capitulo III
CHAPTER
TWO
Witches' Flying
Ointment
T raditional European witchcraft descends from shamanism, which is evident when
we compare the abilities attributed to witches during the medieval witch trials with
the powers of shamans. Witches healed the sick. They performed divination and augury.
They conversed with spirits and kept familiar spirits as their servants, usually in the
forjms of small animals such as cats. Witches were able to bewitch beasts, cause storms,
ancl affect the growth of crops. Spirits instructed them in the technical details of their
profession. Most significantly,it was believed that they had the power of flight. All these
abilities are shamanic.
Sixteenth-century English author Reginald Scot gave an extended catalog of the sup-
posed powers of witches in his Discoverie of Witchcrafi, including the following talents:
18 Soul Flight
Some write that with wishing they can send needles into the livers of their enimies.
Some that they can transferre corne in the blade from one place to another. Some,
that they can cure diseases supernaturallie, flie in the aire, and danse with divels.
Some write, that they can plaie the part of Succubus, and contract themselves to
Incubus; and so yoong prophets are upon them begotten, etc. Som saie they can tran-
substantiate themselves and others, and take the forms and shapes of asses, woolves,
ferrets, cowes, apes, horsses, dogs, etc. Some say they can keepe divels and spirits in
the likenesse of todes and cats.12
Why Most Witches Were Women
The term witch is gender neutral, as is the term shaman. Even so, today most people think
of witches as exclusively women. There is a reason for this error. Throughout history
witches have been presented in literature and in art as female. Medieval Christian theo-
logians held that women were by their nature more susceptible to evil influences than
men. They derived this belief in part from the biblical fable of Adam and Eve because it
was Eve who was seduced by the Serpent. Due to this imagined vulnerability of women,
theologians believed that more women than men became witches. However, many men
were also accused of witchcraft and executed for it. An examination of the long lists
of witch names in Appendix 111of Margaret A. Murray's Witch-Cult in Western Europe
shows a ratio or roughly one man for every ten women.
Since the practice of shamanism in pagan times was divided between men and women,
it may be wondered why witchcraft, its descendent, came to be associated predominantly
with women. A possible answer lies in tracing what became of the role in society that had
been filled by male shamans. It is apparent that their functions of intermediaries with
the spirit world and healers of the sick were assumed, respectively, by priests and physi-
cians-and neither profession was open to women in medieval Europe. To be a healer,
a woman had to become a witch. To converse with the spirit realms and work magic, a
woman had to become a witch. Or, at least, women who healed and made charms were
understood to be witches by the general population, and may have considered them-
selves to be witches also.
12. Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft,bk. I, chap. 4, p. 6 .
Chapter Two: Witches' Flying Ointment 19
How Many Witches Were There?
It is impossible to know how extensive the practice of witchcraft was in Europe prior to
and during the Renaissance, when the persecution of witches by the Catholic and Prot-
estant churches reached its height. The records of the witch interrogations and the liter-
ary works of witch finders, demonologists, and priests of the Inquisition certainly exag-
gerated their number outrageously, but when this exaggeration is discarded, it must be
concluded that traditional shamanic skills passed down from generation to generation
as a cultural heritage of rural European communities formed the basis for the genuine
practice of witchcraft.
It is currently estimated that around forty thousand men, women, and children ac-
cused of witchcraft were executed in Europe over a span of three centuries-roughly be-
tween the years 1450 to 1750,the approximate duration of the witch mania that gripped
the Christian churches. Rossell Hope Robbins gives a much higher estimate of executions,
around two hundred thousand,13but even this is very conservative when compared with
the. ridiculous numbers that have circulated, some of them in the millions! These higher
estiimates are quite absurd. It is unlikely the number of executions exceeded one hundred
thousand, and it was probably less than half this amount. C. L'Estrange Ewen, author
of Witchcrafi and Demonianism, guessed that only about one thousand accused witches
were hanged in England. The numbers executed on the Continent were much higher, but
they have been wildly overestimated by many authorities.
