Divine Origin of the Craft of the Herbalist

This remarkable book traces the history of herbs far back into antiquity, and shows that the gods themselves were believed to be the original healers, not only by revealing the knowledge of their healing properties to mankind but by creating the sustaining herbs out of their own bodies.

Excerpt:

Chapter 1

THE OLD GODS AS HERBALISTS AND THEIR DIVINE MEDICINES

THE religious and magical writings of the great nations of antiquity, that is to say, the Chinese and the Indians, the Sumerians and Babylonians, the Persians and Assyrians (or, as we may now call them, the Akkadians), and the Egyptians and Nubians, contain abundant evidence that these primitive peoples believed that the first beings who possessed a knowledge of plants and their healing properties were the gods themselves. They further thought that the substances of plants were parts and parcels of the substances of which the persons of the gods were composed, and that the juices of plants were exudations or effluxes from them likewise. Some of the ancients thought that certain curative plants and herbs contained portions of the souls or spirits of the gods and spirits that were benevolent to man, and that poisonous plants were the abodes of evil spirits that were hostile to the Creator-inasmuch as they destroyed his handiwork, man-and to man and beast.

The oldest gods were too remote from the trivial affairs of the daily life of men to prevent accidents and calamities from overtaking them, but they placed in the hands of their vicars upon earth a certain kind of knowledge and power which, if rightly used, would enable them to annul and destroy the machinations of evil spirits, and bring to nought the works effected by them, and even to alter the courses of natural phenomena in heaven and upon earth. To this knowledge and power the unsatisfactory name of" Magic" has been given, and though primarily the word "Magic" only described the learning of the priests and sages of the Medes and Persians, who were famed for their skill in working enchantments, the word is now used to describe any supposed supernatural art, but more particularly any system of learning or art which claims to control the actions of spiritual or superhuman beings. "Magic" has always appealed greatly to men of all nations, for by the use of it a man ceases to be a supplicant of the gods, and is able to command and to force supernatural beings and things to do his will.

End Excerpt.

1927