Keep your hair from whitening...

Mix dried fig tree leaves with camomile oil. Rub your hair daily with this preparation. The white hair that is already present will disappear progressively. Another option would be to wash your hair with clay and water, without any soap at all. All you have to do is to coat your hair with the clay, do a massage on your hair and scalp, let sit for some 5 minutes and rinse.

Nurturing oils for your hair

Start by brushing vigorously your hair with a metallic hairbrush and afterwards separate your hair as to put a mix of the following essential oils in equal quantities, on your scalp: Sage, Juniper(Juniperus Communis), Rosemary, Thyme, Cyprus, Lemon, Cade (Juniperus Oxycedrus).
Do it every day during a week once a month, wash it off the eighth day with a mild shampoo.

                                The picture having nothing to do with the recipe.

This ancient recipe nourishes both your hair and scalp.

Brushing your hair like your grandmothers did...

Every morning, brush your hair vigorously with a natural (non plastic) brush, head down. This brushing eliminates accumulated dust and impurities while activating the blood circulation in your scalp.

Women drew the brush throw their hair a 100 times, in those day, less wasn't enough. 

Hair massage for beautiful and thick hair.

Hair loss could be due to bad blood circulation in the scalp.

Activate it by softly massaging the entire surface of your scalp, with your fingertips, every day. Castor oil could be added every now and then to help the growth as well. 

The hunger stopper

Five minutes before your meal, drink a glass of fresh orange juice to which you have added a coffee spoon of beer yeast.

Not only an appetite suppressant but also a fabulous health booster full of vitamins.

Ash tree wine

Take some thirty crushed ash tree leaves and put it into a half a litre of Malaga wine, let it sit for a week. Once ready, have a liqueur glass of it before each one of  your principal meals.

In ancient times, the Ash tree was considered a symbol of power and immortality. The Nordics had their ash tree Yggdrasil, which held up the roof of the world. It has numerous medicinal virtues.

An infusion to purify and eliminate excessive weight.

Every day, in the middle of the afternoon, prepare yourself an infusion of  black currant, quack grass, Teucrium with virgin tea.

May I suggest, you drink it as hot as possible, for the best effect.

The different plants in this recipe are all famous for their ability to purify the body with their diuretic effects.

Carnation vinegar for weightloss

Macerate 100 grams of red carnation petals in a litre of white vinegar, let it sit for three days.

Filter and store in a closed bottle. 
Add 12 drops into the water you use to wash yourself in the morning.

Lose weight and stay fit

Let 30 grams of orange flowers, 4 drops of lemon oil, 20 grams of rosemary oil, 10 grams of Neroli, 8 grams of oregano and 8 gram of bergamot, macerate in 60 centilitres of 90° alcohol, let it sit for a few hours.

Filter and keep it in a glass bottle, rub your face, hands and wrists before going to bed at night.

The plant composing this "Eau de toilette" contains essential oils that will help you lose weight. Orange and lemon will both contribute to fill your needs of vitamin C during the regimen.

Recipes for beauty and youth...

Beauty is and has always been, one of women's major preoccupations.  They have tried everything throughout the centuries, which explain the numerous and various recipes that are to find in rural tradition considering beauty and aesthetics.

The following recipes were still employed not so long time ago, before television entered our living-rooms with its cortege of publicity and promises of eternal youth and success...

These recipes will be of interest for those women who aim toward a more natural way of preserving their youth and beauty, similar to what their great grandmothers did to preserve theirs.

To prevent all diseases

Angelica archangelica

To protect all the habitants of a house, from disease in general, put a metal bowl of dried Angelica flowers in every room.

Another way could be to put powdered Angelica in a small yellow fabric sachet, sewn with the same colour  hanging over the entrance door.

In Herbal Medicine the antiseptic and digestive properties of Angelica are very well established. Tradition considers it also to be an excellent elixir for a long life and for vitality, delaying ageing and death.

How to make headache vanish

The prayer of Saint Pancrace 

Put both your hands on the head of the suffering person while pronouncing the following prayer with conviction:

"Glorious Saint Pancrace and your devoted followers, please confer the soothing of the pain of this person. May the great pain be dissolved promptly."