Executions for witchcraft, even were the numbers known with assurance, would be
a pterilous way of computing the actual number of practicing witches. The majority of
those executed had nothing to do with witchcraft and no knowledge of it, other than
what they may have picked up in general gossip, or during the interrogations of their
torturers. They were accused of witchcraft by spiteful neighbors or hysterical children.
Practicing witches were vulnerable to discovery because it was the nature of their art that
they had dealings with common people, so undoubtedly many of the accused were true
witches. But we can only guess just how many genuine witches were burned or hanged
for witchcraft. It was a small percentage of the total number executed.
What can be stated with some assurance is that there were indeed witches-men and
wornen living alone or in family groups in villages and towns, offering such services as
the healing of disease, fortunetelling, protection from evil spirits, communications with
13. Robbins, Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, 180.
20 Soul Flight
the dead, and the sale of charms for various purposes such as compelling love or finding
treasure. They used a mixture of folk magic and folk medicine. Whether such a person
was known locally as a wise woman or a witch probably depended on how highly they
were regarded in the community. Until recent times, witch was a wholly pejorative term.
The Bible mandated a sentence of death for witches (Exodus 22:18), so to accuse some-
one of being a witch was to condemn them to execution, particularly toward the close of
the Renaissance when the furor against witchcraft reached an hysterical frenzy.
Witch's Familiar
The witch's familiar was held by the demonologists who wrote against them during the
witch craze to be either an animal possessed by an evil spirit, or an evil spirit in the shape
of an animal. In the second case, the familiar spirit was believed to have actually assumed
a material body, conlposing it from the moisture of the air and from the dust and smoke
in the air. Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General of England, wrote in his Discovery
of Witches (1647) that Elizabeth Clark possessed a familiar namedvinegar Tom that had
the power to change its shape. He saw it first in the form of a greyhound with a head like
an ox and large eyes, and before his sight it transformed into a child of about four years
with no head that went running madly around the house, then vanished at the d00r.l~
The usual assumption is that Hopkins was lying in order to ensure the conviction of
Elizabeth Clark for witchcraft. However, it is possible that he was in such a heightened
state of anxiety and hysteria while he interrogated the woman that he saw the familiar in
the form of an astral vision. Contrary to what Hopkins believed, the spirit he identified
as Vinegar Tom had no material body, and it may not even have been connected in any
way with Elizabeth Clark. It is possible that it was a spirit linked to Hopkins himself, that
chose to represent itself as a familiar of the accused witch in order to fulfill the expecta-
tions of Hopkins. If any man was haunted by evil spirits, it was surely Hopkins, who was
responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent women.
Goddess of the Witches
As is the case with legends and stories about shamans, there is often confusion between
the physical and spiritual in the medieval accounts of witchcraft. Many records of the
witch trials declare witches to have the power to physically fly through the air, as well as
14. Robbins, 192.
Chapter Two: Witches' Flying Ointment 21
tfle ability to vanish from sight or transform themselves into cats or other creatures. The
theologians, unwilling to grant any power to the witches themselves, ascribed the power
ol' flight to the Devil. Francesco Maria Guazzo wrote: "Further I hold it to be very true
that sometimes witches are really transported from place to place by the devil who, in the
shape of a goat or some other fantastic animal, both carries them bodily to the sabbat
and himself is present at its obscenities. This is the general opinion of the Theologians
arid Jurisconsults of Italy, Spain, and Catholic Germany; while a great many others are
of' a like opinion."I5
Guazzo substituted the ubiquitous Devil in place of the lunar goddess Diana, as re-
ferred to in the much older ninth-century decree of the Council of Ancyra, recorded
in the Canon Episcopi, which mentions that "certeine wicked women following sathans
provocations, being seduced by the illusion of divels, beleeve and professe that in the
night times they ride abroad with Diana, the goddesse of the Pagans, or else with Hero-
dias, with an innumerable multitude, upon certeine beasts, and passe over manie coun-
tries and nations, in the silence of the night, and doo whatsoever those fairies or ladies
command."16
Herodias is the daughter of Diana, the moon, by her brother Lucifer, the sun, ac-
cording to the Italian witches' gospel published in 1897 under the title Aradia by the
folklorist Charles G. Leland. Herodias is the ruling tutelary spirit of all witches, who is
commanded by Diana to descend to the earth to communicate the secrets of witchcraft
to human beings. The shamanic overtones are overt and undeniable:
'Tis true indeed that thou a spirit art,
But thou wert born but to become again
A mortal; thou must go to earth below
To be a teacher unto women and men
Who fain would study witchcraft in thy school."
