The second image dates to about the same time. Crucially a witch is coming up the chimney to fly to the sabbat. Zika also suggests that the objects in the foreground – the staff, the broom and the tongs – had also been ridden to the sabbat: an image of something like a sabbat umbrella holder where members could rest their mounts comes to mind. 1470) there is a broom, a distaff and, according to Zika (resolution too small for this blogger’s eyes) a thresher. What is interesting for present purposes are the witches in the sky behind. Both show the witches gathering around a goat and preparing to kiss its anus: witch’s contracts were, as we have seen before on this blog, sealed with a kiss on the devil’s bottom animals, particularly goats and cats were also mentioned in this role. Both show a group of witches at the sabbat. Both appear in a book against the Waldensians: Tinctor’s Invective. Charles Zika suggests (64-65) in his excellent Seeing Witchcraft that Martin could refer to St Martin’s night or it could refer to the rod (martin) mount (passe), or some such (citing Ostorero and Schmitt). Between the two women is written the word ‘passe martin’ that has caused some confusion. They are labelled interestingly as Waldensians, the proto-Protestant heresy that got every kind of mud thrown at it in the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries. In it there are two women riding through the sky.

Note that this may be the earliest image anywhere of a witch riding a broom, now that the Schleswig witch has been redated to the same generation. The first of these images dates to about 1450. There are three important manuscript sabbats that come down to us from the period 1450-1500 and that offer the best early visual evidence for the belief that witches attended sabbats by broom. So magickers found it easy to just use brooms for flight.A few months ago Beach offered the evidence for early images of broomstick riding witches. That meant whatever object they used to fly needed to be something that could be kept in their house, that was easily accessible, but that would look completely innocent to visitors.Īnd a broomstick was one of the few items that would be present in every house, that had a reason for being in the house, and could be ridden on (even if it wasn't comfortable). The problem was, that even then, they knew muggles would be jealous of their abilities and that it was best not to let them know of the ability to fly. According to the article on brooms, they could make objects fly, but not humans. Since you're referencing Harry Potter, I'll include the explanation from that universe as well:Īccording to the Harry Potter wiki, the earlier magickers (I'm tired of typing out witches and wizards) did not know of spells to make themselves fly, but they could make objects fly. This also comes close to what the article on flying ointment says when it mentions that 'It was said that witches were able to fly to the Sabbath on their brooms with help of the ointment.' But it also goes on to say, 'Likely the riding of the broom has a different origin.' I will say that he really got into researching the 'old ways' and being able to 'educate' modern Pagans and to show some of them that they really knew very little of the traditions he had been studying. I wish I could state this authoritatively, but I only have his word to go on. (Especially since the idea was to make the ground ready for crops and planting.) There's a good chance that it was only the women who did the hopping with the broom between their legs, since it's a phallic symbol, and it may have also been a fertility ritual, so the ritual very likely had a sexual/reproductive element to it. There was a ceremony Pagans would use for cleansing the ground and marking it off to keep evil spirits out, and this involved hold the broom between their legs, which would look like they were riding it, and walking and kind of hopping around the area they were cleansing, basically defining a perimeter to their 'clean' ground. I asked him about this and he said that it was originally ceremonial. I mean he was really into the old ways and studied up on them. I don't mean a neo-Pagan or a 20th (or 21st) century Wiccan. I don't have a direct source for most of this, so it could be made up, but I had a friend who used to live in this area who was a Pagan.

Witches broomstick origin