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Medicinal plants in the myth
contents
- The Adonis flower
- The Hercules shrub
- The tears of the hellhound
- The bright St. John's wort
- Lilium Candidum
- Nymphaea - Seductive Plant Spirits
- Artemisia - the virgin mugwort
- Lamium ssp. - The devouring Labiatae
- The guilder of the horsemen
- wild garlic
The ancient Greeks saw the world in constant evolution. The forms of life changed incessantly, the gods took the form of humans, animals and plants. They produced with humans and animals children, who were gods as well as humans or animals. As a result, in contrast to the Christian creation, new things could arise. They turned people into animals, mostly as punishment, or in plants. Herbs and flowers were also the result of tears from gods and the milk of goddesses.
In a decisive contrast to Christianity, the world of the Greeks had not been invented for mankind. People could only approach it with the means of the mind, understand it by means of logic, as well as make sense of it with the myth, and some Greek philosophers like Aristotle strictly distinguished between scientific facts and the mythical narrative. The gods of the Greeks hide in the diversity of nature.
Linnaeus, one of the most important naturalists of the eighteenth century, probably found this dynamic nature, with its becoming and passing away, more realistic than the Christian doctrine of an immutable creation of God valid at the time. He systematically classified plants and animals and introduced the still valid system of Latin genus names, in which the nickname indicates the specific species. The names for the plants he found in ancient times and referred, as the transformations in the myth itself, so on properties of the plants that characterize the ancient Storylines. In German common Christian names such as St. John's wort, daffodil or peony were scientifically pagan Titans, daffodils or songs for the god of light Apollo.
Around many medicinal plants entwine myths that find expression in the name of the plants. (Image: naumenkoe / fotolia.com) The Adonis flower
Adonis aestuvalis, the summer Adonis, a buttercup plant contains cardiac glycosides, which relieve cardiac arrhythmias. Mentally it should also help against the illness of the "broken heart" when the heart gets out of heart with lovesickness.
An Adonis is still a good-looking man in everyday language. The princess Myrrha turned into a tree and her pregnant belly became its trunk. This swelled in the next few months, then he broke and came out Myrrhas son, namely Adonis.
The mortal was of such beauty that the gods and goddesses desired him. Artemis, the virgin hunting goddess, was as behind him as Persephone, the goddess of the underworld. But the two had no chance against the love goddess Aphrodite, who seduced Adonis in all her appearances.
She charmed him as Chryse (the Golden One), she entered as a heavenly Urania a purely platonic relationship with him, she awakened in him the desire as Kallipygos (the one with the beautiful buttocks) and she grabbed him as Porne (the whore). Adonis became her lover.
But one of his passions was hunting, and so he moved around with the less erotic Artemis, but she remained as frustrated as Persephone. If they could not have the coveted youth, then at least no one else should have it, the two thought and prepared a wicked plan. Artemis created a monstrous boar that devastated the fields of the peasants and, thanks to its divine origin, evaded all hunters.
Adonis wanted to lay the pig's tusks at the feet of his sweetheart and prepare a brawn out of his head. Aphrodite was still asleep when her lover went hunting. She awoke to a nightmare in which she saw the death of Adonis. Instead of Aphrodite's lover, Persephone appeared and told Aphrodite that Adonis was in the halls of Hades. Then Artemis came in and brought the boar's teeth, narrated how the animal had killed Adonis, and how she had shot the wild boar with an arrow. Men brought the bloody corpse of their lover.
She closed the outer wounds with nectar, so that Adoni's body shone again in full beauty, then she embalmed him with myrrh. Their tears fell to the ground, and where they touched the earth sprouted white anemones, which the Greeks considered a symbol of separation and death. The man Adonis was buried, but Zeus had other plans for him, and he made a god out of mortal. Adonis has since illuminated the upper as well as the underworld with its beauty. One third of his time he spends hunting with Artemis, another third with the gritty Persephone, and the last third with his beloved Aphrodite.
The Greeks combined yet another flower with the myth. So even where Adoni's blood dripped to the ground, and that flower is the Adonis flower.
The Hercules shrubs also owe their name to Greek mythology. (Image: Fixativ / fotolia.com) The Hercules shrub
Heracleum giganteum, the giant hogweed, contains furocomarins that cause toxic reactions - both in contact and inhalation. The poison causes blisters on the skin and a burning pain. The Hercules shrub is a perennial umbellifer, growing to four meters tall, and the leaves alone become over one meter long.
