speak of the nocturnal meeting of witches and sorcerers, under the
name of “Assembly of Diana,” or “Herodia,” it was not until canon or
church law, had become quite engrafted upon the civil law, that the
full persecution for witchcraft arose. A witch was held to be a woman
who had deliberately sold herself to the evil one; who delighted in
injuring others, and who, for the purpose of enhancing the enormity of
her evil acts, choose the Sabbath day for the performance of her most
impious rites, and to whom all black animals had special relationship;
the black cat in many countries being held as her principal familiar.
“To go to the Sabbath” signified taking part in witch orgies. The
possession of a pet of any kind at this period was dangerous to woman.
One who had tamed a frog, was condemned to be burned in consequence,
the harmless amphibian being looked upon as a familiar of Satan. The
devil ever being depicted in sermon or story as black, all black
animals by an easy transition of ideas, became associated with evil and
witches.[1] Although I have referred to witchcraft as having taken on
a new phase soon after the confirmation of celibacy as a dogma of the
church by the Lateran Council of 1215, it yet requires a chapter by
itself, in order to show to what proportions this form of heresy arose,
and the method of the church in its treatment. This period was the age
of supreme despair for woman,[2] death by fire being the common form of
witch punishment. Black cats were frequently burned with a witch at the
stake;[3] during the reign of Louis XV of France, sacks of condemned
cats were burned upon the public square devoted to witch torture. Cats
and witches are found depicted together in a curious cut on the title
page of a book printed in 1621. The proverbial “nine lives” of a cat
were associated in the minds of people with the universally believed
possible metamorphosis of a witch into a cat.[4] So firmly did the
diabolical nature of the black cat impress itself upon the people,
that its effects are felt in business to this day, the skin of black
cats being less prized and of less value in the fur market than those
of other colors. A curious exemplification of this inherited belief is
found in Great Britain. An English taxidermist who exports thousands
of mounted kittens each year to the United States and other countries,
finds the prejudice against black cats still so great that he will
not purchase kittens of this obnoxious color.[5] In the minds of many
people, black seems ineradicably connected with sorcery.
In the _Folk Lore of Cats_, it is stated that as recently as 1867 a
woman was publicly accused of witchcraft in the state of Pennsylvania
on account of her administering three drops of a black cat’s blood to
a child as a remedy for the croup. She admitted the fact but denied
that witchcraft had anything to do with it, and twenty witnesses
were called to prove its success as a remedy. From an early period
the belief in metamorphosis by means of magical power was common
throughout christendom. St. Augustine relates[6] that “hostesses or
innkeepers sometimes put confections into a kind of cheese made by
them, and travelers eating thereof, were presently metamorphosed into
laboring beasts, as horses, asses or oxen.” It was also believed that
the power of changing into various animals was possessed by witches
themselves.[7] At the present day under certain forms of insanity
persons imagine themselves to be animals, birds, and even inanimate
things, as glass; but usually those hallucinations occur in isolated
instances. But among the strange epidemics which have at various times
affected christendom, none is more singular than that Lycanthropia, or
wolf madness, which attacked such multitudes of inhabitants of the Jura
in 1600, as to become a source of great public danger. The affected
persons walked upon their feet and hands until their palms became hard
and horny. They howled like wolves, and as wolves do they hunted in
packs, murdering and devouring many children, nor could the most severe
punishment put an end to this general madness. Six hundred persons
were executed upon their own confessions, which included admissions
of compact with the devil, attendance upon the Sabbath and cannibal
feasting upon a mountain, the devil having used his power for their
transmutation into wolves.[8] Witches were believed to ride through the
air upon animals or bits of wood. The fact of their possession of such
powers is asserted by many writers, the usual method of transportation
being a goat, night crow or enchanted staff.[9] The rhyming Mother
Goose question:
Old woman, old woman, oh whither, oh whither so high?
And its rhyming answer:
To sweep the cobwebs from the sky,
And I’ll be back by and by,
doubtless owes its origin to the witchcraft period.
A song said to be in use during witch dances ran:
Har, Har, Diabole, Diabole; Sali huc, Sali illuc; Lude hic, Lude illic;
Sabaoth, Sabaoth.
