Aromatherapy and the Mind. Julia Lawless
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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 reviving elixir. He also maintained that the key to good health rested on having a daily aromatic bath and a scented massage. However, although Hippocrates and the other great minds of his time drew extensively on the wisdom of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Babylon as well as the other great medical traditions of the East, disease was now regarded primarily as arising from natural causes which could be located in the physical body.
Following Hippocrates’ scientific method, Galen (AD 130–200) described disorders in terms of warmth, cold, dryness and moisture, and erected the foundations of modern physiology. All diseases, mental as well as physical, were, according to Galen, due to a disorder of the humours. He was disdainful of the magical element inherent in Egyptian healing methods and wrote disapproving of the ‘… silly Egyptian spells with incantations, which the Egyptians utter while picking their herbal drugs …’.12
That this development took place at the expense of sacrificing the psychological aspect was recognized by Socrates, when he quoted the Thracian king Zamolxis’s views on treatment:
… as you ought not to attempt to cure the eyes without the head, or the head without the body, so neither ought you to attempt to cure the body without the soul; and that is the reason why the cure of many diseases is unknown to the physicians of Hellas.13
Nevertheless, herbal remedies still constituted the main materials at the physicians’ disposal, and aromatic plants and essences were still used widely. Fragrant oils were commonly used for basic hygiene, especially when water was scarce and soap non-existent. Evidence from Egypt, Greece, Rome and the Near East indicates that both men and women oiled their skin as well as their hair with fragrant lotions to prevent dryness and keep the skin supple, while perfumes were used to mask less pleasant odours. Homer frequently mentions oils being applied after a bath or instead