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There are certain things that, apparently, a witch simply cannot leave the house without pointed hat, something black, preferably involving a cat, possibly a cauldron, and, of course, a broomstick, which is slightly strange when you actually think about it, because of all the objects we could have chosen to give supernatural women the power of flight, we choose the thing you sweep the kitchen with.
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Although actually, who didn't have a child-sized broom at Halloween as a kid?
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You know the ones I mean.
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A little wooden stick with a bundle of badly attached twigs tied around the bottom.
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It looked wonderfully witchy for approximately forty-five minutes, and then you spent the rest of Halloween shedding bits of broom everywhere you went.
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Your parents were still finding those bloody twigs around the house until practically Christmas.
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So, perhaps we've all been trained for this episode from a very early age.
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But seriously, why a broomstick?
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Not wings, not a magical bird, not a chariot pulled by supernatural creatures, not even, generally speaking, flying carpet.
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Somewhere along the way, European culture looked at the humble broomstick, an object associated with houses, cleaning, and women's domestic labour, handed it to a witch, and said, Off you go.
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And she did.
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She flew into paintings, pamphlets, and folklore.
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Eventually she flew over Hobwarts.
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She carried Kiki across the sea towards her new home.
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She carried the Sanderson sisters into the night sky.
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Although apparently, if there aren't enough brooms to go around, a vacuum cleaner and a mop will do.
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And Sabrina, the teenage witch, apparently received the same memo, because the humble vacuum cleaner has also managed to find itself drafted into witch transportation.
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The broomstick is now so completely tangled up with the visual language of witchcraft that you barely need the witch anymore.
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Draw a crooked broom flying across a full moon, and we know exactly who is supposed to be riding it.
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In fact, you can take the witch away altogether and just leave us with the broomstick.
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And we still know who it belongs to.
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But underneath that rather charming Halloween image is a history involving domestic labour, nocturnal flight, hallucinogenic ointments, sex, the devil, fertility, marriage, and a surprisingly persistent historical claim about exactly what witches were supposed to be doing when they climbed aboard their broomsticks.
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So perhaps don't let the children listen too closely to this one.
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I am a practicing eclectic witch and witchcraft on-screen scholar, and I need somebody to talk to about all these thoughts I have about what built the witch.
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Congratulations, listener, that person is you.
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And today we're flying.
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The broomstick might be one of the simplest pieces of witch iconography we've talked about so far, but it tells us an enormous amount about how the witch has been constructed.
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Because unlike the wand, which we talked about last time, the broom begins as something completely ordinary.
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It belongs to the home.
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Historically, it belongs particularly to women's work within that home.
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And yet, once you put it underneath the witch, this symbol of domesticity becomes the thing that allows her to leave the ground entirely.
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Before Harry Potter ever heard the word Quidditch, before Kiki packed her radio and flew away from home, and long before Sarah Sanderson attempted aviation by Mop, witches were already being imagined travelling through the night.
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So where did that image come from?
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And how did something designed to sweep the floor become the witch's ticket to the sky?
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First things first.
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Stories about supernatural flight are much older than the broomstick riding witch.
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People imagined magical and supernatural beings travelling through the air long before anybody started drawing witches straddling household cleaning equipment.
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One of the texts that helps us see the development of these ideas is something called the Canon Episcope.
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This was an influential medieval church text discussing women who believed that they travelled at night with the goddess Diana and a company of other women.
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And here's the interesting bit.
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The church wasn't initially saying, oh God, witches can fly, quite the opposite.
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The argument was that these women had been deceived into believing these journeys had happened.
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In other words, the night flight wasn't necessarily being treated as a physical event.
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It could be understood as an illusion, deception, or false belief.
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But over the following centuries, European ideas about witchcraft became much darker.
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The imagined witch became increasingly connected to the devil.
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The nocturnal journey became connected to the witch's Sabbath.
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Gradually, something that earlier authorities could dismiss as illusion became something later demonologists were increasingly prepared to imagine as physically possible through demonic power.
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And this is where our broom begins to creep into the picture.
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One of the earliest famous images appears in 15th century manuscript of Martin Lefranc, called Le Champion des Dons.
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In it, we see two women flying.
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One appears to be riding a stick, and the other is riding something recognizably broom-like.
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And honestly, the striking thing about the image is how familiar it already looks.
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Put that woman in silhouettes, stick a full moon behind her, and you could sell it as Halloween decoration tomorrow.
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But why the broom?
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Well, think about what a broom actually was.
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The traditional broom, or bizum, was made from bundles of twigs fastened around a handle.
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Nothing particularly magical about that.
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It was a practical household object, and household cleaning was heavily gendered work.
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So the broomstick was already culturally connected with women, domesticity, and the home.
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Which makes what happens to it rather fascinating, because the object associated with women's work inside the home becomes the thing with which the witch can fly straight out of it.
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Now, I'm not suggesting that some medieval bloke sat there thinking, you know what this needs?
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A feminist critique of gendered domestic labour.
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He absolutely did not.
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But looking at the image from our position now, the symbolism is difficult to miss.
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The witch doesn't need a knight's horse.
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She doesn't need a nobleman's carriage.
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She takes something already sitting in her world and uses it to escape the world entirely.
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And then things get weird, because witches weren't only accused of flying, there are also historical accounts involving what became known as flying ointments, substances supposedly used before these nocturnal journeys.
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This is where history, pharmacology, and modern internet folklore get very tangled very quickly.
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Some plants associated with European witchcraft, including Belladonna, Henvane, and Mandrake, contain substances capable of causing extremely dangerous hallucinations and delirium.
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Modern writers have therefore asked whether some stories of magical flight could have originated in altered states of consciousness.
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Perhaps someone didn't physically believe they had climbed onto a broomstick and flown through the window.
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Perhaps they experienced the sensation of flight.
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It's an interesting theory.
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But, and this is a fairly enormous but, the evidence doesn't allow us to confidently reconstruct some secret standardized medieval witch recipe and say, yep, that's exactly what they were doing.
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And whenever you're researching the subject online, you will eventually encounter an even more specific version of the story.
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Apparently, witches put hallucinogenic ointment onto broomstick handles, applied it to intimate areas of the body, hallucinated that they were flying, and that is supposedly why witches ride broomsticks.
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Which sounds like exactly the kind of historical fact the internet would absolutely love to be true.
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And that means it's time to be suspicious.
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But we'll come back to that.
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Because first, we've got several hundred years of cultural development to jump over.
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And eventually, witches don't just fly on brooms, they can play sports on them.
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Before we get to Hogwarts, though, we need to make a brief stop in Oz.
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Yes, again.
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Because by 1939, the broomstick is already so firmly attached to the screen witch that the wizard of Oz can use it as something more than a prop.
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It can stand in for the witch herself.
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The wizard sends Dorothy and her companions to destroy the wicked witch of the West, but he doesn't simply tell them to come back and tell him they've done it.
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He wants proof.
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Specifically, he tells Dorothy, Bring me the broomstick, the Witch of the West.
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And that is fascinating, because the broomstick has become an identifying object, a sort of ID.
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After Dorothy accidentally destroys the witch with water, she returns to the Emerald City carrying the broomstick.
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The witch herself is gone, but Dorothy can place that object before the wizard and everybody understands what it represents.
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Here is your proof, here is your witch.
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Or rather, here is the thing that tells you unmistakably that the witch is dead.
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The broomstick has become so synonymous with witchcraft that it can almost act as a substitute for the witch's body.
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And that's in 1939.
