CHAPTER XMODERN TIMES

Eros is triumphant in the twentieth century, in every social frame, in every milieu, and in every country. Henri Bergson, the French philosopher who is associated with the concept ofl’élan vital—the vital urge, or, as George Bernard Shaw termed it, the life force, declared that this twentieth century has become aphrodisiac.

The love-potion is not a matter of academic history only: it is still flourishing. It still has its devotees. It is still encountered in obscure places, where furtive secrecy is of the essence of the amatory preparations. In the folk mind in particular the love-potion can still be efficacious, sometimes grim in its attendant effects, but unquestionably an accepted and often employed means of directing erotic feelings, imposing amatory impulses, on a beloved victim, on the indifferent libertine, on the wayward and flighty girl.

Ottokar Nemecek in hisDie Wertschätzung der Jungfräulichkeit(Verlag A. Sexl. Vienna, 1953) gives interesting instances of erotic practices, rituals, religious ceremonials, culled from many ethnic groups. In Fernando Po, for example, a prayer is offered: May the woman and the manbecome as erotically entwined as the creepers in the forest entwine around the tree trunks.

In Ethiopia a phallic provocation was the wearing on the head of a band to which a horn was attached. Similarly among many African tribes, where the chief wore a phallus-crown with the same intention. As in Hellenic antiquity, in ancient India and in modern India also, the phallus is the symbol of might, of masculine sovereignty, of cosmic creativeness.

Such customs and rites, such implicit amatory instigations, have not died out. They appear in many forms and guises, sometimes decorative, on other occasions in fanciful culinary shapes. Amulets and figures in phallic and genital form were sold, as late as 1894, in the shops of Tiflis, in Caucasia, and in the United States migrants from the Central European countries still reproduce, in their bake shops, festive genital formations.

Traditional potions, aphrodisiacs, and similar means of arousing genital impulses are in use even at the present time. Carrots, for instance, were long listed by the Arabs as a stimulant. In medieval Spain they were commonly consumed for such a purpose. And in the United States carrots are still reputed to have a marked erotic potency.

Current magazines of the more popular sort, contemporary drug stores have their amatory allurements. Some periodicals advertise exotic perfumes, sultry essences, seductive cosmetics and similar feminine accessories, or insidious unguents and lotions, whose avowed purpose is to attract men in an amorous direction. In the drug stores, hormones and gland extracts, transplantations and rejuvenative manipulations and operations are publicized for similar purposes.

Among some primitive tribal communities in New Guinea, powerful love charms take the form of genital secretions.Such secretions are then used in magic ceremonials affecting both man and beast: the underlying intent being procreational encouragement.

Virility and its concomitants have no frontiers, no temporal restrictions. In Central India, in areas that have not yet been significantly affected by the encroachments of modern ways and procedures, virility has not become a tribal or personal problem. It is so normal, in fact, and sexual indulgence is so released from emotional or social inhibitions and taboos that erotic encouragement in the shape of unguents, liquids, potions is rare: although there is, as a prelude to erotic excitations, a preliminary mamillary exercise.

In the Orient, especially in the islands off South Eastern Asia, erotic frustrations may be solved by resorting to the tribal magician, who holds the communal secrets, the traditional ways of the society, within his memory and his jurisdiction. A maiden may be recalcitrant to the advances of her lover. He will then approach the magician, who will present him with an amulet, a disc or token. The girl who has amatory intentions in the direction of a particular male will likewise be given a disc to wear, on which there is a design of a crescent moon, a moon-coin, as it is termed, fashioned, according to indigenous traditions, by the ancient gods themselves, indulgent to help mortals in their erotic perplexities.

In extremely stubborn cases, love charms associated with magic incantations and formulas are brought into operation: certain fruits, such as bananas or cocoanuts, or even a child’s tears.

The love-potion, in respect of its ingredients, is often conditioned by geographical situation. The flora and fauna of a particular region become the elements for the amatorygoblet. Mediterranean reeds, roots, nuts, and plants naturally become useful for the philtre. It is only in extreme cases that exotic items, rare drugs, inaccessible roots are the object of any particular composition. So, in Sikkim, a state situated in the Eastern Himalayan region, water in which a bird called indigenously Ken fo, or a chameleon, has defecated, forms a potent love philtre. So powerful, in fact, that it produces a condition of priapism in the male and nymphomania in the female.

