8

The Role of Hallucinogenic

Plants in European Witchcraft
Michael ,. Harner

A prevalent attitude among present-day historians and scholars

of religion (e.g., Henningsen, 1969: 105-6; Trevor-Roper, 19~:
90, 192) is that late medieval and Renaissance witchcraft was
essentially a fiction created by the Church. Those taking this posi-
tion often argue that the Inquisition had an a priori conception
of witchcraft and simply tortured accused persons until they gave
the "right" answers in terms of Church dogma. To support their
position, they point out that many of the things witches confessed
to doing, such as flying through the air and engaging in orgies
with demons at Sabbats, were patently impossible.
The position of such scholars is not contravened by accounts of
the rituals practiced by persons organized into formal witchcraft
covens in Europe and the United States today. Such "witches"
engage in what they think are thG1tr4ditional practices, but insofar
as I have been able to discover through interviews, do not believe
that they fly through the air nor frolic with super.natural creatures
at Sabbats. Instead, their activitifs tend to be sober and highly
ritualistic. Academicians as well as· present-day coven participants

A preliminary version of this paper was read at the Hallucinogens and Shamanism
symposium at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in
Seattle in 1968. I am indebted to Lawrence Rosenwald and Philip Winter for assist·
ance in making translations for this paper.
Deadly nigh tshade (Atropa belladonna)

Henbane (Hyoscyamus)
f

Mandrake (Mandragora)

Thorn apple (Datura)

•

128] IN THE TRADITIONAL WESTERN WORLD

have generally failed to comprehend the great importance of hal-

lucinogenic plants in the European witchcraft of former times.1
Yet once the use and the effects of these natural hallucinogens are
understood, the major features of past beliefs and practices sud-
denly seem quite logical and consistent.
Probably the single most important group of plants used by
mankind to, contact the supernatural belongs to the order Sola-
naceae (the potato family). Hallucinogenic members of this group
are widespread in both the Old and New Worlds. Besides the
potato, tomato, chile pepper, and tobacco, the family includes a
great number of species of the genus Datura, which are called by
a variety of names, such as Jimson weed, devil's apple, thorn
apple, mad apple, the devil's weed, Gabriel's trumpet, and angel's
trumpet, and are all hallucinogenic. Datura has been used widely
and apparently from ancient times in shamanism, witchcraft, and
the vision quest in Europe, Asia, Africa, and among American
Indian tribes. Other hallucinogens in the potato family closely
resembling Datura in their effects include mandrake (Mandra-
gora), henbane (Hyoscyamus), and belladonna, or deadly night-
shade (Atropa belladonna). Plants of this group are found in
both temperate and tropical climates, and on all continents.
Each of these plants contains varying quantities of atropine and
the other closely related tropane alkaloids hyoscyamine and scopol-
amine, all of which have hallucinogenic effects (Claus and Tyler,
1965: 273-85; Henry, 1949: ,64-92; Hoffer and Osmund, 1967:
525-28; Lewin, 1964: 129-40; Sollinann, 1957: 381---<)8). These al-
kaloids can be extremely dangerous in their mental and physical
effects, and their toxicity can result in death.
One outstanding feature of atropine is that it is absorbabl~
even by the intact skin; and it has'llnot been unusual in medicine
to observe toxic effects produced by belladonna plasters (Sollmann,
1957= 392). This potential of atropine-containing solanaceous

1. An important and essentially ignored hception was the distinguished nine-

teenth-century anthropologist Edward B. Tylor (1924 [orig. 1871]: vol. 2 :418),
who proposed: " ... the mediaeval witch-ointments ... brought visionary beings
into the presence of the patient, transported him to the witches' sabbath, enabled
him to tum into a beast." More recent exceptions include Barnett (1965) as well as
Baroja (1964:255), the latter acknowledging that the effects of such ointments were
of fundamental importance, at least with regard to the witches' flight.
 Hallucinogens in European Witchcraft [129

plants has long been known to man, both in the Old and New
Worlds, and it is of considerable significance for the study of
shamanism and witchcraft.
As is familiar to every child in our culture, the witch is fan-
tasized as flying through the air on a broomstick. This symbol
actually represents a very serious and central aspect of European
witchcraft, involving the use of solanaceous hallucinogenic
plants. The European witches rubbed their bodies .with a hallu-
cinogenic ointment containing such plants as Atropa belladonna,
Mandragora, and henbane, whose content of atropine was ab-
sorbable through the skin. The witch then indeed took a "trip":
the witch on the broomstick is a representation of that imagined
aerial journey to a rendezvous with spirits or demons, which was
called a Sabbat.
Lewin (1964 [orig. 1924]: 129-30), the famous pharmacologist,
writes: .

