Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants (41 page)

“Witches on a trip lay numb and stiff at home.”

—W
ILL
-E
RICH
P
EUCKERT
,
H
EXENSALBEN
[W
ITCHES
’ O
INTMENTS
], 1960

It is certain that the use of witch’s salves is very ancient and that their application reaches back into prehistoric times (Fühner, 1925).

In archaic Greece the
baetulos,
or fetish stones, were worshipped with salves—or, more precisely, with rubbing the salves on.
¹⁰⁸
To the Greeks the salves
(unguentos)
were ambrosia, the primordial food of the gods (Hajicek-Dobberstein, 1995: 109). In late Hellenic times the salves that were used in magical rituals
(prâxis)
were called
mystérion
, the “secret thing” (Graf, 1996: 90). This places magic and witchcraft in the realm of the mystery cults.

The magician understood himself as a mystic, as someone who created a ritual experience, who had close associations with the members of the known mystery cults of the Imperial times. In ritual … the magician also sings, for he too has been initiated into the mystery cults. … Magic and mystery cults are secretive; they seek direct contact with the Divine, but access is only attainable after a complex initiation ritual (Graf, 1996: 91).

Did the “secret” salves serve the initiation into the mysteries through their psychoactive qualities? Regardless, according to the so-called Mithraic liturgies the initiates had salve rubbed on their eyes during the ordination so that they would see visions (Graf, 1996: 05).

The first mention of a “flying ointment” stems from the “father of poetry” himself, Homer:

These shining doors the goddess [Hera] closed behind her,

and with ambrosia cleansed all stain away

from her delectable skin. Then with fine oil

she smoothed herself, and this, her scented oil,

unstoppered in the bronze-floored house of Zeus,

cast fragrance over earth and heaven.

H
OMER,
T
HE
I
LIAD
(
XIV.169–174)

Hera
¹⁰⁹
anointed herself with the “food of the gods,” with ambrosia, in order to travel from Olympus over Thrace’s snowy mountains, to soar “over the highest peak, and never touch the earth,” to fly to Zeus on Mount Ida. Zeus was profoundly stunned at how fast she was able to make the trip—entirely without horse and wagon! (
The Iliad
XIV.289f.) The answer is very simple: Hera flew by way of ambrosia. Thus Hera can be considered the discoverer of the “flying ointment.”
¹¹⁰

What Was Ambrosia?

“When the moon shines Artemis is present, and the animals and plants dance.”

—K
ARL
K
ERÉNYI
,
D
IE
M
YTHOLOGIE DER
G
RIECHEN
[T
HE
M
YTHOLOGY OF THE
G
REEKS
], 1966

The name
ambrosia
was not only used to describe the “food of the gods,” but was also used as a general term for different plants both mythic and real. According to Pliny the plants were also called artemisia, “the plants of Artemis” (
Natural History
XXVII.28, 55). Dioscorides described the plants and their medicinal effect more precisely.

Ambrosia—some call it Botry, other Botrys Artemisia, the Romans Caprum silvaticum, also Apium rusticum, the Egyptians merseo—is a small, many-branched shrub three spans tall. At its base it produces small leaves like the rue
[Ruta graveolens].
The thin branches are full of small seeds (similar to small grapes) that never flower, with a winelike smell. The root is delicate, two spans long. In Cappadocia it is woven into garlands. It has the power to stop pressing juices and to push them back; it has an astringent effect when used as a compress (
Materia medica
III.119).

The ambrosia plants of Dioscorides are considered to be grape artemisia (
Botrys artemisia
L.), goosefoot (
Chenopodium botrys
L.), or sea ambrosia (
Ambrosia maritima
L.). It is very doubtful that any of these plants could cause the magical effects of the ambrosia flying salve. The divine ambrosia was also compared to soma or haoma—in other words, to psychedelic or entheogenic sacred drugs—and was often interpreted as fly agaric
(Amanita muscaria)
or magic mushroom (
Psilocybes
pp.) (Hajicek-Dobberstein, 1995; Graves, 1960 and 1992; Wohlberg, 1990). Psychoactive mushrooms could actually induce visionary “trips” in other realities—in the world of myth!