Absinthe is a popular drink in European countries, predominantly in France. It is a liqueur distilled from a bushy plant, that has a silk-like stem and small yellow flowers. The plant is found among the valleys and foothills of Europe and on the North African littoral, and prefers to flourish among hedges and ditches.

The botanical name of the plant is Artemisia absinthium: that is, wormwood. Wormwood itself was sacred to the Greek divinity Diana, who was also Artemis: hence the designation Artemisia.

Absinthe itself, distilled from the plant, is a green liqueur to which are added aniseed oil, marjoram, and similar aromatic elements.

Used regularly, absinthe is not only dangerous, but when taken in large quantities produces insanity. Yet it has been reputed to stimulate amatory excitation.

Many noted French writers, poets, and painters have been addicted to the drink, notably the artist Amedeo Modigliani.

The drink was first concocted by a Frenchman, a certain Dr. Ordinaire, who resided in Switzerland. In 1797 the recipe was sold to a M. Pernod. The name Pernod has since then been continuously associated with the drink.

In the hinterland of folklore, in antique traditional sagas transmitted through the ages to recent times, in areas thathave been for centuries more or less unaffected by developments, changes, and innovations, that is, largely, in rural and secluded regions, old beliefs still cling. Old ways are still followed. Old remedies, beverages, potions are still used with anticipations of effective results. This view is illustrated in the French film entitled L’Éternel Retour. As its pervasive theme it stressed the rooted belief, among the French peasantry, in the efficacy of the love-potion.

Currently, a great deal of writing appears constantly in the press, in learned journals, in periodicals of a professional nature, and in complete encyclopedias, all devoted to erotic studies, analyses of society in terms of sexual life, and investigations into sexual morality and sexual abnormalities.

In France, the Polish sponsored Biblioteki Kultury has been established. This Press has recently produced a study of Pornography and its involvements, by Witold Gombrowicz. In France, too, many surveys on erotic practices in the field of films, the stage, art have likewise made their appearance, in addition to a History of Eroticism. Lavishly produced folios are also on the market, in which maisons closes are the subject of detailed treatment and description. Their policies and mores are freely expounded, and the texts are reinforced with photographs and illustrations of persons and places and towns, along with paintings by recognized artists.

A major project in this field is the Illustrated Encyclopedia Erotica, to which a number of noted European sexologists and erotologists have contributed. Published in ten volumes, under the sponsorship of the Institute for Sexual Research of Vienna, this comprehensive compendium is now reprinted in a new edition by the Verlag für Kulturforschung of Hamburg.

There are some 22,000 articles and 12,000 illustrations. The contents range over all aspects of human sexual activity, in their relation to psychology and biology, medicineand jurisprudence, sociology and psychotherapy. Folklore and ethnography, marriage, prostitution, fertility rites, rites of initiation, the deviations of society, secret amatory sects, flagellation and biographical memoirs comprise the introductory matter.

Other subjects discussed and examined include: erotic sculpture, sex mythology, criminology and forensic medicine as they affect perversions, and contemporary developments along the lines of research.

Liquid and also solid nourishment, when essentially compounded of wholesome ingredients, will unquestionably, in the contemporary consensus of medical opinion, promote amatory capacity.

To go one step further, any nourishing food or beverage will, to the extent of its wholesomeness as an acceptable and normally consumed commodity, contribute to the general organic euphoria of the subject, and consequently to his physiological vigor.

In a general sense, therefore, the fantastic or repellent compounds, brews and stews, lotions, electuaries, ointments, and philtres that, for long centuries, were transmitted either in folk legend or imprinted in grave treatises, are, according to medical authority, brusquely deprecated, and in many cases entirely discounted.

Yet, as is well known, legend and saga, folklore and tradition, often retain within themselves accumulated knowledge based on tested validities.

With the increase in experimentation along medical, pharmaceutical, and culinary lines, there is a corresponding emphasis on food and preparations that promote physiological well-being and act as tonics and stimulants.

For these purposes, extracts of the gonads or sex-glands, and pituitary extracts, are medically recommended in certain cases of physiological weakness.

In a more gastronomic direction, there are wholesome broths and soups, such as: mushroom soup, lentil soup, celery soup, as well as salads, lobster dishes, and curries: all of which contain elements that are traditionally reputed to aid in increasing vigor.

In a novel by John Brophy entitledWindfall, and published in London in 1951, the hero arrives in New York, where he is confronted with the fact that the drive for erotic aids is as urgent as ever:

It was true: where Broadway converged on, before it crossed, the undeviating straightness of Sixth Avenue, the wide double roadway was surrounded by theatres, cinemas, hotels and restaurants and newspaper offices, indiscernible behind huge, colored, epileptically moving signs advocating, pictorially or by blunt lettered exhortation, whiskies and pea-nuts, cigarettes, motor-cars, night-clubs, patent medicines and proprietary brands of sexual stimulants.

