But fathers and mothers: they will do it best,
Best of all others. And my flatterers
Shall be the pure and gravest of divines,
That I can get for money. My mere fools,
Eloquent burgesses, and then my poets,
Whom I shall entertain still for that subject.
The few that would give out themselves to be
Court and town-stallions, and, each-where, bely
Ladies who are known most innocent, for them,—
Those will I beg, to make me eunuchs of:
And they shall fan me with ten ostrich tails
A-piece, made in a plume to gather wind.
We will be brave, Puff, now we ha’ the med’cine,
My meat shall all come in, in Indian shells,
Dishes of agate set in gold, and studded
with emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies.
The tongues of carps, dormies, and camels’ heels,
Boil’d i’ the spirit of sol, and dissolv’d pearl
(Apicius’ diet, ’gainst the epilepsy):
And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber,
Headed with diamond and carbuncle.
My foot-boy shall eat pheasants, calver’d salmons,
Knots, godwits, lampreys: I myself will have
The beards of barbel serv’d, instead of salads;
Oil’d mushrooms; and the swelling unctuous paps
Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off,
Drest with an exquisite and poignant sauce;
For which, I’ll say unto my cook, There’s gold;
Go forth, and be a knight.
Face: Sir, I’ll go look
A little, how it heightens. (Exit)
Mammon: Do.—My shirts
I’ll have of taffeta-sarsnet, soft and light
As cobwebs; and for all my other raiment,
It shall be such as might provoke the Persian,
Were he to teach the world riot anew.
My gloves of fishes and birds’ skins, perfum’d
With gums of paradise, and Eastern air—
Surly: And do you think to have the stone with this?
Mammon: No, I do think t’have all this with the stone.
Surly: Why, I have heard he must be homo frugi,
A pious, holy, and religious man,
One free from mortal sin, a very virgin.
Mammon: That makes it, sir; he is so. But I buy it;
My venture brings it me. He, honest wretch,
A notable, superstitious, good soul,
Has worn his knees bare, and his slippers bald,
With prayer and fasting for it: and, sir, let him
Do it alone, for me, still. Here he comes,
Not a profane word afore him; ’tis poison.
Again, in the same play, there is an enumeration of alchemical items,
many of which were, both in ancient and in medieval times, used in
amatory brews:
Subtle: Sir?
Surly: What else are all your terms,
Whereon no one o’ your writers ’grees with other?
Of your elixir, your lac virginis,
Your stone, your med’cine, and your chrysosperm,
Your sal, your sulphur, and your mercury,
Your oil of height, your tree of life, your blood,
Your marchesite, your tutie, your magnesia,
Your toad, your crow, your dragon, and your panther;
Your sun, your moon, your firmament, your adrop,
Your lato, azoch, zernich, chilbrit, beautarit,
And then your red man, and your white woman,
With all your broths, your menstrues, and materials
Of piss and egg-shells, women’s terms, man’s blood,
Hair o’ the head, burnt clouts, chalk, merds, and clay,
Powder of bones, scalings of iron, glass,
And worlds of other strange ingredients,
Would burst a man to name?
* * * * *
A number of herbs, some of which were reputed to produce amatory
benefits, are mentioned in Ben Jonson’s _Volpone_:
Lady Politic Would-Be: Alas, good soul! the passion of the heart.
Seed-Pearl were good now, boil’d with syrup of apples,
Tincture of gold, and coral, citron-pills,
Your elecampane root, myrobalances—
Volpone: Ay me, I have ta’en a grasshopper by the wing!
Lady Politic Would-Be: Burnt silk and amber. You have muscadel
Good i’ the house—
Volpone: You will not drink, and part?
Lady Politic Would-Be: No, fear not that. I doubt we shall not get
Some English saffron, half a dram would serve;
Your sixteen cloves, a little musk, dried mints;
Bugloss and barley-meal—
* * * * *
In Ben Jonson’s _Volpone_ Nano the Dwarf sings some verses, in Act 2,
scene 2, extolling an elixir that has remarkable medicinal and amatory
properties:
You that would last long, list to my song,
Make no more coil, but buy of this oil.
Would you be ever fair and young?
Stout of teeth, and strong of tongue?
Tart of palate? quick of ear?
Sharp of sight? of nostril clear?
Moist of hand? and light of foot?
Or, I will come nearer to ’t,
Would you live free from all diseases?
Do the act your mistress pleases,
Yet fright all aches from your bones?
Here’s a med’cine for the nones.
* * * * *
An amatory appeal is made in a scene from _Bussy D’Ambois_, a drama by
the English playwright George Chapman (c. 1559–c. 1634). Monsieur,
brother of King Henry III of France, addresses the Countess Tamyra:
Monsieur: And wherefore do you this? To please your husband?
’Tis gross and fulsome: if your husband’s pleasure
Be all your object, and you aim at honor
In living close to him, get you from Court;
You may have him at home; these common put-offs
For common women serve: “My honor! Husband!”
Dames maritorious ne’er were meritorious.
Speak plain, and say, “I do not like you, sir,
Y’are an ill-favor’d fellow in my eye;”
And I am answer’d.
Tamyra: Then, I pray, be answer’d:
For in good faith, my lord, I do not like you
In that sort you like.
* * * * *
The love charm in the form of a spell was a belief current in the
Elizabethan age. In the drama _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_, by Robert
Greene, Bacon, conceived as a thaumaturgist, declares:
Thou com’st in post from merry Fressingfield,
Fast-fancied to the Keeper’s bonny lass.
Fast-fancied is an Elizabethan expression meaning bound by love.
* * * * *
The Elizabethan Fair, and all such traditional occasions for barter,
commercial interchange, and public gossip were also and always an
opportunity for amorous interludes. This is the view expressed in _Friar
Bacon and Friar Bungay_, by Robert Greene (c. 1560–1592). Margaret, the
fair maid of Fressingfield, enters:
Margaret: Thomas, maids when they come to see the fair
Count not to make a cope for dearth of hay;
When we have turn’d our butter to the salt,
And set our cheese safely upon the racks,
Then let our fathers price it as they please.
We country sluts of merry Fressingfield
Come to buy needless naughts to make us fine,
And look that young men should be frank this day,
And court us with such fairings as they can.
Phoebus is blithe, and frolic looks from heaven.
* * * * *
In a scene from the Elizabethan dramatist George Peele’s _The Old Wives
Tale_, Zantippa is in search of a husband. She and her ugly sister
Celanta go to a well for water. A Head, speaking from the well, promises
her a love charm, ‘some cockell-bread’:
Zantippa: Now for a husband, house, and home: God send a good
one or none, I pray God! My father hath sent me to the well for
the water of life, and tells me, if I give fair words, I shall
have a husband. But here comes Celanta, my sweet sister. I’ll
stand by and hear what she says.
Enter Celanta, the foul wench, to the well for water with a pot
in her hand.
Celanta: My father hath sent me to the well for water, and he tells me,
if I speak fair, I shall have a husband and none of the worst. Well,
though I am black, I am sure all the world will not forsake me; and, as
the old proverb is, though I am black, I am not the devil.
Zantippa: Marry-gup with a murrain. I know wherefore thou speakest that:
but go thy ways home as wise as thou camest, or I’ll set thee home with
a wanion.
Here she strikes her pitcher against her sister’s, and breaks
them both, and then exit.
Celanta: I think this be the curstest quean in the world. You see what
she is, a little fair, but as proud as the devil, and the veriest vixen
that lives upon God’s earth. Well, I’ll let her alone, and go home and
get another pitcher, and, for all this, get me to the well for water.
Exit.
Enter two Furies out of the Conjurer’s cell and lay Huanebango
by the Well of Life and then exeunt.
Re-enter Zantippa with a pitcher to the well.
Zantippa: Once again for a husband; and, in faith, Celanta, I have got
the start of you; belike husbands grow by the well-side. Now my father
says I must rule my tongue. Why, alas, what am I, then? A woman without
a tongue is as a soldier without his weapon. But I’ll have my water, and
be gone.
Here she offers to dip her pitcher in, and a Head speaks in the
well.
Head: Gently dip, but not too deep,
For fear you make the golden beard to weep.
Fair maiden, white and red,
Stroke me smooth, and comb my head,
And thou shalt have some cockell-bread.
* * * * *
In an old Elizabethan play there is reference to lunary or moonwort as a
contributory factor in amatory thoughts:
I have heard of an herb called Lunary that being bound to the
pulse of the sick causes nothing but dreams of weddings and
dances.
* * * * *
In _Endymion_, a drama by the Elizabethan playwright John Lyly (c.
1554–c. 1606), Endymion soliloquizes:
As ebony, which no fire can scorch, is yet consumed with sweet
savors, so my heart which cannot be bent by the hardness of
fortune, may be bruised by amorous desires.