By "go to earth below," manifestation to human perceptions is intended, so that witches
will be able to see and hear Herodias, or Aradia, allowing her to instruct them in Diana's
forbidden arts. Until spirits manifest on the astral level, they have no existence to human
15. Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, 34.
16. Scot, bk. 111, chap. 16, p. 37.
17. Leland, Aradia, 4.
22 Soul Flight
consciousness. There is also an echo here of the Gnostic myth of Sophia, goddess of wis-
dom, who incarnated as a mortal woman in order to aid human souls mired in ignorance
to regain their divine birthright to dwell among the stars.
Witch's Power of Flight
Witchcraft is ancient in Italy, and even in its pagan beginnings involved soul flight. The
second-century Roman writer Lucius Apuleius, in his novel The Golden Ass, described
the flight of the witch Pamphile, who smeared her body with a magic ointment and
transformed herself into the form of an owl:
And when midnight came, she led me softly into a high chamber and bid me look
thorow the chink of a doore: where first I saw how shee put of all her garments,
and took out of a certain coffer sundry kindes of Boxes, of the which she opened
one, and tempered the ointment therein with her fingers, and then rubbed her body
therewith from the sole of the foot to the crowne of the head, and when she had spo-
ken privily with her selfe, having the candle in her hand, she shaked the parts of her
body, and behold, I perceived a plume of feathers did burgen out, her nose waxed
crooked and hard, her nailes turned into clawes, and so she became an Owle. Then
she cried and screeched like a Bird of that kinde, and willing to proove her force,
mooved her selfe from the ground by little and little, ti1 at last she flew quite away.lR
Notice that the metamorphosis from woman to owl was not effected solely by means of
the ointment, but was triggered with the muttering of an incantation. This suggests that
it took place in a ritual context, although Apuleius does not bother to describe any other
aspects of the ritual. Elizabeth Style, accused of witchcraft in Somerset, England, in 1664,
gave her version of the flying incantation to her inquisitors. After anointing her forehead
and the insides of her wrists with a greenish, raw-smelling oil that was brought to her by
a spirit, she spoke the words "Thout, tout a tout, tout, throughout and about" and was
carried away. To return to her house, she spoke the words "Rentum, Tormentum."19
In the novel of Apuleius, the transformation is physical. Pamphile actually becomes
an owl, the better to fly through the air. This is nonsense, as it should be needless to point
out. The flight of witches as owls certainly did occur, but it was an astral-not a physi-
18. Apuleius, chap. XVI, 67.
19. Murray, Witch-Cult in Western Europe, 101.
Chapter Two: Witches' Flying Ointment 23
cal-flight. We can be quite certain about this from a few eyewitness accounts of witches
when they actually were engaging in soul flight. These accounts, small in number, are
remarkably uniform. The witch is observed lying unconscious for an extended period of
time. Sometimes she is seen to apply an ointment to her naked body before lying down
or falling down and going to sleep. Attempts to rouse her from her trance are usually
futile. When at last she recovers her senses, she declares that she was on a journey, and
may believe that the journey was taken in her physical body, although it is evident to the
witness that this was not the case.
The demonologist Johann Weyer, who was the pupil of Cornelius Agrippa, quotes
Giovanni Battista Porta (1535-1615) on this matter. Porta recorded in the second book
of his work Magia naturalis (Natural Magic) how an elderly witch offered to give him an
account of the things she experienced during her magical flight, which was effected by
means of an ointment that she applied to her body.
Removing her clothing, she vigorously rubbed herself all over with some ointment,
while we observed through cracks in the door. She collapsed under the force of the
soporific juices and fell into a profound sleep. We opened the doors, and struck her
repeatedly, but her sleep was so deep that she felt nothing. We returned to our posi-
tion outside, and now the strength of her remedy began to weaken and grow feeble.
