Of Basil and Venom, Part 2
This writing was sent to my email list back on May 7, 2023. They always get my booking link and my writing first (and some pieces I only send them). If you’d like this sort of thing delivered directly to your inbox, you can sign up (for free) here.
If you’re looking for Part 1 of this project, it’s here.
A green, heatless flame. A spear tip but soft in the hand. Your nose takes in its breath that wants a nightshade. That breathing is summer to me. But now hold it firmly. If it were made of metal, it would cut your skin. But it is a blade of water and chlorophyll, and in your palm its membranes bust and choke. A magic trick. Now you see it and now — open your hand. The flame is out. It is something else. A crumbled black thing, knotted, twisted, smelling of clove. Set it out, an offering to the Queen of Judgment, the Queen of Oaths. Of green and black, of basil and venom, they belong to and long for She Who Is Scorpius, Išhara Tiamat.
We leave Išhara for a moment. Her re-entrance will be all the more dramatic, as is her nature, if I show you a few things first.
Every like draws his like
Basil is ruled by Mars. This is a surprise. One of basil’s many tricks. How could such a sweet-smelling, friendly plant, so tender to the touch, be of the Red Planet? Of war, slander, armor, and poison? I describe the ways basil fits the medicinal profile of a Mars plant in Part I but there are other reasons made of story, magic, and monster. To start, I’d like to look at a bit of Nicholas Culpeper’s entry on basil. I don't always agree with him but with basil, I do. His wording is a helpful map for the first part of our journey, which seeks the relationship between basil and venom.
And away to Dr. Reason went I, who told me [basil] was an herb of Mars, and under the Scorpion, and perhaps therefore called Basilicon; and it is no marvel if it carry a kind of virulent quality with it. Being applied to the place bitten by venomous beasts, or stung by a wasp or hornet, it speedily draws the poison to it; every like draws his like.
The "perhaps therefore" is doing a lot of work in this passage. It conjectures, it conjures, a correspondence between basil's name and the monstrous, the pathogenic. In doing so, Culpeper summons another beast into the passage. Some say basil gets its name from basiliscus, the basilisk, a monster so poisonous that it kills by touch and by breath. Its gaze is deadly. Its body is here a lizard, there a snake, or perhaps a chimera of a rooster and dragon. The OED tells us basil was "supposed to be an antidote to the basilisk's venom" but that basil probably got its name from the Latin basileus, meaning "king." Basil was used in royal perfume. The basilisk also borrows basileus for its name, for the creature is said to have a crest on its head resembling a crown. Basil both is a kingly perfume and the basilisk’s virulent breath. To spend time with basil is to court a regent of the venomous ones. A royal plant, a royal beast. And there are more monsters ahead.
According to Culpeper, basil has the venom’s likeness and so draws itself to itself: every like draws his like. Basil is a healing plant because it is malefic substance that draws malefica to itself. That basil is an antidote for stings from poisonous beasts is not new. As early as the 1st century CE, Pliny the Elder wrote that basil “is a cure for the stings of land scorpions, and the venom of those found in the sea.” In his Canon of Medicine Ibn Sina wrote that basil “helps inflammation and the strikes of poisonous fishes and scorpions.” (In fact, the phrase Ibn Sina uses "Tinnīn bahrī" suggests he meant that basil helps with the strikes from sea monsters like Cetus — the Greek translation for Tinnīn is kētos but that's a story for another time. Monsters, monsters, everywhere.) While basil is tied to the venomous in general, on land and in the deep, it is the scorpion and its sting that comes up over and over.
This is the part where I want to tell you my research shows that basil is the most effective and popular plant for remedying scorpion envenomation. That would be cool. But it’s not true. So many plants help in bites and stings. Basil is merely one of them. Plants are really skilled in handling insects. They've had a lot of practice. Looking at contemporary herbal uses in cases of scorpion stings, basil comes up but not nearly as often as you’d think if you looked at the folklore. The folklore I read seemed obsessed, even paranoid, about the connection between basil and scorpions. I thought it would bear out in scientific papers but what I realized was basil isn’t tied to scorpions because it’s a uniquely potent remedy. Basil is tied to scorpions because of something far more wondrous.
