BAPHOMET
This name was given to the statue of a mysterious deity alleged to be worshipped by the Knights Templars. The latter, although a powerful and wealthy order of chivalry, came to be distrusted by Church and State at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and were disbanded. They were accused of heresy, of worshipping the Devil in the guise of Baphomet, and of practising homosexuality. The order was put down with the utmost severity, and its Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, burned at the stake.
It has been suggested that the word Baphomet was really a version of ‘Mahomet’, and that the Templars, from their connections with the East, had secretly become Mohammedans. This widely-accepted explanation is, however, absurd. Nothing could be more repugnant, nor more strictly forbidden, to anyone who had really embraced Islam, than to make a graven image of either Allah or the Prophet Mohammed.
BAPHOMET, the god of the Knights Templars.
The accounts given of this mysterious statue, by the accused Templars when they were brought to trial, are confused. Some of their evidence was extracted under torture, by people who were determined to get evidence that the Templars were secret devil-worshippers. Sometimes the image was said to be simply a head but of terrifying aspect, and sometimes merely a bare skull; but another account told of the figure being worshipped by kissing its feet. Sometimes it is described as bearded, and “like a demon”; but it is also described as being like a woman. It was generally agreed, however, that the image, or what it represented, was worshipped, and that it was regarded as the giver of abundance and fertility.
In 1816 a distinguished antiquarian, Baron Joseph Von Hammer-Purgstall, published a book entitled Mysterium Baphometis Revelatum, in which he gave his opinion that the Knights Templars really were secret heretics, or “Gnostics” as he called them. He based this opinion upon certain very curious relics of thirteenth-century art, consisting chiefly of statuettes, coffers and cups or goblets. These contained mysterious figures, which are evidently pagan, and correspond to the descriptions of ‘Baphomet’ secretly worshipped by the Templars. That is, the figures are androgynous, bearded but with female breasts, or otherwise showing the characteristics of both sexes, and often with a skull at the feet, and displaying the magical sigil of the pentagram. Sometimes inscriptions in Arabic accompany the figures; but their sense is deliberately obscure.
These images have certain things in common with the deities of the witches. They are sources of life and fertility, and they are associated with the symbols of the skull and the five-pointed star. Their sexual characteristics are emphasised, as were those of Pan and the goddesses of Nature. Their generally pagan appearance would certainly have caused the medieval Church to regard them as devils.
Thomas Wright, in his “Essays on the Worship of the Generative Powers during the Middle Ages of Western Europe” (in Payne Knight’s Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, privately printed, London, 1865), gives his opinion that:
the comparison of facts stated in the confessions of many of the Templars, as preserved in the official reports, with the images and sculptured cups and coffers given by Von Hammer-Purgstall, leads to the conclusion that there is truth in the explanation he gives of the latter, and that the Templars, or at least some of them, had secretly adopted a form of the rites of Gnosticism, which was itself founded upon the phallic worship of the ancients. An English Templar, Stephen de Staplebridge, acknowledged that ‘there were two professions in the order of the Temple, the first lawful and good, the second contrary to the faith’. He had been admitted to the first of these when he entered the order, eleven years before the time of his examination, but he was only initiated into the second or inner mysteries about a year afterwards.
The existence of an inner circle within an order or society of some kind, is a frequent means of occult organisation. Many such ‘orders within orders’ exist at the present day.
In medieval times, the Devil was often regarded as being androgynous. The card called ‘The Devil’ in the old pack of the Tarot de Marseilles represents him thus; and the Old English word ‘scrat’ meant both a devil and a hermaphrodite. ‘The Old Scrat’ is still a dialect term for the Devil.
The distinguished nineteenth-century French occultist, Eliphas Levi, declared Baphomet of the Templars to be identical with the god of the witches’ Sabbat; it was not the figure of a devil, however, but of the god Pan, or rather a pantheistic symbol of the whole of Nature.
The word Baphomet, when written backwards “Kabbalistically”, reveals three abbreviations: TEM, OHP, AB, which stand for Templi omnium hominum pacis abbas, “The father of the temple of universal peace among men.” This explanation may sound somewhat far-fetched; but Eliphas Levi was in touch with secret occult fraternities which preserved traditional knowledge, though he often wrote in an obscure and devious style, being anxious not to give too much offence to the Catholic Church.
There is a very curious and interesting carving in the church of Saint-Merri in France, which is traditionally said to be a representation of Baphomet. It is a horned and winged figure, bearded but having female breasts; and it sits cross-legged, rather like the old Gaulish figures of the Celtic Horned God, Cernunnos.
The idea that God, containing all things, was therefore androgynous, is a very ancient and widespread one. It occurs in the collection of magical legends of the witches of Italy, which Charles Godfrey Leland published as Aradia: The Gospel of the Witches. (See ARADIA.) In this, the legend of Diana states: “Diana was the first created before all creation; in her were all things; out of herself, the first darkness, she divided herself; into darkness and light she was divided. Lucifer, her brother and son, herself and her other half, was the light.”
The same idea occurs in the mystical symbolism of the Qabalah. The Sephiroth, or Divine Emanations from the Unmanifest, which are arranged as the Qabalistic Tree of Life, represent the attributes of God; and of these some are male and some female. S. L. MacGregor Mathers, in The Kabbalah Unveiled (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1957), has pointed out how the translators of the Bible have “smothered up” and glossed over every reference to the fact that God is both masculine and feminine. This was, of course, done to establish the patriarchal conception of God the Father, with femininity regarded, after the Pauline fashion, as something inferior if not actually evil.
