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Craft & Tools

The Besom (Witch's Broom)

Also called besom, broomstick, witch's broomstick

A besom is a traditional broom made of a bundle of twigs bound to a wooden handle. In folklore it is the witch's flying steed; in modern practice it is used to sweep away stale energy from a room or ritual space, hung over doors for protection, and leapt over at weddings.

TraditionBritish and European rural folk custom; modern witchcraft
RegionBritain and western Europe
EraFlying-broom lore from the 1450s; ritual sweeping in modern witchcraft
Moon☾ Waning moon
DaySaturday · Saturn
ElementAir
Difficulty●○○ Simple
Time20 minutes

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The working

  1. Choose a besom with natural twigs and a sturdy handle. Keep a ritual besom separate from the one that sweeps up real dirt.
  2. Clean the floor first in the ordinary way. The besom works on the feel of the room, not on dust.
  3. Bless it by tying on a ribbon and tucking a few sprigs of rosemary or lavender into the binding while you state what it is for.
  4. Open a door or window. Starting at the back of the home, sweep the air just above the floor in short strokes toward the open door, moving room by room.
  5. At the door, give three final sweeps over the threshold, then sprinkle a pinch of salt there and close the door.
  6. To mark out ritual space, sweep the circle area clockwise before you set up your altar.
  7. Hang the besom by the door with the bristles up, a common modern custom for protection, or store it standing on its handle so the twigs keep their shape.

Take care: Keep dried herb bundles and besoms away from candles and fireplaces; dry twigs catch fire fast. If you include jumping the broom in a wedding, learn and share its meaning in African American history rather than treating it as a novelty.

Versions across time and place

i

Jumping the broom

African American marriage custom; also British folk weddings · Recorded in the antebellum United States; revived from the 1970s

Before the Civil War, Southern law did not recognise marriages between enslaved people, and many couples affirmed their union by jumping over a broom. The custom carries the memory of families who made marriages that the law refused and enslavers could tear apart. Historian Tyler Parry traces related broom-jumping weddings to marginal communities in Britain, including Romani and rural Welsh couples. After emancipation many freed people set it aside; after Alex Haley's Roots (1976, televised 1977) it returned as a proud African American tradition. Honor that history if you include it in a wedding.

Recorded in: Tyler D. Parry, Jumping the Broom: The Surprising Multicultural Origins of a Black Wedding Ritual (UNC Press, 2020)
ii

Flying to the sabbath

15th-century French witch trials · 1451 to 1453

The earliest known pictures of women riding a broom and a stick appear in the margin of a 1451 copy of Martin Le Franc's poem. In 1453 the prior Guillaume Edelin of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, under pressure and torture, confessed to flying on a broom to the witches' sabbath. Later artists made the broom-riding witch a standard image.

Recorded in: Martin Le Franc, Le Champion des Dames (1451 manuscript); Guillaume Edelin case, 1453
iii

Broom by the door

British and American household folklore · 19th and 20th centuries

Many households kept rules about brooms: never sweep dirt out of the door after dark, never bring a new broom into the house in May, and lay a broom across the threshold to keep a witch from crossing. Practitioners today often hang a decorated besom inside the front door as a guardian.

Recorded in: Recorded widely in folklore collections

History

The besom was an everyday tool across Europe, cheap to make from birch twigs or heather and used by almost every household. Its link to witchcraft appears in the 1400s, as theologians and judges in France and the Alps began writing about witches flying to night meetings. The oldest known images of broom riders, two women on a broom and a stick, are in a 1451 manuscript of Martin Le Franc's Le Champion des Dames. Two years later Guillaume Edelin, a priest who had mocked belief in witches, confessed under torture to riding a broom and was jailed for life.

The broom also had a life outside witch lore. In Britain informal broom weddings were recorded among poor and Romani communities, and in the American South enslaved couples, barred from legal marriage, jumped the broom to mark their unions. That history of dignity under oppression is why the custom matters so much in African American weddings today. Modern witches use the besom to sweep ritual space and clear a home before a new season, a quiet echo of the hearth-sweeping that kept homes safe.

Sources

  1. Guillaume Edelin · Wikipedia contributors, 2026
  2. The First Known Depiction of a Witch on a Broomstick · Hyperallergic
  3. Jumping the Broom and the American Cultural Divide · African American Intellectual History Society (Black Perspectives)
  4. Jumping the Broom: The Surprising Multicultural Origins of a Black Wedding Ritual · Tyler D. Parry, 2020

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