The Broomstick: History, Myth & Magic of a Witch Symbol

Long before it was a punchline or a Halloween prop, the broomstick was a threshold. A tool that swept the mundane from the sacred, the unwanted from the welcome, the old year from the new. Every witch who has ever stood at her doorway with a besom in hand has touched something ancient — a lineage of hands doing the same quiet work for a thousand years. Stay spooky. Stay strange. Stay spellbound. Tonight, let's talk about the symbol that started it all.

Where the Broomstick Legend Began

The image of a witch astride a broom didn't spring from nowhere. Historians trace it to the besom — a simple bundle of birch twigs bound to an ash handle with willow, used for centuries to sweep hearths, thresholds, and sacred ground clean before ritual. In medieval Europe, cunning folk and village healers used brooms in fertility rites, straddling them and leaping through fields to encourage crops to grow as tall as the jump. Onlookers who didn't understand the practice saw only women leaping wildly astride sticks under the moon — and legend did the rest.

Add to that the confessions (often extracted under torture) describing "flying ointments" — herbal salves rubbed onto skin, sometimes applied with a broom handle, said to produce sensations of soaring. Whatever the truth of those stories, they hardened into the image we inherited: the witch, the broom, the night sky. It became one of the most enduring symbols of feminine power society ever tried to turn into a joke.

The Besom in Folklore and Protection

Across cultures, the broom was never just for cleaning floors — it was a guardian at the door. Placing a besom across a threshold was believed to stop unwanted spirits and ill intentions from crossing into the home. Newlyweds have long "jumped the broom" to mark a threshold crossed together, a tradition with roots stretching from European folk custom to African American history, where it became a powerful act of commitment during eras when marriage itself was denied. The broom, again and again, marks the line between before and after — between what you're leaving and what you're stepping into.

Working with a Besom Today

You don't need to believe in flight to feel the pull of this symbol. Modern practitioners still keep a besom by the door — not for sweeping dust, but for sweeping energy. A few ways to bring the practice into your own space:

• Sweep outward from the center of a room toward the door to clear stagnant or heavy energy before a ritual, a new moon, or simply a hard week.
• Hang a small besom by your front door as a protective ward, bristles facing down to keep unwanted energy from settling.
• Use broom-sweeping as a closing gesture at the end of a ritual — a physical signal to yourself that the working is complete.
• Gift a besom at a housewarming, the old way, as a blessing for the threshold of a new home.

The gesture matters more than the tool. What you're really doing is drawing a boundary and declaring it sacred.

Wearing the Symbol

Every symbol a witch keeps close — the pentacle, the black cat, the evil eye — is a small act of claiming. The broomstick belongs on that list: proof that the things used to mock us were, all along, tools of real power. If you want to carry that same fearless, unapologetic energy into the daylight hours, our Witch Tarot Card Tee was made for exactly that — a wearable reminder that the old symbols were never something to be afraid of. Browse the rest of the shirt collection for more ways to wear your witchcraft out loud.

So light a candle, sweep your doorway, and let the besom do what it's always done — mark the space between what was and what's coming. Stay spooky. Stay strange. Stay spellbound.