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The flowers of this plant show its close association with Venus --they are large, lush, sensual, fragrant. But this is not your mother's Venus, all pink and lovey-dovey. This magick herb is definitely of the Dark Goddess. Datura has been used to hex and to break hexes, to magickally produce sleep and induce dreams, and for protection from evil (perhaps in the fire against fire sense). Native American people have employed it in divination, to find one's totem animal, for communing with birds, and to allow one to see ghosts. Like all the tropane-containing plants (mandrake, henbane, belladonna), datura is said to have gone into flying ointments and contains tropanes, although not as much as its siblings . If you would like to know this magick herb, it is best to grow it yourself. This Ayurvedic powder is composed of the plant's leaves and flowers. This is a dangerous herb, not to be ingested. Top Theory About Flying Ointments I recently read How Do Witches Fly? by Alexander Kuklin, which had an interesting premise--that flying ointments didn't kill their users because their creators balanced the poisonous ingredients against each other. Both Eclectic medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicines have played poisonous herbs off on each other so that their deadly qualities are modified, so I think this premise is quite a good one. The only problem is that the knowledge of how exactly to balance these poisons has not been well preserved. One place to look for information on how poisonous herbs can cancel each other out (i.e., antidotes) is King's American Dispensatory. Top |
Uses in Witchcraft & Magick:
Baneful Work
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Datura