Witch's shaft

Warning! Although this article is based on canonical information, the actual name of this subject is conjectural.

Witch's shaft
General Information
Type	Witch's Tools
Belonging	Tituba Mary Sibley
Use	boost sexual pleasure in rituals

“	There is no magic without arousal.	”
	— Mary Sibley to Anne Hale

Witch's shaft is a dark wooden stick used to induce the sexual arousal required to practice magical feats.

Description

The witch broomstick is one of the traditional Witchcraft instruments, phallic symbol par excellence, which in Salem has been re-sized to a wooden phallus (a shaft, precisely) used to bring pleasure to the female nether regions in order to collect enough energy, via altered states of consciousness, to perform considerably difficult rituals, such as projecting the spirit out of the body and let it roam freely for spying or committing misdeeds. This tool is highly used in the practice of sexual magic, a branch of witchcraft, and helps witches to achieve sexual pleasure in the absence of a (male) partner.

Throughout the Salem series

Tituba rouses Mary with the witch's shaft

With the full moon, Tituba warns her mistress that it is time to begin the Grand Rite. In the privacy of mrs. Sibley's bedroom, the two women in petticoats and Tituba unscrews from the handle of a broom a phallic object that she uses to rouses Mary after applying on her body a particular ointment. When Mary reaches orgasm, her body hangs in an awkward position, the pupils assume a bluish color and the witch's astral projection reaches the witches coven, ready to celebrate the start of the Great Rite by sacrificing a dove over a pull of hellfire filled with dancing witches covered with black pitch. (The Vow)

Tituba wanted to use again the witch's shaft with Mary, but the mistress uses it alone after using it to push hard her familiar toad down the throat of George Sibley. (The Stone Child)

Tituba uses the object again with Mary so that the Samhain is astrally projected on the Marburg's ship to spy on the Countess Von Marburg. (The Wine Dark Sea)

Gallery

the staff hidden in the broomstick

Mary is linked to the Circle

Mary projects her spirit outside the body

Tituba showing the shaft to Anne Hale

Trivia

• The word "shaft" indicates a straight stick or cane and also the long part of a column. Vulgarly speaking it also indicate the penis and if used as a verb it will indicate the act of penetration, which is the exact nature of the object employed by Tituba to stimulate her mistress's nether regions.
• A promotional photo shows Tituba in the act of showing the shaft to Anne Hale, but this scene has not been shown in any of the episodes. LIkely, it was part of an extended scene that got cut in post-production.
• In the episode The Wine Dark Sea, Countess Von Marburg referred ironically to the shaft as "rudimentary witch stick," emphasizing with a mischievous smirk the sexual use of this instrument.

Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Witch riding backwards on a goat. Engraving, c.1500

Historical Facts

• Witches flying during nights has always been associated with flying ointment and sexual arousal. When the witch reaches her bliss, she flies to the Sabbath. This element was taken up in classical iconography, where the phallic deities of wilderness became devils. And their erect phallus, a broomstick.

• In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, images of witches riding up and out of chimneys start to dominate. During this period, women also were more closely associated with domestic space than they were 200 years earlier. At that time, too, brooms are depicted more and more often in relation to domestic work in art.