How To Use Flying Ointment

Hallucinogenic salve used in the do of witchcraft

Preparation for the Witches' Sabbath by David Teniers the Younger. Note on the left an older witch reading from a grimoire while anointing the buttocks of a young witch about to fly to the sabbath upon an inverted besom with a candle upon its twigs

Flying ointment is a hallucinogenic ointment said to take been used past witches in the practice of European witchcraft from at least as far back equally the Early Modern period, when detailed recipes for such preparations were first recorded.

Name [edit]

The ointment is known by a wide multifariousness of names, including witches' flying ointment, green ointment, magic salve, or lycanthropic ointment. In German information technology was Hexensalbe (lit. 'witch salve') or Flugsalbe (lit. 'flying salvage'). Latin names included unguentum sabbati lit. 'sabbath unguent'), unguentum pharelis , unguentum populi (lit. 'poplar unguent') or unguenta somnifera (lit. 'sleeping unguent').^{[1] [2]}

Composition [edit]

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."^[3]

Unrelated to Francis' business relationship, poisonous ingredients listed in works^{[ clarification needed ]} on ethnobotany include: belladonna,^[4] henbane bell, jimson weed, black henbane, mandrake, hemlock, and/or wolfsbane,^{[5] [6] [7]} almost of which comprise atropine, hyoscyamine, and/or scopolamine.^[eight] Scopolamine can cause psychotropic effects when absorbed transdermally.^[9] These tropane alkaloids are classified as deliriants in regards to their psychoactive effects.

Farthermost toxicity of active ingredients [edit]

With the exception of Potentilla reptans, the plants near frequently recorded every bit ingredients in Early Modernistic recipes for flying ointments are extremely toxic^[10] and have caused numerous fatalities when eaten,^[11] whether by confusion with edible species^{[12] [13]} or in cases of criminal poisoning^[xiv] or suicide.^[15] The effects of transdermal absorption of complex mixtures of the active constituents of such potentially lethal plants have not been fairly studied.^{[ commendation needed ]}

Some investigators in modern times who have sought to recreate for their own use the 'flying ointment' of times by have lost their lives in the attempt. The historian, occultist and theosophist Carl Kiesewetter of Meiningen, author of Geschichte des Neueren Occultismus in 1892 and Die Geheimwissenschaften, eine Kulturgeschichte der Esoterik in 1895, was i such casualty.^[sixteen]

Bodily flight versus flight in spirit [edit]

He little knows the Devil who does believe that witches and wizards tin can be borne through the air at wondrous speed to far distant places and there hold revels, dances and suchlike with folk of the same blazon^[17]

the mediaeval witch-ointments...brought visionary beings into the presence of the patient, transported him to the witches' sabbath, enabled him to turn into a beast.^[18]

Magic ointments...produced effects which the subjects themselves believed in, even stating that they had intercourse with evil spirits, had been at the Sabbat and danced on the Brocken with their lovers...The peculiar hallucinations evoked by the drug had been so powerfully transmitted from the subconscious mind to consciousness that mentally uncultivated persons...believed them to be reality.^[19]

It has been a subject of word betwixt 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 mirage 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 stiff drugs absorbed through the pare.^{[20] [ needs context ] [21]} An early proponent of the last explanation was Renaissance scholar and scientist Giambattista della Porta, who not only interviewed users of the flying ointment, simply witnessed its furnishings upon such users at first hand, comparison the deathlike trances he observed in his subjects with their subsequent accounts of the bacchanalian carousal they had 'enjoyed'.^{[22] [ page needed ] [ dubious – discuss ]}

Torso in coma and riding on beasts [edit]

Witches prepare a magic salve. Note naked witch top left riding through the air mounted upon a goat. (woodcut, 1571)

anointing themselves with certain unguents...they are carried by night through the air to distant lands to do certain black magic...just null of this is truthful, though they call up it to be...while they are thus dead and cold, they have no more than feeling than a corpse and may be scourged and burnt; but after the time agreed upon...their senses are liberated, they arise well and merry, relate what they have done, and bring news from other lands.[Italics not original]^[23]

Dominican churchman Bartolommeo Spina (1465? / 1475? -1546) 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 kickoff concerns an incident in the life of his acquaintance Augustus de Turre of Bergamo, a physician. While studying medicine in Pavia equally a young homo, Augustus returned late one nighttime to his lodgings (without a key) to notice no ane 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 constitute her lying unconscious - beyond rousing - on the floor. The following morning time he tried to question her on the matter, but she would only respond that she had been 'on a journey'.

