Image via Wikipedia 

Everyone recognizes the wonderful, sweet smell of cinnamon as a kitchen spice, however ;did you ever wonder about where it originated and what its purpose was?

Cinnamon is a Greek word meaning sweet wood and is gathered off the dried inner bark of the branches of a small tropical evergreen tree. After the bark has been peeled off and dried it curls up into quills,what we know as the cinnamon sticks we use for baking or herbal teas.

Image via Wikipedia

Going back into time Cinnamon has been written in Chinese literature since 2700 BC as a medicinal herb. It was used most commonly as a warming herb that aided circulation and digestion disorders.

Image via Wikipedia

As a spice, cinnamon has had a very long history of being one of the most influential and important of herbs of ancient times. Back in the times of Ancient Rome cinnamon (cinnamum zeylanicum) was considered a very rare herb and was highly prized, like pepper.

There was an ancient belief in a mystical bird called the Cinnamon Bird that supposedly lived in Arabia and used cinnamon to build its nests. Herodotus wrote that these birds flew to an unknown land to collect the cinnamon and took it back with them to Arabia. The Arabians got the cinnamon from the birds by tempting them with large chunks of raw meat. The birds took the heavy pieces of meat back to their nests, which caused the nests to fall and the cinnamon to rain down and be collected by the people.

Cinnamon was always considered a precious commodity to the ancient Romans and by the 1st century A.D. writings referred to 350 grams of cinnamon being equal in value to over five kilograms of silver. So prized was it was that in the first century C.E. the Roman general Pliny the Elder wrote that the Arabian tales were crafted to inflate prices.

Image via Wikipedia

The Romans had such a wide variety of uses for cinnamon, that is why the herb was so continuously sought after, although as you can imagine, like everything else in life in order to obtain such a prize, you needed to be wealthy.

Thought to have healing properties, cinnamon was used for medicinal purposes and was believed to be effective in treating many things such as, colds, bites, inflammatory conditions, as well as menstrual cramps. Cinnamon was used in this sense in the form of oils and teas. Cinnamon incense was popular to the Romans and when mixed with oils it would be made into a perfume in which women would bath in.

Cinnamon was known as a staple ingredient, along with ginger, in many roman recipes. Since most meals were prepared in a single cauldron, casseroles containing both meat and fruit were common and cinnamon helped bridge the flavors. Spices helped preserve food at a time when refrigeration did not exist.

Just as important as using cinnamon their food,cinnamon was used on funeral pyres in Ancient Rome. In 65 AD, Nero burned a year’s supply of cinnamon at his second wife’s Poppaea Sabina’s funeral in order to show the depth of his grief. It was also burned during funerals as a way to ward of the odor of dead bodies.

Image via Wikipedia

Above and beyond all of this, it was also used for Magick now known as magic. It was an appropriate ingredient to the Romans for use in food for love spells, such as the Aphrodite New Moon love spell, Hecate black candle love spell, or Isis Full Moon love spell.

Today cinnamon still has just as many uses as it once did and is used as flavoring in foods from baking to  savory dishes such as Indian curries. It is an ingredient that is used in many medicines to improve the taste of the medicine and it is also still used in many perfumes.

Image via Wikipedia

Cinnamon will always be a notable herb/spice and given its history, it is one of the most renowned and  influential , well used herbs of all times.

More Articles By Mystify

Englands Ancient Healing Wells

Beautiful Blogger Templates for Free

Fight Cancer Aging Insomnia and Much More with This All Natural Miracle Supplement

The All Natural Cream That Stops Ezcema in Its Tracks

Save Our Planet

The Top Five Ways To Give Your Brain A Workout

The Third Eye Fact Or Fiction

A Little Luck

How To Make Money With Google

Almond Milk The Choice Milk For A Healthy Lifestyle

Halloween Horror

The Truth About What It’s Really Like to be an Identical Twin

Copyright © 2009 Tanya Kime-Wallace