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Witchcraft: (From Saxen Wicea, a
contraction of miega, a prophet or sorcerer.) The cult of
persons who, by means of satanic assistance or the aid of
evil spirits or familiars, are enabled to practise minor
black magic. But the difference between the sorcerer and
the witch is that the former has sold his soul to Satan
for complete dominion over him for a stated period,
whereas the witch usually appears as the devoted and often
badly treated servant of the diabolic power. But she is
often mistress of a familiar, her bounden slave, and among
certain savage peoples her occult powers are self-evolved.
The concept of witchcraft was perhaps brought into being
by the mythic influence of conquered races. It closely
resembles in ritual and practice the deraonism of savage
races, from which it probably sprang. (See Peril Worship.)
That is, the non-Aryan peoples of Europe who preceded the
Aryan population, carrying on the practice and traditions
of their religions more or less in secret, awoke in the
Aryan mind the idea that such practices were of 3 "
magical " character. This idea they would not fail to
assist, and would probably exaggerate such details as most
strongly impressed the-Aryan mind, to which their gods
would appear as " devils," and their religious ritual as
sorcery. This view has been combatted on the ground that
the gap betwixt, say, the extinction of the pre-Aryan
religion known as Druidism and the first notices of
witchcraft, is too great to bridge. But Druidism continued
to exist long after it was officially extinct, and British
witchcraft is its lineal successor. The theory is further
advanced that on the failure of the non-Aryan priesthood
novices would be adopted from the invading race for the
purpose of carrying on the old religion. It seems to the
present writer that the circumstance that the greater
number of the upholders of this ancient tradition were
women points to the likelihood of an early custom of the
adoption or marriage of Aryan women by a non-Aryan people
who would prefer to recruit their novices and devotees
from the more plastic sex, naturally distrusting the
masculine portion of an alien people to fall in with their
religious ideas, and that the almost exclusive employment
of women in the cult (in Britain, at least) originated in
this practice. Then individually all claimed to have been
initiated. Says Gomme, " I am inclined tolaygreat stress
upon the act of initiation. It emphasises the idea of a
caste distinct from the general populace, and it
postulates the existence of this caste anterior to the
time when those who practice their supposed powers first
come into notice. Carrying back this act of initiation age
after age, as the dismal records of witchcraft enable us
to do for some centuries, it is clear that the people from
time to time thus introduced into the witch caste carried
oa the practices and assumed the functions of the caste
even though they came to it as novices and strangers. We
thus arrive at an artificial means of descent of a
peculiar group of superstition, and it might be termed
initiatory descent." This concept, thinks Gomme (Folklore
as an Historical Science, p. zor at seq.) was influenced
in the
by another. " Twiditwnal practices, traditional formula;,
and traditional
beliefs are no doubt the elements of witchcraft, but it
was not the force of tradition which produced the
miserable doings of the Middle Ages, and of the
seventeenth century against witches. These were due to a
psychological force, partly generated by the newly
acquired power of the people to read the Bible for
themselves, and so to apply the witch stories of the Jews
to neighbours of their own who possessed powers or
peculiarities which they could not understand, and partly
generated by the carrying on of traditional practices by
certain families or groups of persons who could only
acquire knowledge of such practices by initiation or
family teaching. Lawyers, magistrates, judges, nobles and
monarchs are concerned with witchcraft. These are not
minds that have been crushed by civilisation, but minds
which have misunderstood it or misused it."
Sabbath —The mediaeval criminal records abound in
descriptions of a ceremony at which the rites of the witch
cult were periodically celebrated. This was the witches'
Sabbath. The Sabbath was generally held in some wild and
solitary spot, often in the midst of forests or on the
heights of mountains, at a great distance from the
residence of most of the visitors. The circumstance
connected with it most difficult of proof was the method
of transport from one place to another. The witches nearly
all agreed in the statement that they divested themselves
of their clothes and anointed their bodies with an
ointment made for that especial purpose. They then strode
across a stick, or any similar article, and, muttering a
charm, were carried through the air to the place of
meeting in an incredibly short space of time. Sometimes
the stick was to be anointed as well as their persons.
