Tag: Witchcraft

Ways of dealing with problems within the community, which used a blend of Christian and pagan rituals, was partly a product of the interaction between Christianity and paganism.

Pagan belief demanded rituals that appeased their gods while Christian thought required that there was a focus on only one God.

This meant that such rituals belonging to the Wheel of the Year had to be accommodated into a more acceptable framework.

The local clergy, therefore, became agents of this assimilation process.

The mixing of liturgical, medical, and folklore medicine was a whole medley of ideas as to how nature functioned.

The line between these ideas was very unclear  rite blended into medical practice or was mixed with apparently magical, and certainly ceremonial, pre-Christian practices.

This coming together is evident in a charm ritual for blessing the land, the Aecerbot ritual, which was performed yearly and is still retained centuries later on Plough Monday (usually the
first Monday after Epiphany – 6 January).

Originally an Anglo-Saxon fertility ritual, it was gradually Christianized.

In this agricultural or field remedy for witchcraft, four pieces of turf were taken from the four corners of the land, along with other agricultural products such as fruit, honey, herbs, and milk as well as holy water.

Certain words (such as ‘grow’ and ‘increase’) were said in Latin over these goods.

The individual turfs were then anointed and blessed along with the fruits of the farmer’s labour, taken to church and placed carefully under the altar.

The priest then said four masses over the altar.

The turf was placed back in the ground before sunset, along with four crosses marked with the name of the Apostles.

Similar words and prayers to those above were said, including a specially written prayer calling on God, the earth and heavens to help in bringing forth the power of the earth for a successful crop.

The ritual was closed by the owner of the field turning around three times while reciting Christian prayers.

There followed a similar ritual for blessing the plough using herbs and other sacred items.

The strong similarities to the rites calling upon Mother Earth and the Sun God in pre-Christian rituals are quite marked.

Historic customs are often perpetuated in seasonal festivals.

One example is Homstrom (celebrated on the first Sunday in February), which is an old Swiss festival exulting in the end of winter with the burning of straw people as symbols of the end of Old Man Winter or the Old God.

A similar sort of festival has recently been revived in Scotland round Lammas-tide.

Following the success of the 1970s film The Wicker Man, which highlighted an ancient pagan festival, today this gathering has been given new meaning as an alternative music festival.

The ceremonial burnings commemorate the sacrifices which our ancestors needed in order to feel that they had done what was necessary to achieve a plentiful harvest.

A similar celebration takes place at Queensferry on the east coast of Scotland in August, when the Burryman parades through the town and finishes his day covered with burrs (sticky balls of seeds), possibly representing all the irritations that the townspeople wish to get rid of before the winter.

If you want to celebrate in the same way you might like to make a corn dolly in the shape of a man.

Archetypal wizard of Arthurian lore. Merlin is a Latinized version of the Welsh Myrddin.

His exact origins are lost in myth; he may have been a god, perhaps a version of Mabon or Maponos, the British Apollo, the divine ruler or guardian of Britain.

The name Merlin may have been given to a succession of wizards.

There is no concrete evidence, but it is likely that a Merlin, who was a prophet or a bard,  existed toward the end of the fifth century and has become the basis for the Merlin myths.

Merlin’s first appearance in literature occurs in the Latin works of Geoffrey of Monmouth, a 12th-century Welsh cleric.

The Prophecies of Merlin, written in the early 1130s, comprise verses of prophecies made by an alleged man of the fifth century, named Merlin.

Monmouth made up many of the prophecies, which stretched beyond the 12th century.

In the History of the Kings of Britain, which Monmouth finished around 1135–36 and which laid the foundation for the Arthurian legends, Merlin becomes a character, though Monmouth muddles chronology by placing him in both the fifth and sixth centuries.

He is a magical boy, born of a union between a mortal woman and a spirit (a daemon, which later Christian writers interpreted as the Devil).

He has great magical powers of prophecy and matures quickly.

Merlin uses magic to bring great stones from Ireland to the Salisbury Plain for the building of Stonehenge and arranges for King Uther Pendragon to seduce Ygerna, who bears the infant Arthur.

At that point, Arthur vanishes from Monmouth’s story.

He reappears in a third poetic work, The Life of Merlin, in which he has a sister, Ganieda, who also has a prophetic vision.

Vita Merlini, written by Monmouth around 1150, his biography of the adult Merlin, but it is also a text of Western magical and spiritual enlightenment.

It sets down oral lore of mythology, cosmography, cosmology, natural history, psychology and what are now called archetypes of the human personality.

In 1150 a French poetical version of History of the Kings of Britain has Arthur constructing his Round Table under the aegis of Merlin.

The best-known portrait of Merlin comes from Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, published in 1485, a romantic tale in which the infant Arthur is raised by Merlin.

Upon the death of Uther Pendragon, Merlin presents the youth Arthur to the knights of the land and has him prove he is heir to the throne by withdrawing the sword Excalibur from the stone in which it is embedded.

