POTENCY OF PHILTRES
The potion is primarily the instrument of lust. Lust is the universal
driving force, the cosmic mainspring. The pudenda muliebria, states the
Bible, are among the insatiable things on this earth. Plato, the Greek
philosopher, in his dialogue entitled _Timaeus_, confirms this eternally
unappeased genital passion:
In men the organ of generation, becoming rebellious and
masterful, like an animal disobedient to reason, and maddened
with the sting of lust, seeks to gain absolute sway; and the
same is the case with the so-called womb or matrix of women; the
animal within them is desirous of procreating children, and when
remaining unfruitful long beyond the proper time, gets
discontented and angry, and wandering in every direction through
the body, closes up the passages of breath, and, by obstructing
respiration, drives them to extremity, causing all varieties of
disease, until at length the desire and love of the man and the
woman bringing them together and as it were plucking the fruit
from the trees, sow in the womb, as in a field, animals unseen
by reason of their smallness and without form; these again are
separated and matured within; they are then finally brought out
into the light, and thus the generation of animals is completed.
* * * * *
Of all potions, satyrion is associated, in legend and mythology, with
the most numerous and consecutive effects. There was a story of an
oriental king. It is related in Book 9 of the _Enquiry into Plants_, by
Theophrastus, who flourished in the third century B.C. The king had sent
a gift of satyrion to Antiochus, ruler of Syria. The slave-messenger who
carried the plant was himself so affected by it that he performed
seventy coital operations in succession.
In respect of this same root there was another anecdote about a certain
Proculus. After drinking a satyrion concoction, Proculus performed on
one hundred women in fifteen days.
* * * * *
Wines, liqueurs, and in general all kinds of spirits are, both in
fictional contexts and in the chronicles of the eighteenth century,
considered as salacious tonics, and were so used specifically. Even an
occasional drink of wine had an erotic repute.
* * * * *
In the salacious and scatological novels of the Marquis de Sade,
especially in Justine and in Les 120 Journées de Sodome, food is
repeatedly stressed as immediately contributory to high amatory potency.
Repletion, it appears, corresponds directly to amatory responses. De
Sade describes, in lavish and appreciative detail, with a kind of
personal gusto and even participation, dinner after dinner, in which
courses follow each other in almost numberless and uninterrupted
sequence: roasts of all varieties, game in season, and also out of
season, hors d’oeuvre, pastries of fantastic shape and ingredients, ices
and chocolates. Each course is accompanied with appropriate wines and
brandies. Rhenish and Greek and Italian vintages, burgundy and
champagne, tokay and madeira.
* * * * *
And, both synchronously with the meal, and as an aftermath of the
banquets, the plenitude of food and drink and the total satiety of the
diners produce an enormously exciting, urgent, and effective erotic
reaction, in which not only the guests but the maidservants as well are
involved.
A soup compounded of celery and truffles was a favorite and popular dish
in eighteenth century France, when every possible aphrodisiac aid was
eagerly sought and tested.
No less so was lentil soup in great demand for the same purpose. Bean
soup, also, pea soup, and other vegetable assortments were regularly
employed in culinary ways, but with a decided erotic suggestiveness.
* * * * *
Eighteenth century France, in fact, experimented in both amatory and
gastronomic directions, for one practice was manifestly associated with
the other. All manner of compounds, then, prepared for amatory vigor,
were produced on a large scale. These concoctions invariably included
vinegars, perfumed lotions, electuaries, and strengthening elixirs.
* * * * *
A Portuguese potion, that was in frequent use in the eighteenth century,
consisted of a pint of rose water, shaken together with a pint of orange
flower water and a half pint of myrtle water. To this were added two
thirds of spirit of ambergris and two thirds of distilled spirit of
musk. The result was reputedly a potent concoction.
Asiatic races were long known for their sexual prowess. Hence the West,
through travelers and explorers and adventurers, was eager to acquire
such knowledge in its own interests. In the case of the Asiatic Tartars,
there were accounts of their strange practices. In one instance, they
used the membrum of the wild horse for its reputed high content of vital
fluid. The genitalia of the stag, itself considered an extremely
libidinous animal, were similarly regarded.
* * * * *
In the case of highly responsive natures, a mere inhalation of a
particular perfume, or the sight of a desired person, may produce
extreme erotic symptoms. This was so with Antiochus, son of King
Seleucus, who reigned in the third century B.C. Merely hearing the name
of his mistress uttered aloud was sufficient to induce in him the
ultimate amatory reactions.
The amatory urge has been, in the history of man, of such forceful and
uninterrupted universality that, in special cases and in specific areas
of activity, there have been devised anti-aphrodisiac means, formal
prescriptions, herbal and other concoctions, and well-meant counsel.
Verbena in a drink was formerly recommended as a specific preventive.
Also dried mint and vinegar and the juice of hemlock. Cucumbers, too,
and water melon have at various times been considered effective in
diminishing or allaying sensual interests. In a general sense, whatever
exhausts the body physiologically or mentally has been considered as a
feasible amatory restriction. In this category are included laborious
and persistent work that occupies all the waking energies: a minimum of
sleep, or fasting, or a restricted diet, or exercise of the body: even
castigation.
