# The amulet herbs

*Betony, goat’s rue, savin, sage, horehound, cyclamen, laurel, masterwort, and angelica*

**Known today as.** See each above.

Kind: Plant

## What did Canale use it for?

Hung about the neck, and used in fumigations, drinks, washes, and baths, always with regard to complexion, “for which reason it is well, indeed necessary, always to use the counsel of some skilled physician” (ch. 10).

## What does modern science say?

Canale’s closing principle deserves notice: the illnesses caused by demons “are nonetheless natural,” and once the demon’s action is removed “may be cured with natural medicines alone.” He adds blessings to the medicines because “the effect, even if natural, always partakes of the conditions of the cause.”

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **thujone**: in the savin
- **stachydrine**: in the betony
- **galegine**: in the goat’s rue

**Mechanism.** A list, not a drug: each herb has its own entry and its own pharmacology. Worn at the neck none of them delivers a dose; the savin and the goat’s rue are the ones that would harm if drunk.

**Dose.** See the several entries; savin is the dangerous one.

**Standing.** Canale’s own principle, that demonic illnesses are “nonetheless natural” and yield to natural medicine, is the one modern medicine would keep.

## What lore surrounds it?

Of betony Folkard says that of all the simples “none (the Vervain excepted) was awarded a higher place,” quoting Turner, “Some write it will cure those that are possessed with devils, or frantic, being stamped and applied to the forehead,” and the old manuscript line, “More than all this have been proved of Betony.” Pliny “affirmed that serpents would kill one another if surrounded by a ring composed of Betonica,” and “it was generally understood that the house where Herba Betonica was sown, was free from all mischief.” Horehound “is the Herb which the Egyptians dedicated to their god Horus, and which the priests called the Seed of Horus,” and “to dream of Horehound indicates that you will suffer imprisonment.”

Thiselton-Dyer sets betony with the snapdragon as having “the reputation of averting the most subtle forms of witchcraft,” and gives the old saying “which recommends a person when ill ‘to sell his coat and buy betony.’” Of the angelica he says it “was thought to be specially noisome to witches,” and “in olden times used as an antidote for poisons.”

## What did the older authorities say?

**Culpeper.** Of betony, the first of the amulet herbs, he repeats Antonius Musa, physician to the Emperor Augustus, who wrote a whole book on it and “saith of it, that it preserves the liver and bodies of men from the danger of epidemical diseases, and from witchcraft also.”

## Sources

- Culpeper, N. (1653). *The Complete Herbal*, “Wood Betony.” Project Gutenberg #49513.
- Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Betony.” Project Gutenberg #44638.
- Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Horehound.” Project Gutenberg #44638.
- Thiselton-Dyer, T. F. (1889). *The Folk-lore of Plants*. Project Gutenberg #10118.
- Canale, F. (1622). *Discerning and Healing the Bewitched*, ch. 10.

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*The amulet herbs.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/the-amulet-herbs

Historical description, not medical advice.