Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants (29 page)

Henbane was one of the most important plants of antiquity.

For wounds that won’t heal and spider bites: crush the plant apollinaris together with old unsalted fat in a bowl of old, odorless wine—[take] one pound of fat—make a kind of salve and rub it on the wound; [the patient will be] healed astonishingly fast (
Medicina antiqua
23, fol. 41v).

Henbane salve was also used in other ways.

For swelling of the knees or the shin bones or calves, or wherever: putting crushed symfoniaca that has been worked into a salve with sheep manure and some vinegar on it relieves the swelling” (
Medicina antiqua
5, fol. 25r).

Henbane was also used externally or internally as a pressed juice for hernias, foot or liver pain, and lung problems. The root, when cooked in wine and chewed, relieved toothache. The plant was also one of the gynecological medicines: “Symfoniaca juice, mixed with saffron [
Crocus sativus
L.] and drunk—the wonderful effects you will marvel at” (
Medicina antiqua
5, fol. 25r).

Henbane was a famous aphrodisiac and for this reason a favorite additive to the love potions of the Thessalian witches. But it is also sacred to Zeus/Jupiter, the god father, as the widespread common name Jupiter bean demonstrates (Schoen, 1963: 36). An invocation to henbane from late antiquity that gives an idea of the former usage has been preserved.

The physician of late antiquity, Alexander of Tralles on Pontes (6th century C.E.) recorded an invocation that he must have somehow heard from the people. It was an invocation of henbane against gout: It was buried when the moon was in the sign of Aquarius or Pisces, before sunset, but without touching any other roots; indeed one must only use two fingers of the left hand, with the thumb and the doctor (ring) finger, digging while speaking, “I beseech you, sacred herb, tomorrow I shall call to you in the house of Phileas, so that you might relieve the flow of the feet and hands [gout, rheumatism] of this man or woman. I swear to you with the great names of Joath, Sabaoth, who is the god, who scorched the earth and made still the ocean despite a great amount of inflowing rivers, who dried the site of Lot and transformed into a salt pillar. Take in you the spirit of the earth, your mother, and her power and dry the river of the feet or hand of this man or this woman!” On the following day the bone of any dead animal is taken, the herb is dug out with it, the root is seized, and the following words were spoken, “I invoke the holy names of Jaoth, Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloi!” Then the roots are strewn on a handful of salt and hung around the sick person, taking care that they don’t become wet. The rest of the root is placed for 360 days over the fire (Marzell, 1964: 67ff.).

Black henbane (
Hyoscyamus niger
L.) is also one of the most sacred plants of the Germans and Vikings (Robinson, 1994). In particular they use the plant that is ritually cultivated in henbane gardens, the so-called sacreda acres.
⁴⁶
Henbane was particularly important in divination, in weather magic, in finding treasure, and as a mead spice for libation and drinking. According to Germanic tradition the magical plant must be dug up by a naked girl “who is possessed by the magical spirit” (Höfler, 1990: 91). This explains the demonization of the plant in the wake of the Catholic conversion of central Europe: the former sacred medicinal plants of the heathens were devalued as satanic witches’ herbs (Müller-Ebeling, 1991). In addition, during the Inquisition the use of henbane was considered proof for convicting a person of being a witch (Hug, 1993).

According to sixteenth century legal records from Goslar a witch acknowledged that she bewitched people for money, causing them to buy goods that nobody wanted, regardless of the cost. For this purpose she strew henbane seeds in front of the store as she spoke: “So shall the people like all of my goods, as if Saint John stood on the sacred place” (Marzell, 1964: 47).

During a witch trial in 1648 the accused was charged with giving a farmer whose ox had escaped “nine henbane buttons” so that he could find the animal again (Duerr, 1978: 166). An ancient shamanic practice was present here—namely the finding of lost objects while in a clairvoyant trance induced by a psychoactive substance.
⁴⁷

In 1529 a Pomeranian woman in Gotha, Germany, accused of being a witch admitted that she had made a man “crazy” (in other words, lusty), by putting henbane seeds in his shoe. Some of the things that the herb-woman, Konne Bocksdorf, knew about the herb were documented in her trial. On each day of the week she gathered a different herb: “Sunday she wanted to rest. But because it was a blessed day [being the day of the sun god Helios/Sol/Apollo] the poison was banished from henbane, and that is why she quickly picked this herb from the edges of the nearby roads. Those who couldn’t sleep because of a toothache placed it under the pillow or burned the seeds on glowing coals and inhaled the smoke” (Ludwig, 1982: 162).

