Bottling Witches

Some days things cross my desk in the morning news that I never imagine I’ll see. Today one of those was seeing an online article about witch bottles washing up on the shores of Texas. It has been so long since I’ve seen anything about witch bottles that I had forgotten about them.

Witch bottles go back centuries. The bottles washing up on the Gulf shores of Texas could possibly come from either South America or North America. Also, they have been found in various European countries dating back to at least the sixteenth century. The historian in me tends to take the educated guess that if these bottles have been around that long, they quite likely have derived from folk religions dating back thousands of years. That is how human behaviors and beliefs repeat themselves.

Now for the good news. Witch bottles are used as white magic to counteract black magic. If someone was suffering from an ailment that would not go away or if there was the suspicion of the dark arts, the urine of the person afflicted would be put in a bottle with hair, herbs, pins and needles. The bottle was then corked. It might be hidden in a fireplace, buried beneath the house or in the furthest corner of the property. Likewise, the witch bottle could end up tossed in a river or ocean. The belief was that the bottle draws the evil person or spirit, they are impaled upon the pins and needles and drowned in the urine. This ends the evil spell thereby releasing the formerly afflicted person who is restored to health.