However, in the Ancient East the highest deities were sometimes represented in androgynous form. Such figures were called Brahma Ardhanarisa, or Shiva Ardhanarisa. The Syrian god Baal was sometimes represented as double-sexed; and old accounts tell us that his worshippers called upon him thus: “Hear us, Baal! Whether thou be god or goddess!” Mithras was sometimes referred to as androgynous; and the Greek Dionysus even more frequently so. One of his titles was Diphues, meaning ‘double-sexed’. The Orphic Hymns sing of Zeus, the supreme god of nature, in the same way; as man and as virgin eternal.
Goddesses, too, were sometimes regarded in the ancient world as double-sexed; in particular, the most supposedly feminine of them all, Venus or Aphrodite. In Cyprus, a strange image of Venus was worshipped, bearded and masculine, but dressed in female attire. At the festivals of this worship, transvestism was practised, women wearing men’s clothes and men dressing as women. Similar festivals honoured the goddess Astarte; and it is interesting to note that transvestism was condemned by the Christian Church, which associated it with witchcraft.
There seems no particular reason why transvestism should be regarded as wicked, when one comes to think of it. It is probable that the real cause of the Christian and Old Testament denunciations of the practice, lies in the fact that it was a custom carried out in honour of pagan deities.
The figure of Baphomet, therefore, is connected with worship of great antiquity, the depth and widespread nature of which have been little realised, on account of the veil which has been drawn over these matters. Only in the present day has this veil of pudeur begun to be lifted, when people have come to realise that the ‘obscenity’ of the old Nature worship was mostly in the eye of the beholder.
BASIC BELIEFS OF WITCHES
One of the witches’ most important basic beliefs, obviously, is the reality and possibility of magic. (See MAGIC.) This involves the idea that the physical world is only part of reality, the part that we are able to apprehend with our five senses. Beyond are vaster realms; and in these the witch seeks to venture. This, again, involves a further belief, namely that human beings have more senses than the usual reckoning of five. By means of these innate psychic capacities, the realms beyond the physical are contacted. These powers, say the witch, are perfectly natural; but latent and inactive in the majority of people. They are powers that have become overlaid and hidden by the artificialities of civilisation; but they can be reawakened.
This is one of the matters that have brought witches so often into conflict with the priests of orthodox religions. The established religion of a country does not find it acceptable for people to have their own contact with the Beyond, independently of orthodox priests and their rules and sacraments. This may well have been the reason why the so-called Witch of Endor had to live in hiding. (See BIBLE, REFERENCES TO WITCHCRAFT IN THE.) The Establishment does not like having its authority weakened.
Witches reject the masculine, patriarchal concept of God, in favour of older ideas. They do not see why a rigid monotheism should necessarily be a sign of human advancement, as it is generally taken to be. It seems more reasonable to them to conceive of divinity as being both masculine and feminine; and as evolving moreover a hierarchy of great beings, personified as gods and goddesses, who rule over the different departments of nature, and assist in the evolution of the cosmos.
If witches’ concept of God were to be more precisely defined, it could perhaps best be called Life itself—the life-force of the universe. This, it seems to witches, must be basically benign, however apparently destructive and terrible some of its manifestations may be; because if this is not so, then Life is divided against itself, which is absurd. Moreover, it must be supreme wisdom, because of the wonder and beauty manifested in its myriad forms. Its tendency is to evolve forms capable of expressing ever higher degrees of intelligence; so we who are its children should seek to live in harmony with nature, which is the visible expression of cosmic life, and in doing so find true wisdom and happiness.
Witches do not believe that true morality consists of observing a list of thou-shalt-nots. Their morality can be summed up in one sentence, “Do what you will, so long as it harms none.” This does not mean, however, that witches are pacifists. They say that to allow wrong to flourish unchecked is not ‘harming none’. On the contrary, it is harming everybody.
This bears some resemblance to Aleister Crowley’s law for the New Aeon: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law, love under will.” People often quote the first part of Crowley’s dictum, and claim that he advocated universal licence. They forget the second part of his words. Centuries before, Saint Augustine said something very similar: “Love God, and do what you will.”
The idea of reincarnation seems to witches to be not only much older, but more reasonable and right, than the concept of only one short life, to be followed by heaven for the righteous and hell for the wicked; or than the materialist’s idea that when you’re dead you’re finished. They quote the statement of the old occult philosophers—which I believe modern science supports—that nothing in this universe can be destroyed; it can only change its manifestation. Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” Human individuality and intelligence exist. Through the physical body, they manifest. When the body wears out, or is damaged beyond repair, the person is said to be ‘dead’. But it is the body which is dead. You cannot bury or cremate people—only bodies. In so far as a person is an individual intelligence, can that individuality be destroyed?
The testimony of all ages and countries says, “No.” But at the same time, nothing can stand still. Everything is constantly changing and evolving. To be imprisoned in the personality of John Smith or Jane Brown for all eternity, is no more consonant with cosmic law than being annihilated. Here we may notice the derivation of the word ‘personality’. It comes from persona, a mask. There is that in us which truly says, “I am.” The personality is the mask it wears—a new one for each incarnation. (See REINCARNATION.)
Between earthly incarnations, witches believe the soul rests in the Land of Faery, a pagan paradise like the Celtic Tir-Nan-Og, the Land of the Young. Many references to this pagan otherworld can be found in British and Celtic legend. It is a very different place from the Christian heaven, involving no harps, haloes nor golden gates, but a country like the old dreams of Arcady. It is conceived of as being, not somewhere ‘up above’, but in another dimension co-existing with the world we can see with mortal sight. Sometimes, say witches, we visit this other dimension in our dreams, and can bring back fragmentary recollections of it.
