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RELIGIOUS AND MAGICAL CEREMONIES
CHAPTER V
"Blessed be the Christians and all their ways and works, Cursed be the Infidels, Hereticks, and Turks."
KIPLING (Slightly altered).
IT has so far been impossible for anyone to devise a theory which will decide where Magic ends and Religion begins. The best explanation is that Magic acts as a natural means, that the mere pronouncing of a spell or the performance of certain movements will produce the desired effect as surely as the mixture of two chemical substances will produce a definitely ascertained result. Magic therefore acts alone, it engenders its own force and depends on nothing outside itself, whereas Religion acknowledges a Power beyond itself and acts entirely by the motivation of that Power. The form in which the Power presents itself to the human mind depends on the state of civilisation to which the worshipper has attained. Man at some periods and in some places believes that the Power may be forced to obey his behests, that it cannot resist the commands of the man who performs certain ceremonies accompanied by certain words and manual gestures. At other periods and other places Man regards the Power as greater than himself and tries to propitiate it by means of prayers and gifts, which may include sacrifices of all kinds and self-abasement in every form.
The theory is accurate up to a point, but does not account for all the phenomena. I have therefore not attempted to divide the ceremonies of the witches in accordance with it, but have adopted the conventional division of calling those ceremonies "religious" which were done more or less as acts of worship, and those "magical" which were for the control of the forces of nature, such as producing storms, or for casting on or curing disease.
Religious Ceremonies. The religious rites, which we should call divine service at the present day, were solemnised with the greatest reverence. Homage to the Master was always paid at the beginning of all the sacred functions, and this often included the offering of a burning candle. At Poictiers in 157 the Devil was in the form of "a large black goat who spoke like a person", and to whom the witches rendered homage holding a lighted candle. Boguet says in 159 that the witches worshipped a goat, "and for greater homage they offer to him candles which give a flame of a blue colour. Sometimes he holds a black image which he makes the witches kiss, and when kissing it they offer a candle or a wisp of burning straw". The Somerset witches in 166 said that when they met the Man in Black at the Sabbath "they all make low obeysance to him, and he delivers some Wax Candles like little Torches, which they give back again at parting". As a rule the candles were lighted at a fire or light which the Grandmaster carried on his head between his horns; which shows that the rite was reserved for the great Sabbaths when the Devil was "in his grand Array". De Lancre (Tableau p. 68) says that the Devil usually had three horns, with "a kind of light on the middle one, by which he is accustomed to illuminate the Sabbath, and to give fire and light to those witches who hold lighted candles at the ceremonies of the mass which they counterfeit." Usually the Devil lit the candles himself and handed them to his worshippers, but sometimes the witches were permitted to light their own candles. In either case the symbolism conveyed the meaning that to his worshippers their god was the source of all light.
During the ceremony of receiving homage the god was enthroned. After the ceremony of the candles the congregation knelt before his throne chanting his praises. Then there were hymns and prayers, and sometimes the Master gave an address on the tenets and dogmas of the religion. This was more common in Scotland than elsewhere, as sermons have always been popular in that country, but preachers were known in France also. The style and subject matter of some of these sermons have been preserved. De Lancre says the subject was usually vainglory, but the Scotch records are more detailed. In the trial of John Fian, of the North Berwick coven, in 1590, it was stated that "Satan stood as in a pulpit making a sermon of doubtsome speeches, saying, 'Many comes to the fair, but buys not all wares', and desired him 'not to fear though he was grim; for he had many servants who should never want and should ail nothing, and he should never let any tear fall from their eyes as long as they served him'. And gave their lessons and commandments to them as follows, 'Spare not to eat, drink, and be blyth, taking rest and ease, for he should raise them up at the latter day gloriously'". In the trial of some Lothian witches' the preacher is said to have preached "the doctrines of the infernall Pitt, viz. Blasphemies against God and his son Christ", in other words, he held forth on what he considered to be the true faith and abused the other side. "Among other things he told them that they were more happy in him than they could be in God; him they saw, but God they could not see." In another sermon by the same preacher he "most blasphemously mocked them, if they offered to trust in God who left them miserable in the world, and neither he nor his Son Jesus Christ ever appeared to them when they called on them, as he had, who would not cheat them". This was undoubtedly the great appeal of the Old Religion; the god was there present with his worshippers, they could see him, they could speak to him as friend to friend, whereas the Christian God was unseen and far away in Heaven, and the petitioner could never be sure that his prayer would reach the divine ear.
