Witch Trials and Wildflowers: Herbal Remedies, Witchcraft, and the Softer Side of Dark History

Branded as sinners and monsters, many accused witches were in truth healers: midwives, herbalists, and caretakers whose wisdom endured through herbal remedies and quiet acts of resistance.

Where Fire Once Burned, Flowers Now Bloom. History has long painted them as sinners, temptresses, monsters, women who whispered with the Devil and consorted with shadows. That was the story inked into court records and thundered from pulpits. But peel back the accusations, and another truth begins to bloom.

Many of these so-called witches were midwives, herbalists, caretakers, women whose hands smelled not of brimstone but of chamomile and sage. They knew which flower soothed fever, which root brought comfort to childbirth, which leaf could ease a restless mind. In their villages, they were both respected and feared: sought out in moments of desperation yet condemned for the very knowledge that made them indispensable.

They were called dangerous, yet most were healers. Their knowledge balanced between survival and suspicion, never fully trusted, never fully safe.

---

The Shadow of the Witch Hunts

When most people think of witch trials, their minds fly straight to Salem, Massachusetts.

In the late 1600s, that small Puritan settlement became infamous for its paranoia, with neighbors turning on neighbors and young girls’ accusations sparking a frenzy that ended in twenty executions. Salem’s story is burned into American memory, a cautionary tale about hysteria and fear.

Trial records, quills, and ink: relics of a time when fear was written into law and accusations sealed lives with ink and parchment.

But Salem was only a spark in a much wider storm. Centuries earlier and across the Atlantic, Europe was gripped by waves of trials that consumed entire villages. In Scotland, nearly 4,000 people, mostly women, were accused under King James VI, whose obsession with witchcraft fueled nationwide hunts. In the German-speaking regions, towns like Würzburg and Bamberg witnessed mass trials so sweeping that even children were not spared. In Switzerland, the Protestant canton of Vaud became one of the deadliest regions, with hundreds executed.

Unlike the quick blaze of Salem, these persecutions stretched on for decades, even centuries, rooted in fear of women who stepped outside the lines: widows, healers, midwives, or simply the poor. What united many of the accused wasn’t a pact with the Devil, but their closeness to the natural world: their knowledge of herbs, healing, and the mysteries of birth and death.

Herbs on Trial

What we now celebrate as herbal remedies were once condemned as witchcraft, their healing power mistrusted as dangerous sorcery. To the villagers who sought them out, herbs were comfort: a poultice for wounds, a tea for fever, a charm tucked into a pocket for safe travel. But under the gaze of clergy and courts, the same plants became damning evidence.

Mugwort: Herbal Remedy or Witchcraft’s Tool?

Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris)

Mugwort was carried by travelers for protection, slipped into shoes to ease fatigue, and used by midwives to help with difficult births. It was also burned to ward off evil or placed under pillows to invite dreams and visions. But these uses made it perilous in a world where dreams and childbirth were God’s domain. In the 1590 North Berwick trials in Scotland, accused women were said to have used “witch herbs” to summon storms against the king’s ship, mugwort among them. Its connection with prophecy and the moon made it easy for prosecutors to argue that women who owned it were in league with dark forces, seeing what they should not.

Chamomile: Comfort in a Cup or Potion on Trial?

Chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla)

Chamomile, gentle enough for children, was a universal comfort for stomach pains, sleepless nights, and frayed nerves. Yet in an era when intention mattered as much as action, even chamomile tea could be damning. During the 1612 Pendle trials in Lancashire, England, healers like “Old Demdike” and “Old Chattox” were accused of using charms and herbal drinks to cure, or to curse. Though chamomile itself isn’t named, records show that simple herbal brews offered in good faith were often recast as “witches’ potions.” A whispered blessing over a cup could be reinterpreted as a spell, transforming comfort into supposed sorcery.

Yarrow: Healing Charm or Work of Witchcraft?

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

Yarrow’s reputation as a healer went back to antiquity, its Latin name millefolium (“thousand-leaf”) hints at its many uses. Soldiers carried it to stanch bleeding; villagers tucked it into clothes or laid it across thresholds for protection. But in 1620s Würzburg, Germany, where one of the largest witch persecutions in history unfolded, testimony often described accused women carrying “bundles of strange plants” tied with string. Court scribes, unfamiliar with healing lore, listed them as suspicious objects, sometimes specifically noting plants like yarrow that were linked to both love charms and protective magic. A woman with yarrow in her apron pocket could be condemned for “binding” her neighbors’ fortunes, her healing charms rewritten as malefic spells.

Foxglove: Poison, Cure, and Witchcraft’s Shadow

Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea)

Few plants walked the knife-edge between healing and harm as sharply as foxglove. Its tall spires of purple bells were beloved by children and feared by parents. Too much could stop the heart; in tiny doses, it steadied it. Today, digitalis extracted from foxglove remains a vital heart medicine.In folklore, foxglove was tied to fairies and called “witches’ gloves” in parts of England. During the Salem witch trials of 1692, botanical evidence was not central, but testimonies often described women accused of keeping “poisonous herbs” or “curious flowers.” In Europe, however, foxglove’s presence in a healer’s garden could be turned into a weapon in court. If a neighbor died suddenly, the plant’s toxicity offered ready “proof” that a healer had slipped from remedy to malice.

