Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants (8 page)

The autumn crocus (
Colchicum autumnale
L.) is an important medicinal herb in witches’ medicine. Today the feared poisonous plant is used only in homeopathy (as colchicinum), for, among other uses, rheumatism, gout, and early-stage arthritis. According to Boericke
(Handbuch der homöopathischen Materia medica)
the remedy produces “dreams of mice.” (Woodcut from Hieronymus Bock,
Kreütterbuch,
1577.)

Autumn Crocus
(Colchicum autumnale)

As the sun loses its power and the nights grow longer than the days, delicate light purple flowers suddenly appear on the grazed meadows. They are naked, with no leaves, stems, or other coverings. Like a crocus that somehow missed spring, the autumn crocus sits there in the cold fall weather and hopes for the last stiff-membered insect to pollinate it. But because the crocus doesn’t put in the effort to attract insects with a seductive aroma, pollination often fails. The flower has no other choice than to become flexible like an animal: It bends its filaments over their stigma and pollinates itself.

After this pollination a few months pass until the pollen grows down the long style to the ovaries. The ovaries and ovules of the crocus are not raised up to the sun on a pedestal as in normal flowers; they are instead located in the bulb or tuber twenty centimeters deep in the dark earth. The subterranean fertilization of the ovum takes place on the winter solstice when the nights are the longest. During a time of year when other plants go dormant, resting in seeds or buds, this strange plant celebrates its apex.

Then in the springtime, when the other plants begin to bloom, the autumn crocus seed capsules grow together, and usually three blunt tuliplike leaves rise from the earth. But the leaves of the autumn crocus become yellow, wilt, and disappear entirely by May. Because of this, superstitious people once believed that the flowers had been eaten by the witches for Walpurgis Night. By early summer dry, rattling seed capsules with countless black seeds are all that remain. When the sun has reached its highest point and nature only indulges in greening and flowering, there is no trace of the strange “timeless” plant. It hides from the life-dispensing star like an evil fairy.

The many regional names demonstrate that this unusual plant of the Lily family has strongly influenced the folk imagination. Heinrich Marzell, who has made it his life’s work to collect all of the plant names in the German-language regions, found no fewer than five hundred different names for the autumn crocus, all of which indicate something about its character. It is called Michael’s flower,
Herbstschneeblume
(fall snow flower), and
Winterblume
(winter flower), as well as
Grummetblume
because it appears after the last haying
(Grummet).
It is known as the gall flower not only because it is bitter and poisonous like gall, but also because it blooms on Saint Gall’s day (October 16) (Marzell, 1943: 1070).

Just as the spring flowers wood sorrel and sorrel are used to protect against heat, thirst, and other summer problems, the autumn crocus is good for all of the problems that winter brings. The stamen and stalks were cooked in lard to make a salve that was said to heal frostbitten hands. As a preventive measure against frostbite, the first flower found was rubbed on the unprotected body parts. Women rubbed one of these “spin flowers” between their hands so that their hands would not become sore or stiff during the winter spinning. The people of the upper region of Zurich, the Oberlanders, rubbed the “flower of light” on their eyelids to prevent them from getting tired during the upcoming months of winter work.

Although it heralds the time of year for making yarn and fabric, the autumn crocus is known in many places as naked ladies,
Nakte Jungfer
(naked virgin),
Nakte Maid
(naked maid), or
Nakte Hur
(naked whore) because the lazy flower is “too lazy to cover her nakedness with a leaf-dress like all other upstanding flowers!” Thus in the language of flowers it became a symbol of immodesty. In Saint Gall the girls with questionable reputations had the rattling seedpods—the so-called
Hundshoden
(dog’s balls) or
Pfaffensäcke
(priest’s scrotum)—strewn on their doorways on the first of May.

