Caves of Zugarramurdi
The most famous setting of the Basque sabbaths.
The Witches' Flight
The ointment and the words that make flight possible
Quick facts
- • Place:Zugarramurdi and the caves of the Akelarre
- • Basque name:Sorginen hegaldia
- • Beings involved:Sorginak
- • Motifs:flight, ointment, akelarre, spell
- • Chronology:Medieval oral tradition
The Legend
The Sorginak prepared a special ointment from herbs gathered on full-moon nights according to secret rites. Belladonna, henbane, mandrake: plants that opened the threshold between visible and invisible worlds. They spread the salve over their naked bodies and spoke the sacred words.
Over all the thornbushes! they cried toward the night sky, and their bodies rose up through the farmhouse chimney, flying toward the meadow of the akelarre. Those who forgot the exact words crashed into the bushes along the way, scratched and bruised.
One suspicious husband decided to follow his wife one night, secretly anointing himself with the salve she had prepared. He flew with her to the hidden gathering in the woods, but in his astonishment at the meeting of witches he forgot the protective words he was supposed to repeat.
The other witches discovered him at once and turned him into a goat until dawn as punishment for his curiosity. He awoke in his bed unsure whether everything had been a dream, but with his feet covered in forest mud.
Associated places
Related creatures
Sources and documentation
- J.M. Barandiaran (1972): Mitología Vasca
- Actas de los juicios de Logroño (1610)
- Tradición oral de Navarra
The indecipherable mystery of fearful night flight
The tale of witches flying across the Basque night condenses wonder, fear, and hidden knowledge into a single image: women escaping the weight of ordinary life by means of a dangerous rite.
The ointment and the spoken formula are central. Flight is never random; it depends on botanical knowledge, ritual precision, and the correct words. Magic here is technique as much as mystery.
Uncidos a las cumbres y burlando la opresión
The legend also preserves ambivalence. Perhaps the witches truly flew, or perhaps the ointment produced ecstatic visions that felt indistinguishable from real travel. Folklore leaves the question suspended.
That uncertainty is part of the story's power. It allows the flight to remain both supernatural event and human experience of liberation, terror, and altered consciousness.
