Riding the Broomstick

In 1324, the Catholic church entered Alice Kyteler’s home looking for proof of witchcraft. They were tipped off by gossip they heard from her stepson, who was upset that she received a widow’s dower. The stepson brought his complaint to the Bishop of Ossory, who took the man’s claims and embellished them into a demonic conspiracy to begin a trial against her. That was all it took for someone to be formally investigated. Facts, evidence, and credibility were not requirements for action.

As they searched Alice’s house they found “a pipe of ointment, where-with she greased a staffe”. In the testimony, they also added “upon which she ambled and gallopped thorough thicke and thin, when and in what manner she listed” - although no proof of this claim was presented. The ointment mentioned was not tested and its contents were unknown. But the testimony was good enough to decide she had been using her broomstick for witchcraft.

As if the quoted statement wasn’t problematic enough, it wasn’t even a part of the original transcript. It was added in 1587. “The first mention of a “pipe of ointment” and “greased staffe” in association with Dame Alice appears 200 years after her trial in Raphael Holinshed’s The Chronicle of Ireland (Holinshed, 1587). We see this same false accretion to the original court dossier repeated in an account some 30 years later, as part of the Annales Hiberniae. By this time, Alice’s staff even has a name: a “coulter” (Butler, 1842).” Alice’s story was embellished further with every man that rewrote her tale.

Books published about witches in the 1500s and 1600s alongside the ‘Age of the Witch Hunts’ in Europe either quoted the addition to Alice’s story as fact, or they retold the story with their own spin on it. Each fantastical version became yet another nail in the coffin towards cementing the stereotypical idea of a witch that we imagine today.

Alice has found no rest since her story became co-opted. 600 years after her trial, another facet was invented when a man named Michael Harner wrote a book titled Hallucinogens and Shamanism in 1973, to which he dedicated a chapter called “The Role of Hallucinogenic Plants in European Witchcraft”. In his writing, Harner confidently declared: “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.” The citations for this claim came from the 1587 addition to Alice’s trial, along with a statement from witch theorist Giordano de Bergamo in 1465. The translated quote he referenced from the witch theorist is this: “witches confess that on certain days or nights they anoint a staff and ride it to the appointed place or anoint themselves under the arms and in other hairy places or they [put the ointment] under their nails, the mouth, ear, or under their hairy areas or underarms”.

If you had to pause here and figure out how Harner jumped from those two citations, one of which is suspect to be fabricated, to his declaration that flying ointments were used for witches to get high on while masturbating with their splintery broomsticks, you’re not alone. It is a stretch. While ointments have been mentioned in previous texts, their ingredients were never confirmed and it was treated as speculation. They could have just been hand salve for dry, cracked knuckles, like some accused of witchcraft tried to explain in their defense. Harner was the first to assuredly propose what the ointments were specifically for and how he imagined they were used.

This is the root of how flying ointments and riding the broomstick came to be modern-day mantras of self-empowerment. While women have thought these phrases had been a callback to their oppressed ancestors who could not be controlled, they have actually been a reference to Harner’s perverse suggestion in the 1970s. He has since been quoted in countless esoteric books, mainstream articles, and internet memes like a rallying call for women to take back their practices and their pleasure. But they were not introduced by a witch. Or even a woman.

If we could believe Harner’s theory to be supported by Alice’s trial, it was still the Catholic church who suggested the idea of a greased staffe and wrote it down (likely fueled by a forced “confession” they received while torturing her maid, who they later burned alive). His strategic omission of the rest of the quote from the witch theorist about the ointment being used in four other areas on the body reads as nothing more than a derogatory fixation.

Why have we been perpetuating this claim without examining the sources?

Considering who is saying something is just as important as what is being said. We will never know what actually happened in Alice’s life because she wasn’t able to tell us. Her story was told by the Catholic church, who was unusually harsh on her when considering similar allegations of the time. Religious reformation was the common sentence for heresy, but that courtesy was not offered to Alice or her maid. We can assume the Catholic church’s perspective was stained with bias from their own moral compass, regardless if Alice herself may have subscribed to a different set of beliefs.

Harner’s insertion of himself into the story is tumultuous given the way her narrative was already handled. I fear the reason his outlandish claim gained traction is because it was so sexual - it was controversial, it was catchy, and to some people, it was probably hot. I wonder if his suggestion sparked fantasies and this is how the idea left the academic world to enter the mainstream. Regardless of how it became a part of our contemporary vernacular, ignoring its origins is a misogynistic step backwards.

This is one of many controversies around Atropa belladonna, who has been an important source for the atropine that Harner claimed was being used by witches to masturbate. When it came time to address the flying ointment dilemma in our Poison Garden issue, my co-editor and I gave the job to someone who was an expert on bridging sexuality, empowerment, and storytelling: we let a burlesque dancer handle the narrative.

It is a personal matter if witchy women want to embrace the idea of riding the broomstick in present day. Some may want nothing to do with it when they learn it was created by men and religious institutions. Others may have subjective appreciation in the theory and opt to reclaim the phrase, finding value in taking back ownership of something that had been weaponized against them. I don’t think there is a wrong way to approach it - as long as we can talk about its factual roots and not as the effervescent myth we thought it was.