From childhood, from school years, we all remember these lines from Pushkin's poem Ruslan and Lyudmila (1820):
O field, field, who covered you with dead bones?
Whose greyhound horse trampled you
In the last hour of the bloody battle?
Who fell on you with glory?
Whose heaven listened to prayers?
Why, field, are you silent
And overgrown with the grass of oblivion?
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Pushkin's expression "the grass of oblivion" is usually perceived as a poetic metaphor. But Pushkin's expression is not at all an abstract metaphor, but the name of a very specific plant. “Wormwood … was called the 'bitter herb' or 'the herb of oblivion,' writes the French historian Robert Ambelain.
According to the famous Russian folklorist A. N. Afanasyev, exactly wormwood is the “heroine” of the legends about the drink of oblivion in the epos of different nations: “The Scandinavian sagas tell about a magic drink that gives oblivion to the entire past: a legend akin to the Greek myth about the waters of Lethe; this drink gives Grimhilda to Zigurd so that he will forget Brunhilde; Valkyries, albinas and sorceresses bring cups to the heroes in order to take away their memory of the past and keep them in their possessions for a long time."
In his work "Poetic views of the Slavs on nature" (1865), he cites a Ukrainian folk story about how to hire a chumak (in reality, no chumak, but a sorcerer), having tasted the master's viper porridge, begins to understand the language of animals and plants and, fearing punishment, runs away from the owner.
The sorcerer shouts after him: “Ivane, Ivane! make yourself some chernobyl roots and get drunk; you learn even more than now. The couple foolishly obeyed, drank the infusion of Chernobyl-wormwood - and forgot everything he knew.
Moon grass, earth star
In the beliefs of many peoples, wormwood is the herb of soothsayers and magicians. “Wormwood (artemisia vulgaris), as the name itself indicates, is the herb of Artemis, or Diana, the warrior goddess and huntress,” R. Ambelain replies. - This plant was also called “Ivan Kupala's grass”, “Ivan Kupala's belt”, “grass for a hundred tastes”. A magical herb of the ancients in Egypt, Greece and Rome, it was dedicated to Artemis, the merciless archery hunter, the personification of the moon. In the mysteries of Isis (the goddess of the Moon in Egypt), the initiates carried a branch of wormwood in their hands."
Wormwood, according to the testimony of the same researcher, is also called the "earthen star". And it's clear why.
“The third Angel sounded his trumpet, and a large star fell from heaven, burning like a lamp, and fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of waters. The name of this star is "wormwood"; and the third part of the waters became wormwood, and many of the people died from the waters, because they became bitter, "says the Apocalypse.
This star falling from the sky, making the waters bitter, in the Middle Ages was associated with the fallen angel Lucifer (Satan), cast down from heaven into the underworld. Accordingly, all sorts of supernatural properties were also attributed to the grass of wormwood, a star not heavenly, but "earthy". “For sorcerers it served as a means of evoking evil spirits, hence its other name -“moon grass”(R. Ambelain).
“It is one of the plants most revered by modern witches for its magical power,” says American researcher Pauline Campanelli. - The infusion of this herb on the night of the full moon was washed over crystal balls, magic mirrors and some amulets in order to impart to them the ability to send mediumistic visions or to enhance this ability.
Ladanka with wormwood and laurel leaves evoke prophetic dreams. In ancient times, it was also believed that a leaf of wormwood, placed in shoes while traveling (or under the saddle if riding on a horse), would make the journey less tiring."
Wormwood was also endowed with witchcraft in Russia.
"In early September, or at the end of August, you need to pick up a Chernobyl and sew it into the skin of a young hare, which, if worn in the form of a garter, they say that a person will acquire such dexterity on the run that he can run rather a better horse", - wrote down M. Zabylin in the book "The Russian people, its customs, rituals, traditions, superstitions and poetry" (1880).
“On the eve of Midsummer's Day, wreaths are made of this grass, they look through them at the kindled fire and put them on their heads; whoever observes this will not have eye or headache for a whole year, writes A. N. Afanasyev. - Cows are washed with navar from chernobyl collected on Midsummer's Day so that they give more milk. The peasants wash themselves with this grass in order to protect themselves from unclean spirits, witches and diseases."
"Wormwood grass grows like quinoa," teaches the ancient Russian "Herbalist" of the 17th century. - She is good in wine, cook with honey, that person is not afraid of damage. She's driving her hernia out of the shake of good."
The medicinal properties of wormwood (directly associated with witchcraft) are praised not only by the ancient Russian "Flower gardens", "Herbalists", "Healers", but also by many medical authors of antiquity and the Western European Middle Ages: Dioscorides (1st century AD), Quint Seren Samonik ("Medical Book", 3rd century), Odo of Men ("On the Properties of Herbs", 12th century), etc.
Pliny the Elder in "Natural History" (1st century AD), telling about the custom of the Latins to reward winners in a quadriga competition with a drink infused with wormwood, notes: "I believe that … he is given health as an honorable reward." In “Sadik” by Valafrid Strabo (9th century), wormwood is called “the mother of all herbs”.
Recently, in an ancient Anglo-Saxon herbalist, the poem "The Witchcraft of the Nine Herbs" was discovered about the virtues of medicinal plants that were considered the most effective. The first place among the herbs praised in it is given to wormwood.