O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife! — Macbeth, Act 3
As I've said Culpeper sees basil not as a healing plant in and of itself, but as a thing that is like the poison it draws out. How literal is it that basil is itself a venomous creature? Turns out quite literal. Culpeper again:
Mizaldus affirms, that, being laid to rot in horse-dung, [basil] will breed venomous beasts. Hilarius, a French physician, affirms upon his own knowledge, that an acquaintance of his, by common smelling to it, had a scorpion bred in his brain. Something is the matter; this herb and rue will not grow together, no, nor near one another: and we know rue is as great an enemy to poison as any that grows.
While there are many plants that remedy envenomation, I have yet to come across any other plant that generates scorpions besides our sweet basil. This idea that basil attracts and may even turn into scorpions is not a quirk of Culpeper. Pliny says: “Some persons go so far as to say, that if beaten up, and then placed beneath a stone, a scorpion will breed there.” Does he mean a scorpion will spontaneously occur or does he mean scorpions like to have sex on oxidized basil covered by a stone? Either way, I'm thrilled.
Basil encouraging the breeding between scorpions or the plant transmuting into scorpions is a thing all over the literature on basil. Edward Topsell, a cleric famous for his bestiaries, wrote:
When as one had planted the herbe Basilica on a wall, in a room or place thereof he found two Scorpions. And some say that if a man chew in his mouth fasting this herb Basil before he wash, and afterward lay the same abroad uncovered where no sun commeth at it for the space of seven days, taking it in all the day time, he shall at length find it transmuted into a Scorpion, with a tail of seven knots.
Basil creating "scorpions-in-the-brain" starts to appear, as far as I can tell, between the 1500s and 1600s. In the mid-1550s, physician Jacques Houllier (who Culpeper cites, hilariously, as Hilarius) reported that he met a man who had a scorpion breeding in his brain due to the "continual smelling of this herbe Basill." A contemporary of Houllier, the physician and naturalist Conrad Gesner met a young woman who "by smelling to Basill, fell into an exceeding headache, whereof shee dyed without cure, and after her death beeing opened, there were found little Scorpions in her braine."
In in 1640, botanist and herbalist John Parkinson split the difference between basil’s lovely perfume and its ability to breed stinging pests. In Theatrum Botanicam, Parkinson wrote:
being gently handled it gave a pleasant smell but being hardly wrung and bruised would breed scorpions. It is also observed that scorpions doe much rest and abide under these pots and vessells wherein Basil is planted.
This last part, that scorpions like to hang out under basil plants, probably eases the mind of the modern material rationalist. Basil plants don’t turn into scorpions but rather scorpions emerge from nearby basil plants and so seem to be propagating from them. What silly ancestors we have. Thank goodness we're all so logical now.
Personally, when I read about basil-becoming-scorpion, I assume we’re talking about magic. I still assume that. I plan to play with this in my own practice. To offer basil, fresh and crushed, to Mars, to the stars of Scorpius, to Išhara (who is here already but who is also coming). Tell me about your own experiences if you do this too. Often when I see plants that do things that seem “impossible,” especially if there are major contradictions (a plant can curse but is also used for lifting the same curse) I hear the logic of witchcraft.
There’s something else that may be at play here too. Aristotle, drawing on the work of many other people before him, acknowledged two types of reproduction: biological reproduction and spontaneous generation. Spontaneous generation occurs when creatures spring into existence out “putrefying earth or vegetable matter, as is the case with a number of insects, while others are spontaneously generated in the inside of animals out of the secretions of their several organs” (Aristotle, 1970). Spontaneous generation wasn’t truly discredited until the mid-19th century. The fact it’s not a major part of the "Western worldview" is quite new.
However you allow these recorded experiences of scorpions generating from crushed or chewed basil leaves to sit with you, basil is clearly a plant threaded through the scorpion. It is an antidote because it is the scorpion, it becomes scorpion, it begets scorpions, it encourages the generation of scorpions. It is a stinger plant, all green and inviting, and crushed becomes its other self.