Another implicit belief is the power of thought, for good or ill. Truly, thoughts are things, and the realisation of this is one of the fundamentals of magic. We have become accustomed to this idea as it is put forward in the modern world by the exponents of various movements, such as the so-called ‘New Thought’, practical psychology and so on. But as long ago as the beginning of the fourteenth century, Robert Mannying of Bourne wrote of the power of thought in his tale “The Wicche, the Bagge and the Bisshop”, an episode in his long poem Handlyng Synne.
This story tells of a naughty witch who made a magic bag of leather, that went about of its own accord and stole the milk from people’s cows. Eventually she was arrested and brought before the bishop, together with the magic bag. The bishop ordered her to give him a demonstration of her witchcraft, and she obliged by making the bag rise up and lie down again.
The bishop thereupon tried the charm for himself, doing and saying just as the witch had done; but the bag never moved. He was amazed, and asked the witch why the magic would not work for him. She replied, “Nay, why should it so? Ye believe not as I do,” and explained to him that “My belief hath done the deed every deal.” Whereat the bishop, rather set down, “commanded that she should naught believe nor work as she had wrought”.
This story is notable in that it ascribes the powers of witchcraft, not to Satan, as it would certainly have done in later centuries, but to the hidden abilities of the human mind; and the bishop, instead of ordering the witch to be burned at the stake, simply tells her to go away and not do this again. In 1303, when this poem was commenced, the great illusion of ‘Satanism’ had not yet bedevilled men’s minds to the exclusion of reason.
Practitioners of magic have always emphasised that, although there are techniques to be acquired and the uses of magical accessories to be learnt, in the last resort it is the mind that holds the power of magic. Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa, two famous adepts, said this in the sixteenth century; and at the end of the nineteenth century Miss Mary A. Owen, telling of her investigations in America in Among the Voodoos (International Folk Lore Congress, London, 1891); said: “‘To be strong in de haid’—that is, of great strength of will—is the most important characteristic of a ‘conjurer’ or ‘voodoo’. Never mind what you mix—blood, bones, feathers, grave-dust, herbs, saliva, or hair—it will be powerful or feeble in proportion to the dauntless spirit infused by you, the priest or priestess, at the time you represent the god or ‘Old Master’.”
This is the same as the witch belief, although it comes from the other side of the world.
There are two museums in Britain today which are devoted to showing the beliefs and practices of witches. One is at Boscastle in Cornwall, and is run by Mr Cecil H. Williamson. The other is at Castletown, Isle of Man, and is run by Mr and Mrs Campbell Wilson.
BELLARMINE JUGS, THEIR CONNECTION WITH WITCHCRAFT
The so-called Bellarmine jugs, bottles, and drinking-mugs were produced by the potteries of the Rhineland area, from the sixteenth century onwards. They were exported in large numbers to this country, where they became very popular.
These handsome stoneware vessels take their name from the fierce, bearded face embossed upon them, which was supposed to be that of Cardinal Bellarmine. They are also sometimes called greybeard jugs, on account of this typical decoration.
As well as being in general use as a household article, Bellarmine bottles were remarkably popular for the purpose of casting spells and counterspells, especially in London and the eastern counties of England.
They have often been unearthed from the ruins of old English houses dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in circumstances which point to their connection with witchcraft. The typical Bellarmine bottle has a large body and a narrow neck, which can be tightly stoppered. When used as a witch-bottle, these vessels have been found with highly unpleasant contents, such as human hair entangled with sharp nails, cuttings of human finger-nails, a piece of cloth in the shape of a heart and pierced with pins; and sometimes human urine and salt. The bottle was well sealed up, and then buried in some secret place, or thrown into a river or ditch.
One of these bottles was recovered from the mud of the Thames in fairly recent years; and the frequent post-war demolition works of the 1950s produced a number of examples of these mysterious vessels, brought to light when the foundations of old houses were revealed. All had typically sinister contents as described above.
Whether the witch-bottle was a spell or a counterspell is not always clear. One theory is that it was a form of self-defence, used by people who believed themselves to be ‘overlooked’ by the Evil Eye, to get back at the person who was bewitching them. Believing that a magical link existed between the witch and themselves, they tried to put the magic into reverse, and turn it back upon the sender.
They used their own hair, nail-clippings, urine, etc., as the magical link; and a heart, cut probably from red cloth, to represent the witch’s heart, which they pierced with pins. Sharp nails were added, to nail the witch; and salt, because witches were supposed to hate it. Then the whole thing was buried in some dark and secret place, in the hopeful belief that it would cause the witch to decline and perish.
However, this spell could be used offensively also, if the practitioner got hold of someone else’s hair, nail-clippings, etc., to form the necessary magical link. Nor, in those days when sanitation was decidedly primitive, and the chamber-pot a very necessary and often handsome article of furniture, would it be too difficult to obtain some of the hated person’s urine. The pin-pierced hearts which have been recovered from these witch-bottles, seem to be going rather far for self-defence; and the very nastiness of the spell would give satisfaction to a hate-filled mind.
But why the choice of a Bellarmine bottle for this uncanny business? What had Cardinal Bellarmine to do with witchcraft? The answer, most probably, is nothing; because the face on the bottle does not represent the Cardinal at all, but something much older. Some of the earliest examples of this ware have a triple face on them; that is, three faces combined into one symbolic countenance. This bearded, triple face dates back to pre-Christian times in Celtic Europe, and represented an ancient god of Nature.
In Christian times, sculptors tried to work it into Church decorations by calling it a symbol of the Holy Trinity; but in the sixteenth century it was banned by the Council of Trent, who declared it to be pagan. It is in fact one of the ways in which the Celtic Horned God, Cernunnos, is depicted. Probably because of its old associations with paganism, the triple face was one of the attributes often given in medieval art to the Devil. Dante in his Inferno portrays the great Devil in Hell, whom he calls ‘Dis’, in this way; a typical instance of the god of the old religion becoming the devil of the new.