To assume that fly agaric was included in the witches’ salves is to fall prey to an illusion of the twentieth century.
¹¹¹
The only example of a possible use of mushrooms for the preparation of witches’ salve is found in a statement by Peter Fosselt, who was executed on May 20, 1689, in Gleichenberg:

He had, when the desire came to him, smeared himself with witches’ salve, and went around in hybrid form either to Stradner or he flew over the mountaintops … The devil had given him and his wife a black container with a blue-green salve (Wolf, 1994: 450).

In other words, the “sorcerer” had produced a salve while gathering mushrooms with which he transformed himself into a goshawk and could fly through the air. Perhaps one can read into this that the preparation contained mushrooms, possibly fly agaric or another psychoactive species (
Psilocybes
pp.). Sometimes fly agaric is associated with the old Scottish witches who achieved literary fame through Shakespeare’s
Macbeth
.

It is not known if the witches of the New Forest region added hallucination-causing stuff to the bear lard for their salves, but it has been reported that they ate fly agaric in small amounts (Hall and Kingston, 1979: 231).

A famous witches’ salve is mentioned in the best-known heroic story of late antiquity, the
Metamorphoses, or the Golden Ass
of Apuleius (second century C.E.). Therein the hero is Lucius, a member of the magical practitioners and sorcerers of Thessaly, “the native land of those spells of the magic art which are unanimously praised throughout the entire world” (
Metamorphoses
II). According to the story the Thessalian witches knew how to animate mandrake manikins and send them out to cause damage according to their wishes. And the witches could even change their form according to their desire and travel out.

First Pamphile took off all her clothes. Then she opened a box and removed several small jars from it. She took the cover off one of these and scooped out some ointment, which she massaged for some time between her palms and then smeared all over her body from the tips of her toenails to the top of her hair. After a long secret conversation with her lamp she began to shake her limbs in a quivering tremor. While her body undulated smoothly, soft down sprouted through her skin, and strong wing-feathers grew out; her nose hardened and curved, and her toenails bent into hooks. Pamphile had become an owl (Apuleius,
Metamorphoses:
III.6–18).

Unfortunately, no Thessalian recipes are still in existence. Medieval sources remain silent on this theme. Only toward the end of the late Middle Ages was there speculation about witches’ salves, both those used for the witches’ flight and those for the purpose of animal transformation (Haage, 1984; Leubuscher, 1850; Völker, 1977). With the Renaissance an interest in antiquity emerged, as well as interest in all other possible narcotic salves whose recipes apparently had antique roots in folk medicine and in surgery (Piomelli and Pollio, 1994). Many of these recipes appeared to be based on ancient traditions. In ancient times medicinal salves, pomades, and oils were much more commonly used than in the subsequent eras (Budge, 1996: 29ff.; Clarkson, 1992: 293–310).

Poplar Salve As Medicine

From the beginning those who speculated about the recipes of witches’ salves—usually physicians of the early modern era (Vries, 1991)—attributed the effects to the plants of the nightshade family, the true “traveling herbs” (Duerr, 1978; Evans, 1978; Fühner, 1925; Harner, 1973).

For many inquisitors—Pedro Ciruelo, for example—it was obvious that the alleged witches did not really fly to the sabbat but created hallucinogenic experiences with the salves (Dinzelbacher, 1995: 209).
¹¹²
Today the other realities into which one enters with the help of psychoactive substances (hallucinogenics) are still called “Lucifer’s garden of light” (Kraemer, 1977).

