The Witches' Ointment

by Thomas Hatsis

  Equally incorrect is the romantic notion that flying to meet and worship a horned god presents an unbroken link to ancient rites that were experienced as a result of masturbating with hallucinogenic ointment-covered brooms—from which we get our modern notion of witches riding them. All evidence suggests that while some women might have inserted these drug ointments into their vaginas, it was not done so by way of a broomstick applicator, but more likely the fingers or a pessary.

  We can therefore end this study knowing that both positions—that of the skeptic and that of the romantic—simply do not fly.

  With or without magical ointments.

  FOOTNOTES

  *1 The early modern period follows the late Middle Ages of the post-classical era. Although the chronological limits of the period are open to debate, the timeframe spans the period after the late portion of the post-classical age (ca. 1500), known as the Middle Ages, through the beginning of the Age of Revolutions (ca. 1800).

  *2 Actually, I still have it.

  *3 Entheogenic: “awaking the divine within.” The term was coined by classicist Carl Ruck and his coauthors Jonathan Ott, R. Gordon Wasson, and Jeremy Bigwood in 1979 in an article in the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs (“Entheogens,” Journal of Psychedelic Drugs 11 [1979]: 145) to explain the use of mind-altering substances for spiritual reasons—a way of disassociating the erroneous belief that all drug use represents criminal or immoral behavior.

  *4 The uniformity or “script” of the Sabbat as recorded by inquisitors in the mid-fifteenth through the early eighteenth centuries was clearly a demonological interpolation by the learned class.

  †5 Veneficia can mean a variety of things, including the subject of our inquiry: “poison magic”; other times it can refer to the more banal “general herbal knowledge”; it can even be equated more broadly with a vague word like witchcraft—a term that doesn’t tell us much. The details of how veneficia was used, above all else, will matter throughout the following pages as we decipher the secrets of psyche-magical sorcery.

  *6 The reference to the “Great Demon” was probably a work of later clerical interpolation affixed to some obscure local deity that Matteuccia called on to enhance her spells (see Russell, History of Witchcraft, 215).

  *7 An interesting early case involved Jacqueline Félicie, a Parisian lay healer who practiced medicine in the 1320s. Jealous and outraged university personnel tried Félicie, fined her, and ordered that she cease working—a ruling she ignored (see Lynne Elliot, Medieval Medicine, 27).

  *8 Such a pairing of magistrate with a local sorceress might not be as uncommon as it sounds. Indeed, Matteuccia herself once received help from a Tuscan mercenary in the army of Umbrian condottiero Braccio da Montone, to retrieve a corpse from the Tiber River to be used in her magic spells. See Mammoli, “The Record of the Trial,” 7.

  *9 Scudieri lists only the vilest additives in Matteuccia’s ointment—vulture, owl, and infant blood—stating that there were other ingredients, but leaving those a mystery.

  *10 In Matthew 14:5, Antipas wants to execute John, but doesn’t out of fear of him as a popular prophet. Salome is not mentioned by name in the biblical passages; the name, rather, derives from later folklore and is used for convenience’s sake.

  *11 I am referring to a single goddess here who was called by many names in different parts of Europe (Holda, Holle, Holte, and Hulde, to name a few). For this particular ritual I find reference only to the Holle version of the name. A more detailed breakdown of the local names of this goddess can be found in Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, 49.

  *12 And herein we are allowed a small piece of her folk Christianity, a more or less bucolic (as opposed to learned) form of heresy; nowhere in the established biblical canon does it say that Jesus received help carrying his cross from any kind of animal.

  †13 Here there is an element of folk sorcery in the form of Pierina’s animal metamorphosis. It would be simple to assume that her transformation somehow factored into Sibillia’s mention that if a single donkey were to go missing from the earth, all would be destroyed. Perhaps Pierina needed to temporarily take its place? But then what are we to make of the fox, or a more or less “zombified” Pierina? Sadly, much like the puzzled inquisitors who scratched their heads over Pierina’s obscure folk religion, we too will remain ignorant of her fascinating but opaque rites.