The complicated design of the triple face on the greybeard bottles, etc., became simplified into a single powerful-looking countenance bearded and virile; but it was still the figure of the old pagan god, and hence a suitable vessel for mischief and forbidden arts. But who knew that it was? Who recognised it?
The historical fact that these bottles, with their ancient design, were used for witchcraft, is a pointer to the underground survival of pagan tradition, to a far later date than is generally attributed to it.
BIBLE, REFERENCE TO WITCHCRAFT IN THE
The best-known Biblical text referring to witchcraft is verse 18 in the twenty-second chapter of Exodus, which states: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” It is printed on the title-page of The Discovery of Witches by Matthew Hopkins, the notorious Witch-Finder General. His book was published in 1647, “For the Benefit of the Whole Kingdome”.
This supposed portion of the word of God has been the pitiless death-warrant of thousands. Yet it is nothing but a false translation.
The Authorised Version of the Bible was produced in the time of King James I, a monarch who fancied himself as an authority on witchcraft, while at the same time being much afraid of it. To gratify the King, numerous references to witchcraft were worked in to the translation, which the original does not justify.
This particular text, the most useful of all to the witch-hunters, does not in fact refer to witchcraft at all. The word translated as ‘witch’ is the Hebrew chasaph, which means a poisoner. In the Latin version of the Bible called the Septuagint, this word is given as veneficus, which also means a poisoner.
Another well-known supposed reference to witchcraft in the Bible is the story of the so-called ‘Witch of Endor’ (I Samuel, Chapter 28.) However, the actual text refers to her simply as “a woman that hath a familiar spirit”. She seems to have been a clairvoyant or medium, and a genuine one; though we are not told precisely how the apparition of the deceased prophet Samuel took place
Apparently the woman saw him first, and then his message was conveyed to Saul; but it is not clear whether Saul could see him too, or whether he “perceived that it was Samuel” from the woman’s description. The whole episode is reminiscent of Spiritualistic practices today.
It is notable that the woman had been driven into hiding, and was in fear of persecution, when Saul consulted her. She may have been a priestess of an older, pagan faith, outlawed by the monotheistic, patriarchal creed of the followers of Yahweh.
Hence the two most famous references to witchcraft in the Bible, though often quoted, do not in fact have quite the meaning usually given to them.
BLACK FAST, THE
This ritual was one of fasting to aid concentration, for some particular purpose. It was alleged to have been used by Mabel Brigge, who was executed for witchcraft at York in 1538.
The fast involved abstaining from meat, milk and all food made with milk. During the period of the fast the witch concentrated all her mental energy and will-power upon some particular object. This was usually to cause misfortune or death to some person; hence the rite was feared and called the Black Fast.
Mabel Brigge protested at her trial that she had only used this method to compel a thief to restore stolen goods, and hence its purpose was a righteous one. However, a witness against her claimed that she had admitted using the Black Fast to bring about a man’s death, and that the man had broken his neck before the period of the fast was completed.
She was accused of attempting the lives of King Henry VIII and the Duke of Norfolk by this means; and she was found guilty and executed. This case is interesting, because it shows that witchcraft has always involved practices which are not mere mumbo-jumbo, but are based upon the power of thought, and the occult potentailities of the human mind.
BLACK MASS, THE
Popular belief credits the Black Mass with being the central rite of witchcraft, and the very ultimate in horror and abomination. As a matter of fact, however, the Black Mass is not a witchcraft rite at all.
The whole point of the Black Mass is to pervert and insult the highest Christian sacrament. Therefore, one has to accept the validity of the Mass as the highest Christian sacrament, and to believe in its efficacy, before one can pervert it; and people who believe this are Christians, not witches. They may be bad Christians, but they are certainly not pagans. In fact, they are really playing Christianity, by their very laboured efforts at blasphemy, a sort of back-handed compliment.
The Christian Mass is a ritual involving bread and wine, which the Christian believes to be changed mystically into the Body and Blood of Christ; but the pagan does not believe this. Indeed, to celebrate the Black Mass, one has not only to be a Christian, but a Roman Catholic, who believes in the real Mass. Otherwise, as Gerald Gardner has pointed out, one is going to a great deal of trouble to insult a piece of bread.
The stories about the Black Mass have had a number of different sources; but they are not all fiction. Black Masses of various kinds have taken place, and probably still do. Where they are genuine, they arise mainly from a revolt against Church oppression, and the frustration of those who have to submit to it.
In the Middle Ages the Church ruled public and private life with an iron hand. The feudal system, which the Church supported, was a heavy yoke upon men’s necks. Under the surface, resentment smouldered, and sometimes burst forth into flame, only to be stamped out with pitiless severity. The lords ruled in their castles, while the serf had no future but constant toil, in order to make them richer.
In these circumstances, Satan in medieval France acquired a significant title, Le Grand Serf Revolté, ‘The Great Serf in Revolt’; and the stage was set for probably the only circumstances in which real devil worship manifests itself. Not because people choose to worship evil; but because everything they can enjoy or hope for in this world, they have been told belongs to the Devil. Freedom is of the Devil; sexual enjoyment is of the Devil; even music and dancing are of the Devil. Very well—then let us invoke the Devil!
But how can we invoke the Devil? What other means than by reversing the forms of Christianity? Remember, the Mass in those days was always said in Latin; the Lord’s Prayer was the Paternoster. These were the sonorous incantations which invoked the Christian God. Reversed, would they invoke the opposite forces to those of Christendom—the forces of joyous and unbridled lust, of naked freedom, such as the serfs had once known at the old pagan festivals, of which folk-memory still held a far-off echo, a warmth of remembered fire? There may well have been people who thought like this, in those Dark Ages.
