Noctua wrote:I wasn't going to respond here because I'm sure I have discussed this before, but a few things I've seen stated are a bit funny to me. Yes, witches do use it for a number of reasons. The witches of old, and modern witches into traditional craft and wortcunning.

I've been practicing magick my entire life and belladonna is one of my favourite plants. I work with the spirit of this plant, I have grown it in my garden along with monkshood, henbane, datura, wormwood. I work with the nightshades in salve form which is more common than one may expect --with those into traditional craft but also those who know of and value it's healing and visionary properties.
I've also ingested a couple of these plants, more than once, which of course I don't recommend to anyone at all but it's been involved in rigorous rites of passage for my particular path.

It's a shame that the poison plants are looked upon as being terrible and relegated so much to the idea of hexes and curses. It's also unfortunate to see the old ways having become vilified or lost, or even viewed as inane, quite in this manner.. because people just aren't very knowledgeable about the actual properties of the plants and what precisely is lethal about them, and people aren't very aware of what went into the practices revolving around them. For that matter, far too many people are disconnected from nature and that is a factor in how nature can adversely impact them.

Absolutely they can have the more malicious associations and can be applied that way, but they are all of great duality. If we were to look at them as they actually are --spirited, then what I am saying is they are not 'black arts' 'evily evil'.

I use the nightshades sexually for ecstatic experiences, to subdue my menstrual cramps and other aches, for shamanic questing, for time travel and chronokinesis, for love magick, for diabolical craft, for underworld initiation, for empowerment of the sacred witch-fire, for work with various deities. Sometimes this involves me applying them directly to myself, sometimes it's anointing objects, making offerings or certainly in ritual.

Ellie44 wrote:Most of the more seasoned witches that I know, as well as myself are of like mind and don't recommend it for spell work simply because of the toxic nature. I mean it has been used to wipe out armies. I am not saying that is true for all just is for those I know in my life. My witchy friends walk all different paths from very white to extremely black and all of us in between. I've only known one who used it in hexes and curses and he took extreme precautions.

I have never know it used in beauty potions.
So I'd be interested to read about that as you know how I am about reading new articles to me haha. Have you read the myths on how it used to be used for "flying"..at least in relation to females? No thank you!

There are few herbs I stay away from and this is right up there with henbane. This is one where if you do use it, precautions as you said are the way to go. It seems that OP understands and respects the dangers. What concerns me is that is available to those who may not.

Professor and plant researcher Henry G. Walters speculated in 1915 about the potential for cross-breeding carnivorous and poisonous plants. He believed that if a poisonous plant had "the semimuscular system possessed by the carnivorous plants, it would be more dangerous than the cholera." Dr. Walters declared that plants were capable of love and that they had memories, implying that they might also hold a grudge as lovers do. The deadly nightshade, he believed, was filled with hatred.

Although the entire plant is poisonous - just rubbing against it can raise pustules on the skin - the black berries are the plant's most tempting feature. A Virginia farmer named Charles Wilson lost his children to those berries in 1880. The yougsters' terse obituary suggests an agonizing weekend: "The first and youngest died last Thursday, the second, on Sunday night, and the third, and only remaining child, on Monday."

Even today, tales of deadly nightshade poisoning appear in the medical literature. An elderly woman turned up at the hospital every fall in a kind of psychosis; doctors were unable to trace the cause of her hallucinations, delusions, and headaches. After several days, the symptoms would subside on their own. Finally, her daughter brought in a handful of berries from a shrub growing near her house. She had been snacking on deadly nightshade every autumn when the berries grew ripe but somehow managed to escape a fatal poisoning.

This is far from the only case: A couple earned their place in medical history by baking a pie of nightshade berries, mistaking them for the much more edible bilberries. In Turkey, a review of nightshade poisoning found that forty-nine children were sickened over a six-year period. Most ate the berries themselves out of curiosity, but at least one child was fed nightshade by his parents in the mistaken hope that it would treat his diarrhea.

Deadly nightshade performs its dark magic with the help of an alkaloid called atropine, which causes rapid heartbeat, confusion, hallucinations, and seizures. The symptoms are so unpleasant that atropine is sometimes added to potentially addictive painkillers to keep patients from getting hooked. Medical students memorize this simple mnemonic trick to help them recognize the signs of poisoning: "Hot as a hare, blind as a bat, dry as a bone, red as a beet, and mad as a hatter". "Madness" in this case refers to meaningless speech, a sign of deadly nightshade poisoning.

The herbaceous perennial is found across Europe, Asia, and North America, where it flourishes in damp, shady spots. It grows to about three feet tall, producing pointed, oval-shaped leaves and purplish brown tubular flowers. From these flowers the bright black berries emerge, beginning as hard green fruit that ripen to red, finally reaching their full dark glory in fall.

Early physicians mixed up a potent brew of deadly nightshade, hemlock, mandrake, henbane, opium, and other herbs as a surgical anesthetic. Atropine still has medicinal uses today and has been administered as an antidote to poisoning from nerve gas and pesticide exposure.

Italian women dropped mild tinctures of deadly nightshade into their eyes to dilate their pupils, which they thought made them more alluring. The name "belladonna" may come from this practice; it means "beautiful woman," but the term might also originate from buona donna, a medieval witch doctor who treated the indigent with mysterious potions.

Atropa comes from one of the three Fates of Greek mythology. Each Fate had a role in determining human destiny. Laschesis measured the thread of destiny at birth; Clotho spun the thread, controlling one's destiny; and then, at the end, Atropos brought death at the time and manner of her choosing. Milton remembered her this way:

Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
And slits the tin-spun life.

Meet the Relatives - Member of the large and unruly Solanaceae family, which includes henbane, mandrake, datura, and the spicy Habanero chile pepper.