Grammar Test B Answer 22

22.

a) The hirsute blossom of the passion vine was angered by the criticisms of the bristlecone pine.

b) The hirsute blossom of the passion vine left the forest on the back of an old witch.

c) The witch was checking on her patch of sensemilla

d) The witch was going to use the sensemilla as one of the ingredients for her "flying ointment."


Angered by the criticisms of the bristlecone pine, the hirsute blossom of the passion vine left the forest on the back of an old witch who was checking on her patch of sensimilla that she was going to use as one of the ingredients for her "flying ointment."

red=participial phrase


 

So why are witches so often associated with riding brooms?

Ans: Witches used the "flying ointments" alluded to above (that contained psychoactive ingredients) as means to alter their mental landscape and therefore "fly." They found that these ointments were most effectively applied by putting them on dildos and applying them vaginally. These crude dildos were often made of wood and became associated with "broomsticks."

According to Michael Pollan in The Botany of Desire,

The medieval apothecary garden cared little for aesthetics, focusing instead on species that healed and intoxicated and occasionally poisoned. Witches and sorceres cultivated plants with the power to "cast spells"—in our vocabulary, "psychoactive" plants. Their potion recipes called for such things as datura, opium poppies, belladonna, hashish, fly-agaric mushrooms (Amanita muscaria), and the skins of toads (which contain DMT, a powerful hallucinogen). These ingredients would be combined in a hempseed-oil-based "flying ointment" that the witches would then administer vaginally using a special dildo. This was the "broomstick" by which these women were said to travel . (119)