The main part of the religious rite was a ceremony comparable with the Mass. It must, however, be noted that this rite was not in any way an attempt to represent the Last Supper as described in the Gospels, except that it included the distribution of bread and wine; therefore Cotton Mather is wrong when he says that they "imitated the Supper of our Lord". The most detailed accounts of the ceremony come from more than one place in France. Everything was black; the bread was black, being made of rye; the drink was black and pungent, being probably some kind of drink like the holy heather-beer of the Picts; the lights were black, for they were torches dipped in resin or pitch which gives a blue flame. The Chief was disguised as a black goat and displayed the sacred bread on his horns; he took the sacred wine and sprinkled it on the kneeling people, while they cried out in chorus, "His blood be on us and on our children". Throughout the ceremony the people knelt bowing their heads to the ground, or they lay prostrate, all uniting in a prayer to their god for aid. The descriptions show that the congregations were endued with a passionate devotion to their deity and their religion, and one can see that the Inquisitor de Lancre was not exaggerating when he summarises the feelings of the witches who suffered for their faith. "In short," he says, "it is a false martyrdom; and there are witches so besotted in his devilish service that neither torture nor anguish affright them, and who say that they go to a true martyrdom and death for love of him as gaily as to a festival of pleasure and public rejoicing. When they are seized by justice they neither weep nor shed a single tear, in truth their martyrdom, whether by torture or the gibbet, is so joyful to them that many of them long to be led to execution, and suffer very joyously when they are brought to trial, so much do they long to be with the Devil. And in prison they are impatient of nothing so much as that they may show how much they suffer and desire to suffer for him". This is the spirit which is held up to admiration when it inspires the Christian martyr, but when it was a heathen woman dying for her god she is execrated as the worshipper of the Devil and is thought to have deserved the most cruel of. all deaths for her contumacy in not accepting a God of whom she knew nothing.
Sacrifices. There were several different forms of sacrifices, all of which involved the shedding of blood. The simplest, which was done with hardly any religious ceremony, was the pricking of her own person by the worshipper. This might be done either in private or in public. The sacrifice of animals was also a private rite, and never took place at a Great Sabbath, though it is occasionally recorded at an Esbat. The sacrificial animals were usually a dog, a cat, or a fowl. The animal was offered but not necessarily killed; in the account of the storm-raising by the witches of North Berwick the cat, which had been specially prepared by various magical ceremonies, was cast into the sea as far as possible, but it simply swam back and came safely to land.
Child sacrifice was not uncommon if the accusations are to be credited, but little real evidence is brought forward of the actual killing of children, and it must always be remembered that child-sacrifice is an accusation which the members of a dominant religion are very apt to bring against any other religion with which they are at variance. Occasionally, however, it would seem that a very young infant might be put to death as a religious rite; but this was very rare, and is not recorded in England. It occurs in one trial in Scotland in 1658, when the Alloa coven were accused that "they all together had a meeting at Tullibodie, where they killed a child, another at Clackmannan where they killed another child". Many accusations against the witches included the charge of eating the flesh of infants. This does not seem to have been altogether unfounded, though there is no proof that children were killed for the purpose. Similar forms of cannibalism as a religious rite were practised by the worshippers of Bacchus in ancient Greece.