Although the confirmation by the church in the XIII century of the
supreme holiness of celibacy inaugurated a new era of persecution for
witchcraft, a belief in its existence had from the earliest times been
a doctrine of the church, Augustine, as shown, giving the weight of his
authority in favor. But to the Christian Emperor Charlemagne, in the
eighth century, the first use of torture in accusation of witchcraft is
due. This great emperor while defying the power of the pope, over whom
he even claimed jurisdiction, was himself a religious autocrat whose
severity exceeded even that of the papal throne. Torture was rapidly
adopted over Europe, and soon became general in the church; the council
of Salzburg, 799, publicly ordering its use in witch trials.
A new era of persecution and increased priestly power dates to the
reign of Charlemagne, who although holding himself superior to the
pope, as regarded independent action, greatly enlarged the dominion of
the church and power of the priesthood. He forced Christianity upon
the Saxons at immense sacrifice of life, added to the wealth and power
of the clergy by tithe lands, recognized their judicial and canonical
authority, made marriage illegal without priestly sanction and still
further degraded womanhood through his own polygamy. Although himself
of such wanton life, he yet caused a woman of the town to be dragged
naked through the city streets, subject to all the cruel tortures of an
accompanying mob.
In the ninth century the power of the pope was again greatly increased.
Up to this period he had been elected by the clergy and people of Rome,
and the approbation of the emperor was necessary to confirm it. But
Charles the Bald, 875, relinquished all right of jurisdiction over
Rome, and thereafter the Roman Pontiff became an acknowledged if not
sometimes a supreme power in the appointment of temporal princes. The
power of bishops, clergy, and cardinals diminished as that of the pope
increased.
Notwithstanding her claims of power through St. Peter, it has been by
gradual steps that Rome has decided upon her policy and established
her dogmas. It is but little over four decades, at the Ecumenical of
1849, that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary,
was first authoritatively promulgated, although her worship had long
existed, being traceable to the Egyptian doctrine of the trinity,
with the substitution of Mary in place of Isis. It was not until 1085
that Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII, declared matrimony a sacrament of
the church; and not until 1415, at the Council of Trent, that extreme
unction was instituted and defined as a sacrament. Each of these
dogmas threw more power into the hands of the church, and greater
wealth into her coffers. Thus we see the degeneration of Christianity
has had its epochs. One occurred when the Council of Nice allowed
chance to dictate which would be considered the canonical books of
the New Testament, accepting some theretofore regarded as of doubtful
authenticity and rejecting others that had been universally conceded
genuine.[10] Another epoch of degeneration occurs when the State in
the person of the great emperor Charlemagne added to the power of the
Church by the establishment of torture, whose extremest use fell upon
that portion of humanity looked upon as the direct embodiment of evil.
The peculiar character attributed to woman by the church, led to the
adoption of torture as a necessary method of forcing her to speak the
truth. The testimony of two, and in some countries, three women being
held as only equal to that of one man. At first, young children and
women expecting motherhood, were exempted, but afterwards neither age
or condition freed from accusation and torture, and women even in
the pangs of maternity were burned at the stake,[11] Christianity in
this respect showing much more barbarity than pagan nations. In pagan
Rome the expectant mother was held sacred; to vex or disturb her mind
was punishable, to strike her was death. She even possessed a right
pertaining to the Vestal Virgins; if meeting a condemned criminal on
his way to execution, her word sufficed for his pardon. It scarcely
seems possible, yet in some christian countries the most prominent
class subjected to the torture, were women expecting motherhood.
Christianity became the religion of Iceland A.D., 1000, and by the
earliest extant law, the “Gragas,” dating to 1119, we find that while
torture was prescribed in but few instances yet the class principally
subjected to it, were women about to become mothers. But generally
throughout Europe, until about the XIV century, when priestly celibacy
had become firmly established and the Inquisition connected with the
state, a class consisting of nobles, doctors of the law, pregnant
women, and children under fourteen, were exempt from torture except in
case of high treason and a few other offenses. But at a later period
when these institutions had greatly increased the irresponsible power
of the church, we find neither sex, condition nor age, free from its
infliction, both state and church uniting in its use.
