of temples were erected in Asclepius’ honour and for many years priest-physicians, known as Asclepiades, practised a popular form of healing in these sanctuaries.
Central to their practice was a belief in the transformational relationship between the life-force and its housing – the body. The key to curing the body lay primarily in re-activating the primary life-force. Prayers and sacrifices were offered, and the sick were required to undergo a period of seclusion during which their dreams were recorded and interpreted by the priest-physicians. These were used as a means of insight into the cause and cure of the affliction, in much the same way as the traditional shaman sought out the roots of illness by assuming a trance state. Records of the cases, symptoms, treatment and results were carved upon votive tablets and hung upon the walls of the temples. The recipes for the therapeutic perfumes and incense which were used to enhance the psychological state of the patients are also recorded on some of these tablets. By the fourth century BC this type of healing had spread all over the Hellenic world and in some respects it was the forerunner of modern psycho-therapeutic practice.
Dioscorides (c. AD 100), the most renowned writer on materia medica of this period, mentions over 700 plants which were in use at the time and it may be assumed that they formed the basis of the remedies used in the temples of Asclepius with their focus on psychic medicine. In his De Materia Medica, a work which comprised the combined herbal lore of the Egyptians and Greeks, he discusses the components of perfumes and their medicinal properties, as well as listing detailed recipes. For example, he describes the perfume ‘Susinum’, as containing cardamom, cinnamon, lilies, myrrh, saffron, balanus, wine and honey. Among other aromatics mentioned are: absinthe, anise, balm, basil, calamus, chenopodium, clove, coriander, cumin, fennel, frankincense, galbanum, garlic, hyssop, juniper, laurel, marjoram, melilot, mint, mugwort, myrtle, narcissus, nard, origanum, pennyroyal, pepper, pine, rock rose (labdanum), rose, rosemary, rue, sage, styrax, tarragon, thuja, thyme, turpentine, verbena, violet and wormwood.
However, the most extensive literary information about the early therapeutic use of aromatics and their effect on the mind comes from the classical writer, Theophrastus (c.300 BC). In his Enquiry into Plants, Theophrastus describes the properties of various oils and spices and explores the qualities of the odours themselves. He mentions specific herbs which affect the mental powers: two varieties of a plant known as strykhnos (a type of thorn apple), one which upsets the mental powers and ‘makes one mad’ and another which induces sleep. He also mentions the root of onotheras (oleander) which, when administered in wine, makes the ‘temper gentler and more cheerful’.
In ancient Greece, physicians who cured through the use of ‘aromatic unctions’ were known as Iatralypte. Scented ointments and oils were recognized as having great benefit on both the physical and psychological level. Bay laurel was used to produce a trance-like state, and roses, costus, myrtle and coriander had aphrodisiac properties, while myrrh and marjoram were considered soporific. The Greek physicians adopted many of the Egyptian perfume/remedy formulations, including ‘The Egyptian’ and ‘Kyphi’ – which were said to cure by ‘transfer of sympathy’. A substance such as ‘Kyphi’, which contained 16 different ingredients, could be used as a perfume, an incense or a medicine. It was said to be anti-septic, balsamic and an antidote to poison which, according to Plutarch, would ‘lull one to sleep, allay anxiety and brighten dreams … made of those things that delight most in the night’.7
Another such drug was the miraculous drug nepenthe, described in The Odyssey, that Helen of Troy (c. 2000 BC) is supposed to have obtained from Egypt. The drug has been the subject of much controversy – opinion varies as to whether it was concocted from opium, datura, cannabis, evening primrose or verbena and adiantum mixed:
And now she dropped into the wine they were drinking
a drug – an anodyne, bile-allaying, causing one to forget all ills …8
Helen and the other Homeric heroes and heroines had a credible pharmacopoeia, particularly for relieving pain and altering moods. Mention is made of hellebore, mandrake and poppy juice, inhaled from a steaming sponge. Poppy (later purified opium) was used as an anaesthetic, belladonna and mandrake as anti-spasmodics, cannabis as a euphoric and in the treatment of bronchitis. Myrrh also had its uses – added to wine, it comforted the mind and produced a trance-like state. This property was later utilized by a group of Jewish women known as ‘The Daughters of Jerusalem’, who offered victims due to be crucified a wine in which myrrh had been dissolved, to help relieve the pain. Frankincense dissolved in wine was also used as a general anaesthetic.
THE MIND/BODY SPLIT
Yet, it is with the Greeks that the first signs of a division between the mind and the body, the human and natural realm, became apparent. This development heralded the abandonment of ‘magical medicine’ in favour of ‘scientific materialism’. In his book The Return of the Goddess, E. Whitmont traces the evolution of consciousness from the magical, through the mythological to the mental phase – the age of reason.
The mythological phase of consciousness is a bridge from magical to mental functioning. As the hot lava of the magical level is touched by the first, cold air of the discerning mind, it gels into forms … It marks the transition from a gynolatric to an androlatric world and reaches back to the cult of the Goddess and her child consort who constantly dies and is reborn.9
In the magical and early mythological phase, dominated by worship of the Goddess, everything was seen as partaking of mana, everything was seen as sacred. Aromatics, with their inherent connection to the magical, non-material aspects of existence, were throughout this period regarded as valuable tools of transformation. But as rational, patriarchal consciousness gained the ascendancy, the non-rational, intuitive feminine principle was relegated, as was the woman’s role in healing. Subduing the passions meant repressing the feminine aspect and upholding the masculine ideal of ‘self-control’. Since odour provided a direct doorway through to the feminine part of the mind, the non-rational or ‘magical’ domain, the ancient preoccupation with aromatics as ‘mind-medicine’ also began to wane.
Hippocrates, the son of a priest-physician of Asclepius, was the first to formulate a new approach to medical practice. He separated medicine from priestcraft by maintaining that disease was not due to possession by evil spirits or the like, but to an imbalance of fluid matter related to internal, emotional and external factors. He developed a new theory of disease based on the four elements and the four humours. According to his theory, earth was associated with black bile, air with yellow bile, fire with blood and water with phlegm. One’s temperament and constitution were dependent upon the balance of these qualities. If the body was too cold and dry, for example, it indicated an excess of black bile, so there would be a tendency towards melancholy.
But just as physical illness could be seen to affect the mind, so stress and powerful emotions could influence the body and its behaviour:
Fears, shame, pain, pleasure, passion and so forth: to each of these an appropriate member of the body responds by its action. Instances are sweats, palpitation of the heart, and so forth.10
Hippocrates recognized a psychosomatic unity in mental and physical diseases, for he wrote: ‘In order to cure the human body it is necessary to have knowledge of the whole.’11 As part of his treatment, he prescribed aromatics, such as the famous megalion, made from myrrh, cinnamon and cassia, which, like the Egyptian ‘Kyphi’, functioned both as a physical remedy and as a mentally
