FAIRIES AND WITCHES
The relationship between the world of witchcraft and the world of Faerie has always been close; so close, indeed, that it is not easy to draw a precise boundary in these enchanted lands, and to say where one world ends and another begins.
Some writers, notably Margaret Murray, have advanced the theory that the ‘fairies’ were actually the aboriginal people of these islands, the Little People of the Hills. These small, dark people, displaced by the waves of incoming Celtic settlers from the Continent, took refuge in remote places. They lived in huts roofed over with green turf, an effective form of camouflage which made their dwellings seem at a distance like little hills. They feared the iron weapons of their conquerors, and would flee at the sight of them. But they had subtle and deadly weapons of their own; small, sharp arrowheads of flint, poisoned so that even a slight wound from one of them could be fatal; and, even more dreaded than their ‘elf bolts,’ the powers of their heathen magic, the uncanny and unholy glamourie that their conquerors feared.
Their friendship was capricious; but, once bestowed, they were faithful, and would work hard for those they liked, seeking no more reward than bowls of simple food, left out for them overnight. However, they had two characteristics which their Celtic neighbours found strange and disconcerting. They were people of the night, who would move and work in darkness, or by moonlight; and they preferred to wear little or no clothing, or the least that the climate would permit.
Respectable housewives who tried to get their small, dark servants to wear decent clothes, were rewarded by ‘Brownie’ spurning their well-meant gifts of wearing apparel, and going off in a huff.
It is a remarkable fact that in the Ashdown Forest area of Sussex, as late as the nineteenth century, there were, according to local traditions certain small, dark forest-dwellers, clannish, reserved and odd in their ways; and one of their oddities was that they wore little or no clothing when in their own environment. People were afraid to pass through the forest alone, especially at night, on account of these ‘yellow-bellies’, or ‘pikeys’, as they were called.
The ‘pikeys’ were certainly not supernatural beings, however. They were perfectly material humans; and there were certain public houses in the forest they were known to frequent. They had a sort of ‘bush-telegraph’ among themselves, and the presence of any stranger was immediately noted and intelligence passed around, with remarkable quickness. People were rather afraid of the ‘pikeys’. They were also known as ‘diddikais’; and this word really means a travelling person with some Romany blood. However, these people did not travel; they were forest-dwellers and always had been.
Their descendants are still to be found in the Ashdown Forest area; though now more or less absorbed into the rest of the community. People like this, living in isolated parts of the country, must have been very much like what Margaret Murray conjectures the fairies to have been.
There are many stories contained in the evidence given in the old witch trials, especially in Scotland, of association between witches and fairies. Some of these stories are very circumstantial. Someone goes to a fairy hill and is welcomed inside. They meet the fairy king and queen and are given food; though the presence of small cattle, ‘elf bulls’, running around at the entrance to the fairies’ dwelling, is rather disconcerting.
Inside, they see people making the deadly ‘elf bolts’, the flint arrow-heads to be dipped in poison. They also see the fairies concocting herbal salves and medicines. They are given instruction in the fairies’ herbal cures; but they are threatened that if they talk too much, and betray their hosts’ confidence, it will be the worse for them.
There are also strange hints they hear, that every seven years the fairies “pay a teind to hell”; that is, one of their number dies as a human sacrifice. There are even whispers that a ‘mortal’ may be kidnapped and used for this purpose, instead of one of their own.
The fairy women give birth to children; and a mortal midwife is sometimes called on, in these circumstances, to render aid. Nursing mothers are kidnapped, to be wet-nurses to fairy children; and pretty, fair-haired mortal babies are stolen, and a wizened dark-faced changeling left in their place.
People are thoroughly afraid of the fairies, and propitiate them by calling them the ‘Good Neighbours’, the ‘Good Folk’, or the ‘People of Peace’. About all these features of fairy-lore, there is nothing necessarily supernatural. They could all refer to members of another race, small indeed in comparison to the rest of the population, but not too small to intermarry with them. There are a number of stories of mortals who married fairies; though the marriages seldom lasted, because the wild Little People of the Heaths refused to adapt themselves to the others’ ways.
It is interesting in this connection to note the actual derivation of the word ‘heathen’. It means, in fact, the People of the Heath; just as ‘pagan’ derives from paganus, a countryman, a rustic. The original heathens and pagans were people who kept to the old lore of the countryside, and the old gods and spirits of Nature, while the more sophisticated town-dwellers dwellers had adopted more ‘civilised’ forms of religion.
An important source of information about Scottish witch trials in which fairies are mentioned, is Sir Walter Scott’s Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (John Murray, London, 1830). From this book we see that association with the fairies featured in the accusations made in the trials of Isobel Gowdie (1662), Bessie Dunlop (1576), Alison Pearson (1588), and John Stewart (date not given). One Andro Man was also accused of associating with the Queen of Elfin, “who had a grip of all the craft”; and Thomas the Rhymer, the famous prophet, gained his psychic powers by favour of the Queen of Faerie, as the old ballad tells us.
In fact, the leading female witch of a Scottish coven was evidently called the Queen of Elphame; a word which is simply the Scottish version of the Old Norse Alfheim, the country of the elves, or Fairyland.
The word ‘fairy’ itself derives from the Old French faerie, meaning ‘enchantment’. The Realm of Faerie is the realm of enchantment and magic; hence another reason for its association with witches.
It is evident that the fairy lore of the British Isles is made up of a number of different strands. There are actual memories of the Little People of the Hills, as described above; but there is also the fairy who is quite evidently a spiritual creature, a spirit of Nature, and the story of an adventure in the Realm of Faerie which is actually a description of a vivid psychic experience.
In addition to these features of fairy lore, there is the idea of the Fairy Host as being composed of the souls of the unbaptised, or of those who were ‘too good for hell, but too bad for heaven’. Such hosting fairies, who rode past on the rushing wind, were the spirits of the pagan dead, and they were led by gods and heroes of the past.
The Realm of Faerie is often conceived of as being a beautiful but uncanny place which is underground, actually within the earth. It is curious in this respect to compare this belief with the Eastern stories of Agharti.
The antiquarian Thomas Wright, in his essay “On the National Fairy Mythology of England” (in Essays on England in the Middle Ages, Vol I, John Russell Smith, London, 1846), tells us:
The elves have always had a country and dwelling under ground as well as above ground; and in several parts of England the belief that they descend to their subterraneous abodes through the barrows which cover the bones of our fore-fathers of ancient days is still preserved. There were other ways, however, of approaching the elves’ country, and one of the most common was by openings in the rocks and caverns, as we find in the poem of Sir Orfeo, and in the tale of Elidurus, told by Giraldus. The great cave of the peak of Derby was also a road thither, and Gervase of Tilbury has preserved a tale how William Peverell’s swineherd ventured once to descend it in search of a brood-sow; and how he found beneath a rich and cultivated country, and reapers cutting the corn. The communication, however, has long been stopped up; and those who go now to explore the wonders of the cavern find their progress stayed by the firm impenetrable rock.
Sometimes, however, stray beings from this underground country appeared in the world of men. Such, for instance, as those described in the weird tale of the Green Children, which is averred as truth by two old English chroniclers, William of Newburgh and Ralph of Coggeshall; though the first-named says it happened in the reign of King Stephen, and the latter that it took place in the reign of Henry II. Gervase of Tilbury also mentions it.
The story goes that two mysterious children, a boy and a girl, were found by peasants at a place called Wolfpitts, in Suffolk. They were lost and weeping; they wore strange garments; and their skin was green. They could speak no English, nor at first would they eat anything except green beans. They were taken to the house of Sir Richard de Calne and cared for. However, the boy sickened and died; but the girl accustomed herself to eating earthly food, and gradually lost her green colour, took on human colouring and learnt our speech.
She said that they came from an underground country, where all the people were green-skinned like themselves. No sun was perceived there; but the land was lit by “a brightness or shining, such as would happen after sunset”. She and her brother had been following some sheep or small cattle, and arrived at a cavern. They were lured onward by a sweet sound, like the ringing of bells, and wandered on through the cavern until they came to its end. “Thence, emerging, the excessive brightness of our sun and the unwonted, warm temperature of our air astonished and terrified them. And for a long time they lay upon the edge of the cave.” There they were found as aforesaid.
The girl was baptised, and remained as a servant in the house of Sir Richard de Calne. “She showed herself very wanton and lascivious”; but eventually settled down and married a man at King’s Lynn, in Norfolk. A strange tale of unsolved mystery!
The wanton young lady from this underground Elfland was only following the traditionally amoral nature of the fairies. The Reverend Robert Kirk, Minister of Aberfoyle in Scotland, also wrote of their naughtiness: “For the Inconvenience of their Succubi, who tryst with Men, it is abominable”.