* * * * *
In the drama _The Old Wives Tale_, by George Peele, the Elizabethan
playwright, Frolic and Fantastic sing an erotic chant:
Whenas the rye reach to the chin,
And chopcherry, chopcherry ripe within,
Strawberries swimming in the cream,
And school-boys playing in the stream;
Then, O then, O then, O my true-love said,
Till that time come again
She could not live a maid.
* * * * *
In _Endymion_, the Elizabethan drama by John Lyly, Sir Tophas describes
a desirable woman:
Sir Tophas: I love no grissels; they are so brittle they will
crack like glass, or so dainty that if they be touched they are
straight of the fashion of wax: animus maioribus instat. I
desire old matrons. What a sight would it be to embrace one
whose hair were as orient as the pearl, whose teeth shall be so
pure a watchet that they shall stain the truest turquoise, whose
nose shall throw more beams from it than the fiery carbuncle,
whose eyes shall be environ’d about with redness exceeding the
deepest coral, and whose lips might compare with silver for the
paleness! Such a one if you can help me to, I will by piecemeal
curtail my affections towards Dipsas, and walk my swelling
thoughts till they be cold.
* * * * *
In _Philaster_, a drama by Francis Beaumont (1584–1616) and John
Fletcher (1579–1625), Megra, a Lascivious Lady, is thus described:
Dion: Faith, I think she is one whom the state keeps for the
agents of our confederate princes; she’ll cog and lie with a
whole army, before the league shall break. Her name is common
through the kingdom, and the trophies of her dishonor advanced
beyond Hercules’ Pillars. She loves to try the several
constitutions of men’s bodies; and, indeed, has destroyed the
worth of her own body by making experiment upon it for the good
of the commonwealth.
* * * * *
In _Endymion_, John Lyly’s drama, Epiton and Sir Tophas have a verbal
bout on love:
Epiton: Sir, will you give over wars and play with that bauble
called love?
Tophas: Give over wars? No, Epi, Militat omnis amans, et habet
sua castra Cupido.
Epiton: Love hate made you very eloquent, but your face is
nothing fair.
Tophas: Non formosus erat, sed erat facundus Ulysses.
Epiton: Nay, I must seek a new master if you can speak nothing
but verses.
Tophas: Quicquid conabar dicere, versus erat. Epi, I feel all
Ovid De Arte Amandi lie as heavy at my heart as a load of logs.
* * * * *
In _The Lady of Pleasure_, a play by the English dramatist James
Shirley, Lady Bornwell is rebuked for her amorous diversions by her
husband Sir Thomas:
Another game you have, which consumes more
Your fame than purse; your revels in the night,
Your meetings called the “Ball,” to which repair
As to the Court of Pleasure, all your gallants
And ladies, whither bound by a subpoena
Of Venus, and small Cupid’s high displeasure;
’Tis but the Family of Love translated
Into more costly sin!
* * * * *
Amatory enticement is illustrated in a scene in _The Lady of Pleasure_,
by James Shirley:
Lord: Have you business, madam, with me?
Madam Decoy: And such, I hope, as will not be
Offensive to your lordship.
Lord: I pray speak it.
Madam Decoy: I would desire your lordship’s ear more private.
Lord: Wait i’ th’ next chamber till I call.—
Now, madam.
Exit Haircut.
Madam Decoy: Although I am a stranger to your lordship,
I would not lose a fair occasion offer’d
To show how much I honor, and would serve you.
Lord: Please you to give me the particular,
That I may know the extent of my engagement.
I am ignorant by what desert you should
Be encourag’d to have care of me.
Madam Decoy: My lord,
I will take boldness to be plain; beside
Your other excellent parts, you have much fame
For your sweet inclination to our sex.
Lord: How d’ye mean, madam?
Madam Decoy: I’ that way your lordship
Hath honorably practis’d upon some
Not to be nam’d. Your noble constancy
To a mistress hath deserv’d our general vote;
And I, a part of womankind, have thought
How to express my duty.
Lord: In what, madam?
Madam Decoy: Be not so strange, my lord. I know the beauty
And pleasures of your eyes; that handsome creature
With whose fair life all your delight took leave,
And to whose memory you have paid too much sad
Tribute.
Lord: What’s all this?
Madam Decoy: This: if your lordship
Accept my service, in pure zeal to cure
Your melancholy, I could point where you might
Repair your loss.
Lord: Your ladyship, I conceive,
Doth traffic in flesh merchandize.
Madam Decoy: To men
Of honor, like yourself. I am well known
To some in court, and come not with ambition
Now to supplant your officer.
Lord: What is
The lady of pleasure you prefer?
Madam Decoy: A lady
Of birth and fortune, one upon whose virtue
I may presume, the lady Aretina.
Lord: Wife to Sir Thomas Bornwell?
Madam Decoy: The same, sir.
Lord: Have you prepar’d her?
Madam Decoy: Not for your lordship, till I have found your pulse.
I am acquainted with her disposition,
She has a very appliable nature.
Lord: And, madam, when expect you to be whipt
For doing these fine favors?
Madam Decoy: How, my lord?
Your lordship does but jest, I hope; you make
A difference between a lady that
Does honorable offices, and one
They call a bawd. Your lordship was not wont
To have such coarse opinion of our practice.
Lord: The Lady Aretina is my kinswoman.
Madam Decoy: What if she be, my lord? The nearer blood
The nearer sympathy.
* * * * *
In _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_, by the English dramatist Philip
Massinger (1583–1640), there appears a description of a love philtre:
Furnace: Here, drink it off; the ingredients are cordial,
And this the true elixir; it hath boil’d
Since midnight for you. ’Tis the quintessence
Of five cocks of the game, ten dozen of sparrows,
Knuckles of veal, potato-roots and marrow,
Coral and ambergris. Were you two years older
And I had a wife, or gamesome mistress,
I durst trust you with neither. You need not bait
After this, I warrant you, though your journey’s long;
You may ride on the strength of this till tomorrow morning.
Allworth: Your courtesies overwhelm me: I much grieve
To part from such good friends.
Later, in Act 3 of the same play, Allworth, the young page, describes
the amatory lure of Margaret:
Allworth: My much-lov’d lord, were Margaret only fair,
The cannon of her more than earthly form,
Though mounted high, commanding all beneath it,
And ramm’d with bullets of her sparkling eyes,
Of all the bulwarks that defend your senses
Could batter none, but that which guards your sight.
But when the well-tun’d accents of her tongue
Make music to you, and with numerous sounds
Assault your hearing, (such as if Ulysses
Now liv’d again, howe’er he stood the Syrens,
Could not resist,) the combat must grow doubtful
Between your reason and rebellious passions.
And this too; when you feel her touch, and breath
Like a swift western wind when it glides o’er
Arabia, creating gums and spices;
And, in the van, the nectar of her lips,
Which you must taste, bring the battalia on,
Well arm’d, and strongly lin’d with her discourse,
And knowing manners, to give entertainment;—
Hippolytus himself would leave Diana,
To follow such a Venus.
Lord Lovell: Love hath made you poetical, Allworth.
In another scene, between Sir Giles Overreach, an extortioner, and his
daughter Margaret, the father gives his daughter amatory but sinister
advice that is tantamount to the prescriptions of the _Kama Sutra_ and
similar manuals:
Margaret: There’s too much disparity
between his quality and mine, to hope it.
Overreach: I more than hope’t, and doubt not to effect it.
Be thou no enemy to thyself, my wealth
Shall weigh his titles down, and make you equals.
Now for the means to assure him thine, observe me:
Remember he’s a courtier and a soldier,
And not to be trifled with; and therefore, when
He comes to woo you, see you do not coy it:
This mincing modesty has spoil’d many a match
By a first refusal, in vain after hop’d for.
Margaret: You’ll have me, sir, preserve the distance that
Confines a virgin?
Overreach: Virgin me no virgins!
I must have you lose that name, or you lose me.
I will have you private—start not—I say, private;
If thou art my true daughter, not a bastard,
Thou wilt venture alone with one man, though he came
Like Jupiter to Semele, and come off, too;
And therefore, when he kisses you, kiss close.
Margaret: I have heard this is the strumpet’s fashion, sir,
Which I must never learn.
Overreach: Learn any thing,
And from any creature that may make thee great;
From the devil himself.
Margaret (aside): This is but devilish doctrine!
Overreach: Or, if his blood grows hot, suppose he offer
Beyond this, do not you stay till it cool,
But meet his ardor; if a couch be near,
Sit down on’t, and invite him.
Margaret: In your house,
Your own house, sir! For Heaven’s sake, what are you then?
Or what shall I be, sir?
