Witches' Sabbath

“ We consider it more probable, as pointed out above, that the Witches’ Sabbath was as it were the lingering twilight, constantly deepening, and constantly painted in more monstrous colors, after the day of the degraded festivals in the religion of nature,—an incubus of imagination which oppressed the bosom of humanity buried in a world of dreams; and that nothing more than the belief in its reality, which the Church sanctioned, was necessary to produce the phenomena we describe. The Waldenses and the Albigenses were treated like the Stedinghs. ”

“ Among the magic phenomena connected with witchcraft, none is more curious than the so-called witches' sabbath, the formal meeting of all who are in league [Pg 28] with Satan, for the purpose of swearing allegiance to him, to enjoy unholy delights, and to introduce neophytes. That no such meeting ever really took place, need hardly be stated. The so-called sabbaths were somnambulistic visions, appearing to poor deluded creatures while in a state of trance, which they had produced by narcotic ointments, vile decoctions, or even mere mental effort. ”

“ “To the Sabbath! to the Sabbath!” they cried. “On to the Witches’ Sabbath!”
Up and down that narrow hall they danced, the women on each side of him, to the wildest measure he had ever imagined, yet which he dimly, dreadfully remembered, till the lamp on the wall flickered and went out, and they were left in total darkness. And the devil woke in his heart with a thousand vile suggestions and made him afraid. ”

“ In northern countries the witches’ Sabbath never seems to assume any importance; in Germany, in the form of the Brocken assembly on May Eve, it is a prominent feature, and in England we may bring it into relation with the belief that at certain periods of the year demons and spirits are abroad and have special powers; in south Europe the idea of the Sabbath seems to owe much of its prominence to the association of witchcraft with heresy and the assemblies of the Waldenses and others. ”

“ The meeting-place of the Sabbath-General, as Satan, in mockery of Christian ritual, chooses to call this foregathering of his servants, is a bare peak in the loneliest part of the Cevennes. It stands a little removed from the centre of a great mountain amphitheatre, and just below the summit is a mountain tarn, crystal-pure and casting back the starlight as peacefully as though there were no such things as witch or warlock beneath God's Heaven. ”

“ The Devil himself often went round and collected the congregation; and, not being in his 'grand arroy', he appeared as a man in ordinary dress. Instead of the religious service with the adoration of the god, the witches worked the spells and charms with which they bewitched or unbewitched their enemies and friends, or they exercised new methods which they learnt from their Master, or received instructions how to practise the arts of healing and secret poisoning, of causing and blasting fertility.
There are a few general accounts of the usual course of the Sabbath ritual. ”

“ All that has just been said is more fitted to prove that the going of sorcerers and witches to the sabbath is only an illusion and a deranged imagination on the part of these persons, and malice and deceit on that of the devil, who misleads them, and persuades them to yield themselves to him, and renounce true religion, by the lure of vain promises that he will enrich them, load them with honors, pleasures, and prosperity, rather than to convince us of the reality of the corporeal transportation of these persons to what they call the sabbath. ”

“ The Sabbath disappears, but why? Because it exists everywhere. It enters into the people’s habits, becomes the practice of their daily life. The Devil, the Witches, had long been reproached with loving death more than life, with hating and hindering the generative powers of nature. And now in the pious seventeenth century, when the Witch is fast dying out, a love of barrenness, and a fear of being fruitful, are found to be, in very truth, the one prevalent disease. ”

“ The theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were greatly exercised by the conclusive evidence which proved that people known to be devout and professing Christians had been present at the Sabbath, joined in the ceremonies, and worshipped the witches’ god. ”

“ The light is particularly mentioned in many instances as being carried by the Devil, usually on his head; the witches often lit their torches and candles at this flame, though sometimes it seems that the Devil lit the torch and then presented it to the witch. To call the chief of the cult Lucifer was therefore peculiarly appropriate, especially at the Candlemas Sabbath. ”

