses.
Evidently the normal procedure in Plutarch’s day was to employ the love-potion without hesitation. It must have been highly popular, a regular instrument of amorous stimulation. Further, in addition to sexual excitation, the potion manifestly induced other and less acceptable results, and it also intruded on normal physiological and emotional conditions. It was, in short, a malefic instrument. The most wholesome advice, then, that Plutarch could now offer was to shun such adventitious amatory aids, to rely primarily on the inherent amorousness of the two marrying partners.
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In medieval Spain, in the thirteenth century, a certain Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita, published a book entitled _Book of Good Love_. Good love, that is, _buen amor_, is spiritual love, divine love. _Loco amor_ is the frenzied, carnal love of women that St. Thomas Aquinas terms _amor naturalis_.
Ruiz, familiar with the concept and practices of both types of love, refers to the large body of erotic stimulants, that the Arabs introduced into Europe. Among such potions and aphrodisiacs were: citrus fruits, ginger, cloves, cummin seeds, and carrots.
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The actual composition of love-potions and analogous amatory fortifiers is not known in each case in specific detail. Erotologists, historians of ethnic mores, chroniclers, authors of amatory manuals, and writers on similar topics make frequent casual references to the fact of the potion itself, with the implication that the individual ingredients, their relationship to each other, the sources of supply, and the method of compounding them into one medicament are either so well established in public knowledge as to dispense with the enumeration of the component elements, or are merely in the nature of traditional information, transmitted to the reader without further comment, without the personal or necessary intrusion of the writer.
Despite such strictures, however, there remains a sufficiently substantial corpus of knowledge relative both to the potion as such and to the elements of such a compound elixir.
An immediate, rational, and fundamental explanation of the dearth of details about the potion is that the draught had a high economic value. The possessor of the mysterious ingredients collected and compounded and distilled for monetary gain. The selling of potions was a lucrative business: in the Middle Ages it was a flourishing industry, an indispensable production. And thus it was to the extreme advantage of the dispenser of the amatory cup to guard and retain the secret recipes with the most scrupulous care.
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Perfumes and spices and aromatic roots were often included in the composition of philtres, to give a particular fragrance to the unguent or medicament. This was usually the case among the Romans, who often, in large and luxurious families, had special laboratories where the essences were distilled. These essences contained, among other ingredients, myrrh, cinnamon, marjoram, or spikenard.
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Some philtres consisted of testicular and related matter, as: the sperm of deer and other animals, and even menstrual blood. The belief was that an intimate causal relationship existed between the elements of the philtre and the anticipated sexual implications.
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One of the basic ingredients for a compound conducive to amatory vigor is mastic, recurrently recommended in the Arab manuals. Mastic is a gum or resin used nowadays in the manufacture of varnish. In some countries bordering the Mediterranean, particularly in Greece and Turkey, mastic is used to flavor a liquor.
The mastic shrub is an evergreen, multiple-branched, and indigenous to the Greek island of Chios. In the Orient mastic has been used as a kind of chewing gum. The fruit itself is a red berry. This fruit, crushed and pounded and mixed with honey, produces a drink that is reputed to be of great amatory potency.
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Garlic, too, is an amatory stimulant, and has been so used in composition. It is repeatedly included in the enumeration of aphrodisiac elements, in both Western and Oriental erotic manuals. Among the aboriginal Ainu of Northern Japan, garlic has the same gastronomic status as nectar and ambrosia, the food of the gods, among the ancient Greeks.
Similarly with syrup of vinegar, and nutmeg, with cardamom, which, in a compound of onions, ginger, cinnamon and peas, is reputed to be particularly efficacious in Arab countries. Peppers, both white and red varieties, are credited with arousing intense sexual inclinations.
In the Arab manuals laurel-seeds are frequently mentioned: Indian cachou, cloves, gilly-flower. Instructions are given for pounding various items together into some consistency, then liquefying the compound with a broth, or honey, or goat’s milk.
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In all ages, alcohol has appealed to men for its aphrodisiac possibilities. In moderate amounts, it has been at various times and in varied circumstances commended as a stimulant. In excessive doses, however, it appears to act as a decided anaphrodisiac.
The French King Louis XIV, whose reign was marked by the utmost sexual liberties, was accustomed to encourage his amatory inclinations with a drink of alcohol sweetened with sugar.
Throughout the European countries, there was a folk tradition that required a bride and a bridegroom to consume cakes steeped in alcohol and sugar, to ensure nuptial consummation.
According to some authorities, small doses of spirits depress the higher centres of the brain and thus release emotional inhibitions.
Biblical literature is full of allusions to alcoholic drinks and spirits, and to their frequent use, but uniformly with the proviso of due moderation.
A relevant allusion occurs in Romans 14.21:
Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.
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Since fish contain phosphorus and other elements highly productive in amatory inducements, brews and soups and chowders compounded of fish will equally contribute to aid energizing vigor.
Curries and sauces may act as excitants and hence be provocative, though by indirect means, of amatory urgencies.
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The consumption of garlic, in any considerable quantity, may readily and normally repel intimate contacts. But in antiquity, and through the middle centuries, it was widely in use as a pronounced aphrodisiac. This was and still is especially so in the countries of the Mediterranean littoral. In a fluid form, as distilled oil of garlic, it appears that it has its use also, but with less invigorating effect.
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Anise, which flourishes in the Eastern Mediterranean region, is used at the present time for gastronomic purposes. But it was also reputed to increase amatory excitation.
In the cyclic search for erotic reinforcements, the most horrific ingredients and means have been utilized. Even the human body. One medieval compound, for instance, consisted of the flesh of a human corpse, in a putrefied condition, along with ovaries and testes, both human and animal, soaked in alcohol.
The Marquis de Sade, author of Justine, Les 120 Journées de Sodome, and other novels dealing with sexual orgies and perversions, presents a character called Minski, a giant, who is himself anthropophagous and who eulogizes the consumption of human flesh, dwelling with inhuman relish on the texture, the taste, the continuous appeal of the human body in a sexual sense:
Minski’s potency is such that, at the age of forty-five, his faculty for lubricity is able to induce in one evening ten manifestations. He admits that this physiological energy is largely due to the quantity of human flesh that he consumes. He advises this same regimen to those who would like to triple their capacity, apart from the strength and health and vigor that he will acquire through this diet. Once human flesh is tasted, one will disdain all other foods. No animal meat, no fish can compare with human flesh. Once the initial repugnance is overcome, one can never have enough of it.
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That is the substance of Minski’s argumentation. In this century, William Seabrook, the American writer who adventured in West Africa, the Caribbean Islands, and Arabia, himself describes the eating of human flesh in one of his personal narratives.
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In the opinion of the medieval Italian physician Johannes Benedict Sinibaldus, author of the Geneanthropoeia, a compound of dried black ants was a frequent means of creating amatory desire. The ants were soaked in oil and stored for use in a glass jar.
Incense, particularly in the Orient, has immemorially been considered a priapic stimulant. In Biblical literature, in Exodus, the Lord gives directions for the preparation of a sacred, divine incense. It is to be composed of onycha and galbanum, stacte, pure frankincense, and spices: the whole to be reduced to a fine powder.
The most potent philtre or potion is the instinctive, natural, physiological desire. This maxim has been postulated by many erotologists and sexologists. It is forcefully so asserted by Robert Burton, the seventeenth century encyclopedist who, while searching for a clue to the cure of melancholy, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, simultaneously searched through all the chronicles, histories, and treatises of his predecessors.
Philtres, he asserts, and charms, amulets and figurines, periapts and unguents are basically unlawful means: they are, actually, the last resort in the amatory quest. Panders and bawds and the attendants on erotic provocations give some meagre aid in this respect. Beyond that, there is nothing but magic enchantments, Satanic assistance. ‘I know,’ confesses Burton, ‘that there be those that denye the devil can do any such things, and that there is no other fascination than that which comes by the eyes.’ He then quotes from Pietro Aretino, the Italian erotic poet, in relation to Lucretia’s amatory power:
One accent from thy lips the blood more warmes, Than all their philtres, exorcisms, and charms.