Merlin serves as Arthur’s magical adviser but disappears from the story early in Arthur’s reign.

He is brought down by his passion for Nimue, or Viviane, a damsel of the lake who tricks him into revealing the secret of constructing a magical tower of air, which she uses to imprison him.

In contemporary fiction, Merlin usually is presented as a wise old man, despite his youthfulness in early writings.

It may be said that he has three aspects: youth, the mature prophet, and the wise elder.

He has been subject to many interpretations: magician, mystic, shaman, lord of the earth and animals, seer of all things, embodiment of time and trickster

In English folklore, the Berkeley
Witch was a wealthy woman who lived during the time
of the Norman Conquest in the town of Berkeley in England’s
heartland. She was wealthy and well liked, and
lived luxuriously. Her secret, kept until she was close to
death, was that her wealth was given her by the Devil, in
a pact for her soul (see Devil’s pact). Apparently, she
earned the name witch because she sold her soul to the
Devil, which reflects the once-common belief that all
witches made diabolic pacts.
According to lore, one evening as the Berkeley Witch
ate at her dining table, her pet raven gave a single, harsh
note and dropped dead. The woman recognized this as a
sign that her end was near and that she would have to live
up to her end of the bargain with the Devil. The beginning
of the end was an onslaught of bad news, the first
being the death of her oldest son and his entire family.
She was so overwhelmed that she took to bed and grew
weaker by the day. She confessed her pact to her two
other children, who were a monk and a nun. It was determined
that the only way to keep her out of the Devil’s
Berkeley Witch 21
clutches was to wrap her body in a stag’s skin, place it in
a stone coffin bound with three magic iron chains—for
iron drives away the Devil and his hordes—and place the
coffin upright in church. Psalms and masses were to be
sung and said over the coffin for 40 days and 40 nights.
Meanwhile, if the coffin were not violated by the Devil by
the third day, her body could be buried in the church’s
graveyard.
On the first night after her death, a horde of demons
appeared and broke one iron chain. They reappeared on
the second night and broke a second chain. But the third
chain remained impervious to the demons’ efforts, despite
the fact that the very church shook on its foundation,
and doors splintered on their hinges.
Then a hideous figure appeared—the Devil himself—
and bade the Berkeley Witch follow him. From inside the
coffin she replied she could not, for she was bound. “I
will unbind you, to your great loss,” the Devil answered.
He tore away the chain, smashed the coffin and seized
the living corpse of the witch. He strode outside, where
there waited a huge, demonic black horse covered with
spikes. He threw the witch on the horse, and her corpse
was pierced through with spikes. Her screams reportedly
could be heard for miles, but for naught: the Devil leaped
up on the horse and rode away into the night.

You Will Need

Two small handfuls of corn stalks

Green and yellow wool or cotton

Trailing greenery (ivy or grape vine are ideal)

Appropriately colored ribbons for the ritual (red or orange for Lammas)

Method 

Take one handful of corn stalks.

Just below the top, bind the stalks with the yellow cotton, tying them securely, 3 to5 centimeters underneath, and bind the stalks again; this forms the head of the doll.

Carefully divide the bound bundle into four strands. (The outer two will form the arms, the middle ones the body.)

Gently bend the stalks which represent the arms and bind them carefully with the yellow cotton.

Bind the two middle pieces together, crisscrossing the cotton to create a body approximately 10 to 15 cm (4 inches) long.

Use the green cotton to bind the two middle lower sections to represent legs.

Ask for a blessing from an agricultural god.

You might say: God of plenty, bless now this image of your fertility.

Decorate with the ribbons and trailing greenery.

If the Moon is feminine in nature, how did we ever come up with the “man in the Moon?”

Even though this idea is often thought of as strictly an American invention, such is not the case.

The Sanskrit word for moon is “mas,” which gives it a masculine form, and etymologists have long debated over whether the same is true of the earliest Teutonic languages.

Be that as it may, the concept of the Moon’s masculinity is rooted in several ancient mythologies.

Khensu, for example, is a Moon-god worshipped by the Egyptians, while Sin belongs to the Baby lonians.

Chandra-a Hindu Moon-god-commandeers a silver chariot drawn by deer with antelopelike antlers as he races across the sky.

And, of course, there’s also Yuelao, Chinese mythology’s Old Man in the Moon, who predetermines the marriages of unsuspecting humans.

It’s said that he firmly binds future mates with an invisible silk thread-a thread so strong that nothing can break it but death.

In other areas of the world, though, the Moon’s gender takes a back seat to the roles She plays: those of sanctuary, savior, and bringer of swift justice.

For example, in Siberia, the residents insist that the figure on the Moon is that of a girl who’s been whisked away from the impending danger of an attacking wolf.

Scandinavians see two children rescued from a mean and hateful father.

His crime? He forced them to carry buckets of water all day.’

