Garlic has a very important position in food history, in popular medicine, and in the rites and beliefs of nearly all religions and the most varied magical traditions.

Throughout the history of garlic, both its conception and use have gone through many ups and downs. Followers and detractors of all kinds alternate with scarce balance points, from the subtlest refinement to the relative obscurantism to which it has been confined by the contemporary age, so eager for the so called light products: colourless, odourless and insipid.

Garlic is a bulbous plant of the family Lilas, Allium Sativum, whose bulb has a very intense smell and consists of several small sections named cloves. Today the importance of garlic in the diets and pharmacopoeia of the most ancient civilizations is unquestionable. In the Ancient Egypt, it was so appreciated that it was used as a form of currency.

Its magical and curative properties have always been recognised. Garlic was used to preserve health and keep bad spirits away.

For the Jewish, it has always been an essential part of their diet. They already knew about its stimulant effects in our organism and, more specifically, its aphrodisiac effects, because it revitalizes our body and increases our sexual appetite.

Today we know that garlic is an efficient bactericide capable of protecting us from certain infections and diseases. Thus, for ancient populations, these unknown results could only be magic.

Garlic was used with magic purposes in Ancient Greece, both dietetic and curative. Homer was able to rescue Ulysses due to the magical powers of this condiment in one of the best known references to garlic in the classic literature, which was called Moly.

Today it is still used against the so-called evil eye. Hippocrates and Aristotle praised its virtues.