HISTORY (MISC./OCCult1 60s)


60s

[_Witchcraft_, by Charles Williams, Meridian Books, (1941) 1960;] 

doesn't mention 'Satanism' at all and defines 'Satan', which
it continually terms "the Devil" in purely Christian terms.

------------------------------------------------------------------

[_Witchcraft_, by Pennethorne Hughes_, Penguin Books, (1952) 1965; 
 (var) p. 95-215; within the section 'Initiation' concerning initiation 
 of witches into the coven, from sparse historical records and the works 
 of scholars, inclusive of Margaret Murray(!); most of this seems to be
 drawn from torture-testimonies, and so constitutes Inquisition-mythos.]

It appears that the witch had to be introduced formally before the
coven, much as a member for Parliament is in the House.  This
sponsoring, as well as being a precaution for securing secrecy and
trustworthiness, mayhave been continued as a parody of the 
Christian practice of employing godparents.  But security was the
important reason for having an introducer, since people from witch
families, more particularly men, were often admitted without this
precaution.

First, the new witch denied the Christian faith and baptism, some-
times gratuitouslyemphasizing the sincerety of this by insulting
the Virgin Mary (known as the Anomalous Woman), spitting on the
Cross, and so on.  This was followed by vows to the adopted god,
the Devil.  As time went on, he was the Christian Devil, but
earlier he was more perceptibly the old fertility god, and the
witches vowed themselves his not only soul, but body and soul.
The process was pantomimed in the custom of the Scottish witches
of putting one hand to the crown of the head, and the other on
the sole of the foot, and dedicating to the service of the Master
all that lay in between the two hands.  Professor Murray quotes
a case where a pregnant woman excepted the unborn child, and the
Devil was very angry....

The actual written covenant was another faily late introduction,
as clearly it can have formed no part of the earliest 
paleolithic practice.....  The contract was said to be signed in
the novice's own blood, which is possible enough, for as Professor
Murray says: 'It seems clear that part of the ceremony of
initiation was the cutting of the skin of the candidate to the
effusion of blood.  This is the early rite, and it seems probable
that when the written contract came into vogue the blood was found
to be a convenient writing fluid, or was offered to the Devil in
the form of a signature.'  Blood has always been the most
irrevocable medium, and there are many historic examples of its
use....

Most witches, of course, were unable to write, but they would make
their marks, as did the Somerset witches.  Elizabeth Style
explained, in 1664, how the Devil 'promised her Mony, and that
she should live gallantly, and have the pleasure of the World for
Twelve years, if she would with her Blood sign his Paper, which
was to give her Soul to him'.  Some few pacts with the Devil
survive in museums in different parts of the world, and the theme
is a favourite one in literature.  The term of years which the 
contractor received before being carried off was not constant,
and a fortunate Ann Arydon 'had a lease for fifty yeares of the
divill, whereof (in 1673) ten ar expired' but the usual term was
much shorter, and often seems to have been seven, with an option
of renewal.  As is indicated later, some of this may be post-
rationalization after the Faustian myth had become known in
Great Britain.

The ceremony sometimes proceeded with a sacrifice, usually
black, and often a hen.  The witch bound him or herself in
vassalage to the Devil, and undertook to attend the appropriate
meetings, make converts, and generally do as instructed.
The name being entered into the Black Book or Roll, which
was kept by the Master of the Coven or even by the Grand
Master of the District, and obeisance having been paid, the
witch received a Mark from the Devil.

This Mark which the Devil made upon the witch was regarded,
when discovered by examiners, as final and irrefutable
evidence of guilt.  The result was that there was a great l
tendency to find these marks when they clearly were not the
true witch mark at all, but merely minor deformities or
hardenings of the skin which were insensitive....

As well as being the primitive horned god of the fertility
cults, the god of the witches, already infected with dualistic
ideas and those of later symbolism, was also Dianus or Janus,
the two-faced representative of the double side of the god-like
nature -- good and evil.  He was memories of all the evil powers
represented as black -- Pluto, Set, the Northern Loki, Ahriman,
the Jewish Satan, and aspects of Siva the Destroyer.  He was
associated with the local animal cults as well.  He was a parody
of the Christian representation of the Almighty.  He was Pan.
He was sometimes mixed with the Eastern conception of the djinn.
He was a composite.

In the circumstances, it is surprising that a type devil [sic]
emerges at all from teh varying traditions and the theological
morasses.  When he does so it is as man, woman, or animal....

