Flying ointment is a substance described in European folklore and early modern witch trials as enabling witches to fly, often on broomsticks. These ointments were believed to contain hallucinogenic plants and were linked to the superstition of witches flying at night to Witches' Sabbaths.
Name The ointment is known by a wide variety of names, including witches' flying ointment, green ointment, magic salve, or lycanthropic ointment. In German it was () or (). Latin names included ), , () or ().
Composition
Poisonous ingredients listed in works on ethnobotany include: belladonna,Schultes, Richard Evans; Hofmann, Albert (1979). The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens (2nd ed.). Springfield Illinois: Charles C. Thomas. pps. 261-4. henbane bell, jimson weed, black henbane, mandrake, hemlock, and/or wolfsbane,Rätsch, Christian, The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications pub. Park Street Press 2005Schultes, Richard Evans; Albert Hofmann (1979). Plants of the Gods: Origins of Hallucinogenic Use New York: McGraw-Hill. .Hansen, Harold A. The Witch's Garden pub. Unity Press 1978 most of which contain atropine, hyoscyamine, and/or scopolamine.Furst, Peter T. Hallucinogens and Culture pub. Chandler and Sharp 1976 (volume in series on cross-cultural themes) p.138. Scopolamine can cause psychotropic effects when absorbed transdermally.Sollmann, Torald, A Manual of Pharmacology and Its Applications to Therapeutics and Toxicology. 8th edition. Pub. W.B. Saunders, Philadelphia and London 1957. These tropane alkaloids are classified as deliriants in regards to their psychoactive effects.
Francis Bacon (attributed as "Lord Verulam") listed the ingredients of the witches ointment as "the fat of children digged out of their graves, of juices of smallage, wolfe-bane, and cinque foil, mingled with the meal of fine wheat."
Extreme toxicity of active ingredients
With the exception of Potentilla reptans, the plants most frequently recorded as ingredients in Early Modern recipes for flying ointments are extremely toxicTampion, John: Dangerous Plants, pub. David and Charles, Canada 1977. and have caused numerous fatalities when eaten,A Colour Atlas of Poisonous Plants : A Handbook for Pharmacists, Doctors, Toxicologists, and Biologists by Frohne, Dietrich and Pfänder, Hans Jürgen of Kiel University, translated from second German edition by Norman Grainger Bisset, London : a Wolfe Science Book and one of the volumes in the illustrated series Wolfe Atlases, pub. Wolfe Publishing Ltd. 1984. whether by confusion with edible species or in cases of criminal poisoningSchenk, Gustav Das Buch der Gifte translated by Michael Bullock as The Book of Poisons pub. Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1956 page 28, re. A. belladonna as Lithuanian criminal poison 'Maulda'. or suicide.
The historian, occultist and theosophist of Meiningen experimented on himself with various flying ointment ingredients in the nineteenth century. He eventually died during one of these experiments.Bert-Marco Schuldes: Psychotropicon zum Bilsenkraut und dem Tod Kiesewetters. In: Psychotropicon. Das Online-Magazin für Psychonauten vom 5. März 2012.
Bodily flight versus flight in spirit
It has been a subject of discussion between clergymen as to whether witches were able physically to fly to the Sabbath on their brooms with help of the ointment, or whether such 'flight' was explicable in other ways: a delusion created by the Devil in the minds of the witches; the souls of the witches leaving their bodies to fly in spirit to the Sabbath; or a hallucinatory 'trip' facilitated by the entheogenic effects of potent drugs absorbed through the skin.Harner, Michael J., Hallucinogens and Shamanism, pub. Oxford University Press 1973, reprinted U.S.A.1978 Chapter 8 : pps. 125–150 : The Role of Hallucinogenic Plants in European Witchcraft. An early proponent of the last explanation was Renaissance scholar and scientist Giambattista della Porta, who not only interviewed users of the flying ointment, but witnessed its effects upon such users first hand, comparing the deathlike trances he observed in his subjects with their subsequent accounts of the bacchanalian revelry they had 'enjoyed'. (book II, chapter XXVI, "Lamiarum unguenta").
Body in coma and riding on beasts
Dominican churchman Bartolommeo Spina of Pisa gives two accounts of the power of the flying ointment in his Tractatus de strigibus sive maleficis ('Treatise on witches or evildoers') of 1525. The first concerns an incident in the life of his acquaintance Augustus de Turre of Bergamo, a physician. While studying medicine in Pavia as a young man, Augustus returned late one night to his lodgings (without a key) to find no one awake to let him in. Climbing up to a balcony, he was able to enter through a window, and at once sought out the maidservant, who should have been awake to admit him. On checking her room, however, he found her lying unconscious – beyond rousing – on the floor. The following morning he tried to question her on the matter, but she would only reply that she had been 'on a journey'.
