https://thesteministwitch.com/nightshade-news daily 0.75 2026-11-13 https://thesteministwitch.com/nightshade-news/nightshade-news-001 monthly 0.5 2026-11-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/9f176d56-85d6-41e7-b34b-90669f7e25cb/Untitled+Design.png Nightshade News - The Plant That Was Blamed for Everything - Issue Nº 001 · Friday 13 November 2026 · The Nightshade Issue · The Almanac: First things first: The moon: new on Monday 9 November (a very special date for me for personal reasons), now a waxing crescent, about 17% lit. First quarter lands Tuesday 17 November. The sky: the Leonids (meteor shower) peak the night of 17 to 18 November, best between 2 and 4 AM, roughly 10 to 15 an hour, and the moon sets before the show, which is the one favour it has done us all month considering how pissy everyone has been lately. Full moon is Tuesday 24 November. The wheel: Samhain was two weeks ago, so the veil is still thin and the leftovers are still on the counter, at least for some people. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/bfa45bb9-399c-4685-b6f1-7ab6f305aab3/Untitled+%28Instagram+Post+%284_5%29%29.png Nightshade News - The Plant That Was Blamed for Everything - The Witch’s Index A field guide in three entries. The name. Atropa is linked to Atropos, the Fate who cuts the thread of life. Linnaeus gets the credit for the formal name in the 1700s of the plant named after the scissors. Subtle, Linnaeus. Dwale. The Middle English word dwale meant deadly nightshade, a sleeping draught, and also a stupor, a delusion, a deceiver (from Old Norse dvala, sleep, and Old English dwala, error). That is a lot of weight for one syllable, if you ask me. There is a famous medieval recipe called dwale, for a drink given before surgery. A 1999 BMJ article by the anaesthetist Anthony Carter lists a typical one: boar or sow bile, hemlock, bryony, lettuce, opium, henbane and vinegar, three spoonfuls in a potel of wine. If you look closely, there’s no nightshade. The plant lent its name to the sleeping drink in some usages, but the best-known recipe never used it. Carter called the business "dangerously unpredictable," and he thinks ordinary housewives, not surgeons, were the ones mixing it, because it turns up in household remedy books rather than in medical texts. History left the women out of the footnote, as usual. The strix. The Romans told stories about the strix, an owl-like bird of ill omen that fed on the flesh and blood of infants. Ovid describes it as having a big head, hooked beak and greyish wings. Pliny the Elder, a man who believed a great deal, shrugged and said nobody could even tell which bird was meant. A later Latin glossary used the plural to mean "witch-women," and the word walked into Italian as strega, "witch." The bird became the woman. Keep that sentence in your pocket. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/4cbc5d35-968d-4154-963b-0307c8f6a7db/lore+desk.png Nightshade News - The Plant That Was Blamed for Everything - The Lore Desk The sources use a word I am going to borrow: allegedly. I find this quite fitting and amusing. Allegedly, the witch Circe turned Odysseus's men into pigs with nightshade. Allegedly, a drink that induced trance went into the cult of Dionysus. Rumoured, Livia poisoned Augustus with it. Supposedly, Roman soldiers tipped arrows with a paste of it, and Macbeth spiked the liquor of invading soldiers. Reportedly, parents told children the berries would show them the Devil. (That one I believe. It works on every child. This is not parenting advice.) Modern witchcraft often pairs belladonna with Hecate and the boundary between worlds. I am still hunting the older source for that pairing, so file it under "what people practise today" rather than under history. That is a topic for another day. In this paper we talk about the lore, the science, the history, the spirituality and the intersection. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/0bdf6a10-21fc-4843-a37d-51983cfd467d/4.png Nightshade News - The Plant That Was Blamed for Everything - The Craft What Does a Witch Do With Poison? (Answer: Nothing Reckless) Here is the rule of this paper, and it is the only rule that matters: none of the rituals require anything poisonous and please stay away from poisonous plants. Any information shared is for educational purposes only and never a medical recommendation. If anyone swallows any part of a poisonous plant, call your local poison control or emergency number immediately. The magic here is symbolic, and I promise it is no weaker for it. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/143c19ec-041d-4284-9e5c-7a345febf808/6.png Nightshade News - The Plant That Was Blamed for Everything - Cold Case Nº 001, Part One Did Anyone Ever Fly on a Nightshade Ointment? The file is thick, and I am going to lay it out for you. Exhibit A, the chemistry. Belladonna and its cousins contain tropane alkaloids that absorb through the skin and can cause hallucinations, according to the Emory ethnobotanist Cassandra Quave. Exhibit B, the doctor's report. According to the US Forest Service, the 16th-century physician Andres de Laguna, doctor to Pope Julius III, reported that a green ointment taken from a witch contained hemlock, "salanum" (probably a nightshade), mandrake and henbane. One physician's report is not a lab result, but it is a clue, and a clue is where a cold case starts. Exhibit C, the recipe. A 1977 review in the journal Folklore by Clive Harper, as reported by the Boston Globe, found seven typical ingredients: deadly nightshade, aconite, sweet flag, cinquefoil, smallage, bat's blood and children's fat. Harper concluded it would make a potent hallucinogen. The Globe adds, with a dryness I admire, that it "probably didn't allow witches to fly.” Darn it. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/e79f3a7e-4f5e-4ecb-8dd1-7da764834e4a/IMG_1726.jpg Nightshade News - The Plant That Was Blamed for Everything - This Keeper's Confession: Blame the Paperwork. I went looking for the woman who flew on nightshade, and I found a lot of men writing about her. That is not a conspiracy theory, dearest curious reader. It is a footnote. Belladonna was real, the delirium was real, and yes, some of the women knew their botanical medicine (and some, I am sure, simply knew a neighbour who did). But the story of the poisoner, the ointment and the broomstick was told, recorded and shaped by physicians, inquisitors and authors with a thesis. You know this feeling, I think. You have been described by someone who was not in the room: the colleague who summed you up in a meeting you were not at, the relative who told your story at a table you were not sitting at, the version of you that exists in someone else's model of the world and has never once been asked. (The strix never got a say either. Neither did the woman who inherited her name.) https://thesteministwitch.com/home daily 0.75 2026-10-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/55d202f0-d35f-4c34-8045-fe57d1c704b5/CF145A4E-A048-4483-8E7B-5A1E882B26D4.PNG https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/ff4547eb-2dac-450b-abd9-bd87d0f303da/IMG_9243.jpg https://thesteministwitch.com/home-1 daily 1.0 2026-11-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/55d202f0-d35f-4c34-8045-fe57d1c704b5/CF145A4E-A048-4483-8E7B-5A1E882B26D4.PNG https://thesteministwitch.com/the-arcane-athenaeum daily 0.75 2026-11-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/1794433730228-VSX5SQG8ZDSNAQALNLZ4/unsplash-image-J2_nIEkIpRM.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/52e225aa-4690-410b-9a68-e2f207b0159a/Retreat.png https://thesteministwitch.com/store daily 0.75 2026-11-13 https://thesteministwitch.com/store/p/the-peculiar-post monthly 0.5 2026-11-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/9f22c86c-ad9f-4b32-992b-ef7ea89321ae/peculiar+post.png Store - The Peculiar Post - peculiar post.png https://thesteministwitch.com/store/p/wjh92chx3nky2saydoxfg9g55qkrsj-9txy7 monthly 0.5 2026-11-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/de891e3f-8665-46d3-a1f3-17b10c3efa68/ballinderry-park-coach-house-the-curlew-north-bedroom-04.png Store - Arcane Retreat Room Types - ballinderry-park-coach-house-the-curlew-north-bedroom-04.png (Copy) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/46e253ef-039d-4197-98c8-09c78aabc7ab/ballinderry-park-coach-house-the-hawthorn-ground-floor-bedroom-03.png Store - Arcane Retreat Room Types - ballinderry-park-coach-house-the-hawthorn-ground-floor-bedroom-03.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/90713f79-883f-46e4-aea2-d79e89a94913/ballinderry-park-coach-house-the-grove-family-bedroom-08+%281%29.png Store - Arcane Retreat Room Types - ballinderry-park-coach-house-the-grove-family-bedroom-08 (1).png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/a41fff82-dc3b-4f16-af40-3a08897726e2/Screenshot+2026-11-11+at+9.50.25%E2%80%AFPM.png Store - Arcane Retreat Room Types - Screenshot 2026-11-11 at 9.50.25 PM.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/3efeb415-cc5c-4331-a5d0-1a1a8c8f786b/Screenshot+2026-11-11+at+9.49.37%E2%80%AFPM.png Store - Arcane Retreat Room Types - Screenshot 2026-11-11 at 9.49.37 PM.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/3efeb415-cc5c-4331-a5d0-1a1a8c8f786b/Screenshot+2026-11-11+at+9.49.37%E2%80%AFPM.png Store - Arcane Retreat Room Types - Screenshot 2026-11-11 at 9.49.37 PM.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6ae146d83104a35db839d849/a185928f-f4d8-457f-8128-d4492b64cf0d/Screenshot+2026-11-11+at+9.47.36%E2%80%AFPM.png Store - Arcane Retreat Room Types - Screenshot 2026-11-11 at 9.47.36 PM.png