They generally left the house by the window or by the
chimney, which perhaps suggests survival of the custom of
an earth-dwelling people. Sometimes the witch went out by
the door, and there found a demon in the shape of a goat,
or at times of some other animal, who carried her away on
his back, and brought her home again after the meeting was
dissolved. In the confessions extorted from them at their
trials, the witches and sorcerers bore testimony to the
truth of all these particulars; but those who judged them,
and who wrote upon the subject, asserted that they had
many other independent proofs in corroboration.
We are told by Bodin that a man who lived at the little
town of Loches having observed that his wife frequently
absented herself from the house in the night, became
suspicious of her conduct, and at last by his threats
obliged her to confess that she was a witch, and that she
attended the Sabbaths. To appease the anger of her
husband, she agreed to gratify his curiosity by taking him
with her to the next meeting, but she warned him on no
account whatever to allow the name of God or of the
Saviour to cross his lips. At the appointed time they
stripped and anointed themselves, and, after uttering the
necessary formula, they were suddenly transported to the
landes of Bordeaux, at an immense distance from their own
dwelling. The husband there found himself in the midst of
a great assembly of both sexes in the same state of
deshabille as himself and his wife, and in one part he saw
the devil in a hideous form; but in the first moment of
his surprise he inadvertently uttered the exclamation, "
Man Lieu! ou sommes-nous ? " and all disappeared as
suddenly from his view, leaving him cold and naked in the
middle of the fields, where he wandered till morning, when
the countrymen coming to their daily occupations told him
where he was, and he made his way home in the best manner
he could. But he lost no time in denouncing his wife, who
was brought to her trial, confessed, and was burnt.
As the witches generally went from their beds at night to
the meetings, leaving their husbands and family behind
them, it may seem extraordinary that their absence was not
more frequently perceived. They had, however, a method of
providing against this danger, by casting a drowsiness
over those who might be witnesses, and by placing in their
bed an image which, to all outward appearance, bore an
exact resemblance to themselves, although in reality was
nothing more than a besom or some other similar article.
But the belief was so inculcated that the witches did not
always go in. body to the Sabbath—that they were present
only in spirit, whilst their body remained in bed. Some of
the more rational writers on witchcraft taught that this
was the only manner in which they were ever carried to the
Sabbaths, and various instances are deposed to where that
was manifestly the case. The president, Touretta told
Bodin that he had examined a witch, who was subsequently
burnt in the Dauphine, and who was carried to the Sabbath
in this manner. Her master one night found her stretched
on the floor before the fire in a state of insensibility
and imagined her to be dead. In his attempt to arouse her,
he first beat her body with great severity, and then
applied fire to the more sensitive parts, which being
without effect, he left her in the belief that she had
died suddenly. His astonishment was great when in the
morning he found her in her own bed, in an evident state
of great suffering. When he asked what ailed her, her only
answer was, " Ha ! mon maistre, tant m'avez batue ! " When
further pressed, however, she confessed that during the
time her body lay in a state of insensibility, she had
been herself to the witches' Sabbath, and upon this avowal
she was committed to prison. Bodin further informs us that
at Bordeaux, in 1571, an old woman, who was condemned to
the fire for witchcraft, and confessed that she was
transported to the Sabbath in this manner. One of her
judges, who was personally known to Bodin, while she was
under examination, pressed her to show him how she was
effected, and released her from the fetters for that
purpose. She rubbed herself in different parts of the^body
with " a certain grease," and immediately became stiff and
insensible and, to all appearance, dead. She remained in
this state about five hours, and then as quickly revived,
and told her inquisitors a great number of extraordinary
things, which showed that she must have been spiritually
transported to far distant places.
