Hi all,

I was wondering whether any of you have thoughts about Witches' flying ointment. It as a good candidate for European Ayahuasca (not pharmacologically though!). In its most simplistic version it is supposed to be the effect of antidotal action of paired herbs (e.g. atropine - opiates and atropine-aconitine)

I by no means intend to reconstruct or even use any plant preparations - I'm old enough to know the very narrow safety margins of these substances wise enough to avoid them. My interest is purely ethnobotanical and I sadly this knowledge of olde entheogens has left nothing but a few traces behind.

sometime plants containing tropane alkaloids are added to ayahuasca mixtures used in the amazon etc. its usually a cultural or shamanistic preferance. however yes tropane alkaloids can be very dangerous i wouldn't recommend to mess with them. cocaine is actually one of the safer ones

however you can find lots of information on this in a number of books.

That is true, however I feel that they are not used as the prime ingredients, their addition is to fine-tune the basic MAOI-tryptamine combination. Same goes for the addition of tobacco leaves and/or many many other plants.

My problem is that contrary to ayahuasca resources, the entheogenic / psychedelic / hallucinogenic / whatevermayyou reports (yes, even historical ones!) and information on witches' ointments are very limited. I can only find scarce information on the internet and I do not have much time to do scholar work on the subject. Considering how big topic witches were during medieval and renaissance times, few (or none?) people have thoroughly focused on their ethnobotanical aspect.

Just a taste though, I found an article about dwale, a medieval general anaesthetic based on hemlock, henbane and opium, very nice read!

Dwale: an anaesthetic from old England

cool yes you are right that they are just additives to fine tune the mixture. as far as loss off knowledge etc, i think we can blame the church for that because of all the persecutions etc a lot of knowledge was lost. however yes unfortunatly some good ethnobotanical knowledge on the subject is hard to come by. i guess i can't think of any good books on it but there must be some.

I have a little soft spot for tropanes. I regularly use Datura leaves for my carrier when using DMT. I like Datura very much for this purpose, much more than tobaco, cannabis, parsely etc.

I did a bit of work on Mandrake four or five years ago. I found very little in depth information on it. All the books and the internet pages, rehash the same few tidbits. It got quite annoying to read yet more of the same two or three paragraphs over and over. Annoying because the myths and legends surrounding Mandrake make it sound quite fascinating.

The article on Dwale was interesting but was also wrong in stating Mandrake had been used since Roman times. There is a picture of surgeons trepanning a person knocked out by Mandrake on an egyptian tomb. In fact it was known in pre-dynastic Egypt. Thousands of years, maybe tens of thousands of years worth of human knowledge about Mandrake, probly has been lost. All that remains is a bit of old folk-lore about rituals and harvesting and a hand full of recepies for potions to help with toothache, fertility and insomnia.

This is one time we can't blame the Christians though. Even Christians accepted the need for pain relief. Mandrake was mentioned in the book of Gennesis, which again predates the Romans. The demise of Mandrake lies at the feet of Marco Polo. He in the late 14th Centuary, is the man famed for opening up routes to the East and the trade that followed. That trade included oppium, which was far more effective and much safer than Mandrake.

I ate the roots on four seperate occaissions, tentatively at first, increasing the dosage each time. The last time, I made my self and two friends, quite ill for over a week. I havn't eaten them since. It was an interesting place to visit, glad I went. Really glad I got back. They really do feel like a whitches brew, quite a dark, evil and sinister place.

I have some Mandrake plants growing. Ugly little things. Fascinating though, knowing (or not knowing) what lurks beneath the surface. They are five years old now, which is the optimum age for harvesting. I enjoy them as they are though, I have no desire to uproot them. I expect I won't ever eat Mandrake again. If I hadn't ever eaten them allready however, I'm sure I would leap at the chance to try them, but thats just me.

I had never considered Mandrake, or any of the other tropane containing plants, as some kind of Western or European ayahuasca. Nothing I ever read about them ever sugested that kind of use either. Ammanita Muscaria, I think, sits much more happily in that role.

I wouldn't recommend Mandrake to most people. In fact I would warn most people to stay well away. But they are a peculiar plant with their own particular brand of magic. There is nothing else quite like them.