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So when we jump forward to Hogwarts, the filmmakers are working with an audience who have already had decades upon decades of screen witches reinforcing an image that was centuries old before cinema even existed.
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Which brings us to Harry Potter.
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There are plenty of broomstick scenes I could choose from Harry Potter, particularly once Quidditch becomes established, but I actually think the first flying lesson in Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone tells us more about what the films are doing with the broomstick than any Quidditch match does.
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Think about how the scene looks.
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The children are standing in rows in the grounds of Hogwarts, each with a broom laid neatly beside them.
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Behind them is an enormous stone castle, with its towers, arches, and courtyards, deliberately constructing a world that feels ancient.
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If you've been to Annik, it's imposing and amazing.
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Visually, we're surrounded by the past, and lying neatly on the grass are dozens of objects that belong to one of the oldest visual stereotypes of witchcraft.
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Except nobody is frightened of them.
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Nobody thinks they're sinister.
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Neville might be a little bit nervous, but at the end of the day, they're school equipment.
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Madame Hooch stands in front of the class like a PE teacher and tells them to put their hands over their brooms and command them.
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Up.
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And that is such an interesting transformation of the witch's broom.
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The mise en scĂšne takes an object associated with transgression and places it within an institution.
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The broom has been disciplined, regulated, and literally lined up in rows for children to use.
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Magic has a timetable now.
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Harry's relationship with the broom also immediately tells us something about him.
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He arrives at Hogwarts knowing virtually nothing about magic.
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Hermione, despite being muggle-born, understands spells before he does.
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Ron understands wizarding culture before Harry does.
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Harry is constantly discovering a world everybody else seems to understand already.
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And then somebody gives him a broomstick, and suddenly he's good at something.
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Not just good, naturally, inherently good.
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When the broom leaps into his hand, and particularly when Harry later takes off after Malfoy, the camera gives us movement and space that Harry hasn't really possessed before.
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And I think that's a lovely visual contrast here.
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Harry's story begins with confinement.
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He sleeps in the cupboard under the stairs.
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It's small, enclosed, dark, and controlled by other people.
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Then Harry discovers the magical world, gets onto a broomstick, and suddenly the camera can follow him upwards.
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Height, movement, open space, freedom.
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The boy who lived in a cupboard can now fly.
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And from that point onwards, the broomstick becomes much more than a form of transportation.
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It's sporting equipment, its technology, its status.
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The Nimbus 2000 isn't simply a broomstick.
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It's the broomstick everybody wants.
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Then comes the 2001, which Malfoy's father bribes the entire team with.
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And then comes the firebolt, which is essentially the magical world's answer to somebody arriving outside your house in a very expensive sports car.
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And of course, the broomstick gives us Quidditch, which means that an object once associated with accusations of witches travelling through the night to demonic gatherings becomes school physical education.
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There is something deeply funny about that when you know the history.
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Hundreds of years ago, demonologists are worrying about what witches might be doing whilst they're straddling sticks at night.
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At Hogwarts, they've got a referee.
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But Harry Potter also demonstrates how culturally established the broomstick witch has become.
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The film doesn't need Professor Hooch to explain why magical people fly on brooms.
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We already know.
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The audience brings that information into the film with them, and filmmakers can therefore take centuries of witch imagery and build an entirely new, magical culture on top of it.
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Kiki's delivery service does something much quieter with the same object.
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If Harry's broom becomes institutionalized magical technology, Kiki's broom is personal, it's independence.
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And the scene I keep coming back to is Kiki leaving home.
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She's 13, dressed in her dark witch's dress with that enormous red bow in her hair, preparing to leave everything familiar behind as part of her witch training.
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She has Gigi with her, she has her belongings, she has her little radio, and she has the broomstick.
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Visually, Hiki herself is incredibly simple and recognizable.
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Dark dress, black cat, broom.
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You could almost reduce her to a collection of traditional witch signifiers, but the film changes what those signifiers mean.
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There is no threatening nocturnal witch here.
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There is just a child leaving home.
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When Kiki takes off, the broom becomes part of the visual language of separation.
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The ground and her family recede behind her.
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The landscape opens up around her.
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Her journey through the sky physically represents the transitions she's making in her life.
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She's moving away from childhood dependence and towards independence.
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And importantly, she doesn't immediately look completely graceful doing it.
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Her relationship with flying feels physical.
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The broom wobbles.
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Weather matters.
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Balance matters confidence matters.
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That becomes even more important later when Kiki loses her ability to fly.
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Because the broom isn't functioning like Harry's firebolt, it isn't simply a magical machine that will work regardless of the person sitting on it.
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Flying is connected to Kiki herself.
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Her magic falters as her confidence and sense of identity falter.
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And eventually, when she needs to fly again, she doesn't even have the comfort of her familiar broom.
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She takes an ordinary street sweeper's broom, which I love, because once again we're brought back to the ordinary object underneath the magical symbol.
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It's a broomstick.
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It's meant to sweep the floor.
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But Kiki needs it to do something extraordinary.
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Her flight also becomes labour in another sense because Kiki doesn't simply fly around for fun.
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She starts a delivery service.
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Her broom becomes how she earns money.
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And there is something wonderful about that when you put it beside the broom's domestic history.
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We started with an object associated with women's work inside the household, confinement.
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Now we've got a young witch using that same object to build an independent life inside it, freedom.
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The broom still represents work, but now it also gives her mobility.
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And then we have Hocus Pocus, which looks at centuries of witch iconography and goes, right, but what if we gave one of them a Hoover?
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The Sanderson Sisters Flight is a wonderful example of a film deliberately playing with the audience's existing visual knowledge of witches.
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When they need to take to the sky, Winifred gets the traditional broomstick.
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Mary gets a vacuum cleaner, and Sarah gets a mop.
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Visually, Winifred maintains the historical silhouette.
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She's the elder sister, the leader, and the most conventionally commanding witch of the three, so she gets the icon.
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The other two become variations on it.
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And that's important because the joke doesn't work unless the audience already understands the original image.
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Nobody has to say that's funny because witches traditionally fly on broomsticks.
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We know.
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The broom is already sitting in our cultural memory.
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So the film can replace it with another long-handled domestic object and let our recognition do the work.
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But what I particularly love is that the replacements don't actually move very far away from the broom's historical associations.
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The mop and a vacuum cleaner are still tools of domestic labour.
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The technology has changed, the witch still flies, and Hocus Pokers isn't alone in making that joke.
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Sabrina the Teenage Witch also gives us Sabrina using a vacuum cleaner instead of an expected broom.
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And again, the humour relies entirely on the audience understanding what ought to be there.
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By the 1990s, the broomstick witch is such a stable cultural image that television can parody it simply by swapping the object.
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You don't need a broom to signify a broom anymore.
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You just need something that reminds us of one.
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And there's something else going on here that I think is worth noticing.
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The vacuum cleaner is once again a deeply domestic object.
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So even when modern witch stories update the broom for comedy, they often replace it with another piece of feminized household technology.
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The joke modernizes, the gendered association survives.
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And today's claim is possibly my favorite one we've had so far, because it is exactly the sort of sentence that makes you stop scrolling and go, excuse me?
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The claim is, and you may want young ears to turn off here, witches rode broomsticks because the broom represents the devil's penis.
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Yes, we're talking about this.
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So, fact, fiction, or folklore?
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Well.
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European witchcraft accusations absolutely became sexualized.
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Demonological literature described witches having sexual relationships with demons and with the devil.
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The imagined witch's Sabbath became an inversion of respectable Christian society, religiously, socially, and sexually.