Hercules, Greek Herakles, was a son of Zeus, a demigod and the powerhouse among the ancient heroes. Zeus impregnated the Queen of Thebes, Almene, in the guise of her husband. Zeus's wife, the goddess Hera, took the baby to her breast. Before she knew it, the infant suckered and acquired superhuman powers. Hercules the Centaur Cheiron taught medical knowledge, with the torso of a man and the torso, legs and tail of a stallion.
Hercules was of oversized physique and he also shot poisonous darts, no wonder that the naturalist Linnaeus dedicated him the Bear Claw. The nickname gigantaeus also refers to giants, however, to pure baddies, in contrast to Hercules, in which the good sides covered his dark deeds.
The battle between gods and titans was in a sense the big bang of Greek creation. The gods won and imprisoned the Titans in the underworld of Tartaro. The Earth Mother Gaia was sorry for the giants she gave birth to as well as the gods. She took the severed penis of the god Uranos, fertilized herself and gave birth to monsters. The giants were also giants, but with scales like reptiles and snakes on their feet. They climbed out of a crevasse and covered the world with war. Wherever they raged, literally no more grass grew.
They piled mountains on top of each other to storm the Götterberg Olymp from there. Almost all the giants were mortal, and so the immortal gods struck them down. One of the attackers, but Alkyoneus rose again every time he sank to the ground.
Apollo realized that only one could defeat this resurrector - and that was Hercules. Hercules slipped on his sandals, grabbing clubs, bows, arrows, and lion's skin, and arrived just in time when the fiend grabbed Hera. He slammed the club on his head, distracting the reptile giant, and with another blow he knocked Alkyoneus to the ground, then yanked him up and held him up. However, the giant could only be resurrected when he touched the earth and after a long time in the air he died.
The name Heraclum giganteum thus shows an ambivalence. With the nickname, the peculiarities of the Giant Bear Claw move into the negative. Like the giants, where bear claw grows, nothing else grows, and poisoning by the herbaceous tree fills the Yellow Press.
The tears of the hellhound
Hercules had passed a number of sky commands, captured the Eryman boar, drove out the Stymphalian birds, and fetched the apples of the Hesperides. But King Eurystheus of Tiryn, his cousin, devised another task that was sure to end the hero's life.
Hercules should bring Kerberos, the dog that guarded Underworld. Kerberos had between three and fifty heads, the Greeks were not in agreement, his eyes were blue and yellow, his tail was venomous snakes, and his hair was vipers.
Dogs had a bad reputation among the Greeks, and the Cynics (cynics), a school of philosophy, were notorious for their "biting" mockery. Besides, they should not wash themselves, and their speeches would decompose as well as the acidity of a canid. The story was not very dramatic: Hercules came to Hades, quarreled with the ferryman Charon, who accompanied the deceased across the river Styx into the underworld, but overwhelmed him and forced him to drive the hero into the underworld. Kerberos greeted him joyfully, the hero put a collar around him and brought him to the palace of Eurystheus. When the dog came into the sunlight, he whimpered, because this being of darkness could not stand the light.
The king was startled when he saw the monster, hid in a clay jug and ordered Hercules to bring the dog back to where he had found it. Hero and dog went the same way they had come - but flowers were growing everywhere. Hercules remembered that it was here that tears from Kerbero's eyes moistened the earth. The flowers were beautifully blue, yellow and white, and their shape was reminiscent of hats; the stems alone reached the size of a little man.
Hercules saw the danger, for his teacher, the horse man Cheiron, had taught him botany. They were buttercup plants, and Hercules knew their poison. Thus, the genus Aconitum came into the world in the Greeks. Aconitin is the strongest plant poison in Europe. Three milligrams can kill a human being, it is sufficient to touch the plant, because the poison penetrates through the skin. The poisoning starts with burning in the mouth and tingling in the fingers, followed by sweating and nausea, then put the sensory sensations, next comes a respiratory paralysis, cardiac arrest and death.
The cattle of Arcadia died of Kerberos tears, because the animals ate the storm hat. The shepherds, however, were clever, and used the gift of the underworld for their own purposes: they poisoned sheep cadavers with the yellow flowers of the storm hat. They contained Lyoconitin, the wolf's poison, and the prepared baits took the wolves away. Today, the yellow storm hat therefore bears the name Aconitum lycoctonum, the Wolfwürger.
The bright St. John's wort
The Titan Hyperion was called the "widely shining". He embodied righteousness, and the ancient Greeks therefore called him to court as a custodian. Plants under his sign were suitable for driving away dark spirits.