Overreach: Stand not on form;
Words are no substances.
Margaret: Though you could dispense
With your own honor, cast aside religion,
The hopes of Heaven, or fear of hell, excuse me,
In worldly policy this is not the way
To make me his wife; his whore, I grant it may do.
My maiden honor so soon yielded up,
Nay, prostituted, cannot but assure him
I, that am light to him, will not hold weight
Whene’er tempted by others; so, in judgment,
When to his lust I have given up my honor,
He must and will forsake me.
Overreach: How! I forsake thee!
Do I wear a sword for fashion? or is this arm
Shrunk up or wither’d? Does there live a man
Of that large list I have encounter’d with
Can truly say I e’er gave inch of ground
Not purchas’d with his blood that did oppose me?
Forsake thee when the thing is done! He dares not.
Give me but proof he has enjoy’d thy person,
Though all his captains, echoes to his will,
Stood arm’d by his side to justify the wrong,
And he himself in the head of his bold troop,
Spite of his lordship, and his colonelship,
Or the judge’s favor, I will make him render
A bloody and a strict account, and force him,
By marrying thee, to cure thy wounded honor!
I have said it.
* * * * *
As late as the eighteenth century, in Italy, phallic amulets, in the
form of the fascinum itself and the obscene digital gesture called in
French _la figue_, were in common use. They were worn by children as
protective periapts. Chapels too were decorated with wax images of
phalli, dedicated by devout women worshippers.
* * * * *
An esoteric club existed in England in the eighteenth century that was
associated with the British Navy. It was called _The Very Ancient and
Very Powerful Order of Beggars Benison and Merryland_. On the seal of
this Society, among other and naval designs, was a phallic symbol. The
intent of the Society is still obscure, especially the relation between
naval matters and the phallus.
* * * * *
Amulets in the form of the male mandrake came into vogue in the Middle
Ages, especially in Central Europe, for apotropaic and amatory purposes.
These charms were associated with incantations and magic formulas and
recitatives.
The phallus or fascinum, too, especially in France, was used, as a
meaningful protective agent, on buildings and even on churches.
Phallic and other genital forms were also used for cakes and breads: and
are still so used, especially in Germany and France.
* * * * *
In the Middle Ages Priapus assumed Christian characteristics and in time
was even endowed with sanctity, although he still retained his
functional properties. In many cities of Southern France, for instance,
Saint Foutin was virtually a transferred Priapus. He aided sterile women
and renewed the amatory vigor of men. Images of genitalia were included
among the sacrificial objects dedicated to this saint.
* * * * *
In medieval France a certain Saint Greluchon was a cryptic Priapus,
venerated among the members of the saintly canon. When women made
supplication to this saint, they scraped off minute particles from the
stone genitalia and compounded these scrapings into an amatory potion,
and also as an aid to counteract sterility.
Other saints to whom were attributed the virtues and functions of
Priapus were: Saint Guignolet, Saint Regnaud, Saint Gilles.
In Belgium, Priapus became Ters, equally venerated by women. Ters, in
Antwerp, was actually a synonym for fascinum.
* * * * *
Among the gods of Northern Europe was Frikko, who may be equated with
Priapus, the phallic deity. The Saxons had a similar god, called Frisco,
endowed with the same functions. An analogous deity was Frigga, goddess
of voluptuousness. Before the worship of this symbolic or actual phallus
was the worship of the sun, represented by the phallus as the creator of
cosmic and human fecundity.
* * * * *
_Clauder_
A German medieval scholar presented for his doctoral thesis a brief
monograph on Philtres, their essential characteristics, the dangers
involved in their use, the contents, the purpose of their employment.
The thesis, in Latin, is entitled De Philtris, and was published in
Leipzig in 1661. The author is Johannes Clauder.
Although philtres were frequently used for erotic purposes, the author
asserts, the result rarely corresponded to the intention. The reason for
this was that the philtre was concocted under evil auspices, without
appeal to divine aid and protection. Another reason for the inefficacy
of the potions was improper and defective preparation. The result, he
declares categorically, was very often madness for the victim, or even
death itself.
Some philtres are associated with Satanic and magic practices, and are
essentially poisons. Whores and panders resort to such philtres,
although some use what might be termed natural remedies.
The best philtre, however, according to Clauder, is love itself. In this
regard, he quotes confirmatory statements from the Romans. Seneca the
philosopher, in one of his 124 Epistles, advises: I shall show you a
love philtre, without medicaments, without herbs, without a witch’s
incantations. It is this: If you want to be loved, love. Martial, the
Roman epigrammatist, has something similar to say: Marcus, in order to
be loved, love.
And Ovid had already advised: Banish every evil, be lovable, in order to
be loved.
Paracelsus, the medieval scholar and alchemist, is quoted in relation to
the philtre and its content. Or, as Clauder suggests, the amatory
inducement may take the form of a magic inscription on a key, or a ring,
or a necklace, or an armlet. As for herbs, the Romans preferred the
laurel and the olive, in infusions. Vegetable and mineral and organic
matter is also in use; perspiration, urine, spittle. But there is a
sinister and hazardous element in such practices. Prostitutes in
particular, Clauder threatens, use philtres that rob the victim of mind
and soul and leave him a shallow husk. So corroborates Paracelsus. There
is one potion, however, called Charisia, that may be innocuous. It has
not been identified. But possibly the name may have been invented
etymologically on the basis of the Greek _charis_, which means grace or
gratitude: and hence the nomenclature is wishfully proleptic in
significance.
With respect to a variety of lustful and amatory circumstances, the
Middle Ages were marked by strange social mores, by monstrous
obscenities and erotic barbarities. There were practices designed
primarily to preserve chastity and marital and domestic purity, but they
actually resulted in greater indecencies than the circumstances that
induced these inventive prophylaxes. There was, first of all, the girdle
of chastity, a mechanical device to prevent indiscriminate and unlawful
lustful consummations in the absence of the husband. The putative
inventor of the device was Francesco da Carrara, Provost of Padua, who
belongs in the latter part of the fourteenth century. He himself, it was
said, met with a miserable death, being strangled on the scaffold for
his many cruelties, in 1405, by order of the Senate of Venice.
There was, too, the Congress, a kind of judicial body that determined
marital questions, quarrels, incompatibility, by viewing the two
participants _in actu sexuali_.
Men and women taken in adultery were compelled to march through the
public streets naked, sometimes mounted on an ass, for centuries the
bestial symbol of lust.
There was the libidinous _ius primae noctis_, the _droit de cuisse_,
exercised by the lord of the manor, and on occasion by monks and
prelates, in the case of a newly wedded couple.
In France, in the city of Toulouse, there was a notorious brothel called
The Great Abbey. There were, dispersed through France, many such
pseudo-abbeys, the madame of which, in each case, was called Abbess.
Such terms and such practices, of course, heightened the lewd obscenity.
There was a similar type of dissolute haven that had an infamous
reputation in England.
This perversion, in which devout elements are linked with the extremes
of lust, to heighten the amatory impulse, is described in abundant and
salacious detail in the novels of the Marquis de Sade and in other
instances of erotic literature.
Prostitution reached such a social importance, and the practitioners
acquired such influence in various directions, that, in Paris, a kind of
trade union was formed, to which the practicing prostitutes prescribed.
They established their own procedures, their working hours, and similar
regulations.
At many royal banquets, public entertainments, and processional
ceremonials, in Italy and in France, prostitutes were prominent
participants, some half-naked, often entirely so.
There were, of course, fulminations against such and similar
indecencies, but without much immediate or effective results. Preachers
thundered, to no avail, against the erotic provocations to adultery and
fornication engendered by the sight of women who, by the subtlety of
their dress, exposed various parts of their person. There was public
debauchery. There were genesiac performances in the presence of the
children in a household. There were poems and tales, called fabliaux,
that, reflecting the mores of the age, dealt with nothing but cuckoldry
and fornication, adultery, sodomy, bestiality, and all the multiple
varieties of physiological perversions.
Furthermore, houses, manors, large estates were decorated with
tapestries, paintings, sculpture, all depicting the greatest
obscenities. Even churches and chapels and abbeys contained scenes,
figures, statues of the utmost lewdness in posture, presentation, and
implication.
* * * * *
Among the barbarities of the medieval centuries, many performances,
processions, and rites contained an amazing mingling of ecclesiastical
elements and dissolute blasphemies and libertinage: just as the Greek
satyr plays and the comedies of fifth century Athens were composites of
functional representations by human actors of the libidinous and
irreverent actions of the deities themselves.
The medieval scene contained secular and monastic lubricity, and
processions and rites in which the performers, under the guise of nuns
and prelates, presented shameless and unspeakable obscenities. In
addition, flagellation was inflicted on penitents. In Germany, France,
England, and Italy, all ranks, of all ages, underwent phallic
castigation as an act of devotion.