I thought, Ronue, that you were going to share with us some new theory on this thread?

OK, it took some time to do some research on the pharmacology and botany of the Witches' plants, but now I think I have some good info to share. The Witches' ointment takes into consideration not only the plants (or other ingredients) involved in its preparation but its method of administration as well

The plants used can be roughly divided into three categories

a) Those with well known and tried psychoactive activities,

like the Daturas, Deadly Nightshade, Mandrake, Opium poppies, Cannabis, Nutmeg and Henbane

b) those of lesser, less explored, or less known psychoactive qualities

like Sweet flag, Wild Lettuce, and St. John's Wort

c) and those which are deadly poisonous

like Wolfsbane, Hemlock and Cowbane


From this (not exhaustive) list it is obvious that the preparation of Witches' Ointlent must have been quite a tricky process. This therefore should take into account how much of each herb to use, which part of it to use and when to harvest it. These qualities are pretty well known for plants of the first category. The second category has more-or-less much higher safety margins and mistakes in dosage can be well tolerated. As far as the third category is concerned things go tricky. We (thankfully!) know today that all parts of the plant are poisonous. I hypothesise that these plants must have been harvested around their flowering times, which makes their identification easier. I also hypothesise that many samples for many different locations might have been gathered in order to correct for alkaloid differences among individual plants.

But how do you use them? In what dosage? This is my most baffling question and I feel that the answer resides in the name of the preparation itself; "Ointment". This is a very important point because the method of administration can markedly modify the effects of any "poison". This is well known from anecdotal reports e.g. of smoked vs eaten cannabis to smoked vs tea preparation of datura leaves. Which means that should one be unable to estimate a safe dose of the (reportedly insanely vulgar poison) Wolfsbane, he/she can chose a method of administration that will correct for such mistakes.

This is therefore the essence of preparing these herbs as an Ointment; the available reposts indicate that the active substances were extracted in some fatty substance, preferably lard or human fat(?), then the ointment was applied on parts of various parts of the body. The active substances are steadily and slowly absorbed through the skin into the bloodstream (compare this to making a tea in which case all the poisons of your preparation get to your bloodstream in a matter of minutes!)

The above trick apparently allows for the body to adapt to the presence of these poisonous elements and for the opportunity to wipe away the Ointment from one's body should the beginning of adverse reaction is noticed in case of incorrect preparations.

That for the moment being!

Yes well if you study witch craft you will find the very best ointments were made from the fat from babies. Apperently they were innocent ointments made from them would be purer and less corrupting. When I was experiamenting with mandrake, I decided not to bother trawling the internet on the off chance of finding an online vendor ready to trade freshly rendored baby fat. I decide to make tea instead. The last two times I used it, I just ate raw root pulled straight from the ground. The last time I ate it I consummed a piece the size of a medium sized carrot. That was quite enough to make me ill for the best part of a week, the residual effects lasted about ten days.

I totally understand that after having wasted a day or so trying to find baby fat on ebay or similar. The closest I can get to it is fat from aborted fetuses which are in abundance around me but cosmetics' companies prefer to buy them instead for a good deal of money.

My girlfriend would not even discuss producing one for the said purposes.

wow

more power to you, and kudos for doing it right

I recently used to dog on it/people who did datura solely to trip or get fucked up, as it's tricky to carefully dose from the plant. ime, it's pretty dysphoric and disorienting

Western Ayahuasca = Pomegranate roots or Phalaris grass (DMT) + Syrian Rue (MAOI)

Something with Zoarasterism or something.. ?


http://www.lumrix.net/he.../Psychedelic_plants.html

Has it actually ever been used like that by Europeans? I would be very surprised to find that out!

The problem is that I used a loose definition for "ayahuasca" here, and I certainly did not mean a combination of a MAOI-containing plant with a dmt-containing plant. What I meant was that just like ayahuasceros use certain combinations of plants that have synergistic effects to induce altered states of consciousness, so did (or still do?) the medieval witches and sorcerers; combine certain plants that have synergistic (or antagonistic to be more precise) action to induce altered states.

