In the Europe of the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, bread was made, in large part, with rye. And rye and rye-like plants can host fungusergot*that can, when consumed in high doses, be lethal. In smaller doses, however, ergot can be a powerful hallucinogen. Records from the 14th to the 17th century mention Europeans' affliction with "dancing mania," which found groups of people dancing through streetsoften speaking nonsense and foaming at the mouth as they did sountil they collapsed from exhaustion. Those who experienced the "mania" would later describe the wild visions that accompanied it. (In the 20th century, Albert Hofmann would realize the psychedelic effects of LSD while studying ergot.)
So people, as people are wont to do, adapted this knowledge, figuring out ways to tame ergot, essentially, for hallucinatory purposes. And they experimented with other plants, as well. Forbes's David Kroll notes that there are also hallucinogenic chemicals in Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), Hyoscyamus niger (henbane), Mandragora officinarum (mandrake), and Datura stramonium (jimsonweed). Writing in the 16th century, the Spanish court physician Andrés de Laguna claimed to have taken "a pot full of a certain green ointment
composed of herbs such as hemlock, nightshade, henbane, and mandrake" from the home of a couple accused of witchcraft.
So why do the brooms fit into this? Because to achieve their hallucinations, these early drug users needed a distribution method that was a little more complicated than simple ingestion. When consumed, those old-school hallucinogens could cause assorted unpleasantnessesincluding nausea, vomiting, and skin irritation. What people realized, though, was that absorbing them through the skin could lead to hallucinations that arrived without the unsavory side effects. And the most receptive areas of the body for that absorption were the sweat glands of the armpits ... and the mucus membranes of the genitals.
So people used their developing pharmacological knowledge to produce drug-laden balmsor, yep, "witch's brews." And to distribute those salves with maximum effectiveness, these crafty hallucinators borrowed a technology from the home: a broom. Specifically, the handle of the broom. And then ... you get the idea.
And what about the flying?
Part of the connection may have to do with brooms' place in pagan rituals. As a tool, the broom is seen to balance both "masculine energies (the phallic handle) and female energies (the bristles)"which explains why it was often used, symbolically, in marriage ceremonies. But the more likely connection has to do with the fact that users of "witch's brew" were, in a very practical sense, using their ointment-laden broomsticks to get high. They were using their brooms, basically, to "fly."