Robert Kirk’s book, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (Scotland, 1691; reprinted with introduction by Andrew Lang, David Nutt, London, 1893), is one of the most curious works to be met with on this subject; the more so as its author was reputed, in the next year after its publication, to have been carried away by the fairies himself. He was walking one evening upon a fairy hill near the manse, when he fell down in a fit or swoon, and was taken for dead. He was accordingly buried in the churchyard of Aberfoyle; but after the funeral his ghost appeared to one of his relations and said that he was not really dead, but a captive in Fairyland. He gave directions as to how he could be liberated. His ghost, he said, would appear at the christening of his posthumous child; and if his cousin Grahame of Duchray would throw his dirk over the head of the appearance, Robert Kirk would be restored to the world of the living. The ghost was indeed seen at the christening; but his cousin was so astonished that he failed to throw the dirk, and the Minister remained in the fairies’ power.
Given Mr Kirk’s known interest in fairies, and in the second sight, with which his book also deals, it was inevitable at that place and period that such eerie tales should be told of him. However, his book certainly exists; and written as it was only twenty-nine years after the trial of Isobel Gowdie, the Scottish witch whose testimony about her association with the fairies has so intrigued many writers on this subject, it seems to tell against the theory that the fairies were an actual race of aboriginal people.
Robert Kirk’s fairies are definitely spiritual beings, “of a middle Nature betwixt Man and Angel”. Their bodies are made of “congealled Air”, which can be made to appear or disappear at pleasure, and are most easily seen at twilight. He calls the fairies “that abstruse People”, and refers to them as “Subterraneans”. Those who have the second sight can see the fairies, especially at “the Beginning of each Quarter of the Year”, at which time the fairies change their habitations, and travel abroad.
The quarters of the year to which Mr Kirk refers are the old Celtic divisions of the year, Candlemas, May Eve, Lammas and Halloween, when all kinds of uncanny beings were abroad, and when the witches held (and still hold) their Great Sabbats. This belief in fairy activity at these times is also found in Ireland.
He notes that the fairies have tribes or orders among themselves, and live in houses, which are sometimes visible and at other times not so. “They speak but little, and that by the way of whistling, clear, not rough.” They had births, marriages, and deaths among them; and even sometimes fought among themselves.
“They live much longer than wee; yet die at last, or at least vanish from that State. ’Tis ane of their Tenets, that nothing perisheth, but (as the Sun and Year) every Thing goes in a Circle, lesser or greater, and is renewed and refreshed in its Revolutions; as ’tis another, that every Bodie in the Creation moves (which is a sort of Life); and that nothing moves, but has another Animal moving on it; and so on, to the utmost minutest Corpuscle that’s capable to be a Receptacle of Life.” How Mr Kirk obtained this strange glimpse into the secrets of the fairies, he does not tell us; but one receives the impression from his book that he was deeper in mystic things than he cared to state plainly.
About actual witchcraft, he tells us discreetly little; but he says, “The Tabhaisver, or Seer, that corresponds with this kind of Familiars, can bring them with a Spell to appear to himself or others when he pleases, as readily as Endor Witch to those of her Kind.”
A man called John Walsh, of Netherbury in Dorset, confessed to having converse with the fairies when he was examined upon accusations of witchcraft in 1566. He made a detailed and interesting confession, containing many particulars’ about his magical practices, which was printed under the title of The Examination of John Walsh (John Awdeley, London, 1566). It refers to his relations with the fairies as follows: “He being demanded how he knoweth when any man is bewitched, he saith that he knew it partly by the fairies, and saith that there be three kinds of fairies, white, green and black, which, when he is disposed to use he speaketh with them upon hills whereas there is great heaps of earth, as namely in Dorsetshire. And between the hours of twelve and one at noon, or at midnight, he useth them, whereof, he saith, the black fairies be the worst.”
My own opinion is that the fairy creed is a composite of several factors: actual spirits of nature whose presence can sometimes be perceived, but who usually share this world invisibly with humans; souls of the pagan dead, who take the third road that the Fairy Queen showed to Thomas the Rhymer, “the road to fair Elfland,” away from either the Christian heaven or the Christian hell; and folk-memories of aboriginal races, now mostly vanished. There may be a fourth factor, the very old and apparently world-wide belief in a hidden land or underworld within the earth.
All these different strands have become intertwined, until they are like the twisting magical knots upon some old Celtic or Saxon carving, with strange faces and forms peeping out between. And because they were of the pagan and forbidden side of things, the old gods of paganism and witchcraft became their natural rulers. Hence, as King James I noted in his Daemonologie, the goddess Diana was regarded as Queen of Faerie; and the witches of Italy in their magical legends recorded in Aradia, sometimes called the goddess Fata Diana, ‘Fairy Diana’.
Her personal representative, the high priestess of a witch coven, was called after her ‘the Queen of Elphame’. Hence it is not always easy to distinguish in these old tales between the Queen of Elphame who is a mortal woman, and the visionary lady on a milk-white steed that True Thomas saw as he lay on Huntlie Bank.
Witches’ familiars may be of three kinds. The first kind is that of a discarnate human being or, in other words, the spirit of a dead person. The second kind is that of a non-human spirit, an elemental. The third kind is that of an actual material creature, a small animal such as a cat or a ferret, or a reptile such as a toad.
Familiars of the second kind, the elementals, sometimes indwell a particular object; and these serving spirits have been attributed to ceremonial magicians in the past, as well as to witches. The famous occultist Paracelsus, for instance, was said to have a familiar which dwelt in a large precious stone, probably a crystal, which was set in the pommel of his sword. In old books of magic, one often finds rituals for attracting a spirit and binding it to a crystal or a magic mirror, in order to serve a magician. By the agency of such a spirit, visions would be seen in the crystal or mirror.
The idea of a spirit ensouling some object, generally a statue, is also found among the magicians of primitive races. Anthropologists have named such a statue a ‘fetish’.
Among witches in Britain, the kind of familiar most frequently met with is the third; that is, a small living creature of some kind, kept as a pet. Witch-hunters usually insisted on describing these familiars as ‘imps’, and alleged that the witch fed them on her own blood.
There is a shred of truth in the latter allegation, although misunderstood as usual. The imagination of witch-hunters is often much nastier than that of witches.
What really happened was that the witch gave the creature from time to time a spot of his or her blood, or if the witch were a woman and a nursing mother, a little of her milk. The object of this was to make a psychic link between the witch and the familiar, and to continue that link. Otherwise, the familiar would be fed on whatever food was normal for it to eat.
Many animals have acute psychic perceptions, and by observing their behaviour the presence of unseen visitants, friendly or otherwise, can be divined. The utter refusal of dogs to go into a place which is the scene of a genuine haunting is a fact frequently attested by experience. Cats, on the other hand, seem rather to enjoy ghostly company. (See CATS AS WITCHES’ FAMILIARS.)
The toad is a remarkably intelligent creature, and easily tamed. The natterjack, or walking toad, was the type specially favoured as a witches’ familiar; but all toads make quite good pets, if they are kept in suitable conditions. They must have water available, as they breathe partly through their skin, and if this gets too dry they will die. They feed upon insects; so the cottage garden was an excellent habitat for them and some old-fashioned gardeners kept toads simply for this purpose, to keep down the insects that menaced the plants.
The toad is also generally harmless. He cannot bite, because he has no teeth; and the old story that he spits poison is a libel. What really happens is that the toad, when angry, frightened or excited will exude poison through his skin, from certain glands in the region of his neck. If you do not frighten or injure him, he will remain harmless; and he has the most wonderful, jewel-like eyes of any creature in the reptile kingdom. (As the reader may have gathered, the writer likes toads.)
This substance exuded by the skin of the toad has a milky appearance, and consequently it received the name of toads’ milk. Witches who kept toads as pets had certain ways of obtaining the toads’ milk without injuring or upsetting the toad—a good familiar was too valuable for that. Toads’ milk was used in some of the witches’ secret brews; and modern scientists have discovered that it contains a substance they have named bufotenin, which is an hallucinogenetic drug.
It is also an extremely deadly poison, when used in the wrong way. The writer, therefore, does not feel that it would be in the public interest to disclose too many details on this subject. The present irresponsible attitude towards hallucinogens, unfortunately displayed by many people today, precludes it.
This, however, was one of the reasons for the popularity of the toad as a witch’s familiar. The other reason is that toads, like cats, are very psychic creatures, and will react to ghostly influences.
The animal familiar was used for divination. The method was to set before it within the magical circle a number of objects representing different divinatory meanings, and see which one it selected. The painted pebbles mentioned in the entry on divination would be very suitable for this; or sprigs of different herbs or twigs of trees could be used. Before the divination started, the witch would have to cast the magic circle, and invoke the Gods to send a spirit to possess the familiar and inspire it to give the right answer.
Another way in which the animal familiar was used was to convey a magical influence, for good or ill, to another person. An instance of this is contained in the confession of Margaret and Philippa Flower, who were hanged for witchcraft at Lincoln in 1619.
These two sisters had been employed at Belvoir Castle by the Earl and Countess of Rutland. For some reason, one of them, Margaret, was dismissed. Feeling that she had been unjustly treated, she applied to her mother, Joan Flower, for revenge. Joan Flower was already reputed to be a witch, and she had a familiar, a cat called Rutterkin. Margaret Flower managed to steal a glove belonging to Lord Rosse, the heir of the Earl and Countess; and this glove was used to make the magical link for the ritual of revenge.