There is one form of cannibalism which seems to have arisen after the persecutions had begun. Some of the witches deliberately ate the flesh of a young infant with the avowed purpose of obtaining the gift of silence, even under torture, when questioned by the Christian judges. The child does not appear to have been killed for the purpose, but considering the infant mortality of the period there could have been no difficulty in obtaining the magical flesh. The reason for the practice was a form of sympathetic magic, by eating the flesh of a child who had never spoken articulate words the witches' own tongues would be prevented also from articulating. De Lancre shows this belief very clearly, "In order not to confess the secrets of the school, they make at the Sabbath a paste of black millet with the powder made from the dried liver of an unbaptised child; it has the virtue of taciturnity; so that whosoever eats it will never confess." This generalisation is borne out by the evidence at two Scotch trials. At Forfar in 1661 Helen Guthrie stated that she and some others dug up the body of an unbaptised infant, "and took several parts thereof, as the feet, hands, a part of the head, and a part of the buttock, and they made a pie thereof, that they might eat of it, that by this means they might never make confession (as they thought) of their witchcrafts". In 1695 one of the Bargarran witches told the court that "their Lord (as they called him) gave them a piece of an unchristened Child's liver to eat; telling them, That though they were Apprehended, they should never Confess, which would prevent an effectual Discovery."
The greatest of all the sacrifices was that of the god himself. This took place at one of the great quarterly Sabbaths at the end of a term of years, generally seven or nine. Frazer has shown that the Dying God was originally the ruler of the tribe, in other words the king. When the custom begins to die out in any country, the first change is the substitution of some person of high rank who suffers in the king's stead; for a few days before his death the substitute enjoys royal powers and honours as he is for the time being actually the king. The next step is when a volunteer, tempted by the desire for royal power though only temporary, takes the king's fate upon himself. Then comes the substitution of a criminal already condemned to die in any case, and the final stage is the sacrifice of an animal.
When the records of the Old Religion were made the great sacrifice had reached the last stages. In France a goat was burnt to death at the Sabbaths, the creature being called the Devil. The ashes were collected for the magical promotion of fertility by strewing them on fields and animals. The gathering up of the ashes in the case of Joan of Arc should be remembered in this connection. It is perhaps worth remarking that when in the seventeenth century, the time for the sacrifice had come the god is always said to be in the form of a large goat or in his "grand array", which means that in the original rite it was the sacrifice of the Horned God himself.
In the primitive forms of the sacrifice elsewhere than in Europe the worshippers ate the dead body of the god, or at least some part of it. Ceremonial cannibalism is found in many parts of the world, and in all cases it is due to the desire to obtain the qualities of the dead person, his courage, his wisdom, and so on. When a divine victim was eaten and the holy flesh thus received into the system, the worshipper became one with the deity. In ancient Egypt, as in other places, it was more common to eat the animal substitute or a figure of the god made in dough or other edible substance. The sacrifice of the god in the person of the king or his substitute was known from very early times, and has continued in some countries until the present century. It remained in Western Europe as long as the cult of the Horned God lasted, and I have collected in the chapter on the Divine Victim several examples of the royal gods and their divine substitutes. Besides these historical instances there must have been many local victims who, being in a humble walk of life, were not recorded.
In modern books on this subject the substitutes are often called Mock Kings, whose rule was usually a kind of Saturnalia, for the royal powers were largely burlesqued. Klunzinger records examples of the kind in Egypt in 1878, he says that in every village of Upper Egypt a New-Year King was elected, who for three or four days usurped the power of the Government and ruled despotically. He wore a special dress, and was treated with extravagant respect, he tried legal cases and passed ridiculous sentences on the offenders. At the end of his term of power he was tried and condemned to be burnt. He was then escorted by the whole village to the burning place and a ring of fire was made round him. When the flames became uncomfortably hot he jumped through them to safety, leaving his burlesque royal insignia to be destroyed. This is a very late form of the sacrifice; but in pre-Christian Europe the incarnate god was undoubtedly burnt alive, and it is very certain that the custom did not die out with the coming of Christianity. The burnt sacrifice performed by the "Druids" was, I suggest, the offering of the substitutes for the Divine King.
The "lease of life" granted to certain witches appears to have been another form of substitution for the royal or divine victim. In the evidence at some of the trials the Devil is said to have promised that for a term of years the witch should have wealth and power, but at the end of the time he should claim her, body and soul. Tradition says that he came in person to "fetch" her, and there are many gruesome stories of his coming at the appointed hour. A usual feature of the story is that marks of burning were found afterwards on the dead body of the witch or that nothing was left of her but a heap of ashes. In many instances where the exact length of the lease of life is mentioned, the term is for seven years or multiples of seven. This coincides with the fact that in the case of the royal gods in England there seems to have been a seven-year cycle.
