Urine and Witchcraft

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.

Urine

Urine was sometimes thought to have been used as a parody of holy water. At Sabbats, the Devil purportedly baptized his new initiates with a smelly fluid which had, as a main ingredient, urine.

As a Ward

During the 16^th and 17^th centuries, wizards and cunning women and men used urine for diagnosing and curing illnesses caused by witchcraft.

Boiling a person's urine helps determine if and how bewitchment has occurred. Urine is then used to effect cures, usually by boiling, baking, burying or throwing it upon a fire. Ann Green, a witch or cunning woman of northeast England, said in 1654 that she cured headaches caused by bewitchment by putting a clipping of the victim's hair in his own urine, boiling it and throwing it on a fire. The fire was supposed to destroy the spell.

Boiled urine also was said to cure nephritis. Urine boiled in a pot containing crooked pins was a common remedy for bewitchment.

A case in Yorkshire in 1683 involved a sick man whom a doctor said suffered from bewitchment. To break the spell, the doctor prescribed a cake made of the patient's urine and hair, combined with wheat meal and horseshoe stumps. The cake was to be tossed in a fire.

One of the most effective counter-charms against witchcraft was to secure the witch's own urine: if it was bottled and buried, the witch would be unable to urinate. During the Salem witch trials of 1692, a local doctor named Roger Toothaker claimed his daughter had killed a witch with urine. The daughter spied on the witch until she saw the woman go to her outhouse. The daughter collected the witch's urine and boiled it in a pot until the foul-smelling smoke blocked the chimney flue. The next morning, the witch was dead (Guiley 1989 346).

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Urine and Witchcraft is copyright 1997-1998 to Shantell Powell.