Dittany of Crete

Dittany of Crete is a low herb that spreads into mounds about a foot high and twice as broad. Its rounded, downy leaves are aromatic and now and then mottled with purple, and its tiny two-lipped flowers, greenish and pink to purple, hang in clusters that look like hops. The Romans pictured Juno, in her role as Lucina, the guardian of childbirth, wearing a circlet of it. In Crete and mainland Greece, dittany growing on a grave was a sign that the dead person rested in peace, and on Crete a gift of it was a weighty pledge of love, because it grew in remote places that were hard to reach. English and European legend told that deer wounded by arrows ate it to force the shafts out. Because it gives off thick smoke when burned, European magicians used it to call up spirits and also to drive evil ones away; sorcerers burned it while scrying, for a glimpse of the future and a line to the otherworld, and garlands of it were worn to sharpen clairvoyance. Cunningham keeps the smoke at the centre of its use: burned in a censer, it makes a base for spirits to manifest, the wraiths showing themselves in the rising smoke, and mixed in equal parts with vanilla, benzoin and sandalwood it makes an incense for astral projection. He also has its juice rubbed on the skin to keep venomous creatures away.