Subsection 4 Love potions and magical and poetic cures

Where persuasion and other remedies have no effect, many turn to unlawful means: love potions, amulets, magical spells, bindings, signs and charms. As with a wound from Achilles’ spear, if the wound has been made and caused in that way, it must be cured in the same way.

If imposed by spells and love potions, says Paracelsus, it must be relieved by magical signs—Magic, book 2, chapter 28—and by incantations: Fernel, Pathology, book 6, chapter 13. Schenck, Medical Observations, book 4, has examples of cases brought about by magic and cured by magic and witchcraft. So too says Giovanni Battista Codronchi, On Venereal Diseases, book 3, chapter 9; The Hammer of Witches, chapter 6.

It is not permissible, I admit, yet it is often attempted. See further Weyer, On the Deceptions of Demons, book 3, chapter 18, on remedies through love potions; Delrio, Magical Investigations, volume 2, book 2, question 3, section 3. Cardano, book 16, chapter 90, lists many sympathetic remedies, such as pissing through a ring, etc. Mizaldus, third century, item 30; Giambattista della Porta; Jason Pratensis; Lobel, page 87; Mattioli, etc., prescribe many absurd remedies.

Mandrake root taken in a drink; rings made from an ass’s hooves; the beloved woman’s dung placed under the pillow without her knowledge, etc.: when he smells its foulness, his love dissolves.

An owl’s egg, eaten on the advice of Iarchas, the Indian naked philosopher in Philostratus, book 3, makes people abstain from wine. Drinking a mistress’s blood removes all feeling of love: Julius Capitolinus reports that Faustina, Marcus Aurelius’s wife, who was captivated by love for a gladiator, was completely freed from it in this way on the Chaldeans’ advice.

Some of our astrologers will accomplish as much through images bearing magical signs: “from the seals of Hermes, Solomon, Chael, etc.; an image of a woman with her hair loose,” etc.

Our old poets and imaginative writers have many fabulous remedies for the lovesick, such as the tomb of Protesilaus in Philostratus, in his dialogue between a Phoenician and a vinegrower. Taking the opportunity to discuss the shrine’s remarkable powers, the vinegrower tells him that the altar and tomb of Protesilaus cure almost every kind of disease: wasting illnesses, dropsy, quartan fevers and sore eyes; among the rest, the lovesick will find relief there.

But the most famous is Leucata Petra, that renowned rock in Greece of which Strabo writes in Geography, book 10, not far from Saint Maura, according to Sandys, book 1. If any lover threw himself headlong from that rock, he was instantly cured. After Adonis’s death, when Venus could find no rest for love,

When a maddening flame scorched her very marrow,

She came to Apollo’s temple to learn what she should do to ease her pain. Apollo sent her to Leucata Petra, where she threw herself down and was immediately freed. When she insisted on knowing the reason, he answered that he had often seen Jupiter go there to find relief and bathe when he was enamoured of Juno, and various others after him.

Cephalus leapt down here for love of Protela, daughter of Degoneus; and Sappho of Lesbos for Phaon, on whom she doted miserably.

Driven by Cupid’s frenzy, she plunged headlong from the summit.

Hoping in this way to find relief and be freed from the pangs of love.

Here Deucalion, burning with love for Pyrrha, Plunged into the water and struck it unharmed. Without delay, his love fled, etc.

Here Deucalion came when love for Pyrrha Tormented him, and leapt down into the sea. He suffered no harm at all, and straight away His love was gone, completely driven off.

Joseph Scaliger speaks of this remedy in his Readings in Ausonius, book 18; so do Salmuth in his commentary on Panciroli, On the Seven Wonders of the World, and other writers. Pliny reports that among the Cyzeni there is a spring consecrated to Cupid, and that any lover who tastes its water has his passion eased.

And Anthony Verdurius, Images of the Gods, on Cupid, says that the ancients had a Love of Forgetfulness: he took burning torches and extinguished them in the river. His statue could be seen in the temple of Venus Elusina, which Ovid mentions, saying that in antiquity all lovers who wished to be rid of their pangs went there on pilgrimage.

Pausanias, in his account of Phocis, writes of a temple dedicated “to Venus in a cave”—to Venus in the vault—at Naupactus in Achaea, now Lepanto. There, widows who wanted second husbands made their petitions to the goddess; all manner of lovers’ suits were brought and their grievances relieved.

The same author, in his account of Achaea, tells a similar story of the river Seneleus in Greece: if any lover bathed in it, a hidden power in the water—because of its extreme coldness, perhaps—healed him of love’s torments.

The one who heals love’s wound is the very one who makes it.

If that is so, the water, as he maintains, is “more precious than all gold,” worth more than any gold. Where none of these remedies has any effect, I know no other course: all lovers must join forces and rebel, as they did in Ausonius, and crucify Cupid until he grants their request or satisfies their desires.