* * * * *
In Girolamo Folengo’s _Maccaronea_, published in 1519, there is mention
of manuals that provide magic instruction and prescriptions favorable in
inducing or diverting erotic urges:
He opens the manuals, or reads all that are open:
How to write arcane spells:
How to compel love;
How a husband can find out his wife’s adultery;
How virginal maidens can be forced to love;
How to make a hated husband impotent.
* * * * *
During the Italian Renaissance the women of Italy played a dominant and
sometimes sinister part in both social and political life. Courtesans,
particularly in Rome, had a position somewhat analogous to that of the
Greek hetairae. One such courtesan, Imperia, had skill in composing
sonnets. Most of them were literate and interested in intellectual
pursuits as well as in erotic interludes. Caterina di San Celso played
and sang. Many women of this type are described by Giraldi in the novels
of the _Hecatommithi_ and by Pietro Aretino in his _Ragionamenti_.
The Italian Renaissance was marked by both literary and social
indecencies and lewd lubricities and all kinds of scatological
productions and performances. In the lavish public entertainments, in
the Carnivals and Masques, apart from contests, reviews, pantomimic
presentations, the emphasis was consistently on scandalous songs, with
lascivious undertones, innuendoes, suggestions.
In literature, the moral atmosphere of this period is reflected in the
depiction of the most common Renaissance features—adultery and
cuckoldry, all kinds of illicit amours, lusts resulting in secrecies,
gallantries, murder. To satisfy her lusts, a woman poisons her husband.
An adulteress has her lover kill her husband, without hesitation,
without compunction. Love and lust, poison and death, infidelities and
vengeance followed each other in an abandoned, frenzied, amoral
sequence.
The Italian strega or witch was a powerful intermediary in amatory
affairs of all sorts. With her preparations, her thaumaturgic skills,
her secret concoctions, she aided men and women in consummating erotic
urges, arousing lustful sensualities, securing the love of hesitant
objects of passion, promoting vigor and virility, arranging furtive
amatory assignations: acting, in short, as an amatory midwife, an
empirical guide in debauchery.
By her magical skill the strega was able to aid men and women bent on
amatory consummations. Some of these skills were transferred to the
prostitutes. Acquiring these techniques, and discovering the secrets of
preparing potions, they were able to retain a lover, to lure a new
admirer. For their concoctions and brews they used human teeth and the
eyes of dead men, skulls and ribs, scraps of the flesh of corpses, hair
and nails boiled in oil. They made a fire of burning ashes, in the form
of a heart. Piercing the heart, they chanted their goetic invocation,
anticipating the surrender of the hesitant lover by this means of
sympathetic magic. In this sphere, in fact, the Italian Renaissance had
taken over, as it were, the entire corpus of ancient magic rites, love
brews, and concomitant procedures in the art of erotic control.
* * * * *
A solemn love conjuration appears in a medieval manual called the _True
Grimoire_. The invocation itself is preceded by special preparations
during the waxing or the waning of the moon. An inscription is written
on virgin parchment, by the light of a taper. The supplication runs:
I salute thee and conjure thee, O beautiful Moon, O most
beautiful Star, O brilliant light which I have in my hand. By
the air that I breathe, by the breath within me, by the earth
which I am touching: I conjure thee. By all the names of the
spirit princes living in you. By the ineffable Name On, which
created everything! By you, O resplendent Angel Gabriel, with
the Planet Mercury, Prince, Michiael, and Melchidael.
I conjure you again, by all the Holy Names of God, so that you
may send down power to oppress, torture, and harass the body and
soul and the five senses of her whose name is written here, so
that she shall come unto me, and agree to my desires, liking
nobody in the world, for so long as she shall remain unmoved by
me. Let her then be tortured, made to suffer. Go, then, at once!
Go, Melchidael, Baresches, Zazel, Firiel, Malcha, and all those
who are with thee! I conjure you by the Great Living God to obey
my will, and I promise to satisfy you.
* * * * *
A technique involving the separation of husband and wife, the converse
of a love-potion intended to attract or cement passion, appears in the
following invocation from a magic grimoire called the _Sword of Moses_:
I conjure you, luminaries of heaven and earth, as the heavens
are separated from the earth, so separate and divide N from his
wife N, and separate them from one another, as life is separated
from death, and sea from dry land, and water from fire, and
mountain from vale, and night from day, and light from darkness,
and the sun from the moon; thus separate N from N’s wife, and
separate them from one another in the name of the twelve hours
of the day and the three watches of the night, and the seven
days of the week, and the thirty days of the month, and the
seven years of Shemittah, and the fifty years of Jubilee, on
every day, in the name of the evil angel Imsmael, and in the
name of the angel Iabiel, and in the name of the angel Drmiel,
and in the name of the angel Zahbuk, and in the name of the
angel Ataf, and in the name of the angel Zhsmael, and in the
name of the angel Zsniel, who preside over pains, sharp pains,
inflammation, and dropsy, and separate N from his wife N, make
them depart from one another, and that they should not comfort
one another, swift and quickly.
* * * * *
[Illustration:
National Gallery of Art
DIANA
_by Renoir_
]
[Illustration:
Metropolitan Museum of Art
PYGMALION AND GALATEA
_by Rodin_
]
In the middle centuries prostitution as a civic institution had its
distinction and its privileges. In Venice, all kinds of secondary favors
were granted to these practitioners. They were favored with an indulgent
and even eulogistic Latin testimonial: nostrae bene merentes meretrices.
* * * * *
In France, there were orgiastic ceremonies in which the participants
performed in the nude. These rituals were associated in a contorted
sense with primal creation and were known as Fêtes d’Adam.
In one of Boccaccio’s tales there is an instance of a script intended as
an erotic provocation:
Quoth Bruno, ‘Will thy heart serve thee to touch her with a
script I shall give thee?’
‘Ay, sure,’ replied Calandrino; and the other, ‘Then do thou
make shift to bring me a piece of virgin parchment and a live
bat, together with three grains of frankincense and a candle
that hath been blessed by the priest, and leave me do.’
Accordingly, Calandrino lay in wait all the next night with his
engines to catch a bat and having at last taken one, carried it
to Bruno, with the other things required; whereupon the latter,
withdrawing to a chamber, scribbled divers toys of his fashion
upon the parchment, in characters of his own devising, and
brought it to him, saying, ‘Know, Calandrino, that, if thou
touch her with this script, she will incontinent follow thee and
do what thou wilt.’
* * * * *
In Turkey, under the Sultanate, and notably in the sixteenth century,
erotic relations in the seraglio were stimulated by a preparation known
as pastilles de sérail.
* * * * *
In the sixteenth century there was a religious-erotic cult in Europe
whose members were called Loïstes. Their rituals were marked by sexual
orgies and erotic aberrations.
* * * * *
The corpus of Shakespearean plays contains numberless allusions and
comments on sexual and amatory topics. The language, however, in which
these references are couched is sometimes figurative, euphemistic, and
seemingly innocuous and ingenuous. Sometimes, again, they are so
expressed in the contemporary Elizabethan idiom as to have an immediate
and illuminating impact on the contemporary audience: but, on a cursory
perusal, the context may not spontaneously reveal the underlying
currency.
There is, throughout the plays, mention of the functional processes and
their media, of the organs of the human body, including what are usually
termed pudenda. Shakespeare touches on the normal sexual functions and
also on deviations, on tribadism and coprophilia, on lust and cuckoldry,
on adultery and eunuchs, on all manner of erotic encounters, embraces,
and circumstances.
In _Troilus and Cressida_, to take an example, lust, libido, and potency
are illustrated:
Cressida: They say all lovers swear more performance than they
are able, and yet reserve an ability that they never perform:
vowing more than the performance of ten, and discharging less
than the tenth part of one. They that have the voice of lions
and the act of hares, are they not monsters?
Act 3.2
Again:
Troilus: This is the monstrosity of love, lady—that the will is
infinite and the execution confined; that the desire is
boundless and the act a slave to limit.
Act 3.2
Troilus: What will it be
When that the watery palate tastes indeed
Love’s thrice repured nectar?—death, I fear me,
Swooning distraction, or some joy too fine,
Too-subtle potent, tuned too sharp in sweetness,
For the capacity of my ruder powers:
Act 3.2
There are similar references in _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, _Twelfth
Night_, and _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_.
In _Pericles_ Priapus is mentioned as a symbol of virility:
Pericles: Fie, fie upon her!
She’s able to freeze the god Priapus.