We find these plants associated with incomprehensible acts on

the parts of fanatics . . . Magic ointments or witches' philtres
procured for some reason and applied with or without inten-
tion produced effects which the subjects themselves believed in,
even stating that they had intercourse with evil spirits, had been
on the Brocken and danced at the Sabbat with their lovers, or
caused damage to others by witchcraft. The mental disorder
caused by substances of this kind, for instance Datura, has even
instigated some persons to accuse themselves before a tribunal.
The peculiar hallucinations evoked by the drug had been so
powerfully transmitted from the subconscious mind to con-
sciousness that mentally uncultivated persons . . . believed
them to be reality.
Hesse (1946: 103) writes in :r
similar vein of admixtures to
witches' brew, love potions, and narcotics: "The hallucinations are
frequently dominated by the erotic moment .... In those days,
in order to experience these sensations, young and old women
. \
would rub their bodies with the 'witches' salve,' of which the
active ingredient was belladonna or an extract of some other
solanaceae."
The Inquisition, at the cost of the torture and execution of
perhaps hundreds of thousands of believed and real witches, has
 130 J IN THE TRADITIONAL WESTERN WORLD

supplied the bulk of our data on the role of hallucinogenic plants

in late medieval Europe. From the variety of sources, only some
of which are cited here, it is clear that we are dealing with prac-
tices that were widespread throughout Europe and apparently
known at least as early as Roman times.
Margaret Murray is among the first modern scholars, after
Tylor, to touch upon the possible importance of the "flying oint-
ment" in European witchcraft. She notes (Murray, 1962 [orig.
1921]: 101-2) that the Somerset witches in 1664 used a "green-
ish" oil in transporting themselves to their meetings. Murray,
following Glanvil (1681), (p. 304) observes:
Elizabeth Style said:
"Before they are carried to their meetings, they anoint their
Foreheads and Hand-wrists with an Oyl the Spirit brings them
(which smells raw) and then they are carried in a very short
time, using these words as they pass, Thout, tout a tout, tout,
throughout and about. And when they go off from their Meet-
ings, they say, Rentum, Tormentum ... all are carried to
their several homes in a short space." Alice Duke gave the same
testimony, noting besides that the oil was greenish in colour.
Ann Bishop, the Officer of the Somerset covens, confessed that
"her Forehead being first anointed with a Feather dipt in Oyl,
she hath been suddenly carried to t"he place of their meeting .
. . . After all was ended, the Man in black vanished. The rest
were of a sudden conveighed to their homes."

Another case of the use of an ointment, three centuries earlier,

is from an investigation by the authorities of Lady Alice Kyteler
in 1324 (Murray, 1962 [orig. 1921]: 104, following Holinshed,
1587) .
. . . 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, when and in what
manner she listed. i-
The fifteenth century yields a similar account of an anointed
staff:

-But the vulgar believe, and the witches confess, that on cer-
tain days or nights they anoint a staff and ride on it to the ap-
 Hallucinogens in European Witchcraft [131

pointed place or anoint themselves under the arms and in other

hairy places and sometimes carry charms under the hair. [Ber-
gamo, c. 1470-71, in Hansen, 1901: 199]
The use of a staff or broom was undoubtedly more than a

