Lovage: Magical Properties & Uses

Lovage is the herb of physical attraction and the drawing of admiring attention: it is used in baths, sachets, and washes before social occasions where one wishes to be noticed, desired, or influential. It is not a herb of long-term love but of attraction in the moment and the opening of social doors. In prosperity workings its solar rulership gives it an expansive, attention-drawing quality applicable to business contexts as well as personal ones. In cleansing baths it removes the energetic residue of negative interactions and restores the practitioner's natural attractiveness and vitality. It is one of the older and less commonly known love herbs in the British tradition.

Lovage (Levisticum officinale) has been used medicinally in European herbalism for digestive complaints, as a diuretic, and as an expectorant. Culpeper recommended it for digestive wind, kidney stones, and women's complaints. The essential oil has demonstrated antimicrobial properties. The root is the primary medicinal part, used in teas and tinctures for urinary and digestive complaints. It is used in some liqueurs and as a flavouring. It is generally safe; it should be avoided in pregnancy and in those with kidney disease.

Aphrodite, Venus

Its very name tells the working: lovage, love-ache, the herb of attractive power. Medieval ladies bathed in lovage water before going to court, believing it would draw admirers. The plant was grown in monastery gardens throughout medieval Europe both for its culinary use (it tastes of strong celery) and for its medicinal properties. Culpeper recommended it for digestive complaints, menstrual regulation, and for encouraging eruptions in smallpox and measles to surface. In Italian folk magic it was used in love baths and as an ingredient in love philtres. Its strong, aromatic scent was understood as an attractant: something that draws attention and provokes desire simply by its presence.