Scatalogic Rites of All Nations: A dissertation upon the employment of excrementitious remedial agents in religion, therapeutics, divination, witchcraft, love-philters, etc., in all parts of the globeBourke, John Gregory
Religion
Scatalogic Rites of All Nations: A dissertation upon the employment of excrementitious remedial agents in religion, therapeutics, divination, witchcraft, love-philters, etc., in all parts of the globe
Bourke, John Gregory
Scatology
Frommann enumerates mistletoe among “Recentiorum ad fascinum remedia....
Viscum corylinum et tiliaceum” (hazel or filbert and linden trees). The
genitalia of the bewitched person were anointed with an ointment prepared
from the hazel mistletoe to untie “ligatures.” (See Frommann, “Tractatus
de Fascinatione,” Nuremberg, 1675, pp. 938, 957, 958, 965.)
“We find that persons in Sweden who are afflicted with the falling
sickness carry with them a knife having a handle of oak mistletoe, to
ward off attacks. A piece of mistletoe hung round the neck would ward
off other sicknesses. We have Culpepper’s authority for saying ‘it is
excellent good for the grief of the sinew, itch, sores, and tooth-ache,
the biting of mad dogs, and venemous beasts, and that it purgeth choler
very gently.’ Grimm notes that it was with a branch of mistletoe that
Balder was killed.... The Kadeir Taliasin says that the mistletoe was
one of the ingredients in the _awen a gwybodeu_, or water of inspiration,
science, and immortality, which the goddess Kod prepared in her cauldron.
Witches were thought to have no power to hurt those who bore mistletoe
round their neck. Sir Thomas Browne speaks of the virtues of mistletoe in
cases of epilepsy.”—(“Folk-Medicine,” Black, London, 1883, p. 196.)
The same belief in Waters of Life, science, immortality, etc., seems to
obtain among the Slav nations, who also speak in their myths of “the
crazy weed,” which may, perhaps, be classified with the weed of the
Borgie well, which, as we have seen, “set a’ the Camerslang fo’k wrang i’
th’ head.”—(See “Myths and Folk-Tales of the Russians, Western Slavs, and
Magyars,” Jeremiah Curtin, Boston, Mass., 1890.)
The mistletoe, especially that from the linden and the oak, was
enumerated by Etmuller among the cures for epilepsy (“tiliaceum et
quercinum”); others recommended that from the elder or willow. For the
same disease, on the same page, “zibethum” was prescribed. (See Etmuller,
“Opera Omnia,” Lyons, 1690, vol. i. p. 198: “Comment. Ludovic.”)
The mistletoe of the juniper, gathered in the month of May, was
good for eye-water. “Maio mense instar musci adnascitur inservit
aquæ ophthalmicæ.”—(Etmuller, vol. i. p. 84, “Schroderi Dilucidati
Phytologia.”)
Fungi of different kinds dried were used as styptics.—(Idem, p. 70.)
The fungus of the oak was especially good for this purpose.—(Idem, p.
127.)
The mistletoe of the oak was regarded as of special value in all uterine
troubles, hemorrhages, suppression of the menses, etc.—(Idem, p. 127.)
In the Myth of Kale-wala a young maiden is represented as becoming
pregnant by eating a berry. (See “Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Andrew
Lang, London, 1887, vol. ii. p. 179.)
We may ask the question, what kind of a berry this was. Reference may
also be had to what Lang has to say on the mythical conceptions alleged
to have been induced by juniper and other berries.—(Idem, p. 180.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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