The description of the Sabbath given by the witches
differed only in slight particulars of detail; for their
examinations were all carried on upon one model and
measure—a veritable bed of Procrustes, and equally fatal
to those who were placed upon it. The Sabbath was, in
general, an immense assemblage of witches and demons,
sometimes from distant parts of the earth, at others only
from the province or district in which it was held. On
arriving, the visitors performed their homage to the evil
one with unseemly ceremonies, and presented their new
converts. They then gave an account of all the mischief
they had done since the last meeting. Those who had
neglected to do evil, or who had so far overlooked
themselves as to do good, were treated with disdain, or
severely punished. Several of the victims of the French
courts in the latter part of this century confessed that,
having been unwilling or unable to fulfil the commands of
the evil one, when they appeared at the Sabbath he had
beaten them in the most cruel manner. He took one woman,
who had refused to bewitch her neighbour's daughter, and
threatened to drown her in the Moselle. Others were
plagued in their bodies, or by destruction of their
property. Some were punished for their irregular
attendance at the Sabbath; and one or two, for slighter
offences, were condemned to walk home from the Sabbath
instead of being carried through the air. Those, on the
other hand, who had exerted most their mischievous
propensities were highly honoured at the Sabbath, and
often rewarded
with gifts of money, After this examination was passed,
the demon distributed among his worshippers unguents,
powders, and other articles for the perpetration ot evil.
A French witch, executed in 1580, confessed that some of
her companions offered a sheep or a heifer; and another,
executed the following year, stated that animals of a
black colour were most acceptable. A third, executed at
Gerbe-ville in 1585, declared that no one was exempt from
this offering, and that the poorer sort offered a hen of a
chicken, and some even a lock of their hair, a little
bird, or any trifle, they could put their hands upon.
Severe punishments followed the neglect of this ceremony.
In many instances, according to the confessions of the
witches, besides their direct worship of the devil, they
were obliged to show their abhorrence of the faith they
had deserted by trampling on the cross, and blaspheming
the saiats, and by other profanations.
Before the termination of the meeting, the new witches
received their familiars, or imps, who they generally
addressed as their " little masters," although they were
bound to attend at the bidding of the witches, and execute
their desires. These received names, generally of a
popular character, such as were given to cats, and dogs,
and other pet animals and the similarity these names bear
to each Other in different countries is very remarkable,
After all these preliminary ceremonies had been
transacted, and a great banquet was laid out, and the
whole company fell to eating and drinking and making
merry. At times, every article of luxury was placed before
them, and they feasted in the most sumptuous manner.
Often, however, the meats served on the table were nothing
but toads and rats, and other articles of a revolting
nature. In general they had no salt, and seldom bread.
But, even when-best served, the money and the victuals
furnished by the demons were of the most unsatisfactory
character ; a circumstance of which no rational
explanation is given. The coin when brought forth by open
daylight! was generally found to be nothing better than
dried leaves or bits of dirt; and, however, greedily they
may have eaten at the table, they commonly left the
meeting in a state of exhaustion from hunger.
The tables were next removed, and feasting gave way to
wild and uproarious dancing and revelry. The common dance,
or carole, of the middle ages appears to have been
performed by the persons talcing each other's hand in a
circle, alternately a man and a woman. This, probably the
ordinary dance among the peasantry, was the one generally
practised at the Sabbaths of the witches, with this
peculiarity, that their backs instead of their faces were
turned inwards. The old writers endeavour to account for
this, by supposing that it was designed to prevent them
from seeing and recognising each other. But this, it is
clear, was not the only dance of the Sabbath ; perhaps
more fashionable ones were introduced for witches in
better conditions in society; and moralists of the
succeeding age maliciously insinuate that many dances of a
not very decorous character invented by the devil himself
to heat the imaginations of his victims, had subsequently
been adopted in classes in society who did not frequent
the Sabbath. It may be observed, as a curious circumstance
that the modern waltz is first traced among the meetings
of the witches and their imps ! It was also confessed, in
almost every case, that the dances at the Sabbaths
produced much greater fatigue than commonly arose from
such exercises. Many of the witches declared that, on
their return home, they were usually unable to rise from
their bed for two or three days.
