Found in the Hermetikon archive

Aloe / Aloes

Aloe vera

Aloe / Aloes appears in Hermetikon as an archive-backed plant entry, with references across historical medical, magical, symbolic, and ritual contexts where the source texts support them.

Risk: moderate
Books: 58
Contexts: 4
Mentions: 425

Overview Reading Contexts Citations Related Books

Archive Profile

Identity, safety, and search aliases used to connect this herb to the archive.

Herb identity

Common name: aloe
Latin name: Aloe vera(ambiguous)
Identity note: Historical aloes may refer to aloe resin, aloe vera, or lignum aloes/agarwood.

Safety

moderate

Topical aloe differs from oral aloe latex, which has laxative, kidney, and pregnancy concerns.

Historical archive citations are not medical advice. Use modern clinical and poison-control sources for ingestion, dosage, pregnancy, and toxicity questions.

NCCIH Herbs at a Glance: Topical aloe differs from oral aloe latex, which has laxative, kidney, and pregnancy concerns.

Aliases

aloeAloe barbadensisAloe veraaloeswood of aloes

Aloe / Aloes in Historical Sources

Curated archive synthesis of recurring uses, recipes, rituals, and interpretive problems.

Hermetikon's curated reading of Aloe / Aloes (Aloe vera) is built from 3 source-linked archive notes and 2 preparation or ritual-use entries. The strongest recurring contexts are preparations, ritual uses, and identity. Each note below links back to the archive source used for the claim.

Preparation

high

Culpeper gives Aloe Rosata as powdered aloes digested with clarified Damask rose juice and repeatedly evaporated, then describes it as a gentle purger of choler.

Culpeper's Complete Herbal | Nicholas Culpeper | 1653

Chapter 60

Identity

high

Hill describes juice pressed from aloe leaves and dried into hepatic and caballine aloes, which is resin-drug evidence rather than modern topical aloe gel.

The Family Herbal | John Hill | 1755

Page 59

Ritual

high

Agrippa uses lignum aloes in a suffumigation with spermaceti, storax, pepper-wort, musk, saffron, and lapwing blood for attracting spirits and ghosts.

Three Books of Occult Philosophy | Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim | 1533

Page 145

Preparations and ritual uses

Aloe Rosata

high

Culpeper's Aloe Rosata digests powdered aloes with clarified Damask rose juice and repeatedly evaporates the mixture into a purgative mass.

Culpeper's Complete Herbal | Nicholas Culpeper | 1653

Chapter 60

Spirit suffumigation

high

Agrippa's suffumigation uses lignum aloes with spermaceti, red storax, pepper-wort, musk, saffron, and lapwing blood for spirit and ghost operations.

Three Books of Occult Philosophy | Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim | 1533

Page 145

Aloe / Aloes Archive Contexts

Compact source patterns from the extracted citation set.

Medicine

1 passage across 1 book; strongest source: The Golden Bough.

Matched as aloes; high confidence.

Astrology

6 passages across 6 books; strongest source: Encyclopaedia of Occultism.

Matched as aloe; high confidence.

Preparation

5 passages across 5 books; strongest source: Culpeper's Complete Herbal.

Matched as aloe; high confidence.

Ritual

1 passage across 1 book; strongest source: Key of Solomon.

Matched as aloes; high confidence.

Aloe / Aloes Cited Excerpts

Representative public passages with the herb mention highlighted and linked to archive source material.

5 shown

Culpeper's Complete Herbal

Nicholas Culpeper

1653

"...th brain, stomach, bowels, and eyes of putrified humours, and also strengthens them. Use these as the succeeding. #### *Aloe Rosata.* *College.*] Take of Aloes in powder four ounces, juice of Damask Roses clarified one pound, mix them and digest them in the sun, or in a bath, till the superfluous liquor be drawn off, digest it, and evaporate it four times over, and keep the mass. *Culpeper.*] It is a gallant gentle purger of choler, frees the stomach from superfluous humours, opens stoppings, and other infirmities of the body proceeding from choler and flegm..."