In the same novel there is a description of a New York Night Club, the Freudian Frolics. Here are presented amatory stimulants and visual and palpable inducements in a contemporary setting, basically identical with the Aristophanic performances, the satires of Lucian, the sketches of Alciphron and the more boisterous narratives of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and, dominantly, eighteenth century France. The scene is introduced with a generalization that marks the activities of the place:

Beyond the swing-doors almost every erotic taste not utterly perverted could be if not gratified at least stimulated ... the majority made straight for the primary erotogenic zones.

Again, there is a wildly farcical description of amatory reinforcements. The character concerned is a degeneratemulti-millionaire, an American named Mirabel Jones XVIII. His problem is to achieve an heir to his vast interests. For this purpose, he is undergoing a multiple variety of treatments at the hands of his physician and his psychiatrist. He is subjected to daily injections. He consumes all sorts of tablets. He is regulated by calisthenic exercises, by vitamin pills, by radio-therapy, by baths. All these various means are regimented methodically into prospective erotic channels. As a climax, he travels constantly, from one country to another, to secure a climate favorable to his condition, from South America to California to England.

The possibilities of the love-potion still intrude into modern times. In a series of light sketches of Scottish life, entitledChristina, the author, J. J. Bell, presents young Christina herself, who is living with an aunt who runs a small village store. To further a possible courtship between the aunt and the commercial traveler Mr. Baldwin, Christina conceives a plan to help the shy and hesitant Miss Purvis. The book itself was published about forty years ago:

Christina greatly enjoyed looking at the shops without supervision or restriction. She had made up her mind to purchase a gift for her aunt, whose birthday fell about a month later.

Christina enters a barber’s shop, because she has seen the ideal gift:

She moistened her lips, and, in a tremulous whisper, said—

“I want a—a potion.”

“A lotion, miss?”

“A potion.”

“A lotion—for the hair?” He smiled dreadfully—so it seemed to Christina. Once more she all but fled.

Christina had been reading about potions, in a periodical devoted to love stories. She tells her aunt, Miss Purvis, about it. “It was a magic potion. A lass got it frae a—a sosserer to gi’e to a young man that wasna heedin’ aboot her. She gi’ed it to him, an’ it charmed him, an’ afore she could say ‘Jack Robinson’ he was coortin’ her like fun, an’ their nuptails was celebrated in—”

Now Christina is ready to employ the same means in behalf of her aunt.

To the barber, then, Christina whispers: “A potion. What—what’s the price o’ yer—yer Spirit o’ Love?”

The barber, momentarily nonplussed, finally smiled with understanding:

A moment later he was brushing a cobweb from a small bottle containing a yellowish fluid. A soiled and faded label of floral design was affixed to the bottle, and on it appeared, as in letters of fire, the words “Spirit of Love.”

“One shilling, miss.”

“Would it—charm a lady?”

“Certainly! I have sold hundreds of bottles of ‘Spirit of Love’ to gentlemen for that very object. Charms them like magic!”

“Like magic?”

“Like nothing else, miss. Do you wish the bottle for a sick friend? Just so! In that case a few drops on the pillow will prove a real charm.”

Christina nearly dropped. It was too wonderful!

He must be a sosserer!

Christina administers the potion in her own way. While her aunt is asleep, she pours a few drops on the pillow, but, disturbed by the sudden squalling of a cat, lets the phial fall. It empties itself on the pillow.

The aunt, a sceptic, throws the empty bottle into the fire, with the remark “Spirit of Fiddlesticks!”

Experimentation and research in the direction of rejuvenating processes and invigorating vigor continue all the time, without cessation. Some procedures involve surgical operations: others are associated with the administration of various hormones and extracts and glandular compositions. Proprietary medicines are on the market, particularly in France and in England. An advertisement in a weekly magazine advocates The Royal Jelly Rejuvenating Food Supplement.

In the early nineteenth century, in Edinburgh, there were on sale Luckenbooth Brooches. They were in the nature of amatory periapts. These brooches were sometimes engraved with a lover’s initials. Or a plea or an amorous inducement might appear thereon, such as:

Let me and theemost happy be.

Let me and thee

most happy be.

