Drawing Down the Moon

• Erotic Magic
• The ancient image actually gives the Moon-drawing woman a rod/wand
• Drawing down the Moon produces a fluid
• Apuleius independently knows the Moon as something from which witches extract moisture
• And the Moon becomes blood-red during the extraction
• The ῥάβδος itself has the right ritual pedigree
• Aristotle gives us the two female lunar substances we’re interested in
• moon foam - aphro selenon

Erotic Magic

The literary tradition specifically associates Moon-drawing with erotic magic. Ogden’s collection summarizes the ancient topos: Thessalian pharmakides (φαρμακίδες), a term later redefined as "witches", draw down the Moon particularly in erotic attraction magic, and the Moon can become pale or blood-red during the operation.

The ancient image actually gives the Moon-drawing woman a rod/wand

The famous Hamilton/Tischbein vase-now lost, but preserved in an 18th-century drawing-is the only surviving ancient image identified by modern specialists as depicting drawing down the Moon. Radcliffe Edmonds uses it as the cover image of his Drawing Down the Moon.

The scene shows two naked women. One carries what the catalog describes as a pointed stick/wand; the other has a short sword. The Moon descends between them.

Drawing down the Moon produces a fluid

Lucan describes what the Thessalian witches actually want from the operation. Under their incantations Luna is forced downward until:

The scholarly discussion explicitly points out that Lucan understands the operation not merely as making Luna disappear but as obtaining the substance produced by her descent.

And then, later in the same book, Erictho actually uses that material.

virus lunare is difficult to capture with one English word. Here it is something like:

• lunar fluid / lunar secretion / lunar potent substance
• virus can designate poison, venom, pungent secretion, slime, etc., rather than merely modern “virus.”

And immediately afterward Erictho mixes other pharmacological ingredients into it-rabid-dog foam, lynx viscera, snake-associated substances, dragon eyes, horned-serpent material, etc.

Servius explicitly preserves the pharmacological interpretation when commenting on Vergil’s gathering of magical herbs, which has moon-foam or moon-discharge on them:

The lunar liquid gets onto the herbs, and those particular herbs are gathered.

He explicitly invokes Lucan’s Moon-drawing passage to explain what kind of herbs he means.

The setting is a φαρμακο-ritual scene performed by a sacerdos. Altars are standing around her; she invokes Erebus, Chaos, triple Hecate/Diana, uses simulated water from Avernus, and obtains special herbs and hippomanes. Vergil writes:

Vergil’s ad lunam is what Servius is explaining.

Then Servius clarifies:

Apuleius independently knows the Moon as something from which witches extract moisture

The commentary on Apuleius Metamorphoses 1 notes another formulation: the witch can effectively dry the Moon of her dew/moisture. The commentary compares other ancient passages where witches obtain lunar dew and notes that such lunar moisture was associated with drugs, erotic preparations and poisons.

And the Moon becomes blood-red during the extraction

Ogden’s survey of the ancient evidence identifies this as one of the standard features of the topos:

We’re accumulating a rather specific cluster:

female pharmakis
→ naked female operator
→ rod/wand
→ erotic rite
→ Moon drawn downward
→ Moon becomes blood-red
→ Moon expresses fluid/foam
→ fluid is collected
→ virus lunare
→ combined with pharmacological ingredients
→ administered

And separately:

woman’s reproductive physiology
→ menstrual κάθαρσις explicitly synchronized by Aristotle with lunar φθίσις
→ female filling synchronized with lunar πλήρωσις

That makes the bodily-pharmacological interpretation worth taking seriously.

The ῥάβδος itself has the right ritual pedigree

The Greek ῥάβδος isn’t merely an emblem held decoratively by witches.

Circe’s operation in Homer combines:

• φάρμακα + ῥάβδος

and the rod participates in producing the altered state/transformation. Scholarship on Circe’s ῥάβδος points out that the same category of implement is used by Hermes, Athena and Poseidon in operations affecting consciousness/state; Hermes’ ῥάβδος famously induces and releases sleep.

So:

• ῥάβδος + pharmakon + altered state

is genuinely archaic Greek.

Then the Moon-drawing image gives us:

• naked woman + rod/wand + lunar operation.

ῥάβδος isn’t simply a generic walking stick. Jane Harrison made the useful distinction that the ῥάβδος is the active implement of enchantment: Circe uses a ῥάβδος in conjunction with her pharmakon when transforming Odysseus’ companions.

Aristotle gives us the two female lunar substances we’re interested in

Aristotle explicitly discusses both.

First, menstruation. He says τὰ καταμήνια are the female analogue of male semen:

Then Aristotle gets even more explicit about σπέρμα:

And then Aristotle makes the female side explicit:

Here Aristotle states the relationship between καταμήνια and σπέρμα extraordinarily plainly:

Within his physiology, he explicitly classifies menstrual material as σπέρμα in an unconcocted state.

and explains both through blood-derived generative material. Semen is ultimately produced from nutritive material reduced to αἷμα, and menstrual material occupies the corresponding generative position in the female.

So:

• αἷμα → generative material → male σπέρμα / female καταμήνια.

But then Aristotle immediately discusses another female fluid produced during sexual pleasure.

He says some people believe women emit σπέρμα during intercourse because women sometimes experience pleasure like men and simultaneously emit liquid:

He then disagrees (above with "this moisture is not spermatikos") that this particular ὑγρὰ ἀπόκρισις is semen, calling it instead a female ἔκκρισις associated with the reproductive region.

He argues against those who classify this fluid as female σπέρμα-which importantly tells us that some people in Aristotle’s time apparently did interpret the emission as female sperma.

And he specifically says that in some women its quantity can greatly exceed an emission of semen.

• αἷμα / καταμήνια - menstrual material, whose evacuation Aristotle explicitly correlates with lunar waning.

• ὑγρὰ ἀπόκρισις / ἔκκρισις - the clear/liquid female emission Aristotle explicitly says can accompany sexual pleasure, sometimes abundantly.

Thus “drawing down Selene” could potentially play upon drawing forth/down the woman’s lunar-correlated generative material (menses).

the clear female emission remains a serious second candidate because Aristotle independently attests a substantial ὑγρὰ ἀπόκρισις associated specifically with female sexual excitation.

The rod makes the 2nd more likely...

• see Hyma for more Aristotle on blood and semen as life essences, semen as a more refined version of blood.

The female lunar substances may also be 1. hyma blood and 2. another clear hyma life essence (non-spermatos) refined version of that blood. By extension.

moon foam - aphro selenon

An interesting word is that for "moon foam".

• ἀφροσέληνον - aphro-selēnon: Moon-foam / lunar foam

What a cool term!