A Pinch of Herbs: Witches’ Flying Ointment*
by Erin Pedigo
*An offshoot of this article—titled “Parsley and Pinches of Herbs to Die For”—will appear in the soon-to-be-distributed PRINT Issue #25, themed “Ghosts.” A pre-order form for copies of Issue #25 will appear in this Substack newsletter soon!
This edition of “A Pinch of Herbs” features botanical spookiness that meshes with the theme of our soon-to-be-distributed “Ghosts” issue. Highlights include the most famous plants and herbs associated with the history of Old World witchcraft, most notably those thought to comprise witches’ Flying Ointment—a concoction that allegedly allowed them magical flight upon broomsticks. Join us for a tour of some of the creepiest plants . . . that might have ended up in a witch’s cauldron.
A Halloween witch might grow in her garden herbs common to both cooking and healing. But what else might she grow? A witch might grow mandrakes, belladonna, wormwood, henbane, hemlock, wolfsbane, and datura. Many of these come down to us in historical accounts as ingredients for the infamous Flying Ointment, said to enable witches to fly on brooms to midnight ceremonies. Not every account lists all of these botanicals all together, all the time. But they all are firmly on the Poison Path, one name for the study of the use of baneful herbs in sorcery.
The image of the archetypal Witch has shifted, and our most solid associations arguably come from witchcraft panics that shaped European history. (Although other cultures around the world have their own indigenous folk healing practices and beliefs in magic, and their own botanicals, our focus here is limited to what is perhaps the most widely recognized archetype, the witch has outlasted European history). Earliest prehistory in Europe had shamans, both male and female. Today, the archetypal Witch is still with us—some practitioners of nature-based neo-pagan religions, such as Wicca, call themselves witches. On television in recent decades, the (female) witch has been either a teen or an utterly charming not-quite-ordinary housewife. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, when the children’s literature industry heavily marketed richly illustrated retellings of old stories, the witch was luring Hansel and Gretel with candy or was the Wicked Queen; during that time her looks were also softened and prettied for Halloween greeting cards.
But centuries earlier, supposed witches gained a reputation as companions of demons. This characterization of witches, leading to witchcraft panics, began as early as the late medieval period and lasted until part of the eighteenth century; in America, the much-studied events at Salem arose from this characterization. Here, the witch was believed to be real—and a servant of Satan, with her powers acquired through pacts with demons. The witch was malevolent, sometimes a poisoner, and always pursuing her midnight rides to her Witches Sabbath.
“The modern European concept of the witch as a woman involved with demons was cemented in the Renaissance, when the majority of witch trials were directed at women. Poor, often single, women were vulnerable to accusations from neighbors seeking supernatural explanations for misfortune,” contributing scholars write in A History of Magic, Witchcraft & The Occult (DK, 2020).
As the editor of The Penguin Book of Witches (Penguin Classics, 2014), which contains accounts of accused witches from medieval Europe through eighteenth-century America, professor of history and novelist Katherine Howe elaborates on this point. “Witchcraft was a legitimate, but dangerous, category for explaining reality. Witchcraft intersected, contained, and sometimes overwrote other important social questions—most notably of gender, class, inequality, and religion.”
The witch’s image as a demonic individual utilizing poisonous plants to fly on her broom to her rituals was solidified in the Renaissance and carried over into England’s New World colonies. William Perkins, a Puritan cleric, wrote Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft in 1608, and this one work “did much to introduce such European ideas [of witches as helpers of Satan and women as weak, easily influenced by evil] to England and North America,” according to A History of Magic.
The garden would have been the place where the witch grew her noxious night-mischief weeds, alongside benign, ordinary herbs and vegetables. The garden was the literal, visible intersection of herbs’ powers to heal as well as harm. Cunning folk were local people, usually women, who used their knowledge of herbs and plants to heal their neighbors, often for a small fee or a fair exchange. A History of Magic asserts that they often used spoken-word charms that drew on Christian scripture, and used their knowledge of plants to prepare herbal draughts, tinctures, poultices, infusions, and tisanes. They were generally left alone to practice, but sometimes unfortunately incurred the wrath of the community if there were livestock deaths, sick children, or crop failures.