Lucretia’s erotic faculty was such that she could accomplish, merely by kissing and embracing, her sole philtre, as she admitted, more than all the philosophers, astrologers, alchemists, necromancers, and witches.
Lucretia used neither potions nor herbs. With all my science, she said, I could never stir the hearts of men: only by my embraces, the warmth of my lips. I forced men to rave like wild beasts, and countless among them I drove into bestial stupefaction, with the result that they adored me and my love like an idol.
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In the weird and confused history of human mores, there are noteworthy episodes and anecdotes, some apocryphal and traditional, others warranted by authenticity and verifiable historicity, relating to amatory experiences and their effects. Many of such anecdotes, prevalent in Oriental and classical literature, describe the amazing consequences of the consumption of love-potions and similar concoctions.
There is the story of the wayward and untrustworthy but brilliant Alcibiades, the fifth century B.C. political leader in Greece. His amorous bouts, his erotic intrigues, were so frequent, so forceful, and so indiscriminate that, as personal insignia, he bore the design of Eros, the god of love and son of Aphrodite. Eros was, in this instance, depicted as hurling lightning bolts. Of this same Alcibiades the tale ran, according to a later chronicler, that as a young man Alcibiades had the faculty of diverting wives from their husbands.
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Alcohol, like wine, in moderation, has regularly been used as an amatory complement. King Louis XIV of France, for instance, was accustomed to take alcohol, with the addition of sugar, to arouse his jaded sensuality.
Brides and bridegrooms, too, in medieval Europe, followed a folk custom of eating a cake dipped in alcohol and sugar.
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The embattled women known anciently as Amazons, on taking prisoners in battle, broke the captives’ arms or legs. The belief was that, by the deprivation of a limb, the erotic functions of the captive would correspondingly be strengthened. One of the Amazon queens, Antiara by name, was the author of a kind of apothegm, that the lame best performed the amatory act.
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Certain foods have urgent amatory reactions. Brillat-Savarin, the arch gourmet who is the author of The Physiology of Taste, a standard gastronomic classic, relates that as a result of a repast that included truffles and game, erotic manifestations among the guests were immediate and evident.
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Although the mandrake root involved amatory performances, it was often used for analgesic effects. Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, who ruled in the fifth century A.D., used to order mandrake to be inserted in wine, and the drink to be administered to victims doomed to crucifixion.
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In order to stimulate him doubly, both visually and fluidly, Anaxarchus devised a suitable diversion. He was a fourth century B.C. Greek philosopher, who was a friend of Alexander the Great, accompanying him on his Eastern expeditions. At the usual Greek symposium, which included drinking, entertainment, and discussion on various themes, Anaxarchus had his wine poured out for him by a young and beautiful female attendant, in puris naturalibus.
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In classical antiquity, apples were associated with amatory connotations. Apples were regularly exchanged as gifts among lovers. This custom is mentioned by the Roman elegiac poet Catullus, and by Vergil in the Eclogues: Galatea is after me with an apple. Again:
I sent ten golden apples.
Propertius, the elegiac poet, similarly writes:
I gave her apples stealthily in the palms of my hands.
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In the story of Ala-al Din abu-al, in the corpus of The Arabian Nights, there is an incident that relates how a druggist prepared a love-potion. He bought from a vendor of hashish two ounces of concentrated Roumi opium, and equal parts of cinnamon, Chinese cubebs, cardamoms, cloves, ginger, and mountain shiek—which is a lizard with aphrodisiac properties, and white pepper. After pounding these varied ingredients together, he boiled them in sweet olive oil, adding three ounces of male frankincense and a cup of coriander seed. The mixture was then macerated, and made into an electuary with bee-honey. The directions given by the druggist were as follows: After a dinner of house pigeon and mutton, well spiced, take a spoonful of this electuary, wash it down with sherbet of rose conserve, and await results.
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King Henry IV of France, like other Gallic rulers, had pronounced erotic tendencies, resulting in the possession of many mistresses. On every occasion, before confronting one of them, he fortified his system with a glass of armagnac, a brandy distilled from wine.
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An ancient Classical warning relating to the powerful dominance of love is contained in the tragic story of Arsinoe. Daughter of the King of Cyprus, she rejected her lover Arceophon. In a fit of dejection, he committed suicide. But Arsinoe was punished for her disdain. She was turned into stone by Aphrodite herself.
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Certain animals, in classical and Oriental mythology, were associated with erotic symbolism. This was the case with the stag, the ass, the bull, the camel, the deer, the mare. During a festival in honor of Dionysus, god of wine and in general of fertility, Priapus, the god who represented the active male principle, was on the point of exercising his potency with the nymph Lotis. At the crucial moment, however, an ass brayed, and saved Lotis. As a consequence, the ass was doomed to become a sacrificial victim to Priapus.
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Women were more rarely involved in experimenting with invigorating agents. One woman, however, has gained historical notoriety and infamy in this respect. She was the Countess Elizabeth Bathory, a seventeenth century Hungarian. In her passion for recovering her youthful energy, she was said to have strangled some eighty peasant girls and to have bathed in their blood. Retribution overtook her in the act, and she was sentenced to imprisonment for life.
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Flagellation, as an erotic symbol, was known to the ancients and was frequently practiced in the Middle Ages. Galen of Pergamum, the Greek gladiator-physician who flourished in the second century A.D. under the Roman Emperors, asserts that slave merchants used this practice in order to make their slaves more appealing to prospective buyers.
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Many historical personalities have been addicted to flagellation for their own purposes. Cornelius Gallus, administrator of the Roman province of Egypt and a friend of the Roman epic poet Vergil, resorted to scourging for the purpose of amatory excitation.
One Italian, a noted libertine of the times, had the scourge soaked in vinegar, to give the lashes greater pungency.
There is a strong probability that Abelard also used flagellation. For he declares, addressing Héloise:
Verbera quandoque dabat amor non furor, gratia non ira, quae omnium unguentorum suavitatem transcenderent. Again, he reminds her of his own lascivious and libidinous ways: With threats and scourges I often compelled thee who wast, by nature, a weaker vessel, to comply, notwithstanding thy unwillingness and remonstrances.
Tamerlane, the Asiatic master of the universe, the subject too of one of Christopher Marlowe’s tremendous dramas, was both a flagellant and a monorchis.
Finally, Jean Jacques Rousseau, in his Confessions, acknowledges his condition:
I had discovered in pain, even in shame, a mixture of sensuality that left me with a greater desire, rather than a fear, of experiencing it again.
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Sexual license, although restrained among the Semites, among the Greeks and Romans under certain conditions, and among other ancient nations, often broke all bounds under particular circumstances, with resultant orgies involving almost incredible erotic experiences. The Biblical episode of the Golden Calf illustrates this situation, for it was an absorption of pagan eroticism and then of pagan idolatry.
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The wife of the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius, Faustina, became enamoured of a gladiator. The Emperor consulted the court magicians, who suggested, to diminish or eliminate her passion, that she be required to drink the gladiator’s blood. They promised that, as a consequence, Faustina would conceive a lasting hatred for her erstwhile lover. She drank the blood, and the magicians were justified in their prediction.
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As an erotic performance, and, notably, as a means of curing sterility in women, certain practices associated with the phallic symbol were in force in many countries, in all ages. The women of Brittany practiced phallic rites for centuries, in order to end their sterility. In one town a public phallic figure was often the scene of a peculiar act. The women gathered some of the dust at the base of the image and swallowed it, anticipating, through this form of sympathetic symbolism, the favorable outcome of the priapic implications.
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There was an old legend that King Philip of Macedon had been bewitched by a Thessalian maiden who had used philtres to effect her passionate purpose. When Olympias, the Queen, observed the girl’s beauty and breeding and deportment, she declared that these qualities alone were the philtres that had ensnared King Philip.
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Antiquity consistently associated sexual performances with sacred and divine rituals. So with the ancient Canaanites. The Hebraic tribes that lived in contiguous regions adopted this practice. They cohabited with the women of Shittim, and associated with the daughters of Moab. They went even further, and did obeisance to the gods of their neighbors, particularly to the god Baal-peor. The full text of this episode appears in Numbers 25, verses 1–3.
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There was so much rivalry among the mistresses of King Louis XV of France that each one resorted to the most extreme means to hold his affection, or to regain his love. Madame de Pompadour, for example, used a tincture of cantharides. Cantharides is the beetle Mylabris or Lytta Vesicatoria. The active principle of this insect is a white powder called cantharidine: used as an amatory stimulant, but dangerous, and, when taken internally, fatal to the victim.
For Madame de Pompadour, however, and for many personalities notorious in history for their ruthless determination, there was the old but still meaningful adage about fairness in war and in love.
It is a popular belief that castration eliminates all amatory inclination as well as capacity. The Greek author of the encyclopedic Banquet of the Philosophers, however, Athenaeus, states that the Medes practiced this operation with their neighbors, for the purpose of arousing lustful excitations.
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Pearls, and other precious stones, were anciently credited with amatory properties. In this connection, there was a legend that Cleopatra used to dissolve pearls in vinegar. She drank this mixture to excite her erotic sensualities.
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Visual aphrodisiacs are virtually amatory philtres. The girls of ancient Sparta wore a short knee-length garment that was slit high at the side. The appellation given to these girls, thigh-showers, confirmed their amorous allurement.
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There was an ancient Greek named Ctesippus, who had a notorious reputation for amorous exercises. He was so libidinous that, frantic in his lustful urgencies, he sold the stones from his father’s grave to purchase the wherewithal for his pleasures.
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Apuleius, the Roman philosopher and novelist, author of the romantic tale entitled The Metamorphoses, who flourished in the second century A.D., was involved in a public trial. Accused of practicing witchcraft to win a widow’s love, he was also credited with preparing love-potions for this purpose. The love-potions, it was charged, contained as ingredients highly erotic elements: spiced oysters, sea hedge-hogs, cuttlefish, and lobsters. Apuleius, however, in a speech that is still extant, defended the innocuous nature of his offerings.
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Dancing among the Romans had erotic implications. According to the Roman historian Sallust, a certain Sempronia danced with more zest than a respectable matron should.
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Democritus, the Greek philosopher who belongs in the fifth century B.C., was credited with the preparation of love philtres.
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The tyrant of Syracuse, in Sicily, Dionysius, who belongs in the fourth century B.C., was reputed to be an extreme libertine. He once filled a house with the fragrant herb thyme, which is an erotic stimulant, and with roses in profusion. Then he invited the young women of the city to participate in an orgiastic sequence of libidinous performances.
Madame du Barry, eager to retain the royal favor at the court of France, often prepared dishes that had amatory possibilities. These dishes involved: stewed capon, terrapin soup, crawfish, ginger omelettes, shrimp soup, and sweetbreads: all of which are reputed to be salacious provocatives.
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The goddess of the dawn, who in Greek mythology was Eos, rhododactylos, rosy-fingered, was a divinity endowed with such amorous intensity that, whomever she observed favorably, she carried off for her amatory purposes. The youth Tithonus, who became her husband, was so treated. So with Clitus, Orion, and Cephalus.
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There were, in antiquity, lascivious dances that were sexually provocative. One such dance was the Sicinnis, during which, in addition to lewd gestures, the clothes of the dancer were stripped off. Another dance was called the Dance of the Caleabides: also the Cordax, which involved amatory exhibitionism, denudation, and erotic motions.
Herodotus, the first major Greek historian, relates an episode connected with terpsichorean performances. Cleisthenes, ruler of Sicyon, had a daughter named Agariste. Her beauty brought her numerous suitors, all unsuccessful, in turn. Finally a wealthy young Athenian, a certain Hippoclides, appeared, as a guest at a banquet given by Cleisthenes. Having imbibed too generously, Hippoclides mounted on a table, and performed several lascivious dances. Cleisthenes was so shocked by the obscene movements that he declared to Hippoclides: You have danced away your bride.
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Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, was widely worshipped throughout the Hellenic territories, both on the mainland of Greece, in Asia Minor, and in the Aegean Islands. At Paphos, in Cyprus, an annual festival, attended by both men and women, was held in her honor. The ceremonials conducted during the festival included frenzied sexual performances. In token of the goddess’ favor, each member left for Aphrodite a coin, in return for which they received a phallus and some salt.
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Phallic figures were a common feature in ancient religious cults. But even as late as the eighteenth century the phallus appeared in public demonstrations. At the annual three-day fair held in Isernia, in the Kingdom of Naples, reproductions of a phallus were on sale. The customers were usually barren women, who, through this phallic symbolism, anticipated a favorable outcome for their sterility.
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In classical mythology, erotic inducements were used even by the divinities themselves. In the Greek epic poem the Iliad, Hera, wife of the supreme deity Zeus, employs such excitants, to arouse her husband. From Aphrodite, the goddess of love, Hera secures Aphrodite’s magic girdle of love and longing ‘which subdues the hearts of all the gods and of mortal dwellers upon earth.’
Aphrodite ‘loosed from her bosom a broidered girdle, wherein are fashioned all manner of allurements; therein is love, therein is longing and dalliance—beguilement that steals the wits of the wise.’
And, however wise he might be, Zeus’ wits were thus stolen.
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Although the search for amatory potency is one of the most dominant factors in human history, there are cases where the opposite effect was desired. A Roman matron, to cite one instance, named Numantina, wife of Plautius Sylvanus, was charged with having effected incapacity in her husband by magic means.
Magic played a part in medieval history too. Gregory of Tours, the sixth century A.D. churchman and historian, tells of a certain woman who was spell-bound by a number of concubines. She had become the wife of Eulatius, and had thus inspired the concubines of this Eulatius into jealous retaliation.
Again, according to the chronicles, the medieval king Theodoric was incapacitated by a magic spell.
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Among the most lascivious women in all history was Catherine II of Russia. Married to the grandson of Peter the Great, and still childless, she was informed by her advisers that an heir was urgent in order to preserve the Empire.
Catherine consequently made a realistic decision. She ordered a sturgeon, and caviar, to be prepared for a banquet. Then she invited one of the officers of the Guard, named Sattikoff. The outcome of the invitation, and of the piscatory repast, was an heir to the Russian Empire.
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The Emperor Saladin is concerned in a story that is pointed in confirmation of the amatory value of a fish diet. To verify the degree of continence of some holy dervishes, the Emperor invited two of them to an entertainment in his palace, at which rich food was served. Odalisques too took part in the banquet: but the dervishes succeeded in resisting the female blandishments. Saladin, however, dissatisfied with this reaction of the dervishes, and rather astonished, ordered another repast to be prepared. This consisted entirely of fish dishes. The dervishes were again invited, and the odalisques were present as entertainers. This time, Saladin was completely satisfied with his piscatory experiment, for the dervishes reacted to the odalisques as the Emperor had expected.
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Francis I, King of France during the sixteenth century, was, apart from his cultural interests, noted for his erotic experiences, that he extended by provocative foods, drinks, and concoctions of various kinds designed to prolong his capacity. His mistresses were innumerable, and he died exhausted by his amatory excesses.
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George IV, King of England, was a gourmet who appreciated the priapic properties of truffles. His Ministers at the Courts of Naples, Florence, and Turin were given special and unusual directions. They were to forward to the Royal Kitchen in London any truffles that they discovered to be of superior quality in delicacy or flavor or size.
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King Edward VI of England was the victim, according to old historical chronicles, of bewitchment. The accused was the scholarly but tragic Lady Jane Grey, who was charged with concocting magic potions and employing amatory charms to the King’s detriment.
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An ancient view on incapacity derives from Hippocrates. This famous Greek physician, who died in the same year as Socrates, in 399 B.C., attributed the prevalence of genesiac incapacity among the Scythians to the fact of their wearing breeches. He considered this sartorial custom as at least a predisposing cause: and modern views largely confirm his postulate.
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Glorification of the sexual motif manifested itself on the island of Cyprus, where the birth of Aphrodite was celebrated riotously. The divine image was bathed in the sea by the women of the island: then decked with garlands. There was a session of bathing in the river by both sexes: but this performance was a mere preliminary to subsequent orgiastic licentiousness.
