The Flying Ointment of Witches

What Was a Witch’s Flying Ointment?

In historical descriptions, flying ointment was a preparation combining a fatty base with herbs believed to alter perception. According to legend, it allowed witches to leave ordinary surroundings, travel through the air, and attend nocturnal gatherings known as sabbaths.

That is the captivating image. The historical picture is less straightforward. When you encounter these accounts, you are entering a world where reported experiences, religious beliefs, hostile accusations, and storytelling often became tangled together.

You may also find names such as witches’ salve, sleeping ointment, or poplar ointment. These overlapping terms do not establish that one standard preparation existed. Instead, they reveal how different descriptions gathered around the same compelling idea: a substance that supposedly opened a passage beyond everyday awareness.

A Legend Shaped by Suspicion

During European witch persecutions, flying ointment became more than an intriguing magical object. It also became part of the accusations directed at people suspected of witchcraft. Sensational stories about its ingredients helped make those accusations seem frightening and believable.

You do not need to accept those stories as evidence of real practices. Their disturbing embellishments served a purpose: they made an unfamiliar neighbour appear secretive, dangerous, and fundamentally different.

This distinction changes how you read the legend. An account of what someone was accused of doing is not automatically an account of what they actually did. Keeping that small distance between allegation and evidence allows you to explore the mystery without carrying its old prejudices forward.

Ancient Echoes of an Impossible Journey

The connection between anointing and extraordinary travel reaches beyond medieval witchcraft. In Homer’s Iliad, Hera anoints herself with ambrosia before travelling to Zeus on Mount Ida. Her journey is described as passing above the earth rather than moving along it.

You can recognise a striking resemblance to the later image of magical flight. Yet resemblance is not proof that the same practice continued unchanged across centuries. A divine substance in an ancient poem and an ointment described in witchcraft accounts belong to different storytelling worlds.

What connects them is the imaginative possibility they offer: ordinary limits briefly fall away. Something applied to the body becomes associated with movement beyond the familiar. That image helps explain why the motif remains so memorable.

Medieval Accounts Between Experience and Belief

A narrative attributed to Abraham of Worms, associated with the Book of the Sacred Magic, describes an ointment linked to an extraordinary journey. In the account, he and a young woman use the preparation and experience travel to remarkable places.

Read as a historical narrative, it gives you a glimpse of how such experiences were described. It does not establish that physical flight occurred. The distinction leaves room for curiosity while keeping interpretation separate from proof.

The late-medieval physician Johannes Hartlieb also recorded a description of flying ointment. His account connects herbs with particular days of the week, showing how plant lore and symbolic timing could become intertwined.

Hartlieb describes household objects as vehicles for these supposed journeys. He also condemns the practice. That matters: you are not hearing a neutral observer. His disapproval forms part of the account and shapes the way its details reach you.

When Flight Becomes a Question of Perception

Later writers continued to discuss the mysterious salve. Gerolamo Cardano described a preparation called Lamiarum unguentum, or “ointment of the lamias.” Giambattista della Porta included an account of ointment-associated travel in Natural Magic.

These descriptions connect the legend with plants capable of changing perception, including members of the nightshade family. That connection offers one possible way to understand some flight narratives. It does not demonstrate that every story had the same explanation, or that every alleged practitioner used such preparations.

Johann Weichard von Valvasor offered another revealing interpretation. His account describes someone dreaming of lively gatherings and believing afterward that she had flown. Here, the extraordinary journey belongs to an experienced inner world rather than a demonstrated movement through the sky.

If you have ever awakened from a vivid dream with its atmosphere still surrounding you, that distinction may feel familiar. An experience can seem intensely convincing without being a literal record of events.

Why Historical Recipes Are Not Invitations

The temptation is understandable: a mysterious preparation appears in an old account, and you wonder whether recreating it might unlock its secret. But historical descriptions are not reliable instructions for personal experimentation.

Some plants associated with flying ointments are highly toxic. Natural does not mean gentle, and a preparation applied to the skin is not automatically harmless. These mixtures should not be made or tested.

Modern interest in witchcraft does not require their use. You can explore the symbolism, history, and atmosphere of flying ointment without handling hazardous plants. Leaving the recipe behind does not diminish the mystery; it lets you approach it with clearer boundaries.

Explore the Symbolism Without Recreating the Salve

If the idea of a magical journey speaks to you, let it become a prompt for reflection rather than an experiment. What would “taking flight” mean in your own life: freedom, perspective, imagination, or simply a little breathing room?

• Write down a memorable dream, separating what you experienced from what you think it means.
• Read historical accounts with one question in mind: who is telling this story, and what might shape their interpretation?
• Try a quiet visualisation of a place you find peaceful, treating it as imagination rather than supernatural travel.

The Mystery That Remains

The flying ointment of witches sits between folklore, reported experience, and the human desire to cross ordinary boundaries. Its history becomes more compelling, not less, when you resist a single dramatic explanation.

You do not need to believe in literal flight to feel its fascination. Sometimes the most meaningful journey is a change in perspective: looking again, questioning gently, and discovering how much mystery an old story can still hold.