One of the most interesting Moon myths belongs to the Masai of Kenya.

They say that the Sun once severely beat His wife, the Moon.

To remind Him of His trespasses-and embarrass Him thoroughly-She consistently shows Her blackened eye and swollen lip to all She encounters.

And then, of course, there’s the legend of the Moon Maiden who collects the dreams and wishes of every living creature on Earth.

It’s said that She tosses these into a silver goblet and spends the night swirling them together before sprinkling them back on the Earth in the form of dew.

In this way, nothing important is ever lost or forgotten.

Like everything else, it only changes form.

Other lunar myths seem to concern themselves more with deities who either live on the Moon, or are in charge of its phases.

One such myth concerns the Germanic goddess Holle-sometimes called Frigg-who lives on the Moon and busies Herself with spinning the lives of humankind.

Another tells of the Chinese goddess Chango, whose husband was given a potion containing the key to immortality.

Wanting the gift for herself, the story goes that Chango stole the potion, sucked down every drop, and then flew to the Moon to escape her husband’s wrath.

It’s said that she now lives there happily with the resident hare who gave her refuge.

Then there’s another bit of folklore that has nothing to do with gender or deity at all.

Instead, it speaks of the ten-day period following the appearance of the Full Moon.

It’s said that each of these days holds a magic all its own, and that those who pay heed to the individual attributes and use them as prescribed below can expect to become very powerful, indeed.

Befana  is an old woman who delivers gifts to children throughout Italy on Epiphany Eve (the night of January 5).

A popular belief is that her name derives from the Feast of Epiphany or in Italian La Festa dell’Epifania. .

In popular folklore, Befana visits all the children of Italy on the eve of the Feast of the Epiphany to fill their shoes with candy and presents if they are good. Or a lump of coal or dark candy if they are bad. In many parts of Italy and in particular rural Sicily, a stick in a stocking was placed instead of coal. Being a good housekeeper, many say she will sweep the floor before she leaves. To some the sweeping meant the sweeping away of the problems of the year. The child’s family typically leaves a small glass of wine and a plate with a few morsels of food, often regional or local, for the Befana.

She is usually portrayed as an old lady riding a broomstick through the air wearing a black shawl and is covered in soot because she enters the children’s houses through the chimney. She is often smiling and carries a bag or hamper filled with candy, gifts, or both.

Whether you are casting a simple spell, using items from your kitchen cupboard, or performing a
complicated group ceremony, the source of the power behind it is the same. Every spell or ritual
involves channelling the life force that runs through all forms of existence and transforming it into
higher spiritual energies. These spiritual powers include our own evolved self, which some say is
formed through many lifetimes, and the higher divine cosmic energies, such as a supreme god or
goddess, or, more abstractly, some sort of divine light, spirit and goodness.
Magick for healing, it must be said, is not so far removed from the prayers of conventional religions,
whose positive influence is well documented. The same effect can be created whatever the focus or
faith, and I know from personal experience that positive results can be achieved when a Wiccan coven
sends healing light to a sick member or a friend.
For hundreds of years, angels have been invoked in magick, just as in religion, both for protection and
to act as vehicles for healing or positive energies. Practitioners of white magick may focus on
particular aspects of a god or goddess figure, or benign power, personified through different deities
from many age and cultures.
Most rituals are related to the basic human needs for health, love, fertility and prosperity. In Chapter
13, Seasons and Festivals, I describe the major solar, lunar and agricultural festivals that formed a
focus for attracting abundance and increase to the land, animals, crops and people, tapping into the
life force that connected them all.
In past time, the well-being of the planet was considered to be the responsibility of peasant as well as
king through paying tributes and enacting age-old ceremonies to invoke the necessary energies for the
Wheel of the Year to turn. So individual prosperity or fertility was attained both through private spells
and charms and by sending positive energies to the Earth and the cosmos and, in a sense, receiving
bounty as those beams were amplified and returned to the sender.
Folk or domestic magick was an important part of people’s everyday lives right up until the nineteenth
century. In rural areas, the implements used in and around the home and garden could be easily
adapted for use in magick; and for town-dwellers, flowers and herbs could be gathered on a day in the
country or grown on allotments or in urban back gardens.
In the days before central heating systems, the focus of the home was the family hearth. Focus is Latin
for ‘hearth’ and from Ancient Rome to China, the household deities have always had their place, being
offered morsels of food, nectar and flowers and consulted on family happenings.
It was believed that the ancestors as well as the living gathered around the family hearth, and so it
became a natural focus for magick. The witches’ cauldron started off as the iron cooking pot that hung
over the fire (such pots are still used in country regions of Europe – I saw one for sale quite recently in
the market in Rouen in France).
Herbal brews were not only created to cure coughs and colds but also, with magical words spoken
over them, transformed into potions to bring a desired lover, employment or an unexpected helping
hand in times of sorrow. A grandmother would put any small coins she could spare into a money pot
and warm it near the fire to ‘incubate’ the money into sufficient to mend the roof or buy new coats for
the winter.
A young wife eager to be pregnant would secretly prick a fertilised hen’s egg with a needle on the
night of the full moon immediately before making love. Such actions were quite a normal part of life,
a way of tapping into the same energies that made the cattle fertile and the corn set seed.
Farmers would leave milk for the faeries that they might bring good fortune, young girls recited love
charms while planting herbs in soil embedded with a would-be lover’s footprint. On Hallowe’en,
housewives opened their windows and placed garlic on the window ledge so that only the good family
dead might enter and take shelter from the cold.
This simple folk magick, rather than ceremonial magick, forms the basis for the majority of spells. As
above, so below’, the words of the semi-divine father of magick, Hermes Trismegistos, may originally
have evolved from popular magick that is practised in many different cultures around the world to this
day. They are certainly as applicable today as they ever were.
Whatever the aim of your magick may be, if you look around your home, garden, workshop or even
office, you have the necessary tools for the spells you require. What is more, rooted as they are in
domesticity and the daily world, these implements could not be safer: fruit, vegetables, salt, sand,
seeds, flowers, coins, pots and jars, together with your crystals, candles, incense and oils, and perhaps
a few coloured scarves or ribbons to tie knots. Whether your spell is small and personal, or vast and
universal, whether you are working to attract love, harmony in the home, prosperity or fertility for
yourself or loved ones, for people in the wider environment or the planet, these are all you need.

