Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants (31 page)

The Golden Fleece was the hide of a golden ram that was considered to be the son of the sea god Poseidon and Theophane. Poseidon abducted the pretty maiden Theophane and transformed her into a ewe. Then he took on the shape of a ram, mounted her, and fertilized her. The sheep-shaped Theophane bore the half-god ram who could speak and fly. Hermes, the messenger of the gods, brought this animal to the suffering human woman Nephele. She had found her children Phrixos and Helle racing around the forest, intoxicated by the Dionysian mania. She commanded both of them to climb on the back of the golden ram and fly through the air on his back to Colchis and sacrifice the ram to the god Aries
⁵³
(Apollodorus,
Library
I.9):

But when they had mounted and the ram had carried them over the sea, Helle fell from the ram; from this the sea was called Hellespont. Phrixus, [
sic
] however, was carried to Colchis, where, as his mother had bidden, he sacrificed the ram, and placed it in its golden fleece in the temple of Mars [Aries] … guarded by a dragon (Hyginus
, Myths
).

The “Golden Fleece” is often interpreted as the symbol or epithet of fly agaric (
Amanita muscaria
[L. ex Fr.] Pers) (Allegro, 1970; Ruck, in Wasson, 1986: 171). Was it perhaps a psychoactive mushroom that grew on the tree of knowledge?
⁵⁴

This Colchian magical garden, which was more similar to a mountain fortress than a garden, not only contained pharmacologically potent plants but was also a place of initiation into the mysteries of Hecate.
⁵⁵
There Orpheus, the singer-shaman,
⁵⁶
burned Rhamnos, or buckthorn (
Rhamnus oleoides
L.), and other plants, such as laurel, as fumigants in order to be initiated into the magical arts of Hecate. The buckthorn was also called
persephonion,
“plant of Persephone or Proserpina,” because it was used as a sacrifice for the dead. Branches of it were hung on the door as a sort of protective amulet against poisons (Dioscorides,
Materia medica
I.119). Persephonion was also consecrated to the Eumenides, daughters of Acheron and the night, of the Furies of hell, or of the plague ghosts (Dierbach, 1833: 184).

Virgil described the underworld journey of his hero Aeneas in the sixth book of the
Aeneid
. This journey was only possible under the knowledgeable guidance of a priestess of Hecate or a sibyl, an oracle priestess and prophetess. After Hecate, “the ruler of the depths above and below,” had been invoked and an animal sacrifice had been brought, she opened the gates to Orcus, a dark and ghostly place. Then they landed in the “iron chamber” of the Eumenides.

In the courtyard a shadowy giant elm

Spreads ancient boughs, her ancient arms where dreams,

False dreams, the old tale goes, beneath each leaf

Cling and are numberless.
⁵⁷

—V
IRGIL
,
T
HE
A
ENEID
(VI.281–284
FF
.)

Later they encountered Cerberus, who growled and threatened the intruders. But the sibyls knew how to soothe him; they gave him a magical substance of honey and poppies.
⁵⁸
After he had swallowed the bait he crawled around, numb from the opium. Without the knowledge of the priestess of Hecate, Aeneas would have been lost. As a true shaman this priestess knows how to deal with dangers of the underworld and other dimensions.
⁵⁹

Peony: The Sacred Plant of the Divine Physician

The divine physician Paian (or Paion) was said to have discovered the peony (
Paeonia officinalis
L.), and he used it to heal Pluto (Homer,
The Iliad
V.401). But he must have stolen it from the garden of Hecate in order to do this. This mysterious plant was connected to the cult of Cybele and was considered to be “grown by the moon”—thus its secret name,
selenogonon
(perhaps it was originally the sacred plant of Selene/Hecate). No wonder that the peony—along homeopathic principles—is a cure for somnambulism:

If a person with stumbling somnambulism ties the peony plant around his neck he will immediately stand up again as a healthy person. If he always keeps the plant at his side then the evil will never touch him again. Bind the root of the peony plant in a linen and wrap it around the body parts that hurt. It has a particularly beneficial effect if you take it with you on a ship journey; it quiets the storm when you use it in its pure form” (
Medicina antiqua
66, fol. 72v).

The peony has been associated with witchcraft medicine since early times. In his fifteenth-century herbal Hartlieb wrote about the plant:

“The weird sisters, hand in hand,

Posters of the sea and land,

Thus do go, about, about,

Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,

And thrice again, to make up nine.

Peace, the charm’s wound up.”

—S
HAKESPEARE
, M
ACBETH

(
ACT 1, SCENE 3
)

Isaac the Jew said that when a smoke is made from the seeds of the herb, it is good for people possessed by the devil, the ones who are called
demonaci
in Latin, and for the epileptics as well. The fruits of the herb, drunken and taken with rose honey, is beneficial for the spirits that sleep with the women in the shape of a man, who are called
incubi
in Latin (Hartlieb, 1980: 75).

Another source names fifteen peony seeds in honey as protection from the incubus. Those who wore an amulet made from the plant around their necks were protected from diseases (Meyer, 1884: 61f.).

Invocations and Incense

William Shakespeare (1564–1616), whose name was perhaps a pseudonym of Francis Bacon’s, demonstrated in his dramas that he not only had a good knowledge of medicinal plants, witches’ herbs, and poisonous plants, but was also familiar with the ancient art of invocation (Tabor, 1970). The magical incantation of the three witches who prophesy the future in
Macbeth
draws on archaic material. Hecate even appears in
Macbeth
after the three witches invoke her.

