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.In all probability these "Devil-worshippers" were quite honest in belonging toboth religions, not realising any difference in one of the basic doctrines of the new faith.The Orgies.[23] The orgiastic ceremonies excited the interest and curiosity of the Christian judges andrecorders to an extent out of all proportion to their importance in the cult.It is certain that in the religion ofthe Horned God, as in the cults of Bacchus and other deities of fertility, rites were performed which to themodern mind are too gross to be regarded as religious.These rites were openly practised in Athens in theheight of its civilisation, the Sacred Marriage being regarded as the means of promoting and increasingfertility.Similar rites are known and have been practised in all parts of the world, but always in what are nowcalled "Religions of the Lower Culture".As the cult of the Horned God was also a religion of the LowerCulture such rites formed an integral part of the worship.The reason for their use is the same whereverfound; it is the practical application of the theory of sympathetic magic, with the consequent belief that bysuch means the fertility of the whole land would be increased.It was on account of these rites that the witcheswere credited with and claimed the power of granting fertility.They had therefore also the oppositepower, that of blasting fertility; for, as I have pointed out before, the primitive mind ascribed both good andevil to one power alone; the division into God and Devil, priest and witch, belongs to a higher stage ofcivilisation.Joan of Arc was definitely accused of having practised these rites, and it was through the agency of theDuchess of Bedford that her accusers were proved wrong.The accusation on this subject against Gilles deRais was obviously trumped up and had therefore to be combined with charges of murder to force aconviction.In all the trials where these rites are mentioned the Inquisitors of the Roman Church and the ministers of theReformed Church express an extreme of sanctimonious horror, coupled, however, with a surprisingly prurientdesire to learn all the most intimate details.The ceremonies may have been obscene, but they are renderedinfinitely worse by the attitude of the ecclesiastical recorders and judges.Magic Ceremonies.In the trials of witches the magical element plays a large part.In all studies of witchesand magic, one point must be kept in mind, that when anything regarded as out of the ordinary course ofnature is brought about by human means it is called a miracle if the magician belongs to the beholder's ownreligion, but it is magic often black magic if the wizard belongs to another religion.In Grimm's words,"Miracle is divine, Magic is devilish".This is markedly the case in the Christian records of the wondersperformed by witches.The cauldron is one of the most important accessories of a witch in popular estimation, but in spite of itsprominence in Macbeth it does not often appear in the trials.In Alsace,[24] at the end of the sixteenth centuryit was greatly in vogue, and its use is clearly explained.The ingredients used are not given; the pot was boiledin the presence of all the company, including the Devil, to the accompaniment of prayers and charms.Whenready, the cauldron was either overturned and the contents spilt on the ground, or the liquid was distributed tothe votaries for sprinkling where they desired.The spilling was to bring fog, the rising steam being thesympathetic magic to bring it about.The making of the liquid for sprinkling was obviously a religiousCHAPTER V.RELIGIOUS AND MAGICAL CEREMONIES 52 THE GOD OF THE WITCHESceremony, and when the cult was in its prime and the witches were the priesthood the sacred liquid was usedfor blessing the crops as holy water is now.As with so many of the witch-ceremonies the original meaningwas lost, the new religion adopted the old rites with slight changes and the older form of the ceremonial fellinto disrepute and was sternly forbidden by the Church.The cauldron was not for magical rites only, it alsoserved the homely purpose of cooking the food at the Sabbaths."There was a great cauldron on the fire towhich everyone went and took out meat," said the French witches to Boguet.[25] Nothing suggests morestrongly the primitiveness of the rites and of the people who practised them than the use of the cooking-potwhich was in common to the whole company.The importance of cauldrons in the Late Bronze-age and EarlyIron-age should be noted in this connection.In all the activities of a farm which were directly connected with fertility, witches seem to have been called into perform the rites which would secure the success of the operation.They were also consulted if an animalfell sick.Thus at Burton-on-Trent, in 1597,[26] a certain farmer's cow was ill, "Elizabeth Wright took uponher to help upon condition that she might have a penny to bestow upon her god, and so she came to the man'shouse, kneeled down before the cow, crossed her with a stick in the forehead and prayed to her god, sincewhich time the cow continued well".Here there is the interesting and very definite statement that ElizabethWright had a god who was clearly not that of the Christians.In Orkney, in 1629,[27] Jonet Rendall wasaccused that "the devil appeared to you, whom you called Walliman.After you met your Walliman uponthe hill you came to William Rendall's house, who had a sick horse, and promised to heal him if he couldgive you two pennies for every foot.And having gotten the silver you healed the horse by praying to yourWalliman.And there is none that gives you alms but they will thrive, either by land or sea, if you pray toyour Walliman".Here again the god of the witch was not the same as that of the Christian.The making of wax images for the destruction of an enemy has always been supposed to be a special art of awitch.The action has its origin in the belief in sympathetic magic; the image of clay or wax was made inthe likeness of the doomed person, it was pierced with thorns or pins, and was finally dissolved in water ormelted before a slow fire.The belief was that whatever was done to the image would be repeated in the bodyof the enemy, and as the image slowly melted he would get weaker and die.The method was probably quiteeffectual if the doomed man knew that magic, in which he believed, was being practised against him; butwhen the method was not successful the witches were often prepared to supplement magic with physicalmeans, such as poison and cold steel.Wax images for magical purposes are very early, There is reference to a wax crocodile in ancient Egypt asearly as the XIIth dynasty (before 2000 B.C.), but the most detailed account is in the legal record of theHarem Conspiracy in the reign of the Pharaoh Rameses III (about 1100 B.C.)
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