A Gift of Love

The "Natural Medicine Love it Up" Challenge is on! You can join in and find out more at: https://steemit.com/naturalmedicine/@naturalmedicine/enter-the-natural-medicine-love-it-up-contest-30-sbd-in-prizes-due-date-valentines-day-14th-feb
A gift of love can be a most precious thing!
Showing your love has been done in many different ways in different cultures.
A gift to show your love to a sweatheart is often done with flowers.
Flowers have been a symbol of love and courtship throughout the ages.

The Language of flowers

How oft does an emblem-bud silently tell
What language could never speak half so well!
—Louisa Anne Twamley, Romance of Nature (1836)

What of Heartsease – the violet.

Viola is from the ancient Latin name for the flower. It probably comes from the diminutive of VIA, meaning love.

Viola tricolor, is also known as Johnny Jump up, heartsease, heart's ease, heart's delight, tickle-my-fancy, Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me, come-and-cuddle-me, three faces in a hood, or love-in-idleness

Mentioned in poetry and plays.

When beechen buds begin to swell,
And woods the bluebirds’s warble know,
The yellow violet’s modest bell
Peeps from the last year’s leaves below. – William Cullen Bryant

Wiki tells of the Mythology around this flower

According to Roman mythology, the wild pansy turned into the Love-in-idleness as Cupid shot one of his arrows at the imperial votaress, but missed and instead struck it. As Cupid is the god of desire, affection and erotic love, the flower’s juice received the trait, to act as a love potion. Its name relates to the use of the flower, as it is often used for idleness or vileness acts.
According to Greek mythology, Zeus fell in love with a young woman named Io_(mythology) and provoked jealousy to his wife Hera. He transformed the girl into a heifer and kept her grazing at his feet. For pity on the diet of herbs to which he submitted the beloved, he caused the earth to produce beautiful flowers that he called Io. Another Greek legend has it that the delicate white flowers were worshiped by Eros. To inhibit this worship, Aphrodite colored them, which resulted in tricolor coloration.

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare makes a more direct reference, probably to V. tricolor in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Oberon sends Puck to gather "a little western flower that maidens call love-in-idleness". Oberon's account is that he diverted an arrow from Cupid's bow aimed at "a fair vestal, throned by the west" (supposedly Queen Elizabeth I) to fall upon the plant "before milk-white, now purple with love's wound". The "imperial vot'ress" passes on "fancy-free", destined never to fall in love.
In Act II and III, Oberon's and Puck's intervention with the magic love potion of the flower, they can control the fates of various characters, but also speed up the process of falling in and out of love, so that the actual romances of the lovers and their love itself appears to become very comical. Shakespeare uses the flower to provide the essential dramatic and comical features for his play. Besides that the love potion gained from the flower, does not only interfere with the lovers fates, but also gives the play structure as it affects the lovers' romances drastically, as it at first upsets the balance of love and creates asymmetrical love among the four Athenian lovers. The fact that this flower introduces magical love to this play creates the potential for many possible outcomes for this play.
The juice of the heartsease now, claims Oberon, "on sleeping eyelids laid, Will make or man or woman madly dote Upon the next live creature that it sees." Equipped with such powers, Oberon and Puck control the fates of various characters in the play to provide Shakespeare's essential dramatic and comic structure for the play.
Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before, milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness.

Shakespeare had ended this lover's story as a comedy, with the inclusion of several tragic and dramatic moments. This is supposed to show that love can be a source of comedy as easily as of tragedy and therefore show that the power that the love potion from the Love-in-idleness inherits is beyond the comprehension of fairies and mortals alike.

Look at this simple way to make a love potion, remembering that the power of the love potion comes from what you put in making it.
By: Meg Butler - Source
Ingredients
1 Apple thinly sliced
Pinch of cinnamon
Pinch of thyme
Pinch of rosemary
Pinch of sea salt
Rainwater caught in a crystal dish

Put everything into a saucepan on low heat simmering 90 min.
Stir and Recite "Song of Solomon", words found here while you are making it
Store in a glass vial. Dab on your wrist pulse point daily.

There are oils and perfumes (kind of a love potions) you can buy with chemical hormone called a pheromone.
It’ll stimulates the part of the brains responsible for those longing and attraction feelings.
That helps to get the chemistry going with a love potion but really it's success is due to more of a placebo effect. Get the idea that you're more attractive, and sure enough you become more attractive. Which can be a good thing!

Song of Songs by Gustave Moreau

More on the Song of Solomon which is very interesting in itself...

From Wiki:

The Song of Songs is unique within the Hebrew Bible: it shows no interest in Law or Covenant or the God of Israel, nor does it teach or explore wisdom like Proverbs or Ecclesiastes (although it does have some affinities to wisdom literature, as the ascription to Solomon indicates); instead, it celebrates sexual love, giving "the voices of two lovers, praising each other, yearning for each other, proffering invitations to enjoy". The two are in harmony, each desiring the other and rejoicing in sexual intimacy; the women of Jerusalem form a chorus to the lovers, functioning as an audience whose participation in the lovers' erotic encounters facilitates the participation of the reader.

What of Aphrodisiacs, a substance that elevates sexual or sensual desire or can excite, nourish or sustain it.

One Willow Apothecaries gives us a list of Herbal Aphrodisiac by Category

You can use these herbs to make your own aphrodisiac with a simple method of using 1 cup honey per 2 tablespoon of chopped fresh herb (1 Tbsp. if dried) Heat the honey in a double burner on low heat and when warm stir in the herbs. Let sit for 1-6 hours keeping it warm enough to put it on your skin comfortably. Once you have it strong enough for your liking, strain out your herbs with a cheese cloth or fine mesh strainer, straining it right into your jars.

From the category of heart healers and love drug I choose chocolate.
Thought of by the Aztec as food for the gods!

Chocolate - Food of the Gods

I know the raw cacao (where chocolate comes from) is a superfood and not only is chocolate an aphrodisiac it also makes you happy!

It has chemicals like Phenylethylamine which gives you feelings similar to that of being in love and tryptophan which causes the release of serotonin, a mood-lifter.
But wait there is one more, there is a fat in chocolate called anadamide (comes from the Sanskrit word for “bliss”) which activates a receptor in the brain causing dopamine to be produced ad released. Plus endorphines too, which lower levels of stress and pain.
To me having chocolate is a way of giving a little self love!

Give Yourself some Self Love!

So here's to "Lovin' It Up" and the wonderful herbs, flowers and substances that help us do that!

Thanks for stopping by!