Broom Lore (part 2)

Handfasting and Marriage Broom Lore

When embarking on a marriage one of the main things Wiccan engaged couples should be encouraged to do is find a broom together. This is the symbol of hearth and home. 

Once the broom has been found, and it is anointed as already stated,  some of the broom brush is pulled from the stem. That brush is then woven together and placed upon the wedding altar. The wife-to-be would normally be the keeper of the broom until the wedding. This represents that she is the keeper of the home and keeps peace and harmony while the man goes out to work. It also means that she is the keeper of the Magickal power of the home.

This originated from traditionall Celtic lore of more than 600 years ago.

The night before the wedding, the couple should dress the broom by weaving a strand of colored ribbon around the handle. This represents the intertwining of their lives and that they themselves are no longer individuals but are part of each other.

During the ceremony the broom is placed either standing by the altar or placed lying under the altar as the vows are said, the promises made, that hands fasted. They are pronounced husband and wife and the broom is then put before them as the final test of love.

The couple either steps, or in the old tradition, jumps, over the broom. This is the final end of the ceremony. Then it is recommended that the couple takes the broom home and makes love with the broom under the bed. This seals the marriage.

Your broom can be your best friend and your magickal ally.  Treat your broom with honor, reverence and respect and you will have a life-long companion and ritual tool.

And then there is

The Broomstick

The traditional companion of witches was the enchanted broomstick, used for their wild and unholy flights through the night and probably to some distant Witches’ Sabbat.

This is one of the first images you will probably see as a child and this was doubtlessly believed by the prominent rulers of Europe. The number of actual confessions of witches doing so is remarkably small. Usually confessions state that they went to the Sabbat on foot or on horseback.

Legends of witches flying on brooms go back as far as the beginning of the Common Era.

The earliest known confession of a Witch flying on a broom was in 1453, when Guillaume Edelin of St. Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, stated that he had done so.

In 1563, Martin Tulouff of Guernsey was said to have seen his aged mother straddle a broomstick and whisk up the chimney and out of the house on it, saying “Go in the name of the Devil and Lucifer over rocks and thorns”.

In 1598 Claudine Boban and her mother, witches of the province of Franche-Comte, in eastern France, also spoke of flying up the chimney of a stick.

The belief of flying off through the chimney became firmly embedded in popular tradition, although only a few people ever mentioned doing so.

It has been suggested that this idea was connected with the old custom of pushing a broom up the chimney to indicate the absence of the housewife. The Germanic Goddess Holda or Holle is also connected with the chimney.

Other indications that lead to the popular belief that witches actually flew on broomsticks can be found in an old custom of dancing with a broom between the legs, leaping high in the air.

In Reginald Scot’s book, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, published in 1584, we find a similar description:

“At these magical assemblies, the witches never failed to dance; and in their dance they sing these words, ‘Har, har, dive dive, dance here dance here, play here play here, Sabbath, Sabbath’. And whiles they sing and dance, ever one hath a broom in her hand, and holdeth it up aloft.”

Scot quoted these descriptions of Witch rites from a French demonologist, Jean Bodin, who made observations of a kind of jumping dance, riding on staffs. These customs might have contributed to the popular picture of broomstick-riding witches through the air.

In 1665, from the confession of Julian Cox, one of the Somerset coven, mentioned “that one evening she walks out about a Mile from her own House and there came riding towards her three persons upon three Broom-staves, born up about a years and a half from the ground. Two of them she formerly knew, which was a Witch and a Wizard”.

History
Some authors claim that the oldest known source of witches flying on broomsticks is a manuscript called Le Champion des Dames by Martin Lefranc, 1440.

This might be one of the oldest images representing a hag on a broomstick, but it is certainly not the first. A wall painting from the 12th century in Schleswig Cathedral (Germany) shows the Norse deity Frigg riding her staff.

If we really dig deeper into history, we find that from the Roman world there are reports that mention witches flying on broomsticks as well as having used ointments, as early as the first century.

They were called Straight (Barn owl) and the Lamiae from Greek culture had similar characteristics.

Later in Roman history, the goddess Diana was the leader of the Wild Hunt:

“It is also not to be omitted that some wicked women, perverted by the Devil, seduced by illusions and phantasm of demons, believe and profess themselves in the hours of the night to ride upon certain beasts with Diana, the goddess of pagans, and an innumerable multitude of women, and in the silence of the dead of the night to traverse great spaces of earth, and to obey her commands as of their mistress, and to be summoned to her service on certain nights”. (See: Canon Episcopi).

