Although humanity has probably been trying to use contraceptives since the invention of the affair, it took us a while to actually write about one. As far as I know, this was the very first to receive that honor. It comes from a collection of materials called the Papyri Magicae Graecae, or, The Greek Magical Papyri, which comes from the Hermetics in Egypt after it was pulled into the Roman Empire.

  1. Take seeds of the bitter vetch (orobos: Vicia orobus), as many as you can through the years, as you wish for yourself, so that you would remain sterile.
  2. Steep the seeds in the freshly expelled blood of a menstruating woman. Let the seeds become part of the nature of the menstrual blood.
  3. Take a living frog and throw the seeds of the bitter vetch into its mouth, so that the frog swallows them.
  4. Let the living frog go free at the place where you captured him.
  5. Take the seed of henbane (hyoskyemos: Hyoscyamus niger), steep it in mare's milk.
  6. Take the nasal mucus of a cow with grains of barley, put these into a leather bag made from the hide of a fawn.
  7. On the outside bind it up with a bag of mulehide, and fasten it up during the waning of the moon in a female sign of the zodiac on a day of Cronos of Hermes.
  8. Mix also with the barley grains cerumin from the ear of a mule.

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