Apples, cultivated in Britain as early as 3000 b.c.e., have had a long association with magic, witches, and goddesses.

Magic apple lands, whose fruit gave eternal life, were cultivated by various Western pagan goddesses, among them the Greek Hera, the Scandinavian Idun (Idhunn), the Teutonic Freya and the Norse Hel, Queen of the Underworld.

In Iroquois myth, the apple is the central tree of heaven.

In Christianity, the apple offered Eve by the serpent is the fruit of life but becomes equated with sin.

Games and divination with apples were part of the Celtic/Druidic harvest festival of Samhain (All Hallow’s Eve), now celebrated on October 31

A surviving custom is the dunking for apples on this night.

According to another custom, peeling an apple in front of a candlelit mirror on Samhain will reveal an image of one’s future spouse.

Magical fermented cider may have been used in other pagan rites.

In parts of England, another name for strong cider is witches’ brew.

Apples and apple peel are used in divination methods common in the British Isles.

In English lore, the apple tree is synonymous with enchantment and associated with figures in the Arthurian legends.

Arthur, upon being mortally wounded, was spirited by three fairy queens to the magical place of Avalon, “Isle of the Apples” or “apple land,” ruled by Morgan le Fay, the crone or Mother Death aspect of the Triple Goddess.

Arthur’s knight Lancelot fell asleep under a grafted apple tree and was carried off by four fairy queens.

Queen Guinevere gave an apple to St. Patrick, who died; she was accused of witchcraft and condemned to burn at the stake, but was rescued by Lancelot.

Witches who wished to bewitch or poison others were often said to use apples, as in the folktale of Snow White, who was put to sleep by the poisoned apple of the black witch-queen.

In 1657 Richard Jones, a 12-year-old boy in Shepton Mallet in the county of Somerset in England, was said to be bewitched by a girl who gave him an apple.

Jones suffered fits, and neighbors said they saw him fly over his garden wall.

The girl, Jane Brooks, was charged with witchcraft, convicted and hanged on March 26, 1658.

According to English folklore, it is bad luck to pick all the apples in a harvest: some must be left for the fairies.

The apple is a love charm in Vodun, and in English, Danish and German folklore.

A 15th-century English witch and seer who supposedly prophesied scientific inventions, new technology, wars and politics through several centuries, all written in crude rhymes. The books of her “prophecies” are likely the invention of later writers, among them Richard Head, who published a book of her predictions in 1667; an anonymous writer who published the Strange and Wonderful History of Mother Shipton in 1668; and a man named Hindley, who apparently authored Shipton predictions in 1871.

More myth and fabulous tales surround Mother Shipton than fact. Reputedly, she was born Ursula Southeil near Dropping Well in Knaresborough, Yorkshire, in 1488, though the dates 1448 and 1486 also are given in various texts. Her mother, who possessed the powers of healing, clairvoyance, storm raising and hexing , died in childbirth with “strange and terrible noises.” Ursula, who inherited her mother’s powers, was raised by a local townswoman. Mysterious things happened around Ursula: furniture moved about on its own, and food disappeared from dinner plates. Once, the townswoman left Ursula alone in her cottage. When she returned with several
neighbors, they were attacked by strange forces. A woman was hung by her toes from a staff floating in the air, and men were yoked to the same staff. Other women found themselves dancing in circles; if they tried to stop, Mother Shipton with a familiar, 19th century
Mother Shipton an imp in the shape of a monkey pinched them to keep them going.