“ Marie de la Ralde, another witness, deposed that she often saw Satan approach the children present with a hot iron, but could not say definitely whether or not he branded them. She asserted that all enjoyed the Sabbath to the utmost, the Devil having absolute command over their hearts and wills. Witches, she added, hear heavenly music and really believe themselves to be in Paradise. The Devil persuades them that there is no such place as Hell, and further, by rendering them momentarily immune, that fire has no power over them. ”

“ The thing itself, I mean the sabbath taken in the sense of a nocturnal assembly of persons devoted to the devil, is not remarked in antiquity, although magicians, sorcerers, and witches are spoken of often enough—that is to say, people who boasted that they exercised a kind of power over the devil, and by his means, over animals, the air, the stars, and the lives and fortunes of men. ”

“ How exclusively all these descriptions of witches' sabbaths have their origin in the imagination of the deluded women is seen from the fact that they vary consistently with the prevailing notions of those by whom they are entertained; with coarse peasants, the meetings are rude feasts full of obscene enjoyments; with noble knights, they become the rovings of the wild huntsman, or a hellish court under the guise of a Venus' mountain; with ascetic monks and nuns, a subterranean convent filled with vile blasphemies of God and the saints. ”

“ They accordingly seem to have invented the ideas of a sabbath of witches, a numerous assembly of persons who had cast off all sense of shame, and all regard for those things which the rest of the human species held most sacred, where the devil appeared among them in his most forbidding form, and, by rites equally ridiculous and obscene, the persons present acknowledged themselves his subjects. ”

“ Finally, the Devil, after having taken the form of a he-goat, is consumed by fire, and reduced to ashes, which the witches collect and hide, in order that they may assist them in their diabolical designs.
Of the English Sabbat we shall hear enough when we come to the various cases of witchcraft. Scot quotes Bodin, the great French exponent of witchcraft, ‘who saith, at these magical assemblies the witches never fail to danse, and in their danse they sing these words: Har, har, diuell, diuell, danse here, danse here, plaie here, plaie here, Sabbath, Sabbath. ”

“ It has always been the worst of periods of religious excitement that they shape the dreams of old and young, and find there a fearful and distorted, but vivid and realistic, embodiment of their feverish experiences. In the days of witchcraft thousands visited the Witches’ Sabbaths, as they believed and danced in the Walpurgis orgies, borne (by hereditary orthodox canon) on their own brooms up their own chimneys; and to-day, by the same morbid imaginations, the victims are able to see themselves or others elongated, levitated, floating through the air. ”

“ To prevent the absence of the witches from being noticed by their neighbours, some inferior demon was commanded to assume their shapes and lie in their beds, feigning illness, until the Sabbath was over.
When all the wizards and witches had arrived at the place of rendezvous, the infernal ceremonies of the Sabbath began. Satan, having assumed his favourite shape of a large he-goat, with a face in front and another in his haunches, took his seat upon a throne ”

“ Although in 696 the Council of Berkhampstead decreed that any person sacrificing to the Devil should be punished—a clear enough reference to witches—it was not until some centuries later that the conception of the witch definitely crystallised into its modern form of a woman carrying out an actual compact with Satan, working miracles by his power, and frequently transported through the air to pay him homage at Sabbath gatherings. ”

“ With regard to the gatherings at the so-called Witches' Sabbaths, there can be no doubt that—quite apart from the question of any diabolic presence at such meetings—very questionable assemblies of people did take place at intervals among the inhabitants of many countries. ”

“ Much stress has always been laid by the sceptical writers on the undoubted fact that in many cases the witch confused dreams with reality and believed that she had visited the Sabbath when credible witnesses could prove that she had slept in her bed all the time. ”

“ Barthélemy Minguet of Brécy, a man of twenty-five, tried in 1616, described the ceremonies of the Sabbath; after the sermon the worshippers 'vont à l'offerte, tenant en leurs mains des chandelles de poix noire qui leur sont données par le Diable'. [575] In 1646 Elizabeth Weed of Great Catworth, Hunts, confessed that the Devil came to her at night, 'and being demanded what light was there, she answered, none but the light of the Spirit.' [576] In 1652 a French witch stated that at the Sabbath 'on dansait sans musique, aux chansons. ”

