The first concerns an incident in the life of his acquaintance Augustus de Turre of Bergamo, a physician. ĭominican churchman Bartolommeo Spina of Pisa gives two accounts of the power of the flying ointment in his Tractatus de strigibus sive maleficis ('Treatise on witches or evildoers') of 1525. while they are thus dead and cold, they have no more feeling than a corpse and may be scourged and burnt but after the time agreed upon.their senses are liberated, they arise well and merry, relate what they have done, and bring news from other lands. ( woodcut, 1571)Īnointing themselves with certain unguents.they are carried by night through the air to distant lands to do certain black magic.but nothing of this is true, though they think it to be. Note naked witch top left riding through the air mounted upon a goat. An early proponent of the last explanation was Renaissance scholar and scientist Giambattista della Porta, who not only interviewed users of the flying ointment, but witnessed its effects upon such users at first hand, comparing the deathlike trances he observed in his subjects with their subsequent accounts of the bacchanalian revelry they had 'enjoyed'. It has been a subject of discussion between clergymen as to whether witches were able physically to fly to the Sabbath on their brooms with help of the ointment, or whether such 'flight' was explicable in other ways: a delusion created by the Devil in the minds of the witches the souls of the witches leaving their bodies to fly in spirit to the Sabbath or a hallucinatory 'trip' facilitated by the entheogenic effects of potent drugs absorbed through the skin. Magic ointments.produced effects which the subjects themselves believed in, even stating that they had intercourse with evil spirits, had been at the Sabbat and danced on the Brocken with their lovers.The peculiar hallucinations evoked by the drug had been so powerfully transmitted from the subconscious mind to consciousness that mentally uncultivated persons.believed them to be reality.
The mediaeval witch-ointments.brought visionary beings into the presence of the patient, transported him to the witches' sabbath, enabled him to turn into a beast. He little knows the Devil who does believe that witches and wizards can be borne through the air at wondrous speed to far distant places and there hold revels, dances and suchlike with folk of the same type The historian, occultist and theosophist Carl Kiesewetter of Meiningen, author of Geschichte des Neueren Occultismus in 1892 and Die Geheimwissenschaften, eine Kulturgeschichte der Esoterik in 1895, was one such casualty. Some investigators in modern times who have sought to recreate for their own use the 'flying ointment' of times past have lost their lives in the attempt. The effects of transdermal absorption of complex mixtures of the active constituents of such potentially lethal plants have not been adequately studied. With the exception of Potentilla reptans, the plants most frequently recorded as ingredients in Early Modern recipes for flying ointments are extremely toxic and have caused numerous fatalities when eaten, whether by confusion with edible species or in cases of criminal poisoning or suicide. These tropane alkaloids are classified as deliriants in regards to their psychoactive effects.Įxtreme toxicity of active ingredients Scopolamine can cause psychotropic effects when absorbed transdermally. Unrelated to Francis' account, poisonous ingredients listed in works on ethnobotany include: belladonna, henbane bell, jimson weed, black henbane, mandrake, hemlock, and/or wolfsbane, most of which contain atropine, hyoscyamine, and/or scopolamine.
#Bane with witchfire series#
68: Linda maestra (Pretty teacher) by Francisco Goya - from the series Los Caprichos Witches flying to the Sabbath: Capricho No. Composition įrancis Bacon (attributed as "Lord Verulam") listed the ingredients of the witches ointment as " the fat of children digged out of their graves, of juices of smallage, wolfe-bane, and cinque foil, mingled with the meal of fine wheat." ' poplar unguent') or unguenta somnifera ( lit. ' sabbath unguent'), unguentum pharelis, unguentum populi ( lit. Latin names included unguentum sabbati lit. The ointment is known by a wide variety of names, including witches' flying ointment, green ointment, magic salve, or lycanthropic ointment. 6 Alleged sexual element in application.4 Bodily flight versus flight in spirit.
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