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The Role of Hallucinogenic Plants in European `Wi±Chcraft Michael I

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The Role of Hallucinogenic Plants in European `Wi±Chcraft Michael I The Role of Hallucinogenic Plants in European `Wi±chcraft Michael I. Halnel A prevalent attitude among present-day historians and scholars of religion (e.g., Henningsen, ig69: lo5-6; Trevor-Roper, 1969: 9o, 192) is that late medieval and Renaissance witchcraft was essentially a fiction created by the Church. Those taking this posi- tion often argue that the Inquisition had an a Prjorf conception of witchcraft and simply tortured accused persons until they gave the "right" answers in terms of Church dogma. To support their position, they point out that many of the things witches confessed to doing, such as flying through the air and engaging in orgies with demons at Sabbats, were patently impossible. The position of such scholars is not contravened by accounts of the rituals practiced by persons organized into formal witchcraft covens in Europe and the United States today. Such "witches" engage in what they think are the traditional practices, but insofar as I have been able to discover through interviews, do not believe that they fly through the air nor frolic with supernatural creatures at Sabbats. Instead, their activities tend to be sober and highly ritualistic. Academicians as well as present-day coven participants A preliminary version of this paper was read at the Hallucinogens and Shamanism symposium at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Seattle in ig68. I am indebted to Lawrence Rosenwald and Philip Winter for assist- ance in making translations for this paper. Deadly nightshade (Afropa bezzadon7ia ) Henbane (Hyoscyamus) Mandrake (Mczridragora ) Thorn apple (Dafura) 128] IN THE TRADITIONAL WESTERN WORLD have generally failed to comprehend the great importance of hal- lucinogenic plants in the European witchcraft of former times.1 Yet once the use and the effects of these natural hallucinogens are understood, the major features of past beliefs and practices sud- denly seem quite logical and consistent. Probably the single most important group of plants used by mankind to contact the supernatural belongs to the order Sola- naceae (the potato family) . Hallucinogenic members of this group are widespread in both the Old and New Worlds. Besides .the potato, tomato, chile pepper, and tobacco, the family includes a great number of species of the genus Dafttra, which are called by a variety of names, such as ]imson weed, devil's apple, thorn apple, mad apple, the devil's weed, Gabriel's trumpet, and angel's trumpet, and are all hallucinogenic. Dcztura has been used widely and apparently from ancient times in shamanism, witchcraft, and the vision quest in Europe, Asia, Africa, and among American Indian tribes. Other hallucinogens in the potato family closely resembling .PafurLg in their effects include mandrake (Mcz71drcz- gor4), henbane (Hyoscydmtts), and belladonna, or deadly night- shade (Afropd bezzczdo7ma). Plants of this group are found in both temperate and tropical climates, and on all continents. Each of these plants contains varying quantities of atropine and the other closely related tropane alkaloids hyoscyamine and scopol- amine, all of which have hallucinogenic effects (Claus and Tyler, 1965: 273-85; Henry, 1949: 64T92; Hoffer and Osmund, 1967: 525-28; Lewin,1964: 129-4o; Sollmann,1957: 38lng8). These al- kaloids can be extremely dangerous in their mental and physical effects, and their toxicity can result in death. One outstanding feature of atropine is that it is absorbable even by the intact skin; and it has not been unusual in medicine to observe toxic effects produced by belladonna plasters (Sollmann, 1957: 392). This potential of atropine-containing solanaceous I. An important and essentially ignored exception was the distinguished nine- teenth-century anthropologist Edward 8. Tylor (ig24 [orig. 1871]: vol. 2:418), who proposed: ``. the mediaeval witch-ointments . brought visionary beings into the presence of the patient, transported him to the witchcs' sabbath, enabled him to turn into a beast." More recent exceptions include Bamett (ig65) as well as Baroja (1964:255), the latter acknowledging that the effects of such ointments were of fundamental importance, at least with regard`to the witches' flight. Hallucinogens in European `Witchcraft [i2.9 plants has long been known to man, both in the old and New Worlds, and it is of considerable significance for the study of shamanism and witchcraft. As is familiar to every child in our culture, the witch is fan- tasized as flying through the air on a broomstick. This symbol actually represents a very serious and central aspect of European witchcraft, involving the use of solanaceous hallucinogenic plants. The European witches rubbed their bodies with a hallu- Cinogenic ointment containing such plants as Afrop4 bezzddo717icz, Mc7tdragora, and henbane, whose content of atropine was ab- sorbable through the skin. The witch then indeed took a "trip": the