The witch-mother, Joan Flower, rubbed the glove upon Rutterkin the cat; and she must have pronounced a curse upon Lord Rosse as she did so. Then the glove was dipped into boiling water—doubtless the cauldron was bubbling nearby. It was taken out again, pricked either with pins or with the magical knife, and finally buried. Lord Rosse became ill and eventually died.
The Flowers continued to practise witchcraft against the family of the Earl and Countess, until rumours got about locally, and they were arrested and taken to Lincoln for examination. The mother, Joan Flower, fell down and died as she was being taken to Lincoln Jail; after which the two sisters confessed and were hanged. What happened to the cat is not recorded; but this case is interesting as one of the rare instances in which we have some actual details of how familiars were really used. The cat evidently acted as a sort of medium for the powers of witchcraft.
Witches acquired well-trained familiars from each other. They might be given at initiation, or passed on between members of a family, or inherited as a legacy. The familiar was given a name, and well cared for. Sometimes the names were curious and fanciful.
Some recorded names of witches’ familiars in Britain are Great Tom Twit and Little Tom Twit (these were two toads); Bunne; Pyewacket; Elimanzer; Newes (a good name for a divining familiar); Elva (which was also the name of a Celtic goddess, sister-in-law to the sun god Lugh); Prickeare; Vinegar Tom; Sack and Sugar; Tyffin; Tissey; Pygine; Jarmara; Lyard (a word meaning ‘grey’); Lightfoot; Littleman; Makeshift; Collyn; Fancie; Sathan; Grissell and Greedigut. From the Continent come names like Verdelet, Minette, Carabin, Volan, Piquemouche, and so on. Cornelius Agrippa, a famous writer on occult philosophy and magic, was supposed to keep a familiar in the shape of a little black dog called Monsieur.
A curious sidelight on the belief in the efficacy of animal familiars is the fact that, during the Civil War in England, the supporters of Cromwell quite seriously accused the Royalist Prince Rupert of having a familiar. Apparently the Prince had a little white dog called Boye; and the Puritans’ accusations were ridiculed in contemporary Royalist pamphlets, which improved on the original story by suggesting that Boye was really a beautiful Lapland witch, who had changed herself into a dog in order to keep the gallant Cavalier company.
But to the Puritans, witchcraft was no subject for jest. It was during the Civil War that the notorious Witch-Finder General, Matthew Hopkins, carried on his reign of terror in East Anglia. Many elderly people were bullied and tormented into ‘confessions’, and ultimately hanged, for no other crime than keeping a pet animal or bird that their persecutors had decided was a familiar.
At the present day, there are some extreme Protestant congregations which forbid their members to keep pets. This may be an unacknowledged survival of the old fear of witchcraft and the familiar.
The word ‘familiar’ comes from the Latin famulus, meaning an attendant. The most detailed story from the British Isles of such an attendant in the form of a human spirit is that of the Scottish witch Bessie Dunlop of Ayrshire, who was condemned and executed in 1576. Her familiar was the ghost of a man called Thome Reid, who had been killed at the Battle of Pinkie in 1547.
She described his appearance as that of “a respectable elderly-looking man, grey-bearded, and wearing a grey coat, with Lombard sleeves, of the auld fashion. A pair of grey breeches, and white stockings gartered above the knee, a black bonnet on his head, close behind and plain before, with silken laces drawn through the lips thereof, and a white wand in his hand, completed the description of what we may suppose a respectable-looking man of the province and period.” So says Sir Walter Scott, who, in his Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (London, John Murray, 1830), gives full particulars of this case.
Thome Reid was evidently no mere dubious wraithlike phantom. Furthermore, he gave proof of his identity:
More minutely pressed upon the subject of her familiar, she said she had never known him while among the living, but was aware that the person so calling himself was one who had, in his lifetime, actually been known in middle earth as Thome Reid, officer to the Laird of Blair, and who died at Pinkie. Of this she was made certain, because he sent her on errands to his son, who had succeeded in his office, and to others his relatives, whom he named, and commanded them to amend certain trespasses which he had done while alive, furnishing her with sure tokens by which they should know that it was he who had sent her.
Thome Reid advised Bessie upon how to treat the sick, both humans and cattle, and her treatments were generally successful. He also helped her to divine the whereabouts of stolen property. On one occasion, she said, perhaps too bluntly, that the reason some stolen plough-irons had not been recovered was that a certain sheriff’s officer had accepted a bribe not to find them. This cannot have been pleasing to the authorities concerned; and one wonders whether this was why she fell foul of the law, as she was never alleged to have done harm to anyone. Nevertheless, as Sir Walter Scott says, “The sad words on the margin of the record ‘Convict and burnt’ sufficiently express the tragic conclusion of a curious tale.”
It is notable that Spiritualist mediums of the present day claim to be aided by spirits whom they call ‘Guides’; that is, spirits who particularly attach themselves to a medium for the purpose of assisting in the production of phenomena, and of advising the medium. Without wishing in any way to give offence to Spiritualists, this is exactly what the human familiar of the witches did and still does.
One of the objects of present-day witches’ rites is to contact the spirits of those who have been witches in their past lives on earth, and who have thus acquired wisdom both on earth and in the Beyond. The witches’ procedure, while not precisely the same as that of Spiritualists, is nevertheless very similar in many respects. The Spiritualists’ practice of sitting in a circle, and of having men and women seated alternately, is precisely the same as that of witchcraft; as is their belief that power is latent in the human body, and that under the right conditions this power can be externalised and used by discarnate entities to manifest.
Witches also believe, in common with Spiritualists, that a person of the right temperament can enter into a state of trance, during which a spirit can make use of that person’s mind and body in order to speak, write, or perform actions; in other words, they believe in mediumship. This may be one reason for some Churchmen’s implacable opposition to Spiritualism—that they recognise in it many of the beliefs and phenomena of witchcraft.
The witch maintains, however, as does the Spiritualist, that these powers and phenomena are perfectly natural ones; that they are within the framework of natural laws, even though the materialist may not understand the working of such laws; and that it is the way in which these powers are used that makes them good or evil, and not the essential nature of the powers themselves.
With regard to the witch’s familiar which is a non-human discarnate entity, a nature-spirit, this is a belief not confined to witches. It can be found in the East also, where many fakirs and magicians claim to produce marvellous phenomena by means of their alliance with the spirits of the elements. (See ELEMENTS, SPIRITS OF THE.)
In the West such nature-spirits were accepted by people of all races. The Greeks and Romans felt the presence of the nymphs of river and mountain, the tree-nymphs and the goat-footed fauns of the forest; and to them they raised altars in lonely places of the wild. Such an altar, inscribed Diis campestribus, is described by Sir Walter Scott as being preserved in the Advocates’ Library in Scotland. It was discovered near Roxburgh Castle; and the old gentleman in charge of the library used to translate its inscription as “The Fairies, ye ken.”
After the coming of Christianity, all these nature-spirits were regarded as belonging to the world of Faerie, of which Diana, the goddess of the woodlands and of the moon, was queen. They were “The Secret Commonwealth”, as old Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle described them in 1691; and association with them was banned by the Church as a thing of witchcraft. Even today, some of the more severe Irish clergy tell their flock that the little leprechauns are ‘divils’.
Respect for the fairies, however, has by no means died out, especially in the more Celtic parts of the British Isles. In the Isle of Man, for instance, it is usual for people to salute the Good Folk when they pass by the Fairies’ Bridge; and this custom was observed even by Royalty, on a visit to the island in recent years. To many, it is simply a colourful piece of local folklore; but frequent also are the tales of people who have treated the fairies with discourtesy, and have experienced inexplicable breakdowns of their cars, or other misfortunes thereafter.
However, any intimate friendship between mortals and the fairies was regarded, generally rightly, as a sign of witchcraft in bygone days. The records of this are so extensive and curious that they require an entry to themselves. (See FAIRIES AND WITCHES.)
Belief in the fairy familiar is still sufficiently alive to have been perpetuated by Hollywood. That very funny film Harvey, starring James Stewart, was actually about a familiar of this kind; and it stuck very close to tradition in the way it described ‘Harvey’, the pooka or fairy spirit in animal form, and his prankish powers.
FAMOUS CURSES
Can a curse really work? The answer of world-wide and age-old experience says that provided the curse is justly deserved, it can and does.
This might seem to classify a curse as an example of black magic; but this is by no means necessarily so. Records show that the curse which works with deadliest effect is that which is addressed to the powers of fate and justice, in vengeance for a wrong that human law cannot or will not right.
It may be argued that superstitious fear and a troubled conscience, on the part of the person who has been cursed, will acount for the curse’s apparent working. This can, indeed, account for some famous curses taking effect; but not for all. It could not, for instance, explain the working-out of the Tichbourne Curse, which was laid upon a noble English family in the reign of Henry II, and came true in precise detail centuries afterwards.
The originator of this curse was a pious and strong-minded woman, Lady Mabell de Tichburne, who wished to leave an annual gift or ‘dole’ to the poor. Knowing the mean disposition of her husband, she told him on her death-bed that if he or his descendants ever stopped this charity, great misfortune would fall upon the family, their name would be changed and their race die out. As a sign that their doom was impending, there would be the birth in one generation of seven sons and in the next of seven daughters, and the family home would fall down.