Nor was this mental climate confined to those countries ruled by the Roman Catholic Church. John Buchan, in his novel Witch Wood, has vividly depicted the oppressive atmosphere of Puritan Scotland, under extreme, narrow-minded Protestantism; and the means which the people found of relieving their frustrations, in either a genuine or an imitation witches’ Sabbat.
However, the Black Mass does not belong to genuine witchcraft, because the latter has its own traditions and rituals. The real witch is a pagan, and the old Horned God of the witches is much older than Christianity or the Christian Devil or Satan. Though it will be seen from the foregoing how the Horned God can have come to be united in the popular mind with the Devil; especially as the Church had impressed upon everyone that the old pagan gods were all really devils. The only reason people ever worshipped the Devil was that the image of the Christian God was made so harsh and cruel that the Devil seemed pleasanter.
The witches today have a ceremony of wine and cakes, which is described in Charles Godfrey Leland’s Aradia: the Gospel of the Witches. (See ARADIA.) Wine, or ale or cider when wine could not be had, was (and still is) used to drink the health of the Old Gods. But this is not done in mockery of the Christian Mass or anything else. The wine is consecrated to the Horned God and the Moon Goddess, the deities of the witches. The Sabbats and the Esbats always involve a ritual feast, or at least some eating and drinking; and in the heated imagination of anti-witch writers, this nearly always becomes a Black Mass, even though it bears no resemblance to the Christian sacrament.
Apart from the foregoing influences in the story of the Black Mass, there is the fact that some Christian, or nominally Christian, priests perverted their saying of the Mass to the purposes of baleful magic; and this practice, too, is very ancient. As early as the seventh century A.D. the Council of Toledo denounced the practice of saying the Mass for the Dead in the name of a living person, so that the person named should sicken and die.
There are also in existence magical grimoires which require that the instruments of magic, the wand, the knife etc., should be laid upon an altar and a Mass said over them.
The story of the notorious Abbé Guibourg, who said Mass upon the naked body of the King’s mistress, Madame de Montespan, as she lay upon a secret altar, is a well-documented historical fact. The object of this ritual was that Madame de Montespan should retain Louis XIV’s fickle favour, and with it her position as queen in all but name. The rite not only invoked the perversion of sacred things, but ritual murder. The blood of a sacrificed baby was mingled in the chalice.
But the whole point of this Black Mass was that it had to be performed, not by a witch, but by an ordained Christian priest, who had the power to consecrate the elements of the Mass; and this still holds good (or should we say bad?) today. The Black Mass is a perversion of a Christian rite. Its connection with witchcraft, historically speaking, is comparatively recent.
Moreover, the highly-sophisticated Black Mass, so beloved of films and books designed to thrill as they horrify, is mainly of literary origin. The Marquis de Sade included descriptions of it in his notorious novels, Justine (Paris, 1791) and Juliette (Paris, 1797). These descriptions may have been inspired by stories in French high society about the secret activities of Madame de Montespan. De Sade’s books had an extensive circulation ‘under the counter’, in spite of efforts to suppress them. Forbidden fruit is always attractive, hence the idea of the Black Mass gained status, especially when suitably decorated with beautiful, nude women.
In Britain, the famous Hell Fire Club, or the Monks of Medmenham, organised by Sir Francis Dashwood, had been staging something very similar, though much more light-hearted. There were in fact a number of Hell Fire Clubs in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; but their object was more daring debauchery than serious black magic. Like some similar organisations today, if their ‘invocations of the Devil’ had actually produced some manifestation, no one would have been more terrified—or surprised—than themselves.
Nevertheless, within the late and literary Black Mass, with its theatrical trappings, there is one genuinely ancient figure—the naked woman upon the altar. It would be more correct to say, the naked woman who is the altar; because this is her original role, not that of sacrificial victim (whom the hero of the thriller rescues just in time from the black magician’s knife, as so often seen in films). This use of a living woman’s naked body as the altar where the forces of Life are worshipped and invoked, goes back to before the beginnings of Christianity with its dogmas about Satan; back to the days of the ancient worship of the Great Goddess of Nature, in whom all things were one, under the image of Woman.
BONFIRES
The most likely derivation of the word ‘bonfire’ is that it was a ‘boon-fire’; that is, a fire for which the materials had been begged as a boon or gift. We still see this taking place in the weeks before our present-day bonfire celebrations on 5th November, when children come round seeking fuel for their bonfires. The latter, in commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot, have taken the place of the old Halloween bonfires, which from time immemorial had blazed at the end of October and beginning of November.
A ritual bonfire was a favourite pagan method of celebrating a festival. The four great feast-days of the Celtic year, which have become the four Great Sabbats of the witches, were always occasions of ritual fire in one form or another. The Celtic names for these feasts were Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain. They were held at the beginning of February, the beginning of May, the beginning of August, and the beginning of November, respectively. The Midsummer festival was also called Beltane, meaning ‘bright fire’.
In later years, these occasions became known as Candlemas (2nd February), May Eve (30th April), Lammas (1st August) and Halloween (31st October). (See SABBAT.)
There is something very magical about a bonfire, which somehow seems to invite people to dance round it. The flickering of the flames, the crackling of blazing twigs, the showers of golden sparks, the pungent scent of the wood-smoke, all evoke an atmosphere of cheerfulness and excitement.
Also, the glowing fires in times past served the practical purposes of warmth, light and facilities for cooking and roasting. The latter were necessary and doubtless welcome, when people had come to the Sabbat from considerable distances, bringing provisions with them. In the thinly-populated countryside of olden times, big fires could be built in remote places, that provided enough heat for the traditional naked dances of the Sabbat, which so scandalised the Church.