,
I
symbolic Freudian act, serving as an applicator for the atropine-
containing plant to the sensitive vaginal membranes as well as
providing the suggestion of riding on a steed, a typical illusion
! of the witches' ride to the Sabbat.
In addition to brooms, pitchforks and apparently baskets and
bowls served as "vehicles" for transport to the Sabbat:
Nicole Canette added that it was her custom, when she was
preparing to start on that journey, to put one foot up into a
basket after she had smeared it with the same ointment which
she had used upon herself. Francis Fellet said that he used to
place his left foot, not in a basket, but on the ends of the
backward bent twigs of a broom which he first anointed. [Remy,
1596, Liber I, eh. xiv, p. 103]
Johannes Nider (1692, Liber II, Cap. 41) gives this account:
I shall . . . show how so many people are deceived in their
.sleep, that upon wakening they altogether believe that they
have actually seen what has happened only in the inner part of
the mind. I heard my teacher give this account: a certain priest
of our order entered a village where he came upon a woman
so out of her senses that she believed herself to be transported
through the air during the night with Diana and other women.
When he attempted to remove this heresy from her by means
of wholesome discourse she steadfastly maintained her belief.
The priest then asked her: "Allow me to be present when you
depart on the next occasion." She answered: "I agree to it anq
you will observe my departure .i,n the presence (if you wish) of
suitable witnesses." Therefore,'\vhen the day for the departure
arrived, which the old woman had previously determined, the
priest showed up with trustworthy townsmen to convince this
fanatic of her madness. The woman, having placed a large bowl,
which was used for kneading dough, on top of a stool, stepped
into the bowl and sat herself down. Then, rubbing ointment on
hetself to the accompaniment of magic incantations she lay her
head back and immediately fell asleep. With the labor of the
devil she dreamed of Mistress Venus and other superstitions so
132] IN THE TRADITIONAL WESTERN WORLD

vividly that, crying out with a shout and striking her hands about,
she jarred the bowl in which she was sitting and, falling down
from the stool seriously injured herself about the head. As she
lay there awakened, the priest cried out to her that she had not
moved: "For Heaven's sake, where are you? You were not with
Diana and as will be attested by these present, you never left this
bowl." Thus, by this act and by thoughtful exhortations he drew
out this belief from her abominable soul.
Vincent (MS., c. 1475, in Hansen, 19°1: 229, 230) also sug-
gests the utilization of hallucinogens in order to be "carried" to
the Sabbats:
The devil casts people into deep sleep, in which they dream
that they have been to the Sabbat, adored the demon, caused
lightnings and hail-storms, destroyed vineyards, and burnt alive
children taken from their mothers.
The malefici have philtres and unguents with which they
poison or make sick, and they also imagine themselves to be
carried to the Sabbat by virtue of these.
Remy, in the late sixteenth century, provides the following
additional information:
For they have heard the evidence of those who have smeared
and rubbed themselves with the same ointment that witches use,
and have in a moment been carried with them to the Sabbat;
though in returning it was a journey of many days. [Remy, 01596,
Liber I, Ch. xiv, p. 92]
Bertranda Barbier admitted that she had often done this;
namely, in order to lull her husband into such a sleep, she had
many times tweaked his ear after having with her right hand
anointed it with the same ointment which she used upon herself
when she sought the journey to th~ Sabbat. [Remy, 1596, Liber
I, Ch. xii, p. 83] .
Now if witches, after being aroused from an "iron" sleep, ten
of things they have seen in places so far distant as compared with
the short period of their sleep, the pnly conclusion is that there
has been some unsubstantial journey,like that of the soul. [Remy,
1596, Liber I, Ch. xiv, p. 101]

Spina (1523, Cap. II, in it. ) gives this unusually detailed aC-
count:
~-

i Hallucinogens in European Witchcraft [133

First, indeed, there should be adduced the thing that happened

to the illustrious Prince N., within the lifetime of those who are

I now alive. A certain witch, who said that she had often been car-
ried on the journey, was being held in the prison of some cleric

I
f
Inquistor. The Prince, hearing of this, desired to find out whether
these claims were true or dreams. He summoned the Inquisitor
D., and finally prevailed upon him to let the woman he brought
forth and anoint herself with her usual ointment in their pres-
ence and in the presence of a multitude of nobles. When the In-
quisitor had given his consent (even if in error), the witch as-
serted in their presence that, if she might anoint herself as before,
she would go and be carried off by the Devil. Having anointed
herself several times, however, she remained motionless; nor did
anything extraordinary manage to happen to her. And many
noble eye-witnesses of the matter survive to this very day. From
this fact, it is obviously false that witches are carried on the ride
as part of their pact; it is rather that when they think that they
are so carried, it happens by a delusion of the Devil.
There are many other testimonies of this, and now it is my
pleasure to adduce examples which are said to have happened in .
our own times. Dominus Augustinus de Turre, of Bergamo, the
most cultivated physician of his time, told me a few years ago in
his home at Bergamo, that when he was a youth at his studies in
Padua, he returned home one night about midnight with his
companions. He knocked, and when no one answered or opened
the door, he climbed up a ladder and finally got into the house
by a window. He went to look for the maid and finally found her
lying in her room, supine upon the floor, stripped as if a corpse,
and completely unconscious, so that he was in no way able to
arouse her. When it was morning, and she had returned to her
senses, he asked her what happened that night. She finally con-
fessed that she had been carried on the journey; from which it is
manifestly clear that they [witcHes1 are deluded not bodily, but
mentally or in dreams, in such a way that they imagine they are
carried '1 long distan<;:e while they remain immobile at home.
Something similar to this Jast w;:fS told to me at Saluzzo a few
years ago by Dr. Petrus Cella, for\11erly vicar of the Marchese of
Saluzzo and still living: like things had happened to his own
maidservant, and likewise he had discovered that she was deluded.
Bht there is also a story commonly told among us, that at the
time when the Inquisition in, the diocese of Como was being car-
..
134] IN THE TRADITIONAL WESTERN WORLD