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So sex and the devil absolutely belong within the historical construction of the witch.
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We also have images of women straddling sticks and brooms.
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And yes, you do not need to be Sigmund Freud to look at the long wooden object positioned between a woman's legs and think, hmm, it's a bit phallic.
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But that does not automatically mean medieval Europe had a universally understood symbolic code where broom equals devil's penis.
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It's where the story gets too neat.
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The idea takes several things that genuinely exist within the historical record: sexualized demonology, broom riding witches, flying ointments, and phallic symbolism, and bundles them together into one spectacularly memorable explanation.
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And spectacularly memorable explanations are often where bad history thrives.
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The same problem applies to the claim about witches applying psychoactive ointments internally using broom handles.
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There are historical references to ointments, there are plants associated with witchcraft that genuinely can produce hallucinations.
00:21:56.240 --> 00:22:10.640
There are accounts of supernatural flight, but getting from Those pieces of evidence too, and therefore witches were getting high by putting broomsticks up themselves and hallucinating that they could fly, requires several historical leaps.
00:22:10.960 --> 00:22:15.839
So my verdict, folklore, built from fragments of fact.
00:22:16.160 --> 00:22:19.839
Witches really were accused of sexual relationships with the devil.
00:22:20.079 --> 00:22:23.759
Witches really were represented astride sticks and brooms.
00:22:24.000 --> 00:22:34.480
Flying ointments really do appear within the history of witchcraft, but the wonderfully filthy one-sentence explanation history is messier than the meme.
00:22:35.039 --> 00:22:36.559
It usually is.
00:22:49.039 --> 00:22:52.160
The broom hasn't disappeared from modern witchcraft either.
00:22:52.319 --> 00:23:01.200
And as always, when we talk about contemporary witchcraft on this podcast, there isn't one universal practice shared by everybody who calls themselves a witch.
00:23:01.519 --> 00:23:04.880
But you will sometimes hear a witch's broom called a beesum.
00:23:05.200 --> 00:23:09.039
And brooms can be used symbolically for cleansing ritual space.
00:23:09.359 --> 00:23:17.759
And no, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm telling you that witches really need to hoover before doing a spell, usually afterwards, if you use a salt circle.
00:23:18.079 --> 00:23:21.839
Although, I mean, sometimes the floor does need doing.
00:23:22.079 --> 00:23:27.359
But ritual sweeping can represent clearing away unwanted energy and preparing a space.
00:23:27.519 --> 00:23:32.640
And I actually really like that, because it doesn't completely reinvent what the broom is for.
00:23:32.880 --> 00:23:34.160
It still cleans.
00:23:34.559 --> 00:23:37.759
We've just changed what we imagine we're cleaning away.
00:23:38.000 --> 00:23:44.000
The broom can also become an object associated with boundaries, thresholds, and transitions.
00:23:44.240 --> 00:23:47.680
Which brings us to another tradition involving brooms.
00:23:48.160 --> 00:23:48.880
Marriage.
00:23:49.119 --> 00:23:58.240
And this one matters particularly because it's another example of what happens when the internet takes several complicated history and squashes them into one.
00:24:08.480 --> 00:24:14.880
You will quite often see jumping the broom described online as an ancient pagan wedding tradition.
00:24:15.119 --> 00:24:20.960
And if you've spent any time looking at pagan, witchy, or alternative weddings, you've probably encountered it.
00:24:21.200 --> 00:24:28.880
A couple places a broom on the ground, they jump over it together, and the act represents crossing a threshold into married life.
00:24:29.119 --> 00:24:33.599
Lovely, simple, except the history isn't simple at all.
00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:40.799
Forms of broomstick marriage and informal marriage customs involving brooms existed historically in Britain.
00:24:40.960 --> 00:24:48.559
The broom makes symbolic sense here because it's connected to the household and it can therefore represent establishing a home together.
00:24:48.799 --> 00:24:56.720
Physically crossing over something also gives us a very obvious ritual image of moving from one stage of life to another.
00:24:56.960 --> 00:25:02.799
But jumping the broom also has an enormously important history within African American culture.
00:25:03.039 --> 00:25:12.400
During slavery in the United States, enslaved people were denied many legal rights, including secure legal recognition of their marriages.
00:25:12.720 --> 00:25:24.160
Jumping the broom became associated with marriage ceremonies among enslaved African Americans, and the practice later became an important symbol of African American heritage and cultural memory.
00:25:24.400 --> 00:25:27.039
Those histories deserve to remain visible.
00:25:27.279 --> 00:25:38.720
Because if we simply call jumping the broom an ancient witch wedding, we flatten completely different traditions into one convenient origin story, which is something we seem to do a lot in witchcraft.
00:25:38.799 --> 00:25:41.279
And perhaps that's the hidden hex of the broom.
00:25:41.519 --> 00:25:47.279
We look at an object, we recognize, and assume that means we understand what it means.
00:25:47.519 --> 00:25:54.160
But the broom has carried different meanings for different people, in different places and at different moments in history.
00:25:54.400 --> 00:26:09.759
Sometimes it's magical, sometimes it's domestic, sometimes it's sexual, sometimes it's ceremonial, and sometimes it's something you bought from the Halloween Isle when you were seven and were still finding pieces of behind the sofa six weeks later.
00:26:10.079 --> 00:26:16.319
Objects collect stories, and the broom has collected an extraordinary number of them.
00:26:23.119 --> 00:26:26.480
So, how does it all come together in how we view witches?
00:26:26.799 --> 00:26:29.359
Why does the witch fly on a broomstick?
00:26:29.519 --> 00:26:33.839
The slightly annoying answer is that there probably isn't one reason.
00:26:34.079 --> 00:26:36.720
And I think that's actually more interesting.
00:26:36.960 --> 00:26:54.000
We have older traditions of supernatural night travel, medieval stories about women travelling at night, changing Christian ideas about witchcraft and the devil, the witch's Sabbath, sticks and stuffs associated with magical movement, flying ointments and sexualized demonology.
00:26:54.160 --> 00:27:02.319
And sitting right in the middle of ordinary domestic life, we have an object already strongly associated with women, the broomstick.
00:27:02.559 --> 00:27:06.880
Eventually, visual culture does what visual culture is extremely good at doing.
00:27:07.119 --> 00:27:08.400
It simplifies.
00:27:08.559 --> 00:27:13.599
An image becomes recognizable, and then another artist uses it, and then another.
00:27:13.839 --> 00:27:22.000
Literature inherits it, theatre inherits it, Halloween inherits it, film inherits it, television inherits it.
00:27:22.240 --> 00:27:28.799
Eventually, the connection becomes so strong that the object doesn't need explanation anymore.
00:27:29.039 --> 00:27:35.680
The Wizard of Oz can send Dorothy to retrieve a broomstick and use that object as proof that the wicked witch is dead.
00:27:35.920 --> 00:27:37.920
The witch isn't there.
00:27:38.240 --> 00:27:39.759
But she doesn't need to be.
00:27:39.920 --> 00:27:42.319
The broom tells us who she was.
00:27:43.039 --> 00:27:45.680
Harry Potter can then institutionalize it.
00:27:45.839 --> 00:27:55.119
The medieval-looking architecture, the rows of students, and Madame Huchi's lesson transform the witch's transgressive flight into something regulated and ordinary.
00:27:55.359 --> 00:27:58.240
The broom becomes part of magical society.
00:27:58.799 --> 00:28:01.759
Kiki's delivery service can then personalize it.
00:28:01.920 --> 00:28:06.160
The broom becomes independence, work, confidence, and growing up.