  *14 These powers show the compassionate intentions on the part of the society’s members, hence the moniker “good women” or “good people.” It was this rejection of the church as a source of cures that added to the ecclesiastics’ agitation over the local healers. One is reminded of Thiess, the werewolf from Jürgensburg, Livonia, who fought against Satan for the side of God (see Ginzburg, Ecstasies, 153–54).

  *15 Hieronymus Visconti is also known by the name Girolamo Visconti.

  *16 Lamia is a curious Latin equivalent. The true origin of the term is uncertain.

  *17 This is what the nymph Cranaë does in Fasti.

  *18 There is also the interesting story of Jesus turning children into goats; an apocryphal text, it might not have been known during the Middle Ages. It is not found in any surviving Greek or Latin manuscripts, only in the Arabic Gospel and the Syriac History (see Wilson, Jesus, 84).

  *19 The “four humors,” or humorism, derived from Hippocratic thinking (adopted also by the Indian ayurveda system of medicine), saw health as dependent on the balance of a person’s blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. People get sick when these four humors are out of balance (see Ball, Devil’s Doctor, 53).

  *20 Like Sibillia and Pierina from the previous chaper.

  †21 The Christian theologian Marcion of Sinope, for example, attracted many followers in Asia Minor around the second and third centuries CE. His theology rejected the deity described in the Hebrew scriptures, and he is often considered to have been the impetus for the proto-orthodox development of the New Testament canon. He was denounced by Christian theologians and he consequently set up his own churches in Sinope. For a general review of first-century Christian beliefs, see Ehrman, Lost Christianities, 104–10.

  *22 The Church Fathers were ancient and generally influential Christian theologians, some of whom were eminent teachers and bishops. The term is used of writers or teachers of the church who were not necessarily ordained and not necessarily saints, although most are honored as saints in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran churches.

  *23 Secret meetings with barbes went by at least four other names: conventicles, encounters, reunions, and congregations.

  *24 There are many instances wherein an orthodox writer uses the word poison as a metaphor for a heretical belief, not an actual toxin. For example, Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 50–110 CE), on his way to be martyred for the Christian’s faith, in his letter to the Trallians, warns them to “Abstain from the Poison of Heretics.” He even names a specific poison, aconite. And yet this entire reference appears as nothing more than a metaphor for heretical teachings. Likewise in Frederick II of Hohenstaufen’s (ca. 1190–1250) condemnation of the Waldensians, after referring to them as “ravening wolves” and “bad angels,” he describes them thusly: “[L]ike serpents they creep stealthily abroad: with honeyed sweetness they vomit forth their virus. While they pretend to offer life-giving food they strike with their tail, and prepare a deadly draught, as with some dire poison” (see “Concerning Heretics,” in Robinson, Readings in European History, 385). Frederick II’s association of heretics with poison is certainly a metaphor. It might, however, point to a truth lurking just beneath literary devices, as the rest of this chapter will argue.

  *25 Although the historical “Simon Magus” might not have existed, his presence in heresiology works is vital to historians. As a template for Church Fathers, “Simon” tells us how magicians were perceived in the early Christian centuries.

  †26 One is reminded of the warnings of Augustine and Dioscorides mentioned in chapter 1.

  *27 Perhap
s reinforcing how Church Fathers viewed Simon’s magic as reliant on drugs and other accessories?

  *28 The affair was so humiliating for Queen Constance that King Robert’s biographer, Helgard of Fleury, doesn’t even address the issue in his account of Robert’s life and deeds. He would have certainly known of the scandal but chose to remain silent on the matter (see Fichtenau, Heretics and Scholars, 30).

  †29 What this meant was that a person would always have doubt about orthodox teaching (see Fichtenau, Heretics and Scholars, 35). Properly speaking, a drug used entheogenically would instill such doubts rather effectively.

  *30 According to scholars, Vox in Rama “is the first official church document that condemns the black cat as an incarnation of Satan, and consequently it was the death warrant for the animal” (see Engels, Classical Cats, 188).

  *31 Vox in Rama is based on an earlier letter to Pope Gregory penned by Conrad of Marburg and said to contain some inaccurate information regarding the practices of heretical sects living along the Rhine. Conrad’s original letter is lost, making it impossible to tell if the toad-kissing idea began with Conrad or Gregory. See Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, 48–49.