In Venetian Folk Lore, it is stated that Satan once became furious
with the Lord because paradise contained more souls than hell, and
he determined by fine promises to seduce human beings to his worship
and thus fill his kingdom. He decided to always tempt women instead
of men, because through ambition or a desire for revenge, they yield
more easily. This legend recalls the biblical story of Satan taunting
the Lord with the selfish nature of Job’s goodness, and receiving from
God the permission to try him. Witchcraft was regarded as a sin almost
confined to women. The Witch Hammer declared the very word _femina_
meant one wanting in faith. A wizard was rare; one writer declaring
that to every hundred witches but one wizard was found. In time of
Louis XV this difference was greatly increased; “To one wizard 10,000
witches”; another writer asserted there were 100,000 witches in France
alone. The great inquisitor Sprenger, author of the “Witch Hammer” and
through whose instrumentality many countries were filled with victims,
largely promoted this belief. “Heresy of witches, not of wizards[12]
must we call it, for these latter are of very small account.” No
class or condition of women escaped him; we read of young children,
old people, infants, witches of fifteen years, and two “infernally
beautiful” of seventeen years. Although the ordeal of the red hot iron
fell into disuse in the secular courts early in the fourteenth century,
(1329),[13] ecclesiasticism preserved it in case of women accused of
witchcraft for one hundred and fifty years longer.[14] One of the
peculiarities of witchcraft accusations, was that protestations of
innocence, and a submission to ordeals such as had always vindicated
those taking part in them if passing through unharmed, did not clear
a woman charged with witchcraft, who was then accused with having
received direct help from Satan. The maxim of secular law that the
torture which did not produce confession entitled the accused to full
acquittal was not in force under ecclesiastical indictments, and the
person accused of witchcraft was always liable to be tried again for
the same crime. Every safeguard of law was violated in case of woman,
even Magna Charta forbidding appeal to her except in case of her
husband.
Before the introduction of Christianity, no capital punishment existed,
in the modern acceptation of the term, except for witchcraft. But
pagans unlike christians, did not look upon women as more given to this
practice than men; witches and wizards were alike stoned to death. But
as soon as a system of religion was adopted which taught the greater
sinfulness of women, over whom authority had been given to man by God
himself, the saying arose “one wizard to 10,000 witches,” and the
persecution for witchcraft became chiefly directed against women. The
church degraded woman by destroying her self-respect, and teaching her
to feel consciousness of guilt in the very fact of her existence.[15]
The extreme wickedness of woman, taught as a cardinal doctrine of the
church, created the belief that she was desirous of destroying all
religion, witchcraft being regarded as her strongest weapon,[16]
therefore no punishment for it was thought too severe. The teaching
of the church, as to the creation of women and the origin of evil,
embodied the ordinary belief of the christian peoples, and that woman
rather than man practiced this sin, was attributed by the church to her
original sinful nature, which led her to disobey God’s first command in
Eden.[17]
Although witchcraft was treated as a crime against the state, it was
regarded as a greater sin against heaven, the bible having set its
seal of disapproval in the injunction “Thou shalt not suffer a witch
to live.” The church therefore claimed its control. When coming under
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, witchcraft was much more strenuously
dealt with than when it fell under lay tribunals. It soon proved a
great source of emolument to the church, which grew enormously rich
by its confiscation to its own use of all property of the condemned.
Sprenger, whose work (“The Witch Hammer”), was devoted to methods of
dealing with this sin, was printed in size convenient for carrying in
the pocket.[18] It based its authority upon the bible, twenty-three
pages being devoted to proving that women were especially addicted
to sorcery. This work was sanctioned by the pope, but after the
reformation became equally authoritative in protestant as in catholic
countries, not losing its power for evil until the XVIII century. A
body of men known as “Traveling Witch Inquisitors,” of whom Sprenger
was chief, journeyed from country to country throughout christendom,
in search of victims for torture and death. Their entrance into a
country or city was regarded with more fear than famine or pestilence,
especially by women, against whom their malignity was chiefly directed,
Sprenger, the great authority, declaring that her name signified evil;
“the very word _femina_, (woman), meaning one wanting in faith, for
_fe_ means faith, and _minus_ less.”[19] The reformation caused no
diminution in its use, the protestant clergy equally with the catholic
constantly appealing to its pages. Still another class known as “Witch
Finders,” or “Witch Persecutors” confined their work to their own
neighborhoods. Of these, Cardan, a famous Italian physician, said:
“In order to obtain forfeit property, the same persons act as accusers
and judges, and invent a thousand stories as proof.”[20] The love of
power, and the love of money formed a most hideous combination for evil
in the church; not a christian country but was full of the horrors of
witch persecutions and violent deaths. During the reign of Francis I
more than 100,000 witches were put to death, mostly by burning, in
France alone. Christ was invoked as authority, the square devoted to
Auto da Fe, being known as, “The Burning Place of the Cross.”
