A Herb of Mercury, Against Loss and Inconstancy

Culpeper placed caraway under Mercury, the planet of the mind and of communication. Its folk reputation for fixing and holding gave it a wide use in domestic charm: caraway was baked into bread and mixed into the feed of pigeons and poultry to keep them homing to the loft; it was put in a lover's pocket to guard against inconstancy, and slipped among a child's things to prevent them being spirited away. Chewed caraway seeds after a meal were also a homely remedy for the digestion, a use given here as history. The plant's whole symbolism grows from one idea, keeping what one has, attached, for reasons now obscure, to a common kitchen seed.

Modern herbal medicine still classifies caraway among the carminative herbs, seeds chewed or infused to ease trapped wind and mild indigestion after a heavy meal, a use directly continuous with the old folk practice and one of the few pieces of caraway lore with any real pharmacological plausibility, its essential oil having a mild antispasmodic action on the gut shown in laboratory studies, though it remains a mild kitchen remedy rather than a treatment for serious complaint. Caraway seeds have also been recovered from Mesolithic sites in northern Europe, showing the plant was gathered by hunter-gatherer peoples millennia before its later cultivation and its later reputation for fixing fortune in place.