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Brasica eruca has long been considered a provocative agent. In a medieval monastery it was grown in the garden, and used by the monks in a daily infusion. The intention was to be roused from sluggish inactivity by this stimulating beverage. The concoction, however, had such physiological effects in an amatory sense that the monks climbed the walls of the monastery and pursued their urgencies at the expense of their devotions. They transgressed both ‘their monastery walls and their vows,’ comments the medieval chronicle.
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Passion knows no bounds, no formalities, no conventions. An anecdote related by the Greek philosopher and biographer Plutarch illustrates this point. King Ptolemy II, who reigned in the third century B.C., was so enamoured of his mistress Belestiche that he built a temple in her honor. Then he dedicated it and named his mistress Aphrodite Belestiche, implicitly attributing to her divine characteristics.
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Mixoscopy is an erotic perversion that involves secret observation of amatory performances.
In Homer’s Greek epic, the Odyssey, there is an instance of this aberration, in the form of invited voyeurism. Hephaestus, the husband of Aphrodite, goddess of love, surprised his wife in intimacy with Ares, the war god. In revenge, he summoned all the deities to observe the sight of his wife in the amatory embrace of the god.
Another case of mixoscopy is related by Herodotus, the first major Greek historian. King Candaules, proud of his wife’s beauty, persuaded his friend Gyges to hide in the sleeping chamber and observe the Queen while she was preparing for bed. The Queen caught Gyges in the act of observation and offered him this ultimatum: Either to kill the King and become her husband and the ruler of the Kingdom of Lydia: or to die on the spot. Gyges accepted the first alternative, slew the King, married the Queen, and became King of Lydia.
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The sacred nature of the phallus as a symbol was transmitted from antiquity into modern times. In the Kingdom of Naples, for instance, at Trani, a Carnival was held in which there was carried processionally a huge figure of Priapus, ithyphallically posed, and termed by the participants in the celebration Il Santo Membro, The Holy Member. An ecclesiastical ordinance banished this pagan ceremony at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
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In Greek mythology Orion, represented as a hunter or a monstrous giant, was so lascivious that when Oenopion, King of Chios, was his guest, he ravished the King’s daughter. Orion’s passion drove him to attack the goddess Artemis, who punished him by sending a scorpion, that stung Orion to death. There are other versions of this myth, but basically they represent the forcefulness and pervasiveness of the erotic motif in ancient Greek life.
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The Duc de Richelieu, apart from his statesmanship, had other, more unique interests. One of these concerned amatory matters. He often entertained his guests and their mistresses at repasts called petits soupers. These little suppers provided dishes so prepared as to be conducive to amatory intimacies. In addition, the guests all appeared at the meals in puris naturalibus.
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Osphresiological conditions often have amatory reactions. Henry III of Navarre, for example, inspired Maria of Cleves with intense erotic inclinations on account of a perspiration-soaked handkerchief. Such was the case also with Henry IV of France and Gabrielle.
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In the seventeenth century Katherine Craigie, a Scottish witch, prepared love-potions for her clients. One such petitioner was a widow who had conceived a passion for a particular person. The witch promised her an herb that would make the man exclude all other interests, all other forms of affection, except love for the widow.
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Titus Lucretius Carus, the first century B.C. Roman epic poet, author of the remarkable De Rerum Natura, was, according to legend and to the statement of St. Jerome, poisoned by a love philtre administered by Lucretius’ own wife.
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The Roman Emperor Caligula, according to ancient chronicles, was given a potion by his wife Caesonia. Her object was to induce in the Emperor amatory stimulation, but the drink threw him into a fit.
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Even animals may be affected by amatory potions. There is an incident of a drake that belonged to a chemist. In the chemist’s house there was some water in a copper vessel that had contained phosphorus. Phosphorus has aphrodisiac properties. When the drake drank the water, it was affected with amatory tendencies that manifested themselves until its death.
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When Louis XIV of France approached old age and the disintegrating physiological effects associated therewith, he still retained his libidinous inclinations. As an invigorating drink, he was advised to take a mixture of distilled spirits, orange water, and sugar.
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The lewd and perverted Roman Emperor Tiberius was so eager to experience all varieties of erotic possibilities that, when he became familiar with the plant known as Sandix ceropolium, he exacted from his Germanic subjects a tribute that was partly paid in the form of the plant.
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The Assyrian King Sardanapalus was known for his forthright, unrestrained mode of living. He perpetuated his memory in an inscription on a stone statue of himself:
Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes, who conquered Anchiale and Tarsus on a single day. Eat! Drink Love! For all else is naught.
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In Hindu erotology, there are legends concerning magic devices for overcoming sterility.
King Brihadratha, ruler of Magadha, was sensual and libidinous. But his great regret was the lack of an heir. He therefore consulted a holy ascetic, a certain Candakaucika. The latter presented the king with a juicy mango that had just fallen from its tree. The mango was given to the king’s two wives. Each wife gave birth to half a child. The two parts, being brought together, thus produced a complete heir.
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The Emperor Heliogabalus, according to the Historia Augusta, a Latin collection of the biographies of thirty Roman emperors, was notorious for his unsavory conduct: It was said that in one day he visited all the harlots in the circus, the theatre, the amphitheatre, and every spot in the city. He would cover his head with a muleteer’s hood, in order to avoid recognition. After bestowing on all the prostitutes pieces of gold, without consummating his lusts, he would add: Let nobody know that the Emperor gave you this.
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The association of an Emperor and a harlot is described in the Latin collection of imperial biographies known as the Historia Augusta. The story concerns the Emperor Verus, who reigned in the second century A.D. At the instigation of a public harlot, he shaved off his beard while in Syria, an act that created much hostile talk in Syria itself.
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In the same Historia Augusta, the wild performances of the Emperor Heliogabalus are retailed:
He usually coaxed his friends into a state of drunkenness and suddenly at night let loose among them lions, leopards, and bears. When they woke up in the same chamber as the animals, and found lions, bears, and leopards around them, in the morning, or, what was worse, at night, they died of fright.
The Emperor would buy up harlots from all the pimps and then set them free. He gathered together all the prostitutes from the circus, the theatre, the stadium, and from everywhere, and brought them into the public buildings, and delivered military harangues, as it were, calling them fellow-soldiers.
At similar gatherings he addressed ex-pimps that he assembled from every quarter, as well as the most depraved boys and youths. When he went to the prostitutes, he dressed as a woman. At his banquets he and his friends performed with women.
The story went that he bought a well-known and very beautiful harlot for one hundred thousand sesterces.
In balneis semper cum muliebribus fuit, ita ut eas ipse psilothro curaret: ipse quoque barbam psilothro adcurans: quodque pudendum dictu est, eodem, quo mulieres adcurabantur, et eadem hora, rasit et virilia subactoribus suis, novacula manu sua, qua postea barbam fecit.
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The Historia Augusta makes many revelations about the intimate personal life of the Roman Emperors and their erotic mores. Among the later rulers, Commodus, who belongs in the second century A.D., defiled the temples of the gods with fornication and human blood.
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Of the Emperor Severus, who flourished in the second century A.D., the Historia Augusta says:
Domestically, he was indifferent, and kept his wife Julia, although she was a notorious adulteress and an accomplice in the conspiracy against his own life.
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Heliogabalus, whose biography appears in the Historia Augusta and who ruled in the third century A.D., discovered certain kinds of lustful pleasures, as the chronicle states, to supersede the male prostitutes.
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The younger Gordianus, the Roman Emperor who ruled in the third century A.D., was particularly fond of wine, and also of gastronomic delights. He had a great attachment to women, and was said to have twenty-two concubines assigned to him. He was called the Priam of his day, but the popular name for him was the Priapus of his times.
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The Roman general Lucullus, who belongs in the first century B.C., was also a renowned gourmet, and held lavish and exotic banquets for his friends. The Greek biographer and philosopher Plutarch, and the Roman historian Cornelius Nepos both relate that Lucullus consumed love-potions, that made him unconscious.
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The increase of libidinous inclinations, along with the physiological stimulus, was not invariably the sole, exclusive, and predictable effect of the love-potion. There were circumstances in which the potion might produce, for instance, temporary conditions of insanity. Such was the case, according to historical records, of the notable Roman administrator Gallus, who belongs in the first century B.C. He was driven mad through the excessive use of aphrodisiac philtres. Again, there is a tradition that Titus Lucretius Carus, the Roman poet who produced the remarkable epic entitled _The Nature of Things_, was the occasional victim of a potion administered by his wife with the intention of producing temporary insanity. So, too, with Lucullus, the Roman general and noted gourmet, who dates in the first century B.C. He succumbed to a poison that was contained as an ingredient in a love philtre.