Awaking from sleep, she began a long raving story of crossing seas and mountains,
and she brought forth false responses. We denied her story, but she insisted upon it.
We showed her the black-and-blue marks, but she became all the more stubborm20
The same sort of account occurs in the 1525 Tractatus de strigibus sive maleficus of the
Dominican monk Bartholomaeus of Spina (1465-1546), who relates the story told to
him by his friend, Augustus de Turre of Bergamo. While still a young man, Augustus
returned late one night to his rented house in the university town of Pavia, where he was
studying to become a physician. For a long time he pounded on the door, but nobody an-
swered. In frustration, he climbed the side of the house to a balcony and entered through
an open window, and then went looking for the maid who was supposed to have been
ready and waiting to unbolt the door when he knocked. He found her in her room, lying
unconscious on the floor, and left her to her sleep. The next day, when he asked her what
sht: had been doing on the floor, she replied that she had been "on a journey."
20. Weyer, On Witchcraft, 114.
24 Soul Flight
Writing about the astral flight of witches in his 1597 work Daernonologie,King James
VI of Scotland, who would later be crowned King James I of England, observed:
And some sayeth, that their bodies lying stil as in an extasy, their spirits will be
rauished out of their bodies, & carried to such places. And for verefying thereof, wil
giue euident tokens, aswel by witnesses that haue seene their body lying senseles in
the meane time, as by naming persones, whomwith they mette, and giuing tokens
quhat purpose was amongst them, whome otherwaies they could not haue knowen:
for this forme of journeing, they affirme to vse most, when they are transported
from one Countrie to another.21
The Sabbat Gatherings
It was the general belief of the demonologists that witches flew through the air, either in
body or in spirit, to attend the great gatherings of witches known as sabbats, which were
supposed to be held at certain times of year, most notably All Hallow's Eve (October 3 1)
and Walpurgis Night (April 30), usually on high places such as the tops of mountains.
The Brocken or Blocksburg in the Hartz Mountains of Germany was the most famous
location for this gathering.
More fascinating from the point of view of astral travel and the astral world is the
gathering place supposed to have been used by the witches of Mora, in Sweden, who
attracted the ire of the clergy and of the Swedish monarch Charles XI in the year 1669.
The accused witches called the place the Blocula, according to their inquisitors, who
described it as "a delicate large meadow, whereof you can see no end. The place or house
they met at had before it a gate painted with divers colors; through this gate they went
into a little meadow distinct from the other, where the beasts went that they used to ride
on."22A schoolteacher who claimed that the Devil had carried him there described it as
an island.
In 1730, long after the accused witches of Mora had been executed, a thirteen-year-
old Norwegian girl named Siri J~rgensdatterclaimed that when she was seven, her grand-
mother had taken her to visit the Blocula. "Siri told them that when she was seven years
old, her grandmother took her to a pigsty, where she smeared a sow with some ointment
she took from a horn, whereupon they both mounted and after a short ride through the
21. JamesI, bk. 11, chap. 4, pp. 39-40.
22. Robbins, 349-50.
Chapter Two: Witches' Flying Ointment 25
air arrived at a place that her grandmother called Blaak~llen."~~ The sow was left outside
the building. They entered and sat down at one of seven tables next to the Devil, who was
referred to as "grandfather" by Siri's grandmother.
This child's accusation of witchcraft came to nothing, and it was dismissed by the
bishop who reviewed it. It contains a number of interesting details. The flying ointment
was kept in a horn, which because of its crescent shape is symbolic of the moon. The sow
is a lunar beast. It was the sow that was smeared with the ointment, but the girl and her
grandmother straddled it, bringing their sexual parts into contact with the ointment.
