In European and American folk magic a whole nutmeg was carried as a lucky charm and a gambler's talisman, worn on a string or kept in the pocket for good fortune and to ward off ailments; grated nutmeg featured in charms for money and love. These uses are recorded here as folklore. A plain caution belongs with the spice: in the large amounts that folk practice sometimes urged, nutmeg is genuinely toxic, containing myristicin, and can cause serious poisoning, a fact stated here as warning, not as any encouragement to experiment. In ordinary culinary quantities it is simply a warm, sweet spice; its symbolism of luck and protection is drawn from its rarity and its comforting fragrance.
Cases of nutmeg poisoning recorded in modern medical literature are most often the result of people deliberately consuming large amounts in an attempt to feel its psychoactive effect, producing not any pleasant experience but a miserable, sometimes dangerous state of nausea, rapid heartbeat, hallucination and disorientation lasting a day or more, a documented pattern of misuse rather than any traditional or recommended practice, and stated here only as a further plain warning alongside the poisoning risk already noted. The spice's ordinary culinary use, a light grating over custard, eggnog or winter baking, involves a dose many hundreds of times smaller than any amount associated with poisoning, a distinction worth keeping clearly in mind.