#Witches broomstick origin manual#
#Witches broomstick origin full#

The link between cheese and love magic doesn’t stop at seduction, though.

Cheese is toasted when a woman is dressed up and adorned so that she entices and catches the foolish rats: take a woman in adultery and the Devil will catch you. Writing in the 13th century, the moralist and theologian Odo of Cheriton used the alluring smell of grilled cheese to explain adultery:Ĭheese is toasted and placed in a trap when the rat smells it, it enters the trap, seizes the cheese, and is caught by the trap. The idea that cheese is seductive also has a long history. On her command, the bag would leap up and run to her neighbours’ cattle herd, where it would secretly steal milk and bring it back to her.

#Witches broomstick origin manual#

A 14th century morality manual tells a story about a woman with an enchanted leather bag. On a more playful side, though still a serious annoyance for their neighbours, witches were also thought to magically steal milk directly from cows’ udders. Margaret advised Isabel to carry a stick of rowan wood when she milked the cows in future, to protect the milk from “evil eyes”. Only after a service magician named Margaret Stothard performed a counter-curse would the milk curdle properly. Around 1650, the dairymaid Isabel Maine was convinced her milk was cursed, as it wouldn’t turn into cheese. Malevolent witches were also thought to meddle with milk and cheese: in fact, spoiling milk was one of the most common curses associated with witches in early modern Europe. Creator:Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione/Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Making Circe angry meant it was ‘hard cheese’ for the companions of Odysseus.

William of Malmesbury seemed convinced that enchanted cheese was a genuine risk, though, and in his 12th-century writings William explained that female Italian innkeepers were especially prone to using enchanted cheese to turn their customers into beasts of burden. The fourth century Christian theologian, St Augustine of Hippo, agreed that such things might be possible, though unlikely. In The Odyssey, the sorceress Circe turns Odysseus’ companions into animals by feeding them a magic potion mixed into a drink made of cheese, barley meal, honey and wine. Mischievous magicĮven if you’re not a thief, you should be wary around cheese when there’s a witch in the room. The culprit will be unable to swallow their piece of cheese, thus admitting their guilt. Then feed a small piece to each of your suspects. If he is not guilty, he will eat in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. If he is guilty, he will eat in the name of the devil.

#Witches broomstick origin full#

May his mouth be cursed and full of bitterness, under his tongue pain and labour. One of the most common uses for magic cheese in the medieval and early modern periods was to identify thieves and murderers.

Kathryn Paulsen: The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft Ironically, given our later association of cheese with vivid dreams, Artemidorus claims that cheese fortune-telling is among the most unreliable. The 2nd-century diviner, Artemidorus, mentions “ tyromancy” – cheese divination – as a method of discovering the future in his treatise Oneirocritica. In the early modern period (roughly 1450-1750) the creation of the universe was also thought of by some in terms of cheesemaking: “all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together and out of that bulk a mass formed – just as cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels.” The connection with life and the mysterious way that cheese is made, therefore, puts it in a good position to claim magical properties.Ĭheese magic stretches back long before Hildegard and the medieval period. The 12th-century mystic, Hildegard von Bingen, compared cheese making to the miracle of life in the way that it forms curds (or solid matter) from something insubstantial. It might also be because the process by which cheese is made is a little bit magical. It might be to do with the fact it’s made from milk, a powerful substance in itself, with the ability to give life and strength to the young. It’s not entirely clear why cheese is seen to have magical properties. It’s a history that has quite a lot of cheese in it. It was an image from a book of spells claiming that: “You may fascinate a woman by giving her a piece of cheese.” The spell comes from Kathryn Paulsen’s 1971 book, The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft – and, while proffering a lump of cheddar may seem like an unusual way of attracting a possible mate, Paulsen’s book draws on a long history of magic. As I was scrolling through Twitter recently, a viral tweet caught my attention.