For hundreds of years the Tichbourne Dole, in the form of a yearly free distribution of bread, was given to the poor. Then in 1796 the seventh baronet, Sir Henry Tichbourne, decided that the event had become a nuisance, and stopped it.
In 1803 a large part of the old mansion collapsed. The seven sons, followed by seven daughters, were duly born; and a series of family misfortunes, including the notorious law-case of the Tichbourne claimant, convinced the descendants of Lady Mabell that their ancestral curse was a fact. The family, whose name had been changed to Doughty-Tichbourne by circumstances of inheritance, decided that the dole should be resumed. It is given out yearly to this day, though now in the form of flour instead of bread.
Another famous curse which worked out over the centuries was the Doom of the Seaforths. This is an example of those curses which take the form of a fatal prophecy. Scotland seems to be the particular home of them, probably because of its long tradition of the second sight. The Doom of the Seaforths was pronounced by Kenneth Odhar, known as the Brahan Seer. He was condemned to death as a witch by the Countess of Seaforth, and publicly burned at the stake in the latter part of the seventeenth century. When on his way to execution, he solemnly pronounced these words: “I see a chief, the last of his house, both deaf and dumb. He will be the father of four fair sons, all of whom he shall follow to the tomb. He shall live careworn and die mourning, knowing that the honours of his house are to be extinguished for ever, and that no future chief of the Mackenzies shall rule in Kintail.”
The seer went on to describe in detail what misfortunes would overtake the family; and he said that when four great lairds were born “one of whom shall be buck-toothed, the second hare-lipped, the third half-witted, and the fourth a stammerer”, the Seaforth then holding the title would be the last of his line. This prophecy, made publicly in such dramatic form, was long remembered; and in 1815 the line of the Seaforths became extinct, in the exact circumstances the Brahan Seer had pronounced.
Both of the above stories are well-founded upon historical fact. A number of similar tales could be added from old English and Scottish family records.
In 1926 the Reverend Charles Kent, Rector of Merton in Norfolk, revealed that he had held a public religious service in an attempt to lift the famous ‘Curse of Sturston’, a Norfolk village that was cursed in the time of the first Queen Elizabeth. He used an old altar tomb in the ruined churchyard as a lectern from which to read the service; and people gathered from miles around. He believed that his action had at last laid the curse; but subsequent events proved him wrong.
The curse had been pronounced upon the Lord of the Manor of Sturston, one Sir Miles Yare, by an old woman reputed to be a witch. Exactly why she should have cursed her landlord is not clear; but she uttered a malediction upon him and his house and lands, and said that the place should go to ruin until not one stone remained upon another. The area has indeed steadily declined. The old manor became a farmhouse, and eventually stood empty, falling to pieces, and believed to be haunted.
The Rector had been asked to lay the curse, because of the district’s long history of ill-luck and decay. For a time, things did seem brighter after his service; but with the coming of the Second World War the area was taken over for military training. The inhabitants left, and today Sturston is a lost, desolate place, with its buildings in ruins. The curse is almost fulfilled.
Another story of a witch’s curse is that connected with the Earldom of Breadalbane. For many years visitors to the old castle at Killin, on Loch Tay, were shown the place where a witch was put to death by order of the then Earl of Breadalbane. They were told the story of how the witch cursed the family of Breadalbane, and prophesied that the earldom would not descend direct from father to son for seven generations. This came precisely true, as was noted by a letter in The Times on 18th May 1923, under the heading “A Witch Story”.
The correspondent stated that he had heard of the curse when it had already held good for five generations; and noted that the obituary of the Earl of Breadalbane, which The Times had just published, completed the seventh generation, the title passing to a distant cousin.
How can we account for these things? Is there some power in the unseen which hears the words of the wronged? Or do people at the point of death sometimes discover in themselves a faculty of prophecy, and foresee the doom of their oppressors?
These possibilities might account for the above curses, but hardly for the awesome history of the Hope Diamond, a jewel which has been followed through the years by a trail of disaster too long to detail here, and which seems beyond any claim of coincidence. The stone first appeared in Europe in the time of King Louis XIV of France. It was brought to the French Court by a man called Tavernier, who had stolen it from a statue in a temple in Mandalay. The diamond is a wonderful violet-blue colour, and its present weight, after being recut, is 44 1/4 carats. It reposes today in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. where perhaps the atmosphere of science, and the fact that no one is actually wearing it or trying to make money from it, may keep in abeyance whatever strange and horrifying power has given it such an accursed history. However, the only way in which the curse of the Hope Diamond could finally be laid, might well be to return it to the temple from which it was stolen
Lastly, here is a story of a curse that might have been induced auto-suggestion—but it worked just the same. In April 1795 a naval officer, Captain Anthony Molloy of H.M.S. Caesar, was found guilty by court-material martial of a charge which amounted to cowardice in the face of the enemy, in connection with his conduct at the battle of 1st June 1794. The court, however, found that Molloy’s conduct was so uncharacteristic of him that they did not impose the death-sentence he might have suffered, but merely ordered him to be dismissed from his ship.
Robert Chambers, in his Book of Days, tells us:
A very curious story is told to account for this example of ‘the fears of the brave’. It is said that Molloy had behaved dishonourably to a young lady to whom he was betrothed. The friends of the lady wished to bring an action of breach of promise against the inconstant captain, but she declined doing so, saying that God would punish him. Some time afterwards, they accidentally met in a public room at Bath. She steadily confronted him, while he, drawing back, mumbled some incoherent apology. The lady said, “Captain Molloy, you are a bad man. I wish you the greatest curse that can befall a British officer. When the day of battle comes, may your false heart fail you!” His subsequent conduct and irremediable disgrace formed the fulfilment of her wish.
FERTILITY, WORSHIP OF
It is not easy for present-day people, living in our glossy civilised world of supermarkets and packaged food, to realise what fertility really meant to our ancestors in past centuries.
For one thing, their expectation of life was shorter than ours, and infant mortality was much higher. They needed a big birth-rate to keep any nation or tribe strong. Also, if their crops failed, they could not easily buy food to make up for it; hunger stared them in the face.
Earlier still, before man learned to grow crops, he was dependent upon the herds of game which he hunted for meat. If they became fewer, his life became proportionately harder.
Consequently, when people in ancient times performed rituals for fertility, they were not doing this for a pastime. They were in the greatest earnest.
The principle of fertility is, after all, a very deep, fundamental and mysterious thing. It is Life itself, bursting out in a myriad forms, from the earth and the waters, never standing still, ever renewing itself; eternal, yet ever changing.
Even so, the sex-drive behind human fertility is something deep and fundamental, one of the primeval forces. And, although it was the principle of Life itself that the ancients were seeking to come into harmony with, their means of doing so was usually through their own sexuality; sex made into a ritual. ‘As above, so below’. As they performed the acts which stimulated life, so the powers of universal fertility would be aroused and move.
As it was the country folk who lived closest to the earth, they were more immediately involved in fertility rites than the town dwellers. Consequently, it was the rustic pagans, the pagani or country-folk, who clung to these old ways after the townspeople had turned to more sophisticated, intellectual creeds. Because people believed in these old rites, crude and shocking though the more refined classes found them, they were loath to give them up.
Hence Christianity, although it was the official religion of Europe, was for a long period only a veneer over deep layers of old paganism, much of which went back to the very dawn of time. In Hindu and Buddhist countries, the same situation existed, and still does, to a considerable extent. The intellectual and the refined town dweller have their creeds and practices; the peasant has his primitive magic, based on beliefs of unknown antiquity.
In Western Europe the Wise Ones, or witches, kept to the old ways; and often had more public opinion behind them in the countryside than the Christian priest could command. An instance of this occurred in Dorset, in comparatively recent times. On the side of Trendle Hill, the great hill-figure of the Cerne Giant stands, fierce and with erect phallus. A certain clergyman who objected to the Giant’s frank sexuality, wanted to have ploughed up that part of the chalk-cut figure which he considered indecent. But the people of the countryside around were so much opposed to this being done, that they made him desist. “If you do that,” they said, “our crops will fail.”
In times past, this figure was ‘scoured’, or cleaned and renewed, every seven years. This occasion was accompanied by a folk-festival on the hill, at which sexual intercourse was freely indulged in. The local clergy, however, did succeed in suppressing this rite. The Giant of Cerne now belongs to the National Trust; so the old periodic scouring, which has kept this and the rest of Britain’s unique hill-figures in being, is no longer necessary.
People kept up old fertility rites, not only because they frankly enjoyed them, but because they really believed these rites to work. These rituals served to keep people in touch with the forces of Life, which were also the forces of Luck. Many old lucky charms are of a frankly sexual nature. Small figures of the phallus have been worn as lucky charms since the days of Ancient Egypt. Sometimes these little phalli are fancifully decorated with wings and bells. (See PHALLIC WORSHIP.)
The maypole, which used to stand permanently in some of our towns and villages, is a phallic symbol; which is why the Puritans destroyed so many of the old maypoles. However, a very fine and tall maypole, one of the highest left in England, stands to this day in the significantly-named village of Paganhill, near Stroud, Gloucestershire.