Dear to lovers, yet an emblem of hatred
Follow basil around and you will run into two things: scorpions and contention. I cannot find a text that doesn’t list disagreements. Some say — while others say — they say — and so on (as if we needed another hint that basil is under the stewardship of Mars). In his chapter on basil in Natural History, Pliny the Elder cites Stoic philosopher Chrysippus’s take on basil in order to immediately disagree with him. In 1653, Nicholas Culpeper published The English Physician and the first line of his basil entry is, “This is the herb which all authors are together by the ears about, and rail at one another (like lawyers).” Sweet basil, sprinkled on your pasta. The very same.
That basil is a martial plant is obvious in many folk traditions. Basil is associated with abuse and hatred (Folkard, 1884). The ancient Greeks thought when basil was sown, “the act should be accompanied by abuse, without which it would not flourish. Pliny also records that it throve best when sown with cursing and railing” (Folkard, 1884; D’Andrea, 1982). Achmet tells us that to dream of basil is a bad omen, bringing with it sorrow and suffering (Oberhelman, 1991). Simoons recalls a Persian legend that, “while viewing the plant as a valuable medicinal, nevertheless portrays it as carried by a snake from the underground” (1998). In French, there is a saying, “semer le basilic,” which literally translates to “to sow basil,” but it means to slander. Culpeper suspects that basil is itself poison, hypothesizing that that is why rue won’t grow near it. The plant’s connection to the basilisk only further emphasizes its affinity for the monstrous.
If we stop there, basil is a pretty cut-and-dry case. Mars and Scorpio all the way through. However, basil is, over and over, linked to love. In Tuscany, basil is called “amorino,” which means “little love.” In central Italy, basil is sometimes called “bacia-nicola,” that is “kiss me, Nicholas” — welcoming advances. In the same way, in many places in the Mediterranean, a pot of basil on the window sill means a young woman is ready to accept suitors (this is about to get very cis-heterosexual and if someone wants to write queer romantic historical fiction that uses basil, please do so and tell me about it). Basil was worn in the waist or bosom by young girls and in the hair by married women. In northern Europe, lovers exchanged basil sprigs as a sign of faithfulness (Khare, 2004). Frederick Simoons shares that in Romania and Moldavia, if a woman is able to get a man to bring a sprig of basil to her (I would love to know more about what shenanigans this might involve), it is certain to be a longstanding relationship. In modern Iran, if you eat a mixture of sweet basil and the fruit of the Elaeagnus angustifolia tree you are certain to be loved. I cannot ignore that basil has been and continues to be a love charm and emblem of fidelity in parts of Europe and West Asia. Quite Venusian.
The other hand of love is grief and we find basil connected to mourning as well. In modern Iran and Egypt, sweet basil is used in funerals and planted on graves (Simoons, 1998). In contemporary Crete, basil is a sign of mourning and “love washed with tears” (D’Andrea, 1982). Early Christians claim that sweet basil grew on Christ’s grave and in medieval England, people held sprigs of basil during burial ceremonies (Simoons, 1998). Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron combines basil, love, violence, and grief in his story of star-crossed lovers Lisabetta and Lorenzo. Lisabetta’s brothers murder Lorenzo. She retrievers his head and plants it in a pot. Her tears water it and basil grows out of it.
What do we do with this stray thread of love and marriage, untidying our orderly plant story? In 1884, Richard Folkard wrote what is perhaps my favorite passage about basil. He said basil “is a paradox:—sacred and revered, yet dedicated to the Evil One; of happy augury, yet funereal; dear to women and lovers, yet an emblem of hatred; propagator of scorpions, yet the antidote to their stings.” Basil as a love charm seems an inconvenience, a snag in the pattern, but is an arrow pointing to Mesopotamia, where it all makes much more sense. There is a Being who is all of these things. Who is the Scorpion. Who is armored in love, who is the greenness of the land, who is a guardian of the underworld, who curses and wins wars, and presides over the marriage bed. We return to Išhara. Finally.