Similar beliefs existed in many parts of Europe. From Norse mythology, we know that the army of women, lead by Odin (Wodan), called the Valkyries, was said to ride through the skies on horses, collecting the souls of the dead. In continental Germanic areas, the goddess

Holda or Holle was also said to lead the Wild Hunt and is connected to chimneys and witchcraft. Berchta or Perchta, another Germanic goddess, which can be identified with Holda, has similar characteristics.

Again in Celtic Traditions, the Horned God Cernunnos, and/or Herne the Hunter was leader of the Wild Hunt and the Scottish Witch Goddess Nicneven was also said to fly through the night with her followers. Eastern Europe sources also have a wealth of folklore about witches flying through the air. So flying through the air, evidently, was a deeply rooted mythological theme, associated with the free roaming of the spirit, the separation of soul and body.

Symbolism
The broomstick is a female and male symbol, “the rod which penetrated the bush”. Its symbolism and interpretation is therefore purely sexual.

Ritual Use
There are hints of the broom being used as an artificial penis or dildo.

In a curious old book, A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon and Cant, by Albert BarrSre and Charles Godfrey Leland (1897-1899), we are told that the slang term in those days for a dildo or artificial penis was “a broom-handle”, and the female genitals were known vulgarly as “the broom”. To “have a brush” was to have sexual intercourse.

Noteworthy is the evidence from Witch trials mentioning the “cold hard member of the Devil himself”. In 1662, Isabel Gowdie, accused of witchcraft, made a confession which could suggest that some sort of artificial phallus of horn or leather may have been used:

“His members are exceeding great and long; no man’s members are so long and big as they are….(he is) a meikle, black, rough man, very cold, and I found his nature as cold within me as spring-well water…He is abler for us that way than any man can be, only he is heavy like a malt-sack, a huge nature, very cold, as ice”.

Besom Chant

Besom, besom long and lithe
made from ash and willow withe
Tied with thongs of willow bark
in running stream at moonset dark.

With a pentagram insight
as the ritual fire is lighted
Sweep ye circle, deosil,
Sweep out evil, sweep out ill,

Make the round of the ground
Where we do the Lady’s will.
Besom, besom, Lady’s broom
Sweep out darkness, sweep out doom

Rid ye Lady’s hallowed ground
Of demons, imps and Hell’s red hound;
Then set ye down on Her green earth
By running stream or Mistress’ hearth,

‘Till called once more on Sabbath night
To cleanse once more the dancing site.

Broomstick Or Besom

The broomstick has come to be the traditional companion to the witch, and the enchanted steed for her wild and unholy night-flights through the air.

Even Walt Disney paid tribute to its legendary magical character, in his film “Fantasia”, when he drew Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, with a bewitched broomstick that did its work only too well.

However, the broomstick was only one of the means witches were supposed to use for the purpose of flight. Its frequent occurrence in folklore points to the fact that it possessed some special significance.

This significance is in fact a phallic one.

In Yorkshire folk-belief, it was unlucky for an unmarried girl to step over a broomstick, because it meant that she would be a mother before she was a wife.

In Sussex, the May-Pole, which was itself a phallic symbol, used to be topped with a large birch broom. A ‘besom’ is a dialect term for a shameless, immoral female.

‘To marry over the broomstick’. ‘jump the besom’, was an old-time form of irregular marriage, in which both parties jumped over a broomstick, to signify that they were joined in common-law union. At gypsy wedding ceremonies, the bride and groom jump backwards and forwards over a broomstick; further evidence of the broom’s connection with sex and fertility.

The original household broom was a bunch of the actual broom plant,”Planta genista”, tied round a stick. “Broom! Green broom!” was old street cry, used by vendors of broom-bunches for this purpose. The “Planta genista” was the badge of the “Plantagenet” family, who derived their name from it. They were rumored to favor the Old Religion.

At one time of the year, the broom plant was unlucky. The old saying goes: “If you sweep he house with blossomed broom in May, you will sweep the head of the house away.” This could perhaps have some connection with old sacrificial rites at the commencement of summer.

Blessed Be

(Part 3 will be published on 1st September)

ooooOOOOoooo

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So now I will wish you the best things that life can give and say

Love, Light and Blessed Be!

Merlin.