Although humanity has probably been trying to use
contraceptives since the invention of the
affair, it took us a while to actually write about one. As far as I know, this was the very first to receive that honor. It comes from a collection of materials called the
Papyri Magicae Graecae, or,
The Greek Magical Papyri, which comes from the
Hermetics in
Egypt after it was pulled into the
Roman Empire.
- Take seeds of the bitter vetch (orobos: Vicia orobus), as many as you can through the years, as you wish for yourself, so that you would remain sterile.
- Steep the seeds in the freshly expelled blood of a menstruating woman. Let the seeds become part of the nature of the menstrual blood.
- Take a living frog and throw the seeds of the bitter vetch into its mouth, so that the frog swallows them.
- Let the living frog go free at the place where you captured him.
- Take the seed of henbane (hyoskyemos: Hyoscyamus niger), steep it in mare's milk.
- Take the nasal mucus of a cow with grains of barley, put these into a leather bag made from the hide of a fawn.
- On the outside bind it up with a bag of mulehide, and fasten it up during the waning of the moon in a female sign of the zodiac on a day of Cronos of Hermes.
- Mix also with the barley grains cerumin from the ear of a mule.