ABRACADABRA

Since the middle ages, pentacles and other magical drawings have been currently utilised to cure and keep away all sorts of diseases, it has to been made upon a animal skin or parchment or engraved on a copper plate.

And for it to be efficient, it has to be worn constantly or even better directly on the sick place on the body.

Abracadabra is the most powerful word in medicinal magic, already utilised in ancient times. It is probably derived from the Hebrew word "abreg ad hâbra", meaning: send your thunder until death.

Reduce scar tissue

Rub a fresh Comfrey root on the scar tissue you want to reduce or soften, daily.  This water plant has astringent and strengthening properties.

Don't get discouraged if you don't see any immediate changes, rather continue for as long as several months, is necessary.

 

Purify your skin in depth

To rid the skin of impurities and dead cells, while at the same time lighten the complexion, this recipe was well used by our grand mothers.

Take two handful of green clay powder and mix it with a small amount of spring or rain water, mix it into a paste into which you would add a coffee spoonful of Sage essential oil. 

Heat this mix in a water bath until it gets warm, then put it as a cataplasm/poultice, copiously, on your face.

Keep this mask in place for 10-15 minutes, rinse with lukewarm water.

Do the procedure three days in a row, repeat it every three months.

For a smooth wrinkle free skin

Mix 64 grams of raw onion juice with 64 grams of powdered White Lily, the same amount of white honey and 32 grams of white melted wax for the mixture to become an ointment.

Put it on your face every night before going to bed and let it sit for the night.

Fighting rosacea naturally

Boil two lettuces for an hour and use the solution in compresses to keep on your face.

Another recipe for rosacea due to the winter cold is to make a paste with flour and milk.

Lay down and relax with your compresses or your paste on your face, let it sit for 20 minutes and rinse.

To treat oily skin

If you are bothered by oily skin, you could rinse your face with spring water into which you have added a few drops of Benzoin tincture.

This resinous substance have a great purifying power.  

A recipe for smooth skin

Add to your bath 12 Pine cones. Use new ones, each time.

Pine cones are de congestive, they have the ability to soften your skin and perfume it at the same time.

Heather for the freshness and youth of your skin

Let some Heather flowers and leaves soak for 2 hours in some fresh water. Then heat slowly until boiling and let boil for 5 minutes. Let cool, filter and keep the solution in a glass bottle.

Use this solution for your facial cleansing and you'll keep a young and fresh appearance.

Soft smooth hands

Mix the juice of a fresh tomato with a spoonful of glycerine in a glass bowl.

Apply this preparation, every day on the back of both hands, let sit for 10 minutes and rinse with rose water.

You can also put some cloves into a small bottle of almond oil, after 8 days of rest in the sun, the oil is ready. Rub your hands in this oil once a day, if possible before bedtime and then wear cotton gloves during your sleep.

Unify the skin complexion...

How to eliminate brown spots and any undesirable pigmentation marks on your hands and arms, often assimilated with ageing, wash your hands and arms several times a day with lemon juice together with sea salt. Continue until you get de result that satisfies you. 

This same recipe is also very effective for the face as well as the hair.

Sweaty hands

Nobody likes sweaty hands so to get rid of that issue, wash them three times a day with camphorated alcohol, let your hands air dry.

Wash them the last time for the day before getting to bed and wear cotton gloves during your sleep.

Ways of reducing shadows under your eyes

Take the same amount of Chervil and Mint and let soak in boiling water until cooled, then use it on cotton-pads kept on your eye lids for a few minutes.

Make yourself a facial mask with powdered Mallow and spring water mixed into a paste.

Lay down for half an hour rest with both eye lids covered in cottage cheese.

Put a lukewarm cotton compress soaked in a herbal tea done with a handful of Camomile flowers and a cup of boiling water.

                             Teabags with Camomile herbal tea could be an even easier way of doing it.

Rose petals for beautiful eyes

It is said that our eyes shows the reflection of our soul, so to show your soul beautifully you should pour a glass of boiling water upon a handful of rose petals and let it sit the time for it to cool and then soak a perfectly clean cotton cloth into it and keep it for a few minutes on your closed eyes.

This was the ultimate recipe for beautiful eyes in ancient times.

Carotene for the health and beauty of your gaze...

When your eyes are tired and stingy, eat daily for at least two weeks, a mixture of grated carrots and curdled milk.

Carotene is well known for its high level of vitamin A, revitalising the pigmentation of the retina.

Baking soda for whiter teeth

Baking soda is so commonly used for dental hygiene that it has even been added to mainstream toothpaste in some cases. It helps you keep a fresh breath too. It can even be added to lemon juice and honey, giving you a healing boost against almost anything. It makes your body alkaline, putting up a protective shield against viruses and diseases. It neutralises the acidic environment which bring about illnesses of all kind.

Sage for white, shiny teeth...

Sage is truly a magic herb, with numerous usages, even your teeth will like it.

To have beautifully white, shiny and teeth, brush them, as usual and then twice a day, rub them vigorously with fresh sage leaves.

The surface of sage leaves is soft and hairy, perfect for polishing your teeth.