00:28:06.319 --> 00:28:14.480
A symbol once attached to the threatening woman traveling beyond accepted boundaries becomes the means through which a young girl discovers the world.
00:28:14.720 --> 00:28:18.480
And Hocus Pocus and Sabrina the Teenage Witch can parody it.
00:28:18.720 --> 00:28:24.240
They can replace the broom altogether because the audience mentally supplies the missing symbol for them.
00:28:24.480 --> 00:28:28.079
That's how powerful visual iconography becomes.
00:28:28.319 --> 00:28:32.319
None of these stories have to explain why witches fly on brooms.
00:28:32.559 --> 00:28:36.160
Centuries of culture have already done that work for them.
00:28:36.400 --> 00:28:40.240
And that's what fascinates me about witch iconography generally.
00:28:40.480 --> 00:28:46.000
These things become so familiar that we stop noticing how strange they actually are.
00:28:46.319 --> 00:28:48.400
A woman wearing a pointed hat.
00:28:49.599 --> 00:28:50.880
A bubbling cauldron?
00:28:51.279 --> 00:28:51.839
Which.
00:28:52.160 --> 00:28:53.279
A black cat.
00:28:54.720 --> 00:28:56.720
A broom crossing the moon.
00:28:58.160 --> 00:29:08.000
But underneath that silhouette is an enormous history of anxiety, domesticity, sexuality, superstition, and eventually freedom.
00:29:08.319 --> 00:29:13.279
And perhaps that's why I particularly love what Kiki's delivery service does with the image.
00:29:13.519 --> 00:29:20.400
Because Kiki takes this ancient image of the suspicious woman travelling through the night and makes it joyous.
00:29:20.640 --> 00:29:27.519
The girl climbs onto her broom, she leaves home, and she discovers just how far she can go.
00:29:28.640 --> 00:29:33.599
I'm Millie Hardy Ashton, and this has been Hexposition Which is on Screen.
00:29:33.839 --> 00:29:37.359
Next time, we're putting something on the boil.
00:29:37.680 --> 00:29:47.200
From Shakespeare's bubbling cauldron to bottles, brews, poisons, and magical concoctions, we're asking why witches are always making something suspicious in the kitchen.
00:29:47.440 --> 00:29:50.559
That's next time on Hexposition Which is on screen.
00:29:50.799 --> 00:30:02.000
Until then, the broom may have begun as one of the most ordinary objects in the household, but centuries of folklore and visual culture taught us to see it as a vehicle for witches.
00:30:02.319 --> 00:30:11.119
And sometimes taking flight is really just another way of imagining what happens when a woman refuses to stay where she's been put.
00:30:12.000 --> 00:30:19.279
Theme music is Hulderfolk, Hidden Folk by Jamie Sims, and this has been a familiar footsteps production.
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:24.480
There are certain things that, apparently, a witch simply cannot leave the house without pointed hat, something black, preferably involving a cat, possibly a cauldron, and, of course, a broomstick, which is slightly strange when you actually think about it, because of all the objects we could have chosen to give supernatural women the power of flight, we choose the thing you sweep the kitchen with.
00:00:24.960 --> 00:00:29.920
Although actually, who didn't have a child-sized broom at Halloween as a kid?
00:00:30.160 --> 00:00:31.440
You know the ones I mean.
00:00:31.600 --> 00:00:36.719
A little wooden stick with a bundle of badly attached twigs tied around the bottom.
00:00:36.880 --> 00:00:45.840
It looked wonderfully witchy for approximately forty-five minutes, and then you spent the rest of Halloween shedding bits of broom everywhere you went.
00:00:46.079 --> 00:00:51.439
Your parents were still finding those bloody twigs around the house until practically Christmas.
00:00:52.079 --> 00:00:57.039
So, perhaps we've all been trained for this episode from a very early age.
00:00:57.359 --> 00:01:00.320
But seriously, why a broomstick?
00:01:00.560 --> 00:01:10.000
Not wings, not a magical bird, not a chariot pulled by supernatural creatures, not even, generally speaking, flying carpet.
00:01:10.239 --> 00:01:22.560
Somewhere along the way, European culture looked at the humble broomstick, an object associated with houses, cleaning, and women's domestic labour, handed it to a witch, and said, Off you go.
00:01:23.040 --> 00:01:24.000
And she did.
00:01:24.560 --> 00:01:28.159
She flew into paintings, pamphlets, and folklore.
00:01:28.319 --> 00:01:30.480
Eventually she flew over Hobwarts.
00:01:30.640 --> 00:01:33.840
She carried Kiki across the sea towards her new home.
00:01:34.079 --> 00:01:37.200
She carried the Sanderson sisters into the night sky.
00:01:37.359 --> 00:01:43.200
Although apparently, if there aren't enough brooms to go around, a vacuum cleaner and a mop will do.
00:01:43.599 --> 00:01:53.040
And Sabrina, the teenage witch, apparently received the same memo, because the humble vacuum cleaner has also managed to find itself drafted into witch transportation.
00:01:53.280 --> 00:02:00.319
The broomstick is now so completely tangled up with the visual language of witchcraft that you barely need the witch anymore.
00:02:00.560 --> 00:02:07.200
Draw a crooked broom flying across a full moon, and we know exactly who is supposed to be riding it.
00:02:07.599 --> 00:02:12.319
In fact, you can take the witch away altogether and just leave us with the broomstick.
00:02:12.560 --> 00:02:15.280
And we still know who it belongs to.
00:02:15.919 --> 00:02:36.000
But underneath that rather charming Halloween image is a history involving domestic labour, nocturnal flight, hallucinogenic ointments, sex, the devil, fertility, marriage, and a surprisingly persistent historical claim about exactly what witches were supposed to be doing when they climbed aboard their broomsticks.
00:02:36.400 --> 00:02:40.000
So perhaps don't let the children listen too closely to this one.
00:03:09.759 --> 00:03:18.240
I am a practicing eclectic witch and witchcraft on-screen scholar, and I need somebody to talk to about all these thoughts I have about what built the witch.
00:03:18.400 --> 00:03:21.199
Congratulations, listener, that person is you.
00:03:21.520 --> 00:03:23.520
And today we're flying.
00:03:23.759 --> 00:03:34.479
The broomstick might be one of the simplest pieces of witch iconography we've talked about so far, but it tells us an enormous amount about how the witch has been constructed.
00:03:34.800 --> 00:03:40.960
Because unlike the wand, which we talked about last time, the broom begins as something completely ordinary.
00:03:41.199 --> 00:03:42.639
It belongs to the home.
00:03:42.960 --> 00:03:47.840
Historically, it belongs particularly to women's work within that home.
00:03:48.080 --> 00:03:56.159
And yet, once you put it underneath the witch, this symbol of domesticity becomes the thing that allows her to leave the ground entirely.
00:03:56.400 --> 00:04:10.479
Before Harry Potter ever heard the word Quidditch, before Kiki packed her radio and flew away from home, and long before Sarah Sanderson attempted aviation by Mop, witches were already being imagined travelling through the night.
00:04:10.800 --> 00:04:12.639
So where did that image come from?
00:04:12.800 --> 00:04:18.560
And how did something designed to sweep the floor become the witch's ticket to the sky?
00:04:25.519 --> 00:04:26.959
First things first.
00:04:27.360 --> 00:04:32.639
Stories about supernatural flight are much older than the broomstick riding witch.
00:04:32.959 --> 00:04:42.000
People imagined magical and supernatural beings travelling through the air long before anybody started drawing witches straddling household cleaning equipment.