The Parliament of Toulouse burned 400 witches at one time. Four hundred
women at one hour on the public square, dying the horrid death of
fire for a crime which never existed save in the imagination of those
persecutors and which grew in their imagination from a false belief
in woman’s extraordinary wickedness, based upon a false theory as to
original sin. Remy, judge of Nancy, acknowledged to having burnt eight
hundred in sixteen years; at the rate of half a hundred a year. Many
women were driven to suicide in fear of the torture in store for them.
In 1595 sixteen of those accused by Remy, destroyed themselves rather
than fall into his terrible hands. Six hundred were burnt in one small
bishopric in one year; nine hundred during the same period in another.
Seven thousand lost their lives in Treves; a thousand in the province
of Como, in Italy, in a single year; five hundred were executed at
Geneva, in a single month.
While written history does not fail to give abundant record in regard
to the number of such victims of the church, largely women whose lives
were forfeited by accusation of witchcraft, hundreds at one time dying
agonizingly by fire, a new and weird evidence as to the innumerable
multitude of these martyrs was of late most unexpectedly brought to
light in Spain. During a course of leveling and excavations for city
improvements in Madrid, recently, the workmen came upon the _Quemadero
de la Cruz_.[21] The cutting of a new road through that part of the
city laid bare like geological strata, long black layers super-imposed
one above the other at distances of one or two feet, in the sandstone
and clay. Some of these layers extended 150 feet in a horizontal
direction, and were at first supposed to be the actual discovery of
new geological strata, which they closely resembled. They proved to
be the remains of inquisitorial burnings, where thousands of human
beings of all ages had perished by the torture of fire.[22] The layers
consisted of coal coagulated with human fat, bones, the remains of
singed hair, and the shreds of burnt garments. This discovery created
great excitement, people visiting the spot by thousands to satisfy
themselves of the fact, and to carry away some memento of that dark
age of christian cruelty, a cruelty largely exercised against the most
helpless and innocent, a cruelty having no parallel in the annals of
paganism. Imagination fails to conceive the condensed torture this spot
of earth knew under the watchword of “Christ and His Cross”; and that
was but one of the hundreds, nay, thousands of similar “Burning Places
of the Cross,” with which every christian country, city, and town was
provided for many hundreds of years. A most diabolical custom of the
church made these burnings a holiday spectacle. People thus grew to
look unmoved upon the most atrocious tortures, and excited crowds hung
about witch burnings, eagerly listening as the priests exhorted to
confession, or tormented the dying victims with pictures of an unending
fire soon to be their fate.
An accusation of witchcraft struck all relatives of the accused with
terror, destroying the ordinary virtues of humanity in the hearts of
nearest friends. As it was maintained that devils possessed more than
one in a family, each member sought safety by aiding the church in
accumulating proof against the accused, in hopes thereby to escape
similar charge. It is impossible for us at the present day to conceive
the awful horror falling upon a family into which an accusation of
witchcraft had come. Not alone the shame and disgrace of such a
charge; the terrors of a violent death under the most painful form;
the sudden hurling of the family from ease and affluence to the most
abject poverty; but above all the belief that unending torment by fire
pursued the lost soul through eternity, made a combination of terrors
appalling to the stoutest heart. A Scotch woman convicted as a witch
and sentenced to be burned alive could not be persuaded by either
priest or sheriff to admit her guilt. Suffering the intensest agonies
of thirst during her torture she espied her only son in the surrounding
crowd. Imploring him in the name of her love for him she begged as her
last request, that he should bring her a drink. He shook his head,
not speaking; her fortitude her love, his own most certain conviction
of her innocence not touching him; when she cried again, “Oh, my dear
son, help me any drink, be it never so little, for I am most extremely
drie, oh drie, drie.” His answer to her agonizing entreaties could not
be credited were it not a subject of history, and the date so recent.
