HERB - castile soap

[Denise Pulgino Stout]

BPack,  your soaps sound wonderful!  I'd love if you'd share some of your 
"recipes."  Have you ever tried lemon &/or rosemary?  They would be terrific 
for kitchen use as well.  Rosemary is very cleansing and one of the hot 
trendy herbs for commercial shampoos, etc.  Aveda sells a wonderful  
Rosemary/Mint shampoo and conditioner - the conditioner is great for use on 
skin, especially shaving.  All of their products are wonderful and they are 
a very environmentally friendly, animal friendly company.


----Original Message Follows----
From: BPack55294 at aol.com
Reply-To: herbalist at ansteorra.org
To: herbalist at ansteorra.org
Subject: HERB - castile soap
Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 14:08:28 EDT

     I spent the better part of 1998 researching "castile soap," aka olive 
oil
soap.  I found both European recipes and was "brain picked" a doctoral
candidate in anthropology who was studying the history of olives and their
uses in the Middle East.  The process he told me about, which he himself
witness, is (according to oral history) at least 2000 years old.
     Olive oil based soap developed in the Middle East for a couple of
reasons.  First, olive oil was so abundant, it was an "exploitable 
resource,"
e.g. they even burned it.  Also, both the Jewish and Arab cultures shunned
pork, and beef was not in plentiful supply.  Goat is eaten, but it is a very
lean meat.  Hence, the development of an olive oil based soap.
     I have a lengthy chunk of documentation which I've been trying to pull
together into an article to submit to TI.  If you want to see "the whole
shootin' match," I'll be happy to send it to anyone (contact me privately)
and I would ask $6 to cover my costs in photocopying and postage.
(Supposedly the magaine produced by the Australian olive producers org. was
going to publish an article by me last Fall, their Spring, but I never got 
my
copy of it.  Maybe they had other things which needed to be printed 
instead.)

     Yes, I've made it using both cold process (a 19th C. development) and 
the
older hot process.  Since I do not have access to guarantee-able "clean" 
pure
wood ash, I haven't tried to extract my own lye.  I do a batch every other
month, which supplies me, my two kids and my friends who like it.
     The remarkable thing about olive oil and the soap made from it is that 
it
contains squalene, which is naturally found in hair and skin.  Hence it is
really good for any type of skin!  When my teenaged daughter stops using it,
we can tell!  I have three friends who have serious psoriosis, and it is 
very
soothing for them to use it.  I usually make mine "plain," though
occasionally I will re-process it, adding either lavender, or I have a
coffee/sandalwood recipe with is a natural deoderant, and it's GREAT for
removing cooking odors from one's hands.
     your most humble and obedient servant,
     Lady Elissa ferch Gruffydd

Betsy Packard
Shelby Co., KY  USA
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