The mention of a pigsty recalls an incident related by Bartholomaeus de Spina, who in
his Tractatus de strigibus sive malijicis told of a notary from Lugano who missed his wife
w.hen he arose one morning and went searching for her around his estate. He located her
naked and dirty, lying unconscious in the pigsty. When he interrogated her, she tearfully
admitted that during the night she had gone "on a journey."24
The Blocula, insofar as it can be said to have had any existence, is clearly an astral
pl.ace.The beasts supposed to have carried the witches there were astral beasts, carrying
their astral forms. It is doubtful, however, that Swedish witches ever traveled to the Blo-
cula, either physically or astrally, to attend large sabbat gatherings. The whole concept
of the great witch sabbat was an invention of the inquisitors of the church. Rossell Hope
Robbins wrote: "The conception of the sabbat seems to have been fabricated during the
fourteenth and fifteen centuries, largely by the investigators and judges connected with
the Inq~isition."~~ Witches were solitary practitioners of their shamanic traditions, or at
most family practitioners, and never met in large groups. However, it is possible that the
story of the Blocula as an astral place was derived by the inquisitors from some tradi-
tional belief among Swedish witches, perhaps a belief that descended from a pagan myth
of paradise.
Methods of Flight
An interesting aspect of the soul flight of traditional European witches is the methods
supposed to have been used to carry them through the air. Citing Nicolas Remy's De-
monolatry as his source, Guazzo mentions numerous forms of transportation:
-
23. Robbins, 288.
24. Hansen, Witch's Garden, 87.
25. Robbins, 414-5.
26 SoulFlight
But it must be known that before they go to the Sabbat they anoint themselves upon
some part of their bodies with an unguent made from various foul and filthy ingre-
dients, but chiefly from murdered children; and so anointed they are carried away
on a cowl-staff, or a broom, or a reed, a cleft stick or a distaff, or even a shovel, which
things they ride. At times they are mounted upon an ox or a goat or a dog, and so
are carried to their feast. And yet again they go on foot when the place is not far
distant.26
In earliest times, it was by transformation into birds, as the quotation from the novel of
Apuleius demonstrates. By the tenth century, the prevailing belief was that witches flew
on the backs of beasts sacred to the lunar goddess Diana. In the fanatical eyes of the me-
dieval church, pagan Diana was only one step away from Satan, so it was maintained that
witches flew on beasts controlled by the Devil, or sometimes were carried through the
air by the Devil or by his demons. A later evolution gives the witch a stick to ride upon.
This stick takes several forms. It can be a simple forked twig-forked to indicate duality
and thus duplicity, after the manner of the forked tongue of the serpent. Or it can be a
homely farm implement such as a pitchfork, which had two prongs in early times, or a
corn broom.
Witches are shown in old woodcuts straddling the broom or sitting astride it side-
saddle. Usually the bush of the broom points forward, but there is no rule about this, and
sometimes the handle of the broom is depicted foremost. This is the archetypal image of
the flying witch that has come down through the centuries to our modern celebrations
of Halloween. More than any other single visual image, it embodies the popular concep-
tion of the witch of folklore. That the witch is flying in the image is significant. Flight is
an absolutely essential part of the archetype.
Sometimes witches were said to fly to the sabbat on wands or simple rods, which
they held between their legs for the purpose. This may refer to autoerotic stimulation
by the witch to help achieve the altered consciousness necessary to separate the astral
body from the physical body. It is possible that witches masturbated with some form
of dildo to aid in soul flight. Such powerful archetypes as the witch on her broom have
astonishing persistence and show up in the culture in curious ways. Recently a company
was forced to stop making vibrating Harry Potter flying brooms for children. It was dis-
covered that older girls were taking the toys from their younger siblings and playing with
26. Guazzo, 34-5.
Chapter Two: Witches' Flying Ointment 27
them alone for prolonged periods of time. Whether astral travel was achieved by these
girls is doubtful.
There seems little difference between the soul flight of the shamans of primitive cul-
tures-frequently induced by intoxicating drugs such as alcohol, nicotine, and peyote-
and the astral flight of medieval European witches, which was often provoked by what has
come to be known as flying ointment. This ointment was sometimes applied to the wands
or rods that witches held between their legs during flight. If these wands were used as
dildos, absorption of the active components of the ointment through the mucous mem-
branes of the sexual parts would have been rapid. The witch's ointment was also used to
cause the illusion of shape-shifting, an activity closely related to soul flight since witches
as well as shamans sometimes believed themselves to fly through the air in the forms of
birds, or run swiftly over the ground in the forms of wolves or other beasts.