Bartolommeo's second account is more suggestive and points toward some other element in the witches' 'flights'. It concerns a certain notary of Lugano who, unable to notice his wife 1 morn, searched for her all over their estate and finally discovered her lying securely unconscious, naked and dirty with her vagina exposed, in a corner of the pigsty. The notary 'immediately understood that she was a witch' (!) and at outset wanted to kill her on the spot, only, thinking better of such rashness, waited until she recovered from her stupor, in club 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'.

Light is cast on the tale of the notary's married woman by two accounts widely separated in time simply revealing a persistent theme in European Witchcraft. The showtime is that of Regino of Prüm whose De synodalibus causis et disciplinis ecclesiasticis libri duo (circa 906 C.East.) speaks of women who 'seduced...past 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...'^[24] (Come across too Catechism Episcopi).

The second account dates from some 800 years after, coming from Kingdom of norway in the early 18th century and is the testimony, at the historic period 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 fauna and, afterward a short ride through the air, arrived at a building on the Sabbath mountain.^[25]

Alleged sexual element in application [edit]

The hallucinations are frequently dominated by the erotic moment...in those days, in order to experience these sensations, immature and old women would rub their bodies with the 'witches' save'.^[26]

the witches confess that...they anoint a staff and ride on it to the appointed place or anoint themselves nether the arms and in other hairy places...[Italics not original to text].^[27]

in rifleing the cupboard of the ladie [Alice Kyteler], they found a pipe of oyntement, wherewith she greased a staffe, upon which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin, when and in what manner she listed.^[28]

Some sources have claimed that such an ointment would all-time be absorbed through mucous membranes, and that the traditional image of a female witch astride a broomstick implies the application of flight ointment to the vulva.^[29] The passage from the trial for witchcraft in Ireland of Hiberno-Norman noblewoman Alice Kyteler in 1324 quoted above is, while non explicit, certainly open to interpretations both drug-related and sexual. It is besides a very early account of such practices, pre-dating by some centuries witch trials in the early on modern catamenia. The testimony of Matriarch Kyteler'southward maidservant, Petronilla de Meath, while somewhat compromised by having been extracted under torture, contains references not only to her mistress's abilities in the preparation of 'magical' medicines, just also her sexual behaviour, including at least one example of (declared) intercourse with a demon.^{[30] [31]} Co-ordinate to the inquisition ('in which were five knights and numerous nobles') gear up in move by Richard de Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory, there was in the city of Kilkenny a band of heretical sorcerers, at the caput of whom was Matriarch Alice Kyteler and confronting whom no fewer than seven charges relating to witchcraft were laid. The 5th charge is of particular interest in the context of the 'greased staffe' mentioned to a higher place:

In social club to arouse feelings of honey or hatred, or to inflict death or disease on the bodies of the true-blue, they made utilise of powders, unguents, ointments and candles of fat, which were compounded as follows. They took the entrails of cocks sacrificed to demons, certain horrible worms, various unspecified herbs, dead men's nails, the hair, brains, and shreds of the cerements of boys who were buried unbaptized, with other abominations, all of which they cooked, with various incantations, over a burn of oak-logs in a vessel made out of the skull of a decapitated thief.^{[32] [ page needed ]}

Deducting from the above ingredients of purely symbolic significance relating to death and heresy, i is left with the cooking, in a fatty mixture, of 'unspecified herbs' and 'horrible worms' to produce, among other preparations, 'unguents' and 'ointments' - one of which was the 'staffe-greasing' ointment later found in the 'piping' discovered in Dame Alice'southward cupboard. Information technology is unfortunate that the identities of the herbs and 'worms' involved went unrecorded. Those of the 'unspecified herbs' may well be guessed at in the light of information regarding later flying ointment recipes, but the 'horrible worms' remain more than ambiguous: it is unclear whether actual worms or insect larvae are intended. If the latter, such larvae might themselves have been poisonous and exhilarant, from having fed on alkaloidal plants.

