The medieval apothecary garden

cared little for aesthetics, focusing instead on species that healed and intoxicated and occasionally poisoned. Witches and sorcerers cultivated plants with the power to "cast spells" - in our vocabulary, "psychoactive" plants. Their potion recipes called for things such as datura, opium poppies, belladonna, hashish, fly-agaric mushrooms (Amanita muscaria), and the skin of toads (which contain DMT, a powerful hallucinogen). These ingredients would then be combined in a hempseed-oil-based "flying ointment" that the witches would then administer ca finally issuing a special dildo. This was the "broomstick" by which these women we're said to travel.

Michael Pollan - The Botany of Desire