* * * * *
François Villon, the fifteenth century French lyric poet, was not too
happy in his loves. In his _Double Ballade_ he makes his personal
confession on amatory exercises, and gives due admonitions as to the
possible effects of erotic practices:
Then love until you have your fill,
Follow the ball and midnight feast,
The end will bring you naught until
You break your head, to say the least;
For foolish loves make man a beast:
Idolatrous was Solomon,
And thereby Samson’s vision ceased.
Happier those who all this shun!
And Orpheus, sweet troubadour,
Who piped his flute among the dead,
Risked mortal peril on its spoor
From Cerberus of the triple head;
And beautiful Narcissus fled,
Because of love too lightly won,
To seek his peace in a watery bed.
Happier those who all this shun!
Sardana, once a valiant knight,
Who conquered all the realm of Crete,
Aped woman’s form and took delight
In girlish chores and things effete;
And David, quitting wisdom’s seat,
Forgot his fear of God for one
Whose perfumed thighs aroused his heat.
Happier those who all this shun!
And Amnon, drunk with carnal power,
Feigning to gorge himself the while,
Plucked lovely Tamar’s virgin flower,
A deed incestuous and vile;
Herod—and here I use no guile—
Had John the Baptist’s head undone
For a dance, a song, a dancer’s smile.
Happier those who all this shun!
Of my poor self I wish to speak:
Beaten like washing in a stream,
Entirely nude—no tongue in cheek—
Who made me chew such sour cream
But Kate Vausselles? Noël I deem
Made up the three to share the fun.
Such wedding mittens costly seem.
Happier those who all this shun!
But is this hot, young blood to spurn
Their tender love and flee their sight?
May God forbid! Such ought to burn
As witches do who ride the night.
Sweeter than civets their delight,
But not to put your trust upon:
For be they brown or be they white,
Happier those who all this shun!
* * * * *
As late as the eighteenth century, in Central Europe, there were secret
cults that drew their basic tenets from ancient priapic rites. Some of
these orders practiced nudism but rejected marriage. Some encouraged
promiscuities in their ritualistic assemblies. The Ebionites, for
instance, were of this type. Also the Basilidians, a Gnostic sect that
followed the principles of the founder Basilides, a Gnostic who
flourished in Alexandria in the second century A.D.; also the
Nicolaitans, an early Christian sect.
In Italy, in the eleventh century and the twelfth, there was a similar
sect known as the Patarini. They made obscene obeisance to a black cat,
evidently a variant Satanic form, then abandoned themselves to scenes of
frantic lubricity.
So too in many regions of France that still recalled ancient pagan Gaul
similar orgiastic performances occurred under cover of darkness.
Even the Knights Templars, the military-religious members of the Order
that was founded early in the twelfth century and was suppressed at the
beginning of the fourteenth century, were reputed to have aligned
themselves with foul obscenities that involved anal osculation, as in
the case of the witch members of the Satanic Sabbat, and desecration of
Christian ritual accompanied by erotic perversions.
* * * * *
Sympathetic magic and the use of wax images were common means of
securing amatory ardor compulsively. The ancients were intimately
familiar with the procedures. And the grimoires current in medieval
times were similarly repositories of dark and occult amatory techniques,
and likewise recommended a variety of rituals. Involved in the
ceremonials were of course darkness, the burning of incense, the
construction of special pentagrams and magic circles, the shaping of the
figurine, and the Latin invocation which gave final assurance to the
erotic effects.
* * * * *
Amatory intimacies, especially but not exclusively in the Middle Ages,
were believed possible between human beings and disembodied creatures,
incubi and succubi, sylphs and undines or water spirits, salamanders,
various types of Satanic emissaries and subordinates in the infernal
hierarchy, such as Isheth Zemunin, who presided over prostitution.
Some of these mystic, occult unions, on the other hand, were associated
with beneficent spirits, with angelic embodiments, saints, and similar
personalities.
In the malefic traditions of the Black Arts and demoniac relationships,
there was widespread credence in intercourse between witches and the
members of the Satanic legions, between sorceresses and Satan himself,
and between the practitioners of magic and all kinds of bestial and
obscene creatures. The medieval demonographers are soberly voluble in
recounting many such instances. They chronicle, with precise supporting
confirmatory testimony, tales that brought the participants, the old and
the young women so accused of diabolic intimacies, to trial, to torture,
and finally to the gallows.
Ready and voluminous evidence comes from Guazzo and Johannes Anania and
Jean Bodin, from Henri Boguet and Delrio, from Tartarotti, Stridtbeckh,
Sinistrari and Ricardus, Molitor, de L’Ancre, Elich, and Daugis.
At the Sabbats, the assemblies of witches and Satanic forces, there
were, according to the medieval chroniclers and the old European folk
traditions, frantic performances of the most obscene nature, monstrous
rituals, weird banquets, culminating in lewd orgies characterized,
according to the grave testimonies of the demonographers, by copulation
of witches and materialized demoniac spirits.
The Aphroditic force and influence are all-pervasive. Hence, in the
field of astrological lore, Venus represents love, in its most extended
sense, normal, illicit, and aberrational. Certain symbols, creatures,
forms are regularly associated with her functions. The lubricities of
the goat and the bull are under her sway, while, botanically, many
plants, among them vervain and myrtle, are endowed with aphrodisiac
qualities.
CHAPTER X
MODERN TIMES
Eros is triumphant in the twentieth century, in every social frame, in
every milieu, and in every country. Henri Bergson, the French
philosopher who is associated with the concept of _l’élan vital_—the
vital urge, or, as George Bernard Shaw termed it, the life force,
declared that this twentieth century has become aphrodisiac.
* * * * *
The love-potion is not a matter of academic history only: it is still
flourishing. It still has its devotees. It is still encountered in
obscure places, where furtive secrecy is of the essence of the amatory
preparations. In the folk mind in particular the love-potion can still
be efficacious, sometimes grim in its attendant effects, but
unquestionably an accepted and often employed means of directing erotic
feelings, imposing amatory impulses, on a beloved victim, on the
indifferent libertine, on the wayward and flighty girl.
Ottokar Nemecek in his _Die Wertschätzung der Jungfräulichkeit_ (Verlag
A. Sexl. Vienna, 1953) gives interesting instances of erotic practices,
rituals, religious ceremonials, culled from many ethnic groups. In
Fernando Po, for example, a prayer is offered: May the woman and the man
become as erotically entwined as the creepers in the forest entwine
around the tree trunks.
In Ethiopia a phallic provocation was the wearing on the head of a band
to which a horn was attached. Similarly among many African tribes, where
the chief wore a phallus-crown with the same intention. As in Hellenic
antiquity, in ancient India and in modern India also, the phallus is the
symbol of might, of masculine sovereignty, of cosmic creativeness.
Such customs and rites, such implicit amatory instigations, have not
died out. They appear in many forms and guises, sometimes decorative, on
other occasions in fanciful culinary shapes. Amulets and figures in
phallic and genital form were sold, as late as 1894, in the shops of
Tiflis, in Caucasia, and in the United States migrants from the Central
European countries still reproduce, in their bake shops, festive genital
formations.
* * * * *
Traditional potions, aphrodisiacs, and similar means of arousing genital
impulses are in use even at the present time. Carrots, for instance,
were long listed by the Arabs as a stimulant. In medieval Spain they
were commonly consumed for such a purpose. And in the United States
carrots are still reputed to have a marked erotic potency.
* * * * *
Current magazines of the more popular sort, contemporary drug stores
have their amatory allurements. Some periodicals advertise exotic
perfumes, sultry essences, seductive cosmetics and similar feminine
accessories, or insidious unguents and lotions, whose avowed purpose is
to attract men in an amorous direction. In the drug stores, hormones and
gland extracts, transplantations and rejuvenative manipulations and
operations are publicized for similar purposes.
* * * * *
Among some primitive tribal communities in New Guinea, powerful love
charms take the form of genital secretions. Such secretions are then
used in magic ceremonials affecting both man and beast: the underlying
intent being procreational encouragement.
* * * * *
Virility and its concomitants have no frontiers, no temporal
restrictions. In Central India, in areas that have not yet been
significantly affected by the encroachments of modern ways and
procedures, virility has not become a tribal or personal problem. It is
so normal, in fact, and sexual indulgence is so released from emotional
or social inhibitions and taboos that erotic encouragement in the shape
of unguents, liquids, potions is rare: although there is, as a prelude
to erotic excitations, a preliminary mamillary exercise.
* * * * *
In the Orient, especially in the islands off South Eastern Asia, erotic
frustrations may be solved by resorting to the tribal magician, who
holds the communal secrets, the traditional ways of the society, within
his memory and his jurisdiction. A maiden may be recalcitrant to the
advances of her lover. He will then approach the magician, who will
present him with an amulet, a disc or token. The girl who has amatory
intentions in the direction of a particular male will likewise be given
a disc to wear, on which there is a design of a crescent moon, a
moon-coin, as it is termed, fashioned, according to indigenous
traditions, by the ancient gods themselves, indulgent to help mortals in
their erotic perplexities.