ried on by our people, in the walled city called Lugano, it hap-

pened that the wife of a notary of the Inquisition was accused by
due process of law of being a witch and a sorceress. Her husband
was exceedingly troubled at this, since he had thought her a holy
woman. Then, through the will of the Lord, early on Good Fri-
day; since he could not find his wife, he went to the pigsty. There
he found her naked, in some corner, displaying her genitals, com-
pletely unconscious and smeared with the excrement of the pigs.
Now then, made more certain of that which he had not been
able to believe, he drew his sword in sudden wrath, wishing to
kill her. Returning to himself, however, he stood waiting for a
little while that he might see the outcome of all this. And 10,
after a little while she returned to her senses. When she saw that
her husband was threatening to kill her, she prostrated heFself be-
fore him and, seeking pardon, promised that she would reveal the
whole truth to him. S6 she confessed that she had gone that
night on the journey, etc. Hearing these things, her husband left
at once and made an accusation of her in the house of the In-
quisitor, so that she might be given to the fire. She, however,
though sought at once, was nowhere to be found. They think
that she drowned herself in the lake above whose shore that area
is situated.
A similar general statement is provided by Ciruelo in the early
seventeenth century:
Witches, male and female, who have pact with the devil,
anointing themselves with certain unguents and reciting certain
words, are carried by night through the air to distant lands to do
certain black magic. This illusion occurs in two ways. Sometimes
the devil really carries them to other houses and places, and what
they see and do and say there really happens as they report it.
At other times they do not leave their houses, but the devil enters
them and deprives them of sense ~nd they fall' as dead and cold.
And he represents to their fancies that they go to other houses
and places and do and see and say stich and such things. But
nothing of this is true, though tHey think it to be, and though .
they relate many things of what passes there. And while they
are thus dead and cold they have no more feeling tha,n a corpse
and may be scourged and burnt; but after the time agreed upon
with'the devil he leaves them, their senses are liberated, they arise
 Hallucinogens in Eurqpean Witchcraft [135

well and merry, relate what they have done and bring news from
other lands. [Ciruelo, 1628, P. II, c. 1, N. 6, pp. 45-46]
The physician of Pope Julius III, Andres Laguna, gives a similar
account. In 1545, while he was practicing in Lorraine, a married
couple was seized as witches, being accused of burning grain, killing
livestock, and sucking the blood of children. Under torture, they
confessed their guilt. Laguna reports:
Among the other things found in the henn'itage of the said
witches was a jar half-filled with a certain green unguent, like
that of Popule6n [white poplar ointment], with which they were
anointing themselves: whose odor was so heavy and offensive that
it showed that it was composed of herbs cold [refers to the clas-
sification of medicines as "hot" and "cold"] and soporiferous in
the ultimate degree, which are hemlock, nightshade, henbane
and mandrake: of which unguent, by way of a constable who was
my friend, I managed to obtain a good cannister-full. which
I later, in the city of Metz, used to anoint from head to toe the
wife of the hangman, who because of suspicions about her hus-
band was totally unable to sleep, and tossed and turned almost
half mad. And ~lis one seemed to be an appropriate subject on
whom some tests could be made, since infinite other remedies
had been tried in vain and since it appeared to me that'it [the
ointment] was highly appropriate and could not help but be use-
ful, as one easily deduced from its odor and color. On being
anointed, she suddenly slept such a profound sleep, with her eyes
open like a rabbit (she also fittingly looked like a boiled hare),
that I could not imagine how to wake her. By every means pos-
sible, with strong ligatures and rubbing her extremities, with
affllsions of oil of costus-root and officinal spurge, with fumes and
smoke in her nostrils, and finally with cupping-glasses, I so hur-
ried her that at the end of thirty:six hours she regained her senses
and memory: although the first tords she spoke were: "Why do
you wake me at such an inopportune time? I was surrounded by
all the pleasures and delights of the world." And casting her eyes
on her husband (who was there ~lr stinking of hanged men), she
said to him, smiling: "Knavish one, know that I have made you
a cuckhold, and with a lover younger and better than you," and
she said many other and very strange things. .
t From all this we can conjecture that all that which the

r
I
"\
,..

THE WITCHES' FLYING OINTMENT

Applying the' ointment, in an engraving entitled Departure for the Sabat.

...
The witch is astride her broomstick

..
Applying the ointment and the departure. In The Witches' Kitchen, Frans
Francken's sixteenth-century painting of the demonic activities in a witches'
kitchen, a young witch is rubbed down with flying ointment, and others dis-
robe for the same treatment (right). To the left, another witch flies up the
chimney on her broomstick while other witches tend the cauldron amidst a
muddle of demons.

wretched witches do is phantasm caused by very cold potions and

unguents: which are of such a nature as to corrupt the memory
and the imagination, that the wr~tched ones imagine, and even
very firmly believe, that they have done in a waking state all that
of which they dreamt while sleeping. [Laguna, 1555, IV, xxv, pp.
421-22 J i'
Another example belonging here is due to Porta, a colleague
of Galileo, who similarly suggested a physiological explanation of
the wit<!:hes' salve:
138] IN THE TRADITIONAL WESTERN WORLD

. although they [witches] themselves mix in a great deal of

superstition, nevertheless it is apparent to the observer that these
things result from a natural force. I shall repeat the things I have
heard from them.
They take boys' fat and boil it in a copper vessel, then strain
it; they then knead the residue. With it they mix eleoselinum,
aconite [a deadly poison; see Murray, 1962: 279], poplar branches
and soot. Or sometimes sium, common acofum, cinquefoil,
the blood of a bat, sleep-inducing nightshade [solanum somni-
ferum], and oil; and if they mix in other items, they differ some-
what from these. As soon as it is finished, they anoint the parts of
the body, having rubbed them very thoroughly before, so that
they grow rosy, and heat returns, and that which was stiff with
cold becomes penetrable. So that the flesh may be loose and the
pores open, they add, moreover, fat or, alternately, flowing oil
that the force of the juices may descend inward, and be more
powerful and lively. I. think it not at all questionable that this is
the reason.
Thus, on some moonlit night th~y think that they are carried
off to banquets, music, dances, and coupling with young men,
which they desire most of all. So great is the force of the imagina-
tion and the appearance of the images, that the part of the, brain
called memory is almost full of this sort of thing; and since they
themselves, by inclination of nature, are extremely prone to be-
lief, they take hold of the images in such a way that the mind it-
self is changed and thinks of nothing else day or night. They are
strengthened in this by their eating nothing but beets, roots,
chestnuts, and vegetables.
While I was working on this matter, searching out everything
most diligently-for I was still in a state of ambivalent judgment
-an old woman came to my notice ([one of those] whom they
call screech-owls [striges], from Jhe resemblance between the
night-owl [strix] and the witche~ [strigae], and who suck the
blood of tiny children in their cradles); who promised of her own
accord to bring me answers in a short while. She ordered all of us
who were gathered there with m~ "as witnesses to go outside.
Then she stripped off all her rags and rubbed herself very thor-
oughly and heartily with some ointment (she was visible to us
through the cracks of the door). Then she sank down from the
force of the soporific juices and fell into a deep sleep. We then
opened the doors and gave her quite a flogging; the force of her
stupor was so great that it had taken away her senses. We re-
r
Hallucinogens in European Witchcraft [139
f
I
turned to our place outside. Then the pow~rs of the drug grew
weak and feeble and she, called from her sleep, began to babble
that she had crossed seas and mountains to fetch these false an-
swers. We denied; she insisted; we showed .her the black-and-
blue marks; she insisted more tenaciously than before.
What, then, shall I think of th~se affairs? There will be place
enough to tell of other witches; let our discussion return for the
moment to its proper arrangement; we have been sufficiently lo-
quacious. This, moreover, I think should be pointed out, lest
those who experiment grow ~iscouraged: these things do not turn
out the same for all people. As for example, for melancholics,
since their nature is chill and cold nothing very much happens to
them from the warming-up methods of the witches. . . . [Porta,
1562, II, xxvii, pp. 197-98]

Twentieth-Century Comparative Data

Shortly before the turn of the present century, a German scholar
of the occult, Karl Kiesewetter ([ 1902?J: 579), inspired by the
accounts of Porta and others, made a sample of the witches'
ointment. After rubbing himself with it, he experienced a dream
in which he was flying in spirals. More recently, Professor Will-
Erich Peukert of Gottingen, Germany, is reported to have made
a flying ointment of belladonna, henbane, and Datura, employing
a seventeenth-century formula. According to the report he:
. . . rubbed it on his forehead and armpits and had colleagues
do the same. They fell into a twenty-four hour sleep in which
they dreamed of wild rides, frenzied dancing, and other ·weird
adventures of the type connected with medieval orgies. [Krieg,
1966: 53]
Gustav Schenk has also experimented with henbane, although
not in the form of an ointment~ He reports that after inhaling
the smoke of the burning seeds:
My teeth were clenched, and a dizzy rage took possession of
me. I know that I trembled with,horror; but I also know that I
was permeated by a peculiar sens~ 'of welLbeing connected with
the crazy sensation that my feet were growing lighter, expanding
and breaking loose from my body. (This sensation of gradual
body c;lissolution is typical of henbane poisoning.) Each part of
my body seemed to be going off on its own. My head was growing
independently larger, and I was seized with the fear that I was'
•

140] IN THE TRADITIONAL WESTERN WORLD

falling apart. At the same time I experienced an intoxicating sen-

sation of flying.
The frightening certainty that my end was near through the
dissolution of my body was counterbalanced by an animal joy
in flight. I soared where my hallucinations-the clouds, the lower-
ing .sky, herds of beasts, falling leaves which were quite unlike
any ordinary leaves, billowing streamers of steam and rivers of
molten metal-were swirling along. [Schenk, 1955: 48]
I

Some years ago I ran across a reference to the use of a Datura

ointment by the Yaqui Indians of northern Mexic,o, reportedly
rubbed on the stomach "to see visions." I called this to the atten-
. tion of my colleague and friend Carlos Castaneda, who was study-
ing under a Yaqui shaman, and asked him to find out if the Yaqui
used the ointment for flying and to determine its effects.
I quote from his subsequent experience with the ointment of
Datura, which provides impressive evidence for its impact:
The motion of my body was slow and shaky; it was more like a
tremor forward and up. I looked down ,and saw don Juan sitting
below me, way below me. The momentum carried me forward
one more step, which was even more elastic and longer than the
preceding one. And from there I soared. I remember coming
down once; then I pushed up with both feet, sprang backward,
and glided on my back. I saw the dark sky above me, and the
clouds going by me. I jerked my body so I could look down. I
saw the dark mass of the mountains. My speed was extraordinary.
My arms were fixed, folded against my sides. My head was the
directional unit. If I kept it bent backward I made vertical circles.
I changed directions by turning my head to the side. I enjoyed
such freedom and swiftness as I had never known before. The
marvelous darkness gave me a feeling of sadness, of longing, per-
"haps. It was as if I had found a pla"(¢ewhere I belonged-the dark-
ness of night. [Castaneda, 1968: 91]

Lycanthropy
Now let us turn to lycanthropy, the belief that a ,human can
change ,himself into a wolf or similar predatory animal. The possi-
bility that hallucinogens may have been involved in such beliefs
occurred to me after reading an account of a psychiatrist colleague
 Hallucinogens in European Witchcraft [,141