Comparison of Alice Kyteler's 'staffe' and Siri Jørgensdatter'southward sow - both greased with a mysterious ointment, suggest the innate conservatism of European Witchcraft and the persistence of a body of women's knowledge related to sexuality and the apply of a potent and complex drug.^{[ citation needed ]}

Possible opiate component [edit]

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 take with the alkaloids of Papaver somniferum (opium poppy). This is discussed by Alexander Kuklin in his brief book, How Exercise Witches Fly? (DNA Press, 1999). This antagonism was claimed to exist by the movement of Eclectic medicine. For case, King'south American Dispensatory states in the entry on belladonna: "Belladonna and opium appear to exert antagonistic influences, especially as regards their action on the encephalon, the spinal cord, and middle; they have consequently been recommended and employed every bit antidotes to each other in cases of poisoning" going on to make the improvident claim that "this thing is now positively and satisfactorily settled; hence in all cases of poisoning past belladonna the great remedy is morphine, and its utilise may be guided by the degree of pupillary wrinkle it occasions." The utilize of opiates in the handling of belladonna poisoning is, nonetheless, strongly contraindicated in modern medical do [see beneath].

The synergy between belladonna and poppy alkaloids was fabricated use of in the so-called "twilight sleep" that was provided for women during childbirth beginning in the Edwardian era. Twilight slumber 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 notwithstanding manufactured for use as the injectable compound Omnopon.

At that place is no definite indication of the proportions of solanaceous herbs vs. poppy used in flight ointments, and nearly 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 past Atropa belladonna - far from being antidotes - 'Preparations containing morphine or opiates should exist avoided every bit they have a synergic activeness with atropine'; an appropriate antidote being, by contrast, the acetylcholinesterase inhibitor physostigmine salicylate.^[33]

Sources citing ointments [edit]

The use by witches of flying ointments was first described, co-ordinate to known sources, by Johannes Hartlieb in 1456^{[ citation needed ]}. It was also described by the Spanish theologian Alfonso Tostado (d. 1455) in Super Genesis Commentaria (printed in Venice, 1507), whose commentary tended to ascribe the thesis of the reality of the Witches' Sabbath.^{[ citation needed ]} In 1477 Antone Rose confessed that the devil gave her a stick 18 inches in length on which she would rub an ointment and with the words "go, in the proper noun of the Devil, go" would fly to the "synagogue" (an alternative name for Sabbath in early witchcraft).^[34]

In popular culture [edit]

Drama [edit]

In that location is, in the piece of work of the playwright Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla (1607-1648) of Toledo, an commutation concerning the flying ointment, the (following) passage occurring in the play Lo que quería el Marqués de Villena ('What the Marquis of Villena Wanted').^[35]

Marquis: Others believe that witches can fly.

Zambapalo: And can't they?

Marquis: Certainly not, you ignorant fellow.

Zambapalo: Since I'm no specialist in these matters, I must ask y'all what happens.

Marquis: They all rub themselves with ointment.

Zambapalo: And then what?

Marquis: The ointment, which is an opiate fabricated of henbane given them by the Devil, sends them to sleep, and they dream such a dream that they think they are non dreaming at all. And since the Devil has great power to deceive, he makes them all dream the aforementioned dream. And that is why they think they are flight through the air, when they are really fast asleep. And although they never fly at all, they think, as soon as they wake, that they have all been to see the calf, and all visited the fields at Baraona. When, by God, in reality, more than than two of them take been seen sleeping in their rooms with the ointment on them.

Literature and film [edit]

• In Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Dark-brown", Goody Cloyse, after meeting the Devil, says "I was all anointed with the juice of smallage, and cinquefoil, and wolf's bane" to which the Devil replies "[g]ingled with fine wheat and the fatty of a new-born baby".
• In Mikhail Bulgakov'south The Master and Margarita, Margarita, after like-minded to act as hostess at Dr Woland'due south ball, uses the ointment to go a witch and fly to the manor where the event is beingness held.
• In Clayton Rawson'southward Death from a Top Hat, two recipes by Johann Weyer, a 16th-century demonologist, are given in a footnote:

ane-Water hemlock, sweet flag, cinquefoil, bat's blood, mortiferous nightshade and oil.

2-Baby's fatty, juice of cowbane, aconite, cinquefoil, deadly nightshade and soot.