Old place-names often recall the sites of pagan bonfires. There are quite a number of Tan Hills or Tain Hills in Britain, deriving their name from the old Celtic teinne, meaning ‘fire’. Sometimes these sites, as in the case of the one near Avebury, have been Christianised as ‘St Anne’s Hill’; but the fair that was held on this hill was still called Tan Hill Fair, thus preserving the older name.
Scottish place-names yield such examples as Ard-an-teine, ‘the light of the fire’; Craig-an-teine, ‘the rock of the fire’; Auch-an-teine, ‘the field of the fire’; Tillie-bet-teine, ‘the knoll of the fire’; and so on.
In Cornwall, we find Lantinney, meaning ‘the enclosure of the fire’. The great time for bonfire festivals in Cornwall was Midsummer Eve, the second ‘Beltane’ in the Celtic year.
Fires were lit from one end of the Duchy of Cornwall to the other, and the country people, old and young, danced merrily round them. Midsummer Eve was called ‘Witches’ Night’; but the pagan nature of the celebration was disguised by saying that the fires were built to protect against evil.
For a time, the old bonfire celebrations in Cornwall were allowed to fall into disuse. However, in modern days people and societies interested in preserving old Cornish customs and the Cornish language, have revived them, and Midsummer Beltane blazes again from hill to hill. The Cornish word for it is Goluan, which signifies both ‘light’ and ‘rejoicing’.
The custom of the Midsummer bonfires was formerly kept up all over Britain, and recognised as having its origin in pagan fertility rites. Thus in Langley’s version of Polydore Vergil (1546), we find the following: “Oure Midsomer Bonefyres may seme to have comme of the sacrifices of Ceres Goddesse of Corne, that men did solemnise with fyres, trusting thereby to have more plenty and aboundance of corne.”
Midsummer bonfires were popular throughout Europe, and indeed still are in many places; though today they are officially held to celebrate St John’s Eve, which takes place on 23rd June.
The purpose of many bonfire rituals was distinctly magical, apart from rejoicing. Thus in Hereford and Somerset the Midsummer bonfires were lit to bless the apple trees; and the old country folk feared their crops might fail if they omitted this ceremony. In many places, the smoke from a bonfire kindled in the ancient way, by the friction of two pieces of wood, was a remedy against sickness among cattle, which were driven through the smoke for this purpose. Ritual fire produced in this way was called need-fire, from the old Saxon nied-fyr, meaning ‘forced fire’, that is, fire produced by friction.
The ashes of ritual bonfires were lucky and protected against evil and ill-wishing. They were gathered up after the ceremonies, and mixed with the seed when it was sown, or scattered over the fields where the young plants were beginning to appear. The essential meaning of these old bonfire rites derives from fire as a symbol of life. (See FIRE MAGIC.)
BOOK OF SHADOWS
This is the name given by modern witches to the book in which they write their rituals, invocations and charms. Witches copy from each others’ books that which appeals to them, and things which have been learned from experience; so that in practice no two books are exactly alike.
An old rule of the covens, with regard to written material of this description, is that when anyone died his book was to be burned. (See WITCHCRAFT.) The reason for this, from the old days, was to save embarrassment to the person’s family. A written book was proof positive to accuse a person of witchcraft; and as the latter was popularly supposed to run in families, the discovery of such a thing might make the position of a witch’s surviving relatives very difficult.
Such a writing is called a Book of Shadows, because its contents can only be this world’s shadow of the realities of the Other World; the world of magic and the Beyond, the world of gods and spirits. Even so, I am told, do Freemasons regard their ceremonies; which they preserve “until time and circumstance shall restore the great originals”.
BROCKEN, THE
The Brocken, also called the Blocksberg, was the most famous meeting-place of witches in Europe. An old-fashioned poet, Matthison, wrote of it with gruesome awe:
The horn of Satan grimly sounds;
On Blocksberg’s flanks strange din resounds,
And spectres crowd its summit high.
One wild story even claimed that here on Walpurgis Night (30th April or May Eve), was held the Grand Coven of all the witch-leaders of Europe.
Because in Germany the activities of the witch-hunters, both Catholic and Protestant, reached a degree of frightfulness which exceeded that of anywhere else in Europe, the name of the Brocken as an alleged site of witches’ Sabbats became notorious. In later years Goethe brought the tradition of the Brocken into his famous work Faust, describing a fantastic Sabbat upon its haunted heights.
In the eighteenth century German map-makers usually added to any map of the Hartz Mountains, of which the Brocken is the highest peak, a few witches flying on broomsticks towards its summit. One of these old maps, drawn by L. S. Bestehorn and published at Nuremberg in 1751, is particularly interesting. This map also contains a short description of the Brocken, which states that at the summit of the mountain is the famous ‘Witches’ Ground’, where the Sabbats take place, and close to it is an altar, which was formerly consecrated to a pagan god. There was also a spring of water here, and both the spring and the altar were used in the witches’ ceremonies.
This, explains why the Brocken was so famous as a witches’ meeting-ground. It is evidently an old sacred mountain, on the summit of which pre-Christian rites took place. The scenery in the Hartz Mountains is among the wildest and most beautiful in Germany. Hence the Brocken’s remoteness added to its aura of mystery and terror.
BROCKEN, THE. An old engraving. “The Spectre of the Brocken”.
The famous ‘Spectre of the Brocken’, though a natural phenomenon, was frightening enough to deter a lonely traveller. When the atmospheric conditions are right, the ‘Spectre’ will appear, as a huge shadowy giant, looming up before one. Actually, it is caused by the climber’s own shadow being projected by the sun’s rays upon a bank of mist. On paper, this explanation sounds very matter-of-fact and reassuring; but to be confronted, in the silence of some lonely mountain, with this gigantic apparition, can still send a shiver down one’s spine.
A curious episode took place on the Brocken in June, 1932, when the late Harry Price staged a reconstruction of an alleged black magic ritual there. Accounts of what, if anything, happened are hazy and contradictory. Apparently a goat was involved, which was supposed to turn into a human being at midnight, but failed to do so. This was certainly one of the oddest phases in the controversial career of this famous psychical researcher.
The Brocken in the Hartz Mountains was not the only witches’ meeting-place which was known as the Blocksberg. Other hills and mountains which bore a similar reputation, also acquired the same name. In Pomerania, there were several high places known as the Blocksberg; and the Swedish witches called their meeting-place Blocula.
BROOMSTICK OR BESOM, THE
The broomstick has come to be the traditional companion to the witch, and the enchanted steed for her wild and unholy night-flights through the air. Even Walt Disney paid tribute to its legendary magical character, in his film Fantasia, when he drew Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, with a bewitched broomstick that did its work only too well.
However, the broomstick was only one of the means witches were supposed to use for the purpose of flight. (See BUNE-WAND.) Its frequent occurrence in folklore points to the fact that it possessed some special significance.
This significance is in fact a phallic one. In Yorkshire folk-belief, it was unlucky for an unmarried girl to step over a broomstick, because it meant that she would be a mother before she was a wife. In Sussex, the May-Pole, which was itself a phallic symbol, used to be topped with a large birch broom. A ‘besom’ is a dialect term for a shameless, immoral female.
‘To marry over the broomstick’, ‘jump the besom’, was an old-time form of irregular marriage, in which both parties jumped over a broomstick, to signify that they were joined in common-law union. At gypsy wedding ceremonies, the bride and groom jump backwards and forwards over a broomstick; further evidence of the broom’s connection with sex and fertility.
In a curious and interesting old book, A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, and Cant, by Albert Barrère and Charles Godfrey Leland (London, 1899 and 1897, also Gale Detroit, 1889), we are told that a slang term in those days for a ‘dildo’ or artificial penis was ‘a broom-handle’; and the female genitals were known vulgarly as ‘the broom’. To ‘have a brush’ was to have sexual intercourse. This throws considerable light on the real significance of the broomstick in witch rituals, and in old folk-dances, in which it often plays a part.
The original household broom was a bunch of the actual broom plant, Planta genista, tied round a stick. “Broom! Green broom!” was an old street cry, used by vendors of broom-bunches for this purpose. The Planta genista was the badge of the Plantagenet family, who derived their name from it. They were rumoured to favour the Old Religion. (See ROYALTY.)
At one time of the year, the broom plant was unlucky. The old saying goes: “If you sweep the house with blossomed broom in May, you will sweep the head of the house away.” This could perhaps have some connection with old sacrificial rites at the commencement of summer.
Sometimes the broomstick was regarded as having power to repel witches; perhaps with the idea of turning their own magic against them. At any rate, a broomstick placed across the threshold of a house was supposed to keep witches out.
A broomstick could also be a luck symbol. When alterations were being made to an old house at Blandford in Dorset in 1930, a broomstick was found walled up in the structure. It was recognised as having been put there for luck, and it was allowed to remain in its hiding-place.
These additional meanings of the broomstick are in accord with its phallic significance. Things which are sex symbols are life symbols, and hence luck bringers and protectors against the Evil Eye.
In Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584, and, edited by Hugh Ross Williamson, Centaur, Southern Illinois University Press, 1964), he says of the witches’ Sabbats: “At these magicall assemblies, the witches never faile to danse; and in their danse they sing these words, Har, har, divell divell, danse here danse here, plaie here plaie here, Sabbath, sabbath. And whiles they sing and danse, everie one hath a broome in hir hand, and holdeth it up aloft.” He was quoting from the descriptions of witch rites given by a French demonologist, Jean Bodin, It appears from other old descriptions that witches also performed a kind of jumping dance, riding on staffs; and if broomsticks were used for this purpose, too, it is easy to see how this dance, combined with the witches’ experience of wild visions and dreams of flying while in a stage of magical trance, gave rise to the popular picture of broomstick-riding witches in flight through the air.
When broomsticks or besoms began to be made of more durable materials than the broom plant, the usual combination of woods for them was birch twigs for the brush, an ashen stake for the handle, and osier willow for the binding. However, in the Wyre Forest area of Worcestershire, the traditional woods are oak twigs for the sprays, which is the makers’ term for the broom part; hazel for the staff; and birch for the binding. All of these trees are full of magical meanings of their own, and feature in the old Druidic tree alphabets of Ancient Britain. The ash is a sacred and magical tree; the oak is the king of the woods; the hazel is the tree of wisdom; the willow is a tree of moon-magic; and the birch is a symbol of purification.
This is the old Scottish name given to anything a witch used to fly on. Contrary to popular belief, the instrument of the witches’ legendary flights through the air was by no means always a broomstick. The earliest accounts often refer to a forked wand, or simply a staff, which is given to the witch when she is initiated, together with a vessel of ointment, the witches’ unguent; and it is the latter which enables the witch to fly. (See Flying Ointments.)
One of the earliest writers on witchcraft whose book was printed, was Ulrich Molitor, a Professor of the University of Constance. His book, De Lamiis (Of Witches), was published in 1489, and contains six very quaint and rather attractive woodcuts. One of them is the earliest known picture from a printed book of witches in flight. It depicts three witches, wearing fantastic animal masks, and sharing the same forked staff, on which they are soaring over the countryside.
The incidence of this forked staff as a bune wand is interesting, when we remember that Diana and Hecate, the classical moon goddesses of witchcraft, were both given the title Trivia, ‘of the three ways’, and their statues stood at places where three roads met. The forked staff could well symbolise this, and hence be used in witches’ ritual. It also resembled the horns of the Horned God.
