Raising Hell by Robert Masello Read Free Book Online Page B

woman, you must pretend to cast her horoscope—that is to say, when she shall be married—and must make her look right into your eyes. When you are both in the same positionyou are to repeat the words, ‘Kafe, Kasita non Kafela et publia filii omnibus suis.’ These words said, you may command the female and she will obey you in all you desire.”
    Want something even easier? Rub the juice of the vervain plant on your hands, then touch the one you love.
    Or try touching her hand while saying, "Bestarberto corrumpit viscera ejus mulieris” ("Bestarberto entices the inward parts of the woman").
    If the simpler methods aren’t working, you can always resort to a philter, a love-inducing potion made from wine mixed with assorted herbs and drugs. In the tragedy of Tristan and Iseult, a philter that Iseult’s mother had planned for King Mark to drink is actually consumed by Tristan and Iseult—who wind up paying for the mistake with their lives. In Richard Wagner’s Gotterdämmerung, Siegfried’s affections are diverted from Brünnhilde to Gutrune after he quaffs a magic philter. The recipe for such a philter is included in a seventeenth-century manuscript called the Zekerboni, written by a self-styled “Cabbalistic philosopher” named Pietro Mora: it requires “the heart of a dove, the liver of a sparrow, the womb of a swallow, the kidney of a hare,” all reduced to an “impalpable powder,” and added to an equal portion of the manufacturer’s own blood. The blood, too, must be dried to a powder. If a dose of this concoction is then slipped into the intended’s wine, “marvellous success will follow.”
    A simpler, though no less revolting, recipe is offered by Albertus Magnus in his “Of the Vertues of Hearbes.” After taking some leaves of the periwinkle and mashing them into a powder with “wormes of the earth,” add a dash of the succulent commonly known as houseleek. Use the result as a sort of condiment with the meat course and then just watch the sparks fly.
    The plant kingdom actually yielded any number of aphrodisiacs, which included lettuce, jasmine, endive, purslane, coriander, pansy, cyclamen, and laurel. The ancient Greeks included carrots, perhaps because of their shape. The poppy and deadly nightshade plants were also thought helpful in the quest of love, but less because they inspired ardor than because they could render someone unconscious and therefore vulnerable.

    In the Middle Ages, the mirror method was recommended to many a lovesick swain. The idea was to create in the looking glass itself a kind of link between yourself (the owner of the mirror), the woman you desired, and the act of making love. How did you do this? Simple.
    First you bought a small mirror (without haggling over the price), and you wrote the woman’s name on the back of the glass three times.
    Then you went out looking for a pair of copulating dogs and held the mirror in such a way that it would capture their reflection.
    Finally, you hid the mirror in some spot you were sure the woman would be passing frequently and left it there for nine days. After that, you could pick it up again and carry it in your pocket. Without knowing why, the woman would find herself irresistibly attracted to you.
    Conversely, if a woman had her eye on an elusive male, she could win his love by serving him, as it were, a casserole of herself. First, she had to take a very hot bath and then, as soon as she got out, cover herself with flour. When the flour had soaked up all the moisture, she took a white linen cloth and wiped all the flour away; then she wrung out the cloth over a baking dish. She cut her fingernails and toenails, plucked a few stray hairs from all parts of her body, burned them all to a powder, then added them to the dish. Stirring in one egg, she baked the whole awful concoction in the oven, and served it to the object of her affections. Assuming he could get a mouthful down, he’d be hers forever.
    Casting a death spell