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In the Orient, the almond becomes an amatory agent: either eaten whole, or ground into a powder, or mixed with other ingredients. Powdered almonds with cream and egg yolks and chicken stock act presumably as a stimulant. So with honey taken with almonds and pine tree grains.
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Minerals, precious stones have been constituents in exciting preparations. The medieval centuries in particular placed profound credence in their virtues. The agate was thus reputed to promote genesiac activity. So with molten gold taken in an infusion.
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All sorts of brews are known and experimented with in the East. A stimulant that, although credited with amatory effects, produced at the same time violent reactions, was a Chinese concoction of opium and other ingredients, called affion.
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Herbs were always a contribution in love drinks. An aromatic herb that was called by the Romans Venus’ plant was known in the Middle Ages as Sweet Flag and was considered an erotic excitation.
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Animal flesh and organs have immemorially formed part of the amatory apparatus. In the second century A.D. a physician of Alexandria recommended the flesh of lizard as a genesiac agent.
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Cheese and cherries, dried shrimp and scallops, fried spinach and noodles: chestnuts boiled with pistachio nuts, pine kernels, sugar, rocket seed and cinnamon: chicken gizzard: a compound of juice of powdered onion and ghee, heated and then cooled and mixed with chick-peas and water: a cider drink: cinchona bark: a liqueur distilled from cinnamon: civet-perfumed candy: cod liver, and cod roe: cockles: all these disparate items, some centuries ago, others in our own contemporary times, East and West, have been in use as generative provocations: sometimes traditionally and hopefully: at other times, merely traditionally.
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In the Hindu manuals there are enumerated and described such varied potions and unguents and drugs that masculine activity, according to legend, can be prolonged continuously to the extent of hundreds of individual and successive occasions.
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In the South Seas a stimulating drink, consumed after wedding ceremonies and other notable occasions, is made from the roots of the plant kava piperaceae. The root is chewed and then the juice extruded into a bowl: the liquid is then strained and served.
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In the Orient, from the bird known as King’s Crow, the extracted bile is compounded into an amatory philtre.
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A certain perfume popular among Arabs for amatory stimulus is known as dufz.
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All sorts of drugs, both in their natural state and in synthetic preparations, dangerous in their application and fatal in their effects, have frantically been enlisted as erotic attendants. The venereal passion has thus frequently transcended health, sanity, and the continuance of life itself. Among such drugs, draughts, and preparations are: damiana, absinthe, yohimbine, adrenaline, brucine, aphrodisin, amanita muscaria, belladonna, borax, hashish, cocaine, bhang, mescaline, bufotenin, rauwiloid, harmine.
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Among gruesome items used for libidinous purposes was human dried liver. The Romans were familiar with this ingredient, and Horace, the first century B.C. poet, makes mention of it in describing the dark operations of a witch.
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Formerly used as a love charm was dragon’s blood: a red resin extracted from the fruit of a palm tree called botanically calamus draco. Cast into a fire, dragon’s blood was believed, when accompanied by a binding spell in the form of a rhyming couplet, to induce an errant lover to return to the object of his passion.
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Dog-stones, tubers of the orchis species, are shaped like the testiculi canis, and hence are so called. At one time this plant was assumed to have an amatory virtue.
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In the case of women, darnel grass was considered an amatory provocation, when mixed with barley meal, myrrh, and frankincense.
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The comparatively innocuous cucumber, used domestically in salads, has sometimes been credited, mainly for its phallic shape, with venereal properties.
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In the Orient, the aromatic plant cumin, which is used as a condiment, is also considered aphrodisiacally. So with the pungent berry cubeb, native to Java, and used in cooking and medicinally.
In the East, cubebs are chewed, sometimes powdered and mixed with honey: sometimes made into an infusion with cubeb leaves. The provocative virtues of cubeb peppers are widely known and esteemed, from Arabia to China, and have been used erotically since at least the thirteenth century.
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Periapts and amulets of various types, both inanimate and organic, have been used with amatory prospects. Thus, in the Orient, betel nuts were so used. Or a lock of woman’s hair, over which a spell had been uttered. Or the human liver, as in ancient Greece, was considered the source of all desire and hence became a fetish. Or, in the East, a hyena’s udder, tied on the left arm, would induce the longed-for passion.
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The aromatic plant basil, used as a condiment, was also credited with exciting reactions. So much so, in fact, that in Italy the herb was used by maidens as a love charm.
Beans, too, were thought at all times to be highly amatory in their results. Hence the Church Father St. Jerome forbade the use of beans to nuns.
Carrots, turnips, wild cabbage, and beets have also been included at various times in this category. Pliny the Elder, the Roman author of the Historia Naturalis, states that white beets are an amatory aid.
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There was a long accepted tradition in the efficacy of certain fish, especially the barbel, which is mentioned by the Roman poet Ausonius in a poem dealing with various species of fish.
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The fat of a camel’s hump, melted down, and also camel’s milk taken with honey are, in Oriental erotological literature, considered of marked venereal value.
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The brains of certain animals were at various periods considered, apart from their food value, to possess erotic effects. So with the brains of sheep, pig, and calf. In some countries, notably in the Mediterranean area, animal brains are prepared as a gastronomic delicacy.
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At one time the milk of a chameleon was treated as a generative excitation. The thirteenth century Arab physician and philosopher Avicenna so recommended it.
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Rhubarb and cinnamon, ginger and vanilla, mixed in wine, produce a recipe that was prevalent in Italy, So with curaçao, mixed with madeira wine: to which were added pieces of sugar.
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An old collection of unique recipes, entitled the Golden Cabinet of Secrets, was formerly but incorrectly included among the works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. The collection itself was long popular for its putative authority. An amatory powder, described in the Cabinet, is compounded thus: Flowers of seeds of elecampane, vervain, mistletoe berries are crushed together and dried thoroughly in an oven. The powder is taken in a glass of wine, and the effects, it was urged, would be most gratifying.
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Usually, amatory concoctions were prepared individually, for each suppliant. In the seventeenth century, however, an Englishman by the name of Burton, an apothecary, established a factory in the town of Colchester. Here he produced on a large scale aphrodisiacs compounded of the roots of sea holly.
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There were for sale, in Rome, in the market place, in booths and emporia, and in quarters where people of all ranks and all ethnic origins congregated, philtres and brews, and articles putatively endowed with provocative and generative properties. Dried human marrow, and the sucking-fish, star-fish and intimate genital secretions, both male and female, were used in these concoctions. And over the preparations arose supplications and invocations and incantations directed to the divinities of the underworld, entreating efficacy in the purchased potions.
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Among plants that have both culinary uses and at least presumed amatory implications are the artichoke and asparagus. In France, artichokes were sold by vendors who, in their street cries, added forthrightly that artichokes aroused the genital areas.
Similarly, in the Orient, asparagus, fried with egg yolks, and sprinkled with spices, constituted a decidedly amatory dish.
The egg plant, too, split and boiled with a flour paste, vanilla beans, pimentos, chives, and pepper-corns, and a concoction known as bois bandé or tightening wood, containing strychnine and hence highly dangerous, was commonly in use in the West Indies, where it was credited with excitant qualities.
In China, again, bamboo shoots, usually an appetizing culinary ingredient, are believed to have an aphrodisiac value.
A shrub that, since Roman times, was used for inciting desire was birthwort. In this respect it was quite familiar to the Middle Ages.
Bitter sweet, too, like many herbs, was at one time credited with erotic virtues.
The berry of the caper plant, that is, caperberry, belongs in the same category. Its potency was reputedly so great that the plant is equated, in Ecclesiastes, with erotic desire itself.
Paprika, which is Hungarian red pepper, is prepared from the plant capsicum annuum, and is both a spice and a traditionally credited amatory aid.
A plant similar to the artichoke, and equally prickly, is cardoon, considered a stimulating agent. In France, the fleshy parts of the inner leaves are consumed with this intent.