00:04:42.319 --> 00:04:48.879
One of the texts that helps us see the development of these ideas is something called the Canon Episcope.
00:04:49.040 --> 00:04:58.079
This was an influential medieval church text discussing women who believed that they travelled at night with the goddess Diana and a company of other women.
00:04:58.319 --> 00:05:00.079
And here's the interesting bit.
00:05:00.319 --> 00:05:05.600
The church wasn't initially saying, oh God, witches can fly, quite the opposite.
00:05:05.920 --> 00:05:11.279
The argument was that these women had been deceived into believing these journeys had happened.
00:05:11.519 --> 00:05:16.399
In other words, the night flight wasn't necessarily being treated as a physical event.
00:05:16.639 --> 00:05:21.199
It could be understood as an illusion, deception, or false belief.
00:05:21.680 --> 00:05:27.199
But over the following centuries, European ideas about witchcraft became much darker.
00:05:27.680 --> 00:05:31.279
The imagined witch became increasingly connected to the devil.
00:05:31.439 --> 00:05:35.199
The nocturnal journey became connected to the witch's Sabbath.
00:05:35.680 --> 00:05:48.160
Gradually, something that earlier authorities could dismiss as illusion became something later demonologists were increasingly prepared to imagine as physically possible through demonic power.
00:05:48.480 --> 00:05:51.920
And this is where our broom begins to creep into the picture.
00:05:52.319 --> 00:06:00.399
One of the earliest famous images appears in 15th century manuscript of Martin Lefranc, called Le Champion des Dons.
00:06:01.199 --> 00:06:03.360
In it, we see two women flying.
00:06:03.519 --> 00:06:08.959
One appears to be riding a stick, and the other is riding something recognizably broom-like.
00:06:09.199 --> 00:06:14.079
And honestly, the striking thing about the image is how familiar it already looks.
00:06:14.399 --> 00:06:21.199
Put that woman in silhouettes, stick a full moon behind her, and you could sell it as Halloween decoration tomorrow.
00:06:21.519 --> 00:06:23.199
But why the broom?
00:06:23.600 --> 00:06:26.399
Well, think about what a broom actually was.
00:06:26.560 --> 00:06:31.839
The traditional broom, or bizum, was made from bundles of twigs fastened around a handle.
00:06:32.240 --> 00:06:34.800
Nothing particularly magical about that.
00:06:35.040 --> 00:06:40.160
It was a practical household object, and household cleaning was heavily gendered work.
00:06:40.319 --> 00:06:46.079
So the broomstick was already culturally connected with women, domesticity, and the home.
00:06:46.319 --> 00:06:57.360
Which makes what happens to it rather fascinating, because the object associated with women's work inside the home becomes the thing with which the witch can fly straight out of it.
00:06:57.680 --> 00:07:02.319
Now, I'm not suggesting that some medieval bloke sat there thinking, you know what this needs?
00:07:02.560 --> 00:07:05.120
A feminist critique of gendered domestic labour.
00:07:05.360 --> 00:07:06.959
He absolutely did not.
00:07:07.199 --> 00:07:12.000
But looking at the image from our position now, the symbolism is difficult to miss.
00:07:12.319 --> 00:07:14.879
The witch doesn't need a knight's horse.
00:07:15.120 --> 00:07:17.360
She doesn't need a nobleman's carriage.
00:07:17.600 --> 00:07:23.040
She takes something already sitting in her world and uses it to escape the world entirely.
00:07:23.360 --> 00:07:37.759
And then things get weird, because witches weren't only accused of flying, there are also historical accounts involving what became known as flying ointments, substances supposedly used before these nocturnal journeys.
00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:44.800
This is where history, pharmacology, and modern internet folklore get very tangled very quickly.
00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:57.120
Some plants associated with European witchcraft, including Belladonna, Henvane, and Mandrake, contain substances capable of causing extremely dangerous hallucinations and delirium.
00:07:57.839 --> 00:08:05.279
Modern writers have therefore asked whether some stories of magical flight could have originated in altered states of consciousness.
00:08:05.600 --> 00:08:10.879
Perhaps someone didn't physically believe they had climbed onto a broomstick and flown through the window.
00:08:11.120 --> 00:08:14.639
Perhaps they experienced the sensation of flight.
00:08:14.879 --> 00:08:16.639
It's an interesting theory.
00:08:16.959 --> 00:08:29.600
But, and this is a fairly enormous but, the evidence doesn't allow us to confidently reconstruct some secret standardized medieval witch recipe and say, yep, that's exactly what they were doing.
00:08:29.839 --> 00:08:37.120
And whenever you're researching the subject online, you will eventually encounter an even more specific version of the story.
00:08:37.360 --> 00:08:50.799
Apparently, witches put hallucinogenic ointment onto broomstick handles, applied it to intimate areas of the body, hallucinated that they were flying, and that is supposedly why witches ride broomsticks.
00:08:51.039 --> 00:08:56.720
Which sounds like exactly the kind of historical fact the internet would absolutely love to be true.
00:08:56.960 --> 00:09:00.000
And that means it's time to be suspicious.
00:09:00.320 --> 00:09:02.320
But we'll come back to that.
00:09:02.639 --> 00:09:07.279
Because first, we've got several hundred years of cultural development to jump over.
00:09:07.600 --> 00:09:13.600
And eventually, witches don't just fly on brooms, they can play sports on them.
00:09:20.879 --> 00:09:25.279
Before we get to Hogwarts, though, we need to make a brief stop in Oz.
00:09:25.519 --> 00:09:26.799
Yes, again.
00:09:27.039 --> 00:09:35.519
Because by 1939, the broomstick is already so firmly attached to the screen witch that the wizard of Oz can use it as something more than a prop.
00:09:35.919 --> 00:09:38.720
It can stand in for the witch herself.
00:09:38.960 --> 00:09:46.879
The wizard sends Dorothy and her companions to destroy the wicked witch of the West, but he doesn't simply tell them to come back and tell him they've done it.
00:09:47.039 --> 00:09:48.480
He wants proof.
00:09:48.879 --> 00:09:53.840
Specifically, he tells Dorothy, Bring me the broomstick, the Witch of the West.
00:09:54.320 --> 00:10:00.960
And that is fascinating, because the broomstick has become an identifying object, a sort of ID.
00:10:01.600 --> 00:10:07.840
After Dorothy accidentally destroys the witch with water, she returns to the Emerald City carrying the broomstick.
00:10:08.080 --> 00:10:15.039
The witch herself is gone, but Dorothy can place that object before the wizard and everybody understands what it represents.
00:10:15.279 --> 00:10:17.440
Here is your proof, here is your witch.
00:10:17.679 --> 00:10:22.720
Or rather, here is the thing that tells you unmistakably that the witch is dead.
00:10:23.039 --> 00:10:29.919
The broomstick has become so synonymous with witchcraft that it can almost act as a substitute for the witch's body.
00:10:30.159 --> 00:10:32.159
And that's in 1939.
00:10:32.720 --> 00:10:45.759
So when we jump forward to Hogwarts, the filmmakers are working with an audience who have already had decades upon decades of screen witches reinforcing an image that was centuries old before cinema even existed.
00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:47.600
Which brings us to Harry Potter.
00:10:47.759 --> 00:11:02.559
There are plenty of broomstick scenes I could choose from Harry Potter, particularly once Quidditch becomes established, but I actually think the first flying lesson in Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone tells us more about what the films are doing with the broomstick than any Quidditch match does.
00:11:02.799 --> 00:11:04.720
Think about how the scene looks.
