Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants (28 page)

Oh Isis, great in the art of magic! Release me, free me from all wickedness, evil, and burdens, from being haunted by a god or goddess, by a dead man or a dead woman, from an enemy who wants to battle me, just as you released and freed your son Horus. For I have gone into the fire and came out of the water, and I will not fall into the snares of these days. I have spoken, [and now] I am young (from the
Ebers Payrus
).

The cult of Isis was not only a mystery cult, but also a mystical healing cult. In the center stood Isis, the divine sorceress, the protective mother and goddess of the medicinal plants and poisons (Budge, 1996: 13). Next to her reigned Osiris as the shamanic god, who was later identified with the Greek physician-god Asclepius. Isis was a true shaman, as has been told in many myths. After Osiris, who had been dismembered, was reborn through his sister, Isis, he copulated with her out of sheer gratitude and joy. Out of this union of the initiated shaman and the Great Goddess came Horus—the all-seeing and all-knowing god with the visionary eyes. In other words, shamanic initiation leads to cosmic wisdom. At first Osiris was a mortal human, and through the divine sorceress was transformed into an immortal god. Because Osiris and Isis were twins, Isis must also have been human. She was initiated through the plants and made divine.

It is said that the plants of Isis sprouted from her sweat as it fell to earth (Budge, 1996: 24). One of her most important plants was vervain (
Verbena officinalis
L.). This plant was also called druids’ herb, Juno’s tears, or holy herbe; in Dutch it is known as
Iser cruit
(iron herb). The German common name for the plant,
Eisenkraut
(iron herb), comes from the metal iron, the plant’s “iron-hard” character in folk etymology, or from Isis herself.
³⁹
Of her sacred plants it is said in the ancient texts:

Hiera. The Latin people call it Verbena. It has received this name from the Greeks because the priests use it during purification ceremonies. … The entire plant with the leaves and the roots is healing, crumbled in wine for snake bites, as well as laid on wounds and administered as a drink. It is also useful in the case of four-day fevers. For this purpose one drachma, that is three scruples, of leaves with equal amounts of frankincense
[turis]
is crumbled into a pound of old, hot wine and administered on an empty stomach throughout the four days. [It heals] ulcers and wounds. It soothes [inflammation], when the crushed leaves are used a compress. It cleans contaminated wounds and allows them to heal. Mouth and throat diseases do not proliferate further into the body when the whole plant is cooked in wine and used as a gargle (
Medicina antiqua
55, fol. 154r).

Pliny used “vervain [sideritis] crushed with stale grease” as an effective aphrodisiac (
Natural History
XXVI.93). The sacred plants, or
heirobotane,
were also famous in other places:

The powder of the plant
peristeron
[dove herb], administered with a drink, cures all effects of poison. It is said that the magicians use it because of its effects, first as the Homeric [moly], then as mithridat and centaurea; administered as a drink, it lifts all bad medicine and guides it through the digestive tract (
Medicina antiqua
67, fol. 73v).

The
peristereon
or
hierobotane
was called
persefonion
, “plant of Persephone,” by the classical prophets. It was known to the people of Tuscany as
demetria
, “[plant] of Demeter,” and
bounion
, “plant of Hera/Juno” (Zotter, 1980: 63, 135). It was associated with other goddesses who, according to Apuleius, were identical to Isis. The name
peltodotes,
“bestows love magic,” has also been passed down. Pliny, who usually did not make positive references to magic and ritual, described the magical and healing qualities of vervain, the divine plant of Isis:

No plant however is so renowned among the Romans as
hiera botane
[sacred plant]. Some call it
asistereon,
and Latin writers
verbenaca
. … With this the table of Jupiter is swept, and homes are cleansed and purified. There are two kinds of it; one has many leaves and is thought to be female, the other, the male, has fewer leaves. … It grows everywhere in flat, moist localities. … Both types are used by the people of Gaul in fortune-telling and in uttering prophecies, and the Magi (the druids) especially make the maddest statements about the plant: that people who have been rubbed with it obtain their wishes, banish fevers, win friends and cure all diseases without exception. They add that it must be gathered about the rising of the dog star without the action being seen by the moon or by the sun; that beforehand atonement must be made to earth by an offering of honeycomb and honey; that a circle must be drawn with iron round the plant and then it should be pulled up with the left hand and raised aloft; that leaves, stem and root must be dried separately in the shade. They also say that if a dining couch is sprinkled with water in which this plant has been soaked the entertainment becomes merrier. As a remedy for snake bites it is crushed in wine (
Natural History
XXV.105f.)

“Lovely Hekate of the roads and crossroads I invoke;

in heaven, on earth, and in the sea, saffron-cloaked,

tomb spirit reveling in the souls of the dead,

daughter of Perses, haunting deserted places,

delighting in deer,

nocturnal, dog-loving, monstrous queen,

devouring wild beasts, ungirt, of repelling countenance.

You, herder of bulls, queen and mistress of the whole world,

leader, nymph, mountain-roaming nurturer of youth,

maiden, I beseech to come to these holy rites,

ever with joyous heart and every favoring the oxherd.”