It might be expected that a plant that deviates so drastically from the sun’s rhythms is poisonous. Indeed, the autumn crocus is particularly toxic. It contains twenty different alkaloids—the bulbs, leaves, flowers, and, above all, the seeds are poisonous. The fatal dosage is five seeds! The poison works slowly, like arsenic. Only after hours or even a whole day does the victim begin to feel the scratching and burning in his mouth, which gradually turns into vomiting, bloody diarrhea, cramps, bladder pain, and cardiac rhythm disturbances. After one or two days death occurs due to paralysis of the respiratory center. The poisonous plant has been given cautionary names such as
Giftzwiebel
(poison onion),
Hennenvereck
(hen destroyer),
Ziegentod
(goat death),
Hundsblume
(dog flower),
Viehgift
(cattle poison),
Leichenblume
(corpse flower), and
Teufelswurz
(devil’s spice). However, as a
Lauskraut
(licewort) for poisoning lice it was considered useful.

The Greeks called the specterlike plant
euphemeron,
the one-day killer, and the fire of the Medea of Colchis. Medea of Colchis was a disciple of the black three-headed witch-goddess Hecate. White hellebore, oleander, belladonna, poison hemlock, foxglove, and other poisonous plants grew in her garden on the Black Sea in Colchis—hence the genus name
Colchicum
. When Jason, the Greek Argonaut, reached the strand of Colchis, Medea fell passionately in love with the young sailor. With a brew of her herbs the sorceress made the dragon who guarded the golden fleece fall asleep, and then helped the Argonauts escape.

Medea’s art was possible thanks to the autumn crocus. For nine days she wandered through the forests and mountains in order to gather witches’ herbs to make the grizzled father of her beloved young again. She cut the old man into pieces, cooked him in a brew, and put him back together again—probably an archaic initiation. The autumn crocus sprang from drops of the brew that accidentally spilled onto the ground.

While farmers usually fear and avoid the flower, modern genetic researchers hold this flower in great esteem. These biotechnical sorcerers have discovered that colchicine, the primary poison, has a cytostatic action. It inhibits the development of the spindle during mitosis as well as the development of cell walls. Thus it is possible to arrest cell division at the metaphase, photograph the chromosomes, and establish exact chromosome maps. Although colchicine inhibits further division of the cells, it does not influence the mitotic doubling of the chromosomes. Therefore, multiplication of the chromosome set is achieved. With colchicine-induced mutations, genotypes have already been manipulated. For example, tobacco plants with significantly larger leaves have been developed, and Swedish researchers have even achieved the creation of polyploid giant rabbits.

In other words, this poison has the ability to separate the archetypal spiritual principle form from protoplasmic life. In this way the effects are similar to radioactive rays, which also create volatile mutations. The ancient astrologers placed autumn crocus under the domain of Saturn, the dark, cold planet, the “guardian of the threshold” that stands at the edge of the world of appearances. Today this plant would more likely be categorized under the dominion of Pluto, the chaotic, cataclysmic power beyond the threshold.

Modern medicine has investigated the possibility of integrating the cytostatic action of colchicine into cancer and leukemia therapy. In folk medicine the freshly picked autumn crocus has been used for warts, corns, and even cancerous ulcers. At one time the bulb was carried in a bag or as a charm when the plague and other infectious epidemics visited the region; the reasoning was to rebuke a poison with an even stronger one.

Colchicine tincture continues to be used as a remedy for gout. The Greek doctor Galen and the Arabs used autumn crocus for particularly painful acute cases of gout. The bulb was considered to be the “signature” of a foot deformed by gout. Indeed, the tincture prohibits the uptake of uric acid crystals through the white blood cells in the gouty nodes. The pain is immediately eased, but nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea are the side effects of the treatment. Homeopaths, who understand how to remove the quills from even the most potent of poisons, prescribe it in varying dilutions for different ailments such as gout, rheumatoid arthritis, pericardial and pleural disorders, diarrhea, nausea, and dropsy.

Halloween (Old English for “sacred night”) was originally celebrated on the full moon in November. It marks the beginning of the reign of the god of death and winter. During this time ghosts swarmed and shamans (witches) went on trips. On Halloween a special beer is still brewed with pumpkins. The pumpkin on this beer label represents the full moon.