00:11:04.960 --> 00:11:10.799
The children are standing in rows in the grounds of Hogwarts, each with a broom laid neatly beside them.
00:11:11.039 --> 00:11:19.360
Behind them is an enormous stone castle, with its towers, arches, and courtyards, deliberately constructing a world that feels ancient.
00:11:19.519 --> 00:11:23.440
If you've been to Annik, it's imposing and amazing.
00:11:23.759 --> 00:11:32.960
Visually, we're surrounded by the past, and lying neatly on the grass are dozens of objects that belong to one of the oldest visual stereotypes of witchcraft.
00:11:33.279 --> 00:11:35.840
Except nobody is frightened of them.
00:11:36.080 --> 00:11:37.840
Nobody thinks they're sinister.
00:11:38.159 --> 00:11:43.120
Neville might be a little bit nervous, but at the end of the day, they're school equipment.
00:11:43.440 --> 00:11:50.080
Madame Hooch stands in front of the class like a PE teacher and tells them to put their hands over their brooms and command them.
00:11:50.320 --> 00:11:50.639
Up.
00:11:51.039 --> 00:11:55.039
And that is such an interesting transformation of the witch's broom.
00:11:55.279 --> 00:12:01.519
The mise en scĂšne takes an object associated with transgression and places it within an institution.
00:12:01.759 --> 00:12:08.639
The broom has been disciplined, regulated, and literally lined up in rows for children to use.
00:12:09.120 --> 00:12:11.519
Magic has a timetable now.
00:12:11.919 --> 00:12:16.399
Harry's relationship with the broom also immediately tells us something about him.
00:12:16.639 --> 00:12:20.559
He arrives at Hogwarts knowing virtually nothing about magic.
00:12:20.799 --> 00:12:25.279
Hermione, despite being muggle-born, understands spells before he does.
00:12:25.600 --> 00:12:28.799
Ron understands wizarding culture before Harry does.
00:12:29.120 --> 00:12:34.480
Harry is constantly discovering a world everybody else seems to understand already.
00:12:34.799 --> 00:12:39.679
And then somebody gives him a broomstick, and suddenly he's good at something.
00:12:39.919 --> 00:12:43.679
Not just good, naturally, inherently good.
00:12:44.480 --> 00:12:54.399
When the broom leaps into his hand, and particularly when Harry later takes off after Malfoy, the camera gives us movement and space that Harry hasn't really possessed before.
00:12:54.639 --> 00:12:57.360
And I think that's a lovely visual contrast here.
00:12:57.679 --> 00:13:00.159
Harry's story begins with confinement.
00:13:00.320 --> 00:13:02.480
He sleeps in the cupboard under the stairs.
00:13:02.639 --> 00:13:06.720
It's small, enclosed, dark, and controlled by other people.
00:13:07.039 --> 00:13:14.080
Then Harry discovers the magical world, gets onto a broomstick, and suddenly the camera can follow him upwards.
00:13:14.399 --> 00:13:18.799
Height, movement, open space, freedom.
00:13:19.039 --> 00:13:22.000
The boy who lived in a cupboard can now fly.
00:13:22.480 --> 00:13:27.759
And from that point onwards, the broomstick becomes much more than a form of transportation.
00:13:28.240 --> 00:13:32.399
It's sporting equipment, its technology, its status.
00:13:32.879 --> 00:13:35.759
The Nimbus 2000 isn't simply a broomstick.
00:13:35.840 --> 00:13:38.480
It's the broomstick everybody wants.
00:13:38.720 --> 00:13:44.000
Then comes the 2001, which Malfoy's father bribes the entire team with.
00:13:44.240 --> 00:13:53.279
And then comes the firebolt, which is essentially the magical world's answer to somebody arriving outside your house in a very expensive sports car.
00:13:53.600 --> 00:14:07.840
And of course, the broomstick gives us Quidditch, which means that an object once associated with accusations of witches travelling through the night to demonic gatherings becomes school physical education.
00:14:08.320 --> 00:14:11.840
There is something deeply funny about that when you know the history.
00:14:12.080 --> 00:14:18.960
Hundreds of years ago, demonologists are worrying about what witches might be doing whilst they're straddling sticks at night.
00:14:19.200 --> 00:14:22.000
At Hogwarts, they've got a referee.
00:14:22.559 --> 00:14:27.759
But Harry Potter also demonstrates how culturally established the broomstick witch has become.
00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:33.519
The film doesn't need Professor Hooch to explain why magical people fly on brooms.
00:14:33.919 --> 00:14:35.120
We already know.
00:14:35.360 --> 00:14:47.039
The audience brings that information into the film with them, and filmmakers can therefore take centuries of witch imagery and build an entirely new, magical culture on top of it.
00:14:47.360 --> 00:14:51.360
Kiki's delivery service does something much quieter with the same object.
00:14:51.679 --> 00:14:59.120
If Harry's broom becomes institutionalized magical technology, Kiki's broom is personal, it's independence.
00:14:59.200 --> 00:15:02.559
And the scene I keep coming back to is Kiki leaving home.
00:15:02.799 --> 00:15:12.080
She's 13, dressed in her dark witch's dress with that enormous red bow in her hair, preparing to leave everything familiar behind as part of her witch training.
00:15:12.320 --> 00:15:18.720
She has Gigi with her, she has her belongings, she has her little radio, and she has the broomstick.
00:15:18.960 --> 00:15:23.360
Visually, Hiki herself is incredibly simple and recognizable.
00:15:23.600 --> 00:15:26.639
Dark dress, black cat, broom.
00:15:27.120 --> 00:15:34.480
You could almost reduce her to a collection of traditional witch signifiers, but the film changes what those signifiers mean.
00:15:34.879 --> 00:15:37.679
There is no threatening nocturnal witch here.
00:15:37.840 --> 00:15:40.240
There is just a child leaving home.
00:15:40.480 --> 00:15:45.279
When Kiki takes off, the broom becomes part of the visual language of separation.
00:15:45.519 --> 00:15:48.559
The ground and her family recede behind her.
00:15:48.720 --> 00:15:51.039
The landscape opens up around her.
00:15:51.200 --> 00:15:56.159
Her journey through the sky physically represents the transitions she's making in her life.
00:15:56.399 --> 00:16:00.879
She's moving away from childhood dependence and towards independence.
00:16:01.120 --> 00:16:05.440
And importantly, she doesn't immediately look completely graceful doing it.
00:16:05.840 --> 00:16:08.399
Her relationship with flying feels physical.
00:16:08.639 --> 00:16:10.080
The broom wobbles.
00:16:10.320 --> 00:16:11.200
Weather matters.
00:16:11.440 --> 00:16:14.639
Balance matters confidence matters.
00:16:14.960 --> 00:16:20.240
That becomes even more important later when Kiki loses her ability to fly.
00:16:20.480 --> 00:16:28.480
Because the broom isn't functioning like Harry's firebolt, it isn't simply a magical machine that will work regardless of the person sitting on it.
00:16:28.720 --> 00:16:31.440
Flying is connected to Kiki herself.
00:16:31.679 --> 00:16:35.679
Her magic falters as her confidence and sense of identity falter.
00:16:35.919 --> 00:16:41.039
And eventually, when she needs to fly again, she doesn't even have the comfort of her familiar broom.
00:16:41.279 --> 00:16:49.600
She takes an ordinary street sweeper's broom, which I love, because once again we're brought back to the ordinary object underneath the magical symbol.
00:16:49.759 --> 00:16:51.360
It's a broomstick.
