Flying Potions and Getting to the Sabbat

'Hey Cockalorum! My Broomstick gay! We must rush back ere the dawn of the day; Hey up the chimney! away! away!'- Old Goody Price Mounts in a trice, In showing her legs she is not over nice: Old Goody Jones, all skin and bones, Follows 'like winking'--Away go the crones. --R. H. Barham (1788-1845), English humourist.

Disclaimer

This is NOT a page about Wiccans or neo-pagans, and I do not advocate the belief that Wiccans are Satan-worshippers and/or baby-killers. I am well aware that they are not. This is a starting point for historical research into the great witch craze of 1100-1700 AD. And please, don't ask me for spells.

• The Economics of Air-Borne Witches
• How They Flew
• Flying Ointments
• The Ingredients
• Atropine and Solanine
• Experimental Drugs
• Witches or Drug-Users?

The Economics of Air-Borne Witches

One of the most common attributes of accused witches was their supposed ability to fly great distances. Although even Kramer and Sprenger admitted in the Malleus Maleficarum some witches only imagine they are attending the sabbat, they insisted many witches actually were transported bodily. Nevertheless, even a witch who has attended a sabbat only in her imagination "sees what is taking place as reliably as the one whose body is transported" (Harris 216).

Ironically, an older document called the Canon Episcopi (dating from the 10th century) states that people who believe witches can fly through the night are heretics:

Some wicked women, perverted by the Devil, seduced by illusions and phantasms of demons [who] believed and profess themselves, in the hours of the night to ride upon certain beasts with Diana, the goddess of the pagans, and an innumerable multitude of women, and in the silence of the dead of night to traverse great spaces of earth and to obey her commands as of their mistress and to be summoned to her service on certain nights (Levack 42).

It wasn't until the fifteenth century that the Canon Episcopi was reversed. Now it was a heretical offense to deny witches could transport themselves both in body and in spirit.

Once the reality of the journey had been established, it became possible to question each confessed witch concerning the other people who were at the sabbat. Torture applied at this juncture guaranteed that a breeder reaction would take place. As in advanced model atomic furnaces, every burnt witch automatically led to two or more additional candidates for burning. To help the system run smoothly, there were additional refinements. Expenses were kept down by forcing the witch's family to pay the bill for the services of the torturers and the executioners. The family was also billed for the cost of the fagots and for the banquet which the judges held after the burning. Considerable enthusiasm for witch-hunting could be built up among local officials, since they were empowered to confiscate the entire estate of any person condemned for witchcraft (Harris 214-215).

Feelings of paranoia fed the belief witches could fly.

Witnesses were more often found making imputations of rapid or unseen motion. The witch would be seen as they left onle place, only to turn up several miles away without passing them on the road. A linked belief was that witches knew far too much about other people's business, reporting secrets they could not have known or overhearing conversations from far off (Briggs 108).

Nevertheless, in England, flying was an uncommon confession of witches. The witchcraft acts of 1542-1736 "outlawed many witchcraft practices but did not prohibit flying" (Guiley 1989 127).

How They Flew

Although most accused witches seem to have confessed to flying only as a result of being tortured, some appear to have actually believed they were flying. The means of transport varied greatly. These means include:

• On the backs of bewitched human beings "who waited in a trance at the hitching-post till their mistresses were ready to return" (Rose 233)
• On brooms, sticks, pitchforks, poles, faggots, or shovels
• On aerial goats (the elder witch might ride on its back while "her family were precariously balanced on a spit protruding from the beast's anus" (Rose 233
• On the heads of strange animals
• By transforming themselves into screech owls (Levack 41), flying bridled cats (Wedeck 128) or bats (Givry 69)
• By means of an unguent or ointment given to them by the Devil.

Flying Ointments

A number of written accounts exist which speak of the use of unguents and ointments which allow a witch to fly.

They include; ''The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abremelin The Mage', (1458), by Abraham the Jew, and 'De Miraculis Rerum Naturalium', (1560) by Giovanni Battista Porta, (both these texts are in the British Library however access to them is restricted). In the account of Abraham the Jew, he is provided an unguent by a young Witch that after rubbing on the principal pulses of the feet and hands, created a sensation of flying. Porta's account has a section which is entitled 'Laiarum Unguenta', "Witches Unguents", in this he describes the recipe of flying ointments (Witchcraft Herbal Lore and Flying Ointments).

