Flying ointment, also known as witches' flying ointment, green ointment, magic salve and lycanthropic ointment, is a hallucinogenic ointment said to be used by witches in the Early Modern period.
The ointment contains a fatty base and various herbal extracts, usually including solanaceous herbs that contain the hallucinogenic drugs atropine, hyoscamine and scopolamine. The herbs' essential oils are extracted when boiled in the base. Many of these oils are poisonous when ingested. When applied topically, however, the absorbed chemicals work as a mind altering drug. Typical ingredients in alleged recipes include hemlock, deadly nightshade, wolfsbane, and henbane, usually in a base of animal fat. Supposedly one such recipe for a "flying ointment" consisted of:
- 1/2oz soot
- 1oz pork fat
- 1oz hemlock
- 1oz deadly nightshade
- 1oz wolfsbane
Many of the recipes were obtained through torture of accused witches. It was said that witches were able to fly to the Sabbath on their brooms with help of the ointment. Likely the riding of the broom has a different origin.
The ointment is absorbed best through mucous membranes. The healers that used these ointments would apply them vaginally with an often phallic stick. When travelling to the outskirts of town to congregate, these women would disguise their sticks by wrapping the phallic end with straw, hence the broom.
As the name indicates, a common perception of the user is one of flight, astral projection, or out of body experience. Similar to leaving the body, users may perceive their body changing into another, or shapeshifting. Possibly such ointments lie at the heart of lycanthropic, or werewolf, rituals. Many cultures believe that humans are capable of changing into any number of creatures, or possessing animals' bodies upon leaving their own.
As mirrored by reports of modern astral projectionists, the healers may not have met on a mountain top at all, but rather in an astral realm or shared hallucination.
Links