00:16:51.519 --> 00:16:53.519
It's meant to sweep the floor.
00:16:53.679 --> 00:16:57.120
But Kiki needs it to do something extraordinary.
00:16:57.360 --> 00:17:03.519
Her flight also becomes labour in another sense because Kiki doesn't simply fly around for fun.
00:17:03.840 --> 00:17:05.920
She starts a delivery service.
00:17:06.079 --> 00:17:08.799
Her broom becomes how she earns money.
00:17:09.039 --> 00:17:14.559
And there is something wonderful about that when you put it beside the broom's domestic history.
00:17:14.880 --> 00:17:20.880
We started with an object associated with women's work inside the household, confinement.
00:17:21.200 --> 00:17:27.599
Now we've got a young witch using that same object to build an independent life inside it, freedom.
00:17:27.839 --> 00:17:32.559
The broom still represents work, but now it also gives her mobility.
00:17:32.799 --> 00:17:41.599
And then we have Hocus Pocus, which looks at centuries of witch iconography and goes, right, but what if we gave one of them a Hoover?
00:17:42.240 --> 00:17:50.720
The Sanderson Sisters Flight is a wonderful example of a film deliberately playing with the audience's existing visual knowledge of witches.
00:17:51.200 --> 00:17:55.440
When they need to take to the sky, Winifred gets the traditional broomstick.
00:17:55.759 --> 00:17:59.759
Mary gets a vacuum cleaner, and Sarah gets a mop.
00:18:00.079 --> 00:18:03.440
Visually, Winifred maintains the historical silhouette.
00:18:03.599 --> 00:18:10.079
She's the elder sister, the leader, and the most conventionally commanding witch of the three, so she gets the icon.
00:18:10.400 --> 00:18:13.119
The other two become variations on it.
00:18:13.359 --> 00:18:19.759
And that's important because the joke doesn't work unless the audience already understands the original image.
00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:24.480
Nobody has to say that's funny because witches traditionally fly on broomsticks.
00:18:24.720 --> 00:18:25.359
We know.
00:18:25.680 --> 00:18:28.960
The broom is already sitting in our cultural memory.
00:18:29.279 --> 00:18:35.920
So the film can replace it with another long-handled domestic object and let our recognition do the work.
00:18:36.240 --> 00:18:43.759
But what I particularly love is that the replacements don't actually move very far away from the broom's historical associations.
00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:48.319
The mop and a vacuum cleaner are still tools of domestic labour.
00:18:48.559 --> 00:18:55.599
The technology has changed, the witch still flies, and Hocus Pokers isn't alone in making that joke.
00:18:55.839 --> 00:19:01.680
Sabrina the Teenage Witch also gives us Sabrina using a vacuum cleaner instead of an expected broom.
00:19:01.839 --> 00:19:06.960
And again, the humour relies entirely on the audience understanding what ought to be there.
00:19:07.359 --> 00:19:15.920
By the 1990s, the broomstick witch is such a stable cultural image that television can parody it simply by swapping the object.
00:19:16.160 --> 00:19:19.839
You don't need a broom to signify a broom anymore.
00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:22.559
You just need something that reminds us of one.
00:19:22.799 --> 00:19:26.240
And there's something else going on here that I think is worth noticing.
00:19:26.400 --> 00:19:30.480
The vacuum cleaner is once again a deeply domestic object.
00:19:30.720 --> 00:19:39.440
So even when modern witch stories update the broom for comedy, they often replace it with another piece of feminized household technology.
00:19:39.680 --> 00:19:44.480
The joke modernizes, the gendered association survives.
00:20:00.799 --> 00:20:10.079
And today's claim is possibly my favorite one we've had so far, because it is exactly the sort of sentence that makes you stop scrolling and go, excuse me?
00:20:10.559 --> 00:20:19.839
The claim is, and you may want young ears to turn off here, witches rode broomsticks because the broom represents the devil's penis.
00:20:20.319 --> 00:20:22.640
Yes, we're talking about this.
00:20:22.960 --> 00:20:26.240
So, fact, fiction, or folklore?
00:20:27.039 --> 00:20:27.599
Well.
00:20:28.640 --> 00:20:33.039
European witchcraft accusations absolutely became sexualized.
00:20:33.279 --> 00:20:39.200
Demonological literature described witches having sexual relationships with demons and with the devil.
00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:47.359
The imagined witch's Sabbath became an inversion of respectable Christian society, religiously, socially, and sexually.
00:20:47.599 --> 00:20:53.039
So sex and the devil absolutely belong within the historical construction of the witch.
00:20:53.359 --> 00:20:57.119
We also have images of women straddling sticks and brooms.
00:20:57.759 --> 00:21:07.759
And yes, you do not need to be Sigmund Freud to look at the long wooden object positioned between a woman's legs and think, hmm, it's a bit phallic.
00:21:08.400 --> 00:21:16.319
But that does not automatically mean medieval Europe had a universally understood symbolic code where broom equals devil's penis.
00:21:16.559 --> 00:21:18.720
It's where the story gets too neat.
00:21:19.039 --> 00:21:35.359
The idea takes several things that genuinely exist within the historical record: sexualized demonology, broom riding witches, flying ointments, and phallic symbolism, and bundles them together into one spectacularly memorable explanation.
00:21:35.680 --> 00:21:40.960
And spectacularly memorable explanations are often where bad history thrives.
00:21:41.200 --> 00:21:48.319
The same problem applies to the claim about witches applying psychoactive ointments internally using broom handles.
00:21:48.720 --> 00:21:56.079
There are historical references to ointments, there are plants associated with witchcraft that genuinely can produce hallucinations.
00:21:56.240 --> 00:22:10.640
There are accounts of supernatural flight, but getting from Those pieces of evidence too, and therefore witches were getting high by putting broomsticks up themselves and hallucinating that they could fly, requires several historical leaps.
00:22:10.960 --> 00:22:15.839
So my verdict, folklore, built from fragments of fact.
00:22:16.160 --> 00:22:19.839
Witches really were accused of sexual relationships with the devil.
00:22:20.079 --> 00:22:23.759
Witches really were represented astride sticks and brooms.
00:22:24.000 --> 00:22:34.480
Flying ointments really do appear within the history of witchcraft, but the wonderfully filthy one-sentence explanation history is messier than the meme.
00:22:35.039 --> 00:22:36.559
It usually is.
00:22:49.039 --> 00:22:52.160
The broom hasn't disappeared from modern witchcraft either.
00:22:52.319 --> 00:23:01.200
And as always, when we talk about contemporary witchcraft on this podcast, there isn't one universal practice shared by everybody who calls themselves a witch.
00:23:01.519 --> 00:23:04.880
But you will sometimes hear a witch's broom called a beesum.
00:23:05.200 --> 00:23:09.039
And brooms can be used symbolically for cleansing ritual space.
00:23:09.359 --> 00:23:17.759
And no, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm telling you that witches really need to hoover before doing a spell, usually afterwards, if you use a salt circle.
00:23:18.079 --> 00:23:21.839
Although, I mean, sometimes the floor does need doing.
00:23:22.079 --> 00:23:27.359
But ritual sweeping can represent clearing away unwanted energy and preparing a space.
00:23:27.519 --> 00:23:32.640
And I actually really like that, because it doesn't completely reinvent what the broom is for.
00:23:32.880 --> 00:23:34.160
It still cleans.
00:23:34.559 --> 00:23:37.759
We've just changed what we imagine we're cleaning away.
00:23:38.000 --> 00:23:44.000
The broom can also become an object associated with boundaries, thresholds, and transitions.
