15. The Sabbath Of The Sorcerersc

The misconstrued doctrine of Zoroaster and the magical law of two forces constituting universal equilibrium, have caused some illogical minds to imagine a negative divinity, subordinate but hostile to the active Deity. An impure duad comes thus into being. Men were mad enough to halve God; the Star of Solomon was separated into triangles, and the Manichaens imagined a trinity of night. This evil God, product of sectarian fancies, inspired all manias and all crimes. Sanguinary sacrifices were offered him; monstrous idolatry replaced the true religion; Black Magic traduced the Transcendent and Luminous Magic of true adepts, and horrible conventicles of sorcerers, ghouls and stryges took place in caverns or desert places, for dementia soon changes into frenzy and from human sacrifices to cannibalism there is only one step. The Mysteries the Sabbath have been described variously, but they figure always in Grimoires and in magical trials. The revelations made on the subject may be classified under three heads: 1. those referring to a fantastic and imaginary Sabbath; 2. those which betray the secrets of certain occult assemblies of veritable adepts; 3. revelations of foolish and criminal gatherings, having for their object the operations of Black Magic. For a large number of unhappy men and women, given over to such mad and abominable practices, the Sabbath was but a prolonged nightmare, where dreams appeared realities and were induced by means of potions, fumigations and narcotic frictions. Baptista Porta, whom we have signalized already as a mystifier, gives in his Natural Magic , a pretended recipe for the sorcerers' unguent, by means of which they were transported to the Sabbath. It is a composition of child's fat, aconite boiled with poplar leaves and some other drugs, the whole mixed with soot, which could not contribute to the beauty of the naked sorceresses who repaired to the scene anointed with this made. There is another and more serious recipe given the same author, which we transcribe in Latin to preserve its grimoire character. Recipe: suim, acorum vulgare, pentaphyllon, versper-tillionis sanguinem, solanum somniferum et oleum, the whole boiled and incorporated to the consistence of an unguent. We infer that compositions containing opiates, the pith of green hemp, Datura stramonium or Iaurel-almond, would enter quite as successfully into such preparations. The fat or blood of night-birds added to these narcotics, with black magical ceremonies, would impress imagination and determine the direction of dreams. To Sabbaths dreamed in this manner we must refer the accounts of a goat issuing from pitchers and going back into them after the ceremony; infernal powders obtained from the ordure of this goat, who is called Master Leonard; banquets where abortions are eaten without salt and boiled with serpents and toads; dances, in which monstrous animals or men and women with impossible shapes take part; unbridled debauches where incubi project cold sperm. Nightmare alone could produce or explain such scenes. The unfortunate cure Gaufridy and his abandoned penitent Madeline de la Palud went mad through kindred delusions, and were burned for persisting in affirming them. We must read the depositions of these diseased beings during their trial to understand the extent of the aberration possible to an afflicted imagination. But the Sabbath was not always a dream; it did exist in reality; even now there are secret nocturnal assemblies for the practice of the Rites of the old world, some of which have a religious and social object, while that of others is concerned with orgies and conjurations.