- published: 30 Sep 2011
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A potion (from Latin potio "drink", in turn derived from Greek poton "that which one drinks") is a consumable medicine or poison.
In mythology and literature, a potion is usually made by a magician, sorcerer, dragon, fairy or witch and has magical properties. It might be used to heal, bewitch or poison people. For example, love potions make a person fall in love (or become deeply infatuated) with another (the love potion figures tragically into most versions of the tale of Tristan and Iseult, including Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde); sleeping potions cause a person to fall asleep (in folklore, this can range from normal sleep to a deathlike trance); and elixirs heal/cure any wound/malady (as in C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe). Goscinny and Uderzo's character Asterix the Gaul gained superhuman strength from a magic potion brewed by the druid Getafix.
Creation of potions of different kinds was a common practice of alchemy, and was commonly associated with witchcraft, as in The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare.
I said I hope, like a prayer.
And sent out my tears in a bottle of notes.
Find and drink up; it's uncommon and sweet.
Are you surprised? Is it making you mine?
You morph into the last living thing alive.
I've no periphery, you're all that's in front of me.
Are you the rock, paper, scissors
Casting those faded paper figures on the wall?
As providence seems to annihilate
Common sense, this is my down-to-earth defense
Brush it off again as trickery, slight of hand.
If you must but for all purposes and intents.
Either I am right or I am wrong.
If it's in neither the words nor the song.
It's in this soundless, audible common sense.
Be that as it may, this is my down-to-earth defense
You morph into the last living thing alive.
I've no periphery, you're all that's in front of me.
Brush it off again as trickery, slight of hand.
If you must but for all purposes and intents.
You morph into the last living thing alive.