The Spellcaster's Source Hoodoo and Voodoo Witchcraft Blog of Talia Felix

The Queen Elizabeth Root used in hoodoo is usually nowadays an orris root. In older hoodoo it was taken from a plant called stillingia, or Queen's Root . I cannot find the exact point at which the new name was acquired, but it appears that the name "Queen Elizabeth" came to use coincidental with the time that it was being replaced in curio catalogues with orris root. In this instance, it was probably to evade accusations of fraud or mislabeling for selling queen's root from a different plant.   A similar thing happened with John the Conqueror root, where the easier to acquire jalap replaced the more traditional root, usually identified as either Solomon's Seal root or a Jack in the Pulpit root.  In hoodoo tradition, the John the Conqueror root is the symbol of masculinity; it's even (rarely) called "man root." Its properties include the ability to draw money, success, wit, virility, love, crossing, uncrossing, and luck. The female root is the Que...

The usual explanation one hears for the name of the deadly nightshade as "belladonna" is that it was used as a cosmetic eyedrop to make women beautiful. Another popular claim is that, because of its alleged use by witches, that it's a euphemism for a witch (compare the word beldam ) or perhaps a euphemism for the ancient goddess worshipped by the witches.  No one ever has produced written evidence to back up either of these claims. For the eyedrop theory, one would like to see a historical recipe for a purely cosmetic eyedrop made from the substance, and evidence of it in widespread use. All one finds are medical recipes used to treat diseases of the eye. The very idea of cosmetic eyedrops was rare in the era when the belladonna word appears, partly because it was hard to maintain purity of the ingredients to make a consistently eye-brightening formula. Even into the 19th century, eating a spoonful of whiskey and sugar was the kind of semi-superstitious beauty treatment ...