In Anglo-Saxon, medieval and post-medieval Europe witches, or 'wise women', had wide knowledge of plants and herbs for healing and magical purposes. 'Flying ointments' would be smeared on broomsticks, or other flying implements, or on the witches' bodies as a symbol of supernatural flight. Recipes for these ointments, from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, reveal that, as well as all the celebrated stomach-churning ingredients of eye of newt and blood of bat, commonly listed plants were aconite, hemlock, henbane, deadly nightshade and mandrake. These last three belong to the Solanaceae family and contain atropine as well as other closely related alkaloids hyoscyamine and scopolamine, all of which have psychoactive effects. Atropine is active when absorbed through the skin, as folklorist Dr Will-Erich Peuckert found when he made up an ointment of belladonna, henbane and datura, rubbed it on his forehead and armpits and
"...had wild dreams. Faces danced before my eyes which were at first terrible. Then I suddenly had the sensation of flying for miles through the air. The flight was repeatedly interrupted by great falls. Finally, in the last phase, an image of an orgiastic feast with grotesque sensual excess" (1)
The role of the broomstick takes on a new significance in this light - Harner points out that it could have acted as
"an applicator for the atropine-containing plant to the sensitive vaginal membranes as well as providing the suggestion of riding on a steed" (2)
Witches have also traditionally been associated with toads, and there may also be a psychoactive reason behind this. The venom of certain species of toad contains a psychoactive indole called Bufotenine, which can be extracted, dried and smoked. The skin of one species - Bufo alvarius - has also been found to contain a psychoactive tryptamine, 5-MeO-DMT.
The use of psychoactives in witchcraft has often been denied, either because the Church deemed the practices heretical and suppressed them, or because scholars have claimed that persons suspected of witchcraft during the Inquisition only confessed to 'impossible' practices such as flying because they were under torture. As research into the history of psychoactives in various contexts becomes more accepted, it may be that many other previously hidden instances of entheogen use in the past will come to light.
Notes
(1) Peuckert, W.E. in Ratsch C. (1992) The Dictionary of Sacred and mgical Plants. Bridport, UK: Prism Press
(2) Harner in Harner, M. (ed.) (1973) Hallucinogens and Shamanism. New York: Oxford University Press
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