Around AD 906, the Canon Episcopi (attributed to Regino of Prüm, abbot of Trier) published a warning. Some wicked women, it said, “perverted by the Devil, seduced by illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and profess that they ride in the night hours with Diana, the pagan goddess, or with Herodias, and that they obey her commands as their mistress.” The church did not deny that these women experienced the flight. It denied that it was real. That denial marks the first recorded appearance of the night witch in Christian Europe.
The night witch is a specific folkloric and historical figure defined by nocturnal flight, attendance at the sabbat, and communion with a goddess or demon. The witch archetype is the larger category of magical practitioners — malevolent and benevolent, human and supernatural — that spans centuries and cultures. The two overlap, but they are not the same.
Where the night witch first appears in history
The Canon Episcopi’s “wicked women” were not yet called witches. They were described as deluded Christians who served a pagan goddess. The text itself was concerned with their belief in flight, not with maleficium. But the image stuck. By the early 12th century, the chronicler William of Malmesbury recorded a story from the 10th century in which a woman was seen flying out of her bedroom window on a Thursday night. The local priest found her bed empty and concluded she had gone to “join the company of Herodias.”
The figure evolved significantly after the Malleus Maleficarum (1487) by Heinrich Kramer. Kramer gave the night witch a detailed ritual. The oil anointed on her body, he claimed, was made from the fat of unbaptized infants. She rode a broomstick or a pitchfork. She attended the sabbat where she renounced her faith, kissed the devil’s anus, and received instruction in maleficium. That set of accusations was then applied to thousands of women across Europe during the early modern witch hunts (roughly 1450–1750).
What the Canon Episcopi had dismissed as illusion, the Malleus treated as real, and punishable by death. The night witch became a legal category.
What the night witch symbolises
Night is a liminal time. The boundary between waking and sleeping, the living and the dead, the human and the demonic becomes thin. The night witch moves through that boundary. In folklore, she is often associated with the moon (especially the dark moon), the goddess Diana or Hecate, and the underworld. The flight itself is a symbol of transcendence, or of damnation.
In early modern trials, the night witch’s flight was also a symbol of rebellion. Women who were marginalised, old widows, midwives, healers, were accused of meeting secretly at night to plot harm. That fear of female community, operating outside male control, is woven into the archetype.
The broader witch archetype does not require the night. Many cunning folk and wise women worked openly in daylight, collecting herbs, reciting charms, treating illness. The witch archetype can include saints, shamans, and sorcerers who never leave the ground. The night witch is one specific configuration: nocturnal, illicit, demonic.
How the night witch was said to operate
The practices attributed to the night witch were remarkably consistent across Europe. In the 15th-century trial of Catherine of Savoy (a real noblewoman accused in 1453), the court recorded that she had anointed her body with a special oil, spoken the words “I go in the name of the devil,” and flown out the window to meet Diana. The oil was said to be a mixture of crushed herbs (often henbane, nightshade, and mandrake) and animal fat, which may well have produced psychoactive effects when absorbed through the skin.
Other details from the Malleus: the night witch caused infertility in women, killed livestock, blighted crops, and stole the phallus (a recurring obsession). She was also believed to shape-shift into a cat or a wolf. The witch archetype includes these actions, but the night witch adds the specific context of nocturnal, ecstatic communion.
One more concrete detail: the sabbat itself was imagined as a parody of the Christian mass. The devil sat on a black throne, the witches kissed him, they danced back to back, and the food was corpse-flesh. That specific set of charges belongs to the night witch, not to all witches.
How the night witch compares to other witch subtypes
The day witch is the obvious contrast. In English folklore, the cunning man or white witch worked openly, charged a fee, and used Christian prayers alongside folk charms. The early modern trial of Bessie Dunlop (1576, Scotland) shows a local woman who claimed to heal the sick and see the fairies; she was never accused of night flight. Her magic was domestic and diurnal.
The shamanic witch, from Siberian or Altaic traditions, also travels spiritually. But the shaman’s journey is voluntary, purposeful (to retrieve a soul, to seek a cure), and often assisted by spirit animals. The night witch’s flight, as described by the Malleus, is an act of submission. She is carried by the devil or a demon. She has no control over where she goes.
The modern Wiccan witch consciously reappropriates the night witch. Gerald Gardner (1954) described the coven flying “in the spirit” to the sabbat, often astride a staff or broom. The goal was not demonic worship but the celebration of nature. Gardner’s witches were night witches by choice, not by accusation. That shift is critical: the modern archetype turns the medieval stereotype on its head.
Common misconceptions about the night witch
The most persistent confusion is that every historical witch was a night witch. The evidence from trial records shows otherwise. Many accused witches confessed only to causing harm through curses or maleficium, with no mention of flight or sabbats. The night witch cluster of accusations was more common in certain regions (the Alpine region, the Spanish Inquisition, parts of Germany) and nearly absent in others (Iceland, Russia).
Another misconception: that the night witch’s flight was a metaphor for some real practice. There is strong evidence that the “flying ointment” contained deliriant plants, and women who applied it may have genuinely believed they had flown. That is not the same as claiming they physically flew. The reality is likely a mix of self-medication, social pressure to confess, and genuine ecstatic experience.
Finally, the night witch is not unique to Christianity. In ancient Rome, the strix was a night-flying bird associated with witches that drank children’s blood. In Slavic folklore, the nochnitsa (night witch) sits on a sleeping person’s chest and causes nightmares. The figure is cross-cultural.
FAQ
Was the night witch a real person?
No. The night witch is a folkloric and legal construct. Many real women were accused and executed based on that construct, but no one actually flew on a broomstick to a demonic sabbat.
Does the night witch exist in modern witchcraft?
Yes, as a symbolic identity. Some Wiccan and traditional witches consciously adopt the night witch label to reclaim the figure as a symbol of liminal power. The practice is symbolic, not literal.
How does the night witch differ from the lamia or strix?
The lamia and strix are specifically child-eating demons. The night witch is a human (or a demon impersonating a human) who flies, harms, and communes with the devil. The overlap is real but not complete.
Why was the night witch associated with Diana?
Diana was a Roman goddess of the moon and the hunt, associated with night. The Canon Episcopi linked the flying women to Diana because she was already a goddess of liminal spaces. Over time, Herodias replaced Diana in many accounts, but the nocturnal symbolism stayed constant.
Further reading
The night witch still appears in discussions of the witch archetype, but she is only one face of it. To see the full spectrum, from the cunning folk to the modern Wiccan, begin with our guide to the witch archetype. For a deeper look at the texts that shaped the night witch, explore the Canon Episcopi entry in the glossary. And for the broader context of how these figures were recorded and transmitted, visit the grimoires reference hub. The night witch is not the whole story, but she is the one who forced the story into writing.