Herbal Wise: The Benefits of Celery

Back in the far away (and very hazy) day I used to dance ballet. Those days were over fast when I realized two things: those (comparatively) huge boobs were not going to work and and my right knee was trouble from the get go. Hey, it was fun while it lasted.

To the point, though, I still have problems with my knee. It pops and pains and I wear a soft brace made from bamboo charcoal fiber most days just to keep the darn thing in line. Recently though, due more to the fact that I often research possible helpful solutions for my daughter's Juvenile Idiopathic (they used to call it "Rheumatoid") Arthritis than any interest in my own uncooperative joint, I have found a surprisingly simple solution. Celery.

It turns out that celery seed has been of long standing assistance to those with joint pain. According to Andrew Chevallier in The Visual Reference Guide to Herbal Remedies, celery is a "... good detoxification remedy, celery stem, leaf and seed stimulate the kidneys to clear waste... especially helping to cleanse salts that accumulate in joints, causing stiffness and inflammation."

Celery seed in particular is of great assistance in this process, and can be found at health food stores and herbalists in capsule form. Both my daughter and I take one capsule daily to the benefit of our sore joints. I won't say that it has completely alleviated our symptoms like some miracle but celery seed has certainly helped.

An added bonus here is that celery seed, and more specifically the juice of the celery stem, can help in detoxifying and moving unwanted fluids along. If you are prone to swollen ankles after a long day at your desk, a nice infusion of celery juice in an evening green tea will help move those fluids along and make you less gargantuan in the lower extremities after a long day.

But Pauline, you say; this is HQ. We're not here to have our piggies de-bloatified by some silly celery tea. What will celery do for us magickly gosh darn it?

Hold your horses, as they used to say. I've got that for you too.

Use celery in your cooking not only to help your dreaming hint at the future but to bring peace and harmony to your home and your family.

Most often, celery - particularly in the form of seed - is used to encourage psychism. Crush and bruise a few celery seeds, then wrap them in a muslin bag or a coffee filter and brew them into a tea with very hot water to help you along in your card, crystal ball, pendulum or other readings. The celery tea is said to open the third eye to visions of the future and what might be the best path for anyone you are reading for - including yourself.

You can make a mojo bag for psychic vision by placing equal parts anise, calendula, poppy flower and celery seed into a muslin or yellow flannel bag with intention. Place the mojo in your pillow case and sleep on it nightly to encourage your psychic ability. Carry it - if you dare - into haunted places to see the ghosties and ghoulies that walk the night. The mojo is best held in your left - receptive - hand for this purpose but beware: this practice can encourage an attraction making an unwelcome entity glom on to you and follow you home. Not a very pleasant experience and one that can only be avoided by proper and careful warding beforehand.

In the end, celery is both a practical and spiritual plant that can help in myriad different ways and on various levels. Use it wisely, and the benefits will be manifest happily. Bonne chance ~

Header: Found on Tumblr; isn't the internet amazing?

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

But first, on earth as vampire sent,
Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent:
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race;
There from thy daughter, sister, wife
At midnight drain the stream of life...
Wet with thine own best blood shall drip
Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;
Then stalking to thy sullen grave
Go - and with the ghouls and afreets rave,
Till these in horror shrink away
From spectre more accursed than they!

~ from "The Giaour" by George Gordon Lord Byron, first published in The Unbeliever, London, 1813

Header: A ring with a quote from this poem from Mostly Making Memories on Etsy

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

As Hallowe'en draws nearer, our thoughts turn to ghoulies and ghosties and witches in pointy hats. My thoughts personally turn to the real "witches" of yesterday and today who were and are tortured, persecuted and either killed or driven to kill themselves. Imagined or real, these "servants of Satan" most typically come with female bodies and the fact that such persecution continues to this day all around the world is a sad commentary on just how far "civilization" hasn't come.

In honor of those who have lost and will lose everything to religious zealots, the next few installments of Chthonian Histories will be dedicated to the true story of a simple German girl who was given up by her unfortunate family, questioned, tortured and murdered in 1600.

Agnes was the daughter of a poor miller and his unfortunately ugly wife. They ran what was known as "the convent mill" in the village of Tettenwing in Lower Bavaria. Their mill did not thrive as it was considered haunted. Stories flew about their village that linked the mill itself, the miller and his family to everything from the sending of nightmares to causing plague. It was only travelers that patronized the mill and a traveler with grain to grind was an unusual occurrence in depressed times. The mill fell into disrepair. Local gossips whispered that the miller's wife was an ogress. And a witch.

