Johannes Hartlieb (1410–1468), Alfred J. Clark (1885–1941)
Accounts of the Sabbat or Black Mass, dating from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, related stories of nighttime meetings attended by witches, demons, and Satan, in which wild dancing and sexual orgies occurred. Why did the accused women confess that they were consorting with the devil when the penalty for witchcraft was death, either by hanging or burning at the stake? Torture, perfected by the Inquisitors, undoubtedly loosened many guiltless tongues. The use of “flying ointments,” first described in 1456 by the Bavarian physician Johannes Hartlieb, may have also played a role in their heartfelt confessions.
Witches were said to fly to the Sabbat on brooms, cats, or other animals. They acquired this “power of flight” by applying a sooty green ointment containing plant extracts, which may have produced physiological changes that simulated the sensation of flight. A number of questions have been raised about the nature of these ointments, including their supposed ingredients and where they were applied.
If, as was generally accepted, they slathered their bodies with the ointment, the active chemicals would have had to cross the formidable barrier of the skin to enter the bloodstream. However, if the ointment were applied to the vaginal area, perhaps with a broomstick as some writers suggest, absorption would have been more certain and perhaps account for the sexual fantasies accompanying the Sabbat.
Flying ointments were many in number and varied in composition. Several such ointments were analyzed by the distinguished University College, London, pharmacologist A. J. Clark, who concluded that, among the multiple ingredients, aconite and belladonna were most worthy of consideration. Clark speculated that the sensation of flying might have arisen from a fluttering, irregular heartbeat caused by the aconite, as well as an excitement progressing to delirium caused by the belladona.
In 1692, nineteen women and men were convicted of witchcraft and executed in Salem, Massachusetts. Executions for witchcraft ended in Europe at the close of the eighteenth century.
SEE ALSO Belladonna (1542), Aconite (1762).
A 1508 woodcut by Hans Baldung depicts Hexen (witches) preparing for the Sabbat.