Caraway seeds, in the East, are valued erotically.
Stewed in milk sauce, carrots are endowed, in Oriental manuals, with stimulating characteristics. In ancient Greece the carrot, used as a venereal medicine, was called a philtron.
Rosemary, the aromatic shrub, has leaves that are used in perfumery, medicinally, and in cookery. Among the Romans, it has an amatory virtue.
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Some amatory doses are of such a nature that excess may prove fatal. An urgent young man, invited to a dinner prepared by a courtesan, ate too heartily. He died on the following day, as all the dishes had been spiced with a potent stimulus.
Ferdinand of Castile, too, died from an administration of the same drug that had spiced the courses at the banquet.
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A medieval powder that was an energizing potential, rejuvenating and refreshing, is described by the English dramatist Ben Jonson (c. 1573–1637) in his comedy Volpone. Volpone himself offers the beautifying powder thus:
Here is a powder concealed in this paper, of which, if I should speak to the worth, nine thousand volumes were but as one page, that page as a line, that line as a word; so short is this pilgrimage of man (which some call life) to the expressing of it. Would I reflect on the price? Why, the whole world is but as an empire, that empire as a province, that province as a bank, that bank as a private purse to the purchase of it. I will only tell you; it is the powder that made Venus a goddess (given her by Apollo), that kept her perpetually young, cleared her wrinkles, firmed her gums, filled her skin, colored her hair; from her derived to Helen, and at the sack of Troy unfortunately lost, till now, in this our age, it was as happily recovered, by a studious antiquary, out of some ruins of Asia, who sent a moiety of it to the court of France (but much sophisticated), wherewith the ladies there, now, color their hair.
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The innocuous cress, that is regularly used in salads, was formerly consumed, either raw or boiled or as a juice, for its invigorating value. Cress was prescribed, in Roman times, in recipes intended to cure incapacity. In the Orient, this property of cress as an aphrodisiac is stressed in the erotic manuals.
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Among many other herbs and plants that induce amatory conditions are valerian and coriander and violet: these are mentioned in this respect by Albertus Magnus, the medieval philosopher.
Another plant, botanically known as melampryum pratense and commonly called cow wheat, was given as fodder to cows. But it had also a reputation, according to Pliny the Elder and the Greek physician Dioscorides, as a rousing stimulus of passion.
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The dried seeds of the Cola Nitida, a nut indigenous to Africa, furnishes a drink called cola. This beverage is also known as bichy. The cola nut itself, which is chewed, is credited, among the Africans, with promoting vigor.
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A brew compounded of the Indian root called galanga, and cardamoms, laurel seeds, sparrow wort, nutmeg, cubebs, cloves, in a fowl or pigeon broth, was held to be a powerful stimulant, especially among Arabs.
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Women esteemed, as an amatory incitement, the brains of the mustela piscis.
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To a plant with a root shaped like a claw, called lycopodium, was formerly attributed the quality of inducing desire.
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In Eastern countries, the fruit of the mastic-tree, pounded with oil and honey, makes a drink that is highly esteemed among Arabs as a venereal provocation.
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The Arab erotologist Umar ibn Muhammed al-Nefzawi, author of _The Perfumed Garden_, a survey in amatory practices, discusses the entire range of erotic experiences and procedures among men and women. He treats of genital conditions, medical problems, potions, sexual ceremonials, circumstances favorable to amatory consummations, manipulations and contrivances and preparations that affect amatory potentialities. With all this mass of detail and particularization of venereal topics, the author emphasizes that his work is not an exposition directed toward lewd and libidinous ends, but a virtual glorification of the gifts bestowed upon men by divine graciousness and indulgent beneficence.
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Plutarch, the Greek historian and philosopher, in his _De Sanitate Tuenda Praecepta_, Advice on Keeping Well, tells of an amatory incident:
When the young men described by Menander were, as they were drinking, insidiously beset by the pimp, who introduced some handsome and high-priced concubines, each one of them (as he says),
Bent down his head and munched his own dessert, being on his guard and afraid to look at them.
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The inventive genius of man has included in the preparation of love philtres the most heterogeneous items, such as: human fingers, hoopee brains, tobacco, human excrement, snake bones, toads, skulls and intestinal fluids and organs. Horace and Catullus, Pliny the Elder and Apuleius, among the Romans, have frequent occasion to refer to philtres and their ingredients and effects.
So too the medieval and later physicians and demonographers have much to say on the subject: Martin Delrio and Sprenger, Reginald Scott and Bodin, Johannes Muller and Sinibaldus. A Roman recipe, composed by a witch, runs as follows:
Bring the eggs and plumage foul Of a midnight shrieking owl, Be they well besmear’d with blood Of the blackest venom’d toad, Bring the choicest drugs of Spain, Produce of the poisonous plain, Then into the charm be thrown, Snatch’d from famish’d bitch, a bone, Burn them all with magic flame, Kindled first by Colchian dame.
John Gay, the eighteenth century playwright, in _The Shepherd’s Week_, has one of the characters refer to a philtre in a casual and incidental manner, implying that the practice of this usage was in common vogue:
And in love powder all my money spent; Behap what will, next Sunday after prayers, When to the ale house Lupperkin repairs, These golden flies into his mug I’ll throw, And soon the swain with fervent love shall glow.
Shakespeare, too, in _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, alludes to the love philtre:
Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell, It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound, And maidens call it Love-in-Idleness. Fetch me that flower; the herb I show’d thee once, The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid Will make or man or woman madly dote Upon the next live creature that it sees.
Again:
I’ll watch Titania when she is asleep, And drop the liquor of it in her eyes, The next thing then she waking looks upon, Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull, On meddling monkey, or on busy ape, She shall pursue it with the soul of love.
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Perfumes of all kinds, used on the person, on the genitalia, on clothes, in beds, in foods, were considered arousing stimulants. This procedure was in vogue both among the ancient Greeks and Romans, in the Orient, and during the Middle Ages: and is, of course, far from obsolescent these days.
The Greek playwright Aristophanes mentions perfumes in his comedy _Lysistrata_ in connection with sexual enticements. Horace the Roman lyric poet tells of an old lecher ‘scented with nard.’
Ambergris and civet were immensely popular. An ointment, extracted from spikenard, was known as foliatum: another, as nicerotiana. Cinnamon, sweet marjoram, myrrh, were in use. So with aromatic oils. Perfumes, in fact, are regularly mentioned in erotic and sexual situations and contexts. The corpus of the _Arabian Nights_ contains many episodes involving the use and impact of scents. The Biblical _Song of Songs_ too makes apposite reference to the subject:
a bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me ... ointment and perfumes rejoice the heart ... perfumes and sweet spices ... beds of aromatic spices ...
Ben Jonson, the English dramatist, has Volpone, in the comedy of that name, offer Celia perfumed baths:
The milk of unicorns, and panthers’ breath Gathered in bags, and mixed with Cretan wines. Our drink shall be prepared gold and amber.
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Onions in particular have for centuries possessed an aphrodisiac reputation. Onion is recommended for such intentions by the Greek and Roman poets. Ovid and Martial, and the later bucolic poet Columella urgently stress the eating of plenty of onions as both a rejuvenating and an animating agent. The Greek physician Galen also considered onions as having stimulating virtues.
In the East, onion seed is pounded, mixed with honey, and taken while one is fasting, in the hope of physiological urgency.
Among Arabs, onions boiled with spices, then fried in oil with egg yolks, are, if taken successively on a number of days, considered of high potency.
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The seat of amorous passion was traditionally the liver. This concept is exemplified in _The Faithful Shepherdess_, by John Fletcher:
Amoret: Dear friend, you must not blame me, if I make A doubt of what the silent night may do, Coupled with this day’s heat, to move your blood. Maids must be fearful. Sure you have not been Wash’d white enough, for yet I see a stain Stick in your liver: go and purge again.