Their music, also, was by no means of an ordinary
character. The songs were generally obscene, or vulgar, or
ridiculous. Of instruments there was considerable variety,
but all partaking of the burlesque character of the
proceed-
ings. "Someplayedtneflnteuponastickorbone; another was
seen striking a horse's skull for a lyre; there you saw
them beating the drum on the trunk of an oak, with a
stick; here, others were blowing trumpets with the
branches, The louder the instrument, the greater
satisfaction it gave; and the dancing became wilder and
wilder, until it merged into a vast scene of confusion,
and ended in scenes over which, though minutely described
in the old treatises on detnonology, it will be better to
throw a veil." The witches separated in time to reach
their homes before cock-crow.
We then see that Satan had taken the place of the deities
of the older and abandoned cults of the non-Aryans, whose
obscene rites were attended by " initiated " or " adopted
" neophytes of a race to the generality of which they were
abominable, that witches often worked by means of
familiars, whose shapes they were able to take, or by
means of direct satanic agency. But there were probably
mythological elements in witchcraft as well.
Poolers of Witches.—In the eyes of the populace the powers
of witches were numerous. The most peculiar of these were
: The ability to blight by means of the evil eye (q.v.)
the sale of winds to sailors, power over animals, and
capacity to transform themselves into animal shapes. Thus,
says Gomme—" The most usual transformations are into cats
and hares, and less frequently into red deer, and these
have taken the place of wolves. Thus, cat-transformations
are found in Yorkshire, hare-transformations in
Devonshire, Yorkshire and Wales, and Scotland,
deer-transformations in Cumberland, raven-transformations
in Scotland, cattle-transformations in Ireland. Indeed the
connection between witches and the lower animals is a very
close one, and hardly anywhere in Europe does it occur
that this connection is relegated to a subordinate place.
Story after story, custom after custom is recorded as
appertaining to witchcraft, and animal transformation
appears alwajs.
Witches also possessed the power of making themselves
invisible, by means of a magic ointment supplied to them
by the devil, and of harming others by thrusting nails
into a waxen image representing them.
Witchcraft among Savage People.—Witchcraft among savage
people is, of course, allied to the various cults of
demonism in vogue among barbarian folk all over the world.
These are indicated in the various articles dealing with
uncultured races. The name witchcraft is merely a
convenient English label for such savage demon-cults, as
is " witch-doctors " applied to those who " smell out "
these practitioners of evil.
Evidence for Witchcraft —The evidence for witchcraft, says Podrnore (Modern Spiritualism} falls under four main
heads: (a) the confessions of witches themselves; (b) the
corroborative evidence of lycanthropy, apparitions, etc.;
(c) the witch-marks; (d) the evidence of the evil effects
produced upon the supposed victims.
" (a)—The confessions, as is notorious, were for the most
part extracted by torture, or by lying promises of
release. In England, where torture was not countenanced by
the law, the ingenuity of Matthew Hopkins and other
professional witch-finders coald generally devise some
equally efficient substitute, such as gradual starvation,
enforced sleeplessness, or the maintenance for hours of a
constrained and painful posture. But apart from these
extorted confessions, there is evidence that in some cases
the accused persons were actually driven by the
accumulation of testimony against them, by the pressure of
public opinion, and the singular circumstances in which
they were placed, to believe and confess that they were
witches indeed. Some of the women in Salem who had pleaded
guilty to witchcraft explained afterwards, when the
persecution had died down wtf &>£}> )K&? &&%$$?, fiiaf
tney fiad been " consternated and affrighted even out of
their reason " to confess that of which they were
innocent. And there were not a few persons who voluntarily
confessed to the practice of witchcraft, nocturnal rides,
compacts with the devil, and all the rest of it." The most
striking instances of this voluntary confession are
afforded by children. For even among the earlier writers
on witchcraft the opinion was not uncommonly held that the
nocturnal rides and banquets with the devil were merely
delusions, thought the guilt of the witch was not lessened
thereby. And in. the sixteenth centuries, at least in
English-speaking countries this belief seems to have been
generally alike by believers in witchcraft and their
opponents. Thus Gaule: "But the more prodigious or
stupendous (of the things narrated by witches in their
confessions) are effected merely by the devil; the witches
all the while either in a rapt ecstasie, a charmed sleepe,
or a melancholy dreame; and the witches imagination,
phantasie, common sense, only deluded with what is now
done, or pretended. Even Antoinette Bourig-non, observing
her scholars eat " great pieces of bread and butter " at
breakfast, pointed out to them that they could not have
such good appetites if they had really fed on dainty meats
at the devil's Sabbath the night before.
