The image of a witch riding a broomstick is so ingrained in our cultural consciousness that it would be impossible to dislodge. Have you ever considered why they ride brooms, though? It’s super weird, right? Well, stir yourself up a batch of witch’s brew and get comfy. You’re about to find out how the idea dates back centuries to a pagan ritual and some crazy potions used in, ahem, unique ways.
The Wicked Witch of the West
The modern pop culture depictions of witches mostly stem from one iconic portrayal in particular. That’s right: we’re talking about everyone’s favorite green-skinned, pointy-chinned Wicked Witch of the West!
Actress Margaret Hamilton’s performance and visual presentation in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz is basically ground zero for the witch as an ugly old hag.
Cementing the stereotype
This wicked witch rode a broom, wore a black, pointy hat, and cackled maniacally at every turn. The depiction was perfect for its time and certainly helped cement an image of witches in the public consciousness that lasted for a very long time.
Interestingly, though, the 2003 Broadway musical Wicked tried to redress the balance: it actually reimagined the witch as someone discriminated against because of her green skin.
A witch in suburbia
But over the years, the interpretation of witches in film and TV began to diversify hugely.
In 1964 sitcom Bewitched was launched, and it featured a beautiful witch named Samantha, who was trying to live a normal suburban existence with her mortal husband Darrin. As you might expect, comedic hijinks ensued as Samantha charmingly twitched her nose to cast spells.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch
A similarly family friendly witch arrived in the pages of Archie Comics in the 1960s: Sabrina Spellman.
She spawned an animated show the following decade, but it would be her ’90s live-action sitcom incarnation that made Sabrina the Teenage Witch a pop culture mainstay. Melissa Joan Hart showed the fun side of being a witch to a whole generation of young girls.
A Charmed life
Then, Witches got sexy in 1998 TV series Charmed, which followed the trials and tribulations of the Halliwell sisters. The hugely popular program lasted for eight seasons and became a defining text for young women interested in the Wiccan way of life.
A reboot even came along in 2018 with a new trio of witches, which went strong for four seasons.
Hijinks and Hocus Pocus
The idea of witches as old hags who cast spells over their bubbling cauldrons never fully went away, though. Yet over time it became something often played for laughs.
Take Disney’s Hocus Pocus — a classic 1993 kids movie that saw Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy play the Sanderson sisters. To this day, fans of the cult movie still flock to visit the filming locations in Salem, Massachusetts.
Salem
Salem is one of the most important locations in the history of witchcraft.
This is why some of Hocus Pocus was filmed there, why Samantha visited the town in a flashback plot in season seven of Bewitched, and why Sabrina’s fiendishly witty talking cat was named after the place. Ah, Salem Saberhagen, our favorite TV moggy bent on world domination.
The Witch of Endor
But when was the word “witch” first used? And in what context? Well, it can actually be traced all the way back to the Bible!
The book of Samuel featured the Witch of Endor, who summoned the spirit of the deceased prophet to battle the Philistine army.
Witch hysteria seizes Europe
Interestingly, it took until the mid-1400s for a true fear of witches to truly take hold in Europe. Many accused practitioners of witchcraft during this period were hung or burnt at the stake.
And it was women on the fringes of society — especially single ones or widows — who were often accused of being witches.
The suspicion leads to executions
Between 1500 and 1660, around 80,000 women are thought to have been killed in Europe under suspicion of witchcraft. And most were accused of being in league with Satan himself.
The puritanical religious figures meting out justice also didn’t like how supposedly “lust-filled” the women were. Overall, it’s yet another example of women being treated badly throughout history.
The New World
Countries such as the United States would then carry the torch of witch hysteria into the late 1600s.
General historical consensus is that, at this point in time, settlers were reeling from a smallpox epidemic, wars with Britain and France, and the threat of attack by the Native American tribes whose land they were usurping. The mood was tense, and they needed to blame someone for their troubles. Why not witches?
Three Salem women are accused
This brings us neatly to Salem in 1692. Two young girls experienced fits that made their bodies contort and caused them to scream bloody murder.
They were soon followed by other girls in the area doing the same. Soon enough, three local women were blamed and accused of being witches.
Tituba confesses
One woman called Tituba eventually confessed that she was a witch, and she accused two others — Sarah Osbourne and Sarah Good — of using black magic as well.
Naturally, the confession came when Tituba was being tortured and beaten by her accusers. But hey, who would they have been to doubt the truth of her words?
