Also called Vinaigre des quatre voleurs, Marseilles vinegar, thieves' vinegar
An herbal vinegar tied to a legend of plague-time thieves who robbed the sick without catching the disease, now kept as a household protection and cleansing vinegar for doorways, hands and surfaces.
TraditionFrench folk medicine, later adopted into hoodoo and modern witchcraft
RegionFrance (Marseille, Toulouse), later Britain and the United States
Era18th century recipes; legend set in plague years
Moon☾ Waning moon
DayAny
ElementWater
Difficulty●●○ Moderate
Time30 minutes, then 2 weeks steeping
Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.
The working
Put the herbs, garlic and cloves in the jar and pour the vinegar over them until covered by an inch.
Cap the jar, label it with the date, and set it in a cool dark place.
Shake it once a day for two weeks, naming the people and the home you want it to protect each time.
Strain through cloth into a clean bottle and label it clearly.
To use it as protection, add a splash to a bucket of water and wash the front door, window frames and threshold.
Rub a few drops between your palms before going out, as the old recipes did for hands and temples, if your skin tolerates it.
Keep a small bottle by the door and refresh the wash weekly or when someone in the house is ill.
Take care: This is a cleaning and protection vinegar, not medicine, and it will not prevent any infectious disease. Wormwood, camphor and rue in old recipes are toxic if swallowed, so keep any bottle containing them labeled and away from children. Vinegar can etch marble and stone; test first.
Versions across time and place
i
The Marseille recipe
French apothecary tradition · Copied from a plague-era notice; published 1937
A recipe said to copy one posted in Marseille during a plague outbreak steeps wormwood, meadowsweet, marjoram, sage, cloves, angelica, rosemary, horehound, campanula root and camphor in white wine vinegar for fifteen days. It was rubbed on the hands, ears and temples before visiting the sick.
Recorded in: René-Maurice Gattefossé, Gattefossé's Aromatherapy (1937), as summarized in Wikipedia, Four thieves vinegar
ii
Hoodoo enemy-work vinegar
Hoodoo and spiritual supply trade · 20th century
In hoodoo and in some modern witchcraft books, Four Thieves Vinegar is also used in enemy work, to drive a person away. That use targets real people, so it is noted here only as part of the formula's history; this page uses it purely to protect a home.
Recorded in: Spiritual supply catalog tradition; see Judika Illes, Magic When You Need It (2008)
iii
Seven thieves in Italy
Italian pharmacy · Modern
A similar aromatic mixture is sold in Italy as aceto dei sette ladri, the vinegar of the seven thieves, used as smelling salts. It shows how the legend travelled and how the number of thieves, and herbs, kept changing.
Recorded in: Wikipedia, Four thieves vinegar
History
The story says that during a plague in Marseille or Toulouse a band of thieves robbed the sick and the dead without falling ill, and when caught traded their secret vinegar recipe for a lighter sentence. Storytellers place it anywhere from the 14th to the 18th century, and no court record has been found. Herbal vinegars as medicine are far older, and the name was already known in London by the 1760s, according to an 1827 anecdote.
Printed recipes appear in 18th-century French medical compendia and were reprinted in collections such as Hopkins's Scientific American Encyclopedia of Formulas of 1910. Several ingredients repel insects, which matters because fleas spread plague, and some have antimicrobial properties, though the vinegar never cured anything. In the 20th century it entered hoodoo and modern witchcraft, where it is used both for protection and, more darkly, to drive enemies away.