The one bright spot around the mill was the miller's only surviving child: Agnes. Unlike her parents, Agnes was beautiful. At somewhere around the age of 16 in 1600, Agnes was the object of many a local farm boy's affection. Much to their mothers' dismay, these local sons brought Agnes gifts and got into brawls over her. Every now and then the sheriff would stop by to tell the miller to keep his daughter "in line." As if her beauty was something she could control. As if she put a spell on all the farm boys.

One summer day the sheriff came again, but this time he came with unfamiliar and well dressed men on horseback. They had come to search the house, they told the miller, for signs of "witchery". He and his family had been accused of practicing the dark arts for "these thirty years and more." That included his ogress wife and his enchantress daughter.

The miller protested, of course, but to no avail. It did not take long for the thugs that came along with the fine gentlemen to find a second hearth, built under the kitchen stairs. It was concealed behind a door and on it was a "pot containing a stiff paste, a congealed liquid, or something of the kind. That was no doubt witches' ointment."

The pot was confiscated, the miller and his family put in chains, and Agnes, along with her aging mother and father, was on her way to the notorious Falcon Tower in Munich.

The local judges went to work right away, subjecting Agnes to long, verbal interrogations but finding her "recalcitrant" and unwilling to confess to any knowledge of witchcraft or the devil. She informed the head judge, Wangereck, that she knew people called her parents ogres. All the same, the accusation was unjust and "would never be shown to be true of her, either."

Wangereck, intuiting what would truly break the young woman's spirit, put her in a dank cell for two months while he worked her parents over. The miller died after several rounds of the torture known as strappado (illustrated above). His wife, Anna, was also subjected to the heinous dislocation of various joints. Like her husband, she endured not only the horrible position of hanging from her wrists with her arms behind her back, but she also suffered the misery of having weights tied to her ankles to pull her knees and hips loose.

Anna confessed in a stream of wild babbling. She was returned to her cell where her swollen joints made it impossible to move from the straw bedding.

Meanwhile, Wangereck returned to lovely, recalcitrant Agnes...

(The tale of Agnes the miller's daughter continues next Friday. The majority of my research is indebted to the book High Road to the Stake: A Tale of Witchcraft by Michael Kunze, translated from German by William E. Yuill)

Header: Interrogation by Bessonov Nicolay via InquisitionArt (please note that Nicolay's art, while brilliant, is very realistic and very graphic; viewer discretion is advised)

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

In the early modern age, what we would now term vampires were virtually unknown. The pale, handsome, aristocrat with a hunger for human blood that exploded onto the archetypal playing field when Bram Stoker's Dracula made it big would have been completely foreign to those born prior to the Victorian era. Mention of that sparkly guy in that other book would probably have encouraged the same people to commit you.

What our ancestors may, or may not, have called vampires were far more akin to what we would now call ghouls or even zombies.They were usually envisioned as disheveled denizens of the churchyard who rose at night, hair flowing, breath foul and long, broken fingernails caked with mud. Unlike our later-day bloodsuckers, these original vampires usually had it in for their own families as well. Eschewing lovely, languid young women, they went for their mothers, wives, brothers and children. They weren't above disemboweling the family livestock, either.

An excellent example of this proto-vampire - the type that still roams the forests of the occasional rustic locale - can be found in this excerpt from Puritan Henry More's pamphlet An Antidote Against Atheism. Published in London in 1653, the pamphlet tells a series of grizzly, and allegedly true, tales of the supernatural that are quite literally meant to frighten the unbelieving back to church. Here, the story of a German man named Johannes Contius:

Immediately after the burial of this Contius, a citizen and alderman in Silesia near Poland, stories began to circulate of the appearance of a phantom which spoke to people in the voice of the man. Remarkable tales were told of the consumption of milk from jugs and bowls, of milk being turned to blood, of old men being strangled, children taken out of cradles, altar cloths being soiled with blood and poultry killed and eaten. 

Eventually it was decided to disinter the body of the alderman. It was found that all the bodies buried near that of Contius had become putrefied and rotten, but his skin was tender and florid, his joints by no means stiff and when a staff was put between his fingers, they closed around it and held it fast in their grip. He could open and shut his eyes, and when a vein in his leg was punctured the blood sprang out. This happened after the body had been in the grave for some six months.