Mass hysteria
Good was trialed and hanged, Osbourne died in jail, and Tituba was jailed but later released. Following this, 150 of Salem’s people were apparently accused of witchcraft, and 18 were executed.
Interestingly, six men were among those put to death, showing that it wasn’t an accusation reserved exclusively for women. Either way, though, the whole debacle is now viewed as a particularly terrible case of mass hysteria.
The first depiction of a witch on a broomstick
All of this gives us some insight into the pop culture image and real life history of witchcraft, but it still leaves some lingering questions. Namely, what’s with the broomsticks?
Do we know when such an image first appeared? Well, to find out, we have to travel back to France in 1451.
Le Champions des Dames
It was here that poet Martin Le Franc published Le Champions des Dames, which translates as The Defender of Ladies.
Within its manuscript — which is now in the National Library of France — there is an illustration of two women alongside a poem about virtuous womanhood. Apparently, one is flying on a white stick and the other is riding a broom.
Waldensians
The poem features a passage dealing with witchcraft, and the women in the illustration are even dubbed “Waldensians.” For those who don’t know, this was a subset of Christianity in the 12th century. If you were a female in this movement, you could be a priest and even perform the sacrament.
The church — somewhat predictably terrified by such equal treatment of women — saw the movement as heretical. Hence, a Waldensian woman was branded a witch.
A pagan fertility ritual
So, okay, now we know where the broom came from. But that still doesn’t tell us why witches used these items. It’s an oddly domestic thing to associate with something as taboo as witchcraft, right?
Well, anthropologist Robin Skelton put forth one theory in her 1995 book The Practice of Witchcraft Today: An Introduction to Beliefs and Rituals. She wondered if the association had its roots in an ancient pagan fertility ritual.
Under the full moon
During this ceremony farmers would dance around — often while riding poles, brooms, or pitchforks — under the pale glow of the full moon.
The latter item sounds deeply unpleasant and borderline dangerous, doesn’t it? We’d choose the broom, thank you very much!
Leaping high into the air
Anyway, performance of the ritual was believed to ensure that the farmer’s crops would continue to flourish. They would supposedly attempt to jump as high as they could to represent the height to which they wanted their crops to grow.
Perhaps over the years these farmers — with their propensity for leaping high into the air — became entangled with the idea of witches using a broom to fly?
Witch’s brew
If you’re not convinced by that theory, though, another option focuses on accused witches using broomsticks to apply “witch’s brew” to their bodies. What’s that, we hear you ask?
Well, in this era there were reports of witches concocting special ointments and rubs that would give them their sinister powers, such as the ability to fly.
Lady Alice Kyteler
For example, Lady Alice Kyteler was an Irish widow who was tried in a court of law in 1324 on charges of heresy and sorcery. Her home was searched, and the written report revealed something interesting.
According to History.com, the investigators discovered “a pipe of ointment, wherewith she greased a staffe, upon which she ambled and galloped through thicke and thin.”
A pot full of green ointment
What would these ointments be made from? And did they offer any kind of benefits to practitioners of the dark arts? Physician Andres Laguna wrote about one such salve which was confiscated from a supposed witch in the early 1500s.
As per Mental Floss, he described “a pot full of [a] certain green ointment… composed of soporific herbs such as hemlock, nightshade, henbane and mandrake.”
The executioner’s wife experiment
Laguna decided to do a little experiment with the ointment, as he wanted to know why a witch would slather it on her body. So, he enlisted the help of the local executioner’s wife, as you do.
Apparently, he proceeded to cover her “head to foot” in the green goo. It was all in the name of science, you understand.
A profound sleep
The results were really shocking.
Laguna wrote, “No sooner did I anoint her than she opened her eyes wide like a rabbit, and soon they looked like those of a cooked hare when she fell into such a profound sleep that I thought I should never be able to wake her. However, after the lapse of 36 hours, I restored her to her senses and sanity.”
All the delights in the world
Unfortunately for the good doctor, the woman wasn’t exactly thrilled when he woke her up. She complained, “Why did you awaken me, badness to you, at such an inauspicious moment? Why, I was surrounded by all the delights in the world.”
The spiteful spouse even revealed that in her dream she had taken a younger lover, who was lustier than her hubby. That poor executioner didn’t know what hit him.
The dream felt real
As time passed, the woman insisted that what she experienced was real. And from Laguna’s perspective, he now definitively knew the ointment induced vivid dreams.