But whatever guise she wears, the archetypal Witch has never quite escaped insinuations of sexually-charged night-flying and sacrificial ceremonies, courtesy of Flying Ointment; but what was in this notorious salve? The Early Modern period of Europe (roughly 1453-1798) is when the alleged recipes were first recorded by earnest students of the occult. (John Dee and Francis Bacon, courtiers to Elizabeth I, were obsessed with magic and alchemy; Dee was considered a wizard. James I, who ruled after her, also had a court full of occult dabblers. Witchcraft and magic were considered so real in England that he wrote a tract against it called Demonology.)
Earlier recipes do exist; for example, one written in 1267—firmly medieval—by Theodric of Cervia contained “henbane, mandrake, hemlock, lettuce, opium, ivy, climbing ivy, lapathum, juice of unripe mulberry, and spurge flax. The resultant ointment was to be soaked into a sponge and inhaled.” Francis Bacon’s seventeenth-century ingredient list for Flying Ointment was particularly gruesome: “the fat of children digged out their graves, of juices of smallage, wolf-bane and cinquefoil, mingled with the meal of fine wheat.” Trying to piece the puzzle together, Scientific Inquirer noted importantly in a 2019 article that recipes for Flying Ointment after Theodric’s included human remains or blood. The pattern through history emerges, clear that the archetype of the witch became one who made blood sacrifices, firmly in satanic thrall. The article, “Halloween Science: Breaking Down Witches Flying Ointment One Ingredient at a Time,” charts next a recipe from 1428. It listed “bat blood, vulture fat, and the blood of a newborn baby. Eight years later, Johannes Nider wrote in the Formicarius that boiled, unbaptized babies were the central ingredient.” And in 1584, A Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot also chillingly mentions “the fat of young children”—along with aconite and soot.
While these recipes for Flying Ointment are particularly disturbing, some of the most violent persecution of alleged witches surged in the fifteenth century. Europe was waging general war on heresy while printed literature detailed lurid assurances that witches were demons’ helpers. No better excuse to put to death alleged witches than for rumor of human sacrifice. “From the 14th to the 18th centuries, around 50,000 people were executed for witchcraft in Europe and North America, some four fifths of whom were women. The most extreme purges took place in the late 16th and early 17th centuries in Europe,” partly due to passage of laws in many countries, according to A History of Magic.
“In addition to the profane, witches’ flying ointments called for a host of powerful and often poisonous plants,” the Scientific Inquirer article noted. No recorded recipe for Flying Ointment contained all of these at once, but many were often included. Flying Ointment was said to be rubbed by witches under their arms, between their thighs, and in the groin area, and they then mounted their brooms and flew to do the devil’s work.
Indeed, during the witchcraft panic in Salem, Massachusetts, in the winter of 1692, “riding on a pole” was part of the evidence given, as were assertions that the devil shapeshifted into animals; the devil bodily brought witches to a field; the devil coaxed witches to sign his book and to torment specific townsfolk. The use of poppets came up in evidence, as did invisible fingers pinching, invisible pins pricking, unexplainable convulsions, conversations with the devil about fine clothing and “pretty things,” and at one moment in testimony, a Witches Sabbath complete with sacrament—“red bread and red wine.” The Penguin Book of Witches contains some of these details in testimonies from the Salem trials. Several of the women implicated named other women involved, and of course, young Betty Parris and Abigail Williams were at the forefront of events. In all, nineteen people were executed out of the more than 200 ultimately accused.
Flying Ointment, it seems, remains potent in the popular imagination. Even today, scholars debate whether any accounts of Flying Ointment found anywhere, or of witches flying, period, points to actual physical flight or rather to a dream state or an altered state of mind. Conflating it all, practitioners of modern religions that use witchcraft or magic even sell “Dream Ointment” or “Flying Ointment” online with various ingredients, stating they can help with lucid dreaming but noting clearly that mucous membranes are not to be anointed with the stuff.
Here is a primer of some of the most famous herbs associated with magic, many of them likely contenders for inclusion in Flying Ointment. A proviso: for entertainment purposes only. Do not ingest. Do not attempt to recreate. (For scholars, or for those who are just morbidly curious, there is a Poison Garden in Alnwick, England, which contains many of these plants, and more. You may take guided tours.)
Mandrake root (Mandragora): Mandrake was often listed as an ingredient in witches’ Flying Ointment. And, of all the herbs on this list, medieval and early modern Europeans feared the mandrake root most especially. Legend was that the plant’s forked roots made a homunculus, a tiny man; when pulled up, the roots would emit an earsplitting, fatal scream. It was said dogs were tied to the leaves, baited with meat or other tasty things, and when they lunged for the treats they pulled up the root, were subjected to the screams, and dropped dead. One medieval experiment may prove to the contrary: mandrake roots were pulled up by a dog in an experiment by Spanish Muslim medieval herbalist Ibn al Baitar—the dog lived, according to “The Plant that Can Kill and Cure,” a BBC News Magazine report from 2016.
Wolfsbane (Aconitum napellus) is also known as monkshood or aconite. It produces deep blue flowers that resemble bells or the hoods of monks’ robes. Tingling and burning skin irritation can occur from contact with the plants; ingestion of 20 to 40 milliliters is fatal. Because it is extremely deadly, it was probably mentioned as being part of Flying Ointment, asserts Sarah Penicka in her article “Caveat Anoynter! A Study of Flying Ointments and Their Plants” (The Dark Side Journal, University of Sydney Department of Studies in Religion, 2004). Interestingly, she asserts that mandrake was not part of the recipe, contradicting both Francis Bacon and Theodric—she excludes it because it is not a hallucinogenic.
Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium): “It is considered a mind-altering substance,” writes Judy Ann Nock in her book, The Modern Witchcraft Guide to Magickal Herbs (Adams Media, 2019). Wormwood first grew along the trail of the biblical serpent, asserts A History of Magic. A History of Magic also asserts that in magic spells, it can be used for revenge.
Datura: The Datura genus holds nine poisonous plants. Common names for some types are jimsonweed, thorn apples, devil’s trumpets, devil’s weed, hell’s bells, and moonflower. Datura inoxia produces large, white, conical flowers. When bruised or crushed, datura inoxia emits a strong, funky odor, according to PlantWorld Seeds, a garden supply resource—the seeds are $3.65 a packet for the gardeners who dare. All parts of daturas are toxic if ingested. Some skin and mucous membrane irritation can occur, and the plants are hallucinogenic. Datura plants have been used for centuries in many indigenous cultures’ spiritual ceremonies. Sarah Penicka asserts that datura was never part of medieval or early modern European witches’ Flying Ointment because “it had not yet arrived from the New World.”
Hemlock (Conium maculatum): The plant produces tiny, delicate white flowers similar to those on flowering carrot tops or tops of wild carrot. Hemlock was steadfastly associated with witchcraft in Europe, as were many herbs simply for their deadly poisonous nature, not so much that they were hallucinogenic, notes Sarah Penicka.
Belladonna (Atropa belladonna): Beautiful but brutal belladonna beguiles. Its cherry-sized berries, black when ripe, contain an inky, sweet juice that is extremely toxic and often fatal if ingested. Also known as Deadly Nightshade (it is in the Solanaceae nightshade family with potatoes, eggplants, and tomatoes), it is native to North Africa, Europe, and parts of western Asia.
Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger): Henbane is such a powerful hallucinogen that skin or mucous membrane contact with its fat, hairy leaves or its big yellowish flowers can cause delirium and illness. A History of Magic asserts that the Oracle at Delphi smoked dried henbane to achieve her future-predicting trances. Henbane was often rumored to be in Flying Ointment. It was “freely associated” with witchcraft in the time of Shakespeare, Sarah Penicka notes. In Magickal Herbs, Judy Ann Nock implores today’s magically inclined practitioners not to ingest, inhale, or even burn henbane.
The biggest surprise of all in regard to Flying Ointment’s possible ingredients is that common parsley appears in a few sources. Sarah Penicka attempts to unravel the reason, concluding that parsley could not shake a very long association it had with death.
The deadly plants and herbs associated with Flying Ointment and witchcraft throughout time may remain a source of fascination and temptation, as will the archetype of the Witch. Scholar Daniel A. Schulke writes in his book Veneficium: Magic, Witchcraft, and the Poison Path: “Poison in various forms was also closely associated with the witch, and used in magical contexts. . . . [The] knowledge and use of toxins, from the most ancient of times, has been proscribed by law and religious decree. Like the witch, whose presence in communities was regarded as insidious and polluting, the presence of poison is often undetectable, lurking unseen until it has exacted a toll in victims. This shared countenance of the grotesque inspires fear and awe, and has animated the violent aversion to both the witch and poison over time.” Noting, however that human nature is incorrigibly curious, “like the nubile guise of witch, poison may also be alluring. . . . In this guise both witch and poison serve to arouse and allure, even if doing so with profound unease.”
Happy Halloween!
Erin Pedigo is a full-time freelance copyeditor and proofreader.
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