Perigot: Oh, do not wrong my honest simple truth! Myself and my affections are as pure As those chaste flames that burn before the shrine Of the great Dian; only my intent To drag you thither was to plight our troths, With interchange of mutual chaste embraces, And ceremonious tying of our souls. For to that holy wood is consecrate A virtuous well, about whose flowery banks The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds By the pale moonshine, dipping oftentimes Their stolen children, so to make them free From dying flesh and dull mortality. By this fair fount hath many a shepherd sworn, And given away his freedom, many a troth Been plight, which neither envy nor old time Could ever break, with many a chaste kiss given In hope of coming happiness; by this Fresh fountain many a blushing maid Hath crown’d the head of her long-loved shepherd With gaudy flowers, whilst he happy sung Lays of his love and dear captivity. There grow all herbs fit to cool looser flames Our sensual parts provoke, chiding our bloods, And quenching by their power those hidden sparks That else would break out, and provoke our sense To open fires; so virtuous is that place. Then, gentle shepherdess, believe and grant. In troth, it fits not with that face to scant Your faithful shepherd of those chaste desires He ever aim’d at, and ...
Amoret: Thou hast prevail’d; farewell. This coming night Shall crown thy chaste hopes with long-wish’d delight.
Perigot: Our great god Pan reward thee for that good Thou hast given thy poor shepherd!
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A medieval song, that appears in _The Maid’s Tragedy_, by Beaumont and Fletcher, suggests that restraint in lust may occasionally be a desideratum:
I could never have the power To love one above an hour, But my heart would prompt mine eye On some other man to fly. Venus, fix mine eyes fast, Or, if not, give me all that I shall see at last!
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In _Philaster_, a play by Beaumont and Fletcher, mention is made of an amatory provocative that was in common use in the Middle Ages and later:
Cleremont: Sure this lady has a good turn done her against her will; before she was common talk, now none dare say cantharides can stir her. Her face looks like a warrant, willing and commanding all tongues, as they will answer it, to be tied up and bolted when this lady means to let herself loose. As I live, she has got her a goodly protection and a gracious; and may use her body discreetly for her health’s sake, once a week, excepting Lent and dog-days. Oh, if they were to be got for money, what a great sum would come out of the city for these licenses!
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Foods and herbs that have a gastronomic appeal are often empirically credited with amatory traits as well. For instance, eel soup and preserves and sundry pies have been brought into the field of such beneficial stimulants. Also the herb eryngium maritimum or Sea Holly, whose fleshy roots were candied and served hot in Elizabethan and later days. Figs and fennel soup: tunny fish and plovers’ eggs, halibut, plaice, mackerel and mullet. So with apples and potatoes and garlic. Horseradish and sesame seeds, vanilla and turmeric, frangipane cream and purslane: frogs’ legs and peaches. Ghee, ginger-fruit jam. Goose-tongues and grapes and guinea fowl. Hare soup and haricot beans. Soup seasoned with thyme, pimento, cloves, and laurel. Lentils and pomegranates and dates. Mutton, lamb, and rice. Mallows boiled in goat milk. Or the sap of mallows. Aromatic marjoram and marrow. Mint and onions, pineapple and mushrooms. Peas, and pastries kneaded into phallic and genital forms. All things, it appears, that are edible or potable come at some time or other under the classification of anticipatory amatory aids.
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Messalina, the wife of the Roman Emperor Claudius, was infamous for her licentiousness, her intrigues, and her obscene amours. Historical testimony relates that she had amorous encounters with fourteen athletes, and in consequence assumed the honorific of _Invincible_. In commemoration of the episode she also dedicated fourteen wreaths to the Priapic god.
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Apuleius, the Roman novelist who flourished in the second century A.D., alludes to an ancient Roman list of ingredients in the preparation of love-potions:
They dig out all kinds of philtres from everywhere: they search for the agent that arouses mutual love: pills and nails and threads, roots and herbs and shoots, the two-tailed lizard, and charms from mares.
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A certain philtre, according to the testimony of Girolamo Folengo in his _Maccaronea_, published in 1519, was composed of black dust from a tomb, the venom of a toad, the flesh of a brigand, the lung of an ass, the blood of a blind infant, the bile of an ox, and corpses rifled from graves.
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It is unusual to discover a decided anti-aphrodisiac, recommended as an antidote, for banishing lust. The following prescription appears in the _Secrets of Albertus Magnus_, a medieval magic manual:
Turtur, a Turtle, is a birde very well knowne. It is called Merlon of the Chaldees, of the Greeks Pilax. If the heart of this foule be borne in a Wolves skin, he that weareth it shall never have an appetite to commit lechery from henceforth.
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In the same magic manual attributed to Albertus Magnus the medieval philosopher, there is a description of a philtre that has a number of properties, both medicinal and amatory:
The seventh is the herb of the planet Venus, and is called Pisterion, of some Hierobotane, id est, Sterbo columbaria et Verbena, Vervin.
The root of this herb put upon the neck healeth the swine pockes, apostumus behinde the eares, and botches of the neck, and such as cannot keepe their water. It healeth cuts also, and swelling of the evil, or fundament, proceeding of an inflammation which groweth in the fundament.
It is also of great strength in veneriall pastimes. If any man put it into his house or vineyard, or in the ground, he shal have great store of increase.
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Another love charm, from Albertus Magnus’ _Book of the Marvels of the World_, is designed to stabilize a woman’s affection:
If thou wilt that a woman bee not visious nor desire men, take the private members of a Woolfe, and the haires which doe grow on the cheekes or eyebrowes of him, and the haires which bee under his beard, and burne it all, and give it to her to drinke, when she knoweth not, and she shal desire no other man.
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Macrobius, a Roman writer who flourished c. 400 A.D., is the author of a symposium entitled _Saturnalia_, in which he states that hot drinks, particularly wine, are provocative of amatory exercise: deinde omnia calida Venerem provocant et semen excitant et generationi favent. Hausto autem mero plurimo fiunt viri ad coitum pigriores. That is, a long draught of unmixed wine is a decided stimulant to genesiac activity. On the other hand, like many of the ancient erotic poets, Macrobius adds that excessive and cold wine is a deterrent: vini nimietas ut frigidi facit semen exile vel debile.
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The plant verbena officinalis was known to Hippocrates and later on to Pliny the Elder as an effective means of inducing virile potency.
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An Indian plant named Datroa, the juice of which was used in a drink, was given as a physiological stimulant
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In the eighteenth century an erotic concoction known as Diavolini was popular in Italy. In France, these Diavolini became equally popular under the name of diablotins—devil-pastilles.
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The nettle, urtica urens, was a legendary and traditional stimulus, credited with promoting decisive potency.
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Ocimum Basilicum is a plant with labiate flowers. It was known to the Egyptians and is mentioned by the Roman encyclopedist Pliny the Elder. It was used as an aphrodisiac as well as for other medicinal purposes.
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Lycopodium Clavatum, a plant known by a variety of other names, was formerly used in amatory practices.
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The amethyst was anciently considered a stone whose contact was a stimulus to passion.
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In the Middle Ages there was in Germany a kind of humorous folk legend that was called the Old Wives’ Mill. This legend extended into the eighteenth century. The theme was the rejuvenation of old women into young maidens and young women. There is an old print depicting the Mill, with elderly females being carried into the Mill and coming out young and comely.
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The means of arousing erotic sensations and the devices contrived for the furtherance of weird or furtive amatory conditions have varied all the way from forthright bestialities, sacrificial blood rituals, as described by the poet Horace with reference to the witch Canidia’s practices, down to more or less innocuous or ineffectual concoctions.
As far as ritual killing is concerned, and the extraction of human organs for amatory purposes, such methods were in vogue in Europe until far into the seventeenth century, notably in France.
A French preparation, that promised a renewal of physiological vigor, was known as Essence à l’usage des monstres.
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Certain ancient Greek papyri contain suggestions and recipes intended to promote physiological vigor and by means of magic formulas to correct amatory deficiencies. These papyri now belong in the Louvre, in Paris, and in the British Museum.
Diagrams and symbols appear in the papyri. There are invocations, magic ritualistic prescriptions. There are, also, invocations and supplications to strange deities: among them, Sabazios, a Thracian-Phrygian god who had affinities with Dionysus, the god of wine, of fertility, and of procreation. He was also equated with the deity called Curios Sabaoth, mentioned in the Septuagint, and also Theos Hypsistos.
