WITCHY WOMEN

Q: Like all good parents, I mindlessly pass on cultural traditions to my
kids and usually don't have a clue where they came from. We decorate a tree
in December, hide colored eggs on Easter, and in October we dress up and
carve pumpkins, and my kids tape up pictures of witches on broomsticks on
the window. I've heard theories about some of these things, but where did
the "witches flying on broomsticks" think come from?

- - Jan Rein, Albuquerque, N.M.

A: You don't want to hear it, mom. Well, maybe you do want to hear it, but
you don't want to tell the kids. As we've learned from our previous forays
into folklore, most of these old rituals have something to do with S-E-X.
You thought Easter eggs and bunnies as fertility symbols was kinky? You
ain't heard nothin' yet.

The easy take on the witch's broomstick is that it's a burlesque of female
domesticity. But you needn't have an especially dirty mind to realize that a
woman riding a pole has sexual connotations - and not merely as a metaphor
for the phallus.

Before we get into that, though, we should talk about drugs and religion.
Toldja this would be weird.

A lot of people who did drugs in the '60s thought, Wow, man, I can see God!
(Now they think, I better get my gun and head over to the post office.) A
few writers had thoughts along the following lines: (a) We're not the first
people who ever did drugs. (b) Many leading religious figures have been
mystics, and mystical experiences have been a primary source of religious
revelation. (c) A good way to have a mystical experience is to do drugs.
(Forty days of fasting in the desert will do in a pinch. (d) Ergo, many of
the world's major religions owe their origins to drugs! I'm oversimplifying,
but not much. See for example Weston La Barre, "Hallucinogens and the
Samanic Origins of Religion," in "Flesh of the Gods: The Ritual Use of
Hallucinogens" (1972).

If drugs work for religious types, they'll work for pagans, too. That brings
us back to witches. Today many scholars assume there never were any actual
witches, just a bunch of old crones, simpleminded adolescents, and other
unfortunates who became targets of religious paranoia. But a few writers
have asked: What if there really were witches? Not, I hasten to say, people
who were genuinely in league with the devil, flew on broomsticks, turned
into beasts, etc, but rather people who believed they were or did? Moreover,
what if the agency of this belief was a drug-induced hallucination?

There, in a nutshell, is the working hypothesis of Michael J. Harner's "The
Role of Hallucinogenic Plants in European Witchcraft" in "Hallucinogens and
Shamanism" (1973). Harner notes that since antiquity many hallucinogenic
plants have been known throughout the world, including some species of the
potato family (family Solanaceae, genus Datura) such as jimsonweed,
devil's-weed, mad apple, etc, as well as potato cousins like mandrake,
henbane, and belladonna (deadly nightshade).

Trolling through the works of medieval and Renaissance writers, Harner finds
a number of instances in which witchy hallucinations follow a potent hit of
drugs. How were these drugs administered? Typically in the form of an
ointment. Where was this ointment applied? To the skin, of course, but more
effectively to the mucous membranes. Where can one find mucous membranes? In
the vagina, among other places. How would one apply ointment to one's
vagina? Well, one can always count on one's fingers, I suppose. But you
could also use, uh, a pole. And where might one find a pole in the average
peasant household? A broomstick. Bingo.

Harner buttresses his thesis with some choice quotes. From a witchcraft
investigation in 1324: "In rifleing the closet of the ladie, they found a
Pipe of oyntment, wherewith she greased a staffe, upon the which she ambled
and galloped through thick and thin." Also this from around 1470: "But the
vulgar believe, and the witches confess, that on certain days or nights they
anoint a staff and ride on it to the appointed place or anoint themselves
under the arms and in other hairy places."

Scant underpinning for a mighty farfetched theory, you may say, and I won't
deny it. Still, gives you something to think about next time you're dressing
your daughter for Halloween.

- - Cecil Adams

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