Spiders, Toads, and Common Plantain: Folklore Right Under Your Feet

Writing this blog encourages me to see the world in a different way. New England is full of interesting places and stories. Almost every town has its ghost or witches, its haunted cemetery, or its anomalous rock formation. There's something unusual lurking everywhere.

Sometimes it's hiding right under our feet. Last week I went for a walk in the Arnold Arboretum. I was hoping to find a mountain ash tree, but the Arboretum has over 15,000 (!) plantings and I never located one. However, I did find this plant.

It's the common plantain, also known as greater plantain, snakeweed, Englishman's foot, and a host of other things. If you speak Latin, you'll call it plantago major. The ancient Roman's called it planta, which means "the sole of man's foot," because it supposedly followed the Roman legions wherever they marched. You probably have some in your yard or growing out of the cracks in your sidewalk.

Here's a story about the plantain from a the 1798 edition of The Farmer's Almanack:

A toad was seen fighting with a spider in Rhode-Island; and when the former was bit, it hopped to a plantain leaf, bit off a piece, and then engaged with the spider again. After this had been repeated sundry times, a spectator pulled up the plantain, and put it out of the way. The toad, on being bit again, jumped to where the plantain had stood; and as it was not to be found, she hopped round several times, turned over on her back, swelled up, and died immediately. This is an evident demonstration that the juice of the plantain is an antidote against the bites of those venomous insects.

Now, I'm not saying this battle between a Rhode Island toad and spider never happened, but the famous Dutch writer Erasmus included a very similar story in his Colloquies, which were written in the 1500s:

I have heard it told by those that have seen it, that there is the like Enmity between a Toad and a Spider; but that the Toad cures himself, when he is wounded, by biting of a Plantane Leaf.

Perhaps toads across the world all know the efficacy of plantain against spider venom, or perhaps this is a very old folk story that made its way from Europe to New England. Either way, its inclusion in The Farmer's Almanack indicates the high regard English settlers had for common plantain.

In addition to spider bites, over the centuries plantain has been used to treat dysentery, earaches, kidney disorders, and open wounds. Although originally native to southern Europe, plantain has spread across the world. Just as the Roman legionnaires carried it out from Italy, the English settlers carried it to North America.

Because of this the Native Americans gave it the names Englishman's foot and white man's foot, an invasive species brought by an invading nation. However, stories also say that the plant's ability to cure rattlesnake bites was first discovered by a South Carolina Indian. This discovery added another name, snakeweed, to plantain's long list of pseudonyms and spurred that state's legislature to reward the Indian (from Matthew Robinson's Family Herbal, 1863).

I don't know anything about the dangers or benefits of using plantain to treat illnesses or injuries, so I'm not going to recommend it for anything, particularly not rattlesnake bites. If you're bitten by a rattlesnake call 911! But I will recommend looking down when you walk around, because you never know what interesting piece of folklore you're stepping over.

Aleister Crowley's New Hampshire Vacation

School will be starting up again soon, and I wonder if kids are still asked to write essays about what they did on their summer vacations. I suppose most kids write about similar things: trips to the beach, playing Little League, family vacations, etc.

I wonder if any kids write about practicing ritual magic? That's what Aleister Crowley did on his summer vacation to New Hampshire in 1916.

Aleister Crowley has a very sinister reputation, which he actively cultivated, but I don't think it is entirely deserved. Crowley was born into a well-off British family in 1875, and even as a very young child he questioned his parent's devotion to fundamentalist Christianity, which resulted in his mother calling him "the Beast." The name stuck, and when he was an adult he called himself the Great Beast 666 to signify his opposition to Christianity.

However, Crowley was not a Satanist. While he was attending college in Cambridge he became a bisexual libertine, and also became interested in occultism and ritual magic. After college he joined the Order of the Golden Dawn, an order of ritual magicians in England that included notable members like W.B. Yeats, Bram Stoker, and Sax Rohmer.

The Golden Dawn eventually splintered apart due to conflicts between members, and Crowley founded his own magical order called the Argentum Astrum after he had been contacted by a divine being called Aiwass while he was living in Cairo. Crowley felt that he had come in contact with the Godhead itself, and was able to converse directly with the Holy Guardian Angel that guided his life. It's not entirely clear if he thought this angel was an external being or part of his deep subconscious.

Before his death in 1947, Crowley founded even more magical orders and lodges, went through a string of male and female lovers, preached about the end of Christianity, and became addicted to a lot of drugs. Crowley felt there was no such thing as bad publicity, and reveled in being called the Wickedest Man in the World by the British press. Even in death he generated controversy. The physician who was attending Crowley died exactly one day after Crowley did, and the press claimed the magician had put a curse on the doctor.

With such a busy life, you can see why Crowley might want an occasional vacation, and in 1916 after leaving New York City he spent the summer on the shores of New Hampshire's Lake Pasquaney. In his book The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, he describes what he did on his summer vacation. He did not play Little League.

Before leaving New York, he drank a special potion to restore his youthful vigor. The effects didn't kick in until he reached New Hampshire, where he found himself unable to focus on any intellectual work and instead chopped down an enormous tree to build a wharf for his canoe. He claims that "Passers-by spread the story of the hermit with superhuman strength, and people came from all parts to gaze upon the miracle."

After the effects of this potion (which sounds like some type of amphetamine to me) faded away, Crowley decided to clear his mind of the remnants of his parents' Christianity by ritually crucifying a toad.

The result was immediately apparent. A girl of the village, three miles away, asked me to employ her as my secretary. I had had no intention of doing any literary work; but as soon as I set eyes on her I recognized that she had been sent for a purpose, for she exactly resembled the aforesaid toad. I therefore engaged her to come out every morning and take dictation.

While in New Hampshire, Crowley also had a vision of the universe, which he called the Star Sponge Vision.

 I lost consciousness of everything but a universal space in which were innumerable bright points, and I realized this as a physical representation of the universe, in what I may call its essential structure. I exclaimed, "Nothingness with twinkles!" I concentrated upon this vision, with the result that the void space which had been the principal element of it diminished in importance; space appeared to be ablaze, yet the radiant points were not confused, and I thereupon completed my sentence with the exclamation, "but what twinkles!"

I guess Crowley overall had an eventful summer vacation in New Hampshire - he even had a ball of lightning follow him into his cottage during a thunderstorm, which he wrote about in a letter to the New York Times. However, there is one small catch to the stories he told about his vacation: there's no such place as Lake Pasquaney in New Hampshire. (Thanks to Joseph Citro and Diane Fould's Curious New England for pointing that out.)

The cottage where Crowley vacationed.

 Well, according to the site Atlas Obscura and a book called The New England Grimpendium by J.W. Ocker, Crowley actually spent his vacation in Hebron, New Hampshire in a cottage on the shores of Lake Newfound. The cottage (photo above) was owned by Evangeline Adams, a well-known astrologer in the early 20th century. Adams and Crowley collaborated on several books together, but eventually had a falling out over who should get authorial credit.

Evangeline Adams

Crowley only has bad things to say about Adams in his Confessions, so maybe this is what motivated him to invent Lake Pasquaney. He clearly enjoyed his time at her cottage, but perhaps didn't want to give her any credit for loaning it to him. Crowley also enjoyed creating an air of mystery around himself, so that was probably part of the decision as well.

Lam!

One more interesting vacation tidbit. Hebron is very close to where Betty and Barney Hill were abducted by UFOs, and Crowley once had an encounter with an entity named Lam that looked much like the aliens who abducted the Hill. This site has some speculation about connections between the two. Read at the risk of your own sanity.