There are countless plants on our great green planet, many of which have remarkable properties that can be used in medicine, healing, and even magic.
We found many such plants, but without a doubt, in the hidden corners of the lost corners of the Earth, there are still many herbs, mushrooms and fruits that are still hiding from us, but whose amazing properties we can learn from ancient legends.
When such plants are mentioned in ancient legends, they are described in such amazing detail, as if they really existed, people definitely saw them and used them for their needs. Some of these plants had incredibly powerful properties, but all the data about them disappeared long ago in the darkness of the centuries, leaving us only crumbs of information.
Elixir of life mushroom
Some of the legendary plants of antiquity were associated with the possible acquisition of eternal youth and / or eternal life. This topic was especially widespread in ancient China. In ancient Chinese texts, starting from the 5th century, you can find a mention of the elixir of life, whose key element was a mushroom called Lingzhi.
The mushroom Ganoderma lucidum (varnished tinder fungus) is now known under this name and is used in Chinese medicine. But is this the legendary mushroom?
Lacquered polypore.
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As the legends tell, if you find one specific type of linghi mushroom and properly prepare it with certain herbs, you will get a drug that can completely stop human aging. At the same time, the recipe for making this potion has not reached our days and what herbs should be added there, as well as what type of mushroom is needed.
According to the legends, only magicians and alchemists knew the place where the real Lingzhi mushroom grew. This place is located on Mount Penglai, which is one of the three sacred island-mountains in Chinese mythology, which served as the abode of the inhabitants of the "sky". Only a limited circle of people knew how to find the right mushroom and how to make the potion of life from it. Even the Chinese emperor was not privy to this secret.
Amrita - the drink of the gods
Another way to gain immortality is associated with a drink called Amrita (also known as Soma). In Hindu mythologists, this drink was drunk by the gods and he made them immortal. Tradition says that amrita was obtained by "churning the Ocean of Milk". Amrita was delivered to the gods by Mohini.
The churning (churning) process is described as follows: Vishnu, in the form of a turtle, puts the Mandara mountain on his back, the gods and demons tie the Vasuki snake to it instead of a rope and twirl it like a whorl in the sea until various wonderful things begin to appear from it, in including the doctor of the gods Dhanvantari with amrita.
Mohini with amrita.
However, in the legends there are also references to the fact that some herbs from the mountains were needed to create amrita. There is also a process for describing the preparation of a drink, but also without details. The ingredients had to be crushed, then filtered through the wool, and then mixed with cow's milk.
Some botanists claim that judging by the visions of the gods, amrita was most likely prepared from a powerful hallucinogen, most likely containing psilobicin. Probably from the so-called hallucinogenic mushrooms. Others say that it could be a plant like the ephedra (Ephedra genus), which contains narcotic substances - the alkaloids ephedrine and pseudoephedrine.
Mysterious sylph
The most mysterious and mystical ancient herb, about which we now know nothing and to which absolutely phenomenal properties were attributed, was called silphium. Sylphius was deeply revered in the Roman Empire and was more expensive than gold, as it was very rare and valuable.
In appearance, the sylph looked rather plain, had a thick stem and sluggish leaves (its images and descriptions have come down to us), but was considered a real miracle in medicine. According to ancient doctors, sylphium cured almost any disease, and also protected from snake bites and was so toxic that if you drip its juice into the uterus, you could get rid of unwanted pregnancy. This was called "cleanse the womb."
Hippocrates gives the following recipe: "If the rectum falls out and does not stay in its place, take the sylphion, as fresh and dense as possible, scrape it finely and apply it as a poultice."
Sylphium was also considered a very powerful aphrodisiac, and it was also used for coughs, sore throat, fever, digestive disorders, and even warts. It was given as feed for livestock to make the meat of the animals more tender. Songs were composed about sylph and he was mentioned in prose.
Julius Caesar at the beginning of the civil war took from the public treasury, along with gold and silver, about half a ton of sylphium. Sylphium was the most important export for Cyrenaica (North Africa) and for its capital, Cyrene. He was depicted on Cyrene coins and was the only tribute that the inhabitants of the country paid to the Romans.
The most surprising thing is that, judging by the descriptions, it was impossible to grow sylphium by ourselves, it could only be found in the wild in a certain place. "… both Ionia and the Peloponnese are not so badly positioned in relation to the sun and the time of year, so that there was a lack of sun for the growth of plants, however, despite numerous attempts, it was impossible to grow in Ionia and the Peloponnese a sylphion, which itself grows in Libya ", - wrote about the plant Hippocrates.
Gradually, less and less sylphium was mined, until they stopped finding it at all. It is believed to have completely disappeared. Modern science considers Sylphium to be a plant from the umbrella family.
Ferula Tingitan plant from the umbrella species.
A plant that softens stones
Another unusual plant grows somewhere in the rainforest of South America and was probably used to soften rock.
Famous megalithic stone structures in Peru and Bolivia, such as those in Sacsayhuaman, in which the stones in the walls have edges that seem to be melted by something, have long been asking scientists how they were created. It seems that these walls were not built from solid stone, but from blocks that were once soft and pliable.
The stones in Sacsayhuaman or Cuzco are so tightly fitted to each other that there are no gaps between them. The weight of some stones is over 150 tons.
The incredible walls of Cusco (photo below) once attracted the attention of researchers Jan Peter de Jong, Christopher Jordan and Jesus Camarra, who expressed the idea that the stone blocks for these walls were heavily softened, and then placed in a special mold installed tight to the previous stone. After hardening, all the stones would be very flat against each other.
It is not known only how the ancients managed to soften the stones so much. But it seems that the famous traveler and adventurer Percy Fawcett (who later perished forever somewhere in the jungle in search of the lost city Z) managed to find out and write it down in his diary.
Fawcett once saw several holes in the sheer cliffs and the locals told him that a certain bird was making its nests there. The holes were so neatly round that Fawcett quickly noticed that such holes were not found anywhere else on the rocks, only where this bird made its nest. He also wondered why the birds would live there, and not somewhere in a more convenient place.
“They make these holes in the stones themselves,” a local resident told him. Later, Fawcett wrote in his diary how he personally saw a bird, similar to a kingfisher, arrives from somewhere with the leaves of an unidentified plant and begins to quickly rub on the stone in a circular motion with these leaves.
The bird arrives with new and new leaves and after three or four times the stone begins to crumble in that place and a hole appears there. Then the bird brings leaves again and deepens this hole.
Fawcett also recorded the story of a man who wore boots with spurs and one day this man came to his camp, and the spurs on his feet looked like melted chocolate. After questioning, the man said that he was passing by an unusual low plant with dark red leaves.
And there is another story from the same Fawcett and also about a substance that softens the stone. A friend of his son, Brian Fawcett, once found a bottle of some kind of liquid in a mining camp. He was sure it was alcohol. But when the bottle was brought to Fawcett's camp, it accidentally broke, and the substance fell on a small rock.
After about ten minutes, people saw that there was no stone, and in its place was some soft substance, similar in consistency to cement. The rock under the softened stone was also partially damaged. It was as if the stone was composed of wax and melted due to the heat.
What kind of mysterious plant it was, whose juice in such a short time turned the stone into a kind of wax candle, remained a mystery. Fawcett did not manage to find out, and if he did, all this was forever hidden in the jungle, in which he finally disappeared in 1925.