Great difficulty was experienced when the body was cut up and dismembered by order of the authorities. But when the task was completed and the remains consigned to the flames, the specter ceased to molest the family or interfere with their slumbers or health.

Not only was this grandfather of the Dracula archetype more loathsome, but it took a good deal more effort to kill him as well. Vendredi heureux ~

Header: Death on a Pale Horse by Albert Pinkham Ryder via Wikimedia

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

In 1521, Pierre Bourgot of Poligny, France confessed to being a werewolf. He further went on to tell, in grisly detail, of breaking the neck of a nine year old girl and eating her intestines. Though Bourgot's confession is often said to have been free of coercion, the fear of witches, werewolves and other dark denizens of the underworld was high in the area at the time. It is hard to imagine, given the climate, that Bourgot was not at least threatened with torture.

But the writings of the judge who tried Bourgot and two compatriot werewolves, might lead to the conclusion that these people were affected by some sort of delusion that actually made them think they were wolves in the flesh. Here is the most compelling passage of Judge Jean Boin's notes:

I have seen the accused go on all fours in their cells just as they did when they were in the fields; but they said that it was impossible for them to turn themselves into wolves, since they had no more ointment and they had lost the power of doing it by being imprisoned. I have further noticed that they were all scratched on the face, hands and legs as if by bush or bramble, and that one of them bore hardly any resemblance to a man and struck with horror those who looked upon him.

The judge was quick to adjure that Bourgot and his fellows in transformation were none other than true werewolves. The men were sentenced to death and burned at the stake.

Header: The Werewolf by Lucas Cranach c 1521 via Wikipedia

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

On Tuesday, I mentioned that the plant calamus can be used to ward off poltergeists.  These "noisy ghosts" have troubled human beings at least since the dawn of civilization.  There are written records from ancient Sumer and Egypt that hint at people being burdened by the loud, boisterous activities of what we now call poltergeists.  It is popular to imagine now that all this bizarre rapping, tapping, poking and throwing of objects is kindled by psychological rage.  Usually, I hasten to add, that of an adolescent girl. 

Just as many of us scoff at our ancestors' opinions on things like this, I feel it is important to realize that they would dismiss our opinions in turn.  In many cases, our ancestors didn't try to define what the cause of the trouble was, they just reported what occurred. 

That is the case in this interesting passage from the writings of the right Reverend Joseph Glanvill.  Writing in 1662, the Reverend describes an incidence of poltergeist activity in the town of Tedworth, England.  None of it, I will say, sounds very pleasant:

Having one night played some little tricks at the master's bed, [the poltergeist] went into another bed, where one of the daughters lay.  There it passed from side to side, lifting her up as it passed.  At that time there were three kinds of noises in the bed.  They endeavored to thrust at it with a sword, but it still shifted and avoided the thrusts still getting under the child when they offered at it.  

The night after, it came panting like a dog out of breath.  Upon which, one took a bedstaff to knock it, but it was caught out of her hand and thrown away.  The room was presently filled with a bloomy noisome smell, and was very hot, though without a fire, in a very sharp and severe winter.  It continued in the bed panting and scratching an hour and a half, and then went into the next room, where it knocked a little and seemed to rattle a chain.  

At no point does Reverend Glanvill refer to the cause of this dreadful disturbance as anything but "it".  Though he does call upon God's mercy to request relief for the troubled family, he is not pinning the poltergeist activity on the Devil, the dead or even the girl who is most troubled by the problem.

What the poltergeist might be remains an unspoken mystery.  It is certainly one we can delve into in the future, as well.

Header: Untitled painting of a ghoulish entity by Jeffrey C. Jones via American Gallery

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

In Western mythos, ghouls are nasty creatures that terrify the living and consume the dead.  What exactly they might be is more often than not left to the imagination.  In some stories they are demonic creature, in others walking corpses and in still others a combination of the two.  Passing a cemetery at night – ill-advised in any situation – the traveler should avert his eyes to avoid seeing the hideous ghouls gnawing on the bones of the newly buried.

Ghouls actually come from Middle Eastern mythology, where they are the same as in western tales and yet different.  The word ghoul derives etymologically from the Arabic ghul.  This word may in turn come from the Sumerian galla, those demons of the underworld that dragged Inanna’s husband off to the realm of her sister Ereshkigal. 