" (b)—But if the witch's own account of her marvellous
feats may be explained as, at best, the vague remembrance
of a nightmare, it is hardly necessary to go beyond this
explanation to account for the prodigies reported by
others. In most cases there is no need to suppose even so
much foundation for the marvels, since the evidence (e.g.,
for lycanthropy) is purely traditional. And when we get
accounts at first hand, they are commonly concerned, not
with such matters as levitation, or transformation of
hares into old women, but merely with vague shapes seen in
the dusk, or the unexplained appearance of a black dog.
Even so the evidence comes almost exclusively from
ignorant peasants, and is given years after the events."
" (c)—The evidence for " witch-marks " does not greatly
concern us. The insensible patches on which Matthew
Hopkins and other witch-finders relied may well have been
genuine in some cases. Such insensible areas are known to
occur in hysterical subjects, and the production of
insensibility by means of suggestion is a commonplace in
modern times. The supposed witches' teats, which the imps
sucked, appear to have been found almost exclusively, like
the imps themselves, in the English-speaking countries.
Any wart, boil, or swelling would probably form a
sufficient warrant for the accusation ; we read in Cotton
Mather of a jury of women finding a preter-natural teat
upon a witch's body, which could not be discovered when a
second search was made three or four hours later, and of a
witch's mark upon the finger of a small child, which took
the form of " a deep red spot, about the bigness of a
flea-bite." And the witch-mark which brought conviction to
the mind of Increase Mather in the case of George
Burroughs was his ability to hold a heavy gun at arm's
length, and to carry a barrel of cider from the canoe to
the shore.v •
" (d)—Of most of the evidence based upon the injuries
suffered by the witches' supposed victims, it is difficult
to speak seriously. If a man's cow ran dry, if his horse
stumbled, his cart stuck in a gate, his pigs or fowls
sickened, if his child had a fit, his wife or himself an
unaccustomed pain, it was evidence acceptable in a court
of law against any old woman who might be supposed within
the last twelve months—or twelve years^-to have conceived
some cause of offence against him and his. Follies of this
kind are too well known to need repetition.
But there is another feature of witchcraft, at any rate of
the cases occurring in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries in England and America, which is not so well
recognised, and which has a more direct bearing upon our
present inquiry—the predominant part played in the initial
stages of witch persecution by malevolent or merely
hysterical children and young women."