Ursula fit the classic stereotype of hag. Head described her as follows: . . . with very great goggling, but sharp and fiery eyes; her nose of incredible and unproportionable length, having in it many crooks and turnings, adorned with many strange pimples of divers colours, as red and blue mixed, which, like vapours of brimstone, gave such a lustre to the affrighted spectators in the dead time of the night, that one of them confessed that her nurse needed no other light to assist her in the performance of her duty. In art, she is depicted as wearing a tall, conical, brimmed black hat.

Despite this incredibly ugly appearance, Ursula married Tobias Shipton at age 24. Her husband then disappeared from all records, and Ursula became known as Mother Shipton. She did not like prying neighbours and once took revenge on a group of them by bewitching
them at a breakfast party (see spells). The guests suddenly broke into hysterical laughter and ran out of the house, pursued by goblins. For this mischief, Mother Shipton was summoned to court, but she threatened to do worse if she were prosecuted. She then said,

“Updraxi, call Stygician Helleuei,”  and soared off on a winged drago The verses attributed to her vary. One of the best known is:

Carriages without horses shall go
Around the world thoughts shall fly
In the twinkling of an eye
Iron in the water shall float
As easy as a wooden boat
Gold shall be found, and found
In a land that’s not now known
A house of glass shall come to pass
In England, but alas!

Her predictions included automobiles, telephone and telegraph, iron-clad boats, the California gold rush and the Crystal Palace in London. Mother Shipton also is credited with predicting the Civil War in England, the Great Fire of London (1666), the discovery of tobacco and
potatoes in the New World, World War II and the women’s liberation movement.

Her memorial, Mother Shipton’s Cave, is in Knaresborough.

An old technique of magical healing
by wise women and men, wizards and witches involving
the measuring of the patient’s girdle or belt. Changes in
girth revealed the presence of evil spirits or fairies which
had invaded the body to cause the illness. After exorcising
the entity, usually through charms, the witch took
another measurement to verify that the spirit was gone.
Some cures involved the recitation of charms, cutting up
of the girdle and burying the pieces in the ground. Girdle
measuring was a widespread practice in Europe and the
British Isles through the end of the 16th century

It is the duty of the banshee or ‘woman of the fairies’ to foretell the death of an individual. Banshees are attached to particular families and their cry is only heard when a family member is about to die. Banshees are reported either to be young women of mournful aspect or else to take the form of hags. With eyes red from weeping she continually combs her hair with a gold or silver comb. The cries of the banshee are echoed by professional mourners or keeners who were engaged to maintain high piercing cries and moans at a funeral wake. The very first being to set up a keening cry was the goddess Brighid, one of the Tuatha de Danaan. She wailed for the death of her only son.

Spells designed to bring about a difference in bodily appearance in order to dissolve mischievous enchantments by the fairy folk or frequenters of the lower world were legion in most cultures.

In Celtic lore for instance, during the process of dissolving the enchantment, having cast a magic circle, the rescuer had to keep repeating the name of the enchanted person to remind them of who they truly were.

Traditionally the enchanted one would go through several metamorphoses or shape shifts in the following order: esk, adder, lion and finally a bolt of red-hot iron.

Then returning to human form, they were left completely naked.

They had to be covered by a cloak – thus rendered invisible – and washed in milk and then hot water.

If we accept the idea of the evolution of the soul, the stage of heating iron until it is red hot represents the process of transmutation from animal to human.

The final purification in milk (which in Irish mythology is a healing substance) and water restores the victim to his normal self – he is reborn.

In many cultures iron is regarded as a tool of purification.

It was, and still is, dreaded by the darker powers and many amulets and charms fashioned from the substance were used to avert evil.

Iron pins or brooches were stuck in headgear, a piece of iron was often sown into the clothes of children and horseshoes were often used to protect the homes and byres (cowsheds).

Women in childbirth were also said to be protected with iron , sometimes by a row of nails and at other times by a scythe or pitchfork.

This was so that mother and baby were protected from evil spirits, particularly from the night demons who were said to steal babies.

Up until quite recently in Scotland in some areas, it was considered highly unwise to leave a baby alone at all, lest it be stolen away by the faeries.

Participants in the lingering remnants of an ancient agrarian cult in northern Italy, which came to the attention of the Inquisition in the late 16th century because of the cult’s nocturnal battles with witches and warlocks over the fertility of the crops and livestock.

The term benandanti means “good walkers.” The cult flourished in the Friuli region of Italy, an isolated area where Italian, German and Slavic traditions met and mingled.

The benandanti were comprised of men and women born of the caul, that is, with the inner fetal membrane still covering the body, especially the head.

This was a sign not only of the benandanti but of supernatural powers of healing the bewitched and the power to see witches.

Some benandanti saved their cauls and wore them about their necks as amulets or talismans.