Another relic of ancient sexual rites in Britain is the group of stones called the Men-an-Tol, in Cornwall. One of these stones is carefully cut away in the centre, so that it has a circular hole bored through it. On either side of it are upright stones of phallic shape. These stones represent the old Powers of Life and date from prehistoric times. For unknown centuries, they have been believed to be magical stones; and sick people have been passed through the holed stone of the Men-an-Tol in the hope of curing them.
The idea behind this type of ritual is that contact with the forces of life brings renewed vitality. From this mysterious élan vital flows the feeling of ecstatic joy that surges through so many religious and magical dances; notably the naked dance of witches at their Sabbats and Esbats.
Witchcraft is concerned with the forces of fertility, through among other things its practices of moon worship (though it is not the material moon which is worshipped, but the feminine power of Nature behind it). The moon is intimately connected with fertility, both of the earth and of human beings. On woman’s monthly cycle of menstruation and ovulation her fertility depends; while that of man depends upon his sperm, which astrologically is ruled by the moon. Its appearance is reminiscent of lunar whiteness and opalescence, of moonstones and crystals. Both sperm and menstrual blood have always been believed to be potent magical substances, for this reason. (See MOON WORSHIP.)
Sun worship, too, is essentially the worship of Life. Without the light of the sun, no crops would ripen; and all things on earth would wither and die. Without moisture, however, to temper the sun’s heat, nothing could grow in the parched land. The sun is the father of fire; the moon is the mother of water. Without these two principles, there would be no life as we know it manifested on earth. The link between the two is air; while earth is the sphere of their manifestation.
Life, therefore, to the ancients who philosophised from Nature, and all the fertility thereof, depends upon the universal interplay of positive and negative forces, counterbalancing and complementary to each other. Positive and negative; fire and water; sun and moon; man and woman; god and goddess; light and darkness; day and night; Lucifer and Diana; Pan and Hecate.
This, then, is the belief behind the sex-rites of ancient fertility cults. These rites were not only sympathetic magic, to arouse the life-giving forces of Nature. They were in their purest form the hieros gamos, or sacred marriage, which was the universal arcanum of Life itself—the rebis or ‘double thing’ of the alchemists.
When present-day witches perform such rites, if they are true followers of the old traditions, they do so in this spirit, and not merely for the sake of the ‘sex orgies’ so beloved by certain sections of the sensationalist press. It does not seem to occur to the writers of these sensational reports, that if all witches wanted was ‘sex orgies’, they would have no need to invent a witch cult in order to indulge in them. In our present-day ‘permissive society’, sex is blazoned forth everywhere, usually in some more or less commercialised form. Cheapened and degraded, sex in the form of promiscuity is so prevalent that people whose minds contain any other ideas on the subject are made to feel out-of-date, ‘not with it’, ‘square’ and so on.
And yet, how few people, in the midst of all this frantic search for satisfaction, ever seem to find it; and how many, beneath their surface gaiety, are loveless, insecure, neurotic and miserable? Perhaps the old idea of the sacredness of sex was not so foolish after all? To degrade sex is to degrade life itself.
Contrary to many misrepresentations, witches do not believe in promiscuity, any more than they believe in prudishness; because they do not think that either extreme is a natural way of living for human beings.
But, the sceptic may say, what place have the rites of an ancient fertility cult in the modern world at all? Do we still need to perform these old rituals in order to make the crops grow? And as for increasing the population, isn’t the world grossly over-populated already?
The answer is that all things, including living religions, evolve; and the Craft of the Wise is a living religion. Over the years, we have begun to see a new concept of the idea of fertility; one that is not only material, but also of the mind and the soul.
The creative forces are not only creative in the physical sense; they can also beget and give birth to art, music, poetry and literature. We speak of people’s minds being ‘fertile’ or ‘barren’. We talk of ‘cultivating’ ideas as well as fields; of new ‘conceptions’ of a better way of living. There is a spiritual as well as a material fertility; and human life is a desert without it. These are the aims towards which sincere and intelligent present-day pagans, witches, and Nature-worshippers are tending.
The spirit of the old rites, therefore, continues; but in a higher form. The concern is not so much with literal fertility as with vitality, and with finding one’s harmony with Nature. In this way, people seek for a philosophy of life which bestows peace of mind, as well as physical satisfaction.
Of course, initiation as a witch cannot automatically bestow anything on anyone. Witchcraft is the Craft of the Wise; and no one can be made wise. They can only become wise. All that initiation into any of the mysteries can or ever could do, is to open the gate; whether or not the individual progresses further is up to him. This, too, is something the modern world seems to find hard to understand.
Witchcraft is, and always has been, a fertility cult. As such, it is life-affirming, instead of life-repressing. Its followers throughout the ages have not been intellectuals, but people who were often unlettered, and who were concerned with the fundamentals of birth, life and death. Magic does not work through the intellect; it works through the instincts and emotions, the fundamental things that man was born with. Sex is one of the most fundamental and instinctive things of all; consequently it is one of the most potently magical things, when rightly understood.
FIRE MAGIC
The natural flame of candlelight has been the perpetual accompaniment of magical ceremonies. Both the witch and the ceremonial magician have preferred its soft glow to that of artificial illumination. Because night or twilight are more conducive to psychic results than the bright glare of day, illumination is needed. Midnight is often called the ‘witching hour’, from an instinctive perception of its influence upon human minds. Witches and magicians’ candles burn at midnight.
In the glow of candlelight, an ordinary everyday room can take on quite a different appearance from that which it normally possesses. People’s faces look different, too. The commonplace is transformed by the alchemy of fire.
Because one of the most important secrets of magic is to provide the atmosphere in which the unusual can happen, this lore of candlelight and fire-flames has acquired importance. However simple a ritual may be, a witch will always have fire in some form upon the altar; either a lighted candle, a burning joss-stick, or both.
Today, when different coloured candles are easily obtainable, their colours are chosen for their magical significance. Red is a favourite colour for the candles used in witchcraft rites, because it is the colour of life. If black candles are used, it is usually in a rite meant to summon spirits of the departed.
Sometimes, however, witches prefer to make their own candles. They use for this purpose beeswax with which a small quantity of aromatic herbs has been mingled. The figure of a pentagram, the sign of magic, is cut on the candle.
Sometimes the candle flame is used as a means of communicating with spirits. The leader of the rite will ask any spirit entity that may be present, if they will make their presence known by causing the candle flame to flicker. It is surprising how often this will happen, apparently without any physical cause.
In fact, candle flames will often do odd things, in the course of a magical ritual. Witches believe that a natural, naked flame gives off power, whether it be that of a candle or a bonfire. Outdoors, the bonfire takes the place of the candle flames of the indoor ritual.
If candles are used outdoors, as they sometimes are to mark the four cardinal points of the magic circle, then they have to be enclosed in lanterns. Otherwise, the wind would soon gutter them away.
The old story goes that when a candle flame burns blue it is a sign that a spirit is present. Strange as it may sound, this could have a foundation in fact. When I have been taking part in witchcraft rites, I have seen on a number of occasions a kind of blueish light building up over the candle on the altar. This could be something akin to the “orgone energy” described by Wilhelm Reich, the colour of which is blue. It is in fact, in my opinion, the power which is being raised by the ritual, of which spirit entities can make use in order to manifest.
The glow of a candle makes an effective point of concentration. Some people use it as an aid to clairvoyance, and profess to see pictures building up around the flame. Too bright a flame, however, will dazzle the eyes; so the seer concentrates upon the blue part of the flame, at the base, and watches for a softly shining aura to form around the light, which is the prelude to psychic sight. People also concentrate in this way upon a wish or a prayer.
Those of a philosophical turn of thought may reflect that the candle is an image of humanity. The wax corresponds to the body, the wick to the mind, and the flame to the spirit.
Outdoors, the bonfire is a frequent accompaniment to witches’ rites. In this case, a witch will stand with his or her back to the wind, so that the flames will be blown away from them, and the spell will be sent outwards upon the wind and the flame. Sometimes a circle of thirteen stones is collected, and placed round the fire.
Dancing around the ritual bonfire is a time-honoured way of raising power. When the witches could venture to build a bonfire big enough, its warmth would encourage them to throw off their clothes and dance naked, in a wild and exhilarating round of joy and abandon. The magnetic emanations of power flow more freely from unclothed bodies; hence the popularity of ritual nudity down through the ages, as an adjunct to religious and magical rites. (See NUDITY, RITUAL.)
This is not always possible, however, even with the biggest of bonfires; and in general, in the present day, witches’ bonfires have to be kept discreetly small. The countryside today is more thickly populated, and hence there are more people about to notice a fire at night, than there were in former times. Even so, some witch-fires still get lighted.
FLAGELLATION, ITS USE IN FOLK RITES
It is evident from a number of old records that flagellation entered into the rites of witchcraft, partly as a means of discipline and partly as a religious or magical act.
For instance, in August 1678, according to Law’s Memorialls (quoted by Montague Summers in his Geography of Witchcraft, Kegan Paul, London, 1927), “the devil had a great meeting of witches in Loudian”, that is Lothian in Scotland. This was probably the Lammas Sabbat. Prominent among the witch-leaders was a former Protestant minister, one Gideon Penman, who was later accused of taking part in this gathering. It was said that he “was in the rear in all their dances, and beat up all those that were slow”.
