Why witches ride on broomsticks

In case you ever tried a broomstick out yourselves, you will know them as not the most comfortable way to travel. If you belong to those who never took a broom onto a hill to jump on it as far as you can: You missed out on something! The bitter realization when crashing down onto the floor was something …

Against the most popular believe, the broomstick did not symbolize a phallus, and therefor a witch riding it on her way to the even better sex with devils and demons, although that image seems to be the most fun!

Witches could fly on anything!

Originally, any object was believed to be flown by witches. The ability to fly was given to those objects by the paste they produced out of dead babies, as I already described in this article! So, any object in the daily life of a witch was suitable, as long as you could sit on it. A pillow, a carpet, even a pet of any kind! Just imagine all of these seduced women smearing dead babies onto theit personal things to fly into the mountains – the early modern world was fascinating!

The business with the brooms

It however was not just a conincidence that broomsticks became the one object to be associated with witches. In late medieval times in the holy roman empire, it was a common profession for women to brew their own beer. What was not used in the own household was sold on the market, or even at their doorstep. A broom upside down next to their entrance door meant there was beer to be sold.

The broomstick is an object associated with women making their own money with an own product. Compared to all the objects a witch was believed to have taken a ride on, the broomstick is a manifest of their exclusion from the workforce.

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https://www.spiegel.de/geschichte/hexenaccessoires-in-darstellungen-woher-kommen-sie-a-6c15f8df-0002-0001-0000-000179121597
https://www.stern.de/panorama/wissen/bierbrauen-war-frauensache—bis-fanatische-christen-die-brauerinnen-als-hexen-verfolgten-30432116.html
Maissen, T. (2018). Frühe Neuzeit. C.H.Beck: München.