Since October is right around the corner its the perfect time to ask - whats up with witches flying on broomsticks causing havoc? The well known image may actually stem from the 17th century habit of women soaking smothering or saturating a broom handle with hallucinogenic herbs before pushing it up their vagina to absorb the opiates through the old mucus membranes which got them high and made them feel as though flying.
Theologian Giordano de Bergamo describes in his 15th-century manuscript Quaestio de Strigis (Inquiry into Witches): "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." It is also hard not to feel great sorrow and respect for Alice Kyteler the first woman to be condemned of witchcraft in Ireland on the grounds that according to the 1324 records of the investigation "In rifleing the closet of the ladie they found a pipe of ointment wherewith she greased her staffe upon which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin."
The image of the broom-riding witch isn't specifically European. Aztec goddesses like Tlazolteotl were also depicted whizzing around on a broomstick. What is unique to the European broomstick myth is the men who disseminated it, like Heinrich Kramer the German Catholic clergyman who wrote the Malleus Maleficarum or King James whose supernatural obsessions inspired the witches of Macbeth.
These men angered and unsettled by the idea that a mere woman had the cunning to self-medicate and/or masturbate flew immediately to murderous fury. They raged to snuff out the homefires that allowed women sovereignty over their own bodies. It was a question of female agency as much as alchemy. And as is often the case women paid the price of punishment.
But be proud and take no care my witchy friends. Worry not who chafes who frets or where conspirers are. Because the night is ours! And thus I conclude this sessions of Freaky Friday Facts finished.