  *32 Sometimes it isn’t the bufotenine that causes the physiological and psychological effects in those ingesting toad poison but rather another naturally occurring hallucinogenic compound found in toads, 5-MeO-DMT, a powerful tryptamine. I use bufotenine here, and in subsequent chapters, for ease of reference.

  *33 This connection will be evident in the prescriptions reproduced in this chapter.

  *34 The Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian medical papyrus of herbal knowledge, was around since at least 1550 BCE.

  *35 Mandrake is mentioned in Genesis 30:14–17. As used in the Kabbalah it “is the Soul and Spirit; any two things united in love and friendship (dodim). ‘Happy is he who preserves his dudaim [higher and lower Manas] inseparable.’”

  *36 Known popularly today as Physica.

  †37 According to Hildegard, a sympathetic-magical formula that did not include ingesting the mandrake root, but rather merely taking it to bed and uttering an incantation to God before sleep, could be substituted with other nonpsychoactive plants, such as beech, cedar, or aspen; these would work just as well, as it was the incantation to God that carried the most spiritual weight.

  *38 While Martin Booth, in his book Cannabis: A History (p. 72), presents a fanciful account involving Pope Innocent VIII’s open banning of cannabis use in the late fifteenth century, this recipe from M. 136 is one of only a few mentions of that plant anywhere in the medieval record; its sporadic inclusion in recipes makes it unlikely that it was used regularly, and so it will therefore not be discussed in this chapter.

  *39 “Permistionis rationis,” literally “a scrambling of reason” or “mixing of senses.” The Chief of Psychosomatic Medicine at the Veteran’s Admisinstation Hospital in Los Angeles, Sidney Cohen (1910–1987), who experimented with LSD in the 1950s and 1960s described synesthesia as including “cross-overs of sensation from one sense modality to another. For example, the subject will say that he can hear colors or he will speak of the scent of music” (see Cohen, The Beyond Within, 51).

  *40 Just as the use of cocaine in the first recipes of Coca-Cola survives in the drink’s name, so does the German name for henbane (pilsen) survive in our modern “pilsners.”

  †41 Henbane is also found in several other practical (i.e., free from superstitions) formulas in Bald’s Leechbook (see Cockayne et al., vol. 2): one used “against worms,” (p. 137); another for “every hard tumour or swelling,” (p. 71–73). Furthermore, “if a knee be sore,” the leech should ferment henbane and hemlock, and rub them on the throbbing area (p. 341). Henbane can also be used for toothache (p. 51). Two other henbane extracts are used for patients complaining of earache (pp. 41 and 43). On this last use, a leech should be careful with such henbane eardrops; centuries earlier, Pliny warned his and future generations that one should use henbane oils sparingly, as extracts of the plant dropped in the ear can cause madness (“Oleum fit ex semine quod ipsum auribus infusim temptat mentem,” quoted in Macht, “A Pharmacological Appreciation,” 168).

  *42 Another claim advanced by some researchers is that the name derives from Bellona, a Roman war goddess. Those few sources hold that the priests of Bellona used to imbibe an intoxicating drink made from belladonna, but I have been unable to find a reliable basis for this assertion (see Grieve, Modern Herbal, 585; and Harold Hansen, Witches Garden, 54).

  *43 Solatro is a variant spelling of the nightshade referred to as solata in the Old English Herbarium above. The references here come from two different texts talking about the same plant. Spelling variations abound in these archaic texts.

  *44 Sixteenth-century Dutch physician Johann Weyer believed the hippomane to be the “little piece of flesh the size of a dry fig, circular in appearance . . . which appears on the forehead of a new-born foal” (see Weyer, Witches, Devils, and Doctors, 273).

  *45 Ergot derives from the French argot, meaning “spur.”

  *46 The work remained unpublished until 1471.

  †47 While it has been rumored that the Old Man of the Mountain used cannabis, not opium, both drugs are pure conjecture. To this writer, however, given the time the Decameron was produced it seems more likely that Boccaccio was referring to opium, a widely known drug in the fourteenth century, and not to cannabis, a drug that is largely (though not completely) absent from the medieval herbarium.

  *48 Going by Lilienskiold’s records, only seventeen of the eighty-three show evidence of ergot-inspired witches’ rites (see Alm, “Witch Trials,” 406–8).