Symptoms of Bewitchment.—Mr. Podmore remarks: " The
symptoms of the alleged bewitchment were, in all these
cases monotonously alike, The victims would fall into fits
or convulsions, of a kind which the physicians called in
were unable to diagnose or to cure. In these fits the
children would commonly call out on the old woman who was
the imaginary cause of their ailment; would profess, at
times, to see her shape present in the room, and would
even stab at it with a knife or other weapon. (la the most
conclusive cases the record continues that the old woman,
being straightway sought for, would be found attempting
to. conceal a corresponding wound on her person.) These
fits, which sometimes lasted, with slight intermission,
for weeks together would be increased in violence by the
approach of the supposed witch; or, as Hutchinson notes,
by the presence of sympathetic spectators. The fits, as
was also commonly noted by contemporary chroniclers, would
diminish or altogether cease when the witch was imprisoned
or condemned; on the other hand, if the supposed witch
were released the victim would continue to suffer horrible
tortures, insomuch that at the Salem trials one old woman
who had been acquitted by the jury was, because of the
hideous outcry from the afflicted persons in court,
straightway re-tried and condemned. The witch's touch
would always provoke severe attacks, indeed, contact with
the witch or the establishment of rapport between her and
the victim by means of some garment worn by the latter, as
in Mistress Faith Corbet's case, was generally regarded as
an essential pre-requisite of the enchantment. Once this
rapport established the mere look of the witch, or the
direction of her evil will would suffice. The afflicted in
Salem were, as the Mathers testify, much tortured in court
by the malevolent glances of the poor wretches on trial;
and two ' visionary' girls added greatly to the weight of
the evidence by foretelling with singular accuracy, when
such or such of the afflicted persons then present would
feel the baneful influence, and howl for anguish. It
should be added—though the evidence as we now understand
the word, for the fact alleged is of course practically
negligible—that it was commonly reported that the witch's
victim could, although blindfolded, distinguish her
tormentor by the touch alone from all other persons, and
could even foresee her approach and discern her actions at
a considerable distance.
"The effect of the convulsions and cataleptic attacks,
which modern science would unhesitatingly dismiss as being
simply the result of hysteria, was heightened in many
cases by manifestations of a more material kind. It was a
common feature for the victim to vomit pins, needles,
wood, stubble, and other substances; or for thorns or
needles to be found embedded in her flesh. In a case
recorded by Glanvil an hysterical servant girl, Mary
Longdon, in addition to the usual fits, vomiting of pins,
etc., was tormented by stones being continually flung at
her, which stones when they fell to the ground straightway
vanished. Her master bore witness in court to the falling
of the stones and their miraculous disappearance.
Moreover, the same Mary Longdon would frequently be
transported by an invisible power to the top of the house,
and there " laid on a board betwixt two Sollar beams," or
wpuld be put into a chest, or half suffocated between two
feather-beds.
" Gross as these frauds appear to us, it is singular that
for the most part they remained undetected, and even, it
would seem, unsuspected, not merely by the ignorant
peasants, for whose benefit the play was acted in the
first instance, but in the larger theatre of a law court.
But there are some notorious instances of confession or
detection-Edmund Robinson, the boy on whose accusation the
Lancashire witches were tried, subsequently confessed to
imposture. Other youths were detected with blacklead in
their mouths when foaming in sham epileptic fits,
colouring their urine with ink, concealing crooked pins
about their persons in order to vomit them later,
scratching the bed posts with their toes, and
surreptitiously eating to repletion during a pretended
fast. But commonly the spectators were so convinced
beforehand of the genuineness of such portents that they
held it superfluous to examine the claims of any
particular performance of this kind on their credence.
" It is difficult to know ifl such cases where
self-deception ends and where malevolent trickery begins.
Nor would the examination of these bygone outbreaks of
hysteria trivial in themselves as terrible in their
consequences—be of interest in the present connection,
except for the fact that we find here the primitive form
of those Poltergeist manifestations which gave the papular
impetus in 1848 to the belief in Modern Spiritualism, and
which are still appealed by those who maintain the
genuineness of the physical manifestations of the seance
room as instances of similar phenomena occurring
spontaneously."
Difference between British and Continental Witchtra/t.—
The salient difference between British and Continental
witchcraft systems seems to have been that whereas the
former was an almost exclusively female system, the
Continental one favoured the inclusion in the ranks of
sorcerers (as foreign witches were called) of the male
element; this at least was the case in France and Germany,
but there is evidence that in Hungary and the Slavonic
countries, the female element was the more numerous. In
Ireland we find women also pre-eminent; this is probably
to be accounted for by the circumstance before noted that
the non-alien priesthoods in their decline became almost
entirely dependent upon the offices of women. But the
various forms of witchcraft are duly entered in the
several articles dealing with European countries.