Long-stalked plants were often believed to be bune wands for witches, especially such plants as grew in wild and desolate places. The yellow ragwort is one such; and there is a saying in the Isle of Man, “As arrant a witch as ever rode a ragwort.”
Isobel Gowdie, that young Scottish witch whose detailed confession has an air of wild poetry about it, spoke thus of her witch flights: “When we would ride, we take windle-straws, or beanstalks, and put them betwixt our feet, and say thrice:
Horse and Hattock, horse and go,
Horse and pellattis, ho! ho!
And immediately we fly away wherever we would.”
If the witches were well rubbed with the intoxicating ointment before they performed this ritual, it might well serve the purpose of fixing their minds on the idea that they were flying on a wand or a broomstick; so that their subsequent visions in drug-induced trance would take that form.
BURNING AT THE STAKE AS PUNISHMENT FOR WITCHES
Contrary to popular belief, witches were not burned at the stake in England, after the Reformation. Instead, death sentences were carried out by hanging.
In Scotland, however, the sentence of burning was still inflicted; but if the witches had confessed what they were ordered to confess, they were accorded the mercy of being strangled before being burnt. If they refused to confess, they were burnt alive. This custom was followed upon the Continent also, and accounts for many of the fantastic ‘confessions’ recorded as having been made by witches. Knowing that they had no hope of escape, they confessed whatever was required — however much their alleged crimes were an affront to anyone’s intelligence — in order to obtain a more merciful death. (See LAWS AGAINST WITCHCRAFT.)
The record of witch-burning in Europe as a whole is a sickening one. How many people actually perished in the years of witch-hunting can only be guessed at. It is a story which shames Protestant and Catholic alike; because, although the persecution of witches started under the Catholic Church, the Protestants carried it on with equal inhumanity.
The American authority, George Lincoln Burr, from his studies of the history of witchcraft, has given his opinion that a minimum of 100,000 men, women and children were burned for witchcraft in Germany alone. It is true that Germany was a country in which the mania for persecution raged with particular fierceness. Even so, when we read of such things as the Frenchman Nicholas Remy, the Attorney-General of Lorraine, boasting that he had been personally responsible for the burning of 900 persons for witchcraft in ten years, from 1581 to 1591, we may guess and shudder at the unknown total of Europe’s victims.
Witch-hunting established itself as a profitable business; because not all witches were poor people by any means, and the property and estate of a convicted witch were confiscated, sometimes by the Church authorities, sometimes by the State, or even by the local feudal overlord, depending upon individual circumstances. All the costs of the trial and execution were charged against the witch’s estate; and grisly documents setting out the actual tariffs for burning witches in Scotland and elsewhere still exist.
The last witch-burning in the United Kingdom took place in Scotland in June 1722, when an old woman called Janet Horne was burned at Dornoch on a charge of having lamed her daughter by witchcraft. At least, this is the last Scottish witch-burning of which we have definite historical record. There are rumours of later executions in Scotland; but by this time in history not the quality of mercy but eighteenth-century scepticism and rationalism were putting the curb on the witch-hunters.
In 1736 witchcraft ceased to be a capital charge, in Scotland as well as England; and in 1743 this fact was publicly denounced by certain Scottish Churchmen, as being contrary to the express Law of God!
Before the Reformation in England, witches had been treated as heretics, and could be burned under the statute De Haeretico Comburendo, passed in 1401. But before this date, witch-burnings were already being carried out in the British Isles, as in the case of Petronilla de Meath of Dame Alice Kyteler’s coven in Ireland in 1323. (See KYTELER, DAME ALICE.)
Looking back at the horrifying records of the burning of witches, one is compelled to wonder how the human mind could consent to such cruelty. The answer seems to be that fear played a large part in it; the terror of black magic. The Christian Church did not invent the punishment of death by burning. There is the case of Theoris, a Greek woman of Lemnos, mentioned by Demosthenes, who was publicly tried in Athens and burned for sorcery. It is certain that people came to believe that a witch’s influence could only really be destroyed by her body being burnt.
In our own times, the remains of Rasputin, the occultist who was regarded as the evil genius of the Tzarist Court of Russia, were torn from their tomb and burned by the revolutionaries—an act that may have been something more than an expression of hatred alone. Furthermore, on several occasions in the last twenty years, disturbing stories have leaked out of Mexico, of women being killed and their bodies burned, because they were believed to be witches. The body of the revolutionary, Che Guevara, was burned and the ashes scattered, by order of the authorities.
There were occasions in England when women were publicly burned at the stake, after the Reformation. If a woman were found guilty of witchcraft which involved treason, for instance using occult means for an attempt upon the life of the sovereign, this was punishable by burning at the stake. Also, for a woman to kill her husband, by witchcraft or any other means, was regarded as ‘petty treason’; and this too was punishable by burning at the stake.
Incredible as it appears, this sentence was actually carried out twice in Sussex as late as the eighteenth century. In 1752 a woman called Anne Whale was publicly burned at the stake at Horsham for poisoning her husband. Again in 1776, another woman, a Mrs Cruttenden, was found guilty of killing her husband by cutting his throat as he lay in bed; and she, too, was publicly burned at Horsham.
There was no mention of witchcraft in either case; but this kind of execution, which as we have seen survived to an astonishingly late date, has often been mistaken for a witch-burning.
It is a psychologically interesting fact that it was not equally punishable for a man to kill his wife. This was murder, but not ‘petty treason’; so it carried only a normal death sentence. The horrific punishment of burning at the stake was in this instance meted out solely to women. It seems likely that it was in some deep and unconscious way related to the old practice of burning witches.