He mused, “From all this we may infer that all that those wretched witches do and say is caused by potions and ointments which so corrupt their memory and imagination that they create their own woes, for they firmly believe when awake all that they had dreamed when asleep.”
Hallucinogenic chemicals
Crazy, right? Well, maybe not. To a modern person, this sounds very much like the poor woman was covered top to bottom in some kind of hallucinogen which left her struggling with her own reality. And you know what?
That’s exactly what happened. Apparently, nightshade, mandrake, and henbane can all produce the hallucinogenic chemicals we now call tropane alkaloids.
Ingesting is a bad idea
Unlike the doctors and executioner’s wives of the time, though, the alleged witches back then were well aware of these hallucinogenic properties.
They even knew that simply brewing up a potion and either eating or drinking it would be a bad idea. Apparently, doing so would likely cause them to become extremely ill with vomiting and nausea.
Rubbing on the skin is the answer
So, their solution was simple. If their witch’s brew couldn’t be ingested, then they could simply rub it on their skin to achieve the same effects.
These witches were so far ahead of the game that they even knew their underarms and, um, intimate areas would be the most receptive places for their ointments.
The broomstick handle
Yes, you read that right. They rubbed their witch’s brew down under. And they did so with the handle of a humble broomstick.
Remember our old friend Lady Alice Kyteler, who loved to amble and gallop through thick and thin on her “greased staffe”? That makes so much more sense now, doesn’t it?
Tropane alkaloids
The cultural notion of witches flying on their broomsticks is perhaps also informed by their use of hallucinogens. For this one, we’ll turn things over to artist Gustav Schenk, who described what it felt like to be tripping on tropane alkaloids in 1966.
He revealed that initially he felt like his feet were getting lighter — even breaking away from his body. Then things got really weird.
Flying high
“At the same time, I experienced an intoxicating sensation of flying,” Schenk wrote. “I soared where my hallucinations — the clouds, the lowering sky, herds of beasts, falling leaves, billowing streamers of steam and rivers of molten metal — were swirling along.”
There you have it, folks; he felt like he was flying. We’ve heard of getting high, but that’s ridiculous!
Domesticity
We wonder if somehow the notion of a broom being used to get witches high was phased out over the course of history and our many cultural interpretations, with just the broom itself remaining.
Maybe they then became synonymous in more modern culture because of society’s stereotypical attitudes toward domestic life. Basically, witches are predominantly women, and they have traditionally been associated with using brooms to clean the home.
Femininity gone wild
Or, as Dylan Thuras of Atlas Obscura suggested, perhaps there’s still a sexual implication to the item.
He wrote, “The broom was a symbol of female domesticity, yet the broom was also phallic, so riding on one was a symbol of female sexuality, thus femininity and domesticity gone wild. Scary for any patriarch!”
Rye bread
Fascinating, huh? We’ll finish by telling you what’s arguably even more interesting, though. In the Middle Ages and into Renaissance times, rye was an integral ingredient in the making of bread.
But unbeknownst to the people of the time, rye plants can be pretty dangerous if not handled correctly. You see, they can contain a fungus called ergot which is lethal if ingested in high enough amounts.
Ergot
Though ergot can also have hallucinogenic properties. In the 14th to 17th centuries, stories of people being gripped by “dancing mania” were fairly common. Unfortunately, this didn’t mean they were slaves to the rhythm.
Instead, it saw them gyrating through the streets, foaming at the mouth, spouting gibberish, and experiencing mad visions until their bodies gave up out of exhaustion.
A new explanation
In 1976, academic Linnda Caporael wrote a paper proposing that Massachusetts had experienced an ergot outbreak in 1692. She posited that the source of the epidemic could be traced to one place: Salem. Whoa! Think about that for a moment.
Were the young girls suffering from contortions and screaming actually having visions brought on by their poison bread? Food for thought, maybe.
And now you know
So, there you have it. The next time you’re at a Halloween party and you’re greeted with that familiar image of a witch riding a broomstick, you’ll know what’s what. You may even tell your friends the crazy reason why witches really ride brooms.
But is it possible that the victims of the Salem witch trials were actually under the influence of hallucinogens rather than mass hysteria?
It’s mental
There's no denying that accused witches were behaving strangely.
Another major theory holds that conversion disorder — an illness characterized by odd physical symptoms like blindness or paralysis that have a mental origin — was responsible. Such a condition might've caused uncontrollable movement in Salem residents.
