Written by She grows at the edge of things.
In the dappled shadow at the forest margin, in the rubble of old ruins, in the disturbed earth beside crumbling walls – belladonna chooses her ground carefully. She is not a plant that invites herself into the tidy cultivated garden. She arrives where something has been disrupted, where the ground has been turned over, where the boundary between the managed world and the wild one has become uncertain.
This is appropriate. Belladonna has always lived at the edge.
Atropa belladonna, deadly nightshade, is one of the most famous and most feared plants in the Western magical tradition. She appears in the literature of witchcraft, in the pharmacopoeia of medieval herbalists, in the records of poisoners and physicians alike. She has killed people. She has healed people. She has, according to centuries of folk tradition, carried people between worlds.
She deserves to be understood properly.
The Names She Carries
The name belladonna is Italian, bella donna, beautiful lady, and its origin is usually explained by one of two stories, or both simultaneously. The first: