In honor of spooky season, the Quest brings you the real tales behind our scary stories, the true horror of an iconic villain. Witches and their broomsticks have become synonymous in modern culture and art, a staple in our Halloween decorations and costumes. It doesn’t occur to us often to question these traditions that seem to have been around forever, but in this case, there is a lot behind the myth.
Although the origins of the witch’s broom are rooted in the sexism of witchcraft scares, the lore scared men came up with in the 15th century is arguably peak. The first known instance of a witch being depicted flying on a broomstick was in the margins of the French poem Le Champion des Dames (“The Defender of the Ladies”) in 1451. In this lengthy poem, there is an ongoing philosophical debate between allegorical figures about whether women are good or not. Upon asking Lady Truth, they all decide that women are inherently good despite some witchcraft here and there. Many texts about witchcraft and “dangerous, virtue-less women” like this were circulated following the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. There were manuals on how to discern if your neighbor was a witch, signs to look out for, and even strategies to keep the devil in their deviant souls and out of yours.
What was this lore, you might ask? Well, hallucinogens of the time, such as ergot fungus or deadly nightshade, were not safe to ingest, but they could be absorbed through mucus membranes, and one of the potential places you could absorb “flying ointment” into your body was none other than the vulva. Combining this with the broom, which was also a symbol of domesticity, you get depraved women who ride brooms with shrooms on them to elaborate orgies in the dead of night. This was obviously not true, but if you torture someone for long enough, they’ll confess to anything. People in their right minds may think of a few issues with this story: splinters, gravity, or lack of literally any evidence. Nevertheless, when someone went against the church, was not “ladylike,” or was deviant in any way, they could be tried as a witch. Epidemic? Witches. Failed harvest? Susie missed church twice last week! Flood in the next town over? It must be those witches again. The witch trials have a long and complicated history, but they can be boiled down to the scapegoating of one group in order to soothe the fear of a population. These fears can be seen largely in a religious context. Waldensians, a Christian sect who allowed women to become priests, were described as witches in cahoots with Satan by authorities in the Church.
The first person to confess to riding a broom in order to fly was not actually a woman, but a man by the name of Guillaume Edelin, who was a priest near Paris. He was arrested in 1453 after publicly criticizing the Church for frequent witch hunts and confessed to riding a broom to a Sabbat after extensive torture. After trial, he repented, but was imprisoned for life! Most people accused of witchcraft were not so lucky, as the typical punishment was a death sentence. With the enlightenment, however, came clarity, and the turn towards the rational began to change the fate of some women accused of witchcraft. A century later, a Dutch physician named Johann Weyer had the revolutionary thought to use weighing technology for the betterment of a system long in need of revision—the persecution of witches. Everyone assumed that witches were physically different in some manner which granted them the ability to fly, so in 1545 Weyer got permission from Emperor Charles V to weigh women accused of witchcraft to verify their guilt by proving that they weighed less than normal due to their flying abilities. Shockingly, they were all of normal human weight! Each woman would receive a certificate to affirm their status as a non-witch, and thus were free to live out the rest of their lives.
Reprieves like this one were few and far in between, and the few people advocating reason were no match for the systems and stigmas already in place. Almost 150 years later, the Salem Witch Trials began. The political instability, harsh winters, and potential ergot growth in rye left the people of Salem anxious for answers. The paranoia surrounding Puritan ideas of witchcraft made a scapegoat out of vulnerable people who did not fit the societal norm when people started falling ill with strange symptoms. Over a year and three months between 1692 and 1693, 20 people were tortured and executed. It was not until the wife of Governor William Phips was accused that "spectral evidence” was outlawed.
The corruption and misogyny of the witch trials remain prominent, but today there are more and more people taking back the label of “witch.” Many people identify as witches, whether they practice a neo-pagan religion like Wicca, are in a coven, or borrow from different ideas and cultures to form their own practice. More than astrology and tarot being normalized in today's society, women are now empowered by being witches! The witch’s broom, originally a sign of domesticity gone awry that combined the imagery of a woman's role as a homemaker with sexual depravity, has now become a symbol of resistance and power.