00:23:44.240 --> 00:23:47.680
Which brings us to another tradition involving brooms.
00:23:48.160 --> 00:23:48.880
Marriage.
00:23:49.119 --> 00:23:58.240
And this one matters particularly because it's another example of what happens when the internet takes several complicated history and squashes them into one.
00:24:08.480 --> 00:24:14.880
You will quite often see jumping the broom described online as an ancient pagan wedding tradition.
00:24:15.119 --> 00:24:20.960
And if you've spent any time looking at pagan, witchy, or alternative weddings, you've probably encountered it.
00:24:21.200 --> 00:24:28.880
A couple places a broom on the ground, they jump over it together, and the act represents crossing a threshold into married life.
00:24:29.119 --> 00:24:33.599
Lovely, simple, except the history isn't simple at all.
00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:40.799
Forms of broomstick marriage and informal marriage customs involving brooms existed historically in Britain.
00:24:40.960 --> 00:24:48.559
The broom makes symbolic sense here because it's connected to the household and it can therefore represent establishing a home together.
00:24:48.799 --> 00:24:56.720
Physically crossing over something also gives us a very obvious ritual image of moving from one stage of life to another.
00:24:56.960 --> 00:25:02.799
But jumping the broom also has an enormously important history within African American culture.
00:25:03.039 --> 00:25:12.400
During slavery in the United States, enslaved people were denied many legal rights, including secure legal recognition of their marriages.
00:25:12.720 --> 00:25:24.160
Jumping the broom became associated with marriage ceremonies among enslaved African Americans, and the practice later became an important symbol of African American heritage and cultural memory.
00:25:24.400 --> 00:25:27.039
Those histories deserve to remain visible.
00:25:27.279 --> 00:25:38.720
Because if we simply call jumping the broom an ancient witch wedding, we flatten completely different traditions into one convenient origin story, which is something we seem to do a lot in witchcraft.
00:25:38.799 --> 00:25:41.279
And perhaps that's the hidden hex of the broom.
00:25:41.519 --> 00:25:47.279
We look at an object, we recognize, and assume that means we understand what it means.
00:25:47.519 --> 00:25:54.160
But the broom has carried different meanings for different people, in different places and at different moments in history.
00:25:54.400 --> 00:26:09.759
Sometimes it's magical, sometimes it's domestic, sometimes it's sexual, sometimes it's ceremonial, and sometimes it's something you bought from the Halloween Isle when you were seven and were still finding pieces of behind the sofa six weeks later.
00:26:10.079 --> 00:26:16.319
Objects collect stories, and the broom has collected an extraordinary number of them.
00:26:23.119 --> 00:26:26.480
So, how does it all come together in how we view witches?
00:26:26.799 --> 00:26:29.359
Why does the witch fly on a broomstick?
00:26:29.519 --> 00:26:33.839
The slightly annoying answer is that there probably isn't one reason.
00:26:34.079 --> 00:26:36.720
And I think that's actually more interesting.
00:26:36.960 --> 00:26:54.000
We have older traditions of supernatural night travel, medieval stories about women travelling at night, changing Christian ideas about witchcraft and the devil, the witch's Sabbath, sticks and stuffs associated with magical movement, flying ointments and sexualized demonology.
00:26:54.160 --> 00:27:02.319
And sitting right in the middle of ordinary domestic life, we have an object already strongly associated with women, the broomstick.
00:27:02.559 --> 00:27:06.880
Eventually, visual culture does what visual culture is extremely good at doing.
00:27:07.119 --> 00:27:08.400
It simplifies.
00:27:08.559 --> 00:27:13.599
An image becomes recognizable, and then another artist uses it, and then another.
00:27:13.839 --> 00:27:22.000
Literature inherits it, theatre inherits it, Halloween inherits it, film inherits it, television inherits it.
00:27:22.240 --> 00:27:28.799
Eventually, the connection becomes so strong that the object doesn't need explanation anymore.
00:27:29.039 --> 00:27:35.680
The Wizard of Oz can send Dorothy to retrieve a broomstick and use that object as proof that the wicked witch is dead.
00:27:35.920 --> 00:27:37.920
The witch isn't there.
00:27:38.240 --> 00:27:39.759
But she doesn't need to be.
00:27:39.920 --> 00:27:42.319
The broom tells us who she was.
00:27:43.039 --> 00:27:45.680
Harry Potter can then institutionalize it.
00:27:45.839 --> 00:27:55.119
The medieval-looking architecture, the rows of students, and Madame Huchi's lesson transform the witch's transgressive flight into something regulated and ordinary.
00:27:55.359 --> 00:27:58.240
The broom becomes part of magical society.
00:27:58.799 --> 00:28:01.759
Kiki's delivery service can then personalize it.
00:28:01.920 --> 00:28:06.160
The broom becomes independence, work, confidence, and growing up.
00:28:06.319 --> 00:28:14.480
A symbol once attached to the threatening woman traveling beyond accepted boundaries becomes the means through which a young girl discovers the world.
00:28:14.720 --> 00:28:18.480
And Hocus Pocus and Sabrina the Teenage Witch can parody it.
00:28:18.720 --> 00:28:24.240
They can replace the broom altogether because the audience mentally supplies the missing symbol for them.
00:28:24.480 --> 00:28:28.079
That's how powerful visual iconography becomes.
00:28:28.319 --> 00:28:32.319
None of these stories have to explain why witches fly on brooms.
00:28:32.559 --> 00:28:36.160
Centuries of culture have already done that work for them.
00:28:36.400 --> 00:28:40.240
And that's what fascinates me about witch iconography generally.
00:28:40.480 --> 00:28:46.000
These things become so familiar that we stop noticing how strange they actually are.
00:28:46.319 --> 00:28:48.400
A woman wearing a pointed hat.
00:28:49.599 --> 00:28:50.880
A bubbling cauldron?
00:28:51.279 --> 00:28:51.839
Which.
00:28:52.160 --> 00:28:53.279
A black cat.
00:28:54.720 --> 00:28:56.720
A broom crossing the moon.
00:28:58.160 --> 00:29:08.000
But underneath that silhouette is an enormous history of anxiety, domesticity, sexuality, superstition, and eventually freedom.
00:29:08.319 --> 00:29:13.279
And perhaps that's why I particularly love what Kiki's delivery service does with the image.
00:29:13.519 --> 00:29:20.400
Because Kiki takes this ancient image of the suspicious woman travelling through the night and makes it joyous.
00:29:20.640 --> 00:29:27.519
The girl climbs onto her broom, she leaves home, and she discovers just how far she can go.
00:29:28.640 --> 00:29:33.599
I'm Millie Hardy Ashton, and this has been Hexposition Which is on Screen.
00:29:33.839 --> 00:29:37.359
Next time, we're putting something on the boil.
00:29:37.680 --> 00:29:47.200
From Shakespeare's bubbling cauldron to bottles, brews, poisons, and magical concoctions, we're asking why witches are always making something suspicious in the kitchen.
00:29:47.440 --> 00:29:50.559
That's next time on Hexposition Which is on screen.
00:29:50.799 --> 00:30:02.000
Until then, the broom may have begun as one of the most ordinary objects in the household, but centuries of folklore and visual culture taught us to see it as a vehicle for witches.
00:30:02.319 --> 00:30:11.119
And sometimes taking flight is really just another way of imagining what happens when a woman refuses to stay where she's been put.
00:30:12.000 --> 00:30:19.279
Theme music is Hulderfolk, Hidden Folk by Jamie Sims, and this has been a familiar footsteps production.
