Plants of Life, Plants of Death

Description

Author: Simoons, Frederick J.  (1922-)

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press

Pub Date: 1998

Binding: Paperback

Condition: Fair.  Binding tight.  No marks, tears.  Lower front cover corner has approx. 1/2″ bend.  Pages 256 and 276-276 have bent upper corners.  Edge and corner wear.

Notes: NOT food production or use, human nutrition, or medicinal use of plants.  “…my focus is on magic, ritual, and religion as they have shaped the way humans have perceived and used plants since antiquity…My primary goal is to tell the stories of certain plants that, since antiquity, have played unusual roles in ritual in the areas of high civilization from Europe through the Near East to Indian and China.”  (From the Introduction).  The focus is on tulsi (i.e. holy basil), the pipal and banyan fig trees, mandrake, garlic, and urd and fava beans.   Two sides of the plant coin–on the one side ritual purity, fertility, health, prosperity–and on the other side impurity, sickness, bad luck and death.  India, China, and Greece.  250+ pages of Notes.