This chapter has dealt with the historic devil as revealed in
the witch trials.  But the witches themselves sometimes, and
their opponents almost always, mixed him with something else.
It has been shown throughout that the mystical tradition of
the Devil as the other nature of God, the dark force of evil,
took on a name and a personality early in human thought.  
Wherever opposition to Christianity, or indeed to any orthodox
religion, was found, therefore, the Devil was recognized.  And
so the Devil of the witches, the sulphurous masked human or
or nearly animal figure of hair, wax, and horn, was given the 
name of the theological concept.  He became, famliiarly, Old
Nick.  He bcame, more terrifically and powerfully, Lucifer,
Beelzebub, Satan, Apollyon, Asmodeus, Abaddon, the Prince of
Darkness, and the Foul Fiend himself.

He had been so from the earliest times, for we are told that,
after the initiate to the Eleusinian mysteries had passed his
various ordeals, had seen and touched the Holy Things, and
was qualified, the final and awful secret was vouchsafed to
him.  At a flying pace a priest brushed by him, and breathed
into his ear the ultimate mystery: 'Osiris is a Black God.'

This is the historical reconstruction of the nursery devil
who has for centuries been employed to frighten children.
So it was with sixteenth-century Reginal Scot, who complains,
'In our childhood our mother's maids have so terrified us
with an ugly devil having horns on his head, fire in his
mouth, a tail in his breech, eyes like a bison, fangs like
a dog, skin like a nigger, a voice roaring like a lion,
whereby we start and are afraid when we hear one call "Boh".'

Now it was with the cry of 'Boh catch him' that my grand-
mother used to tease me as a child as the beginning of the
twentieth-century.  Poor dear, she was very old, and worn
out by begetting nineteen children, including one set of
triplets and two of twins, but even when in her right mind
she probably never knew that Boh was the name for the Devil.
Yet it was....

...whilst defiance of the Church and organized worship of 
the Devil were the offence against society, it was individual
acts of malevolence which led to the majority of the accusations
[of witchcraft].  These acts and practices went on long afer 
the organized cult had decayed.

The darker and more sophisticated activities of the adepts --
thaumaturgic and goetic matic -- were the pursuits of the
intellectual.  Rites of criminal curiosity, rationalized
perversion, mathematical magic, the evocation of evil spirits,
talismans, and aspects of astrology derived from the Egyptian 
mysteries, the Kabbalah, Pythagoras, and the aristocratic
stream of diabolism.  There were not refinements argueed, 
except by implication, against the ordinary witch -- the member
of the decaying group enemy of Christianity.  Against the
witch, or those mistaken as witches, the accusations were
mainly of natural magic, venefic magic, spell-casting, fire
or storm raising, lycanthropy, and the keeping of familiars....

[re: period of history -- 300s CE]

Constantine, in adopting Christianity, limited the legitimate
use of magic, and ordered the severe punishment of those 
'charming the minds of modest persons to the practice of
debauchery'.  He had no objection, however, to the prevention
by magic of premature rains, or to white magic generally, and
made careful distinction between theurgic and goetic practices
-- as the later Church did not.  Julian 'the Apostate' was
accused by clerical historians of being a necromancer, and
certainly did extend toleration and interest to all kinds of
arts....

...although magic was claimed, the grave offence was still
clearly that of political conspiracy.  Magicians, astrologers,
and mathematicians were individually feared and proscribed,
and their books burned.  The sophisticated, gnostic side of
the ritual was relentlessly if intermittently opposed: but a
cult of Devil worshippers was still undetected -- if only
because the Devil himself was as yet so ill-defined....

While consolidating, [the Church's] approach to witchcraft 
was extremely tentative, and the punishments were comparatively
tame.  Some idea of a pact with the Devil was formulated in
A.D. 306, and the Council of Ancyra, in A.D. 314, forbade
witchcraft as a branch of pharmacy, demanding a few years'
penance from any found guilty of it....

There was a steady decline [in Europe] in humanity which was not
arrested until the thirteenth century -- with the exception of
the period of the Carolingian renaissance, during which,
incidentally, torture was for the time abolished.  Yet whilst
popes and emperors disputed authority in the decaying cities
of Rome and Germany, and peasants everywhere obeyed the whim
of a local overlord and the Sunday rule of a foreign priest,
the fathers of the Church gradually forged their faith,
determined doctrine, and defined the Evil One....

---------------------------------------------------------------