Or:

My heart ye have and thir I creve.I fancie non but the alon.Wrong not the heart whose joy thou art.

My heart ye have and thir I creve.

I fancie non but the alon.

Wrong not the heart whose joy thou art.

Analogous to philtres and similar amatory concoctions is the indirect stimulus derived from reading teacups. A popular Scottish weekly paper says: It’s fun, and there’s a good deal in it, too, if the signs are read aright.

In relation to Love and Friendship, the column declares that a ‘human’ figure seen in the form of the tea leaves, whether man or woman, or the outline of a letter of thealphabet, indicates that the love and feeling of affection will concern the person whose name begins with the tea leaf letter.

This is, in essence, an innocuous variation of an amatory inducement.

Among contemporary proprietary preparations reputed to have amatory value is aphrodisin. This is a compound of yohimbine, a substance indigenous to Central Africa and derived from the bark of the yohimbe tree, along with extract of miura pauma, aronacein, and other ingredients.

There are many instances of women, concubines, mistresses, and harlots, who have become historically famous or notorious through their own personal practices, or for the influence they have exerted socially and politically. A French courtesan who rose from minor and humble circumstances was Céleste Mogador, who was born in 1824 and who died in 1909. She was a dancer, an actress, and an equestrienne: and ultimately became the Comtesse Lionel de Moreton de Chabrillan. She gained some additional réclame by the publication of her Memoirs.

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), the French poet, in hisLes Fleurs du Mal, has a sequence of poems on passion, macabre, violent, distorted, filled with fantastic imagery, touched with the symbol of death, and putrefaction, and unsated human longings. There are hymns to beauty that border on disaster and cruelty, on ugliness and inhumanity. There is a paean to exotic perfumes, a laudation of a woman’s dark tresses. But these poetic effusions are stamped with bitterness and a sense of reality aghast, unholy revelations. There appears an entire distant, remote world, far-flung and almost extinct, where the poet sees an aromatic forest, where he dwells in the woman’s depths. She pleads with her lover, for she is unsated and insatiable. He peersthrough those two dark eyes, the windows of your soul. O ruthless demon, he clamors, pour less flame upon me. I am not the dread and furtive Styx, capable of embracing you nine times.

A putresent carcass, seen on a summer morning, is a poetic memento mori, like an Egyptian skeleton at the feast, a warning that lust and beauty and passion have their brief day and are grimly evanescent, and an indirect injunction, on the poet’s part, to adhere to the Roman poet Horace’s hedonisticcarpe diem.

InThe VampireBaudelaire exclaims at being enslaved by a hateful but alluring woman, while in another piece he stresses the potency of perfumes.

These poems, then, symbolize, in a comprehensive sense, the intrusions of lust and passion in human relationships, and the intimate contacts and associations of these lusts with malefic forces and ominous impacts.

Ballads, street songs, and broadsides, belonging to a wide and usually comparatively uncultured level, in all ethnic communities, deal largely with physiological and scatological functions, sexual and erotic intrusions and experiences and experiments, without restraint, without reflection and without moralizing corollaries thereon, but with a forthright, direct verbal impact. Hence there are, dispersed through such unsophisticated uncontrived versified episodes, many matters relating to amatory enticements and means of erotic provocations and challenges affecting both male and female, in all types of occupation, in many gradations of society, at every age level, from young and urgent milkmaids and their swains to debauched lechers and libertines.

Pastoral pieces, soldiers’ rollicking ditties, sailors’ chanties, all the rhythmic, chthonic, usually crude but outspoken exuberance of folk ways and currents, of peasantry and burgher, tinker and servant, tipplers, ploughmen, and innkeepers—thatis the colorful and various component of the popular muse.

Sometimes the erotic impact is suggested by indirection: sometimes by an innocuous expression used in a double entendre context. Sometimes the idiom has the immediacy of the Greek functional and genital significance exemplified in the Aristophanic comedies.

Rakes and panders rub shoulders with guileless innocence and feminine wiles, with lordly arrogance, authority, and wealth, with humility and beggarliness, with want and starvation. And pervasive through all the insinuating permutations of street life and market place, of court and manor, of fields and ocean, battle and stress, there runs the urgency of amatory attraction: lust and passion and allurement, and the means of satisfying and sating and continuing and maintaining such erotic capacities, such animal lustfulness and unbridled salaciousness and lewd ardor, prurience and perverted depravities.

Yet there are instances, sudden outbursts, occasional spurts of deeper feelings, brusque awareness: some latent though possibly dishonored principle, a touch of wry humor, in which blatant reality and some remote consciousness of betterment peer through the vernacular crudities.