“By no means dear mother will I do you the wrong, for the drier you are
no doubt you will burn the better.”[23] Under Accadian law 3,000 years
before christianity, the son who denied his father was sentenced to a
simple fine, but he who denied his mother was to be banished from the
land and sea;[24] but in the sixteenth century of the christian era, we
find a son under christian laws denying his mother a drink of water in
her death agony by fire.
Erskine says:
It was instituted in Scotland 1653, “that all who used
witchcraft, sorcery, necromancy, or pretended skill therein,
shall be punished capitally; upon which statute numberless
innocent persons were tried and burnt to death, upon evidence
which, in place of affording reasonable conviction to the
judge, was fraught with absurdity and superstition.”[25]
Thirty thousand persons accused of witchcraft were burned to death in
Germany and Italy alone, and although neither age nor sex was spared,
yet women and girls were the chief victims. Uncommon beauty was as
dangerous to a woman as the possession of great wealth, which brought
frequent accusations in order that the church might seize upon the
witches’ property for its own use.
Children of the most tender years did not escape accusation and death.
During the height of witchcraft persecution, hundreds of little ones
were condemned as witches. Little girls of ten, eight, and seven years
are mentioned; blind girls, infants[26] and even young boys were among
the numbers who thus perished. Everywhere the most helpless classes
were the victims.
It was declared that witches looked no person steadily in the face, but
allowed their eyes to wander from side to side, or kept them fixed upon
the earth. To this assertion that a witch could not look any one in the
face, the present belief of a connection between guilt and a downcast
look, is due; although the church taught that a woman should preserve a
downward look in shame for the sin she had brought into the world, and
to this day, an open, confident look upon a woman’s face is deprecated
as evil. Attendance upon Sabbats[27] and control of the weather were
among the accusations brought against the witch. In Scotland a woman
accused of raising a storm by taking off her stockings, was put to
death. Sprenger tells of a Swiss farmer whose little daughter startled
him by saying she could bring rain, immediately raising a storm.[28]
Whatever the pretext made for witchcraft persecution we have abundant
proof that the so-called “witch” was among the most profoundly
scientific persons of the age. The church having forbidden its offices
and all external methods of knowledge to woman, was profoundly stirred
with indignation at her having through her own wisdom, penetrated
into some of the most deeply subtle secrets of nature: and it was a
subject of debate during the middle ages if learning for woman was not
an additional capacity for evil, as owing to her, knowledge had first
been introduced in the world. In penetrating into these arcana, woman
trenched upon that mysterious hidden knowledge of the church which it
regarded as among its most potential methods of controlling mankind.
Scholars have invariably attributed magical knowledge and practices
to the church, popes and prelates of every degree having been thus
accused. The word “magic” or “wisdom” simply meaning superior science,
was attributed in the highest degree to King Solomon, who ruled even
the Elementals by means of his magic ring made in accord with certain
natural laws. He was said to have drawn his power directly from God.
Magi were known as late as the X century of this era. Among their
powers were casting out demons, the fearless use of poisons, control
of spirits and an acquaintance with many natural laws unknown to the
world at large. During the present century, the Abbé Constant (Eliphas
Levi), declared the Pentegram to be the key of the two worlds, and if
rightly understood, endowing man with infinite power. The empire of THE
WILL over the astral light is symbolized in magic by the Pentegram, the
growth of a personal will being the most important end to be attained
in the history of man’s evolution. The opposition of the church to this
growth of the human will in mankind, has ever been the most marked
feature in its history. Under WILL, man decides for himself, escaping
from all control that hinders his personal development.
It is only an innate and natural tendency of the soul to go
beyond its body to find material with which to clothe the life
that it desires to give expression to. The soul can and must
be trained to do this consciously. You can easily see that
this power possessed _consciously_ will give its possessor
power to work magic.