Išhara
Išhara is a Mesopotamian goddess of the underworld, of war and victory, of oaths, of sexuality and marriage, of plant propagation, of purification, and of divination, especially extispicy (divination by means of inspecting the entrails of sacrificed animals). Scholars trace her cults to the easternmost lands of the Mediterranean, known now as contemporary Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt (Murat, 2002). She is called The Lady of the Oath, The Queen of Judgment and Divination. Išhara is often invoked along with the god of the Moon who also oversees the making and keeping of oaths. Her consort is sometimes Dagan, a god of grain, weather, and fertility. Dagan and Išhara are invoked together when performing fertility and vegetation rites. She purifies homes and can just as easily lift illness as she can cause it (Murat, 2002). Where her worship was most prominent, she was given the name Queen of the Inhabited World (White, 2007).
Just as basil is Martial but has Venusian qualities, Išhara shares affinities with the Venusian Ištar and Inanna. She may be invoked with Ištar or Inanna when performing love-magic or in association with marriage and midwifery (Nakata, 1995). She even shares in their love of cannabis, which was sometimes called “the aromatic of Išhara” (White, 2007). While all three goddesses preside over love and war, White emphasizes Išhara’s warlike nature as standing apart from the rest. He cites entitlement stones that give Išhara the epithet Mistress of Victory Over Lands. In curses, she is entreated “not to hear him in the midst of mighty battle” (White, 2007).
Išhara shares with basil the blend of war, strife, and marriage, but it is Išhara’s connection to the constellation of Scorpius that makes these two a pair. White tells us “the Scorpion in its entirety is attributed to the multifaceted goddess Išhara.” Gabriella Frantz-Szabó and Wilfred Lambert tie the knot between Scorpio and Išhara tighter, saying “in the late Cassite times [Išhara’s symbol] was the scorpion, since Išhara was astrologically Scorpio” (Frantz-Szabó et. al., 1980). Išhara is the constellation Scorpius in the same way that Ištar is Venus.
A note: the constellation Scorpius is not the same as the zodiac sign Scorpio. I think it is most accurate to think about Išhara with regard to the constellation and its fixed stars. However, words, especially when repeated, are a kind of magic and in this case in particular, I find a lot of affinity between Išhara and how we describe the zodiac sign Scorpio, so I am going to use them interchangeably despite the mess.
We've talked about the basilisk and the virulence of basil, but with Išhara we confront the Mother of Monsters. In Mesopotoamian Astrology, Ulla Koch-Westenholz provides a digest of The Great Star List. The GSL corresponds The Scorpion to Išhara on one line, and then the next line repeats it but adds a crucial epithet: The Scorpion - Išhara Tiamat. In Babylonian Star-Lore, White translates this to "Išhara of the ocean (Išhara Tiamat)." While "of the ocean" is the literal translation of "tiamat," Tiamat is an essential goddess in her own right. Perhaps the essential goddess.
Tiamat is the primordial chaos deity of the sea. Tiamat is Mother, of creation itself but also specifically of the world's monsters. To give Išhara her name as an epithet is chilling. For me, it brings up the basilisk’s deadly gaze and Tiamat’s connection to Cetus and Medusa. It reminds me of basil's centuries-long tie to the venomous monsters, on land and in the sea. It also brings up Venus’s strange position in Scorpio, where she is in detriment but has triplicity rulership, where she is somehow brought low yet keeps company with those who get her fangs and deep waters. Išhara, goddess of battle, oaths of blood, oaths of fidelity, the violent blade into the autumn soil to en-seed the earth, goddess of protection and purification, watery underworld goddess of monsters.
If Išhara is the constellation Scorpius, a path between Tiamat and the goddess can be found in the Epic of Creation. In the epic, eleven monster types are cataloged as children of Tiamat.* One of these creatures is the Scorpion-men. Such creatures have a human head, bird’s legs, a snake-headed penis, a scorpion’s segmented body and tail. Sometimes they have wings. The beasts who are most associated with Išhara are the offspring of Tiamat.
The Scorpion-men often appear alongside the Sun god Shamash because they are solar guardians. This imagery fits with the Scorpion constellation as the place where the Sun begins to descend into the darkness of the underworld. It also fits Išhara’s role as an underworld goddess. The Scorpion “rises just before the winter solstice, symbolises the death of the sun and the dissolution of the year” (White, 2007). Between 4,000-1,000 BCE, the Scorpion constellation was the sign of the autumnal equinox until precession shifted us to Libra. The autumnal equinox is a time of ceremonies of death in many parts of the world north of the equator.