European witches were commonly associated with the use of magical ointments, oils, and salves. So-called witches would anoint themselves with these unguents (sometimes known as green ointments or green oils) before taking to the air on their broomsticks. One seventeenth-century English witch confessed that "before they are carried to their meetings, they anoint their Foreheads and their Hand-wrists with an Oyl the Spirit brings them (which smells raw)" (Harris 218). Other English witches said the greenish oil was applied with a feather to the forehead. Some were believed to apply the unguent to their armpits (Couliano 153).

In the case of Alice Kettle, a 14th-century Irish witch, she "greased a staffe, upon which she ambled and gallopped thorough thicke and thin" (Wedeck 127). A fifteenth-century source reads, "They anoint a staff and ride on it...or anoint themselves under the arms and in other hairy places" (Harris 218). And in another source, we find that "Witches, male and female, who have pact with the devil, anointing themselves with certain unguents and reciting certain words are carried by night to distant lands" (Harris 218).

An elaborate ointment is described in the Errores Gazariorum:

Take a red-haired man known to be a good Catholic, take off his clothes, tie him down on a bench so that he is unable to move, and then let venomous animals loose on him. When he has expired from their bites and stings, hang the body upside down and place a bowl under his head and mouth. Let the distillations falling from the body be caught in the bowl. Mix these with the fat of a hanged man, the entrails of children, and the bodies of the poisonous creatures that had been used to effect the victim's demise. The uses of the salves and powders so procured are many. By smearing them on sticks or brooms, one renders those objects capable of bearing one aloft, or else one anoints one's own body to the same end (Russell 1972 240).

A French charcoal-burner reportedly learned his wife was going to a Sabbat, and wished to go as well. One night, he pretended to be slepping while his wife rubbed herself with an ointment. She then vanished up the chimney. He anointed himself similarly and was carried off to the cellar of an old mansion. There he found his wife with the assembled Sabbat. "His wife instantly made a secret sign, and all the company disappeared. The charcoal-burner was left alone in the depths of the cellar, where he was found by the people of the house, who took him for a thief. He had the greatest difficulty in getting out of a very bad scrape" (Givry 71).

The flying ointment of Basque witches (according to information obtained by torturing one of them, Maria of Ituren) involved skinning toads alive and mixing the dried, powdered flesh with usainbelar (water plantain) (Ashley 140).

The Ingredients

These greenish "Oyls" generally contain a mixture of herbs, some of which are extremely poisonous (Warning: do not experiment with these--a bit of sap in a cut can kill). Some common ingredients are:

Some of the ingredients, such as almond oil, soot, and parsley, are obviously inert. Many of the earliest known flying potions contain nothing but inert ingredients, and were applied to the witch's broom or stick rather than directly to her body. These potions "should probably be viewed as products of either harmless folklore or demonological theory, and not as effective mind-altering substances" (Levack 45).

Atropine and Solanine

Many of the poisonous ingredients contain atropine, or tropane, a highly toxic white crystalline alkaloid (C₁₇H₂₃NO₃). In medicines, atropine is used to relieve spasms, to diminsh secretions, to dilate the pupil of the eye, and to relieve pain. However, when a potion containing atropine is rubbed into the skin, it can produce life-like dreams, delusions, and high excitement (Harris 220).

Other poisons, notably those from the potato family (Solanaceae), also contain a toxic alkaloid called solanine. "Potatoes exposed to light prior to harvesting turn green, a sign of the presence of a toxic alkaloid called solanine. If ingested, solanine can cause symptoms such as headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, fever, apathy, restlessness, confusion, and hallucinations. Other plants in the potato family produce compounds called tropanes, which are responsible for the hallucinogenic properties of solanaceous plants from the Old and New Worlds" (Mendelson & Mello 78).

The fat of the child could be used to help the atropine/solanine to pass through the skin and enter the bloodstream. "The process could be speeded up by applying the ointment to the genitals (male or female) and/or the anus, where the rich supply of blood vessels readily absorbed the hallucinogenic compounds.... Sometimes the witches used a staff made of ash wood to apply the ointment themselves, but because witchcraft was against the law...they often disguised the staff as a broomstick" (Mendelson & Mello 78).

