The Sabbat

All societies require rituals of ecstasy and release through which the sexual and anarchic, feelings of the group can be purged. Such catharses are rare in our modern world, where relatively cheap thrills like adultery and drugs have come to replace them. Our bacchic rites have sunk considerably, alas.

The witches’ Sabbat (or Sabbath) of myth (as shown in the paintings of Goya, as luridly confessed by the tortured witches) was a mélange of meeting, dance, orgy, love feast, bacchanal, feast of Priapus, as well as a parody of Christianity. In reality, it may derive from the fertility dances of paleolithic humans around the antlered representation of the incarnate god. But as that ritual metamorphosed through the ages, it borrowed from every known religious tradition, of which Christianity was merely the latest.

Witches were said to fly to the Sabbats upon broomsticks. They flew up chimneys and through the billowing clouds to Sabbats held in ancient holy places. When they arrived, they oiled themselves once more for the dance, using powerful hallucinogenic ointments which may have been introduced vaginally. The dancing, the feasting—the sweet music and luscious food—the kiss of infamy (osculum infame), and intercourse with the incarnate god (called the “Devil” by the Inquisitors and even by some witches themselves)—all these elements are familiar to us from legend.

The word sabbath is but one of many linguistic reminders of the link between witches and Jews that we find throughout the historical sources on witchcraft. Did the Christian chroniclers deliberately use the word Sabbath to relate the witches to the Jews and thus discredit them more? They used the word synagogue this way to denote the witches’ place of worship. Many attempts were made to confuse witches with Jews and witches with Christian heretics. The witch, like the Jew and the heretic, served the age-old purpose of being the outsider against whom the main societal group unifies.

Much of the prejudicial lore relating to Jews also relates to witches: the charge of kidnapping and sacrificing babies, for example. Are these merely archetypes that are always projected onto the outsider by the insider? Or was there, in fact, a connection between the suppression of witches and the suppression of Jews and heretics? Was it once again a case of a Church in jeopardy, seeking scapegoats in order to bolster its fading power?

The Sabbat began with a roll call of members, the introduction of initiates, oath-taking, and the kiss of obedience. (This same kiss on the ass—so often mentioned by the prurient—is also associated with other heretics, so we may presume it is an archetypal insult.) Next came dancing—not dancing as we know it as a social activity, but dancing as an ecstatic religious expression, a loss of the boundaries of self to the will of the group, a means of uniting with the deity. Ritual feasting followed, as well as perhaps ritual sacrifices of animals (if not infants); and then at last came the sexual union of the incarnate god with the worshipers.

It has been suggested by Margaret Murray and others that the person who represented the Horned God copulated with the witches using an artificial phallus, and that this accounts for the witches’ assertion that “the Devil’s” penis was cold, hard, and painful. Most likely the incarnate god was also masked. The Sabbat ended at cockcrow, and the witches returned to their dreary lives greatly refreshed.

Whether the witches’ Sabbat originated in a paleolithic fertility cult or in the Saturnalia of the classical world is not finally ascertainable. But, clearly, the witches’ nocturnal gathering as we know it partakes of elements of both. There are all the characteristics of religious convocation: a consecrated spot (the Rollright stones, a tree sacred to the ancient gods); a circle (or coven) of twelve worshipers plus one who represented the incarnate god or goddess (Sabbats drew many covens together); ritual dancing; ritual drug use (the hallucinogenic ointments and perhaps hallucinogenic mushrooms, too); ritual eating; ritual copulation—and eventually blessed (or cursed—if you believe the Christian view) catharsis.

The witches boasted about the food, the music, the entertainment at their Sabbats. Offered a free trip to Las Vegas or a night at the Sabbat, there is no question which they would have chosen.

Did these Sabbats really occur? Some witches claimed to have been to them when all the time they were observed sleeping in their beds. Did they fly only in dreams, aided by their famous flying ointments? How shall we know for sure?

The Sabbat persists as archetype if not in fact: maddened worshipers whirling by moonlight around their Horned God, taking him into their bodies, casting off modesty, frustration, boredom (as well as their clothes!)—kicking over the traces of bourgeois morality if only for a night, and finding again the primal religious force of which sexual ecstasy is but a pallid reminder.

Bring back the Sabbat! Never have we needed it more!