Išhara is so enormous that the paradoxes of basil no longer look like paradoxes. They look like her. She is of love and hate, war and marriage. As basil is a plant of grief, she is a goddess of the underworld and the dead. She is also a goddess of monsters. I assume the basilisk would feel quite at home among the children of Tiamat. As a water sign, it makes sense that the goddess who presides over a Scorpio plant would also be of the primordial ocean. Išhara is not Tiamat herself so much as she is of Tiamat. As are we all. Tiamat’s body is the earth and the heavens. Išhara-Scorpion is just one piece of her body, and basil is one reflection of it.
*For those who love the fixed stars, Frantz-Szabó and Lambert say that the hydra (Bašmu) was Išhara’s first symbol before it solidified as the scorpion, so there may be a connection between Išhara and the Hydra constellation too. So many threads to pull.
I dare write no more of it. — Culpeper on basil
When I taste my basil tincture, I am hit with the pungency and heat and then — horses of green-gold air swirling off into different directions in the vault of my mind, lifting up my head, and I’m lighter, more possible, focused, from their blades of stimulating clarity. My spine is a sword. My limbs tingle and want to move.
The first time I tried the tincture, before I knew Išhara's name, basil gave me a scene. I was shown an evening, cold, black-indigo, a shine on the air. A large fire and warriors around it, loose-limbed and laughing, eve of battle in their bones. The surreal-real saturated presence comes from feeling your mortality. The sharpness, the edge in your mind, that doesn’t allow you to waste time pretending. Impatient for life, ready, clear. You will yell because the thought is loud and you will dance because your legs are doing it and you will fuck who you like if they’ll have you but you will ask and will ask now. Because you will die. It is a Scorpio presence, as ripe as the luxuriating of Taurus, but different. It is Išhara wrapping her knotted tail around your neck, holding your bones, greening them with basil, pressing where it is tender until it is black, shining, armor that will take life in its claws and accept no less. This is the vibrancy, the presence that comes from below.
I fell into an obsession with basil this winter, and it felt ill-timed to want such a summer plant then. But it was perfect. To feel its green heat in the cold dark. Basil is warmth flowing back into numb limbs, stinging. It is a trick, a surprise, a teasing dagger. It is presence balancing on a knife. It is exactly what we have. It is all we have.
And I had been dissatisfied with my Scorpio keywords. I heard myself in readings saying “intense” and “cathartic” and “deep” and I bored myself. They are not wrong words but they are not enough. But basil is enough. Išhara is enough. Basil, a sweet garden friend. Basil, a sea monster. Basil, a love charm and a plant of mourning. Basil, a warrior plant. Basil, a plant of alchemy, of witchcraft, of venom. Išhara gives me more than words. She gives me story.
Basil has dragged me on my strangest plant journey to date. I’ve struggled to share it with you because quite appropriate to Scorpio, I am left with at least as much mystery as I am left with revelation. So much is just out of reach, but deliciously so.
Despite the length, you’ll notice many places where more research (verbal and experiential) could be done. Please go and do it. Share in this with me. I’d love to see more people talking about working with basil and the stars of Scorpius, something I began writing and had to put down for now if I was ever going to send this to you. There's so much about Antares and Lisi and the brazier (speaking of a scene of warriors around a fire!), the mourning and rage at the heart of the Scorpion. Holy basil is also connected to the god Yama, who is Yima, who is keyed to Antares. There's a whole thing I cut about Macbeth and basil and scorpions that I may share at another time. I’d like to see what scholarship you may find on Isis and basil, for Isis is connected to the scorpions too. I wonder who you meet when you seek Išhara. And if you manage to catch basil turning into a scorpion, keep sharp and live to tell me about it.
Recommended Resources
I had planned to talk more about the specific stars in the Scorpion constellation. Thankfully, several luminaries have already done so. I strongly recommend Sasha Ravitch's The Red Dreaded Spindle: An Astrolater’s Guide to the Stinger Stars of Scorpius available via Hadean Press. Kaitlin Coppock has also written extensively about Antares as has Genie Desert of Tides of Tethys. I also highly recommend Sasha's workshop on Mars.
Bibliography
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