will magic potion work?

[ark200]

magic potion prepared from herbs can give some power to the drinker. i read it in ancient writings. now my question is: will magic potion prepared from herbs work that way today?

[Ramscha]

What "ancient writings" do you refer to? And what kind of "herbs"? Which recipe? There is a whole bunch of this stuff, a little bit more precise information would be helpful to help you in return.

[Desecrated]

Poisonous plants has always been poisonous.

Some folk remedies work, some don't.

Please don't experiment with things from a book without consulting your doctor first.

[ark200]

What "ancient writings" do you refer to? And what kind of "herbs"? Which recipe? There is a whole bunch of this stuff, a little bit more precise information would be helpful to help you in return.

writings are:

1. natural magick by cornelius agrippa

2. odesy by homar( circe turned human into animal by potion)

3. comas by poet milton ( comas offered lady egerton potion that provide happiness)

4. a fisherman and his soul by oscar wilde ( the witch there uses potion)

5. the faust by goethe

6. macbeth by shakespere

and many more....


actually i find a similarity between ancient magic potion and modern herbal medicine. both use herbs and recepy. are magicians of the old like scientists of modern world?

[Urscumug]

I think we have to separate the "herbal potion" and the "magic potion".

An herbal potion is a mixture containing various drugs extracted from plants. There are lot of them and they are very potent, especially when they are concentrated in essential oils. Somehow the ancient were able to determine the effects of these drugs. This is not trivial, because with the most potent ones you have to be careful with the dose (a benevolent drug can turn into a poison) and the effects are not always immediate (especially with the curative ones). Nobody knows how this knowledge was discovered, and this is maybe the magickal part of the process.

On the other hand you have magick potions. I do not have experience with them, but I don't think their power is coming from the chemical properties of their ingredients but from their magickal properties and intent of the manufactor. Here is an extract from John M. Greer's The New Encyclopedia of the Occult:

The principle governing natural magic in the Western occult tradition is the great Hermetic axiom "As above, so below". Every object in the material world, according to this dictum, is a reflection of astrological and spiritual powers. By making use of these material reflections, the natural magician concentrates or disperses particular powers of the higher levels of being; thus a stone or an herb associated with the sun is infused with the magical energies of the sun, and wearing that stone or hanging that herb on the wall brings those energies into play in a particular situation.

He also writes in The Natural Magic Workbook, chapter on potions:

A potion is a magically charged drink. Potions in earlier times were routinely made from a range of bizarre and noxious ingredients - powered mummy, mashed centipedes, dried viper meat an so on. (...) Since potions, like food, enter your body and become part of it, they offer an effective way of working magic on yourself, or focusing your awareness in particular ways.

The last part reminds me of a technique to launch sigils: write them on a cake and eat it.

[Desecrated]

What "ancient writings" do you refer to? And what kind of "herbs"? Which recipe? There is a whole bunch of this stuff, a little bit more precise information would be helpful to help you in return.

writings are:

1. natural magick by cornelius agrippa

2. odesy by homar( circe turned human into animal by potion)

3. comas by poet milton ( comas offered lady egerton potion that provide happiness)

4. a fisherman and his soul by oscar wilde ( the witch there uses potion)

5. the faust by goethe

6. macbeth by shakespere

and many more....


actually i find a similarity between ancient magic potion and modern herbal medicine. both use herbs and recepy. are magicians of the old like scientists of modern world?

Some of these examples are real, some are works of fictions.

1. These, I would be careful with.

2. There is no transformation potion that works that fast in real life.
Not even dengue feber and ebola spreads that quick.

3. A potion that provides happiness? Isn't that whiskey?
But I guess any SSRI extracted from plants would theoretically work.
St. John's wort was popular then and is still popular.
Fish liver oil as also been used for a long time and modern studies show that omega 3 helps with maintaining a good health,

4. Oscar wilde was involved with the occult in real life.

5. From what we've gathered, Satan is not interested in your soul.

6. The witches in Shakespeare has been debated furiously in the literary world. We don't know he if himself believed in witches or not. Although people did around that time. There were executions of witches in the same city that Shakespeare lived.

The Description he uses in his play, most likely came from Holinshed's Chronicles,



Partly yes. Magicians usually works with some sort of mysticism as well.
But both natural remedies and alchemy was the forerunners to modern science.
Astrology later became astronomy and so on.