Belladonna

Gender: Feminine
Planet: Saturn
Element: Water
Deities:

• Hecate,
• Bellona,
• Circe

About Belladonna:

• Belladonna is one of the most toxic plants found in the Eastern Hemisphere.
• All parts of the plant contain tropane alkaloids.
• The berries pose the greatest danger to children because they look attractive and have a somewhat sweet taste.
• The consumption of two to five berries by a human adult is probably lethal.
• consuming even a single leaf can prove fatal to humans
• The root of the plant is generally the most toxic part, though this can vary from one specimen to another. Ingestion of a single leaf of the plant can be fatal to an adult

A native to Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, the herb grows wildly in many parts of the United States, mostly in dumps, quarries, near old ruins, under shade trees, or atop wooded hills.

Belladonna is a branching plant that often grows to resemble a shrub of about 4 feet in height within a single growing season. Its leaves are long, extending 7 inches, and its bell-shaped flowers are purple with green tinges, about an inch long. The fruit and berries appear green when growing, but, as the toxins get stronger in the ripening stage, turn a shiny black color. Belladonna blooms in midsummer through early fall, and its roots are thick, fleshy, and white, growing to about 6 inches or more in length.

Ritual Uses of Belladonna:

• The priests of Bellona, according to ancient tradition, drank an infusion of belladonna prior to worshiping Her and invoking Her aid.
• Atropa belladonna and related plants, such as jimson weed (Datura stramonium), have occasionally been used as recreational drugs because of the vivid hallucinations and delirium they produce. However, these hallucinations are most commonly described as very unpleasant, and recreational use is considered extremely dangerous because of the high risk of unintentional fatal overdose.

 

Magical Uses of Belladonna:

Belladonna is rightfully known as the plant used most throughout the history of stealth assassination.

Spies, as well as taste-testers hired by kings and the wealthy to sample food for poisons, learned that it’s possible to develop a tolerance to belladonna. By exposing himself to the toxins by taking small sips of a brew made from the plant over time, an assassin could demonstrate a drink was safe to consume, and his mark would swallow the poison willingly. Made from the plant’s berries, such a drink retains a sweet taste, and can pass as a fermented beverage.

[box type=”info”] According to history, Scotland’s King Duncan I, in 1030, passed around bottles of the deadly drink to an army of Danes, which killed them all without his having to lift a sword. [/box]

For witches, belladonna is the supposed main ingredient allowing broomsticks to levitate. And perhaps it did, even if only in their hallucinations. Witches were believed to use a mixture of belladonna, opium poppy and other plants, typically poisonous (such as monkshood and poison hemlock), in flying ointment, which they applied to help them fly to gatherings with other witches.

In the past it was also used to encourage astral protection and to produce visions.

Today belladonna is little-used in herb both black magick or white magic due to its high toxicity. As all parts of the plant are extremely poisonous and there are still reports of death resulting from accidental ingestion of nightshade.

 

Sympathetic Magick:

To create a Doll Baby of your enemy, and then fill it with these berry’s every day, is a great idea for a black magick hex on someone you want destroyed.

The effect on the victim includes:

The symptoms of belladonna poisoning include dilated pupils, sensitivity to light, blurred vision, tachycardia, loss of balance, staggering, headache, rash, flushing, severely dry mouth and throat, slurred speech, urinary retention, constipation, confusion, hallucinations, delirium, and convulsions.

[box type=”info”] In 2009, belladonna berries were mistaken for blueberries by an adult woman. The six berries she ate were documented to result in severe anticholinergic syndrome.

The plant’s deadly symptoms are caused by atropine’s disruption of the parasympathetic nervous system’s ability to regulate involuntary activities, such as sweating, breathing, and heart rate. Its anticholinergic properties will cause the disruption of cognitive capacities, such as memory and learning.[/box]

Medicinal uses of Belladonna:

Belladonna has been used in herbal medicine for centuries as a pain reliever, muscle relaxer, and anti-inflammatory, and to treat menstrual problems, peptic ulcer disease, histaminic reaction, and motion sickness.

How to prepare a belladonna for direct administration to patients.

“Belladonna tinctures, decoctions, and powders, as well as alkaloid salt mixtures, are still produced for pharmaceutical use, and these are often standardised at 1037 parts hyoscyamine to 194 parts atropine and 65 parts scopolamine. The alkaloids are compounded with phenobarbital and/or kaolin and pectin for use in various functional gastrointestinal disorders. The tincture, used for identical purposes, remains in most pharmacopoeias, with a similar tincture of Datura stramonium having been in the US Pharmacopoeia at least until the late 1930s. The combination of belladonna and opium, in powder, tincture, or alkaloid form, is particularly useful by mouth or as a suppository for diarrhoea and some forms of visceral pain; it can be made by a compounding pharmacist, and may be available as a manufactured fixed combination product in some countries (e.g., B&O Supprettes). A banana-flavoured liquid (most common trade name: Donnagel PG) was available until 31 December 1992 in the United States.”

“Atropine sulphate is used as a mydriatic and cycloplegic for eye examinations. It is also used as an antidote to organophosphate and carbamate poisoning, and is loaded in an autoinjector for use in case of a nerve gas attack. Atropinisation (administration of a sufficient dose to block nerve gas effects) results in 100 percent blockade of the muscarinic acetylcholine receptors, and atropine sulphate is the benchmark for measuring the power of anticholinergic drugs.”

How to Grow Belladonna

 

Source:

• Kuklin, Alexander (February 1999). How Do Witches Fly?. DNA Press.

• Big, Bad Botany: Deadly Nightshade (Atropa Belladonna), the Poisonous A-Lister, http://www.slate.com/blogs/wild_things/2014/08/18/poisonous_plants_belladonna_nightshade_is_the_celebrity_of_deadly_flora.html