In one collection of such ballads, entitledDrolleries, the amatory theme returns again and again, always lusty, always sensual. The burgess who is off to the fair while her good man is absent from home: the coy mistress: the country maid on a visit to the City: the old lecherous beau unrepentantly persistent: the lustful squire, the libidinous courtier, the wayward maid: widows and lords, fiddlers and coopers, cobblers and miners, merchants all conniving in adultery and incest, in concocting potions for reluctant lovers, in beseeching hesitant favors, in besmirching marriage and domesticity and exultantly and indifferently glorifying all the varieties of amatory diversions and perversions.

InToday, a popular British weekly magazine, an article appeared early in 1962, by a woman, accusing the contemporary man of having lost his virility. She spoke of ‘sexually moribund men,’ of man’s failure, in consequence, as a marriage partner, and of his amatory deficiencies.

A response to these challenges appeared in a later issue. It was written by a factory worker who, from his own experience and that of his acquaintances and fellow-workers, refuted the first attack. He denied physical exhaustion. He asserted that the typical worker, by virtue of his constant application to his job, is kept continuously physically fit and capable. His knowledge, too, of the range of amatory procedures and practices has been widened by war contacts, by interchange of views and attitudes with many groups, foreigners, visitors, refugees. He added that the freedom of expression on such matters was an additional encouragement toward enlightenment. If anything, this typical worker concluded, it was the woman who was hesitant, indifferent, and un-cooperative.

In Gilbert and Sullivan’sThe Sorcerer, a farcical treatment of the Black Arts, there is a scene involving love philtres and their effects:

Mr. Wells: Love-philtre—we’ve quantities of it ...

Alexis: I have sent for you to consult you on a very important matter. I believe you advertise a Patent Oxy-Hydrogen Love-at-first-sight Philtre?

Mr. Wells: Sir, it is our leading article. (Producing a phial).

Alexis: Now I want to know if you can confidently guarantee it as possessing all the qualities you claim for it in your advertisement?

Mr. Wells: Sir, we are not in the habit of puffing our goods. Ours is an old-established house with a large family connection, and every assurance held out in the advertisement is fully realized. (Hurt).

Aline (aside): Oh, Alexis, don’t offend him! He’ll change us into something dreadful—I know he will!

Alexis: I am anxious from purely philanthropical motives to distribute this philtre, secretly, among the inhabitants of this village. I shall of course require a quantity. How do you sell it?

Mr. Wells: In buying a quantity, sir, we should strongly advise you taking it in the wood, and drawing it off as you happen to want it. We have it in four-and-a-half and nine gallon casks—also in pipes and hogsheads for laying down, and we deduct 10 per cent for prompt cash.

Alexis: I should mention that I am a Member of the Army and Navy Stores.

Mr. Wells: In that case we deduct 25 per cent.

Alexis: Aline, the villagers will assemble to carouse in a few minutes. Go and fetch the tea-pot.

Aline: But, Alexis—

Alexis: My dear, you must obey me, if you please. Go and fetch the tea-pot.

Aline (going): I’m sure Dr. Daly would disapprove of it.

(Exit Aline).

Alexis: And how soon does it take effect?

Mr. Wells: In twelve hours. Whoever drinks of it loses consciousness for that period, and on waking falls in love, as a matter of course, with the first lady he meets who has also tasted it, and his affection is at once returned. One trial will prove the fact.

Enter Aline with large tea-pot.

Alexis: Good: then, Mr. Wells, I shall feel obliged if you will at once pour as much philtre into this tea-pot as will suffice to affect the whole village.

Aline: But bless me, Alexis, many of the villagers are married people!

Mr. Wells: Madam, this philtre is compounded on the strictest principles. On married people it has no effectwhatever. But are you quite sure that you have nerve enough to carry you through the fearful ordeal?

Alexis: In the good cause I fear nothing.

Mr. Wells: Very good, then, we will proceed at once to the Incantation.

In the South Sea Islands amatory aids and spells are still in vogue. The following love incantation involves the love-sick girl Taratake:

Mr. Hair-of-his-head, Mr. Hair-of-his-head,Go you to him, to Taratake!Whisper my name when he dreams,when he wakes.When he walks among the women.Draw him by the hand,Draw him by the foot,Draw him by the heart and entrails to me.He thinks only of me;He dies for love of me;There is no woman for him but me,no love but mine,no love-making but mine.He comes to me, he comes, he is here with me,With me, Laughter-of-Waves-o-o-o!