The sacrifice of the god was liable to be confused with a sacrifice to the god by those who were not fully acquainted with the cult. The recorders claimed that all child-murders, of which the witches were accused, were sacrifices to the devil. Child-murders were, however, seldom substantiated and were not more frequent among the witches than among other classes of society. When the actual testimony of the witches is given, and not the generalisations of biassed Christians, there is no doubt that the person or animal who died was regarded as the god.
In traditional accounts of the fairies the seven-year cycle and the human sacrifice to the god are preserved. Thomas of Ercildoune was carried away by the Fairy Queen; he remained with her for more than three years, she then sent him back to his own home, and when he remonstrated she told him that the next day was Hallow e'en:
To-morrow, of hell the foulé fiend
Among these folks shall choose his fee.
Thou art a fair man and a hende, *
I trow full well he would choose thee.
*1 Hende = comely.
And in the ballad of Young Tamlane the hero is a fairy knight who loves a human lady and asks her to save him:
Then would I never tire, Janet,
In elvish land to dwell;
But aye at every seven years
They pay the teind * to hell,
And I am sae fat and fu' o' flesh
I fear 'twill be myself.
In view of the fact that ceremonial cannibalism was practised, Young Tamlane's physical condition has a sinister significance.
In a Cumberland tale it is said that "every seven years the elves and fairies pay Kane, * or make an offering of one of their children to the grand enemy of salvation, and they are permitted to purloin one of the children of men to present to the fiend; a more acceptable offering, I'll warrant, than one of their own infernal brood that are Satan's sib-allies, and drink a drop of the deil's blood every May morning".
In early times the Dying God or his substitute was burnt alive in the presence of the whole congregation; but when Western Europe became more organised such a ceremony could not be permitted and the victim died at the hands of the public executioner. The custom of burning the witch was not the invention of the Church, which only took advantage of a custom already existing and did nothing to modify the cruelty of more barbarous times. Death by burning was considered by the witches themselves as so essential that Ann Foster, of Northampton, when condemned to die for witchcraft in 1674, "mightily desired to be burned, but the Court would give no Ear to that, but
*1 Teind = Tenth, tithe.
*2 Kane =Tax.
that she should be hanged at the Common place of Execution." This is in accordance with the request of a witch in the Rudlieb, who when about to be hanged asked that her body should be taken down from the gallows and burnt, and the ashes strewn on water, lest being scattered in the air they should breed clouds, drought and hail.
It is interesting to note that there is no legal record that a witch was condemned to be burnt alive in, England; witches were hanged if another crime besides witchcraft could be proved against them. In fact, the English leniency towards the "horrible crime of witchcraft" is very noticeable. It was commented on in Scotland during the rule of the Commonwealth, "there is much witchery up and down our land; the English be too sparing to try it." In Scotland persons could be condemned for witchcraft only, the usual method of execution was strangulation at the stake, after which the body was burnt; but there are cases on record where the witch was condemned to be burnt alive, and the records also show that the sentence was faithfully carried out. In France also evidence of the practice of witchcraft meant sentence of death, and the condemned person died in the flames. There is even a record of a man-witch who was sentenced "a estre bruslé vif à petit feu", and in Alsace one of the magistrates said that burning was too good for witches, and condemned them to be torn in pieces with red-hot pincers. This is, as far as I know, the only occasion when the Christian clergy pleaded for mercy for the culprits; they were so far successful that the sentence was mitigated to beheading with the sword, for which mercy the condemned thanked the magistrate with tears of gratitude.
The belief in the dogma of the Dying God is the reason why it is so often recorded against witches as a heinous sin that they pretended to be Christian while all the time they were "Devil-worshippers". The fundamental difference between the two religions is that the Christian believes that God died once for all, whereas the more primitive belief is that the god is perpetually incarnate on earth and may therefore be put to death over and over again. In all probability these "Devil-worshippers" were quite honest in belonging to both religions, not realising any difference in one of the basic doctrines of the new faith.
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