The benandanti were compelled to serve their villages during the Ember Days, the changing of the seasons marked by the solstices and equinoxes.

At midnight, usually on Thursday but sometimes on Friday or Saturday of the Ember Days, they were summoned, sometimes by drums or, tradition has it, by angels.

If they did not respond promptly and were late, they were severely beaten.

They left their bodies, and their spirits assumed the shapes of butterflies, mice, cats and hares.

They went to the valley of Josaphat in the center of the world, where they met the army of witches and warlocks, also in spirit guises.

The benandanti would be armed with stalks of fennel, renowned for its healing properties; the witches would be armed with sorghum stalks, a type of millet perhaps identified with brooms.

For an hour or several hours, the opposing spirit armies engaged in battle, beating each other with their stalks.

If the benandanti won, the year’s crops would be abundant.

If the witches won, storms would plague the growing and harvesting seasons, and famine would ensue.

After the “games,” as the battles were called, the benandanti and the witches passed by houses looking for clean water to drink.

If they found none, the witches entered the cellars and either overturned the wine casks, or drank the wine and urinated in the casks.

The spirits had to return to their bodies by cock’s crow.

If they did not, or if their bodies had been turned over onto their stomachs while their spirits were gone, they either had great difficulty re-entering them, or could not get back in at all.

The spirits then were forced to wander the earth until their bodies’ destined time of death arrived.

The origins of the benandanti cult are unknown; the roots are probably ancient.

The leaving of the body and doing battle in spirit, in the guise of animals, is shamanic in nature.

The benandanti may be an offshoot of the cult of Diana, which was known in Italy from the end of the 14th century.

Followers of Diana held peaceful sabbats at night and were not associated with diabolical rites until later by the church.

The rites of the benandanti had no similarities to the celebrated witches’ sabbat but were entirely agricultural in intent, and were emotionally intense.

The benandanti considered themselves soldiers of the good fight, preserving their crops and protecting their villages from the evildoing of witches.

The cult persisted in spite of the magical/holy measures provided by the church to protect crops, such as the sprinkling of holy water over the fields, the erection of a cross and the processions and prayers on Rogation Days.

Apparently, the benandanti believed their ways were more effective.

Though pagan, the cult had acquired Christian elements by the late 16th century.

The benandanti went out in the service of Christ and God, to battle the agents of the Devil.

The benandanti came to the attention of the church in 1575, when a priest in Brazzano heard rumors of a man in Civdale, Paolo Gasparutto, who could cure bewitched persons and who “roamed about at night with witches and goblins.”

Summoned and questioned by the priest, Gasparutto admitted the Ember Days’ outings, adding that in addition to fighting, there was leaping about, dancing and riding on animals.

To the priest, this sounded ominously like a witches’ sabbat, and he involved the inquisitors.

Various interrogations and trials of benandanti were conducted in the region from 1575 to 1644.

The churchinquisitors made efforts to associate the benandanti with witches and to get them to confess that they participated in witches’ sabbats (said to occur every Thursday night, not just during the Ember Days), and were forced to abjure Christ and gave their souls to the Devil.

With few exceptions, the benandanti staunchly deflected these efforts.

They also insisted that being benandanti did not at all interfere with their regular churchgoing and Christian prayers.

They said they were forced to go out inservice because they had been born with the caul.

They were initiated at maturity, and after some 10 or 20 years in service, were relieved of their obligations.

While some benandanti claimed to go out during each of the Embers Days, others said they went out only once every few years.

Still others said they were called out whenever witches “did evil.”

Some said they knew who were other benandanti and who were witches, while others said they did not know anyone but recognized the spirit forms as one side or the other.

Most protested that they could not reveal names or even details about the battles, lest they be severely beaten in punishment.

The inquisitors, however, often succeeded in eliciting names of members of both factions.

One aspect of the benandanti’s nocturnal travels that puzzled inquisitors the most was the leaving behind of the body.

By the late 16th century, inquisitors and demonologists were beginning to question the actuality of the witches’ sabbat, contending instead that it was all hallucinatory.

But the benandanti insisted that their spirit battles were very real; that they did leave the body and travel in spirit, and could assume the shapes of animals.

They did not feel pain in the fighting, they said.

Some said they left the body after rubbing on an ointment or oil, while others fell into a faint that resembled a cataleptic state.

Beyond that, the peasants were at a loss to explain. One description of the spirit travel to the valley of Josaphat, offered in 1591 by Menechino della Nota as a dream in order to dodge the inquisitors, is described in Night Battles by Carlo Ginzburg:

“I had the impression there were many of us together as though in a haze but we did not know one another, and it felt as if we moved through the air like smoke and that we crossed over the water like smoke,everyone returned home as smoke”

No inquisitors could accept that the soul could leave the body while it was living and return.

That the benandanti took the shapes of animals led the inquisitors to believe that they were physically led off on animals, and they tried to ascertain that the Devil did the leading.