The psychoactive and aphrodisiac traits of henbane were well known at the time of the Inquisition (Fühner, 1919; Heiser, 1987). The burning of henbane as an incense or fumigation probably has a long tradition in Europe (Golowin, 1982b).

In 1586, the celebrated physician Matthiolus said he had observed farm children eating henbane seeds: “They were momentarily mad, foggy, and confused, so that the parents thought they were possessed by evil spirits.” In the early modern era henbane seeds were strewn on the hot oven plates in bathhouses “so that the bathers, who sat in the little bathhouse, stumbled into one another” (Höfler, 1990: 91). Henbane, known as
Bilsenkraut
or
pilsner chrut
in German
,
was the most important beer additive from Germanic times up to the Bavarian beer purity laws in 1516 (Rätsch, 1996b).

Just as witchcraft medicine was forced underground, knowledge about the traditional use of the psychoactive henbane disappeared from public consciousness (Müller-Ebeling, 1991; Schurz, 1969). With the advent of the beer purity laws the medicinal uses of henbane were forgotten. Nevertheless, in this century it was still prescribed in the form of cigarettes for asthmatics, but in medicine it has been replaced by the isolated alkaloid, in particular scopolamine. Nevertheless, henbane remains an official drug and is thus obtainable from pharmacies (DAB [German pharmacopoeia] 8, Ph. Helv. VI). Henbane oil
(Oleum hyoscyami),
which is particularly good for erotic massage, can also be procured there.

Monkshood As Medicine

Monkshood, “the saliva of Cerberus,” was already a feared poison during antiquity. The name
akoniton
came to be used as a general term for numerous poisonous plants (see chart on page 98), but especially for the different monkshoods. Today monkshood (
Aconitum napellus
L.) is considered the “most poison plant of Europe.” Hardly any of the ancient medicinal uses of the herb have been passed down. But in India it is still used as a drug; the dried leaves are smoked by yogis and sadhus, in particular the
aghoris,
who are in service to the dark goddess Kali (Svoboda, 1993: 175). Perhaps herein lies a key to the understanding of the role of monkshood in the original cult of Hecate, for this plant is so intimately connected with the witch goddess and her priestesses that it really is considered the classic witches’ herb (Bauerreiss, 1994; Hansen, 1981).

What was once identified as
akonitum
is also known today as the feared poisonous plant one berry or herb Paris
(Paris quadrifolia
L.). It was especially used as a remedy for gout. Until recent times a ritual for the gathering of the plant was preserved in the Bohemian forest, complete with herbal invocation. In order for the desired healing power to be released, it must be picked by moonshine, after the following charm has been spoken (Marzell, 1964: 77).

Oh one berry, who planted you?

Our Lady with her five fingers true

Through all her might and power

She brought you here to flower,

That I shall have my health.

Only when the divine radiance from the Mother Goddess is combined with the collection ritual does the plant receive its power—a typical characteristic of witchcraft medicine (Storl, 1993a). By the way, one berry is only weakly “poisonous” (Roth et al., 1994: 538); it would be more properly included in the forgotten psychoactive plants of the European flora.

The Shamanic Goddess and Her Shaman, Orpheus

Hecate is also considered to be the wife of Pluto and is often called Proserpina. On the earth she is Diana, and at the same time she is known in the sky as Lucia
⁴⁸
(Clemens, 1985: 432f.). Thus three goddesses are actually united in her, and she represents a shaman who is bound to the three realms of the world. She describes herself in a classical text of revelation.

I am the virgin of many forms, descended from heaven, with the sight of a steer, three-headed, wild, and with golden weapons. I am Phoebe experienced in the arts; I am Eileithyia [Artemis as birth goddess] who bestows light on humans, she who bears all three links to the threefold nature, like the fiery images of the ether. But with a white team I take possession of the air, while the earth determines the gender of my black children.