The problem was equally well known to the ancients, who advised, to
counteract the heat engendered by passionate excitation, a prescription
involving cold. Hence the cold bath was a common and recognized
procedure and was adopted, centuries later, as a regular feature in
Anglo-Saxon mores. Other Greeks, among them the philosophers Plato and
his successor Aristotle, suggested that going barefoot would diminish
the heat-producing physiological desire. Another suggestion was to wear
sheets of lead, beaten out thin, near the kidneys or on the legs. Pliny
the Elder, the Roman encyclopedist and author of the monumental
_Historia Naturalis_, and the eminent Greek physician Galen, both
coincided in this view.
A more difficult procedure, but one commended by the seventeenth century
Sir Thomas Browne, was self-restraint in the ‘flaming days,’ as he calls
them. Otherwise, there remains one other remedy, that was adopted by
Origen, the third century A.D. Father of the Church. He cut the Gordian
knot, freeing himself from all carnal inducements: Seeds genitalibus
membris, eunuchum se facit.
Ingenious inventions, activities, devices for escaping from or
suppressing compulsive amatory inclinations have been proposed in every
age, from the arch poet of love Ovid himself to the knowledgeable Dr.
Nicolas Venette.
Shun idleness, for idleness tends to amatory thoughts, warns the
erotological poet. Be active, and you will not be endangered. Occupy
yourself constantly: with agricultural pursuits, or fishing, or hunting.
Or even take up the study of law.
Avoid food that tends to stimulate: and, in general, live an ascetic
life removed from crowds, from visual provocations, from social parties
and clamorous public spectacles and dramatic performances, from
pictorial or sculptural objects that induce amatory images.
Snuff taking is suggested, as well as concentrated mental study, in
later centuries. Or drink a concoction of the roots and seeds of the
water lily. That is soothing and cooling, as the Turks seemed to have
found it.
* * * * *
Aromatic herbs were, in ancient Rome, usually a preliminary to more
active amatory adventures. The osphresiological sensitivity of men and
women is such that in many cases particular aromas, strong unguents and
cosmetics, arouse venereal impulses. In perverted and aberrational
situations, in fact, even repellent but powerful effluvia and vapors,
corporeal and genital, may create or induce erotic susceptibility. The
Oriental manuals of erotology and certain anthropological studies
confirm this view.
A strange personality who was himself European in origin but merged with
the East was the writer Lafcadio Hearn. In the course of his essays,
translations, and interpretations he produced a brief thesis on feminine
osphresiological influence.
The Roman novelist Apuleius, who belongs in the second century A.D., was
accused of marrying a wealthy widow named Pudentilla, by magic rites. He
thus answered his accuser:
He said that I was the only one found capable of defiling her
widowhood, as if it were virginity, by my incantations and love
philtres.
* * * * *
Woman became so masterful, so pervasively dominant in her relations with
her masculine counterpart, that she came to reflect man’s primary
physiological desire. She became equated with erotic passion and
fulfillment, and her urgency grew so intense that all roads were
directed toward her as the ultimate pleasure, the sensual summum bonum.
She was in the medieval dialectical sense, matter in actu. And when the
physiological and amatory capacities of the male became, through
excessive practice or through incidental incapacities or aberrations and
indiscretions, markedly weakened and deficient, there was instant and
frantic resort to any means, to all means, whereby this defect or
incapacity might be corrected or possibly completely remedied. Hence the
febrile, the universal quest, in every land and at all cultural levels,
for aids and persuasive spells and secret incantations, thaumaturgic
formulas and brews, elixirs and anticipated panaceas.
* * * * *
Springs, rivers, lakes, wells, and fountains have had at various times a
kind of miraculous or thaumaturgic repute as an efficacious amatory
stimulant. The Khirgiz of Central Asia, for instance, have a legend that
a princess, after bathing in a sacred lake, became enceinte. Waters may
thus be fruitful and fecundating. Aristotle himself relates that a pool
had the same effect on a bathing woman.
In the Middle Ages, the philosopher and occultist Albertus Magnus
describes similar instances and similar potencies.
In India, barren women bathed in a sacred well. Similarly with the
waters of Sinuessa in Greece. Springs in Germany and Morocco and in
France were likewise venerated for their traditional erotic efficacy.
In Hindu mythology, there are instances of women bathing in the holy
River Ganges and losing their sterility. So in the aboriginal myths of
Australia. In the Fiji islands barren women bathe in the river and then
take a drink of saffron and carob bean.
A similar tradition lingers in China, in the history of the Manchus. The
lotus often appeared in their legends as a kind of confirmatory aid. In
Egypt, in fact, the lotus was known as the wife of the Nile.
In both the West and the Orient, the personal will to be admired or
loved is believed to be instrumental, in a perceptible degree, in
producing a corresponding impact on the object of the desire. Various
procedures are specified, each having its own effective possibilities.
An offering of a bouquet of red flowers, breathed upon three times by
the amorous giver, may prove highly favorable to his pursuit. Or a
musical serenade, equally in vogue in the Latin countries, in medieval
Europe, and in the Middle East.