There are also substances which counteract magic. It has little force in any place where a fir-tree grows, for the spirits of the air hate and avoid such spots.[394] In the _Causae et curae_ Hildegard tells how to compound a powder “against poison and against magic words.”[395] It also “confers health and courage and prosperity on him who carries it with him.” First one takes a root of geranium (_storkesnabil_) with its leaves, two mallow plants, and seven shoots of the plantagenet. These must be plucked at midday in the middle of April. Then they are to be laid on moist earth and sprinkled with water to keep them green for a while. Next they are dried in the setting sun and in the rising sun until the third hour, when they should once more be laid on moist earth and sprinkled with water until noon. Then they are to be removed and placed facing the south in the full sunshine until the ninth hour, when they should be wrapped in a cloth, with a stick on top to hold them in place, until a trifle before midnight. Then the night begins to incline towards day and all the evils of darkness and night begin to flee. A little before midnight, therefore, they should be transferred to a high window or placed above a door or in some garden where the cool air may have access to them. As soon as midnight is passed, they are to be removed once more, pulverized with the middle finger, and put in a new pill-box with a little _bisemum_ to keep them from decaying but not a sufficient quantity to overcome the scent of the herbs. A little of this powder may be applied daily to the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, or it may be bound on the body as an antiaphrodisiac, or it may be held over wine without touching it but so that its odor can reach the wine, which should then be drunk with a bit of saffron as a preventive of indigestion, poison, magic, and so forth. [Sidenote: Ceremony with a jacinth and wheaten loaf.] In the _Subtilitates_[396] the following procedure is recommended, if anyone is bewitched by phantasms or magic words so that he goes mad. Take a wheaten loaf and cut the upper crust in the form of a cross. First draw a jacinth through one line of the cross, saying, “May God who cast away all the preciousness of gems from the devil when he transgressed His precept, remove from you N. all phantasms and magic words and free you from the ill of this madness.” Then the jacinth is to be drawn through the other arm of the cross and this formula is to be repeated, “As the splendor which the devil once possessed departed from him because of his transgression, so may this madness which harasses N. by varied phantasies and magic arts be removed from you and depart from you.” The ceremony is then completed by the bewitched person eating the bread around the cross. [Sidenote: Hildegard’s superstitious procedure.]