There are more similarities I think. Ayahuasca brews usually contain two prime plants (e.g. P.viridis-B.caap. or D.cabrerana-B.caapi) for the main "effect" as well as other plants for "fine tuning" the experience. It is very similar with Witches' Ointment, where two prime plants are used (e.g. A.belladonna-A.napelus, or datura spp-A.napelus) for the main effect whereas the others are added to "fine tune" the resulting experience.

I think the word "Ayahuasca" or "Yage" means only one thing- "A brew made from the Caapi vine with, or without traditional additives".

I wouldn't consider DMT + MAOI in any other form to be Ayahuasca.

I believe there was DMT using people outside South America.

I also believe ancient europeans used mushrooms, they certainly used Morning glory seeds.

what about the whole kykeon and the eleusinian mysteries ? that sounds pretty much like ´western people´s ayahuasca´..

all of greek mentality which pervades western thinking is influenced by it.

It's a fair point and indeed kykeon could be an analogous to ayahuasca preparation, however we have little evidence about whether any psychoactive ingredients were added in it. As a matter of fact, no good sources exist as to what types of psychoactive herbs might have been used.

The fact that it actually contained ergot-infested barley and/or Amanita muscaria are modern theories and I personally think that they may stem from this modern tendency to try and connect religious practices with the parallel use of psychoactive herbs. In reality, Eulesinian Mysteries still remain a mystery (a fairly big one apparently!) and no-one really knows what was happening there...

So to speak thus, how do we know to what extend the Mysteries influenced the Greek mentality? It is usually sociopolitical factors that influence the initiation of such mentalities (even though I would prefer to avoid discussing factors that could have driven the "advent" of philosophy).

alexander shulgin says missletoe, wich is surrounded by all kinds of myths (i believe it's also the main ingredient in the magic potion in the 'asterix and obelix' comics), contains some DMT analogue.
But the combinations of herbs used in midievel europe are countless. especially the belladonna-plants wich often where combined with poppy's. I also believe that the ergot alkaloïds from the fungus where used, but lysergic acid is a very dangerous substance (like the tropane alkaloïds).
However, i do think syrian rue was known and highly regarded at least in the entire mediteranean region and it could very well have been used in combination with sacred mushrooms, since it was seen as something that protects against evil spirits. Contrary to what many people believe, ancient greece underwent influence from india and the other way round, even before alexander went there. From the west turkish coast in cities like milete, goods from lydia, persia and india where shipped to greece and the other greek colonies. At the same time much of the highly regarded egyptian knowledge of mathematics must have come, through babylon, from india as well, since they often used the same measuring units and symbols.
It is most likely that much of the stuff used in india, was known to the greeks as well and vice versa.

I love this part; I am slightly annoyed when people consider ancient Greece as the "cradle of civilisation", A great deal of seminal knowledge had indeed been imported from different sources. Even philosophy can be traced back to Eastern civilisations (even though ancient Greeks developed it an awful lot - or they were the first ones to write down their thoughts properly so that later people can find it). But as far as science and scientific method is concerned, the oldest I can go ( regarding our current knowledge) is Aristotle.

But still, very interesting issues from everyone, it would be nice to have better historical sources for the entheogenic uses of european plants and fungi. For instance, even though many psychoactive species of the psilocybe genus are indigenous to Europe, no good accounts exist as to their use in the historical times.

Theres no question in my mind that psilocybin containing mushrooms were used in ancient europe.

I'll try to find a source.

That would be great! The only things I have found are mere speculations and 1 or 2 christian religious depictions showing some fly agaric mushroom, but nothing like P. semilanceata or P.bohemica, or other genera like Gymnopilus, Conocube and Inocube.

And of course, I do not consider the depicted golden halo around the heads of christian saints as proof that they were eating psychoactive mushrooms!

I think it's a miracle that so much is known about the use of plants in midievel europe. Wichcraft and other forms of magic took place mostly outside the influence from roman and eventually christian culture and for this reason little is known about it. (just look at all the rsearch being done around 'stonehenge' and how little is actually known about that thing). Most of the 'nature-religion' subculture's where illiterate.
I'm sure that other type's of mushroom then the fly-agaric where used all over europe, but the use of it may just never be recorded anywhere.