Love magic

Love magic is a type of magic attested in many cultures across time which is supposed to influence feelings of love and desire. A love potion (Latin: poculum amatorium; French: philtre d'amour) is a magical liquid which supposedly causes the drinker to become enamoured of the person who served it.

Quotes

• Where are the bay-leaves, Thestylis, and the charms?
  Fetch all; with fiery wool the caldron crown;
  Let glamour win me back my false lord's heart!
  • Theocritus, Idyll II; C. S. Calverley, Theocritus, 3rd ed. (1892)

• Si possent homines delenimentis capi,
  Omnes haberent nunc amatores anus.
  Aetas et corpus tenerum et morigeratio,
  Haec sunt uenena formosarum mulierum:
  Mala aetas nulla delenimenta inuenit.
  • If one might capture men with magic philtres,
    Lovers would swarm round every toothless crone.
    A dainty body, youth, obliging ways—
    These be the philtres handsome women use:
    Old age has none of these—and these are all.
  • Lucius Afranius, fragment of Vopiscus; Kirby Flower Smith, "Note on Satyros, Life of Euripides, Oxyr. Pap. 9, 157–8", American Journal of Philology, Vol. 34 (1913), p. 64
  • Cp. Euripides, Andromache, 205; Lucretius, IV, 1278; Tibullus, I, 5, 43 & I, 8, 23; Ovid, Medicamina Faciei Femineae, 35 & Ars Amatoria, II, 99; Plutarch, Moralia, 141B

• The craving Wife the force of Magick tries,
  And Philters for th’ unable Husband buys:
  The Potion works not on the part design’d;
  But turns his Brain, and stupifies his Mind.
  The sotted Moon-Calf gapes, and staring on,
  Sees his own Business by another done:
  A long Oblivion, a benumning Frost,
  Constrains his Head; and Yesterday is lost:
  Some nimbler Juice would make him foam, and rave,
  Like that Cæsonia to her Caius gave:
  Who, plucking from the Forehead of the Fole
  His Mother’s Love, infus’d it in the Bowl:
  The boiling Blood ran hissing in his Veins,
  Till the mad Vapour mounted to his Brains.
  The Thund’rer was not half so much on Fire,
  When Juno’s Girdle kindled his Desire.
  • Juvenal, Satire VI; John Dryden, The Satires of Juvenalis (1693)

• That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,
  Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
  Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took
  At a fair vestal thronèd by the west,
  And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
  As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;
  But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
  Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon,
  And the imperial votaress passed on,
  In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
  Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
  It fell upon a little western flower,
  Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
  And maidens call it love-in-idleness.
  Fetch me that flower; the herb I shew'd thee once:
  The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid
  Will make or man or woman madly dote
  Upon the next live creature that it sees.
  ...
  Having once this juice,
  I'll watch Titania when she is asleep,
  And drop the liquor of it in her eyes.
  The next thing then she waking looks upon,
  Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull,
  On meddling monkey, or on busy ape,
  She shall pursue it with the soul of love:
  And ere I take this charm from off her sight,
  As I can take it with another herb,
  I'll make her render up her page to me.
  • Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, 2:1
  • (The "fair vestal" is often identified as Elizabeth I, the "Virgin Queen")

• Now to the melting Kiss that sips
  The Jellyed Philtre of her Lips;
  • John Cleveland, "The Senses Festival" in Poems, 6th ed. (1685)

• If any Maid too much has granted,
    Her loss this Philtre will repair;
  This blooms a cheek where red is wanted,
    And this will make a brown girl fair!
  • "Monk" Lewis, "The Gypsy’s Song" in The Monk (1796)

• As for the spells practised by the women to bring young men under their control, they are infinite. Of such a nature are they that any such youth becomes mad, nor is he given any respite to think of anything else. ... Let this serve as a warning to our Europeans who intend to travel in India, so that they may not allow their liberty to be taken from them, for afterwards they will weep over their unhappy irremediable state. It happens often to one so bound by spells that after his lady-love has died he cannot endure the approach of any other woman, remaining ever overcome by sorrow for the defunct.
  • Niccolao Manucci (tr. W. Irvine), Vol. II, pp. 134–135. Quoted in Jivanji Jamshedji Modi, "A Few Stories of Witchcraft, Magic, &c., told by Niccolao Manucci in his “Storia do Mogor” or Mogul India (1653–1708)", Papers Read Before the Anthropological Society of Bombay (1918), p. 20