To get shiny hair

Follow the elders beauty recipes by adding some lemon drops or some vinegar to the last rinsing water, rubbing it into the scalp and hair was and is still, the best and cheapest way of getting beautiful shiny hair. Beer is also good.

To get beautiful highlights in your hair

Dark haired who would like to get highlights in their hair should try this recipe: 

boil 4 big, previously washed, leeks in a litre of water for 20 minutes. Use this water as last rinse after your shampoo.

For blondes this recipe will accentuate the golden strains in their hair with the same method but with two handful of German Camomile flowers instead of the leeks.

Picture just to illustrate not actual result.

Both could use the following recipe to get reddish highlights in their hair by rinsing with water from a litre of water in which tea and onion peels have cooked.

To get thicker hair

Make a poultice with green clay, apply it after a mild shampoo, let it sit for 10 minutes and rinse. Do it over again every week for three months.

In tradition, clay symbolises the primordial substance from which Adam was created, it is a living substance. In pharmacopoeia, clay is antiseptic, healing, re mineralising and favour the rebuilding of cells.

Hair growth stimulating lotion

Any rural woman knows that to stimulate hair growth it should be cut at the new moon or the waxing moon. A handful of Lupinus flowers soaked in water during an hour, filtered and mixed together with the equal amount of dark rum would give you a lotion to use to rub your scalp every morning.

Watercress could be used as well instead of Lupinus.

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.

Iron and copper bath

Heat a copper ring and an iron ring until red hot and then throw them into a recipient full of spring or rain water. Plunge your hands and feet at the same time and stir the water slowly with them. Let them air dry. 

In the Middle Ages and a long time after, the water used by the blacksmith to cool the iron was utilized as a remedy. Copper is associated with the sign of Taurus, but is beneficial for all the other signs, it has also a bactericidal action. Iron and copper are present in the body in the form of trace elements indispensable for the organisms nutrition uptake.

The Cosmic Antenna

To enforce and balance your energies take some time regularly to do this in a calm and well ventilated place.

 Start by settling down, relaxing, finding your center.

Standing legs slightly apart, in the axle of your hips, stable and anchored.

Put your arms up over your head, palms up toward the sky.

Concentrate for a few minutes, imagining yourself as a living antenna, captivating the cosmic energies through your hands, arms, down through your body, meeting the telluric energies coming from Earth, going up through your legs.

Feel the energies streaming throughout your body.

You shouldn't exceed 15 minutes.

The energy boosting trees

When you feel depressed and tired you need something that would boost your energies.

Choose a big, strong, beautiful tree, an Oak, a Birch tree, a Chestnut tree, following your instinct  and attraction.

Place the palm of your hands or your spine on the tree trunk to feel tits energy circulate.

To permit these energies flow through your body and bring the dynamic benefits, some 10 minutes will be enough.

Do not forget to thank the tree for its contribution before leaving.

In ancient time, trees were considered as living beings with mysterious powers given to them by the Gods. Their powers gave birth to many legends. Symbol of longevity and force, they have sometimes even been raised to the same rang as the Gods by many  ancient civilizations.Throughout the centuries their vital power remains strong and it is recommended to gather some for yourself as often as possible.

Eggs to gather strength

Beat an egg yolk in half a glass of wine and 2 coffee spoons of sugar. Boil this mix 2-3 minutes, then add three peeled almonds and a pinch of cinnamon.  Let it cool and sip slowly.

Mix an egg yolk with a coffee spoon of sugar, 12 crushed wheat grains, 3 drops of rose essence and 3 drops of mint essence. Add a glass of grape juice and a pinch of cinnamon. Let it sit for at least an hour before drinking it.

Watercress infusion against fatigue

Every evening before going to bed, let five watercress leaves soak in a glass of hot water with a lid or a saucer covering it. Put it on your bedside table overnight and drink the water in the morning when you awaken, before getting up. Repeat this for 21 days, starting at the waxing moon.

Fountain watercress grows in the water. It belongs thus to both Earth and Water, which gives it special virtues from both kingdoms. 

Nettles against fatigue

Boil nettles, roots, leaves, the entirety of the plant, during half an hour. Filter and keep the liquid  in a closed recipient in a fresh place.

Take half a glass every morning and evening.

White nettles are utilized by cosmetology in shampoo. It's urticant virtues makes it, following tradition, a very strong plant against all disease. 

The Ivy brew for toothache

Macerate in a ceramic jar, twenty Ivy leaves with  some good wine and a pinch of salt.

After a while, put it to boil, let it boil slowly until the leaves are "cooked".

Then let it cool and take a sip as soon as it is cool enough for you to put it in your mouth, then let it sit on your aching tooth for as long as it pleases you.

It is also proclaimed that Ivy wine has the ability to reattach loose teeth.

Pork Fat for toothache

Put a small piece of pork fat between the inner cheek and the hurting tooth, the pain will retreat quickly. It works also on abscesses.

It could be the soothing virtues of the pork fat that makes this recipe so successful. It is also said that it has the faculty to absorb subtle emanations.