Found in the Hermetikon archive

Gourd

Lagenaria siceraria

Gourd 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: 51
Contexts: 6
Mentions: 279

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: gourd
Latin name: Lagenaria siceraria(ambiguous)
Identity note: Archive references may be vessel, plant, biblical, or folk material.

Safety

moderate

Gourd identity varies; bitter gourds or contaminated gourds can be unsafe.

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

Kew POWO: Gourd identity varies; bitter gourds or contaminated gourds can be unsafe.

Aliases

gourdgourdsLagenaria siceraria

Gourd in Historical Sources

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

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

Preparation

high

Culpeper includes gourd seeds in a cooling powder with melon, cucumber, citrul, endive, camphor, gums, and starch for heat of the stomach and liver.

Culpeper's Complete Herbal | Nicholas Culpeper | 1653

Chapter 58

Ritual

high

Frazer's Caramantran procession has masqueraders carrying gourds full of wine, placing gourds in carnival vessel and intoxication symbolism.

The Golden Bough | James George Frazer | 1907

Â§ 11. The Magic Spring.

Symbolism

high

In Frazer's corn-mother material, the wild swan stands for gourds during a women's corn-medicine festival, making gourd a crop-symbol in seasonal ritual.

The Golden Bough | James George Frazer | 1912

Â§ 6. The Double Personification of the Corn as Mother and Daughter.

Preparations and ritual uses

Cooling seed powder

high

Culpeper's powder uses gourd seeds with melon, cucumber, citrul, endive, camphor, gum arabic, tragacanth, and starch.

Culpeper's Complete Herbal | Nicholas Culpeper | 1653

Chapter 58

Carnival wine vessel

high

Frazer's Caramantran procession uses gourds full of wine as carried vessels in the public carnival rite.

The Golden Bough | James George Frazer | 1907

Â§ 11. The Magic Spring.

Gourd Archive Contexts

Compact source patterns from the extracted citation set.

Medicine

3 passages across 3 books; strongest source: The Family Herbal.

Matched as gourd; medium confidence.

Astrology

2 passages across 2 books; strongest source: The Golden Bough.

Matched as gourds; high confidence.

Folk magic

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

Matched as gourds; high confidence.

Preparation

4 passages across 4 books; strongest source: Culpeper's Complete Herbal.

Matched as gourds; high confidence.

Ritual

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

Matched as gourd; medium confidence.

Safety

2 passages across 2 books; strongest source: The Golden Bough.

Matched as gourds; high confidence.

Gourd 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

"...s, of each two drams and fifteen grains, white Starch, Gum Arabic, Tragacanth, the seeds of Melons, Cucumbers, Citruls, Gourds, Endive, of each a dram and an half, Camphire a scruple, make them into powder according to art. *Culpeper.*] It is very profitable against the heat of the stomach and liver, besides, it wonderfully helps such as have the yellow jaundice, and consumptions of the lungs. You may safely take a dram of the powder, or two drams of the electuary in the morning fasting, for most of these powders will keep better by half in electuaries. #### *..."

Chapter 58Open in Reader

Preparationalias: gourdshigh confidence

The Golden Bough

James George Frazer

1907

"...cally attired, is drawn in a chariot or borne on a litter, accompanied by the populace in grotesque costumes, who carry gourds full of wine and drain them with all the marks, real or affected, of intoxication. At the head of the procession are some men disguised as judges and barristers, and a tall gaunt personage who masquerades as Lent; behind them follow young people mounted on miserable hacks and attired as mourners who pretend to bewail the fate that is in store for Caramantran. In the principal square the procession halts, the tribunal is constituted, an..."

Â§ 11. The Magic Spring.Open in Reader

Safetyalias: gourdshigh confidence

The Golden Bough

James George Frazer

1890

9. The Magic SpringOpen in Reader

Safetyalias: gourdshigh confidence

The Golden Bough

James George Frazer

1913

"...site sexes in the towns. They all sally out in the evenings, the boys armed with nettles or thistles and the girls with gourds containing a filthy solution of all sorts of abominations. When any of the hostile parties meet, they begin by reviling each other in the foulest language, from which they proceed to personal violence, the boys stinging the girls with their nettles, while the girls discharge their stink-pots in the faces of their adversaries. These hostilities may perhaps be regarded as a preparation for the festival of the Cross. The eve of the festiv..."

Â§ 2. The Periodic Expulsion of Evils.Open in Reader

Astrologyalias: gourdshigh confidence

The Golden Bough

James George Frazer

1912

"...ed a special kind of crop cultivated by [pg 205] the Indians: the wild goose stood for the maize, the wild swan for the gourds, and the wild duck for the beans. So when the feathered messengers of the Old Woman began to arrive in spring the Indians celebrated the corn-medicine festival of the women. Scaffolds were set up, on which the people hung dried meat and other things by way of offerings to the Old Woman; and on a certain day the old women of the tribe, as representatives of the Old Woman who Never Dies, assembled at the scaffolds each bearing in her han..."

Â§ 6. The Double Personification of the Corn as Mother and Daughter.Open in Reader

Folk magicalias: gourdshigh confidence

Books Mentioning Gourd

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

51 books

Myths of the Cherokee

James Mooney | 1900

gourdsgourd

30 mentions

Culpeper's Complete Herbal

Nicholas Culpeper | 1653

gourds

25 mentionscited

Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics

James Hastings | 1917

gourdsgourd

24 mentions

Mythology of All Races (Vol 11)

Hartley Burr Alexander | 1920

gourdsgourd

17 mentions

Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics

James Hastings | 1908

gourdsgourd

16 mentions

Tradition and Mythology

Lord Arundell of Wardour (John Francis Arundell) | 1872

gourdsgourd

14 mentions

Error's Chains

Frank S. Dobbins | 1883

gourdsgourd

12 mentions

The Golden Bough

James George Frazer | 1906

Archive Profile

Herb identity

Safety

Aliases

Gourd in Historical Sources

Preparation

Ritual

Symbolism

Preparations and ritual uses

Cooling seed powder

Carnival wine vessel

Gourd Archive Contexts

Medicine

Astrology

Folk magic

Preparation

Ritual

Safety

Gourd Cited Excerpts

Culpeper's Complete Herbal

The Golden Bough

The Golden Bough

The Golden Bough

The Golden Bough

Related Archive Material

Related herbs

Books Mentioning Gourd