The amethyst was anciently considered a stone whose contact was a stimulus to passion.
In the Middle Ages there was in Germany a kind of humorous folk legend that was called the Old Wives’ Mill. This legend extended into the eighteenth century. The theme was the rejuvenation of old women into young maidens and young women. There is an old print depicting the Mill, with elderly females being carried into the Mill and coming out young and comely.
The means of arousing erotic sensations and the devices contrived for the furtherance of weird or furtive amatory conditions have varied all the way from forthright bestialities, sacrificial blood rituals, as described by the poet Horace with reference to the witch Canidia’s practices, down to more or less innocuous or ineffectual concoctions.
As far as ritual killing is concerned, and the extraction of human organs for amatory purposes, such methods were in vogue in Europe until far into the seventeenth century, notably in France.
A French preparation, that promised a renewal of physiological vigor, was known as Essence à l’usage des monstres.
Certain ancient Greek papyri contain suggestions and recipes intended to promote physiological vigor and by means of magic formulas to correct amatory deficiencies. These papyri now belong in the Louvre, in Paris, and in the British Museum.
Diagrams and symbols appear in the papyri. There are invocations, magic ritualistic prescriptions. There are, also, invocations and supplications to strange deities: among them, Sabazios, a Thracian-Phrygian god who had affinities with Dionysus, the god of wine, of fertility, and of procreation. He was also equated with the deity called Curios Sabaoth, mentioned in the Septuagint, and also Theos Hypsistos.