who administered harmaline to a subject who afterwards reported

that he first believed he was a bird flying through the air, then a
fish, then in his own words (see Naranjo in this volume, p. 185):
I wasn't a fish anymore, but a big cat, a tiger. I walked, though,
feeling the same freedom I had experienced as a bird and a fish,
freedom of movement, flexibility, grace. I moved as a tiger in
the jungle, joyously, feeling the ground under my feet, feeling my
power; my chest grew larger. I then approached an animal, any
animal. I only saw its neck, and then experienced what a tiger
feels when looking at its prey.
The neck which the subject referred td was that of a woman
in the room who had appeared to him to have changed' into
a deer, and the subject had to be restrained from attempting to
bite her neck.
This information, together with random accounts of shape
changing reported by persons having LSD experiences in our
culture, caused me to review the werewolf literature to see if there
might be a connection with hallucinogen use.2 The following ex-
amples illustrate some of the results.
A Greek account, by Paulus Aegineta, of lycanthropy from the
fourth or seventh century A.D. is as follows (Adams, 1844:
1 :389-<),0) :
Those labouring under lycanthropia go out during the night
imitating wolves in all things and lingering about sepulchres until
morning. You may recognize such persons by these marks: they
are pale, their vision feeble, their eyes dry, tongue very dry, and
the flow of the saliva stopped; but they are thirsty, and their legs
have incurable ulcerations from frequent falls. Such'are the marks
of the disease.
The symptoms described closely resemble those reported for
the clinical effects of atropine, specifically, dryness of the throat
and mouth, difficulty in swallowing, great thirst, impaired vision,
and staggering gait (Sollmann, '\19
57: 392). It is interesting to
2. A most useful survey of the European werewolf literature is provided by
Summers (1966). While the Reverend Mr. Summers recognizes that the ointments
had a mle both in witchcraft and lycanthropy (p. xiv), he seems quite seriously
to assign a role of at least equal importance to the "force" of the "diabolic pact"
presumably made by the practitioner and to his "impious spells" (p. 123).
 THE TRANSFORMATION OF WITCHES
INTO ANIMAL FORMS

Three witches in animal forms flying on a pitchfork, from a fifteenth-century

woodcut

observe also that Hesse (1946: 103-4) notes: "A characteristic

feature of solanaceae psychosis is furthermore that the intoxicated
person imagines himself to have been changed into some animal,
and the hallucinosis is completed by the sensation of the grow-
ing feathers and hair, due probably to main paraethesic."
Porta (1658 [orig. 1589J: 219) states that "To make a man
believe he was changed into a Biri or Beast" a potion was drunk
which was made from henbane, mandrake, stramonium or So-
lanum manicum, and belladonna. Under its effects, "the man
would seem sometimes to be changed into a fish; and flinging out
his arms, would swim on the GroJnd: sometimes he would seem
to skip up, and then to dive down again. Another would believe
himself turned into a Goose, and would eat Grass, and beat the
Ground with his Teeth, like a Goose: now and then sing, arid
endeavor to clap his Wings."
In Goya's~,Cocina de las brujas (Witches' Kitchen), the witches are in vari-
ous stages of transformation. One of the creatures, apparently a wolf, watches
a cloven-hoofed beast, probably a he-goat, rise up the chimney

,
•

1441 IN THE TRADITIONAL WESTERN WORLD

In a confession made before an inquisitor of the Church in

1521 in France, Pierre Bourgot admitted that he and a com-
panion had used an ointment whose effect, when rubbed on the
body, was to change them into wolves ·for one or two hours, and
that in this state they physically attacked a number of persons
on various occasions, biting them with their teeth, killing them
and even eating parts of their bodies (Wier, 1885 [orig. 166o]:
263-67) .
In 1599 Chauvin court published in Paris a discourse on ly-
canthropy in which he concluded that such changes were illusory
and produced by "unguents, powders, potiohS, and noxious herbs,
which are able to dazzle all who come under their baleful and
magic influence" (Chauvincourt, 1599)·
A somewhat similar position was taken by Nynald shortly
thereafter in his work, De la lycanthropie, transformation, et I

extase des sorciers, in which he also listed the ingredients of

the ointments used. Among them were belladonna and henbane,
as well as aconite, opium, and hashish (Nynald, 1615: ch. ii).
He asserted that "all shape-shifting is mere hallucination" (Ny-
nauld, 1615: ch. vii').
It was sometimes recorded that a girdle made of the pelt of a
wolf was used in addition to the ointment. "Peter Stump, who
was executed for werwolfism in 1590, confessed that the demon
has bestowed a girdle upon him, with which he girt himself when
the lust came upon him to shift his shape to a wolf" (Elich, 1607:
155) .
Verst egan (1634: 237) reports:

The Were-Wolues are certaine Sorcerers, who having an-

noynted their bodies, with an Oy,ptment which they make by the
instinct of the Divell: And pufting on a certayne Inchaunted
Girdle, doe not onely unto the view of others, seeme as Wolues,
but to their owne thinking have bqth the Shape, and Nature of
Wolues, so long as they weare th€ sayd girdle: And they doe dis-
pose themselves as very W olues, i~ wourrying, and killing, and
most of Humane Creatures.

