The High Priestess or High Priest walks clockwise, tracing the ritual circle and sweeping with the broom, usually a few inches off the ground. It is generally used to purify and protect, and to ritually cleanse a circle-casting area before magic is performed by symbolically sweeping away negative energies and astral build up. Warlocks, the male equivalent of witches (usually in the pejorative sense of Europe‘s Middle Ages), are historically often described as riding pitchforks instead of the broomsticks of witches.Ī modern Wiccan besom generally consists of an ash or hazel stave handle with bristles made from birch twigs (although the bristles can also be made of many other materials, including straw, herbs or other twigs), tied on using thin pieces of willow wood, all traditional and sacred woods. ![]() French and German illustrations from as early as the 15th Century show witches flying on broomsticks, or sometimes on pitchforks. The witches mounted broomsticks and would leap around the fields, smeared with the flying ointment, to “teach” the crops how high to grow, and the ointment would give them imaginary “trips” and the feeling of having flown distances.ĭespite the association with women, the first known case of claiming to have flown on a broomstick was actually confessed by a French male witch, Guillaume Adeline, in 1453, although there are prior records of witches flying on sticks or poles or similar objects. Thus, the generally accepted theory about the origins of witches flying on brooms is based in a ritual involving a psychoactive drug trip: as the ointment was rubbed all over the body using the broom (particularly on the forehead, wrists, hands, feet, under the arms or between the legs), it gave a sensation of flying. In the Middle Ages, witches would prepare a “flying ointment” (also known as “green ointment”) to aid them in their journey, the recipes for which usually had a base of either Belladonna (Nightshade) or Mandragora, both highly psychoactive drugs producing visions and encouraging astral projection, mixed with clove oil (which is known best for its anaesthetic properties). ![]() It is a traditionally-constructed broom made of a bundle of twigs tied to a central stouter wooden pole. ![]() A besom broom is the kind of broom traditionally associated with witches, and is one of the tools commonly used in the practice of modern Wicca.
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