Pick Me, Drink Me, Love Me: The Magic of Polish Aphrodisiacs
Since time immemorial, people have believed that some substances can help us fall in love, make someone else fall in love, increase sexual drive, or ensure that couples live happily ever after.
Pliny the Elder recommended ‘garlic pounded with fresh coriander and taken in neat wine’, while Casanova is said to have eaten 50 oysters a day. From pomegranate to opium, and from asparagus to chocolate (which spikes in sales every Valentine’s Day), there are countless ingredients people associate with love and sex. And although there might be some truth to the words of the esteemed British food critic Jay Rayner wrote – ‘there is only one truly ingestible aphrodisiac and that’s the grape, after it’s fermented’ – a variety of herbs, fruits and other plants have long made our imaginations run wild.
As ethnographer Zygmunt Gloger writes in his Encyklopedia Staropolska (Old-Polish Encyclopaedia, 1900-1903), in the chapter dedicated to rośliny miłośnicze or love-inducing plants:
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[In old manuscripts,] there’s talk about a certain lichen that hangs from the branches of dying trees in the shape of a beard and is called ‘Kiss Me’. Most often, ‘nasięźrzał’ is mentioned, the main herb of love – a small, peculiar fern […]. There’s also lovage and the highly magical bog-star. In mediaeval gardens, the rose of love was grown, named ‘fioletka’ from the Latin ‘philirosa’. […] In the gardens of noble manors, the flower of love (‘flos amoris’) was also grown, called ‘brunat’ or ‘szarłat’ (amaranth) at the time….
Trans. NMR
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Kupala Night, photo: Przemysław Graf / Agencja Gazeta
And so, let’s take a look at some of these aphrodisiacs we find in Polish folk customs and beliefs. Many of them are somehow associated with Kupala Night, or the Slavic midsummer. Most of them are documented in the 2016 book Rośliny w Wierzeniach i Zwyczajach Ludowych (Plants in Folk Beliefs & Customs), which was edited by Monika Kujawska, Łukasz Łuczaj, Joanna Sosnowska and Piotr Klepacki. This fascinating work is based on the Interwar research of Polish folklorist and ethnographer Adam Fischer (1889-1943).
Rośliny w Wierzeniach i Zwyczajach Ludowych fits very well into the tradition of Polish herbariums – which began in the 16th and 17th century, with works such as O Ziołach i Mocy Ich (On Herbs and Their Power) by Stefan Falimierz and Zielnik (Herbarium) by Szymon Syreniusz. The research continued in the 19th and 20th centuries thanks to the work of ethnographers and Slavists such as Oskar Kolberg (1814-1890), Zygmunt Gloger (1845-1910), Aleksander Bruckner (1856-1939), and Kazimierz Moszyński (1887-1959).
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Lovage, photo: Paweł Małecki / Agencja Gazeta
Let’s start with lovage. Without a doubt, this is the plant Poles most often associate with aphrodisiacs. Its Polish name – or actually its names, since there are countless variations such as lubszyk, lubszczyk, lubieszczyk, and lubieniec – comes from the Latin Levisticum officinale. And yet, just as in English, it’s associated with affection (lubić means to like).
Lovage is a very common herb, which was used – and is used still today – for its rich umami flavour (adding lovage to your broth is a game-changer!). In the past, it was also believed to awaken love and lust in a potential mate. Lovage and hazel have been used in herbal baths to ensure future happiness. Girls who were beautiful and admired were believed to have been bathed in lovage when they were little. They also carried lovage sprigs around in order to quickly find a husband. Young men, on the other hand, when bathed in one of these herbs, would easily impress any young woman they admired.
In the vicinity of Kalisz in Greater Poland, there was a custom to pick lovage at midnight during the full moon, saying: ‘Lubieniec, I pick you with my five fingers and my sixth hand; let people chase my friendship right away’.
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Adder's tongue, photo: Flpa / East News
Ethnographers quote a very similar phrase referring to ophioglossum, or adder’s tongue fern (its Polish name, nasięźrzał, comes from the phrase ‘na siebie spojrzał’ – ‘he looked at himself’). According to Zygmunt Gloger, it was also supposed to be picked at midnight, and in quite a peculiar way:
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People say, that when a girl wants a boy to love her, she needs to treat this fern in a very particular manner. After finding the right spot to pick nasięźrzał during the day, she has to go back there at midnight. She has to be naked and pick it up turning her back to the plant, so that she’s not kidnapped by the devil.
Trans. NMR
After picking it, the woman should recite the magical spell – often similar to the one about lovage, cited above – and rub it all over her skin to make herself more attractive.
The mythical fern flower, which only appears on Kupala night and can only be found by exceptionally virtuous people, was also a part of lovers’ magic. It was also possibly quite effective –since searching for it was one of few occasions when it was accepted for boys and girls to walk around together unattended by chaperones or elders.
The symbolism of the fern flower is so strong that it hasn’t been forgotten over the centuries. Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, the 19th-century Polish writer and chronicler of Polish history and legends, wrote a fable about it. The songwriter Jonasz Kofta also composed lyrics to a beautiful song performed by the original Polish girlband Alibabki entitled Kwiat Jednej Nocy (The One-Night Flower).
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Vinca, photo: Wacław Klag / East News
Vinca, known in Polish as barwinek, has been known as an aphrodisiac since the late 17th century, when the translation of a work entitled De Secretis Mulierum (Women’s Secrets) was published in Polish as O Sekretach Białogłowskich. This work, often attributed to the 13th-century philosopher Albertus Magnus, but actually composed by one of his followers, discusses sexuality and reproduction. While astrological influences on the fetus are discussed in the most detail, the effect of plants on lovers is also described, and vinca is one of the recommended stimulators.
As Fisher states, this was in tune with folk imagery from Southern Poland, which also considered vinca to be an aphrodisiacum. In the Małopolska region, near Kraków, evergreen vinca leaves were used to make flower crowns for the bride and her maids. It was also used it in the ‘wedding twig’ (rózga weselna, once used instead of the bouquet), the ‘wedding wreath’ (the symbol of virginity), and as decoration on wedding breads.
There were even love songs about barwinek, such as: ‘Jasinku, Jasinku, gdzieś narwał barwinku’ (‘Oh Johnny, Johnny, where did you pick the vinca’), sung by women from Andrychów in Lesser Poland.
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The pansy flower is the protagonist of a folk tale about love as well, although not a happy one. Named bratek (little brother) in Polish, it is believed to be the fruit of forbidden love between a brother and a sister. As Kazimierz Moszyński wrote:
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Among the non-magical plants, which play an important role in the rituals, especially pansies and ‘melampyrum nemorosum’ deserve a closer look. In a way, these herbs replace one another amongst the people, as they are both characterised by a two-color bloom. In both cases, there is a combination of light yellow with dark blue or purple. Both pansies and melampyrum are believed, amongst the majority of northern Slavs, to have originated from the sinful love between a brother and a sister. Hence, in parts of Polesie and Belarus, a well-known ballad was sung about them, containing the theme of incestuous love between siblings. […] In some areas where the tradition of human origin of pansies is alive, yellow petals are considered to be the transformed brother and blue petals are considered to be the sister.
Trans. NMR
Rosemary, mint, beech & more
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Rosemary, photo: Justyna Rojek / East News
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Blossom, oh my rosemary
I’ll visit the girl, I’ll visit the only one
I’ll ask her.
Trans. NMR
These lyrics, to one of the most famous Polish soldiers’ songs from World War I refer to rosemary. An aromatic and commonly used herb, it was an important wedding symbol, but it was also used in love magic. According to Oskar Kolberg’s findings from the Poznań area, if a woman is able to put a rosemary sprig under the collar of her beloved’s shirt, she can be sure he will love her back.
When someone is infatuated, in Polish, we still say that he or she ‘feels the mint’ for the object of their affection (czuje do kogoś miętę). Although mint isn’t necessarily considered an aphrodisiac, it often forms part of romantic scenes described by Polish writers:
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Pan Tadeusz, dir. Andrzej Wajda, photo: Canal+ Polska
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Fragrant plants were lined up in a row: geranium, carnation, aster, and violet. The young man spots new marvels down below: right by the stream, where once there was a thicket full of nettles, now a garden thrived, crisscrossed by tiny paths, with clumps of mint and English grass […].
Trans. Leonard Kress
In Silesia, beech is also used in love magic. To charm someone into falling in love with you, you need to find a beech tree in the woods which grows close to a fir, so that their branches touch when the wind blows. Then, from the place where trees ‘meet’, you need to take some bark, burn it, brew it and give to your favourite person – who’ll inevitably fall madly in love with you right away.
We hope that with all this information we provided, you are now ready for Valentine’s Day. If not, better yet: wait for Kupala Night – it’s in June, when many of the plants mentioned above can be found growing in European forests.
And if you’re very lucky, maybe you can even find the legendary fern flower…
Written by Natalia Mętrak-Ruda, Jan 2021
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