—O
RPHIC HYMN TO
H
ECATE

The Garden of Hecate

According to Hesiod, Hecate was the daughter of the Titan Asteria.
⁴⁰
Zeus worshipped her above all others, and she was given part of the sky, the earth, and the ocean (underworld), which meant that she could be effective in those places. Among the humans Hecate was the “one of the most honored immortal gods,” and was “the teacher of young men from the beginning” (
Theogony
415, 452).

Hecate lived in a cave, the grotto of Hecate, which was possibly found on Samothrace (Maas, 1974: 176). In Colchis there was a “splendid shrine” to Hecate (Apollonius,
Argonautica
III.842). Hecate was also a goddess of the shamans. She bestowed “illuminating rituals that are, and should be, secret” (Seneca,
Medea
6). She was called “goddess of the gate,” “stealth runner,” “the night transformer,” “the underworldly one,” the “terrible goddess of the leaders,” or “raging anger enveloping the flame-eyed dogs,” “Tartaros’ child,” the “goddess of the divine necessity,” or even “the excrement eater.”

Hecate is the “lady of the underworld,” according to Eusebius (c. C.E. 260–339), the Christian and Greek ecclesiastical writer. She is the “mistress of all evil demons,”
⁴¹
and also the “black one,” or, like Aphrodite, “the demon of love madness.” She is the mother of the Italian Circe, and aunt or mother of Medea of Colchis (Georgias), the cosmic “super witch” (Luck, 1962: 61). Hecate brings deep sleep and disturbing dreams, causes epilepsy (the “sacred disease”) and insanity
(mania),
and also could bring forth altered states of consciousness: “And propitiate only-begotten Hecate, daughter of Perses, pouring from a goblet the hive-stored labour of bees” (Apollonius,
Argonautica
III.1035ff.).
⁴²

Hecate is the threefold goddess who often manifests in three separate goddesses: Hecate, Artemis, and Selene (Spretnak, 1984). She has three heads: horse, human, and dog; thus she is also directly connected with Cerberus, who is likewise three-headed: “Cerberus had three dog heads, the tail of a dragon, and on his back the heads of all kinds of snakes” (Apollodorus I.9).

Cerberus is a mythological dog who guards the entrance to Hades, the realm of shadows and the dead. He is the classic image of the “hounds of hell.” Cerberus also created the two most important witches’ plants in European history. When the half-divine hero Hercules brought Cerberus to the light of day for the first time in the context of his twelve tasks in the underworld, the raging dog angrily sprayed his slave. Where his urine fell to the earth sprouted the first henbane and monkshood
⁴³
(Pliny,
Natural History
XXVII.4–5). After this assignment, Hercules was purified by Eumolpus and then initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries (Apollodorus I.9).

The “herb of Hecate” was a famous magical substance, which was even used by the gods for their own purposes:

[Pallas Athena] flung at [the human ] Arachne juice pressed from one of Hecate’s herbs. Touched by those magic drops, Archane’s hair fell out; her nose and ears dropped away; her head became tiny; her whole body shrank; and slender, fingerlike limbs grew from her sides as legs. The rest of her was belly, from which she spins a thread to weave as she wove before, for she is a spider now” (Ovid,
The Metamorphoses
VI.139ff).

Henbane: The True Pharmakon of the Witches

Hecate was—astonishingly—intimately connected with the sun god Apollo. Apollo was as alien to the early Greeks as Hecate. He was a wild and ecstatic god of the Hyperboreans and was subsequently displaced through the classical Hellenization of Greece. His original being is made clear in his second name—in the earliest times he was ritually invoked as Hecatos (Kerényi, 1966: 34). He was also a kind of twin of the witch goddess. On the other hand he was the younger twin of the Delik Artemis, who stood by as his midwife even though she had barely been born herself (Apollodorus,
Library
I.4).

“It is said that Apollo discovered this plant and gave to Asclepius. This is why it bears the name Apollinaris.”

—
M
EDICINA ANTIQUA
23,
FOLIO 41V

Apollo was one of the most important oracle gods. According to Apollodorus (
Library
I.4) he learned divination from Pan.
⁴⁴
Laurel was sacred to Apollo as well as Hecate. Her most sacred plant, however, was the white henbane (
Hyoscyamus albus
L.).

“Henbane, with its yellow flowers, is one of the favored plants of the women who know about nature, the ones who want to have control over their own wombs.”

—R
HEA
R
OTHER
, “M
ODERNE
H
EXEN, DIE ANF
N
ATURMEDIZIN VERTRANEN
” [“M
ODERN
W
ITCHES
R
ELY ON
N
ATURAL
M
EDICINE
”], 1997

Henbane was called
apollinaris,
“the [plant] of Apollo,” by the Romans.
⁴⁵
In Latin it is also called
symfoniaca
or
insanin
, meaning “insanity [causing].” The Greeks knew it by the name
Hyoskiamos
(pig bean), or
Pitonionca
(dragon plant). The Celtic Gaels called it
bellinotem,
“herb of the [oracle god] Belenos” (Zotter, 1980: 67). Henbane has psychoactive and strong hallucinogenic activity, and was the most important medium of divination in antiquity. For this purpose the smoke from the herb or seeds was usually inhaled by the Pythians, sibyls, prophets, and Germanic Alrunas. They were able to divine and give oracles through the trancelike or visionary state of consciousness induced by the plant (Rätsch, 1987b).