Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants (72 page)

¹²⁸
Brandy was still called “druid’s brandy” and “witch’s schnapps” in the vernacular into the last century (Arends, 1935: 63). Today there are still herbal liquors marketed under the name “witch’s drink.”

¹²⁹
Toads were in use in the Middle Ages for love magic (Meyer, 1884: 263).

¹³⁰
Shakespeare also reveals his knowledge of henbane and its medicinal effects in
Hamlet
(cf. Tabor, 1970).

7. Images of Witches: The Demonization of Nature’s Healing Powers

¹
Herman de Vries discusses the etymology of the syllable
bil
at length (de Vries, 1993: 77).

²
Under the entry for the word
Hexe
(witch) in the 1877 edition of
Grimm’s Wörterbuch
[Grimm’s Dictionary], one definition is an insult for an “ugly old woman, because people think of witches as wrinkled and blear-eyed.” The word is also defined as a “kind of term of endearment for a young and supple maiden.”

³
Mary, however, is indeed invoked as a magical healer in the world of folk customs. Examples have been cited by Eva Labouvie in van Dülmen, 1987: 59, 61.

⁴
The religion of Isis crossed the Mediterranean into Greece from Egypt and was thence carried throughout the Roman Empire by its legions. It found fertile soil in the more southern regions of Germany, where it persisted until Christianity began to prevail, following the conversion of the Frankish king Clovis in the late fifth century. See Giebel, 1990: 149–194.

⁵
The stories of the Middle Ages collected by Joseph Klapper contain the visions of an abbot who found himself transported “to a beautiful meadow in which a temple stood. … And he entered the temple and waited, and saw the most Holy Virgin come and cut flowers from the trees that stood in front of the door, and braided six splendid garlands from them” (quoted in Hartlaub, 1947: 30f.).

⁶
Similar to the incorporation of pagan sites and beliefs into Christian practice, the pagan belief in tree spirits survives in the association of deciduous trees with female saints (who replace the former dryads in this Christian context).

⁷
The common names of many plants mirror their symbolic classification. Often the same plant was associated with the divine as well as with the demonic. For instance, common German names for orchids (
Orchis
spp.) include
Unserer lieben Frau Hände
(our beloved Lady’s hands)
, Muttergotteshand
(Virgin Mary’s hand),
Marienhand
(Mary’s hand),
Teufelsoarsch
and
Teiwelwarsch
(devil’s ass)
, Bockwürze
(buck wort), and, in English, satyrion. The divergent symbolism is even contained in one expanded name,
Gottes Hand und Teufels Hinterbacken
(God’s hand and devil’s rear).

⁸
Many examples of this pair of opposites in medieval art were recognized by Ernst Guldan for his study
Eva und Maria: Eine Antithese als Bildmotiv
(Graz and Cologne: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1966).

⁹
In a 1504 engraving of the fall of man by Albrecht Dürer, Eve is surrounded by cats—the witch’s traditional companions—and rabbits, both of which were attributed to the Germanic love goddess Freya.

¹⁰
In this example the image of Isis again flows into the symbolism of Mary, as the Greek authors interpreted Isis as the moon goddess. As Mary does in this statue, Isis was commonly represented as standing on the crescent moon. There are other similarities to be found in the common artistic representations of Mary and Isis; the most preeminent is the resemblance of the Christian pietà to the many sculptures of Isis holding the dead Osiris across her lap. It is widely considered that the Black Madonnas found throughout Europe represent a transitional stage of the transformation of Isis into the Virgin Mary. Isis was also worshipped everywhere as the guardian of the dead; thus she was demonized and turned into a witch, to whom the night is sacred.

¹¹
From the original French edition (Michelet, 1952: vol. 1, 9).

