The legendary Flying Ointment has long been whispered of in the shadowed corners of witchcraft, steeped in folklore, mystery, and danger. It is a salve of visions, a key to the liminal spaces between worlds, used by witches who sought to untether their spirits from the confines of flesh and travel beyond the veil.
First recorded in medieval Europe, the ointment is deeply entwined with tales of the witches' sabbat, where practitioners were said to anoint themselves before soaring through the night sky, crossing vast distances in a heartbeat, slipping between worlds like the mist that clings to the earth at twilight. But these were not journeys of the body; they were flights of the soul, astral voyages undertaken in deep trance states induced by the potent botanicals within the salve. The infamous inquisitor Johannes Nider wrote of such unguents in Formicarius (1435), as did the demonologist Nicholas Rรฉmy in Demonolatry (1595). The works of Andrรฉs Laguna (1555) and Giambattista della Porta (1589) contain formulas using henbane, belladonna, and mandrake—herbs known for their ability to summon visions, break the boundaries of consciousness, and send the spirit hurtling beyond the mundane.
This ointment was never merely for flight. It was a conduit for deep Shadow Work, allowing witches to slip into the Underworld, commune with spirits, walk with ancestors, and unearth the hidden corners of the self. It was applied during rites of necromancy, divination, communion with the dead, and to move between the waking world and the realm of the unseen.
To use such an unguent is not for the unprepared. The herbs contained within can be both sacred and deadly. The old ways must be approached with knowledge, reverence, and caution.
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