“ There, each Sabbath, together congregate the old and young, the lofty and the lowly, bond and free, and the incense which from that altar ascends to heaven is not the less pure because in that secluded spot the tones of the Sabbath bell never yet were heard. ”

“ And why should it be thought unreasonable that persons in our employment, and our children, who early notice the character of our religion, might receive some good impression, as to the nature of the Sabbath, by seeing us deny ourselves what on other days is innocent and right? I am not pleading that the Sabbath be made a day for afflicting our souls, but that we should not permit our sensual desires to interfere with our spiritual delight. ”

“ The scene now before us on Mount Olivet forms a miniature picture of what takes place Sabbath after Sabbath in every meeting of Christian disciples. As we are assembled like the apostles in our Sanctuary—looking upwards to Heaven, there are glorious Spirits, we may well believe, clustering around us—hovering in silence over our assembly—engaged, it may be, in unseen conflict with the emissaries of evil—assisting us in our prayers—joining with us in our praises—waiting to waft these upwards, and get them perfumed with the incense of the Saviour’s merits. ”

“ But keep the Sabbath, and the Lord’s day festival; because the former is the memorial of the creation, and the latter of the resurrection. But there is one only Sabbath to be observed by you in the whole year, which is that of our Lord’s burial, on which men ought to keep a fast, but not a festival. For inasmuch as the Creator was then under the earth, the sorrow for Him is more forcible than the joy for the creation; for the Creator is more honourable by nature and dignity than His own creatures. ”

“ If the Sabbath was not sanctified at creation, but was sanctified in the wilderness of Sin, why does the narrative in each instance [33] record the sanctification of the Sabbath at creation and omit all mention of such fact in the wilderness of Sin? Nay, why does the record of events in the wilderness of Sin show that the holy Sabbath was at that time already in existence? In a word, How can a theory subversive of all the facts in the record, be maintained as the truth of God?
We have seen the Sabbath ordained of God at the close of the creation week. ”

“ It has lost its grasp on the affections of the good, and the fear of the bad. It is already beginning to indicate character and religion to withdraw from religious meetings. I have heard a devout person, who prized the Sabbath, say in bitterness of heart, ‘On Sunday it seems wicked to go to church.’ And the motive that holds the best there is now only a hope, and a waiting. ”

“ As they have beheld the streams of our church-going people crowding along the streets of our cities to our numerous temples, they have failed to reflect how even the best gifts of heaven, the Sabbath and the sunlight, are the most ready to be abused, and that, at that very moment, there were thousands loitering at home in indolence, and even not a few, perhaps, rioting in intemperance. ”

“ If it be conceded that the witches in their accounts of what took place at the Sabbaths were describing, not furtive assemblies for malicious evil practices and unlimited debauchery, but gatherings for performing the rites of an organised religion, their evidence takes on an entirely new significance. ”

“ Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.’ These were properly called Jewish sabbaths. Hosea says, ‘her sabbaths.’ But the Sabbath of which we are speaking, God calls ‘my Sabbath.’ Here is a clear distinction between the creation Sabbath and the ceremonial. The one is perpetual; the others were merely shadows of good things to come, and are limited in Christ.”—Miller’s Life and Views, pp. ”

“ Reb Mordecai Winenki, the reader, begins the service. Prayers of sincere gratitude are sent on high. The worshippers greet the Sabbath as a lover greets his long-awaited bride—with joy, with smiles, with loving fervor. The service is at an end and the happy participants return to their homes.
Beautiful is the legend of the Sabbath eve.
When a man leaves the synagogue for his home, an Angel of Good and an Angel of Evil accompany him. ”

“ Allusion is made to Sunday under the character of a festival, as a symbol of a new life, consecrated to the Lord in opposition to the old Sabbath, in the epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians: “If they who were brought up under the Old Testament have attained to a new hope, and no longer keep [Jewish] Sabbaths holy, but have consecrated their life to the day of the Lord, on which also our life rose up in him, how shall we be able to live without him?” ”