The use of the staff or broom was undoubtedly more than a symbolic Freudian act, serving as an applicator for the atropine-containing plant to the sensitive vaginal membranes, as well as providing the suggestion of riding on a steed, a typical illusion of the witches' ride to the sabbat (Harris 220).

Experimental Drugs

The formulae for the atropine-containing drugs have been the subject of numerous experiments.

Andrés Laguna, a sixteenth-century physician practicing in Lorraine, described the discovery of a witch's jar "half filled with a certain green unguent...with which they were anointing themselves: whose odor was so heavy and offensive that it showed that it was composed of herbs cold and soporiferous to the ultimate degree, which are hemlock, nightshade, henbane, and mandrake." Laguna obtained a canister full of this ointment and used it to carry out an experiment on the wife of a hangman in Metz. He anointed this woman from head to toe, whereupon "she suddenly slept such a sound sleep, with her eyes open like a rabbit (she also fittingly looked like a boiled hare), that I could not imagine how to wake her." When Laguna finally managed to get her up, she had been sleeping for thirty-six hours. She complained: "Why do you wake me at such an inopportune time? I was surrounded by all the pleasures and delights of the world." Then she smiled at her husband who was standing there, "all stinking of hanged men," and said to him, "Knavish one, know that I have made you a cuckold, and with a lover younger and better than you" (Harris 218-219).

In 1992, an anonymous man conducted a similar experiment. He writes,

The unguent was rubbed on the pulse points of the hands and feet, after 5 minutes, a great feeling of tiredness and coldness overcame me and I lay down, my breathing slowed and I began to feel a bit panicky that I would die, however I convinced myself that if I did go into respiratory collapse or heart failure the instructions I had left with a friend who was attending me would enable him to provide artificial respiration and call an ambulance. My understanding of time became impossible so I could not decide how long my experiences lasted. Eventually I stopped being fearful and my mind seemed to be becoming detached from its normal state, there was still a feeling of coldness then I seemed to be floating upwards. I found myself soaring above the rooftops of London and my body was no longer human it had become amorphous like a giant squid, with its tentacles streaming behind it. With a little concentration I could change my body into virtually any shape I so desired. I seemed to be heading West and eventually came to a hillside, there I met a number of other people who informed me that the meeting place was not on this world but in the stars. I immediately shot into the sky towards a very bright star, I was not alone and as I flew towards the star many others were with me, our bodies seemed to melt into each other and I remember intense sensations of pleasure running up and down my body, which at the same time was not my body but everyones, it's difficult to describe. Eventually I came to an enormous hall and walked upon its cold floor towards a flight of steps, either side of the hall were enormous pillars that stretched up so high I could not see a ceiling. As I came to the top of the steps I saw a hooded figure of a woman, she looked at me though her face was hidden by the hood. I suddenly felt an incredible sensation of power emanating from the woman and I became very frightened. The woman began to remove her hood and through fear I averted my gaze, a voice in my head told me to look up, I did and the face of the woman shone so brightly it hurt, not just my eyes but my whole body. I then remember a sensation of falling and cannot remember anything else (Witchcraft Herbal Lore and Flying Ointments).

One modern experimenter, who only breathed in the fumes of a henbane ointment, speaks of the "crazy sensation that my feet were growing lighter, expanding and breaking loose from my body...at the same time I experienced an intoxicating sensation of flying" (Harris 220).

Witches or Drug-Users?

Although hallucinogenic ointments account for many specific features of the witchcraft belief, the Inquisition was not "concerned with identifying witches on the basis of their possession of ointments" (Harris 221). The Malleus Maleficarum has little to say about these potions. There is, however, another possibility.

Before 1750, health was considered a privilege of the wealthy, and a peasant's diet consisted mainly of dark bread. Accused witches may have been suffering from ergot poisoning. Ergot is a dark purple or black fungus which flourishes on rye in cold and wet conditions. Bread with just a 2% content of ergot is pink and can cause ergot poisoning, which leads to hallucinations and muscle cramps, dry gangrene, and even death. The hallucinatory aspect is key here. LSD can be made from ergot, and accounts of witches' sabbats can certainly read as "acid trips." These people were inadvertently experiencing the same sensations as drug-users.

It seems likely that most actual drug-users were never identified as witches, and that most convicted witches had never used the hallucinogenic unguents.

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Flying Potions and Getting To the Sabbat is copyright 1998 to Shantell Powell.