Flying Ointment
Witches flying on broomsticks (as in the woodcut above) are a common trope in popular culture, but for Kramer this presented a problem. Through a series of theological arguments drawing on the Church Fathers, he ‘proves’ that such a thing is possible, since although flying is unnatural to man the devil is permitted to operate under God’s permission, and offering such powers is a way to test the purity of people before their place in the afterlife is decided. Having established the possibility of witches flying, Kramer goes further in elaborating how this feat is actually achieved.
Witches simply make a special flying ointment. ‘They make at the devil’s instruction from the limbs of children, particularly of those whom they have killed before baptism, and anoint with it a chair or a broomstick; whereupon they are immediately carried up into the air, either by day or by night, and either visibly or, if they wish, invisibly’ (Malleus Part II, Question 1, Chapter 3). The reason for unbaptised children being selected is that in Catholicism all those that die without being baptised are condemned automatically to hell, and most churches refused to bury them in consecrated ground.
As if his logical arguments were not enough, Kramer also has several real examples of flying witches in his archives. The main attraction of flying to witches was to allow them to be more efficient in their evildoing. A witch living in the Rhineland was not invited to a wedding, and so she was carried through the air by a devil to a nearby hill to enjoy a grandstand view of her own urine raining from the skies onto the revellers (Ibid.). Her flight was witnessed by local shepherds, and the party-pooper witch was burned at the stake.
Sometimes the witch does not wish to be bodily transported, as for example to an inconvenient coven meeting, or has run out of unbaptised infants to make flying ointment, and so instead can watch what is going on elsewhere by a form of conference-call. A witch of Breisach told Kramer that to achieve this witches must lie down on their left side, ‘and then a sort of bluish vapour comes from their mouth, through which they can clearly see what is happening’ (Ibid.). This anecdote, extracted under torture, was seen as unequivocal proof by Kramer.