witch on the broQms±ick is a representation of that imagined aerial ].ourney to a rendezvous with spirits or demons, which was called a Sabbat. Lewin (1964 [orig.1924] : 129-3o), the famous pharmacologist, writes : We find these plants associated with incomprehensible acts on the parts of fanatics . Magic ointments or witches' philtres procured for some reason and applied with or without inten- tion produced effects which the subjects themselves believed in, even stating that they had intercourse with evil spirits, had been on the Brocken and danced at the Sabbat with their lovers, or caused damage to others by witchcraft. The mental disorder caused by substances of this kind, for instance DcfftJrd, has even instigated some I)ersons to accuse themselves before a tribunal. The peculiar hallucinations evoked by the drug had been so powerfully transmitted from the subconscious mind to con- sciousness that mentally uncultivated persons . believed them to be reality. Hesse (1946: lo3) writes in a similar vein of admixtures to witches' brew,love potions, and narcotics: "The hallucinations are frequently dominated by the erotic moment .... In those days, in order to experience these sensations, .young and old women would rub their bodies with the `witches' salve,' of which the active ingredient was belladonna or an extract of some other solanaceae." The Inquisition, at the cost of the torture and execution of perhaps hundreds of thousands of believed and real witches, has 130] IN THE TRADITIONAL WESTERN WORLD supplied the bulk of our data on the role of hallucinogenic plants in late medieval Europe. From the variety of sources, only some of which are cited here, it is clear that we are dealing with prac- tices that were widespread throughout Europe and apparently known at least as early as Roman times. Margaret Murray is among the first modern scholars, after Tylor, to touch upon the possible importance of the "flying oint- ment" in European witchcraft. She notes (Murray, 1962 [orig. 1921]: 1oi-2) that the Somerset witches in 1664 used a ``green- ish" oil in transporting themselves to their meetings. Murray, following Glanvil (i68i), (p. 3o4) observes: Elizabeth Style said: "Before they are carried to their meetings, they anoint their Foreheads and Hand-wrists with an Oyl the Spirit brings them (which smells raw) and then they are carried in a very short time, using these words as they pass, ThotJt, fotJf cZ fouf,„,€PThtJf, fhrotjgfeout and abottf . And when they go off from their Meet- ings, they say, Re"ft/in, Tormenfttm .... all are carried to their several homes in a short space." Alice Duke gave the same testimony, noting besides that the oil was greenish in colour. Ann Bishop, the Officer of the Somerset covens, confessed that "her Forehead being first anointed with a Feather dipt in Oyl, she hath been suddenly carried to the place of their meeting. After all was ended, the Man in black vanished. The rest were of a sudden conveighed to their homes." Another case of the use of an ointment, three centuries earlier, is from an investigation by the authorities of Lady Alice Kyteler in 1324 (Murray,1962 [orig.1921]: lo4, following Holinshed, 1587) . in rifleing the closet of the ladie, they found a Pipe of oyntment, wherewith she greased a staffe, upon the which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin, when and in what manner she listed. The fifteenth century yields a similar account of an anointed staff: But the vulgar believe, and the witches confess, that on cer- tain days or nights they anoint a staff and ride on it to the ap- Hallucinogens in European `Witchcraft |i3i pointed place or anoint themselves under the arms and in other hairy p]aces and sometimes carry charms under the hair. [Ber- gamo, c.147o-7l,1.77 Hansen,1901: 199] The use of a staff or broom was undoubtedly more than a symbolic Freudian act, serving as an applicator for the atropine- containing plant to the sensitive vaginal membranes as well as providing the suggestion of riding on a steed, a typical illusion of the witches' ride to the Sabbat. In addition to brooms, pitchforks and apparently baskets and bowls served as "vehicles" for transport to the Sabbat: Nicole Ganette added that it was her custom, when she was preparing to start on that journey, to put one foot up into a basket after she had smeared it with the same ointment which she had used upon herself. Francis Fellet said that he used to place his left foot, not in a basket, but on the ends of the backward bent twigs of a broom which he first anointed. [Remy, 1596, Liber I, Ch. xiv, p. io3] Johannes Nider (i692, Liber 11, Cap. 4i) gives this account: I shall . show how so many people are deceived in their sleep, that upon wakening they altogether believe that they have actually seen what has happened only in the inner part of the mind. I heard my teacher give this account: a certain priest of our order entered a village where he came upon a woman so out of her senses that she believed herself to be transported through the air during the night with Diana and other women.
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