In extremely stubborn cases, love charms associated with magic
incantations and formulas are brought into operation: certain fruits,
such as bananas or cocoanuts, or even a child’s tears.
* * * * *
The love-potion, in respect of its ingredients, is often conditioned by
geographical situation. The flora and fauna of a particular region
become the elements for the amatory goblet. Mediterranean reeds, roots,
nuts, and plants naturally become useful for the philtre. It is only in
extreme cases that exotic items, rare drugs, inaccessible roots are the
object of any particular composition. So, in Sikkim, a state situated in
the Eastern Himalayan region, water in which a bird called indigenously
Ken fo, or a chameleon, has defecated, forms a potent love philtre. So
powerful, in fact, that it produces a condition of priapism in the male
and nymphomania in the female.
* * * * *
Absinthe is a popular drink in European countries, predominantly in
France. It is a liqueur distilled from a bushy plant, that has a
silk-like stem and small yellow flowers. The plant is found among the
valleys and foothills of Europe and on the North African littoral, and
prefers to flourish among hedges and ditches.
The botanical name of the plant is Artemisia absinthium: that is,
wormwood. Wormwood itself was sacred to the Greek divinity Diana, who
was also Artemis: hence the designation Artemisia.
Absinthe itself, distilled from the plant, is a green liqueur to which
are added aniseed oil, marjoram, and similar aromatic elements.
Used regularly, absinthe is not only dangerous, but when taken in large
quantities produces insanity. Yet it has been reputed to stimulate
amatory excitation.
Many noted French writers, poets, and painters have been addicted to the
drink, notably the artist Amedeo Modigliani.
The drink was first concocted by a Frenchman, a certain Dr. Ordinaire,
who resided in Switzerland. In 1797 the recipe was sold to a M. Pernod.
The name Pernod has since then been continuously associated with the
drink.
* * * * *
In the hinterland of folklore, in antique traditional sagas transmitted
through the ages to recent times, in areas that have been for centuries
more or less unaffected by developments, changes, and innovations, that
is, largely, in rural and secluded regions, old beliefs still cling. Old
ways are still followed. Old remedies, beverages, potions are still used
with anticipations of effective results. This view is illustrated in the
French film entitled L’Éternel Retour. As its pervasive theme it
stressed the rooted belief, among the French peasantry, in the efficacy
of the love-potion.
* * * * *
Currently, a great deal of writing appears constantly in the press, in
learned journals, in periodicals of a professional nature, and in
complete encyclopedias, all devoted to erotic studies, analyses of
society in terms of sexual life, and investigations into sexual morality
and sexual abnormalities.
In France, the Polish sponsored Biblioteki Kultury has been established.
This Press has recently produced a study of Pornography and its
involvements, by Witold Gombrowicz. In France, too, many surveys on
erotic practices in the field of films, the stage, art have likewise
made their appearance, in addition to a History of Eroticism. Lavishly
produced folios are also on the market, in which maisons closes are the
subject of detailed treatment and description. Their policies and mores
are freely expounded, and the texts are reinforced with photographs and
illustrations of persons and places and towns, along with paintings by
recognized artists.
A major project in this field is the Illustrated Encyclopedia Erotica,
to which a number of noted European sexologists and erotologists have
contributed. Published in ten volumes, under the sponsorship of the
Institute for Sexual Research of Vienna, this comprehensive compendium
is now reprinted in a new edition by the Verlag für Kulturforschung of
Hamburg.
There are some 22,000 articles and 12,000 illustrations. The contents
range over all aspects of human sexual activity, in their relation to
psychology and biology, medicine and jurisprudence, sociology and
psychotherapy. Folklore and ethnography, marriage, prostitution,
fertility rites, rites of initiation, the deviations of society, secret
amatory sects, flagellation and biographical memoirs comprise the
introductory matter.
Other subjects discussed and examined include: erotic sculpture, sex
mythology, criminology and forensic medicine as they affect perversions,
and contemporary developments along the lines of research.
* * * * *
Liquid and also solid nourishment, when essentially compounded of
wholesome ingredients, will unquestionably, in the contemporary
consensus of medical opinion, promote amatory capacity.
To go one step further, any nourishing food or beverage will, to the
extent of its wholesomeness as an acceptable and normally consumed
commodity, contribute to the general organic euphoria of the subject,
and consequently to his physiological vigor.
In a general sense, therefore, the fantastic or repellent compounds,
brews and stews, lotions, electuaries, ointments, and philtres that, for
long centuries, were transmitted either in folk legend or imprinted in
grave treatises, are, according to medical authority, brusquely
deprecated, and in many cases entirely discounted.
Yet, as is well known, legend and saga, folklore and tradition, often
retain within themselves accumulated knowledge based on tested
validities.
* * * * *
With the increase in experimentation along medical, pharmaceutical, and
culinary lines, there is a corresponding emphasis on food and
preparations that promote physiological well-being and act as tonics and
stimulants.
For these purposes, extracts of the gonads or sex-glands, and pituitary
extracts, are medically recommended in certain cases of physiological
weakness.
In a more gastronomic direction, there are wholesome broths and soups,
such as: mushroom soup, lentil soup, celery soup, as well as salads,
lobster dishes, and curries: all of which contain elements that are
traditionally reputed to aid in increasing vigor.
* * * * *
In a novel by John Brophy entitled _Windfall_, and published in London
in 1951, the hero arrives in New York, where he is confronted with the
fact that the drive for erotic aids is as urgent as ever:
It was true: where Broadway converged on, before it crossed, the
undeviating straightness of Sixth Avenue, the wide double roadway was
surrounded by theatres, cinemas, hotels and restaurants and newspaper
offices, indiscernible behind huge, colored, epileptically moving signs
advocating, pictorially or by blunt lettered exhortation, whiskies and
pea-nuts, cigarettes, motor-cars, night-clubs, patent medicines and
proprietary brands of sexual stimulants.
* * * * *
In the same novel there is a description of a New York Night Club, the
Freudian Frolics. Here are presented amatory stimulants and visual and
palpable inducements in a contemporary setting, basically identical with
the Aristophanic performances, the satires of Lucian, the sketches of
Alciphron and the more boisterous narratives of the Middle Ages, the
Renaissance, and, dominantly, eighteenth century France. The scene is
introduced with a generalization that marks the activities of the place:
Beyond the swing-doors almost every erotic taste not utterly
perverted could be if not gratified at least stimulated ... the
majority made straight for the primary erotogenic zones.
* * * * *
Again, there is a wildly farcical description of amatory reinforcements.
The character concerned is a degenerate multi-millionaire, an American
named Mirabel Jones XVIII. His problem is to achieve an heir to his vast
interests. For this purpose, he is undergoing a multiple variety of
treatments at the hands of his physician and his psychiatrist. He is
subjected to daily injections. He consumes all sorts of tablets. He is
regulated by calisthenic exercises, by vitamin pills, by radio-therapy,
by baths. All these various means are regimented methodically into
prospective erotic channels. As a climax, he travels constantly, from
one country to another, to secure a climate favorable to his condition,
from South America to California to England.
* * * * *
The possibilities of the love-potion still intrude into modern times. In
a series of light sketches of Scottish life, entitled _Christina_, the
author, J. J. Bell, presents young Christina herself, who is living with
an aunt who runs a small village store. To further a possible courtship
between the aunt and the commercial traveler Mr. Baldwin, Christina
conceives a plan to help the shy and hesitant Miss Purvis. The book
itself was published about forty years ago:
Christina greatly enjoyed looking at the shops without
supervision or restriction. She had made up her mind to purchase
a gift for her aunt, whose birthday fell about a month later.
Christina enters a barber’s shop, because she has seen the ideal
gift:
She moistened her lips, and, in a tremulous whisper, said—
“I want a—a potion.”
“A lotion, miss?”
“A potion.”
“A lotion—for the hair?” He smiled dreadfully—so it seemed to
Christina. Once more she all but fled.
Christina had been reading about potions, in a periodical devoted to
love stories. She tells her aunt, Miss Purvis, about it. “It was a magic
potion. A lass got it frae a—a sosserer to gi’e to a young man that
wasna heedin’ aboot her. She gi’ed it to him, an’ it charmed him, an’
afore she could say ‘Jack Robinson’ he was coortin’ her like fun, an’
their nuptails was celebrated in—”
Now Christina is ready to employ the same means in behalf of her aunt.
