Why is the witch's broom so strongly associated with flight?

The flying broomstick image traces back to a real historical practice involving so-called flying ointments, preparations made from genuinely toxic plants including belladonna, henbane, and mandrake, which were absorbed through the skin and produced hallucinations interpreted as flight, a practice that was both real and genuinely dangerous, not a charming folk tale.

The besom was never just a cleaning tool. For the deeper history of its hearth-and-threshold origins, and how the besom genuinely functions in protective and handfasting tradition, see our existing complete besom history and ritual guide. This piece focuses specifically on the flying ointment story, since it deserves more honest, careful treatment than the wink-and-nudge framing it usually receives.

What was actually in a historical flying ointment?

Historical flying ointments were typically a fat or lard base infused with plants from the nightshade family, most commonly belladonna, henbane, and mandrake, sometimes alongside hemlock or wolfsbane, all of which contain tropane alkaloids including atropine, hyoscyamine, and scopolamine, compounds genuinely capable of producing hallucinations, including the sensation of flight, when absorbed through the skin.

This is documented, verifiable history rather than folklore embellishment. Belladonna's use in this context is recorded as early as the ninth century, and in 1576 the physician Andrés de Laguna analysed an ointment seized from suspected witches near Rome, identifying hemlock, mandrake, and henbane among its contents. The transdermal application, rubbing the ointment onto skin, including via a broom handle used as an applicator, rather than swallowing it, was specifically how practitioners avoided the most immediately lethal effects of oral ingestion while still absorbing enough of the alkaloids to produce genuine, intense hallucinatory experience.

This detail, the broom handle as an applicator rather than a vehicle, is very likely the genuine historical root of the flying broomstick image that has followed witches through five centuries of art and storytelling. The hallucinatory sensation of flight, combined with vivid dreaming and dissociation from ordinary waking consciousness, was experienced as genuinely real by those who used these preparations, and was interpreted within the period's own framework as attendance at a witches' sabbath.

What is a crystal besom used for on a modern altar?

A crystal besom is a miniature ritual broom, typically bundled from dried herbs with a gemstone tip, used symbolically rather than for literal sweeping, most often placed on an altar for ongoing protective and cleansing energy, hung above a mirror to ward off negativity reflecting back into a space, or given as a meaningful gift between practitioners.

Unlike a full-sized besom used for the air-sweeping technique covered in our main besom guide, a crystal besom functions primarily as a standing symbolic presence, a permanent fixture on the altar rather than a tool actively wielded during ritual. The crystal tip carries its own specific correspondence, an amethyst tip leans toward spiritual protection, a clear quartz tip amplifies whatever intention the besom already holds, and a black tourmaline tip strengthens its grounding, threshold-guarding quality.