There has probably only been one time in the history of the witch trials that a commissioner found an actual salve that elicited its attributed effects. In the year 1545, when the Duke of Lothringen lay very sick in bed, a married couple were arrested and accused of casting a spell on the duke. Both of them admitted to witchcraft at the trial. During a subsequent house search a jug with a salve was found. The papist physician Andrés de Laguna (1499–1560) investigated the ingredients (Rothman, 1972). He recognized in the salve
un cierto unguento verde como el del Populeon
(“a certain green salve like that of the poplar”; Vries, 1991). Laguna guessed that this salve contained
Cicuta
(water hemlock),
Solanum
(nightshade, probably belladonna),
Hyoscyamus,
and
Mandragora,
and tested it on the wife of the hangman. She fell into a kind of coma or deep sleep for three days, and was annoyed when she was wakened from this sleep full of sweet dreams and erotic adventures. Apparently this was not an isolated effect; in
Tractatus de magis
(1591) Goedelmann wrote about a girl from Magdeburg:

After she had anointed herself, she fell in such a deep sleep that she could not be woken, neither during the night nor on the following days. When she finally came back to herself she could not be talked out of the fact that she had not really been at a dance on the Blocksberg (Peuckert, 1960: 170).

Particularly informative are the comparisons of the witches’ salve and poplar salve, which was often used medicinally (Vries, 1991). A poplar-bud salve had already been described by Dioscorides.

The leaves of the black poplar with vinegar helps for the pain of gout. The resin of the same is mixed into the salve. The fruit drunk with vinegar helps those who suffer from epilepsy. It is said that the tears that flowed from Eridanus hardened and became what is called amber, which is called Chrysophoron by some. When rubbed it smells good and has a golden color; when it is finely ground and drunk it works against dysentery (
Materia medica
I.110).

The doctor Valentino Kräutermann wrote in his vernacular introductory book
Der Curieuse und vernünfftige Zauber-Artzt
[The Curious and Practical Magic Doctor, 1725] that one should eat lemon balm (
Melissa officinalis
L.) after the evening meal in order to have happy dreams. “The same does borage [
Borago officinalis
L.] and oak fern [
Polypodium vulgare
L.] and white poplar buds, that is why the poplar salve is good for happy dreams as well” (Kräutermann, 1725: 96f.).
¹¹³

For poplar salve the European poplar (
Populus nigra
L.) was mainly used, but American species were also used. In North America the resinous poplar buds from the balm of Gilead poplar (
Populus gileadensis
Rouleau), from black cottonwood (
Populus trichocarpa
Torr. ex A. Gray ex Hook.), and from quaking aspen (
Populus tremuloides
Michx.) are are all called balm of Gilead; the resin is called tacamahaca when it is separated. The buds are picked during the spring from beneath the branches and are extracted in alcohol. This solution is still used in wound salves (Tillford, 1997: 114f.; Vries, 1991). Balm of Gilead is favored as an apotropaic incense for modern wicca rituals.

Since the fifteenth century medicinal poplar salve has been included in almost all herbals and pharmacopoeia. In the
Gart of Gesundhit
(Garden of Health) from 1485 poplar buds are mentioned along with the following ingredients in equal parts: opium poppy leaves (
Papaver somniferum
L.), houseleek (
Sempervivum tectorum
L.), lettuce leaves (
Lactuca sativa
L.
, L. virosa
L.), orchid (
Orchiss
pp.), nightshades, henbane leaves (
Hyoscyamus niger
L.), and mandrake leaves (
Mandragora officinarum
L.)
.
Everything is crumbled up and boiled in lard. How it was administered is also interesting: the salve was rubbed on the temples and the navel area. In later recipes belladonna (
Atropa belladonna
L.) and hemp (
Cannabis sativa
L.) were mentioned as additives (Vries, 1991). In other words, all psychoactive and aphrodisiac witches’ herbs, with the exception of monkshood, were combined in the poplar salve. In the early modern era this sort of poplar salve was widespread and very beloved, and was used as a general pain medicine as aspirin is today. It was probably found in most households. This, however, had the drawback that at any time it could be identified by the Inquisition as a witches’ salve and would be considered proof of witchcraft.
¹¹⁴