N-atureof Flying Ointment
Exactly how the flying ointment worked was beyond the understanding of the times. The
urlcommonly enlightened Francis Bacon (1561-1626) in his Sylva Sylvarurn, a treatise
written in his last year of life, expressed his conviction that flying ointment induced a
hallucination by means of "soporiferous medicines" such as the juices of smallage,wolf-
bane, and cinquefoil. He was undoubtedly correct, as we may surmise from our modern
vantage. By contrast, Henry More wrote in his 1653 work Antidote Against Atheism that
the ointment sealed up the pores of the skin, and in this way preserved the heat of the
body while the soul was absent, allowing it to survive until the soul's return.z7He be-
lieved the ointment incidental to the projection of the soul, but necessary to preserve the
life of the body. Eyewitness accounts of witches lying in trance, who later claimed to have
been flying, indicated to enlightened men such as Bacon and More that no physical flight
was involved, but the more credulous continued to believe that witches actually flew.
A surprising number of recipes of witches' flying ointment have survived down to
the present in written form. Hansen mentions that sixteen of them are "comparatively
The active ingredients were the juices from narcotic or psychotropic plants.
The inactive ingredients were occult in nature, and probably played no part in the ef-
fectiveness of the ointment. These include such things as soot and bat's blood. The base
27. Robbins, 365.
28. Hansen, 90.
28 Soul Flight
of the ointment was rendered fat, into which the active and inactive ingredients were
blended.
The priests of the Inquisition and the demonologists such as Guazzo maintained that
the fat was obtained from murdered babies. This should probably be regarded as little
more than a slander against witches, who likely used the same type of lard they employed
for cooking. However, it is possible that when this slander became common knowledge,
some men and women who fancied themselves witches, as the Inquisition understood
witches-that is, as agents of Satan -may have actually used the fat of infants. An alter-
native base to fat was oil, which would have been less effective since the ointment would
more quickly run off the body, or be wiped off by the movements of the limbs. Some
scholars suppose the "oil" specified in the formulae to be a euphemism for baby fat.
The other major inactive ingredient, soot, would have the effect of coloring the
ointment black. When smeared over the entire naked body it would make an effec-
tive concealment for travel at night, when the ointment was applied for the purpose of
shape-shifting. As mentioned, shape-shifting is an astral event, but those who believed
themselves transformed into wolves, bears, stags, or other beasts, and intoxicated by the
effects of the ointment, may have run through the fields and villages in their physical
bodies beneath the light of the moon, under the delusion that they had changed into the
bodies of beasts. In the tale related by Bartholomaeus de Spina concerning the wife of the
notary from Lugano, who found his wife unconscious in the pigsty, it may be significant
that the wife is described as dirty. The dirt could have come from the sty, or perhaps if
she used a flying ointment, it was from soot in the ointment.
The method of applying the ointment, according to Lucius Apuleius, was to rub it
vigorously into the skin all over the body from the soles of the feet to the hairline. For this
purpose, the witch was more or less forced to make herself naked. The common image
of a nude witch applying the ointment to her body promoted the myth of the lustfulness
of witches. Reginald Scot wrote that the ointment was rubbed into the skin until the skin
was reddened by the friction, bringing the blood to just beneath the surface and warming
it so that the pores were opened.29It is likely that it was also rubbed into the genitals.
29. Murray, 100.
Chapter Two: Witches' Flying Ointment 29
Three Recipes for Flying Ointment
Margaret A. Murray provided three simple recipes for flying ointment in the final ap-
pendix of her Witch-Cult in Western Europe that are translated into English from an un-
named French source, or sources.
1. Parsley, water of aconite, poplar leaves, and soot.
2. Water parsnip, sweet flag, cinquefoil, bat's blood, deadly nightshade, and oil.
3. Baby's fat, juice of water parsnip, aconite, cinquefoil, deadly nightshade, and
T.he active ingredient of the first formula is aconite, which is derived from a root and was
a poison well-known to the Romans. It is an alkaloid that causes irregularity and stop-
ping of the heart. A. J. Clark, who wrote the appendix to Murray's book, points out that
the parsley (du persil in the French text) may actually have been hemlock, which he says
closely resembles parsley. Hemlock, a poison used in classical times, produces paralysis
of'the body that is sometimes accompanied by delirium.