In Arabic folklore, the ghoul is not just a haunt of cemeteries, deserts and wild places.  It may also take on the loveliest of forms and try to live among men.  A story illustrating this, called “The Merchant and the Demon”, may have been first written down in a Persian book which predates The Arabian Nights known as the Hazar Afsan.  Here, the poignancy of the ghoul’s netherworld existence is made clear in its relentless fight to live like a mortal.

An old merchant in the city of Baghdad began to believe that his days on earth were numbered.  He had only one child, a son, to whom the merchant would leave all his vast wealth.  The son was not yet married, however, and wanting to provide more than just material goods for him, the merchant arranged a lucrative marriage.

When the son was introduced to his fiancée, his heart fell.  Though she was from a good and wealthy family, she was not at all clever or pretty.  The son imagined a lifetime with this woman and decided that he could not face it.  He would need to reveal his feelings to his father, but how?  The old merchant was only doing what he thought best.  In despair, the young man roamed the outskirts of the city at dusk day after day.

One evening, when he was at his wits end, the young man heard a woman singing in the most beautiful voice.  He stopped, and peering over the vine-laden gate to his left he saw a maiden on the balcony of a small but tidy house.  She was the most charming thing the young man had ever seen and he stayed by the gate until her song was done. 

Evening after evening he stood outside the gate, falling in love with the young woman.  He began to ask around the neighborhood and found that she was a well bred young lady.  Her father, though wise and well respected, was poor.  The young man was too besotted to let this stop him.  He went to his father and proposed marriage to the young lady whose name he did not know.

At first, the merchant would not be convinced but, seeing his son’s sincerity and desire, he at last relented.  The old merchant contacted the wise man who, overjoyed at the thought of a wealthy match for his daughter, readily agreed to the nuptial arrangement.  The couple was introduced and the young woman returned the young man’s affection.  A sumptuous wedding feast was held, and the couple moved into the old merchant’s palatial home.

All went well for the first few weeks.  The young man did find it odd that his new bride would not join him at meals, but he shrugged this off as the jitters of a newly wed maiden.  One night, startled awake by the call of an owl, the young man was surprised to find himself alone in bed.  He waited for his wife to return, forcing himself to stay awake until she finally crept back into the room and under the sheet only moments before dawn.

The next night, the young man did not allow himself to dose and sure enough just at midnight his bride slipped out of their bed and left the room.  This happened night after night until finally the young man determined to follow her.  He found, to his amazement, that she left the house all together and hurried through the streets do Baghdad until she came to a cemetery not far from her father’s home.  She entered through the creaky gate and then descended into a sepulcher from which the young man could see the flickering light of oil lamps emanating.

Terrified but curious, the young man shored up his courage and approached the sepulcher.  He gazed down the steps and, to his revulsion and horror, saw his lovely bride at table with a company of hideous ghouls.  As they laughed and drank together, a fresh corpse was brought in and laid out on the table.  The young woman tore into it along with the ghouls, ripping it apart and tearing flesh from bone until nothing remained but the skeleton. 

Sated, the ghouls began to break up their feast.  The young man ran for home, jumped in bed, and pretended not to notice when his bride returned.  That night at supper, however, when the woman refused to partake of the meal before her, the young man snapped.  “Doubtless you prefer to take your wine and meat with the ghouls,” he said.

The woman stood up and left the house without a word.  The young man did not follow, assuming that his bride had returned to her own kind.  Instead he drank heavily, and fell into bed to sleep it off.  In the middle of the night he was awakened by a weight on his chest.  When he opened his eyes he was greeted by the sight of his bride, her fang-like teeth bared as she tried to rip open his throat.  The young man managed to fight her off and stab her to death.  She was buried the next day, in the cemetery where she had met her comrades.

Three nights later the young man’s bride returned to him.  Again, she tried to kill him, and again he fought her off.  When she ran away with a hideous shriek, the young man determined to end his nightmare.  With his father’s help, he had his wife’s tomb opened.  There she lay, fresh and pink as if she were only sleeping, with the stain of blood on her lips.

Father and son approached the young woman’s father, and he finally admitted that she had been of the walking dead all along.  She had expired from fever some years past and, after three nights, returned to his house where she resumed her prior life without ever speaking of the tomb.  He knew she was a ghoul, he acknowledged, but he did not have the heart to do away with her.

The young man, however, did.  He had her body burned to ashes and scattered what was left of her on the muddy surface of the Tigris river.  The young man married that less clever, less pretty girl, and he never ventured to the outskirts of Baghdad again.

Header: The Coffee Bearer by John Frederick Lewis c 1857