Hyperion's warmth and light made the plants grow, taking care not to burn the tender green. Hyperium, St. John's wort, was assigned to the giant; probably his yellow glowing flowers led to this association, because they sprout like the sun sprout a child's drawing. St. John's wort reflects the mythical giant's quality, as it lightens the mood in the dark season.
The existence of white lilies is also attributed to Hercules in Greek mythology. (Image: vvoe / fotolia.com) Lilium Candidum
The lily also owes its existence to Hercules - at least in the myth. When the hero sucked on Hera's chest, a few drops of milk fell to the floor. This resulted in the lilies, the symbol of innocence. Antiquity saw in her the flower of Hera, especially in the form of Hera-Pais, the eternal virgin. But Aphrodite spoiled this "pure flower". She embodied the sexual love and planted the virgin lily a pistil in the form of a donkey's pussy.
Nymphaea - Seductive Plant Spirits
In front of the human women, far more enticing beings populate nature, the nymphs. The most diverse genera of them inspired the springs and trees, dryads, hamadryads, naiads and ostriches. The dryads lived in oak trees, the melia in ash trees. The nymphs on ponds and lakes have remained to us. Here grow the lotus plants, Nymphaea caerulea, which open their red and white flowers when light shines on them.
Artemisia - the virgin mugwort
Artemis was the Mistress of the Woods, she appeared as a Crescent, while the full moon goddess Selene and the new moon Goddess Hecate were originally aspects of her. Not only was Artemis distinctly prudish, she also defended her virginity with the utmost brutality. For a long time it was a mystery that the Greeks represented this untouched nature goddess in statues with a hundred breasts, until it turned out that these "breasts" actually represented testicles of sacrificed bulls.
The early forms of Artemis reflect the equally powerful and threatening goddesses of the archaic hunters. Their virginity had nothing to do with the submissive chastity of the Christian Madonna; they might appear like elves in a fantasy novel, as ethereal creatures like the shadow of a deer peeking shyly out of the thicket, but they also expressed the destructive aspects of nature - they were predators, and for Artemis was the bear that was just as lovingly caring for her young as she is tearing the one that makes her angry.
Men approaching the Divine Hunter with sexual purpose paid with their lives, and even the enchanting Apollo did not even try. Girls dedicated to the goddess, the "arktoi" did not let a man approach him, a method of contraception that was sensible at the time: exposing children or aborting them at the risk of their lives were the alternatives.
In childhood, the girls joined the Artemiskult, and most of them left with the first menstruation. Few stayed in the forest and served the goddess, they were then forbidden to meet men. If they violated this commandment, Artemis punished them without mercy. Artemis protected especially the virgins, but also the women giving birth, which is also logical in their origin from the archaic "mother of the animals", who gives birth to life. Artemis fought the puerperal fever, but usually prevailed her adversary Thanatos, who brought the deceased women in the underworld.
The mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) has traditionally been widely used in women's medicine. (Photo: katharinarau / fotolia.com) Artemisia vulgaris, mugwort, and Artemisia absinthum, vermouth promote menstruation and were used as abortifacients. The ancient Greeks used mugwort to open the uterus and start the menstrual period.
Artemisia abrotanum strengthens the formation of blood and therefore helps mothers who have lost a lot of blood at birth. The Greeks put her under the pillow when they suffered from childlessness, but the husband was not allowed to hear about it. Keeping a branch of Abronatum in your hand and calling Artemis should help with infertility.
The fourth Artemisia species, the tarragon, played no role in fertility and prevention, but the Greeks protected themselves against snake bites.
Lamium ssp. - The devouring Labiatae
In the deepest depths of Hades lurked a monster that fertilized the myths for millennia. Lamien still called the Christian witch-hunters of the modern times the witches, who supposedly copulated with the devil, and thus got the power for their evil spells. In ancient Rome, the lamas were nocturnal horrors, which invaded the houses in the form of birds, and sucked the blood of the infants according to vampires, which explained the sudden death of the child.
But the original Lamia lived in the Underworld of the Greeks, and its monster body was as much a serpent as a woman's. Originally she was an equally clever and beautiful goddess, and thus moved into the crosshairs of the god Casanova Zeus. As usual with the seed disperser, he impregnated her several times, then put her down like a wet towel and let her sit with the children.
