Witch Research

I've been researching "witchy" plants. Belladonna/Deadly Nightshade/Atropa belladonna seems to be moderately widely used as an entheogen in modern times, including in San Fransisco in the 60s. Taking it seems like a very bad idea to me, not least because the active dose is very close to the fatal dose. The effects last up to three days. Reading accounts of people who have taken it recreationally, I find about 20% that are clearly nonsense or tales of misidentification, about 70% that are regretting their naivety and wishing they'd never ventured down that path, and about 10% reports of people who found the experience valuable, comparing very unfavourably with reports from other drug experiences on the same websites. Anyway, it's interesting comparing the detail of these reports to our ingrained cultural ideas about witches.

I found this excellent page about Henbane/Stinking Nightshade/Hyoscyamus niger: "Bartolomaeus... writing in 1398, commented: 'This herb is called insana wood, for the use thereof is perilous; for if it be eate or dranke, it breedeth woodenes, or slow liknes of slepe; therefore the herb is commonly called Morilindi, for it taketh away wytte and reason."'  Very inspiring. I also found a detail about the devil tending to henbane on Walpurgis Night that I will certainly make use of.

Further nightshades such as Bittersweet/Woody Nightshade/Solanum dulcamara contain a further class of chemicals which are more simply poisonous rather than mind-bending. Also, I read a anecdote about a family in "1965" who accidentally ate tomatoes which had been mistakenly grafted onto a toxic nightshade species (tomato, peppers and potato belong to the nightshade family), and spent a few days hallucinating in hospital.

It's difficult to find much interesting on witches without getting sucked into various Wiccan reconstructions. Whilst I have the greatest of respect for people's religious freedoms and beliefs, much of that stuff rings so hollow to me that it's of no use for my purposes. Which is a shame.