Basil

TSRF wrote:

Thank gods I didn’t listen to you and run out and plant some! My back deck is covered in ice. We had rain and then a freeze last night. Do you know what a freeze does to Basil? DO YOU??

Anyway, yes. We still have pesto in the freezer from last year’s crop. I’m moving my seed in the ground date to May 21st because of this freakishly cold spring.

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Yeah, i had a bunch of pots out on my patio. I had to bring many of them inside. But I didnt have room for all of them.

So, i had to decide which plants lived, and which plants died. I’m a God. God of Plants. The decider.

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Sacred Plant of Eternal Love and Healing: The Mythology and Magic of Basil
basil:https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/sacred-plant-eternal-love-and-healing-mythology-and-magic-basil-009395

…Ancient Superstitions Regarding Basil

The name derives from the Greek “basilikos”, which means “herb worthy of a king”, as mentioned by the Greek philosopher and botanist Theophrastus, in the 3rd century BC. Basil seems to have originated in India and was brought to the West by the merchants of spices; the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans were already aware of its flavors and healing properties.

The Greeks and Romans believed that, to grow a healthy seedling, it was necessary to sow it, accompanying the operation with insults and curses, but to speak of the basil more seriously was the Roman writer Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, who explains how the basil is a plant to sow in abundance “after the Ides of May until the summer solstice”. Among the Romans it was considered a magical and sacred plant to Venus, like many other fragrant herbs, to be harvested following precise rituals.
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….Tears of love

In the Middle Ages, in order to collect basil, one had to first purify the right hand, washing it in three different springs, then using an oak branch and wearing white linen clothes. In Boccaccio’s Decameron we find one of the strangest love stories that has as its protagonist the basil plant. Boccaccio in V Novella, IV day, tells the story of Elisabetta da Messina who buried the head of her beloved Lorenzo, barbarously murdered by her jealous brothers, in a large vase of basil, which she watered every day with tears.
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….The history of pesto

Historically basil arrived in Liguria in the second half of the eleventh and early twelfth century and especially in Genoa following the enterprises of the Genoese commander Guglielmo Embriaco, known as Head of Chainmail. The leader kept on one of his galleys his real secret entrusted to Captain Bartolomeo Decotto. The captain experimented with the therapeutic characteristics of the basil when he was in Palestine during the crusades and returning to Genoa he brought some bags of seeds with him. A true legend was born. At first it was said that the basil leaves were only used as a medicine, but then when working with the pestle to obtain ointments, it happened that someone thought it well to add olive oil to use as a cream for skin irritations. It is said that accidentally the sauce fell on bread and … pesto was born!

Legends and superstitions have always accompanied the history of spices, but curiously some survived right until the 1800s. It is said that some English people living in India roamed regularly with a wooden necklace of basil to neutralize the electrical impulses, keeping away the lightning, as claimed by the Hindu religion. In the same period, but only in the eclipses, basil was also eaten and placed in water reserves to prevent contamination.