Chapter 60Open in Reader

Preparationalias: aloehigh confidence

King's American Dispensatory

Harvey Wickes Felter

1854

"... one thousand grammes (1000 Gm.) [2 lbs. av., 3 ozs., 120 grs.]"— (Nat. Form.). Action, Medical Uses, and Dosage.— (See Aloe.) A preparation of repulsive taste, employed to overcnme romtipittion, when associated with flatulence or menstrual tardiness. Dose, as a laxative, about 4 fluid drachms. VINUM AROMATICUM.— AROMATIC WINE. Preparation. — Take of lavender, origanum, peppermint, rosemary, sage, wormwood, of each, 1 part; stronger white wine, a sufficient quantity to make 100 parts. "Mix the solid ingredients, and reduce them to a coarse (No. 20) powder. M..."

Page 1184Open in Reader

Preparationalias: aloehigh confidence

The Family Herbal

John Hill

1755

"...re pressed gently, and the juice received in earthen vessels: it is set to settle and then dried in the sun. The common aloe is a very fine plant; the leaves are above two feet long and an inch thick, they are dented at the edges and prickly, and have a very sharp thorn at the point. The stalk, when it flowers, is five or six feet high, and divided into several branches; the flowers are yellow streaked with green. From the juice of the leaves of this plant are made the hepatic and the caballine aloes; the hepatic is made from the clearer and finer part of th..."

Page 59Open in Reader

Astrologyalias: aloehigh confidence

Three Books of Occult Philosophy

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim

1533

"...here is nothing like the fume of spermaceti for the raising of spirits. Wherefore, if a fume be made of that and lignum-aloes, red storax, pepper-wort, musk, and saffron, all tempered together, with the blood of a lapwing, it will quickly gather airy spirits together, and if it be used about the graves of the dead, it gathers together spirits and the ghosts of the dead. So, as often as we direct any work to the Sun, we must make suffumigations with Solary things, and if to the Moon, with Lunary things, and so of the rest. And we must know that as there is a c..."

Page 145Open in Reader

Astrologyalias: aloeshigh confidence

The Golden Bough

James George Frazer

1907

"... take their place in the procession. The hymn of the Carnival is now thundered out, after which, amid a deafening roar, aloe leaves and cabbages are whirled aloft and descend impartially on the heads of the just and the unjust, who lend fresh zest to the proceedings by engaging in a free fight. When these preliminaries have been concluded to the satisfaction of all concerned, the procession gets under weigh. The rear is brought up by a cart laden with barrels of wine and policemen, the latter engaged in the congenial task of serving out wine to all who ask f..."

Â§ 11. The Magic Spring.Open in Reader

Astrologyalias: aloehigh confidence

Books Mentioning Aloe / Aloes

Complete public source inventory, placed after the interpretive reading so the page opens with the most useful synthesis first.

58 books

Culpeper's Complete Herbal

Nicholas Culpeper | 1653

aloealoeswood of aloes

154 mentionscited

King's American Dispensatory

Harvey Wickes Felter | 1854

aloealoes

58 mentionscited

Anatomy of Melancholy

Robert Burton | 1621

aloesaloe

16 mentions

The Mathnawi, Vol. 2

R. A. Nicholson | 1926

Archive Profile

Herb identity

Safety

Aliases

Aloe / Aloes in Historical Sources

Preparation

Identity

Ritual

Preparations and ritual uses

Aloe Rosata

Spirit suffumigation

Aloe / Aloes Archive Contexts

Medicine

Astrology

Preparation

Ritual

Aloe / Aloes Cited Excerpts

Culpeper's Complete Herbal

King's American Dispensatory

The Family Herbal

Three Books of Occult Philosophy

The Golden Bough

Related Archive Material

Related herbs

Books Mentioning Aloe / Aloes