Hecate was invoked as the most important goddess in many invocations (magical papyri) of late antiquity. She was also known by the names Artemis-Hecate and Isis-Hecate. Usually she was invoked for love magic
(phíltra),
and was often connected to dogs,
⁶⁰
even Cerberus. Medea is also invoked in the place of Hecate in the magical papyri (Luck, 1990: 50, 129ff.).

Invocations
(epaoidé, carmen)
are connected with incense. The burning of incense opens the ritual. The incense creates a sacred space and is at the same time food of the gods—a means to entice them. With the invocation a deity or a helping spirit
(daimon, parhedros)
⁶¹
could be made serviceable. With their help one can receive healing, prophecy, or black magic. A magical papyrus indicates this recipe for a cursing ritual
(diabolé)
: “The NN brings you, dear goddess, a horrifying incense offering—colorful goat fat, and blood, and refuse, the corpse juices of a dead virgin, the heart of one who died too soon” (Graf, 1996: 163).

In his second
Idyll
Theocritus named sacrificial grain, laurel leaves, and wheat bran as incenses for the altar of Hecate, to be burned during the invocation. In Virgil
(8th Eclogue)
“masculine incense” was burned for love magic. Myrrh was also named as an incense offering during the rites of Hecate. Storax was the sacred incense of Prothyreia, of the goddess of birth
(Orphic Hymns).
Storax has the following medicinal effects:

It has a warming, softening, digestive energy, it is effective for coughs, catarrh, colds, hoarseness, and the loss of the voice, further it is a good remedy for congestion and hardenings in the womb and encourages, when taken internally and in suppositories, and also eases the menstruation. A small amount taken with turpentine resin soothes the body. It is also used to spread on bandages and mixed with the strengthening salves. But it was also burned, crushed, and made to coals, like incense. … The storax oil prepared in Syria is warming and powerfully soothing, but it causes headaches, pain (in the limbs) and dead sleep (Dioscorides,
Materia medica
I.79).

The Arts of the Thessalian Witches

During antiquity in Thessaly the servants and priestesses of Hecate were already famous for their witchcraft.
⁶³
Thessaly is a region in northern Greece that borders on Macedonia. It was considered to be the home of witchcraft and magic.
⁶⁴
In the Thessalian region of Pharsalus an ancient bas-relief (from the first quarter of the fifth century B.C.E.; today it is located in the Louvre) was found on which Demeter and Persephone stand across from one another. They offer each other an identifiable mushroom.
⁶⁵
Perhaps this image represents the Great Goddess with her priestesses, the “first witch.” Could mushrooms, maybe even psychedelic species, have been the secret remedy of the Thessalian witches?

“Hecate, also called Daughter of the Night, was particularly famous for her herbal knowledge; she could identify and knew the poisonous, harmful roots as well as she knew the true medicinal herbs. She also taught her daughters about the poisonous and healing plants.”

—J
OHANN
H
EINRICH
D
IERBACH
,
F
LORA
M
YTHOLOGICA
,
1833

Magical abilities were attributed to the Thessalian witches, and they had magical sayings with which they could “draw down the moon.”
⁶⁶
In other words, these women could make use of the magical power of the moon.
⁶⁷
The moon had, according to various classical concepts, the ability to perspire magical sweat, which in the hand of a witch revealed truly wondrous powers. There was a magic, called
virus lunare,
through which the moon could be invoked and a liquid secreted from it and dropped on herbs.
⁶⁸
The moon was considered a container that filled with the divine drink soma, haoma, or ambrosia during the waxing period (Hajicek-Dobberstein, 1995; Wohlberg, 1990).

“Hecate, also called Daughter of the Night, was particularly famous for her herbal knowledge; she could identify and knew the poisonous, harmful roots as well as she knew the true medicinal herbs. She also taught her daughters about the poisonous and healing plants.”

—J
OHANN
H
EINRICH
D
IERBACH
,
F
LORA
M
YTHOLOGICA
,
1833

To the Thessalian witches
(veneficus Thessalus)
were also attributed the ability to transform into animals and an insatiable sexual appetite. They were legendary for their art of brewing love potions
(philter, amatoria)
as well as their knowledge of aphrodisiacs.
⁶⁹
However, these preparations could “make someone crazy” (Lucian,
Dialogues of the Hetaerae
I). Special love magic could release the Dionysian ecstasy (Graf, 1996: 129). The “old women, the same kind who were said to be found in Thessalia, who understood the magical sayings,” also knew the tricks of “how to make a woman, regardless of how ugly she is, desirable” (
Dialogues of the Hetaerae
IV).

The satirist Petronius (first century C.E.) described in his picaresque novel how his hero was made impotent through witchcraft: He was bewitched by a love potion. His search for help from the gods and goddesses, even from the “wondrous Circe,” was futile. Finally he went to Oenothea, one of the witches experienced in the Thessalian arts. He was handled quite severely by her:

Oenothea produced a leather phallus, sprinkled it with oil, ground pepper and crushed nettle-seeds, and proceeded to guide it by degrees up my backside. Then the sadistic old hag sprayed my thighs with the stuff. … She mixed nasturtium-juice [
Lepidiu latifolium
L.,
L. sativum
L.] with southernwood [
Artemisia abrotanum
L.] and soaked my parts in it. Then she took a bunch of green nettles and with measured strokes began to whip all my body below my navel (
The Satyricon
137–138).