To the barber, then, Christina whispers: “A potion. What—what’s the
price o’ yer—yer Spirit o’ Love?”
The barber, momentarily nonplussed, finally smiled with understanding:
A moment later he was brushing a cobweb from a small bottle containing a
yellowish fluid. A soiled and faded label of floral design was affixed
to the bottle, and on it appeared, as in letters of fire, the words
“Spirit of Love.”
“One shilling, miss.”
“Would it—charm a lady?”
“Certainly! I have sold hundreds of bottles of ‘Spirit of Love’ to
gentlemen for that very object. Charms them like magic!”
“Like magic?”
“Like nothing else, miss. Do you wish the bottle for a sick friend? Just
so! In that case a few drops on the pillow will prove a real charm.”
Christina nearly dropped. It was too wonderful!
He must be a sosserer!
Christina administers the potion in her own way. While her aunt is
asleep, she pours a few drops on the pillow, but, disturbed by the
sudden squalling of a cat, lets the phial fall. It empties itself on the
pillow.
The aunt, a sceptic, throws the empty bottle into the fire, with the
remark “Spirit of Fiddlesticks!”
* * * * *
Experimentation and research in the direction of rejuvenating processes
and invigorating vigor continue all the time, without cessation. Some
procedures involve surgical operations: others are associated with the
administration of various hormones and extracts and glandular
compositions. Proprietary medicines are on the market, particularly in
France and in England. An advertisement in a weekly magazine advocates
The Royal Jelly Rejuvenating Food Supplement.
* * * * *
In the early nineteenth century, in Edinburgh, there were on sale
Luckenbooth Brooches. They were in the nature of amatory periapts. These
brooches were sometimes engraved with a lover’s initials. Or a plea or
an amorous inducement might appear thereon, such as:
Let me and thee
most happy be.
Or:
My heart ye have and thir I creve.
I fancie non but the alon.
Wrong not the heart whose joy thou art.
* * * * *
Analogous to philtres and similar amatory concoctions is the indirect
stimulus derived from reading teacups. A popular Scottish weekly paper
says: It’s fun, and there’s a good deal in it, too, if the signs are
read aright.
In relation to Love and Friendship, the column declares that a ‘human’
figure seen in the form of the tea leaves, whether man or woman, or the
outline of a letter of the alphabet, indicates that the love and feeling
of affection will concern the person whose name begins with the tea leaf
letter.
This is, in essence, an innocuous variation of an amatory inducement.
* * * * *
Among contemporary proprietary preparations reputed to have amatory
value is aphrodisin. This is a compound of yohimbine, a substance
indigenous to Central Africa and derived from the bark of the yohimbe
tree, along with extract of miura pauma, aronacein, and other
ingredients.
* * * * *
There are many instances of women, concubines, mistresses, and harlots,
who have become historically famous or notorious through their own
personal practices, or for the influence they have exerted socially and
politically. A French courtesan who rose from minor and humble
circumstances was Céleste Mogador, who was born in 1824 and who died in
1909. She was a dancer, an actress, and an equestrienne: and ultimately
became the Comtesse Lionel de Moreton de Chabrillan. She gained some
additional réclame by the publication of her Memoirs.
* * * * *
Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), the French poet, in his _Les Fleurs du
Mal_, has a sequence of poems on passion, macabre, violent, distorted,
filled with fantastic imagery, touched with the symbol of death, and
putrefaction, and unsated human longings. There are hymns to beauty that
border on disaster and cruelty, on ugliness and inhumanity. There is a
paean to exotic perfumes, a laudation of a woman’s dark tresses. But
these poetic effusions are stamped with bitterness and a sense of
reality aghast, unholy revelations. There appears an entire distant,
remote world, far-flung and almost extinct, where the poet sees an
aromatic forest, where he dwells in the woman’s depths. She pleads with
her lover, for she is unsated and insatiable. He peers through those two
dark eyes, the windows of your soul. O ruthless demon, he clamors, pour
less flame upon me. I am not the dread and furtive Styx, capable of
embracing you nine times.
A putresent carcass, seen on a summer morning, is a poetic memento mori,
like an Egyptian skeleton at the feast, a warning that lust and beauty
and passion have their brief day and are grimly evanescent, and an
indirect injunction, on the poet’s part, to adhere to the Roman poet
Horace’s hedonistic _carpe diem_.
In _The Vampire_ Baudelaire exclaims at being enslaved by a hateful but
alluring woman, while in another piece he stresses the potency of
perfumes.
These poems, then, symbolize, in a comprehensive sense, the intrusions
of lust and passion in human relationships, and the intimate contacts
and associations of these lusts with malefic forces and ominous impacts.
* * * * *
Ballads, street songs, and broadsides, belonging to a wide and usually
comparatively uncultured level, in all ethnic communities, deal largely
with physiological and scatological functions, sexual and erotic
intrusions and experiences and experiments, without restraint, without
reflection and without moralizing corollaries thereon, but with a
forthright, direct verbal impact. Hence there are, dispersed through
such unsophisticated uncontrived versified episodes, many matters
relating to amatory enticements and means of erotic provocations and
challenges affecting both male and female, in all types of occupation,
in many gradations of society, at every age level, from young and urgent
milkmaids and their swains to debauched lechers and libertines.
Pastoral pieces, soldiers’ rollicking ditties, sailors’ chanties, all
the rhythmic, chthonic, usually crude but outspoken exuberance of folk
ways and currents, of peasantry and burgher, tinker and servant,
tipplers, ploughmen, and innkeepers—that is the colorful and various
component of the popular muse.
Sometimes the erotic impact is suggested by indirection: sometimes by an
innocuous expression used in a double entendre context. Sometimes the
idiom has the immediacy of the Greek functional and genital significance
exemplified in the Aristophanic comedies.
Rakes and panders rub shoulders with guileless innocence and feminine
wiles, with lordly arrogance, authority, and wealth, with humility and
beggarliness, with want and starvation. And pervasive through all the
insinuating permutations of street life and market place, of court and
manor, of fields and ocean, battle and stress, there runs the urgency of
amatory attraction: lust and passion and allurement, and the means of
satisfying and sating and continuing and maintaining such erotic
capacities, such animal lustfulness and unbridled salaciousness and lewd
ardor, prurience and perverted depravities.
Yet there are instances, sudden outbursts, occasional spurts of deeper
feelings, brusque awareness: some latent though possibly dishonored
principle, a touch of wry humor, in which blatant reality and some
remote consciousness of betterment peer through the vernacular
crudities.
In one collection of such ballads, entitled _Drolleries_, the amatory
theme returns again and again, always lusty, always sensual. The burgess
who is off to the fair while her good man is absent from home: the coy
mistress: the country maid on a visit to the City: the old lecherous
beau unrepentantly persistent: the lustful squire, the libidinous
courtier, the wayward maid: widows and lords, fiddlers and coopers,
cobblers and miners, merchants all conniving in adultery and incest, in
concocting potions for reluctant lovers, in beseeching hesitant favors,
in besmirching marriage and domesticity and exultantly and indifferently
glorifying all the varieties of amatory diversions and perversions.
* * * * *
In _Today_, a popular British weekly magazine, an article appeared early
in 1962, by a woman, accusing the contemporary man of having lost his
virility. She spoke of ‘sexually moribund men,’ of man’s failure, in
consequence, as a marriage partner, and of his amatory deficiencies.
A response to these challenges appeared in a later issue. It was written
by a factory worker who, from his own experience and that of his
acquaintances and fellow-workers, refuted the first attack. He denied
physical exhaustion. He asserted that the typical worker, by virtue of
his constant application to his job, is kept continuously physically fit
and capable. His knowledge, too, of the range of amatory procedures and
practices has been widened by war contacts, by interchange of views and
attitudes with many groups, foreigners, visitors, refugees. He added
that the freedom of expression on such matters was an additional
encouragement toward enlightenment. If anything, this typical worker
concluded, it was the woman who was hesitant, indifferent, and
un-cooperative.
* * * * *
In Gilbert and Sullivan’s _The Sorcerer_, a farcical treatment of the
Black Arts, there is a scene involving love philtres and their effects:
Mr. Wells: Love-philtre—we’ve quantities of it ...
Alexis: I have sent for you to consult you on a very important
matter. I believe you advertise a Patent Oxy-Hydrogen
Love-at-first-sight Philtre?
Mr. Wells: Sir, it is our leading article. (_Producing a
phial_).
Alexis: Now I want to know if you can confidently guarantee it
as possessing all the qualities you claim for it in your
advertisement?
Mr. Wells: Sir, we are not in the habit of puffing our goods.
Ours is an old-established house with a large family connection,
and every assurance held out in the advertisement is fully
realized. (_Hurt_).
