Source: US Forest Service
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Yesteryear’s Drug Abuse?
Much has been written of the connection between the psychoactive tropane alkaloids contained in henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), thorn apple (Datura stramonium), belladonna (Atropa belladonna), and witchcraft in medieval Europe. Lore has it that women and men who practiced witchcraft learned to use and perhaps abuse these compounds without the fear of death associated with the oral ingestion of these deadly compounds. They learned that combining these compounds with oils or fats and then applying them to the skin allowed for their absorption into their bloodstreams without the deadly effects of oral consumption. Some witches would also ritually burn henbane and inhale the smoke causing them to enter a hallucinogenic state of mind where they cast spells and performed incantations to summon demons and other dark spirits to participate in their revelry.
R.E.L. Masters and Jean Houston in their book, The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience, described, “That the witches’ ointment already was known in the fifteenth century, and that it was thought to produce dreams or illusions of flying and attendance at the Sabbat, is clear from a case cited at the time. A Dominican priest had watched a woman rub herself with the ointment and fall into a “trance.” When she awakened, she claimed to have been transported to the Sabbat and to have joined in the revels there. The witches’ ointment was actually analyzed in the sixteenth century by Andreas de Laguna, physician to Pope Julius III. Of a tube taken from a witch, Laguna reported that the ointment was green in color and contained hemlock, salanum, mandragora, and henbane.”
Many of the medieval practitioners using these plants would likely have experienced extremely vivid hallucinations involving flying off to destinations where many emotional states and physical activities were experienced. Period eyewitness accounts state that the force and intensities of these hallucinations, especially the vivid imagery, left the witches with memories that to them were as real as any other memory.
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