What do these physical characteristics tell us about the nature of the spirit belladonna represents? That it does not respect the contract that most plants make with us humans. Its sweet berries and sweet flowers don’t indicate a friend; they mask danger. Belladonna can be depended on only to be unpredictable and to trick us into believing that it is not harmful. In some ways, this resembles how many people perceive witches. We are often thought to be tricksy, because we can heal or hex, help or curse. I think belladonna represents something extremely complex about the nature of witches—something that many witches recognize, if only on a subconscious level. We find ourselves attracted to belladonna without really knowing why. [...] Belladonna has several fundamental qualities for witchcraft: unpredictability, ambiguity, tricksiness, and as an indicator of the Crooked Path. These qualities can be funneled into the concept of malice, an essential characteristic of Belladonna Spirit. We can respect something that is dangerous, like a tiger, and simultaneously realize that tigers don’t eat human beings out of any malice. They may just happen to be hungry when a human is available. We know there are dangers in our world, and we accept them. Generally, however, those dangers find ways to warn us off—with garish patterns, spines, bad smells, or bitter tastes. However, belladonna exempts itself from warning and steps into the space of deliberately messing with us, betraying an intelligence that materialists like to deny to the plant world. Like the witch in Hansel and Gretel who entices the children with her gingerbread house—because why else did she create it except as a trap?—and then shoves them into the oven, belladonna entices us with its luscious berries and then shoves us into the hell of its ferocious hallucinations. It can kill you, but even that’s not dependable—today, three berries will kill you; tomorrow, it may take fifteen. That sounds like malice to me—which, in some societies, is the very definition of witchcraft.
harold roth, the witching herbs
