Contemporary witches, sorceresses, and spell-binders of varying degrees of reliability still use, as love potions, old, traditional ingredients. One of these is hippomanes. Hippomanes was well known among the ancients. It is a fleshy excrescence that appears on a foal’s head at birth. When dried, and swallowed by the person in search of the amatory excitation, it produces, according to these dark practitioners, a result that cannot be questioned.
The erotic merit of this equine aposteme is confirmed by a number of authorities, from Vergil himself, the Roman epic poet, to Pausanias, the second century A.D. Greek geographer, and to the sixteenth century Neapolitan alchemist and occultist Gambattista della Porta.
SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY
Benoit, H. The Many Faces of Love. New York: Pantheon, c. 1955.
Bibliotheca Erotica Moniacensis. A German collection of erotica.
Bibliotheca Roloffiana. A collection of erotica published in Germany in the eighteenth century.
Blondeau, Nicolas. Dictionnaire Erotique. Paris: Isidore Liseux, 1885.
Clauder, Johannes. De Philtris. Leipzig, 1661.
Decle, L. Three Years in Savage Africa. London: Methuen, 1898.
Dufour, H. Histoire de la Prostitution chez tous les Peuples du Monde. Bruxelles: 1857.