Halloween's Herbal Legends: From the Jack-O-Lantern to Broomsticks

This article is an expanded version of an article I originally had published in the Fall 2003 issue of the Herb Quarterly magazine.

The folklore and historical uses of plants are popular areas of study with many herbalists, gardeners and pagans. Folklore focuses on the legends and myths associated with various plants as opposed to the scientific knowledge associated with the fields of study such as botany and horticulture.

All Hallow's Eve or Samhain, the ancient Celtic festival day, traditionally marked the end of summer and beginning of winter. Long before modern-day Halloween costumes and candy overtook the proceedings, the final day of October was a time of reflection, both of past events and of loved ones who had recently died. At the same time, the evening provided a chance to look forward and try to divine what the new year would bring.

While that spirit of reflection has been lost on most of us who celebrate the holiday's modern incarnation, the symbols remain. Images of cauldrons and broomsticks, pumpkins and witches endure as icons of Halloween. Steeped in history and lore, many of these symbols have a connection to herbs that reveals users long forgotten.

Herbalist or Witch
The historical image of a cauldron bubbling over with magical potions, for example, probably originated from the large pot in which women of the Middle Ages boiled ingredients to produce a variety of medicinal simples and compounds. Simpling and compounding are the arts of collecting medicinal herbs, flowers, fruits, and roots in order to keep a necessary supply of potions, ointments, salves and poltices on hand. Women of the household most often conducted and supervised the simpling that occured in their household. During the Medieval and Renaissance periods, the disciplines of herbalism, alchemy and magic often overlapped and these women sometimes added the roll of spell-casting to their role of creating homemade herbal cures.

As for the contents of the symbolic cauldron, Shakespeare immortalized these herbs in Macbeth (Act 4, Scene 1), with the chant: