Samsonola Oil
Description: a opaque red-brown liquid that smells, not at all unpleasantly, of barbershop. The old-style kind, with the shaving cream and the blue liquid for the combs and the rest. Samsonola Oil is not toxic, but it tastes horrible, and drinking it confers no benefit.
Effects: Rubbing a dose into a subject’s scalp will make him (Samsonola Oil only works on men) immune to the ill effects of fatigue for a full day. The subject can still ‘feel’ tired, and can go to sleep normally, but any symptoms of fatigue will be strictly cosmetic. Doses of Samsonola Oil can be sequentially used with no side effects; men under the effect of the elixir will not suddenly have all that cumulative fatigue hit them at once, once it wears off. This is mentioned only because people apparently keep expecting that to happen.
The basic concept of Samsonola Oil is straightforward, as occult elixirs go: the story of Samson tells of how he was a strong, powerful man until his hair was cut off. Logically, it then follows that the strength resided in the hair itself (and when it comes to practical occultism, yes, this is eminently logical). Therefore, the hair can be theoretically harvested for its strength. After that it was just a matter of working out the exact alchemical process to do this.
Every barbershop has its own recipe, of course. The end result is the same — Samsonola Oil — but some barbers burn the hair, some squeeze it, others boil it or dry it in the sun or whatever. The important point is that a reasonably busy barbershop can generate a dose of Samsonola Oil per day, and that there are any number of people willing to pay good money for a guaranteed harmless stimulant like this. Not insane amounts of money, as being able to stay up all night without ill effect or latter consequwnce is merely a nice thing to be able to do, but the typical price makes processing Samsonola Oil a profitable sideline for barbershops.
A few things of particularly esoteric note: first off, this is men’s hair magic. Women have their own occult practices and concoctions involving hair which are neither stronger nor weaker than men’s. Also: one of the side effects of creating Samsonola Oil (many would call it an ‘added feature’) is that any hair used it making it loses its original esoteric connection to the person who contributed it. That makes it useless for tracking somebody, or performing sympathetic magic on them at all. Which is why the magical community doesn’t hassle anybody performing this particular kind of hedge magic (unless he’s also engaging in genuinely worrisome activities, of course). It’s in everybody’s best interests to keep the opportunities for effective hexing and poppet magic down.
Lastly: yes, all of this means that almost every barber out there is either a hedge-warlock, or knows one. Which suggests that one should tip them very, very well after getting a haircut. But that’s just good, common sense, really.
Now I want to see an In Nomine version of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.