Growth of Belief in Witchcraft —It is significant that in
early times the supernatural side of witchcraft won little
public credence. People believed in such things as magical
poisoning and the raising of tempests by witches, but they
refused to give credence to such superstitions as that the
witch rode through the air, or had communion in any way
with diabolic agency. As early as 800 A.D. an Irish synod
pronounced the belief of flight through the air and
vampirism, to be incompatible with Christian doctrine, and
many early writers like Stephen of Hungary and Regino
state that flight by night and kindred practices are
merely a delusion. Indeed those who held these beliefs
were actively punished by penance. In face of the later
development of belief in witchcraft, this frank scepticism
is almost amazing, and it is most strange that the tenth
and eleventh centuries should have rejected superstitions
embraced widely by the sixteenth and seventeenth.
From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries we find the
conception of witchcraft and demonology greatly furthered
and assisted by the writings of scholars and the
institution of the Inquisition to deal with the rise of
unbelief. A vast amount of literature was circulated
dealing with questions relating to magic and sorcery, and
regarding the habits and customs of witches, magicians and
practitioners in " black magic," and many hairs were
split. The Church gladly joined in this campaign against
what it regarded as the forces of darkness, and indeed
both accused and accusers seem to have lingered under the
most dreadful delusions— delusions which were to cost
society dear as a whole. The scholastic conception of
demonology was that the witch was not a woman but a demon.
Rationalism was at a
discount and the ingenuity of raediasval scholars disposed
of all objections to the phenomena of witchcraft. The
deities of pagan times were cited as practitioners of
sorcery, and erudition, especially in ecclesiastical
circles, ran riot on the subject. There also arose a class
of judges or inquisitors like Bodin in Trance and Sprenger
in Germany, who composed lengthy treatises upon the manner
of discovering witches, of putting them to the test, and
generally of presiding in witchcraft trials. The
cold-blooded cruelty of these textbooks on current
demonology can only be accounted for by the likelihood
that their authors felt themselves justified in their
composition through motives of fidelity to their church
and religion. The awful terror disseminated especially
among the intelligent by the possibility of a charge of
witchcraft being brought against them at any moment
brought about an intolerable condition of things. The
intellectual might be arraigned at any time on a charge of
witchcraft by any rascal who cared to make it. Position or
learning were no safeguard against such a charge, and it
is peculiar that the more thoughtful and serious part of
the population should not have made some attempt to put a
period to the dreadful condition of affairs brought about
by ignorance and superstition. Of course the principal
reason against their being able to do so was the fact that
the whole system was countenanced by the Church, in whose
bands the entire procedure of trials for witchcraft lay.
Strangely enough convents and monasteries were often the
centres of demoniac possession. The conception of the
incubi and succubi undoubtedly arose from the ascetic
tortures of the monk and the nun. Wholesale trials, too,
of wretched people who were alleged to attend Sabbatic
orgies of the enemy of mankind on dreary heaths were gone
through with an elaborateness which spread terror in the
public mind. The tortures inflicted on those unfortunates
were generally of the most fiendish description, but they
were supposed to be for the good of the souls oi those who
bore them. In France the majority of these trials took
place in the fifteenth century; whereas in England we find
that most of them were current in the seventeenth century.
Full details regarding these will be found in the articles
France and England. The famous outburst of fanaticism in
New England under Cotton Mather (See America) in 1691 to
1692 was by no means the last in an English-speaking
country, for in 1712 a woman was convicted of witchcraft
in England, and ia Scotland the last trial and execution
for sorcery, took place in 1722. In Spain we find burnings
by the Inquisition in 1781 ; in Germany as late as 1793,
and as regards Latin South America a woman was burned in
Peru so recently as 1888. The death of the belief in
witchcraft was brought about by a more sane spirit of
criticism than had before obtained. Even the dull wits of
the inquisitorial and other courts began to see that the
wretched creatures upon whom they passed sentence either
confessed because of the extremity of torture they had to
suffer, or else were under hallucination regarding the
nature of their connection with the satanic power.