The Greek writer Lucian’s _Lover of Lies_ consists of a collection of sketches on various contemporary superstitions and practices. There are descriptions of magic statues endowed with animation, awesome apparitions, and also charms for bringing back a lover who has strayed.
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The River Scamander, in Greece, was reputed to be such a potent amatory stimulus that maidens hopefully bathed in its waters. On one occasion, according to the testimony of the orator Aeschines, the beautiful Callirhoë, on her way to bathing in the sacred Scamander, was met by a young man who represented himself as an aide to the river god. The young man then substituted himself for the god and performed his divine function.
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The medieval demonographer Martin Delrio, in his Disquisitionum Magicarum Libri Sex, discusses love charms, brews of all kinds, and other amatory inducements used by practitioners in the Black Arts. He mentions formulas and incantations, spells and alluring chants such as the seductive croonings of the ancient sirens, as well as the hypnotic music produced by Orpheus: also concoctions compounded of viscera and blood and other more intimate secretions.
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Amatory inducements may be merely sensuous, or bodily proximity, as in dancing. Or excitation may be provoked by listening to an appealing voice, or visually observing a theatrical spectacle. Or recalling a fragment of song, a forgotten melody.
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Particularly in the Orient, amatory preparations often run the gamut from oddities or puerilities to items that are monstrous in themselves, or so rare as to preclude the possibility of securing them: as, the scale of a tortoise, or the secretions of a stag, or a corpse, or a hyena’s brains or whiskers.
Yet, in the East, these ingredients might well be furtively whispered to the love-sick suppliant by some aged crone who is the repository of legendary remedies, or by an obscure apothecary, whose pharmacopoeia is medieval, or by some wandering minstrel or trader.
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Certain plants are associated with erotic consequences and have been resorted to by those in restless quest of amatory contentments. Among these plants are: the root of narcissus, vervain, water lilies, and bamboo.
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In one Hindu erotic manual, a kind of Rake’s Progress entitled The Harlot’s Guide, certain ingredients are enumerated as contributing to the potency of philtres. Included in the items are fish soup, ghee, and indigenous herbs.
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In former times, in France, a dish of the testes of a kid or a bull or a fox or a hare would be set before a man who intended to embark on amatory ventures.
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Love stimulants may be both material and psychic. They may have physiological impacts that result in amatory capacity, or they may heighten and arouse the emotional awareness and sensitivity, with similar results.
Among the medieval investigators, philosophers, and alchemists and occultists, Albertus Magnus held a dominant position. He had a perception of scientific method, yet he also dealt in unwarranted and legendary fantasies. He wrote on physiology and astronomy. He investigated plant and animal life. He equated the characteristics and properties of certain stones, certain metals, certain creatures, with corresponding human traits and faculties. He felt that such stones, or the extraction of certain animal organs, would be conducive to the realization of the virtues of these minerals or viscera in relation to the human being. The lion’s bravery resides in the lion’s heart. Hence the eating of the heart, by a kind of sympathetic transference, will render the human consumer equally courageous. So the procedure extends throughout the entire amatory field. Certain animals and birds, as the pigeon and the ass and the goat and the bull, are known for their lubricity. The testes, therefore, and the genitalia of such animals will correspondingly endow the man who consumes them with equally intense capacity. Certain formulas, particular invocations and ritualistic procedures, diagrams and symbols and periapts will all contribute to the efficacy of the rite.
Thus, to stimulate desire in either sex, the genitalia of the animals of the opposite sex are consumed.
In the nests of eagles are found stones called echites. Worn on the left arm, these stones promote erotic sensations.
To ensure erotic continuance, the marrow of a wolf’s left foot is advised. This is mixed with chypre and ambergris and the resultant unguent is rubbed on the object of affection.
Like a culinary direction, but usually with less promptness or ease, one is enjoined to take the liver of a sparrow, a swallow’s womb, a hare’s kidney, a pigeon’s heart. Dry and crush into a powder. Add equal weight of one’s own blood. Dry and mix in soup as an infallible potion.
For reinvigorating purposes, an ointment composed of ash of star-lizard, civet oil, St. John’s wort oil is prepared. This is smeared on the toe of the left foot and the loins.
The fat of a young buck, together with civet and ambergris, is equally efficacious.
Goose testes and the stomach of a hare, well seasoned with spices, are amatory aids.
Also: a salad made of satyrion, rocket, and celery, soaked in oil and rose vinegar.
As, in rarer cases, an anaphrodisiac, on the other hand, the powdered genitals of a mild bull are recommended, in a soup containing veal, purslain, and lettuce.
The medieval grimoires, those manuals dedicated to sorcery, also treated of philtres and amatory brews.
Take two new knives. On a Friday morning—the day that is consecrated to Aphrodite—go to a spot where you can find earthworms. Take two, join the two knives together, then cut the two heads and the two tails of the worms. Keep the bodies. On returning home, smear them with sperm: dry, and pulverize them.
Again: Pull out three pubic hairs and three from the left armpit. Burn them on a hot shovel. Pulverize, and insert in a piece of bread, that will be dipped in soup.
Or: With the left hand pluck a bunch of vervain and repeat: I pluck you by the power of Lucifer, Prince of the Infernal Regions, and of Beelzebub, mother of three demons. Let her send Attos, Effeton, and Canabo to torment X so that, within twenty-four hours, she may do my will.
There is a prescription against cuckoldry, involving the organs, the skin, and the eyes of a wolf: pounded and calcined and composed into a drink.
Another prescription, designed for amatory purposes, involves a loaf of warm bread into which nine drops of blood are distilled. The bread is then dried, pulverized, and taken with coffee.
Another recipe requires the fat and the bile of a goat, dried, and mixed with oil. Its use will ensure faithful and continuous attachment to the person loved.
Another device for maintaining enduring love requires two turtle doves, male and female. After they are strangled, the blood is poured into a cup never before used. One’s own blood is added, together with some hair of the woman. On the first white page of a new Bible there is now written with a gold pen dipped in the turtle doves’ blood: Where you go, I shall go. Where you stay, I shall stay. Your people are my people and your god is my god. I shall die where you die. Only death shall separate us. The document is sprinkled with incense and placed under the nuptial pillow. The brew is poured into another cup, never before used, and mixed with wine. Each of the two persons concerned in the ceremony now takes a drink.
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An elaborate potion, that involves many ingredients, much time, and careful and scrupulous preparation, is as follows:
On the first Friday after a summer new moon, go at noon and look for a snake. Cut its head off, and carry it away in a new silk bag. Once home, throw the stick used for killing the snake toward the East, and hang the bag in a dark, warm corner. The following night, go barefooted to a meadow. Before midnight, gather two leaves of white clover, two of red clover, and six stems of spurge. Bring them back in a new basket. Then take a white bud from two rose bushes, a red bud and a young leaf of each, wrap in virgin parchment on which you write: Revarin myrtol her kulbata with a new goose quill dipped in your own blood.
The leaves, their contents, and the basket are set at the head of the bed, on a table on which a lamp burns for at least three hours. On waking up, spray the flowers and leaves with cold well water and set them in the place where the snake’s head is drying. Wait until night. About eleven p.m. stretch out, on a table in the room, virgin parchment, draw thereon with a fresh heated point a six-branched star, by the light of an old church taper placed in a silver holder.
Procure a new chopper, two new knives, a new porcelain bowl, a new, well rinsed bottle, a black glass, a carafe of cold water, a stick of new wax, a seal, a mortar, and a new cork.
At midnight, make the sign of the cross three times. Then put the snake’s head in the mortar with the leaves and flowers crushed into a paste. Heap up into a consistent mixture. Put the mortar on the flame until the contents are dry: then pulverize, while the mortar is heating.
With the new knives, let six drops of your blood fall into the cup: add water, pour the contents of the mortar into the cup, stir, and boil. Take three of your hairs, calcine them and throw into the cup. Do likewise with the parchment and the bag. Pour into the bottle, add water until it overflows. Cork it and seal it, place it in the bed, put out the light, pray and go to sleep.
After three days, after leaving it in the dark, by the window, on the third midnight the brew will be ready. Five drops for men, three for women, mixed with drink or food.
This elixir was reputed to be highly effective.