This kind of dancing is known among primitive people from Morocco to South America, with a whip or some other means of scourging being used to urge on the dancers. Its object is to stimulate and excite the participants, and to keep them in the direction and rhythm of the dance.
Mild flagellation was also widely believed in in ancient times as driving away evil influences and arousing the forces of life. At the old Horn Fair, which used to be held at Charlton in Kent, part of the traditional ceremonies consisted of whipping women with what William Hone in The Year Book (William Tegg and Co. London, 1848) describes as “furze”, though it is more likely to have been green broom (Planta genista). This old fair, which was connected with the worship of the Horned God, was such an occasion for licence and frolic that it gave rise to the proverb, “All is fair at Horn Fair.” It was eventually banned, for this reason.
FLAGELLATION. “They sacrifice to the Devil, and not to God” are the words on this miniature in a fifteenth-century French manuscript of St. Augustine’s Civitas Dei.
On the Continent, fresh green branches, called ‘rods of life’, were used in old-time folk festivals for ritual beating, sometimes on Holy Innocents’ Day and sometimes at Easter. These rods were used by one sex upon the other, and they were believed to give renewed health and fertility to those who submitted to the rite.
Ritual flagellation goes back to the days of Ancient Egypt, and probably beyond. Herodotus states that at the annual festival held at Busiris in honour of the Goddess Isis, while the sacrifice was being performed, ritual flagellation was practised by the whole assembly, amounting to several thousands of both men and women. He adds that he is not allowed to mention the reason why these beatings were performed. That is, they were part of the Mysteries, into which Herodotus had been initiated.
When the house called ‘The Villa of the Mysteries’ was discovered in the ruins of Pompeii in 1910, its remarkable and beautiful fresco paintings gave the world an actual picture of initiation into one of the Mystery cults of olden time. It is thought to depict an initiation into the Mysteries of Dionysus. Part of the initiation scene shows the neophyte, a girl being scourged upon her naked flesh by the initiator, who is depicted as a winged goddess, Telete, the Daughter of Dionysus. In this instance, flagellation appears as an ordeal which the neophyte had to pass, and also perhaps as a means of purification before a person was admitted to the Mysteries.
This villa was probably a secret meeting place of initiates, after the Dionysiac Mysteries had been banned by the Roman Senate.
However, the Lupercalia Festival of Ancient Rome, which also involved ritual flagellation, was not only tolerated, but members of the nobility willingly took part in it. This is mentioned in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, when Caesar’s wife takes part in the Lupercalia, in order to be cured of her barrenness and be able to have a child.
The festival of the Lupercalia was performed in honour of the god Pan. It took place in February, and this month actually derives its name from the Latin februa, meaning ‘purification’. A curious old book gives a lively description of this time-honoured rite:
Virgil speaks of the dancing Salii and naked Luperci, and the commentators explain that these last were men who, upon particular solemnities, used to strip themselves stark naked, and who ran about the streets, carrying straps of goat’s leather in their hands, with which they struck such women as they met in their way. Nor did those women run away; on the contrary, they willingly presented the palms of their hands to them in order to receive the strokes, imagining that these blows, whether applied to their hands or to other parts of their body, had the power of rendering them fruitful or procuring them an easy delivery.
The Luperci were in early times formed into two bands, named after the most distinguished families in Rome, Quintiliani and Fabiani; and to these was afterwards added a third band, named Juliani, from Julius Caesar. Marc Anthony did not scruple to run as one of the Luperci, having once harangued the people in that condition. This feast was established in the time of Augustus, but afterwards restored and continued to the time of Anastasius. The festival was celebrated so late as the year 496, long after the establishment of Christianity. Members of noble families ran for a long time among the Luperci, and a great improvement was moreover made in the ceremony. The ladies, no longer contented with being slapped on the palms of their hands as formerly, began to strip themselves also, in order to give a fuller scope to the Lupercus, and to allow him to display the vigour and agility of his arm. It is wickedly said that the ladies became in time completely fascinated with this kind of ‘diversion’, and that the ceremony being brought to a degree of perfection was so well relished by all parties, that it existed long after many of the other rites of paganism were abolished; and when Pope Gelasius at length put an end to it, he met with so much opposition that he was obliged to write an apology.
(Flagellation and the Flagellants: A History of the Rod in all Countries from the Earliest Period to the Present time, by “the Rev. Wm. M. Cooper, B.A.” (James Glass Bertram), London, 1868).
It is remarkable that this ritual should have continued publicly, so long after the official establishment of Christianity. There is evidence that rituals like this took place privately for a much longer period. A miniature from a fifteenth-century manuscript, for instance, shows an indoor gathering of thirteen people, some of whom are eating and drinking, some performing a round dance, while three of them, almost naked, are vigorously plying the birch upon themselves and each other. On one side is the figure of a scandalised Bishop, who has intruded upon this secret gathering. He bears a scroll in one hand, with a Latin inscription upon it, which translates: “They sacrifice to demons, and not to God”.
This miniature has usually been taken to depict the practices of the medieval sect called Flagellants; but it could represent something quite different, and not a Christian gathering at all. The ceremony is taking place in front of two pillars, reminiscent of Masonic symbolism; and on top of each pillar is a small nude statue. The facts that those taking part are a coven of thirteen; that the flagellation is evidently accompanied, not by lugubrious repentance for sin, but by feasting and dancing; and that no Christian symbols are shown, but instead two pagan statues, are surely significant, especially when taken in conjunction with the Bishop’s condemnation of “sacrificing to demons”. To the medieval Church, all pagan gods and spirits were demons. What this fifteenth-century miniature really depicts is a secret gathering of pagans.
Rumours and allegations have been frequent, that present-day witches make use of ritual flagellation in their ceremonies. The truth is that some covens do make use of this, and others do not. Those which do, however, have the warrant of a good deal of antiquity behind them; the truth of which has hitherto been obscured by the difficulties encountered by anthropologists and students of comparative religion, in the frank discussion of this subject. The reason for this seems to be that, while strict moralists have no objection, indeed are all in favour, of flagellation being used for penance and punishment, to inflict pain and suffering; nevertheless, the idea of this very ancient folk-rite being used in a magical way, not to inflict pain but as part of a fertility ritual, for some reason upsets them very much.
In later years, when the witch cult was being more severely persecuted and forbidden, flagellation was used as a means of discipline. Harsh as this may sound, the security of the coven members was literally a matter of life and death. Any breaches of coven law had to be punished, sometimes severely. Traitors were killed; and people whose carelessness or vacillation endangered the lives of their companions received a sharp and painful reminder of where their loyalty lay.
It is recorded that at Arras, France, in 1460, a wealthy man called Jean Tacquet, whose loyalty to the coven he belonged to had become doubtful, was beaten by the “Devil” with a bull’s pizzle. This weapon was actually the dried penis of a bull, which formed a severe instrument of flagellation. It was dried in a way which made it very strong and flexible, being stretched and drawn out to the length of an ordinary cane, and capable of administering a terrible castigation. In later times, the bull’s pizzle came to be used for severe forms of flagellation inflicted upon criminals; it was still being used upon women prisoners in Germany in the early nineteenth century! It is such a curious weapon, however, that its origin may well have been a ritual one, used in the witch cult to punish those who were untrue to the Horned God, to whom it was sacred.
Isobel Gowdie, the young Scottish witch who made such a remarkably full confession of what happened in the coven she belonged to, in 1662, complained of the harshness with which the “Devil” behaved. “We would be beaten if we were absent any time, or neglected anything that would be appointed to be done ... He would be beating and scourging us all up and down with cords and other sharp scourges, like naked ghosts; and we would still be crying, ‘Pity! pity! Mercy! mercy our Lord!’ But he would have neither pity nor mercy.”
Such power, in the hands of a cruel and sadistic man, could be fearfully abused. One wonders whether this was the reason why Isobel Gowdie gave herself up to the authorities, and confessed her witchcraft, knowing as she must have done that the result would be her own execution. For some reason, her life had become intolerable, and she wanted to die. Though, of course, the alternative explanation of her conduct is that she was a voluntary human sacrifice. This beautiful, red-haired girl is one of the many enigmas of witchcraft’s dark history.
FLYING OINTMENTS
One of the traditional capabilities of the legendary witch is the capacity to fly, upon a staff, a broomstick, the back of a demon goat or some similar fantastic means of transport. There were not even wanting eye-witnesses, in past centuries, who claimed to have seen such diabolical flights of witches, riding the air on moonlight nights.
Very early on, however, it was realised by serious writers that the truth behind the stories of ‘flying witches’ lay in mysterious potions and trance-inducing ointments they used.
Francis Bacon wrote: “The ointment that Witches use, is reported to be made of the fat of children digged out of their graves; of the juices of Smallage, Wolfe-Bane, and Cinque-Foil, mingled with the meal of fine wheat; but I suppose the soporiferous medicines are likest to do it, which are Hen-bane, Hemlock, Mandrake, Moonshade, or rather Night-shade, Tobacco, Opium, Saffron, Poplar-leaves, etc.”