The head ache is supposed to be gone within 15 minutes. The more the prayer is utilised the better it becomes.

The Magical Breath

Act upon the burn mark as quickly as possible: blow tree times, forming a cross, on the hurting spot while saying this prayer:

"Fire of God cool the heat of the wound like Judas lost his colours when he betrayed Our Lord in the olive garden (say the persons name) God has healed you with his powerful gift. Amen!"

The breath is magnetically charged by the person who does the blowing. Mothers have since always blown upon the burns of their children. Blowing in the sign of the cross adds even more power to it.

Poppy and Anise to help you sleep well

The Poppy

Put a small white cotton purse, sewn with white thread, under your pillow, the sachet should contain Poppy seeds.

The Poppy is a variant of the Opium flower (Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy) with similar narcotic virtues.

The Anise

Let 10 grams of Anise seeds macerate in 50 grams of alcohol for 5 days. Filter and keep stored in a small glass bottle, tightly closed.

Take 10 drops daily in a small glass of water every night before going to sleep.

The medicinal properties of Anise are numerous: it is an expectorant, stomachic, diuretic. Alone this plant has the ability to rid you of all the different things that can  prevent you from sleeping.

Orange blossom and Hop to combat insomnia

Orange Blossom

Heat a glass of milk and add some orange blossom extract. Drink it before going to bed or even better once in bed.

Orange blossom is very ancient and well known, often employed in the rural parts of the world.


Hop

Put a handful of dried Laurel leaves together with the same amount of dried hop, into the stuffing of your pillow.

Laurel is a good antiseptic, considered a salutary plant for health issues. Hop cones has a well known hypnotic virtue, sovereign against insomnia.

Hawthorn to combat insomnia

Let a spoonful of hawthorn flowers infuse in a tea pot of hot water and drink two cups before going to bed.

Hawthorn is an excellent medicinal plant with calming virtues and has a regulating effect on stress. It has also been used as in good luck charms since very ancient times.

To bring happiness and joy to your future baby

The Red Rose

The last Friday in the month, pick a red rose, symbol of pregnancy.

After having removed the petals, put the heart of the rose and its petals in a small red sachet and close it with a red ribbon.
Keep this sachet with you all the time during your pregnancy, preferably directly on your skin. It will protect your baby.

The rose and the colour red are both two symbols for love, manifesting here the force of the maternal love, assuring your baby's security. In France they say that happy babies are born in roses.

The five pointed star to reveal the sex of your baby

Trace a five pointed star upon the belly of the pregnant mother, putting a number from one to five on each branch starting from the left and putting a 6 in the middle. The star should have a point heading towards each breast and one towards her intimate parts. Tell the future mother to close her eyes and put a finger on the figure. If she points on the numbers: 5, 3, 1, she can expect a son and if she points on the numbers:6, 4, 2, she can expect to have a daughter.

If she puts her finger between two numbers, tell her to do it again and if she does it several time in a row, start again the following day. Each branch forming a triangle should be as large as the palm of your hand.

The pentagram -the five pointed star- is the presentation of man in the esoteric teachings. It is the future mothers instinct that will guide her finger.

To get pregnant...

The round box

Pick every hair you find on your pillow, your own as well as those of your husband. Keep them somewhere secret.
After a period of 49 days take the hairs and two dried peppermint leaves and put them in a round metal box. Put the box in the fire after having closed it thoroughly. The ashes of the hair and mint leaves should then be added to a meal, shared by your husband and yourself, half-half. It is said that this will make you give birth to a child within a period of a year.

The round box symbolizes the womb wherein meets the gametes symbolized by the fire.

Mallow flowers in your bath

Heat an iron ring red hot, then throw it in a wooden recipient filled with rain water or spring water. Add two handful of Mallow flowers.

Put your hands and feet in the bath simultaneously, agitating the water, during some ten minutes.

These hand and feet baths in a water previously energised by a heated piece of metal are excellent to gather the vitality it is charged with. The emperor Charlemagne (France) planted lots of Mallow because of his appreciation of it. It was also employed by the pharmacopoeia for its aphrodisiac virtues.