Reginald Scot in his Discovery of Witchcraft (1584) proved
that the belief on the part of the witch that she was a
servant of the Devil was purely imaginary, and in
consequence drew upon his work the wrath of the British
Solomon, James I., who warmly replied to him in his
Demonologie. But Friedrich von Spec's Caittio Criminalis,
1631, advanced considerations of still greater weight'from
the rationalistic point of view— considerations of such
weight indeed that Bodin, the arch-demonologist, denounced
him and demanded that he should be added to the long list
of his victims,
Psychology 'of Witchcraft —No doubt exists nowadays when
the conditions of savage witchcraft have been closely
examined and commented upon, that the witch and the
sorcerer of the Middle Ages, like their prototypes among
the native races of Africa, America, Asia and elsewhere,
have a firmly-rooted belief in their own magical powers,
and in their connection with unseen and generally diabolic
agencies. It is a strange circumstance that in many
instances the confessions wrung from two or more witches,
when a. number of them have been concerned in the same
case, have tallied with one another in almost every
detail. This would imply that these women suffered from
collective hallucination, and actually believed that they
had seen the supernatural beings with whom they confessed
fellowship, and had gone through the rites and acts for
which they suffered. A period arrived in the mediaeval
campaign against witchcraft when it was admitted that the
whole system was one of hallucination; yet, said the
demonologists, this was no palliation of the offence, for
it was equally as evil to imagine such diabolic acts as
actually to take part in them.
There is also evidence which would lead to the belief that
the witch possessed certain minor powers of hypnotism and
telepathy, which would give her real confidence in her
belief that she wielded magical terrors. Again the
phenomena of spiritualism and the large possibilities it
offers for fraud suggest that some kindred system might
have been in use amongst the more shrewd or the leaders in
these Sabbatic meetings, which would thoroughly convince
the ignorant among the sisterhood of the existence in
their midst of diabolic powers. Trance and hysteria, drugs
and salves, there is good reason to believe, were also
used unsparingly, but the great source of witch-belief
undoubtedly exists in auto-suggestion, fostered and
fomented from ecclesiastical and scholastic sources, and
by no means lessened by popular belief.
Since the above article was written an exhaustive
examination of the phenomena of witchcraft has been made
by Miss M. A. Murray, lecturer on Egyptology at University
College, London. Basing her conclusions upon the
suggestions of C. G. Leland, in his " Aradia, or the
Witches of Italy," and those of other modern writers, she
inclines to the hypothesis that witchcraft was in reality
the modern and degraded descendant of an ancient
nature-religion, the rites of which were actually carried
out in deserted places and included child-sacrifice and
other barbarous customs. In the Satanic presence at such
gatherings she sees the attendance of a priest of the
cult. In brief, her hypothesis tends to prove the actual
Reality of the witch-religion as against that of
hallucination which, until recently, was the explanation
accepted by students of the subject. Her remarks, too,
upon the familiar, go to show that a large body of proof
exists for the belief that this conception also rested
upon actual occurrences. (S« her papers in Man and
elsewhere.)
Recent researches on the part of the writer have convinced
him of the soundness of these views, but have added the
conviction that witchcraft religion was, in some manner,
possessed of an equestrian connection, the precise nature
of which is still dark to him. The broomstick appears to
be the magical equivalent of a horse, the witches
occasionally rode to the Sabbath on horseback, and one of
the tests for a witch was to see if her eye held the
reflection or likeness of a horse. May it not be that the
witch-religion was the remnant of a prehistoric
horse-totem cult ? But this is, after all, merely of the
nature of surmise. The writer has also found good evidence
for the existence of a witch-cult precisely similar to
that of Europe in pre-Columbian Mexico, and has even
encountered a picture of a naked witch with peaked cap
riding on a broomstick in the native Mexican painting
known as the Codex Fejervary-Wayer, which seems to show
that the witch-religion was
in no sense limited to Europe, and was of most ancient
origin.
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