In The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, written by Abraham the Jew for his son Lamech and dated 1458 (translated by S. L. MacGregor Mathers, the De Laurence Company Inc., Chicago, 1948), there is a noteworthy description of Abraham’s experience with a young witch of Linz in Austria. Abraham had travelled extensively in search of magic, until he eventually met the Mage Abramelin, whose teachings he describes in the book; but before he encountered this adept he had had varied experiences with a number of other exponents of the magical arts, of whom this woman was one.
She gave him an unguent, with which he rubbed the principal pulses of his feet and hands, and the witch herself did likewise. Then it seemed to Abraham that he was flying in the air, and that he arrived in the place where he had wished to be, but which he had not indicated to the woman in any way.
Unfortunately, he does not tell us what the unguent was made of; nor will he describe what he saw, save that it was “admirable”. He seemed to be in the trance or out-of-the-body state for some time; and when he awoke, he had pain in the head and a feeling of melancholy. The witch then recounted to him what she had seen on her own ‘flight’; but it was quite different from Abraham’s experience.
He was, he says, much astonished; because he felt as if he had been “really and corporeally” in the place he saw in his vision. He wished to make further experiments with the properties of this unguent; so on another occasion he asked the woman if she would go and seek news of a friend of his, at a place he named, while he remained beside her and watched.
She agreed, and proceeded to anoint herself with the unguent; whereat Abraham watched expectantly to see if she would actually fly away. Instead, she fell to the ground and lay there for three hours, as if she were dead. Abraham began to fear that she was really dead; but eventually she regained consciousness and told him what she had seen. However, her account, according to Abraham, did not correspond with what he knew of his friend; so he concluded that it was simply a fantastic dream, induced by the magical unguent. She confessed to Abraham that this unguent had been given to her by “the Devil”; and Abraham, who was a very pious man, would work no further with her.
It is curious to note how present-day users of drugs, such as L.S.D., speak of their experiences as ‘taking a trip’, ‘getting high’ and so on; expressions which are reminiscent of the idea of witches’ ‘flights’ while under the influence of hallucinogens.
One of the earliest writers to make a detailed and reasoned study of this matter of witches’ unguents was Giovanni Battista Porta, a Neapolitan, the author of Magia Naturalis or Natural Magic. This book was first called De Miraculis Rerum Naturalium and appeared at Antwerp in 1560. It had a section entitled Lamiarum Unguenta, or “Witches’ Unguents”; but this was omitted from a later edition, which had been expurgated by a Dominican monk. However, the book made a big impression in its time, and was translated into French and English. Various editions exist, and one of these came into the hands of Reginald Scot, who was influenced by it in the writing of his Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584).
This sceptical, free-thinking book ridiculed the standard charges brought against witches, and so annoyed the witch-hunting King James I that he ordered it to be publicly burnt by the common hangman. Scot exposed the nonsense of witches being able to fly literally through the air, and revealed Porta’s recipes for the witches’ unguent, or witches’ salve, as it was sometimes called.
Porta wrote in Latin, the common language of learned men of that time; and herewith (according to Montague Summers), is the actual Latin of his recipes:
“Puerorum pinguedinem ahaeno vase decoquendo ex aqua capiunt, inspissando quod ex elixatione ultimum, novissimumque subsidet, inde condunt, continuoque inserviunt usui: cum hac immiscent eleoselinum, aconitum, frondes populneas, et fuliginem.
“Vel aliter sic: Sium, acorum vulgare, pentaphyllon, vespertilionis sanguinem, solanum somniferum, et oleum.”
Montague Summers in his book, The Werewolf (Kegan Paul, London’ 1933), has a very interesting chapter on witch ointments; to which he attributes the phenomena, or alleged phenomena, of lycanthropy, as well as the traditional flying. He tells us that Jean Wier, in his De Lamiis, Of Witches, quotes Porta’s recipes; and these are evidently the ones discussed in the appendix to Margaret Murray’s Witch Cult in Western Europe.
Summers also gives us the recipe for a witch unguent quoted by Jerome Cardan in his De Subtilitate, and also discussed in the appendix mentioned above:
“Constat ut creditur puerorum pinguedine e sepulchris eruta, succisque apii, acontique tum pentaphylli siligineque.” (Sic).
Now, it is evident that much depends upon the accurate translation of these Latin texts; and the writer would venture to query some of the translations which have been made of them.
Reginald Scot, in his Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), renders Porta’s recipes thus:
The receipt is as followeth:
The fat of young children, and seeth it with water in a brazen vessel, reserving the thickest of that which remaineth boiled in the bottom, which they lay up and keep, until occasion serveth to use it. They put hereunto Eleoselinum, Aconitum, Frondes populeas, and Soot.
Another receipt to the same purpose:
Sium, acarum vulgare, pentaphyllon, the blood of a flittermouse, solanum somniferum, and oleum. They stamp all these together, and then they rub all parts of their bodies exceedingly, till they look red, and be very hot, so as the pores may be opened, and their flesh soluble and loose. They join herewith either fat, or oil instead thereof, that the force of the ointment may the rather pierce inwardly, and so be more effectual. By this means (saith he) in a moonlight night they seem to be carried in the air, to feasting, singing, dancing, kissing, culling and other acts of venery, with such youths as they love and desire most.
“Aconitum” is aconite, otherwise called wolf’s bane; “frondes populeas” are poplar leaves; “acarum vulgare” is probably sweet flag (Acorus calamus), an aromatic herb; “pentaphyllon” is cinquefoil; “oleum” is oil. “Flittermouse” is an old name for a bat. These are the ingredients whose meanings we can be reasonably certain about; but the rest present something of a problem.
The matter is further complicated by the fact that, in the reprint of Reginald Scot’s book which appeared in 1886, published by Elliot Stock, a section of “explanatory notes” translates Eleoselinum as “mountain parsley”. (Selinum is a Latin form of the Greek selinon, parsley.) It also gives Sium as “yellow watercress”, and Acarum vulgare as “our Asarum europaeum”, which is not sweet flag at all, but another plant called asarabacca.
The young leaves and buds of the poplar were long used by old-time apothecaries to make an ointment called unguentum populeum, which had soothing properties for inflammation and wounds. “Solanum somniferum” could mean several of the Solanaceae; henbane, thornapple, belladonna or black nightshade (all of which, incidentally, are very poisonous plants, and so also is aconite).
Montague Summers translates “eleoselinum” as hemlock (also extremely poisonous), and “Solanum somniferum” as deadly nightshade, which is the same thing as belladonna.
Of course, the “fat of young children” is simply a touch of the horrific. The most popular foundation for ointments as made by apothecaries was hog’s lard; often with the addition of a little benzoin to make it keep better.
With regard to the second recipe, this consists, according to Montague Summers, of sium or cowbane; acorum vulgare or sweet flag; pentaphyllon or cinquefoil; vespertilionis sanguis or bat’s blood; solanum somniferum or deadly nightshade; and oleum which is oil.
Another doubtful word here is “sium”. If it does mean cowbane, or water hemlock, then this again is an extremely poisonous plant. But does it?
It may be useful to append Jean Wier’s version of these recipes:
“1). Du persil, de l’eau de l’Aconite, des feuilles de Peuple, et de la suye.” (These are the ingredients of the first Porta recipe, which had to be mixed with “the fat of young children”. Professor A. J. Clark seems to have missed the point of this in his appendix to Margaret Murray’s book mentioned above, and describes it as “a watery solution.” The equivalent of “eleoselinum” here is “persil”, which means parsley.)
“2). De la Berle, de l’Acorum vulgaire, de la Quintefeuille, du sang de Chauve-souris, de la Morelle endormante, et de l’huyle.” (This is the second Porta recipe. “La Morelle endormante” certainly looks like a description of deadly nightshade, which has one large, cherry-like fruit. “Berle” means smallage, water-parsley or wild celery (Apium graveolens). This is not cowbane; and its occurrence here leads me to suspect that the first recipe has a misplaced comma that has proved remarkably misleading. I think its real reading is “Du persil de l’eau, de l’Aconite”, etc., which is somewhat different from “parsley and water of aconite”. Smallage is a plant growing in ditches and marshy places; it is acrid, and when bruised has a curious smell. It is one of the ‘herbs of the spirit’ used by sorcerers in their fumigations.)
“3). De graisse d’enfant, de suc d’Ache, d’Aconite, de Quintefeuille, de Morelle, et de suye.” (This is the Cardan recipe, with the addition of “Morelle”, probably deadly nightshade. Summers translates it as the fat of children whose bodies have been stolen from their graves, mixed with henbane, aconite, cinquefoil and fine wheaten flour. But “suc d’Ache” is the juice of smallage, not henbane; and the “fine wheaten flour” may well be simply a misreading of siligo, wheat, for fuligo, soot.)
Comparing these different versions one with another, we may hope to come to some conclusions as to what the ingredients of the witches’ salve really were. We can only hope that further investigations will be made by those having the necessary medical and pharmaceutical qualifications to carry them out safely.