¹²
Hans Weiditz’s birth and death dates and the influence of his work are to a large degree unknown. He is referred to as a student of Albrecht Dürer. According to Woldemar von Seidlitz, the woodcuts in the book by Petrarch were attributed to a “Petrarch master.” In 1904 Heinrich Röttinger identified the initials of this master as those of the Strasbourg resident Hans Weiditz. Fraenger (1985: 85ff.) refers to this identification as well, but the attribution is a very controversial topic in art history. In regard to the authorship of any illustration from that era, keep in mind that in the sixteenth century an artist would present watercolor sketches to an illustrator, who then made them into outline drawings. In turn these outlines served the woodcutter as a model, and finally the print was integrated into the typography.

¹³
In 1930 W. Rytz discovered these watercolor sketches in the herbarium of the Bern Botanical Insititute, and they proved to be the original draft for the woodcuts in Otto Brunfels’s
Contrafayt Kreüterbuch
. Rytz published these fifteen pieces in 1936.

¹⁴
The 1506 date is contested, as it was written by a later hand.

¹⁵
Lottlisa Behling mentions this acquaintance in her 1957 investigation of the
Pflanzen in der Mittlealterlichen Tafelmalerei
[Plants in Medieval Altar Painting]
.

¹⁶
Such a hat appears as the headgear of Saint Jerome in the left wing of the high altar of Freiburg, also painted by Hans Baldung Grien.

¹⁷
Wolfgang Behringer suggested the first time the term
Hexe
appeared in connection with black magic was in 1293 (in van Dülmen, 1987: 134). Since the fifteenth century
Hexe
has been synonymous with the unusual and the destructive. Ralph Metzner (1994: 152), proceeding from the Germanic word
Hagezussa
(hag or sorceress) and the medieval
zunrita
(“she who rides on the fence”), thought about the idea that shamans and soothsayers go through the hedge, which signifies a threshold and border, and that they travel out of the mundane reality into the world beyond. This is made possible by altered states induced by plants.

¹⁸
Quoted in the original German edition from Biedermann, 1974: 18. Quoted here from Robbins, Rossell,
The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology
, New York: Crown Publishers, 1959, pages 264, 265.

¹⁹
This is the term used by Williram von Ebersberg in his exegesis to the Song of Solomon in 1060 (see also Müller-Ebeling, 1987: 144).

²⁰
See Horst Appuhn,
Der Fuund vom Nonnenchor
, Wienhausen: Kloster Wienhausen, 1973: 52: “Protection against evil and fear of punishment were thus united with sacrifices and the hope for the blessing of the highest one.” The cloister itself was established in 1221 and moved to Wienhausen in 1231. The nun’s choir at the cloisters was built in 1305.

²¹
During her research into the depictions of witches made between 1885 and 1920, Ulrike Stelzl (1983: 119) made the startling observation that there are neither gender nor generational conflicts—a democratic atmosphere reigns among the people in these pictures. In general neither animals nor nature is oppressed. Stelzl came to the conclusion that the artists had portrayed witches as “figures of opposition” to the norms of their time rather than as “enemies” of their time.

²²
If the subject of a picture by Baldung had not been chosen by him but was instead painted in an academic context, then this emphasis on the intoxicating and erotic content might be seen as a reflex of the conflict between academic medicine and authoritative theology. As we know from Paracelsus’s conscious disassociation from the doctor Galen (129–c. 199 C.E.) (who also played a role in the philosophy of the fifteenth century), “The physicians observed … that in the suppression of the sexual drive there was a serious danger that could become fatal under certain circumstances. The retention of certain juices that by their nature are supposed to be excreted was thought to make them convert to serious poisons in the body. For this reason the advice was to secrete them through coitus and onanism. A medium for restoring the exhausted life-spirit in the brain was seen in intoxication. Therefore the [medical] advice was to get completely drunk once a month.” In his extremely thorough study
Über den Einfluß der autoritativen Theologie auf die Medizin des Mittlealters,
Paul Diepgen (1958: 19) discussed this opposition between medicine, which is interested in physical health, and theology, which concerns spiritual health. With the Lateran council in 1215, Pope Innocent III made a prohibition against such therapeutic measures. In the Christian context Baldung’s emphasis on intoxicated behavior represented sin, and sin caused disease—for which the witches were ultimately held responsible.