Mr. Hair-of-his-head, Mr. Hair-of-his-head,

Go you to him, to Taratake!

Whisper my name when he dreams,

when he wakes.

When he walks among the women.

Draw him by the hand,

Draw him by the foot,

Draw him by the heart and entrails to me.

He thinks only of me;

He dies for love of me;

There is no woman for him but me,

no love but mine,

no love-making but mine.

He comes to me, he comes, he is here with me,

With me, Laughter-of-Waves-o-o-o!

As recently as 1956, in theFlute of Sand, Lawrence Morgan describes an experience among the Ouled-Naïl dancers of North Africa:

Interwoven into their lives were sorcery, black magic, and, most common of all, the use of love-philtres with which they believed they could enslave any man. In the pot of mint tea in Yacourte’s room had been aphiltre intended to help the erring lover to make up his mind.

The term bayadère is derived from the Portuguesebaladeira, associated with bailar, to dance. Originally, the expression was applied to a Hindu dancing girl, noted for erotic performances. The bayadère, in fact, like the nautsch dancers, could be equated with prostitution.

The European newspapers and magazines, notably in Germany, Austria, and France, until quite recent times, advertised, in the interests of readers, all kinds of elixirs, remedies, philtres, concoctions, and unguents, to correct sexual deficiencies or to promote physiological capacity. There was a cream called Vigor. Dragées des Fakirs were ‘scientific and immediate.’ A Parisian aphrodisiac powder announced itself as ‘durable.’ It could be forwarded by mail, from the Scientific Laboratories. Clients could be interviewed at specified hours. Renox was a concoction that was urged very persuasively: so too with the contrivance Heureka. There was another contrivance called Samson, implicitly suggesting a Biblical valor. Sexine and Stimulol andDragées de Vénuswere both harmless and effective, according to the laudatory testimony of the manufacturers themselves.

There was a highly advertised preparation, called Testogan, that implied stimulating amatory reactions.

A contrivance under the name of Amor Star was formerly advertised in Europe as very effective, making the agent another Casanova. In Paris, a preparation called Mono promised rejuvenation for the male.

Many European restaurants practiced a dual role. Inaddition to their culinary purpose, they were in a basic sense amatory rendez-vous. During the First World War German eating-places, variety halls, dance palaces, and cabarets advertised, with appropriately alluring illustrations:

Wein, Weib Gesang

In other instances, Teutonic gaiety was eulogized as being highly imitative of Gallic ways.Leben à la Paris—ran the posters:

DamenklubMaskenbälleLustiger AbendCafé Dorian Gray.

Damenklub

Maskenbälle

Lustiger Abend

Café Dorian Gray.

These spots were instigations to perversions, amatory practices, and promiscuities.

Numerous collections of erotica exist in varying degrees of seclusion, in libraries, state archives, and museums. To a large extent, such compilations were made during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The bibliophile, on his death, usually bequeathed his books and manuscripts and erotic objects and artifacts to a state or national library. Among English specialists in this genre were James Campbell, the pseudonym of J. C. Reddie, William S. Potter, Henry Spencer Ashbee, better known under his pseudonym of Pisanus Fraxi. In France, the Bibliothèque Nationale, in its section known as L’Enfer, houses a large collection of erotic matter.

In cosmopolitan cities like London and New York, the sex theme is predominant in certain types of rather furtive bookstores. They deal largely with paperbacks, stressing sexual relationships, erotic magazines, and treatises, bothauthoritatively written and, in some cases, barely literate, on erotic mores and variations of perversions. The paperbacks, flaunting jackets that play a significant role in the attraction of the text, range from lust to rape, from masochism to tribadism, with all possible intermediate permutations. Such fictional productions not infrequently transcend the ingenuities of the Marquis de Sade.

Contemporary witches, sorceresses, and spell-binders of varying degrees of reliability still use, as love potions, old, traditional ingredients. One of these is hippomanes. Hippomanes was well known among the ancients. It is a fleshy excrescence that appears on a foal’s head at birth. When dried, and swallowed by the person in search of the amatory excitation, it produces, according to these dark practitioners, a result that cannot be questioned.

The erotic merit of this equine aposteme is confirmed by a number of authorities, from Vergil himself, the Roman epic poet, to Pausanias, the second century A.D. Greek geographer, and to the sixteenth century Neapolitan alchemist and occultist Gambattista della Porta.

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