I would very strongly caution anyone else from doing so, as most of the substances involved are dangerous and could be fatal. I refer, of course, to the active principles, the herbs mentioned above; the bat’s blood, soot, and children’s fat are merely fantastic ingredients, which could even have been inserted into these recipes as a blind.
Some very interesting and indeed daring research, into the secrets of the witches’ salve, has been done by Dr. Erich-Will Peuckert, of the University of Gottingen, Germany. Using the recipes given by Porta as a base, Dr Peuckert made up an unguent containing thornapple (Datura stramonium), henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), and deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna). Wild celery (Apium graveolens) and parsley were also included; and the basis for the salve was hog’s lard.
Dr Peuckert wished for confirmation of his results, if any; so he obtained the co-operation of a friend of his, a solicitor who knew nothing about witchcraft or the supposed effects of the witches’ salve, or Unguentum Sabbati as it is sometimes called.
On the night of the experiment, Dr Peuckert and his friend retired to a private room, and applied the unguent to their bodies according to Porta’s directions. They fell into a deep sleep which lasted for twenty hours, and they ultimately awoke with very similar symptoms to those described in the account of Abraham the Jew, given above; symptoms resembling those of a bad hangover.
However, Dr Peuckert and his colleague forced themselves, in the interests of science, to write down an immediate account of what they had each experienced, before discussing it or comparing notes. The result was fantastic beyond the doctor’s expectations.
Not only had each man had wild dreams of all the legendary phantasmagoria of the Sabbat; but the dream-experiences of each had been virtually the same. So strange, weird and erotic were the visions that Dr Peuckert has been understandably reticent in publishing details. He dreamed of flying though the air, of landing on a mountain-top, and of wild orgiastic rites and the appearance of monsters and demons.
The account of his colleague in the experiment tallied with his own in so many particulars, that Dr Peuckert suggests this to be, in fact, the narcotic action of the salve, which automatically induces this kind of vision. Alternatively, it has been suggested that the salve acts by stirring up some particular racial memory, lying deeply buried in the unconscious mind. But memory of what?
It would seem, following the latter theory, that something from the collective unconscious is involved; a field in which the work of Carl Gustav Jung may be relevantly studied, some of his discoveries being in their way quite as strange and thought-provoking as this.
While again emphasising strongly the folly of amateur meddling with these dangerous substances, I feel that this account would be incomplete without the details of another recipe. They are given here, however, solely for the information of qualified researchers. This recipe is one which I am told has been used by a present-day witch in England; but I have no information as to what results it produced. It consists of aconite, poppy juice, fox-glove, poplar leaves, and cinquefoil, in a base of beeswax, lanoline and almond oil.
It is from the eldritch stories of such visionary Sabbats as those induced by the Unguentum Sabbati, that Mussorgsky derived the inspiration for his music entitled Night on the Bare Mountain. Berlioz, too, attempted to describe a witches’ Sabbat in music, in his Symphonie Fantastique. The descriptions of the Sabbat in art, by painters and engravers, are innumerable; but they are almost always that of the Sabbat of narcotic-induced fantasy.
FOSSILS USED AS CHARMS
It has always been a practice of witches to use in their craft things which were in some way striking or mysterious. In this way, they impressed the mind strongly with what they were trying to do.
Fossils were long considered very mysterious objects, appearing as they did to be some product of Nature changed to stone. For instance, the coiled fossils called ammonites were sometimes known as snake stones. They were believed to be a coiled snake turned to stone. In fact, they are the remains of a kind of giant, snail-like shellfish. But even when we know what fossils are, it is strange to hold in one’s hand what was once a living thing, millions of years ago.
A fossil credited with great magical properties is the shepherd’s crown, a kind of fossilised sea urchin. These are often almost a perfect heart-shape, with a five-pointed pattern on the top. A closely similar variety, but more high and rounded, is called fairy loaves.
FOSSILS. Some examples from the author’s collection.
These fossilised sea urchins have been found as grave goods in Neolithic burials; and they may be the magical ‘glane-stone’ of the Druids, as they certainly resemble the description given of this object by ancient writers. Their magical connection is thus of great antiquity.
Sussex cottagers used to put shepherds’ crowns on their window-sills, to protect the house from lightning, witchcraft and the Evil Eye. If a farm worker found one when he was digging or ploughing, he would pick it up, spit on it, and throw it over his left shoulder. This was done to avert bad luck.
I remember my mother telling me how her mother used to have some large shepherds’ crowns on the mantelpiece at home. They were a prized possession, and my grandmother used to polish them regularly with black boot-polish! Why this was done is not clear; perhaps there was some idea behind it that magical objects should be given some regular service and attention, though it may have been simply part of the Victorian mania for polishing things. Their presence over the fire-place, of course, was to protect the chimney, a possible way of entrance for evil influences. Naughty children used to be threatened that ‘something bad would come down the chimney after them’.
Another fossil that was used as a protective amulet for the home is the witch stone. This name is also sometimes applied to a flint with a hole in it; but the real Sussex witch stone is a small fossil in the perfect form of a bead—round, white, faintly glittering and with a hole through its middle. These fossils are also found in Yorkshire and other places. They are actually a fossil sponge, the product of warm seas millions of years ago. Their correct name is Porosphaera globularis. People wore these round their necks for luck, or hung them up in their homes by a piece of brightly-coloured ribbon or thread.
The long, pointed fossils called belemnites are somewhat phallic in shape, and hence doubly magical, as anything that is a life symbol is also a luck-bringer. They are sometimes known as ‘thunder stones’ or ‘thunder bolts’; perhaps from a confusion with meteorites. They are actually the fossilised internal shell of a cephalopod, some prehistoric ancestor of our squids and cuttle-fish.
I have heard of a fossil of this kind being used as a charm to strengthen cattle. It was used with two perfectly round pebbles, to symbolise testicles. The three things had to be dipped into water which was given to the cattle to drink.
Two substances long regarded as magical, jet and amber, are actually fossils, though not always recognised as such. Amber is fossilised resin and jet is fossilised wood. This is the reason why amber shows electrical properties on being rubbed. Real jet will do the same, and hence used to be known as ‘black amber’; though much of what is sold today as jet is not jet at all but fine black glass. Amber and jet are two of the most time-honoured bringers of luck, being often found as necklaces in prehistoric graves. Because of their electrical properties, they were regarded as having life in them; which in a sense they have, being semiprecious stones which originated as living things.
Jet was anciently worn as a protection against witchcraft, and to relieve melancholy and depression, and prevent nightmares. It was sacred to Cybele, the Great Mother.
Amber was also worn as a protection against witchcraft and sorcery, and was regarded as a safeguard for health and preventer of infection. This is the reason for its popularity as the mouth-piece of pipes and cigar or cigarette holders.
FOUR POWERS OF THE MAGUS
The Four Powers of the Magus are the attributes traditionally necessary for the successful practice of magic. They are: to know, to dare, to will and to be silent. These powers are often called by their Latin names: noscere, audere, velle and tacere.
A little reflection upon this traditional teaching about magic will show the reasoning behind it. None of the powers is sufficient alone in itself; the four powers must be present, balancing each other. Mere knowledge is not enough, without the will or the courage to put it into practice. Nor are will and daring of any avail without the knowledge to back them up. Audacity will not get far, without the will behind it to endure to the end. Will-power must in its turn summon the courage to take the first step. All these are in vain, unless the magician has the discretion to be silent and keep his own counsel. No babblers will ever attain to real magical power.
In fact, it has been said that the fourth power, to be silent, is the most important of all, and the most difficult to attain. Silence is a potency in itself; the silence of the great, timeless desert beneath the stars; the silence of the snow-capped mountains on the roof of the world; the silence within the vaults of the Pyramids. These are the silences of secret treasures, laid up for the initiate. No chatterers or boasters will find them.
People who blab their plans and ideas to everyone disperse their own forces. Occult operations in particular should not be talked about, or they will never come to fruition.
This is the reason why today, even though persecution by Church or State has generally ceased, all serious occult societies, including the Craft of the Wise, keep their innermost teachings and practices secret. It is not, as sensational writers suppose, because orgies of devil worship are going on; but because this is the mystical and magical tradition. Freemasonry observes it also, and defines itself as being, not a secret society, but a society with secrets.
The tradition goes back to the days of the ancient Mystery Cults, when a simple exoteric religion was taught to the general populace; while an esoteric teaching was to be found by those who wished to seek further and had the capacity to understand it. The Master Jesus evidently followed the same principle, when he told his disciples not to cast their pearls before swine or the swine would turn again and rend them.
There is a correspondence between the Four Powers of the Magus and the Four Elements. Noscere, to know, corresponds to air. Audere, to dare, corresponds to water. Velle, to will, corresponds to fire. Tacere, to be silent, corresponds to earth.
Air is the element of Mercury, the ruler of knowledge. Water brings with it the idea of launching boldly upon the waves of uncharted seas. Fire reminds us of the flame of will. Earth conveys the silent strength of rocks and mountains. When all these four are gathered together, there appears the fifth element, spirit; and its correspondence is the fifth power; ire, to go, the power of progression through the universe, the power of evolution.
Because the Sphinx is a representation of the Four Elements, these powers are also sometimes called the Four Powers of the Sphinx.
