The evil green-skinned witch flying on her magic broom is perhaps a Halloween icon and a well-worn stereotype. But the actual story behind how witches have been associated with such an everyday household item is anything but dull.
It is not known exactly when the broom itself was first invented, but the act of sweeping dates back to ancient times, when people likely used clusters of thin sticks, reeds, and other natural fibers for sweep dust or ash from a fire or fireplace. As J. Bryan Lowder writes, this domestic task appears even in the New Testament, which dates back to the first and second centuries AD.
Word broom comes from the plant or shrub that was used to make many early sweepers. It gradually replaced the old English word besom, although both terms seem to have been used at least until the 18th century. From the beginning, brooms and brooms were primarily associated with women, and this ubiquitous household object became a powerful symbol of female domesticity.
Despite this, the first witch to admit riding a broom or a broom is a man: Guillaume Edelin. Edelin was a priest from Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris. He was arrested in 1453 and tried for witchcraft after publicly criticizing the church’s warnings about witches. His confession was tortured, and he eventually repented, but was still imprisoned for life.
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By the time of Edelin’s “confession”, the idea of witches riding brooms was already well established. The earliest known image of witches on broomsticks dates from 1451, when two illustrations appeared in the manuscript of French poet Martin Le Franc The Ladies ‘Champion (The Ladies’ Defender). In both drawings, a woman hovers in the air on a broom; the other flies aboard a simple white stick. Both wear scarves that identify them as Vaudois, members of a Christian sect founded in the 12th century who have been labeled heretics by the Catholic Church, in part because they allowed women to become priests.
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Flying witches linked to pagan ritual?
Anthropologist Robin Skelton suggests that the association between witches and brooms could have roots in a pagan fertility ritual, in which rural farmers jumped and danced on horseback on sticks, pitchforks or brooms in the light of the full moon to encourage the growth of their crops. This “broom dance,” she writes, has become confused with common tales of witches flying through the night on their way to orgies and other illicit gatherings.
Illustrations of Witches on Brooms, c. 1440.
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Brooms were also seen as the perfect vehicles for the special ointments and ointments that witches prepared to give themselves the ability to fly, among other depraved activities. In 1324, when the wealthy Irish widow Lady Alice Kyteler was tried for witchcraft and heresy, investigators reported that while searching Kyteler’s house they found “a pipe of ointment, with which she greased a stick, on which she wandered and galloped through thick and thin. “
Pharmacologist David Kroll writes in Forbes that alleged witches in the Middle Ages were supposed to concoct their brews from plants such as Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), Hyoscyamus niger (fruit juice), Mandragora officinarum (mandrake) and Datura stramonium (jimsonweed), all of which are said to have produced hallucinogenic chemicals known as tropanic alkaloids.
According to some historical accounts, rather than ingesting these psychotropic substances while eating or drinking, which would have caused intestinal distress, witches chose to absorb them through the skin, often in the most intimate areas of their bodies. In his book Murder, magic and medicine, John Mann quotes a 15th century text by the theologian Jordanes of Bergamo, who wrote that “the vulgar believe, and witches confess, that on certain days or nights they anoint a staff and ride on it to the designated place or anoint each other under the arms and in other hairy places.
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Witchcraft anxiety leads to legends
It is impossible to know whether such stories, reported at the height of the dread over witchcraft in Europe in the Middle Ages, reflected reality or not. Most of what we know about medieval witchcraft today comes from the records of religious inquisitors, legal officials, and testimonies of accused witches themselves (often while being tortured).
Beginning in the 17th century, tales of witches using brooms to fly and climb out of chimneys became more common, even as women became more closely associated than ever before with the domestic and domestic sphere. According to one custom, women held up a broom in front of a door, or placed it in a fireplace, to let others know that they were not at home. Perhaps because of this, popular legend adopted the idea that witches left their homes by their chimneys, even though very few accused witches had ever done so.
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Popular anxiety about witchcraft had subsided by the 18th century. Although there are still many self-identified “witches” in the United States today, thanks to the growth of neo-pagan religious traditions like Wicca, few of them claim to take flight aboard their ships. faithful brooms. But the image of witches flying on broomsticks endures, especially on Halloween.