The second formula contains the active ingredient deadly nightshade, or belladonna.
In moderate doses, it generates excitement or delirium, but eating as few as fourteen ber-
ries is known to have caused death. Clark suggests that water parsnip, which is harmless,
may actually refer to the poisonous water hemlock or cowbane.
The active ingredients of the third formula are aconite and deadly nightshade. To-
gether they would cause irregularity in the heartbeat and emotional excitement.
Notice that two of the recipes contain soot, which has no active function but would
blacken the ointments. The first may have been thickened by a paste made from ground
an'd pulverized poplar leaves, or more probably fresh green poplar buds, which yield a
thick juice when crushed that was employed for the making of ointment. The second was
liquid and used an oil as its base. The third relied on human fat taken from an infant. In
the medieval European world, infant deaths were commonplace. Woman had many chil-
dren, and the majority of them died in infancy. It is impossible to know if baby fat was
ever used in a flying ointment, but it was not an unobtainable substance, and would not
necessarily have required murder. Human fat is perhaps more readily absorbed through
the skin than animal fat, since it is so similar to the fat beneath the skin of the person
applying it.
-
30. Murray, 279.
30 SoulFlight
Active Ingredients
Harold A. Hansen lists twenty-seven ingredients that occur either once, or multiple times,
in traditional flying ointment recipes. Most would seem to have no active properties, but
it is possible that their inclusion created a catalytic effect, enhancing, limiting, or other-
wise modifying the power of the active substances. Soot appears in seven of the sixteen
recipes that Hansen regards as reliable. The only ingredient that is found more often is
cinquefoil (Potentilla reptans) which occurs in eight.
The main active ingredients appear to be water hemlock (Cicuta vivosa), hemlock
(Conium maculatum), monkshood (Aconitum napellus), opium poppy (Papaver som-
niferum), deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna), henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), black
nightshade (Solanum nigrum), mandrake (Mandragora oficinarum), thornapple (Datu-
ra stramonium), darnel (Lolium temulentum), poison lettuce (Lactuca virosa) and black
poplar (Populus niger).
Hemlock and water hemlock have similar poisonous effects. It was a concoction of
hemlock that was used to execute the Greek philosopher Socrates. Hansen asserts that
the juices of the two hemlocks, when rubbed into the skin, cause the sensation of gliding
through the air.31
Monkshood is poisonous when applied to the surface of the skin. The naturalist Pliny
the Elder wrote in his Natural History that the Roman Calpurnius Bestia murdered a suc-
cession of wives by rubbing aconitine on their sexual parts as they slept. "It is established
that of all poisons the quickest to act is aconite, and that death occurs on the same day if
the genitals of a female creature are but touched by it."32
The juice of the opium poppy causes languor and hallucinations. In modern times,
we are familiar with the power of the opium poppy's concentrated extract, heroin, but
the raw gum that seeps from cuts in the seed pods can be smoked, or the plant can be
eaten, to produce a less potent effect. Opium was known about and used by physicians
in Europe during the Middle Ages. It is possible that witches mistakenly assumed that
they could get the same effect from the common corn poppy (Papaver rhoeas), but both
types of poppies are listed in one recipe for flying ointment. Of the corn poppy, Nicholas
3 1. Hansen, 74.
32. Pliny, (bk. XXVII, chap. 2 ) , vol. 7, p. 391
Chapter Two: Witches' Flying Ointment 31
Culpeper wrote: "The herb is Lunar; and of the flowers and seeds is made a syrup, which
is frequentIy, and to good effect, used to procure rest and sleep in the sick and weak."33
Mild poisoning by deadly nightshade brings on high spirits, a sense of timelessness,
and deep sleep that is often accompanied by erotic dreams. Its common Italian name,
belladonna (beautiful lady), refers to the historical practice of women applying drops of
its juice diluted in water to the surface of their eyes to dilate their pupils, in order to lend
themselves a more fascinating and seductive appearance.
