Sobre las escobas masturbatorias de las brujas

"De la misma época -concretamente de 1324, cuatro años después de promulgarse la bula Super illius specula de Juan XXII- es una diligencia inquisitorial donde se dice:

Al revisar el desván de la dama se encontró un tubo de ungüento, con el cual engrasaba un bastón, sobre el cual podía deambular y galopar a través de todos los obstáculos donde y como ella quisiera.

El detalle de la escoba, reiterado en mil lugares, tiene una explicación farmacológica también, y es de los que se mantienen practicamente invariable hasta el siglo XVII. Otra diligencia, ahora  de 1470, indica:

El vulgo cree, y las brujas confiesan, que en ciertos días y noches untan un palo y lo montan para llegar a un lugar determinado, o bien se untan ellas mismas bajo los brazos y en otros lugares donde crece vello...

El palo se empleaba para frotar o incertar los ungüentos en zonas que la modestia del inquisidor se resiste a decir...

Tiene probablemente razón un antropólogo contemporáneo al afirmar que las famosas escobas de las brujas fueron consoladores quimicamente reforzados..."

Escohotado. Historia de las Drogas, Tomo I. pp. 280-281 

"WEYER, JOHANN. De Praestigiis Daemonum et Incantationibus ac Veneficiis. BasUeae, 1568.

This book is dedicated to the Duke of Cleves and Juliers and Berg, whose physician Weyer had been for fifteen years. It was submitted before publication to the theologians and priests of the court. (Reference to year 1566 in iv, 8; to 1563 in iv, 13 ; to 1564 in v, 22 ; to 1567 in vi, 6.) First ed. 1563.

…iii, c. 16 [bis]. The experiences of witches are delirious dreams induced by the drugs wherewith they confect their ointments.

Long quotation from Jo. Bapt. Porta (Magia Naturalis, lib. ii, c. 26), who had investigated the matter carefully. He gives the ingredients which are mixed with infants' fataconite, eleoselnium, frondes populneae, soot, [suim], pentaphyllon, bat's blood, belladonna, etc. They first rub the surface till red, to open the pores, and then rub the ointment strongly in. He experimented with a well known witch who promised for money to bring him answers. She turned everyone out of the room, but he watched her through the crack of the door, saw her strip herself naked and anoint herself thoroughly all over with an unguent. The somniferous drugs threw her into a deep sleep, out of which she could not be aroused by a smart whipping. When she awoke, she recited a long delirium, how she had crossed mountains and seas, etc., bringing false responses, and persisted pertinaciously on being contradicted. Their minds dwelling perpetually on these subjects, they are more susceptible, and as they live exclusively on insufficient vegetable foodbeets, chestnuts, greens, etc. they are more easily affected."

Lea, Henry Charles. Materials Toward A History Of Witchcraft p. 505