Bartolommeo's second account is more suggestive and points toward another element in the witches' 'flights'. It concerns a certain notary of Lugano who, unable to find his wife one morning, searched for her all over their estate and finally discovered her lying deeply unconscious, naked and dirty in a corner of the pigsty. The notary 'immediately understood that she was a witch' and at first wanted to kill her on the spot, but, thinking better of such rashness, waited until she recovered from her stupor, in order to question her. Terrified by his wrath, the poor woman fell to her knees and confessed that during the night she had 'been on a journey'.Ginzburg, Carlo. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991.
Light is cast on the tale of the notary's wife by two accounts widely separated in time but revealing a persistent theme in European Witchcraft. The first is that of Regino of Prüm whose De synodalibus causis et disciplinis ecclesiasticis libri duo (circa 906 C.E.) speaks of women who 'seduced...by demons...insist that they ride at night on certain beasts [italics not original] together with Diana, goddess of the pagans, and a great multitude of women; that they cover great distances in the silence of the deepest night...'Quoted in : Ginzburg, Carlo, Ecstasies. Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath, New York, 1991, . First published in Italian as Storia notturna: Una decifrazione del Sabba, 1989. (See also Canon Episcopi).Ginzburg, Carlo. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991.
The second account dates from some 800 years later, coming from Norway in the early 18th century and is the testimony, at the age of thirteen, of one Siri Jørgensdatter. Siri claimed that when she was seven her grandmother had taken her to the Witches' Sabbath on the mountain meadow Blockula ('blue-hill'): her grandmother led her to a pigsty, where she smeared a sow with some ointment which she took from a horn, whereupon grandmother and granddaughter mounted the animal and, after a short ride through the air, arrived at a building on the Sabbath mountain.Quoted in Pickering, David : A Dictionary of Witchcraft pub. David Pickering 2014.
Alleged sexual element in application
Some sources have claimed that such an ointment would best be absorbed through mucous membranes, and that the traditional image of a female witch astride a broomstick implies the application of flying ointment to the vulva.Emboden, William Narcotic Plants : Hallucinogens, stimulants, inebriants, and hypnotics, their origins and uses 2nd edition (revised and enlarged) pub. Macmillan, New York 1979 p.127 The passage from the trial for witchcraft in Ireland of Hiberno-Norman noblewoman Alice Kyteler in 1324 quoted above is, while not explicit, certainly open to interpretations both drug-related and sexual. It is also a very early account of such practices, pre-dating by some centuries witch trials in the early modern period. The testimony of Dame Kyteler's maidservant, Petronilla de Meath, while compromised by having been extracted under torture, contains references not only to her mistress's abilities in the preparation of 'magical' medicines, but also her sexual behaviour, including at least one instance of (alleged) intercourse with a demon.Williams, Bernadette, 'The Sorcery Trial of Alice Kyteler,' History Ireland Vol. 2, No.4 (Winter, 1994)Davidson, Sharon, and John O. Ward, trans. The Sorcery Trial of Alice Kyteler: A Contemporary Account (1324). Asheville, NC: Pegasus Press, 2004. According to the inquisition ('in which were five knights and numerous nobles') set in motion by Richard de Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory, there was in the city of Kilkenny a band of heretical sorcerers, at the head of whom was Dame Alice Kyteler and against whom no fewer than seven charges relating to witchcraft were laid. The fifth charge is of particular interest in the context of the 'greased staffe' mentioned above:
Possible opiate component
One possible key to how individuals dealt with the toxicity of the nightshades usually said to be part of flying ointments is through the supposed antidotal reaction some of the solanaceous alkaloids have with the alkaloids of Papaver somniferum (opium poppy). This antagonism was claimed to exist by the movement of Eclectic medicine. For instance, King's American Dispensatory states in the entry on belladonna: "Belladonna and opium appear to exert antagonistic influences, especially as regards their action on the brain, the spinal cord, and heart; they have consequently been recommended and employed as antidotes to each other in cases of poisoning" going on to make the extravagant claim that "this matter is now positively and satisfactorily settled; hence in all cases of poisoning by belladonna the great remedy is morphine, and its use may be guided by the degree of pupillary contraction it occasions."
The synergy between belladonna and poppy alkaloids was made use of in the so-called "twilight sleep" that was provided for women during childbirth beginning in the Edwardian era. Twilight sleep was a mixture of scopolamine, a belladonna alkaloid, and morphine, a Papaver alkaloid, that was injected and which furnished a combination of painkilling and amnesia for a woman in labor. A version is still manufactured for use as the injectable compound Omnopon.
There is no definite indication of the proportions of solanaceous herbs vs. poppy used in flying ointments, and most historical recipes for flying ointment do not include poppy. Furthermore, a reputable publication by the former UK Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries (now DEFRA) states specifically that, in cases of poisoning by Atropa belladonna – far from being antidotes – 'Preparations containing morphine or opiates should be avoided as they have a synergic action with atropine', an appropriate antidote being, by contrast, the acetylcholinesterase inhibitor physostigmine salicylate.Cooper, Marion R. and Johnson, Anthony W. Poisonous Plants in Britain and their effects on Animals and Man, Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food Reference Book 161 (replacing Bulletin 161) pub. HMSO London, 1984 page 213
Historical documents