Henbane contains throughout its parts the alkaloid hyoscyamine, and its seeds also
contain scopolamine. Hansen asserts that henbane by virtue of these alkaloids "can pro-
duce in its victims the illusion of having been turned into an The herbalist
Jo:hn Gerard wrote that "to wash the feet in the decoction of Henbane causeth sleepe; or
gillen in a clister it doth the same; and also the often smelling to the floures. The leaues,
seed and iuyce taken inwardly causeth an vnquiet sleepe like vnto the sleep of drunken-
nesse, which continueth long, and is deadly to the party."35
Mandrake was known to be both a soporific and an aphrodisiac. No plant has a great-
er occult reputation. It was fabIed to render the possessor of its dried root invulnerable in
battle, to cure him of all sickness,to aid in the discovery of hidden treasure, and to induce
any woman he desired to make love to him. By comparison, the actual physical effects of
the root are mild. Wine in which the root was boiled was used to cause sleep. The same
e%:ct was achieved by smelling the fruit of the mandrake and by drinking its juice.
The very scent of the flowers of thornapple in the air can induce stupefaction, and
when the root is taken internally thornapple causes hallucinations and temporary insan-
ity. A larger dose can produce permanent insanity and a still larger dose, death. Pliny
called it manicon, the maddening herb.36
The seeds of darnel induce dizziness when eaten, and may perhaps have some similar
effect when their active component is leeched from them into the ointment and absorbed
through the skin. "When Darnel has been given medicinally in a harmful quantity, it is
33. Culpeper, Cukeper's Complete Herbal, 125.
34. Hansen, 45.
35. Gerard, The Herbal, 355.
36. Pliny (bk. XXI, chap. 105), vol. VI, p. 287.
recorded to have produced all the symptoms of drunkenness: a general trembling, fol-
lowed by inability to walk, hindered speech and vomiting."37
Poison lettuce is said to bring on sweet dreams. The Latin name Lactuca virosa signi-
fies "poisonous milky juice." At one time, the juice was collected by cutting the tops of
the plants and scraping the milky juice that welled forth into a cup several times a day.
The juice in the cup became congealed, and was knocked out in the form of a patty. It
was used to cut or adulterate opium because its properties are similar to those of opium.
"The drug resembles a feeble opium without its tendency to upset the digestive system.
It is used to a small extent as a sedative and narc~tic."'~ Water distilled from lettuce (eau
de laitue) was used in France as a mild sedative, but larger doses given to animals in the
form of injections have caused death.
Francis Bacon listed the leaves of the black poplar as a soporific. Gerard, writing in
1597, reported that the buds of the new leaves were made into "that profitable ointment
called unguenturn p o p ~ l e o n . "It~is~ worth noting in passing that the juice of the man-
drake was also put into this ointment?" and that the ointment was sometimes combined
with crushed henbane leave^.^' Gerard further wrote that "the leaues and yong buds of
blacke Poplar doe asswage the paine of the gout in the hands or feet, being made into an
ointment with May butter."42
Given the potent qualities of many of the active herbal ingredients in flying oint-
ment, it would be foolish in the extreme to experiment with their manufacture and use.
One of the first men to do so in modern times, Dr. Karl Kiesewetter, died of poison-
ing as the result of one of his experimental soul flights.43Will-Erich Peuckert, who in
1927 experimented in spite of the dangers with one of the flying ointments described by
Giovanni Battista Porta in his Magia naturalis, reported that it first induced a sensation
- - -
37. Grieve, Modern Herbal, 372.
38. Ibid., 476.
39. Gerard, 1486.
40. Ibid., 352.
41. Ibid., 355.
42. Ibid., 1488.
43. Hansen, 95.
Chapter Two: Witches' Flying Ointment 33
of rapid and wild flight, followed by the impression of being jostled amid a great throng
of revelers, and finally of participating in a chaotic sexual orgy.44
There can be little doubt that some of the flying ointments worked in the intended
way, at least some of the time. In the absence of a rigorous control over the amounts and
potencies of the ingredients that made them up, their effects probably varied wildly from
batch to batch. There is no way to know if their use was harmless, or caused cumulative
damage to the organs and nervous system. The latter case appears more likely in view of the
malicious effects of some of the herbs that the ointments contained. Fortunately for those
who desire to project their astral bodies, drugs are not necessary to achieve useful results.
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