Masterwort

Masterwort is a perennial of the family Apiaceae, native to the mountains of central and southern Europe, from the Alps and Carpathians to the Massif Central and the northern Apennines, though it has been planted so widely that its true native range is uncertain. Kynes describes it as growing to a little under a metre, with toothed, three-lobed leaves and broad, lacy heads of small white flowers. It flavours a number of liqueurs and bitters, and in Austrian folk medicine its roots and leaves were drunk as tea, wine or liqueur and used outwardly as fumigation, tincture or incense. In the Middle Ages it was prized so highly as a healer that Germans, Danes and Swedes simply called it master and counted it a divine medicine, and it was thought to counter poisons, even the bite of a rabid dog. In the Tyrol the dried root was burned to cleanse the house on Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve and Twelfth Night, and in hoodoo the root serves in spirit work and protection and is the chief ingredient of master key oil. In magical practice it is worn to lend bodily strength, carried to steady the will and calm the feelings, kept as an amulet against evil, and sprinkled about to make spirits appear.