• In the film serial Warlock, the villain kills an unbaptised boy to get this "Flying Ointment".
• In Jodi Picoult's Salem Falls, a group of four girls practicing witchcraft ingest a flight ointment made of belladonna.
• In the book Calling on Dragons (Book three of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles), the witch Morwen uses a flying potion on a straw basket and a broomstick, not on herself.
• In Eastward. L. Konigsburg's Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, two characters effort to make a flying ointment.
• In the 2015 horror picture show The Witch, a witch kills an babe kid and makes flying ointment out of his corpse.
• In the 2016 movie, The Honey Witch, the main character applies a flight ointment to her body.
• In the 2019 movie, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the 2 main characters apply a flying ointment to their armpits.
• In the 2020 moving-picture show, Gretel and Hansel, directed by Oz Perkins, the witch, caressing a precious jar filled with ointment, applies information technology to herself, and so initiates Gretel into witchcraft by inducing her to do the same.

Music [edit]

• The Bonzo Domestic dog Doo-Dah Band vocal 'eleven Moustachioed Daughters' - a track on the Album The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse - is a darkly comic and surprisingly detailed evocation of the traditional Witches' Sabbath, featuring the flight-ointment-related lines :

'and belladonna, to make your optics like a...fauna's!

To anoint the body and make it smoothen,

To drink and make thyself divine,

To choose another'due south form and make information technology...thine!'

• The Swedish symphonic metallic band Therion has a song chosen Unguentum Sabbati (Ointment of the Sabbat) on the album Sitra Ahra.

Gallery [edit]

• 

  Henbane bloom

• 

  Jimsonweed blossom

• 

  Jimsonweed seed capsule

• 

  Opium poppy blossom

• 

  Opium poppy seed capsules

• 

• 

See also [edit]

• Besom
• Cunning folk
• Deliriants
• Hedgewitch
• Nightshades
• Witches' Sabbath
• Johannes Hartlieb
• Volition Erich Peuckert

References [edit]