²³
Feelings of revulsion against these creatures lasted for centuries and were resistant to all enlightened knowledge. Insects, amphibians, and small mammals that live underground not only have a position high up on the scale of revulsion, but members of this group reappear again and again as ingredients of witches’ potions. In this context the creatures’ possible healing attributes were turned into their frightening opposite. The results of a contemporary survey conducted by the Marplan Institute revealed that 40.1 percent of those surveyed are afraid of rats, 32.3 percent are afraid of spiders, and 24.7 fear snakes (Kokrotsch and Rippchen, 1997: 80).

²⁴
Such creatures were also considered the cause of disease even when they were attributed with healing activity. For example, the Greeks used cockroach flour with rose oil for ear infections, and the pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck included powdered cockroach as a medicine in 1907 (Kokrotsch and Rippchen, 1997: 62).

²⁵
Cf. Müller-Ebeling, 1991: 163–181.

²⁶
The moral symbolism of these animals in Bosch paintings was identified by the art historian D. Bax in his comparison
Hieronymus Bosch and Lucas Cranach: Two Last Judgement Triptychs, Description and Exposition
, (Amsterdam, Oxford, New York: North Holland Publishing Company, 1983).

²⁷
Frogs were generally considered more lucky. One belief held that frogs carried the souls of dead children and thus it was unlucky to kill one; another that a precious stone could be found in a frog’s head.

²⁸
While no bats native to Europe are members of the bloodsucking species, the bloodsucking vampire bat can be found in the Americas. The range of the Phyllostomidae Desmodus, or common vampire bat, extends from the northernmost areas of Mexico into the southwestern border of the United States to as far south as Argentina.

²⁹
Unfortunately, this quote from the feminist-oriented authors is not dated. It comes from the edition by Opitz, 1995: 26.

³⁰
Klapper, 1960: 99–109 (about the witch of Blomberg); 76, 77 (about superstitions).

³¹
Paracelsus in vol. IX of
Philosophia occulta,
1989 edition,
(Mikrokosmos und Makrocosmos: Occulte Schriften)
p. 308.

³²
Bruno (from the 1995 edition, p. 115ff.) actually means two authors, namely the Dominican monk Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Institoris.

³³
Athanasius, 1987: 82.

³⁴
Paracelsus, after Behling, 1957: 127f.

³⁵
Michelet, 1952, vol. 1: 13.

³⁶
The degree to which the imagination plays a role in the progress of disease and health can be seen from a modern perspective when one realizes the serious role the diagnosis serves. When the doctor explains that a nonlethal virus caused a sickness, there is no need to worry anymore, and one’s focus turns to therapy and health. On the other hand, a diagnosis such as AIDS or cancer can have the same effect as voodoo, because the afflicted is confronted with a hopeless, often fatal diagnosis.

³⁷
Cf. especially the essays in Opitz, 1995.

³⁸
Some researchers take a different position—for example, the pharmacist Larissa Leibrock-Plehn (1992), who researched the abortion medicines used by the so-called witches in their healing practices, and the historian Ingrid Ahrendt-Schulte (1994), who compared the fantasy constructions to the actual realities of the lives of the tortured women.

³⁹
Gerlinde Volland, “Mandragora-Ikonographie einer anthropomorphen Zauberpflanze,” in
Jahrbuch für Ethnomedicin und Bewußtseinsforschung
, Berlin: VWB, 1997. The insights of Diepgen (1958: 11, 17) are also historically revealing. He considers that over the course of the relentless struggle for primacy between medicine and theology in the Middle Ages, “the value of a
servus medicus
became the same as that of a midwife.” In addition, due to competition with women healers, the physicians of the early Middle Ages were duty bound to produce the medicine themselves.