Until the Inquisition, little had been known about the secretive benandanti, even in their own villages.

Some who were known for their healing and spell-breaking abilities were sought out.

The public attention, plus the persistent efforts of the church to ally the benandanti with witches, eventually did lead to increasing association of the benandanti with witches.

By 1623 the church had obtained confessions from benandanti that they participated in witches’ sabbats.

This led to more damning confessions of Devil’s pacts, desecration of the cross, vampirism and abjuration of the Christian faith.

What had once been a purely agricultural rite became transformed into a rite of Devil worship.

Despite its success, the church put little effort into prosecuting the benandanti.

Many trials were never concluded, and torture was not used.

Punishment, when meted out, was mild—prison sentences or banishment.

The benandanti apparently came to light when skepticism about witches was gaining ground in parts of Europe.

The last major benandanti trial took place in 1644.

A few scattered inquisitional efforts occurred into the late 1600s, but trials were abandoned.

A name applied to English ale-wives, wise women and witches. It was also given to familiar animals.

One Mother Redcap was an elderly woman who lived in a village about 14 miles from Cambridge, England, who was known as a witch. She said she was endowed with her witch powers in circumstances reminiscent of the Devil’s pact legends of medieval centuries. According to an article published in the London Sunday Chronicle on September 9, 1928:

One day a black man called, produced a book and asked her to sign her name in it. The woman signed the book and the mysterious stranger then told her she would be the mistress of five imps who would carry out her orders. Shortly afterwards the woman was seen out accompanied by a rat, a cat, a toad, a ferret, and a mouse. Everybody believed she was a witch, and many people visited her to obtain cures.

Mother Redcap’s neighbors apparently viewed her new status as an asset and not something evil, and she was not persecuted. Her story is odd, however, for she claimed to sign the mysterious book without asking what it was or why. In traditional stories of the Devil’s pact, the person supposedly knows full well the terms of the deal: their soul in exchange for earthly gain, which places a moral burden squarely upon the shoulders of the individual.

Mother Redcap appeared not to suffer and used her alleged supernatural abilities to help others. She died in 1926.

An Essex Old Mother Redcap lived in a house called Duval’s (Devil House) in Wallasea Island, where no traditional witch’s familiars such as toads, frogs or snakes lived. She would sit in her house peeling potatoes and chanting spells such as “Holly, holly, brolly, brolly, Redcap! Bonny, bonny.”

After her death in the 1920s, her house was haunted by the spirit of a familiar and people considered it dangerous to enter. If anyone did and stayed, they were assaulted by a mysterious voice that shouted, “Do it! Do it!” as though to urge them to commit suicide. Cows in the vicinity were stricken with mad cow disease. The house was bombed into ruins during World War II. In 1953, the ruins were washed away in a tidal wave

Bellarmine jugs, bottles, and drinking-mugs were produced by the potteries of the Rhineland area, from the sixteenth century
onwards.

They were exported in large numbers to this country, where they became very popular.

These handsome stoneware vessels take their name from the fierce, bearded face embossed upon them, which was supposed to be that of
Cardinal Bellarmine.

They are also sometimes called greybeard jugs,on account of this typical decoration.

As well as being in general use as a household article, Bellarmine bottles were remarkably popular for the purpose of casting spells and
counterspells, especially in London and the eastern counties of England.

They have often been unearthed from the ruins of old English houses dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in circumstances
which point to their connection with witchcraft.

The typical Bellarmine bottle has a large body and a narrow neck, which can be tightly stoppered.

When used as a witch-bottle, these vessels have been found with highly unpleasant contents, such as human hair entangled with sharp
nails, cuttings of human finger-nails, a piece of cloth in the shape of a heart and pierced with pins ; and sometimes human urine and salt. The
bottle was well sealed up, and then buried in some secret place, or thrown into a river or ditch.

One of these bottles was recovered from the mud of the Thamesin fairly recent years ; and the frequent post-war demolition works of
the 1 950s produced a number of examples of these mysterious vessels, brought to light when the foundations of old houses were revealed.

All had typically sinister contents as described above.

Whether the witch-bottle was a spell or a counterspell is not always clear.

One theory is that it was a form of self-defence, used by people who believed themselves to be ‘overlooked’ by the Evil Eye, to get back
at the person who was bewitching them.

Believing that a magical link existed between the witch and themselves, they tried to put the magic into reverse, and turn it back upon the sender.

They used their own hair, nail-clippings, urine, etc., as the magical link ; and a heart, cut probably from red cloth, to represent the witch’s
heart, which they pierced with pins.

Sharp nails were added, to nail the witch ; and salt, because witches were supposed to hate it.

Then the whole thing was buried in some dark and secret place, in the hopeful belief that it would cause the witch to decline and perish.

However, this spell could be used offensively also, if the practitioner got hold of someone else’s hair, nail-clippings, etc., to form the necessary magical link.

