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October 12, 2024

In honour of Halloween season (aka my favourite time of the year), of course I had to dedicate a blog post to the NSFW origins of the idea that witches ride broomsticks. So hold onto your pointy hats, I’m about to give you excellent small talk topics to bring up at the Halloween party. 

First of all, throughout history women who have been accused of witchcraft are almost always actually just people who have varying degrees of education that institutions like the church are unhappy with. Its hard to indoctrinate the masses of uneducated people into your cult, if there are a bunch of people who know basic botany/medical science and can disprove what you’re preaching by helping stop infections with plants rather than praying. This tangent is important because the theory of riding broomsticks, does in fact stem from having a good working knowledge of plant properties in Europe. 

Now, certain plants produce a substance called tropane alkaloids, which is a hallucinogenic chemical. It is also most effective when it is absorbed through mucous membranes (such as the vulva or rectum)  Do we see where this is going yet? Basically witches would brew up a bunch of plants, smear it on a broom and go to town. Its a bit unclear if they were fully inserting broom handles as dildoes or just rubbing them externally, I imagine it would have been down to personal preference. Apparently it was really common to hallucinate that you were flying when under the influence, which is also a big part of where this came from. Propaganda would also tie this practice to communing with the devil and general wickedness. 

Funtasia

Earliest illustration of a witch riding a stick, from Le Champion des Dames by Martin Le Franc. c. 1440

The earliest written account of this practice is from 1324 in the case of Lady Alice Kyteler:

"In rifleing the closet of the ladie, they found a pipe of oyntment, wherewith she greased a staffe, upon which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin."

Which is a bit unclear thanks to the ye olde english of it all. In the fifteenth-century records of Jordanes de Bergamo, its a little more clear. 

"But the vulgar believe, and the witches confess, that on certain days or nights they anoint a staff and ride on it to the appointed place or anoint themselves under the arms and in other hairy places."

Funtasia

Preparing a magic salve. Note naked witch top left riding through the air mounted upon a goat (please as humans can we let goats live in peace). Woodcut from 1571

Out of sheer scientific curiosity I decided to dig a little into what plants European Witches might have been using to make their hallucinogenic goop. Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade),Hyoscyamus niger (henbane),Mandragora officinarum (mandrake) andDatura stramonium (jimsonweed), all produce tropane alkaloids and grow in the regions that our sources come from. Now I mean it when I say you should NOT  go out and find these, brew them up and spread them on your naughty bits. Belladonna (the plant not the pornstar) is famously poisonous, the rest of the ingredients also pose really serious health risks. 

Over the centuries, stories of broomstick riding were passed down and skewed to become the gimmick we know today, but it did in fact originally have a much more sexually charged origin. I could turn this into a bit of a gender studies essay and ramble on about how the Church also linked female sexual pleasure with Witchcraft and demonised it which were can still see the effects of today, but thats distinctly not as fun as the hallucinogenic broomstick story. 


Funtasia Sexpert and Totally Not Looking Up How To Grow Those Plants

Verin Sampson 


Sources.

David Kroll, 2017. The Origin Of Witches Riding Broomsticks: Drugs From Nature, Plus Shakespeare.https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkroll/2017/10/31/the-origin-of-witches-riding-broomsticks-drugs-from-nature-plus-shakespeare/ 

3 min read


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