Magic properties of natural substances.
That magic, however diabolical it may be, does employ natural forces and substances, is not only asserted by Magic Art itself, but freely admitted by Hildegard in her discussions of the properties of animals, plants, and minerals in her other two works, the Subtleties of Diverse Creatures and Cases and Cures. In the latter work she states that while herbs in the east are full of virtue and have a good odor and medicinal properties, those in the west are potent in the magic art and for other phantasms but do not contribute much to the health of the human body.[391] In the former work she tells that the tree-toad is much employed in diabolical arts, especially when the trees are beginning to leaf and blossom, since at this time the spirits of the air are especially active.[392] Sometimes, however, there is a way to remove this magic virtue from a natural substance. The root mandragora “is no longer efficacious for magic and fantastic purposes,” if it is purified in a fountain for a day and a night immediately after it has been dug from the earth.[393]
Instances of counter-magic.
There are also substances which counteract magic. It has little force in any place where a fir-tree grows, for the spirits of the air hate and avoid such spots.[394] In the Causae et curae Hildegard tells how to compound a powder “against poison and against magic words.”[395] It also “confers health and courage and prosperity on him who carries it with him.” First one takes a root of geranium (storkesnabil) with its leaves, two mallow plants, and seven shoots of the plantagenet. These must be plucked at midday in the middle of April. Then they are to be laid on moist earth and sprinkled with water to keep them green for a while. Next they are dried in the setting sun and in the rising sun until the third hour, when they should once more be laid on moist earth and sprinkled with water until noon. Then they are to be removed and placed facing the south in the full sunshine until the ninth hour, when they should be wrapped in a cloth, with a stick on top to hold them in place, until a trifle before midnight. Then the night begins to incline towards day and all the evils of darkness and night begin to flee. A little before midnight, therefore, they should be transferred to a high window or placed above a door or in some garden where the cool air may have access to them. As soon as midnight is passed, they are to be removed once more, pulverized with the middle finger, and put in a new pill-box with a little bisemum to keep them from decaying but not a sufficient quantity to overcome the scent of the herbs. A little of this powder may be applied daily to the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, or it may be bound on the body as an antiaphrodisiac, or it may be held over wine without touching it but so that its odor can reach the wine, which should then be drunk with a bit of saffron as a preventive of indigestion, poison, magic, and so forth.
Ceremony with a jacinth and wheaten loaf.
In the Subtilitates[396] the following procedure is recommended, if anyone is bewitched by phantasms or magic words so that he goes mad. Take a wheaten loaf and cut the upper crust in the form of a cross. First draw a jacinth through one line of the cross, saying, “May God who cast away all the preciousness of gems from the devil when he transgressed His precept, remove from you N. all phantasms and magic words and free you from the ill of this madness.” Then the jacinth is to be drawn through the other arm of the cross and this formula is to be repeated, “As the splendor which the devil once possessed departed from him because of his transgression, so may this madness which harasses N. by varied phantasies and magic arts be removed from you and depart from you.” The ceremony is then completed by the bewitched person eating the bread around the cross.
Hildegard’s superstitious procedure.
These two illustrations make it apparent that Hildegard has a licit magic of her own which is every whit as superstitious as the magic art which she condemns. It is evident that she accepts not only marvelous and occult virtues of natural substances such as herbs and gems, but also the power of words and incantations, and rites and ceremonies of a most decidedly magical character. In the second passage this procedure assumed a Christian character, but the plucking and drying of the herbs in the first passage perhaps preserves the flavor of primitive Teutonic or Celtic paganism. Nor is such superstitious procedure resorted to merely against magic, to whose operations it forms a sort of homeopathic counterpart. It is also employed for ordinary medicinal purposes, and is a characteristic feature of Hildegard’s conception of nature and whole mental attitude. This we may further illustrate by running through the books of the Subtilitates.
Use of herbs.
Except for passages connecting the devil with certain herbs which we have already noted, Hildegard’s discussion of vegetation is for the most part limited to medicinal properties of herbs, which are effective without the addition of fantastic ceremonial. Sometimes nevertheless the herbs are either prepared or administered in a rather bizarre fashion. Insanity may be alleviated, we are told, by shaving the patient’s head and washing it in the hot water in which agrimonia has been boiled, while the hot herbs themselves are bound in a cloth first over his heart and then upon his forehead and temples.[397] An unguent beneficial alike for digestive and mental disorders is made of the bark, leaves, and bits of the green wood of the fir-tree, combined with saliva to half their weight. This mess is to be boiled in water until it becomes thick, then butter is to be added, and the whole strained through a cloth.[398] The mandragora root should first be worn bound between the breast and navel for three days and three nights, then divided in halves and these bound on the thighs for three days and three nights. Finally the left half of the root, which resembles the human figure, should be pulverized, camphor added to it, and eaten.[399] If a man is always sad and in the dumps, after purifying the mandragora root in a fountain, let him take it to bed with him, hold it so that it will be warmed by the heat of his body, and say, “God, who madest man from the dust of the earth without grief, I now place next me that earth which has never transgressed”—Hildegard has already stated that the mandragora is composed “of that earth of which Adam was created”—“in order that my clay may feel that peace just as Thou didst create it.” That the prayer or incantation is more essential than the virtue of the mandragora in this operation, is indicated by the statement that shoots of beech, cedar, or aspen may be used instead of the mandragora.