The Witches' Ointment by Thomas Hatsis

Author:Thomas Hatsis
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, pdf
Tags: Entheogens/Occult
Publisher: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Published: 2015-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

WICKED RITUALS AND OINTMENTS

Alonso Tostado (ca. 1400–1455), bishop of Ávila, was a Spanish theologian and exegete who left us two separate descriptions of these ointments, one in his Commentary on Genesis (1435–36), and the other in his Commentary on Matthew (1440). But it is in his interpolations from one commentary to the next that we encounter one of the clearest leaps from soporific drug spells to witches’ ointment. While only making passing mention of the ointments in his later Commentary on Matthew, he expands on their psychoactive nature in the earlier work, Commentary on Genesis, as part of a larger argument about the creation of Eve from Adam.

Let’s temporarily suspend the law of anachronism and work backward in these two commentaries, from Matthew toward Genesis. In Matthew, while addressing whether or not people could be carried by the devil to various places, Tostado took a swing at the long-held view of the Canon Episcopi, which stated that the women who rode with Diana did so only in their imaginations: “It is clear that this is the meaning of the text when it is said that the person who believes such things loses his or her faith and . . . belongs, not to Him, but . . . to the Devil. They believe Diana is a goddess, and yet Diana is the Devil.”65 Tostado further argues that people could not be carried away against their will. For those who chose to be taken away by the devil, it “should not be denied that female and also male sorcerers with certain kinds of wicked rituals and ointments are carried away by demons.” They meet with others and together “revere the demons” by “indulging in lust and all indecencies.”66 The “wicked rituals and ointments” opened an avenue for Tostado to demonstrate that witches really did fly, not bodily, but spiritually, a crimen animae, “crime of the soul” so to speak.

In the Genesis commentary, however, Tostado says nothing of flying with demons or worshipping Diana or Herodias as Satan’s surrogates. He does mention some peculiar properties of these ointments, though, which sound remarkably similar to those in the hallucinatory drug recipes discussed in chapter 4 of this book. He writes that

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