Even garlic, fennel, and rue, humble kitchen companion, were enlisted against witchcraft in charms and amulets. When a healer offered them, it was faith; when an accused woman owned them, it was sorcery.

Herbal knowledge was never neutral. It lingered uneasily between survival and suspicion, a space where superstition was quick to grow. A child’s fever breaking after an infusion could be hailed as divine intervention, but if the fever lingered or the child died, the healer’s very same knowledge was recast as witchcraft.

In the courts, dried bundles of herbs hanging from rafters or tucked in aprons became “evidence of the Devil’s work.” The very tools of healing, mortar, pestle, bundles of sage were turned into symbols of malice. What comforted the body unsettled the fearful mind and so herbs themselves went on trial alongside the women who carried them.

The Wisdom of Forgotten Women

Herbs, parchment, and a well-worn mortar: the quiet tools of women whose knowledge was passed hand to hand, preserved not in books but in practice.

It is tempting, centuries later, to picture witches as robed figures casting spells by candlelight. In truth, most of those accused were simply women living ordinary lives in extraordinary circumstances. They were midwives, healers, widows, and outsiders. They were the people others turned to when a baby wouldn’t breathe, when a fever ran too high, when grief pressed too heavy on the heart.

Their wisdom was not written in books, but in memory and practice, passed hand to hand, mother to daughter, neighbor to neighbor. They knew the plants that grew by the hedgerows, how to prepare them, when to harvest under the right moon. They carried a knowledge of birth and death that was both practical and deeply spiritual.

But such wisdom was precarious. In a world governed by church and crown, power did not sit comfortably in the hands of poor women. To heal outside the sanctioned authority of doctors, or worse, to succeed where doctors failed, was dangerous. A recovery could bring gratitude, but a death could bring accusation. The same skill that made them essential to their communities made them suspect to the authorities.

And so their names slipped into trial records, their lives reduced to confessions wrenched by fear. Many left no written words behind, no legacy but the memory of their “crimes.” Yet when we look closely, we can see what was really lost: not just lives, but entire libraries of lived knowledge, extinguished one woman at a time.

But the story does not end with silence. Some of their wisdom survived, reshaped into medicine and wellness. Some endured in secret, disguised as prayer or custom, carried forward by women whose quiet defiance was as brave as any rebellion.

Healing Practices That Survived: From Witchcraft to Medicine

A single flame cradled in cupped hands: a reminder that the wisdom once branded as witchcraft survived through quiet acts of care and persistence.

A single flame cradled in cupped hands: a reminder that the wisdom once branded as witchcraft survived through quiet acts of care and persistence.

Though the trials silenced countless voices, their wisdom could not be so easily extinguished. Many of the very remedies once branded “witchcraft” still flow through our daily lives accepted now as medicine or wellness where once they were evidence of sorcery.

• Willow bark, chewed to ease pain and fever, gave rise to aspirin, one of the most widely used medicines in the world.

• Foxglove, condemned as a “witch’s flower” for its dangerous potency, became the source of digitalis, a treatment that continues to steady failing hearts.

• Chamomile, lavender, and peppermint, once tucked into aprons and whispered over in kitchens, now soothe millions as teas and oils, sold openly instead of hidden away.

This endurance is a form of reclamation. Though the women who carried the knowledge were condemned, the plants themselves outlasted the fear. Their survival tells us what the trials tried to deny: this was not superstition, but science in its earliest form.

Acts of Quiet Resistance

The softer side of this history also lies in the small, everyday defiance of those who continued their practices, even as danger closed in around them. To brew tea, to lay hands in comfort, to murmur a charm was, in itself, a radical act of survival.

Many women disguised their remedies as piety. An herbal poultice might be offered with a whispered prayer, a blessing recited over a tea, so it passed as devotion instead of sorcery. In doing so, they protected themselves while still protecting others.

Every act of healing carried risk: one day it meant gratitude, the next it could mean accusation. Yet still they practiced, quietly, stubbornly. Their defiance was not loud rebellion, but the persistence of care. The refusal to let cruelty extinguish kindness.

Closing Reflection

Dusty bottles on a shadowed shelf: fragments of knowledge that outlasted fear, a quiet echo of healing carried through time.

The witch trials scarred history with fear and cruelty, but they could not erase tenderness, nor could they extinguish care. Each act of healing, however small, was a rebellion in its own right. A whispered prayer disguised as medicine, a cup of tea offered as both comfort and quiet defiance.

When we light a candle, brew a calming tea, or reach for herbs to ease pain, we echo those women who risked everything to keep wisdom alive. Their resistance was not shouted from rooftops but carried in hushed kitchens, in hidden gardens, in the persistence of compassion.

And that is the softer side of dark history: not just the survival of knowledge, but the bravery of those who chose, again and again, to heal in the face of fear.