1. ^ Rätsch, Christian (2005). The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications. Simon and Schuster. p. 3295. ISBN9781594776625.
2. ^ Rätsch, Christian; Müller-Ebeling, Claudia (2006). Infidel Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide. Simon and Schuster. p. 403. ISBN9781594776601.
3. ^ Lewis Spence (1970). The Encyclopedia of the Occult. Bracken Books. p. 306 – via Cyberspace Archive.
4. ^ Schultes, Richard Evans; Hofmann, Albert (1979). The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens (2nd ed.). Springfield Illinois: Charles C. Thomas. pps. 261-four.
5. ^ Rätsch, Christian, The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications pub. Park Street Press 2005
6. ^ Schultes, Richard Evans; Albert Hofmann (1979). Plants of the Gods: Origins of Hallucinogenic Use New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-056089-7.
7. ^ Hansen, Harold A. The Witch'due south Garden pub. Unity Press 1978 ISBN 978-0913300473
8. ^ Furst, Peter T. Hallucinogens and Civilization pub. Chandler and Sharp 1976 (volume in series on cantankerous-cultural themes) p.138.
9. ^ Sollmann, Torald, A Transmission of Pharmacology and Its Applications to Therapeutics and Toxicology. eighth edition. Pub. W.B. Saunders, Philadelphia and London 1957.
10. ^ Tampion, John : Unsafe Plants, pub. David and Charles, Canada 1977. ISBN 0 7153 7375 seven
11. ^ A Color Atlas of Poisonous Plants : A Handbook for Pharmacists, Doctors, Toxicologists, and Biologists by Frohne, Dietrich and Pfänder, Hans Jürgen of University of Kiel, translated from second High german edition by Norman Grainger Bisset, London : a Wolfe Scientific discipline Book and 1 of the volumes in the illustrated series Wolfe Atlases, pub. Wolfe Publishing Ltd. 1984.
12. ^ Mateo Montoya, A; Mavrakanas, North; Schutz, JS (2009). "Astute anticholinergic syndrome from Atropa belladonna mistaken for blueberries". Eur J Ophthalmol. 19 (1): 170–2. doi:ten.1177/112067210901900130. PMID 19123171. S2CID 9387171.
13. ^ "The Poisonous substance GARDEN Website blog - 28th Nov 2015". Thepoisongarden.co.uk. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
14. ^ Schenk, Gustav Das Buch der Gifte translated past Michael Bullock as The Book of Poisons pub. Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1956 page 28, re. A. belladonna as Lithuanian criminal poison 'Maulda'.
15. ^ Demirhan, A; Tekelioğlu, ÜY; Yıldız, İ; Korkmaz, T; Bilgi, Thou; Akkaya, A; Koçoğlu, H (2013). "Anticholinergic Toxic Syndrome Caused by Atropa Belladonna Fruit (Deadly Nightshade): A Case Written report". Turk J Anaesthesiol Reanim. 41 (half dozen): 226–8. doi:ten.5152/TJAR.2013.43. PMC4894214. PMID 27366377.
16. ^ Bert-Marco Schuldes: Psychotropicon zum Bilsenkraut und dem Tod Kiesewetters. In: Psychotropicon. Das Online-Magazin für Psychonauten vom 5. März 2012.
17. ^ Bishop Jesper Brocmand, Systema universae theologiae 1633
18. ^ Tylor, Edward B.1924 Primitive Culture : Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Fine art, and Custom 2 vols. (combined) pub. New York : Brentano'south. Originally published 1871.
19. ^ Lewin, Louis Phantastica, Narcotic and Stimulating Drugs : Their Use and Abuse. Translated from the 2d German edition by P.H.A. Wirth, pub. New York : E.P. Dutton. Original German edition 1924.
20. ^ "Witches Gallery". Bristol Radical History Group . Retrieved 19 July 2017.
21. ^ Harner, Michael J., Hallucinogens and Shamanism, pub. Oxford University Press 1973, reprinted United statesA.1978 Affiliate eight : pps. 125-150 : The Role of Hallucinogenic Plants in European Witchcraft.
22. ^ John Baptista Porta (1584). Magiae naturalis. Archived from the original on 16 May 2008. {{cite book}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
23. ^ Ciruelo,Pedro : Tratado en el cual se repruevan todas las supersticiones y hechizerías, pub. Barcelona 1628, P.II, c. 1, North. half-dozen, pps. 45-46, quoted in H.C. Lea : Materials Toward a History of Witchcraft, pub. Thomas Yoseloff New York and London 1957, folio 413.
24. ^ Quoted in : Ginzburg, Carlo, Ecstasies. Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath, New York, 1991, ISBN 0-226-29693-eight. First published in Italian as Storia notturna: Una decifrazione del Sabba, 1989.
25. ^ Quoted in Pickering, David : A Dictionary of Witchcraft pub. David Pickering 2014.
26. ^ Hesse, Erich, Narcotics and Drug Habit pub. New York : Philosophical Library 1946
27. ^ Bergamo, Jordanes de, Quaestio de Strigis (Unpublished manuscript, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris), quoted in Joseph Hansen Quellen und Untersuchen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexengefolgung im Mittelalter pps. 195-200. Pub. 1901 [1905]. Bonn : Carl Georgi.
28. ^ Wright, Thomas, ed. A Gimmicky Narrative of the Proceedings Against Dame Alice Kyteler, Prosecuted for Sorcery in 1324, by Richard de Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory. London: The Camden Society, 1843.
29. ^ Emboden, William Narcotic Plants : Hallucinogens, stimulants, inebriants, and hypnotics, their origins and uses second edition (revised and enlarged) pub. Macmillan, New York 1979 ISBN 0-02-535480-ix p.127
30. ^ Williams, Bernadette, 'The Sorcery Trial of Alice Kyteler,' History Ireland Vol. two, No.4 (Winter, 1994)
31. ^ Davidson, Sharon, and John O. Ward, trans. The Sorcery Trial of Alice Kyteler: A Contemporary Account (1324). Asheville, NC: Pegasus Press, 2004.
32. ^ Seymour, St. John D. Irish Witchcraft and Demonology pub. Dorset Press 1992 ISBN 0-88029-734-4
33. ^ Cooper, Marion R. and Johnson, Anthony Westward. Poisonous Plants in Britain and their effects on Animals and Man, Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food Reference Volume 161 (replacing Message 161) pub. HMSO London, 1984 ISBN 0 11 242529 1 folio 213
34. ^ Encyclopedia of witchcraft and demonology, Folio 50, octopus, 1974
35. ^ Quoted in : Baroja, Julio Caro The Earth of the Witches pub. Phoenix 2001 (Original Championship Las brujas y su mundo) ISBN 9781842122426)

External links [edit]

• Flight Potions and Getting to the Sabbat
• Belladonna in flight ointments
• Ritual of the Raven
• If Witches No Longer Wing: Today's Pagans and the Solanaceous Plants
• Rex's American Dispensatory on Belladonna
• FLYING OINTMENTS: Their Ingredients and Their Use
• Witches' Ointment: Data from the Gale Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology

How To Use Flying Ointment,

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_ointment

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