Boguet (1929 [orig. 1602]: 150), similarly reports the use of

an ointment in combination with a wolf skin:
 Hallucinogens in European Witchcraft [145

The confessions of Jacques Boequet, Franr,;oise Secretain,

Clauda Jamquillaume, Clauda Jamprost, Thievenne Paget, Pierre
Gandillon and George Gandillon are very relevant to our argu-
ment, for they said that, in order to turn themselves into wolves,
they first rubbed themselves with an ointment, and then Satan
clothed them in a wolf's skin which completely covered them,
and that they then went on all-fours and ran about the country
chasing now a person and now an animal to the guidance of their
appetite. '

Del Rio (1606, Liber II, quaestrio xviii, pp. 455-56) states:
At times he [the demon] fastens most closely the real skin of a
beast around their [the sorcerers'] bodies: that this is done, since
the wolf-skin that he furnishes is concealed in the hollow trunk
. of a tree, is supported by the confessions of certain witnesses.

Boguet (1929 [orig. 1602]: 151) is clearly of the view that the
use of the ointment was essential to the werewolf experience:
In company with the Lord Claude Meynier, our Recorder, I
have seen those I have named go on all-fours in a room just as
they dId when they were in the fields; but they said that it was
impossible for them to turn themselves into wolves, since, they
had no more ointment, and they had lost the power of doing so
by being imprisoned.

He also indicates that the same ointment was used both for
going to the Sabbat and for becoming werewolves (Boguet, 1929
[orig. 1602]: 69): "The witches anoint themselves with it [oint-
ment] when they go to the Sabbat, or when they change into
wolves."
It appears, then, that a solanaceous plant ointment was used
both in experiencing the witches' ~ight and the metamorphosis
into werewolf. The differing results can easily be explained from
what we know of modern experiences with hallucinogenic drugs.
That is, the expectations and desir~s'iof the subject and the cues
in his immediate environment strongly affect the nature of his'
experience. We can see how the use of the broomstick or other
straddling device, or the use of a wolf skin or wolf skin girdle,
might be, through their tactile impact on the subject, powerful
suggestive devices influencing the nature bf the hallucinatiom.
146] IN THE TRADITIONAL WESTERN WORLD

Finally, I wish to note one of the major characteristics of

medieval and Renaissance witchcraft in Europe which helps dis-
tinguish it from. ordinary shamanism. This is the fact that the
witches performed their acts of bewitching and of mutual aid
while not in a trance, but as part of a ritual meeting called the
Esbat which has been described as a "business" meeting. This
was a real gathering not connected with the use of the hallucino-
genic ointment and was clearly distinguished both in name and
substance from the Sabbat or Sabbath to which one flew and where
one participatecl in orgiastic encounters with demons. In other
words, unlike classical shamans, the sorcerer in Europe had his
trance encounters with the spirit world on occasions distinguished
from his manipulation of that supernatural world. I believe the rea-
son for this major distinguishing feature of European witchcraft
lies in the nature of the drugs they were using. Specifically, the
solanaceous hallucinogens are so powerful that it is essentially
impossible for the user to control his mind and body sufficiently
to perform ritual activity at the same time. In addition, the state
of extended sleep following the period of initial excitation, sleep
which can extend·for three or four days, together with thetyp-
ical amnesia, made this hardly a convenient method for daily
practice of witchcraft. Furthermore, there is some ethnographic
evidence that too frequent use of the solanaceous drugs can per-
manently derange the mind.
I arrived at this particular insight about the problems of using
solanaceous plants in shamanism and witchcraft during my field-
work among the Jivaro Indians (untsuri 8uara) of eastern Ecuador,
who use both the solanaceous plant, Datura, and no~-solanaceous
hallucinogens. They utilize the solanaceous plant in the vision
quest, simply to encounter the sl:\Pernatural, but do not use it in
shamanism because it is "too strong," and prevents the shaman
from being able to opeJate in both worlds· simultaneously. The
European witches, in my .opinion, ,had an entirely reasonable ritual
system of using the solanaceous plants, given their great effects.
Thus, the fact that traditional European witchcraft involves the
separation of trance states from ritual operations may be largely
due to the problems of coping with the particular hallucinogens
they used. This woulcl explain the peculiar existence of both Sab-
 Hallucinogens in European Witchcraft [1.f7

bats and Esbats in European witchcraft, and also raises the ques-
tion of whether shamans have to be in a trance state at the same
time that they are engaged in their manipulative activities. If not,
it may be necessary to revise our conceptions of the scope of sha-
manism and to extend it to include some of the central aspects of
witchcraft as it was formerly practiced in Europe. '

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