Aline (_aside_): Oh, Alexis, don’t offend him! He’ll change us
into something dreadful—I know he will!
Alexis: I am anxious from purely philanthropical motives to
distribute this philtre, secretly, among the inhabitants of this
village. I shall of course require a quantity. How do you sell
it?
Mr. Wells: In buying a quantity, sir, we should strongly advise
you taking it in the wood, and drawing it off as you happen to
want it. We have it in four-and-a-half and nine gallon
casks—also in pipes and hogsheads for laying down, and we deduct
10 per cent for prompt cash.
Alexis: I should mention that I am a Member of the Army and Navy
Stores.
Mr. Wells: In that case we deduct 25 per cent.
Alexis: Aline, the villagers will assemble to carouse in a few
minutes. Go and fetch the tea-pot.
Aline: But, Alexis—
Alexis: My dear, you must obey me, if you please. Go and fetch
the tea-pot.
Aline (_going_): I’m sure Dr. Daly would disapprove of it.
(_Exit Aline_).
Alexis: And how soon does it take effect?
Mr. Wells: In twelve hours. Whoever drinks of it loses
consciousness for that period, and on waking falls in love, as a
matter of course, with the first lady he meets who has also
tasted it, and his affection is at once returned. One trial will
prove the fact.
_Enter Aline with large tea-pot._
Alexis: Good: then, Mr. Wells, I shall feel obliged if you will
at once pour as much philtre into this tea-pot as will suffice
to affect the whole village.
Aline: But bless me, Alexis, many of the villagers are married
people!
Mr. Wells: Madam, this philtre is compounded on the strictest
principles. On married people it has no effect whatever. But are
you quite sure that you have nerve enough to carry you through
the fearful ordeal?
Alexis: In the good cause I fear nothing.
Mr. Wells: Very good, then, we will proceed at once to the
Incantation.
* * * * *
In the South Sea Islands amatory aids and spells are still in vogue. The
following love incantation involves the love-sick girl Taratake:
Mr. Hair-of-his-head, Mr. Hair-of-his-head,
Go you to him, to Taratake!
Whisper my name when he dreams,
when he wakes.
When he walks among the women.
Draw him by the hand,
Draw him by the foot,
Draw him by the heart and entrails to me.
He thinks only of me;
He dies for love of me;
There is no woman for him but me,
no love but mine,
no love-making but mine.
He comes to me, he comes, he is here with me,
With me, Laughter-of-Waves-o-o-o!
* * * * *
As recently as 1956, in the _Flute of Sand_, Lawrence Morgan describes
an experience among the Ouled-Naïl dancers of North Africa:
Interwoven into their lives were sorcery, black magic, and, most
common of all, the use of love-philtres with which they believed
they could enslave any man. In the pot of mint tea in Yacourte’s
room had been a philtre intended to help the erring lover to
make up his mind.
* * * * *
The term bayadère is derived from the Portuguese baladeira, associated
with bailar, to dance. Originally, the expression was applied to a Hindu
dancing girl, noted for erotic performances. The bayadère, in fact, like
the nautsch dancers, could be equated with prostitution.
* * * * *
The European newspapers and magazines, notably in Germany, Austria, and
France, until quite recent times, advertised, in the interests of
readers, all kinds of elixirs, remedies, philtres, concoctions, and
unguents, to correct sexual deficiencies or to promote physiological
capacity. There was a cream called Vigor. Dragées des Fakirs were
‘scientific and immediate.’ A Parisian aphrodisiac powder announced
itself as ‘durable.’ It could be forwarded by mail, from the Scientific
Laboratories. Clients could be interviewed at specified hours. Renox was
a concoction that was urged very persuasively: so too with the
contrivance Heureka. There was another contrivance called Samson,
implicitly suggesting a Biblical valor. Sexine and Stimulol and Dragées
de Vénus were both harmless and effective, according to the laudatory
testimony of the manufacturers themselves.
* * * * *
There was a highly advertised preparation, called Testogan, that implied
stimulating amatory reactions.
* * * * *
A contrivance under the name of Amor Star was formerly advertised in
Europe as very effective, making the agent another Casanova. In Paris, a
preparation called Mono promised rejuvenation for the male.
* * * * *
Many European restaurants practiced a dual role. In addition to their
culinary purpose, they were in a basic sense amatory rendez-vous. During
the First World War German eating-places, variety halls, dance palaces,
and cabarets advertised, with appropriately alluring illustrations:
Wein, Weib Gesang
In other instances, Teutonic gaiety was eulogized as being highly
imitative of Gallic ways. Leben à la Paris—ran the posters:
Damenklub
Maskenbälle
Lustiger Abend
Café Dorian Gray.
These spots were instigations to perversions, amatory practices, and
promiscuities.
* * * * *
Numerous collections of erotica exist in varying degrees of seclusion,
in libraries, state archives, and museums. To a large extent, such
compilations were made during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The
bibliophile, on his death, usually bequeathed his books and manuscripts
and erotic objects and artifacts to a state or national library. Among
English specialists in this genre were James Campbell, the pseudonym of
J. C. Reddie, William S. Potter, Henry Spencer Ashbee, better known
under his pseudonym of Pisanus Fraxi. In France, the Bibliothèque
Nationale, in its section known as L’Enfer, houses a large collection of
erotic matter.
* * * * *
In cosmopolitan cities like London and New York, the sex theme is
predominant in certain types of rather furtive bookstores. They deal
largely with paperbacks, stressing sexual relationships, erotic
magazines, and treatises, both authoritatively written and, in some
cases, barely literate, on erotic mores and variations of perversions.
The paperbacks, flaunting jackets that play a significant role in the
attraction of the text, range from lust to rape, from masochism to
tribadism, with all possible intermediate permutations. Such fictional
productions not infrequently transcend the ingenuities of the Marquis de
Sade.
* * * * *
Contemporary witches, sorceresses, and spell-binders of varying degrees
of reliability still use, as love potions, old, traditional ingredients.
One of these is hippomanes. Hippomanes was well known among the
ancients. It is a fleshy excrescence that appears on a foal’s head at
birth. When dried, and swallowed by the person in search of the amatory
excitation, it produces, according to these dark practitioners, a result
that cannot be questioned.
The erotic merit of this equine aposteme is confirmed by a number of
authorities, from Vergil himself, the Roman epic poet, to Pausanias, the
second century A.D. Greek geographer, and to the sixteenth century
Neapolitan alchemist and occultist Gambattista della Porta.
SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY
Benoit, H. The Many Faces of Love. New York: Pantheon, c. 1955.
Bibliotheca Erotica Moniacensis. A German collection of erotica.
Bibliotheca Roloffiana. A collection of erotica published in Germany
in the eighteenth century.
Blondeau, Nicolas. Dictionnaire Erotique. Paris: Isidore Liseux, 1885.
Clauder, Johannes. De Philtris. Leipzig, 1661.
Decle, L. Three Years in Savage Africa. London: Methuen, 1898.
Dufour, H. Histoire de la Prostitution chez tous les Peuples du Monde.
Bruxelles: 1857.
Dulaure, Jacques-Antoine. The Gods of Generation. English translation
by A.F.N. Privately printed. New York: Panurge Press, 1934.
Ellis, Havelock. Studies in the Psychology of Sex. 2 volumes. New
York: Random House, c. 1938–1942.
Epton, N. C. Love and the French. London: Cassell, 1959.
Epton, N. C. Love and the English. London: Cassell, 1960.
Epton, N. C. Love and the Spanish. London: Cassell, 1961.
Flacelière, Robert. Love in Ancient Greece. Trans. by J. Cleugh.
London: Muller, 1962.
Gilbert, O. P. Men in Women’s Guise. London: John Lane, 1926.
Gilbert, O. P. Women in Men’s Guise. London: John Lane, 1932.
Goncourt, E and J De. La Femme au dix-huitième Siècle. Paris, 1902.
Gregorovius, F. A. Der Ghetto und die Juden in Rom. Berlin: Schocken
Verlag, 1935.
Hervé-Piraus, F.R. Les Temples d’Amour au XVIIIe Siècle. Paris, 1910.
King, L. W. Babylonian Magic and Sorcery. London: 1896.
Laurent, E. Magica Sexualis. New York: Anthropological Press, 1934.
Mantegazza, Paolo. English translation under the title Sexual
Relations of Mankind. Privately printed. New York: Anthropological
Press, 1932.
Rodocanachi, E. P. La Femme italienne: avant, pendant et après la
Renaissance: sa vie privée et mondaine, son influence sociale.
Paris: Hachette, 1922.
Wolff, J. F. Dissertatio de Philtris. Wittenberg, 1726.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
End of Project Gutenberg's Love Potions through the Ages, by Harry E. Wedeck