  *49 It should be noted that Psellus does not agree with the general consensus that Zoe poisoned Romanus. Here I refer to Luck, Arcana Mundi. The source he draws from, Book 6, Verse 64, in Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, however, does not make such a connection between hallucinogenic drugs and Zoe’s religious and/or magical beliefs at all other than to suggest that Zoe “enjoyed” whatever ingredients she put in her perfumes.

  *50 German theologian Johannes Nider (ca. 1380–1438) retells this story in the Formicarius, the second book ever printed to discuss witchcraft, although in Nider’s telling the nun is replaced with a young boy (see Klaniczay, “Process of Trance,” 208).

  *51 Some scholars surmise that this plant was actually St. John’s Wort, Hypericum (see Adams, Healing Art, 185).

  *52 Three other mentions of Finicella exist: Roman senate scribe Stefano Infessura notes her execution in his Diary of Rome (late fifteenth century), imperial notary Paolo di Lello Petrone also brushes the burning in La mesticanza (ca. 1450), and preacher and confidant of Bernardino of Siena, Giacomo della Marca, mentions her in his sermon “De sortilegiis” (mid- to late-fifteenth century). These three accounts say nothing of an ointment or a cat transformation. Infessura recounts that Finicella “betwitched many people” (“affattucchiava di molte persone,” see Tommassini, Diario, 25), but does not say how. Di Lello Petrone identifys “Finiccola” as a “sorceress and witch” (“fattucchiera e strega,” see Muratori, et. al., Rerum italicarum, 90). Della Marca’s “De sortilegiis” speaks of “Funicella,” who, under orders from Satan, killed 65 children including her own son whose body parts she used in magic (see Mormondo, The Preacher’s Demons, 267).

  *53 The fragmentary High German romance Titurel was penned by Wolfram von Eschenbach after 1217. The surviving fragments indicate that the story would have served as a prequel to Wolfram’s earlier work, Parzival, expanding on the stories of characters from that work and on the theme of the Holy Grail. Titurel was continued by Albrecht von Scharfenberg.

  *54 “Devil” or “monster” in Old English.

  †55 See “Women Who Walk among the Dead” in chapter 2.

  *56 The use of ointments to deliver drugs safely into the bloodstream was recognized in print as early as the seventeenth century (see Bacon and Montagu, Works, 491).

  *57 Literally “care of the field.”

  *58 The
“coldness” of the devil’s penis is but one argument that favors this sentiment. However, such ideas involving Satan’s cold phallus are centuries older than the first mention of ointment-covered brooms. The idea evolved out of ideas about heretical sect leaders’ cold skin (see Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, 49).

  †59 There isn’t a single mention in the literature prior to 1973 that so-called witches masterbated with hallucinogenic salves smeared on brooms in order to “fly” (See Harrison, Roots of Witchcraft, 196–97). Here are some of the problems with that theory that I have noted in my research: in the earliest witch trials, both women and men were accused of riding ointment-sapped brooms; men obviously don’t have a vagina, therefore discrediting the theory. If one were to then assume that male members of the scobaces therefore must have inserted the broomstick up their rectum as some have surmised, he would still be met with another problem, the same one shared by women: fifteenth-century broomsticks were hardly the finely finished wooden rods we know today. Like most other peasant possessions in those days, brooms were made by their owners with whatever materials they had available. Usually a “broom” consisted of little more than finding the leafiest branch on a tree. Without sounding too crude, those who believe in ointment-covered broom dildos have yet to explain the splinters that would have undoubtedly poked the inner linings of a vagina or rectum. A safer way to apply an ointment in either orifice would have been to simply rub it in with one’s fingers or use a pessary, which are mentioned as application methods in the medical literature of the time. Finally, brooms weren’t the most oft-cited means of transportation in the early demonology works: chairs, fence posts, shovels, and sticks were also reported. In fact, the most frequently recorded means of aerial travel was, as one inquisitor put it, “atop mule or horse shit” (see Joseph Hansen, Quellen und untersuchungen, 542: “. . . super stecore muli vel equi ad locum . . .”; for a thorough list of the places and dates of these early excremental flying vectors, see Russell, History of Witchcraft, 339–40).