The Forsaken raged as desperately as with anger. She did not approach the grower and therefore she let out her anger on the children. She murdered her body fruits and devoured them afterwards. Now, after his death, Zeus's paternal instincts stirred, and he punished his exiles, turned them into a kite-like monster and gave her the blackest spot in Tartaros at home. The reptile stared there with lidless eyes into the darkness to sleep, she had to take her eyes out, they then woke up. The Greeks also told other variants: In an alternative version, Zeus became so wild that he in turn ate lamia, which was then reborn as Athena from his head.
Laimos means throat or throat. Linnaeus named after this figure a whole family, the Lamiaceae. These devouring are called in German mint. They enter into a win-win relationship with bumblebees; the bumblebee feeds on the nectar and at the same time pollinates the flower. But the eye first sees something else: a bumblebee crawling into the "lip-blossoms" looks as if it is devoured.
In contrast to its ancient model Lamium, the deadnettle, is completely harmless.
The guilder of the horsemen
The Greeks populated forests and steppes, mountains and seas with creatures that were half human, half animal. The Saytyre had the upper body of men or monkeys, but the legs, ears and abdomen of horny goats; the Silene instead the legs of horses. The role of these beastmen was mostly ambivalent, and some were malignant to humans.
The centaurs, with the body of a horse, four legs, hooves, a tail, and the torso and body of a man, were savage fellows: robbing and raping human women, they broke into people like a barbarous cavalry, and even when they did When they met people for peaceful meals, they beat everything short and sweet in the drunk.
Some historians suspect that the myth of the Centaurs reflects the encounter between the farmers and the equestrian peoples, the Scythians who invaded the north of present-day Greece from the steppes of southern Russia, and the land that ravaged the land from the perspective of settled peasants. For farmers who did their work on foot and used horses and donkeys mainly as lumbering and draft animals, the men who lived in the saddle must have appeared like creatures that grew together with their mounts.
There were female centaurs, but the wild horsemen preferred to mate with human women. Female robbery was her passion, and here, too, a real experience presumably handed down. Actual robbery of women determined in ancient times the ratio of the sedentary to the cavalry nomads. Mounted warriors were almost always superior to the sedentary who ordered their field; meanwhile, they moved about in their tent camps in small groups, and therefore the inbreeding pressure was great. For centuries, seducing sedentary women has been a cruel and successful strategy for sustaining incest taboo.
Also the other behavior of the Centaurs, who coerced the Greeks by force, robbed what they could carry, but themselves did no steady work, corresponds very well to the usual relationship between peasants and equestrian peoples. The fact that this experience was a negative memory for the Greeks seems likely, and even the Centaurs did not emerge from the good idea of a gentle god: Ixion, a human being murdered his father-in-law and thus gave birth to kinship killing. The God of Light Apollo punished the criminal with madness, but Zeus irritated such Outlaws. He not only forgave the mortal, but even gave him immortality.
It did not change anything about Ixion's bad character. He now stayed on Mount Olympus and touched Hera, the wife of the father of the gods. She fled to her bedroom, the lollipop stumbled after it and lunged at the beauty, who lolled in bed. It was a mirage, he reached into the void, and instead the whole group of gods pressed the offender. Although Zeus also entered with everyone he desired, whether goddess, human or female, he set a different standard in his own marriage.
Nephele, the goddess of the mist, had pretended to be Hera's illusion, and the cursed Ixion had made this fog pregnant. The minor goddess gave birth to a child, Kentauros, the Horse Man. As lascivious as his father, the scion fertilized the wild mares, and from it arose the Centaurs, who maintained the bad qualities of their grandfather.
One of them, however, struck out of style. Cheiron lived in a cave and taught his disciples the secrets of nature. Moreover, he instructed them to treat all creatures with respect. Even half human, half animal and at the same time of divine origin, he claimed that humans, animals and plants had the same origin. Orpheus, Jason and Achilles attended his school.
Horse mankind founded the medicine. He was the first surgeon and understood what we call naturopathy today: diseases and wounds he treated with the medicinal plants of Greece. One of his most important herbs was allegedly the centaury. Centaurium erythrea is a gentian plant with pink flowers. The taste is bitter.
Centaurium can be taken as a tea or tincture. It helps against diseases of the liver such as bile and anemia. It also promotes digestion, it was traditionally used as a remedy for fever, helped against inflammation of the eye, against ulcers and relieved the complaints of excessive consumption of alcohol. New studies also see the Kentaur herb as an aid to preventing tumors.
The power of the bear is transmitted to the myth by the wild garlic. (Image: juhumbert / fotolia.com) wild garlic
The bear was in Greece the animal of the hunting goddess Artemis, and bear cults were at the center of the early hunting rites. Hunters and Wildbeuter understood themselves as part of the animal world. Animals were other egos of humans, humans could mate with them, talk to their spirits and change their identity.
