Witch's broom
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The generally accepted theory about the origins of witches and flying with their brooms is based in a ritual involving a psychoactive drug trip. The witches would prepare a flying ointment to aid them in their journey. There are many recipes for this ointment all having a base of either Atropa belladonna or Mandragora officinarum, both highly psychoactive drugs producing visions and encouraging astral projection. The ointment was rubbed all over the body using the broom. A personal account is given by one witch who described the act of rubbing the ointment on her hands and feet, which provided a sensation of flying. Witches mounted broomsticks and would leap around the fields, smeared with the flying ointment, in order to "teach the crops how high to grow". The ointment would give them hallucinations, which made them believe that they flew distances.
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