The war’s impact
Professor Emerson W. Baker, in A Story of Witchcraft, explained that motor-based hysteria can be caused by post-traumatic stress syndrome.
And as it happens, many in the area would likely have suffered from this because of King William’s War, which occurred just north of the area.
War refugees
Villagers like Abigail Hobbs, Mercy Lewis, Susannah Sheldon, and Sarah Churchwell had seen the fighting firsthand and may have internalized the trauma to the point where it became severe mental illness.
But other experts suggested a more edible cause.
Fungus among us
Scientist Linda R. Caporael suggested a type of poisoning could have caused Salem’s extreme witch situation.
As mentioned earlier, ergot is a type of fungus that grows in rye and other grains and produces ergotamine, an effective migraine treatment that has hallucinogenic qualities similar to LSD.
Side effects
Consuming ergot leads to a bevy of side effects: convulsions, vomiting, crawling sensations on the skin, hallucinations, gangrene, and others.
Linda argues the conditions would have been right in the growing season of 1691 for this to occur.
Not real
However, there are detractors for this theory. Some argue that this poisoning only occurs when villagers have severe vitamin A deficiencies.
Salem had plenty of vitamin A-filled foods, like dairy and fish, that make such a condition seem unlikely.
Could it be?
Many other sicknesses, like Encephalitis Lethargica, epilepsy, and Lyme disease, have been proposed as well.
There are others who believe another type of plant, Devil’s Trumpet, caused the physiological and psychological symptoms in the townspeople.
Maybe not
But Emerson doesn't think it's as simple as one cause.
"None of these suggested diseases fit because a close reading of the testimony suggests that the symptoms were intermittent," he wrote. "The afflicted had stretches when they acted perfectly normal, intersperse with acute fits."
Keeping it cold
Another theory involves frigid weather.
“The 1680s and 1690s were part of the Maunder Minimum, the most extreme weather of the Little Ice Age, a period of colder temperatures occurring roughly from 1400 to 1800. Strikingly cold winters and dry summers were common in these decades,” the professor recalled.
Harsh temperatures
The cold weather caused crops to fail, and made the locals physically stressed, due to the much harsher conditions.
During the Little Ice Age in Europe, there were scatterings of witchcraft accusations, so Salem would fit the pattern.
Infighting
Salem locals were prone to fighting about everything, which Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum explore in Salem Possessed.
“Predictably enough, the witchcraft accusations of 1692 moved in channels which were determined by years of factional strife in Salem Village,” they wrote.
Seems suspicious
For instance, Daniel Andrew and Philip English were accused of witchcraft when they won local elections.
Rebecca Nurse's husband earned a spot on an influential committee before she was accused.
Disagree
Still, historian Elaine Breslaw argues against this theory, as “other towns in frontier Massachusetts that experienced the same socio-economic-political difficulties did not spark a similar witchscare.
Several communities suffering from less stress did suffer from contact with Salem as the witchscare virus spread.”
They were lying
What if the villagers simply lied about their illnesses? Even Emerson admitted, "Most historians acknowledge that some fakery took place at Salem.
A close reading of the surviving court records and related documents suggests that more fraud took place than many cared to admit after the trials ended."
We think so
Some huge proponents of this idea were the supposed witches.
During John Alden’s trial, he explained that people in the courtroom were manipulating the "victims" and exacerbating their conditions.
Fake attack
In another trial, the girl claimed that a spirit stabbed her and brought a broken knife to court. A man in the room stood, declared it was his knife, and that he’d broken it.
He had the tip of the knife, which easily fit with the section she carried.
Blaming another religion
Maybe it was simply a culture clash. Some of the religious officials of the time blamed the Salemites for practicing English folk magic.
Not everyone approved of this practice, but a healthy group of people were keeping it alive.
Accusing them all
Well-known practitioners were accused of cursing the residents, even families who were using spells to fight whoever the "bad" witches were.
One practitioner who didn’t get off easily was Tituba, a slave of Samuel Parris.
Let’s try it
Tituba and her husband, John, baked a magic cake made from rye meal and urine from a girl with the mysterious illness.
They then fed it to a dog, which was supposed to reveal who was responsible for the spells.
Spreading the fear
Tituba was arrested and tried for witchcraft. She confessed, saying she worked with the Devil and there were others like her in the area.
Obviously, she wasn’t the cause of the witch scare, but her testimony prolonged it. Popular culture also helped perpetuate falsehoods about this strange time.