At the same time, the people perceived inside and outside, dream world and watch world, which led to ideas of this world and a hereafter. These worlds were not strictly separated, but influenced, and frontier workers, the shamans went over these bridges. Killing an animal made the hunter guilty and forced him to restore harmony between worlds through rites or sacrifices. Through physical over-stimulation, dances, songs and trance, the shaman moved to a state where he believed he was traveling to the Otherworld.
Bear ceremonies can be found not only among the Indians of America, the peoples of Siberia, but already in finds from the Paleolithic. It is, according to Egon Wimmers, to the "archetypal dream image of a primal religion of humanity, which has survived in hyperbolic far-off". Although it leads, according to Wilfried Rosenthal, too far to speak of a "cave bear cult" as a solid ceremonial in the Paleolithic, but it is proven that there was a special relationship between man and cave bear in the last ice age.
As late as the twentieth century, the circumpolar hunter peoples embarked on bear hunts in ritualistic ceremonies, the seeds of Scandinavia as well as the Wogulen, Samojaden, Evenken, Yakut or Chukchi - Indigenous Kamchatka as well as the Ainu in Japan.
The brown bear appeared to our ancestors as a hybrid being: its skeleton resembles that of an extremely strong human; he can stand upright and is a runner like us. He is omnivore like us, he even masturbates like us. Therefore, he often appears in the myths as a disguised person or even as an ancestor. In hunter peoples, therefore, the death of a bear has always been considered a dangerous event. The spirit of the bear could take revenge, his soul could look for a new body, or the hunters had accidentally killed an ancestor.
Bear hunts therefore followed strict rules: The bear was addressed and deceived like a human being. When the Karelians came to the cave where they hibernated, they shouted, "Arise, my dear bear, to receive your guests." The bear was often circumscribed not to call him: his name was "old man" or "Father". Conversely, if a bear killed a human, the hunters would not handle it as with other animals because they made a human intention of the bear and behaved like that. In the case of the bear, they practiced the same vendetta as a man who murdered a member of the clan.
In many cultures, the bear was considered a healer, and in some Indian peoples, a bear spirit was even the creator of medicine. On the one hand, it was due to its strength, on the other hand, it came just out of its winter cave, when the spring life sprouted from the ground. The Chukchi in northern Siberia wrote him the same skills as a shaman.
However, his diet was decisive: Bears dig out roots and, like other animals, eat medicinal herbs when they are ill. Bear's garlic, the leek of the bear, is a relative of garlic. In April, it covers the ground of light forests, especially spreading in riparian forests and permeates them with its spicy scent.
In contrast to garlic, seasoned wild garlic does not evaporate through the skin, but only through the mouth, and this smell of leek is also comparatively mild. Bear's garlic was considered both a spice and a medicinal plant, and presumably our ancestors believed that bears ate leeks to strengthen themselves. When a man did that, he also developed bear power.
Add to that the fine sense of smell of the bear. Bears can smell food for many miles, and the hunting peoples recognized this and attributed to him clairvoyant powers. The "bear's pear" can therefore also have its origin in the fact that the fumes of this plant attracted the bears with their fine noses. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Swell:
Most examples are taken from:
- Hertling, Bernd: How the apple of contention became the one-and-only. (Healing) plants in Greek myth. Augsburg 2006.
Also:
- Frankfurt Archaeological Museum (ed.): Bear cult and shaman magic. Rituals of early hunters. Regensburg 2015.
- Eliade, Mircea: shamanism and archaic ecstasy technique. Frankfurt am Main 1975.
- Ginzburg, Carlo: Witches Sabbath. Deciphering a nocturnal story.
Frankfurt am Main 1993 - Harris, Marvin: Lazy spell. Our yearning for the other world.
Stuttgart 1993. - Herrmann, Paul: Norse mythology. Berlin 1995.
- Hiller, Helmut: lexicon of superstition. Süddeutscher Verlag GmbH. Munich 1986.
- Rosenbohm, Alexandra: Marburg Studies on Ethnology. Hallucinogenic drugs in shamanism. Myth and Ritual in Cultural Comparison. Berlin 1991.
- Stewart T., Caroline: The Origin of Werewolf Beliefs. In: Bolte, Johannes (ed.): Journal of the Association for Folklore. Founded by Karl Weinhold. 19th year. Berlin 1909. p. 30-49.