Nor, in those days when sanitation was decidedly primitive, and the chamber-pot a very necessary and often handsome article of furniture, would it be too difficult to obtain some of the hated person’s urine.

The pin-pierced hearts which have been recovered from these witch-bottles, seem to be going rather far for self-defence ; and the
very nastiness of the spell would give satisfaction to a hate-filled mind.

But why the choice of a Bellarmine bottle for this uncanny business ?

What had Cardinal Bellarmine to do with witchcraft ?

The answer, most probably, is nothing ; because the face on the bottle does not represent the Cardinal at all, but something much older.

Some of the earliest examples of this ware have a triple face on them ; that is, three faces combined into one symbolic countenance.

This bearded, triple face dates back to pre-Christian times in Celtic Europe, and represented an ancient god of Nature.

In Christian times, sculptors tried to work it into Church decorations by calling it a symbol of the Holy Trinity ; but in the sixteenth century
it was banned by the Council of Trent, who declared it to be pagan.

It is in fact one of the ways in which the Celtic Horned God, Cernunnos, is depicted.

Probably because of its old associations with paganism, the triple face was one of the attributes often given in medieval art to the Devil.

Dante in his Inferno portrays the great Devil in Hell, whom he calls ‘Dis’, in this way ; a typical instance of the god of the old religion becoming the devil of the new.

The complicated design of the triple face on the greybeard bottles, etc. , became simplified into a single powerful-looking countenance
bearded and virile ; but it was still the figure of the old pagan god, and hence a suitable vessel for mischief and forbidden arts.

But who knew that it was ? Who recognised it ?

The historical fact that these bottles, with their ancient design, were used for witchcraft, is a pointer to the underground survival of pagan
tradition, to a far later date than is generally attributed to it.

Lucius Apuleius is best known to us as the author of The Golden Ass, one of the most famous romances in the world, containing as it does the story of Cupid and Psyche. His importance to the study of witchcraft rests on the fact that The Golden Ass is a romance of witchcraft, and
illustrates the beliefs which were held about witches in the pre-Christian world.

This work of Apuleius proves that witchcraft was not, as some modern writers have claimed, an invention of the Middle Ages, On the
contrary, witchcraft was known, feared and respected in ancient Greece and Rome.

Lucius Apuleius was a priest of Isis, who was born at Madaura, a Roman colony in North Africa, early in the second century A.D. His family was wealthy, and he traveled quite extensively for those times, in search of education and insight into religious mysteries. He was once
himself accused of practicing black magic. He had married a wealthy widow, older than himself, and the widow’s jealous family brought an
accusation against him of having bewitched her into matrimony. However, Apuleius successfully defended himself in court by a brilliant
and witty speech, which was later published under the title of A Discourse on Magic (Apulei Apologia sive pro se de Magia Liber, with introduction and commentary by H. E. Butler and A. S. Owen, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1914).

His book The Golden Ass has been translated into English by William Adlington in 1 566 (Simpkin Marshall, London, 1 930 and AMS Press,
New York, 1 893), and in our own day by Robert Graves in 1 950. It pretends to be an autobiography, telling how Lucius as an adventurous
young man found himself in Thessaly, a region in Greece notorious for witchcraft. After hearing from his traveling companions various hair-raising tales about the dark powers of Thessalian witches, he determined to pry into witchcraft himself. His cousin, Byrrhaena, warned him that his host’s wife, Pamphile, was a most dangerous witch ; but her words of caution only made his curiosity keener.

He resolved to seduce Pamphile’s maid, Fotis, and thus gain entry into the secrets of Pamphile’s witchcraft. As Fotis was quite willing to be
seduced, Lucius’ plan at first appeared to prosper. He persuaded the girl to let him secretly watch her mistress anointing herself with a magic
unguent, which transformed her into an owl and enabled her to fly through the night in that shape.

However, when Lucius got the girl to steal a pot of the witch’s unguent for him, it changed him not into an owl, the bird of wisdom, but into an ass. Fotis told him that the counter-magic which would restore him to human shape was to eat roses; but before he was able to do this he passed through one wild adventure after another, until the goddess Isis took pity on him and helped him to regain his humanity.

The witches in The Golden Ass have many of the characteristics attributed to those of the Middle Ages. They can change their shape by means of magic unguents; they steal parts from corpses to use in their spells; they bewitch men by obtaining pieces of their hair; they can
cast a glamour over the senses, and charm people asleep; they can pass through a hole in a door by changing themselves into a small animal,
or even an insect; and they can transform others into animal shape.

However, Apuleius as a priest of lsis shows both sides of the cult of the moon goddess, the right- and left-hand paths. He recognizes Isis as the
Queen of Heaven, yet identical in her dark aspect with Hecate and Proserpine, the Queen of the Underworld. The roses which redeem Lucius from the shape of an ass are the symbol of the Mysteries; an idea which in later years was repeated in the occult emblem of the Rosy Cross.