Sexual Union with the Devil

Sexual union between an incarnate god and a worshiper has a venerable history and is known in many religious traditions. The Inquisitors’ notion that witches were fucked by the Devil seems clearly to be a debased form of this union. Recorders at witch trials were pruriently eager to learn all the details of sexual relations between devils and witches—and the tortured witches obliged them with the most intimate descriptions.

The Devil’s penis was hard, made of bone or horn (or even iron) as well as flesh; his semen was ice-cold. His penis was bifurcate, able to penetrate two orifices at once. Sometimes it was even trifurcate, able to penetrate mouth, anus, and vagina simultaneously. The wishful basis of these descriptions would be obvious and even a bit silly if not for the fact that so many women (and even girls as young as eight to thirteen years) were put to death for supposedly having had intercourse with devils. This is the problem encountered again and again in studying witchcraft. The supposed “crimes” of the witches seem drawn from Krafft-Ebing until we remember that the hysterical projections of the Inquisitors had the power to kill many innocents.