Witches

by Colin Wilson

  Merlin himself finally succumbed to the charms of an echantress called Viviane, who—like Morgan—persuaded him to teach her magic by promising to give herself, then imprisoned him in a castle made of mist, where he died.

  The real significance of these tales of magic is that, like Lucan’s evil witch Erichtho, they seem to satisfy a basic hunger of the imagination—that is, they are what Jung calls an archetype. The wicked queen in Snow White is a later version of the Morgan archetype, while Tolkien’s Gandalf is, in all essentials, Merlin. The dragon—which appears so frequently in Arthurian legends—is another archetype, whose current incarnation is probably the Loch Ness monster.

  The significance of the archetypes is that they appear in many different forms; when one dies out, another takes its place. The witch is another basic archetype.

  The Lady of the Lake.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Destruction of The Templars

  When Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar, was slowly burned to death on an island in the Seine in 1314, he summoned the Pope and the King to ‘meet him within a year before the throne of God’. Oddly enough, both men—the two most responsible for the downfall of the Templars—died within a year.

  The Knights Templar were among the first—and most distinguished—victims of the witchcraft craze. In 1118, after the First Crusade had opened the Holy Land to Christian Pilgrims, a knight called Hugues de Payens conceived the apparently absurd notion of guarding and policing the roads of the Holy Land with a band of eight knights. This preposterous idea appealed to the King of Jerusalem, who granted them a wing of the palace that had once been Solomon’s temple. Their monastic discipline soon turned the Templars into a formidable fighting force. Hugues deliberately sought out knights who had been excommunicated, and so felt they had nothing to lose. Grateful crusaders often beqreathed the Templars their land or possessions, and the Order soon became wealthy. In fact, they became the chief bankers of the Holy Land—even the Moslems banked with them because they were famous for their honesty.

  The Order had its ups and downs—in 1187 the Templars were massacred by Saladin, and the Grand Master, Gerard de Ridfort, ordered the remaining Templar garrisons surrender. But the Templars soon regained their power and wealth—partly as a result of a compromise with their Moslem enemies. In 1244 they regained Jerusalem—not by battle, but by negotiation. But in the same year they were again almost wiped out, this time by an Egyptian army. Yet again they recovered; but the Mongols under Genghis Khan and the Egyptians under Baybars kept up unrelenting pressure. By 1303, they had been driven out of the Holy Land, to take refuge in Cyprus.

  But they were still immensely rich. Philip IV of France resented their power and their wealth; but since he was practically bankrupt, he had to borrow from them. The ideal would clearly be to destroy them and seize their wealth. But how? The obvious answer was: accuse them of heresy and intercourse with the Devil. In that case, their lands and possessions would be forfeited.

  Secret orders went out, and at daybreak on 13 October 1307, the authorities swooped and arrested almost every Templar in France.

  An ex-Templar had provided the accusations: homosexuality (which is probably the only one with any foundation in fact), intercourse with a demon named Baphomet (who was worshipped in the form of a wooden penis and a jewelled skull) and spitting on the cross. It was alleged that everyone who became a Templar had to become a sodomite, and that the initiation ceremony including kissing the mouth, navel and anus of his sponsor. The ceremonies to Baphomet took place in front of young virgins and female demons.

  The knights were tortured so brutally that thirty six of them died within days of their arrest. In November that year Pope Clement V, a sick weakling, issued a Bull ordering all kings to arrest Templars. At this stage, no one could afford to allow the Templars to regain their power. For three years, Templars were tortured, and in 1310, 54 of them were burned to death, all refusing to confess to the charges of devil-worship. By 1312, the Pope had to reluctantly admit that the charge of heresy would not stand up; but he dissolved the order.

  Jacques de Molay had confessed under horrible tortures, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Exposed in public before Notre Dame to make a confession, he dismayed everyone by declaring that his only offence was to lie under torture, and that the Order was innocent. The following day, at sunset, he was burned alive on a slow fire.

  CHAPTER 9

  The First Witch Trial

  In 1275, a sixty year old woman named Angéle de la Barthe was tried before the Inquisitor Hugues de Baniols at Toulouse. The prime charge was of heresy (Toulouse had been the centre of heresy); but she was also charged with having had sexual intercourse with a demon, and given birth to a monster. This creature had to be fed on the flesh of dead babies, so Angéle either murdered children, or dug up their corpses from graveyards. The confession was undoubtedly obtained from her by torture. Angéle de la Barthe was sentenced to be burned to death.

  CHAPTER 10

  Jehanne de Brigue

  The first secular trial for witchcraft—as distinguished from heresy—took place in Paris in 1390.

  The oddity of the case of Jehanne de Brigue is that she was probably guilty of practising ‘sorcery’. The case against her was brought by a man called Jehane de Ruilly—whose complaint seems to have been that Jehanne saved his life by witchcraft. He had been so ill that he had been given only a week to live. He consulted Jehanne de Brigue, who had a reputation as a witch—in fact, she had been jailed for it at Meaux. Jehanne told him that he had been ‘hexed’ (or bewitched) by his ex-mistress Gilete, who had borne him two children. However, Jehanne’s ‘charms’—making a waxen figure of Gilete, and suckling two toads—apparently worked, and Ruilly recovered.

  Jehanne at first denied being a witch, but after three months in prison, admitted that she had learned witchcraft from her aunt, who had taught her to summon a demon called Haussibut. She had cured Ruilly, she said, with the help of Haussibut. The court sentenced her to death, but delayed the sentence because she was pregnant. Jehanne decided to appeal to the Parlement of Paris.

  The Parlement—consisting of twelve men—was less sympathetic than she had hoped, and suggested that she should be ‘put to the torture’. Hereupon, Jehanne confessed that the whole affair had been inspired by Ruilly’s wife Macette, who hated him because he beat her. According to Jehanne, Ruilly had sickened because he was being poisoned by a ‘philtre’ concocted by her and Macette; they had also made a waxen image of him and presumably stuck pins in it or performed other black magic ceremonies.

  Macette at first denied everything; but after being placed on the rack, decided to confess. On August 11, 1391, both women were led to the Chatelet aux Halles, where mitres were placed on their heads as a sign that they were sorcerers; then both were led to the pig market, where they were to be burned alive. However, there were still further doubts and consultations. Lawyers argued that since no one had died, the death sentence was too harsh. But at a supplementary hearing, Ruilly declared that his page had recently killed two toads in the courtyard of his house. This was regarded as clinching evidence. On August 19th, 1391, both women were burned to death.

  Were Jehanne and Macette guilty as charged? The chief problem in all witchcraft cases is that confessions under torture, or threat of torture, are valueless as evidence. Rossell Hope Robbins quotes a moving letter from Johannes Junius, burgomaster of Bamberg, accused of witchcraft in 1628, to his daughter Veronica, ‘..the executioner put the thumbscrew on me so that the blood spurted from the nails ... so that for four weeks I could not use my hands..’ The executioner himself finally said: ‘Sir, I beg you for God’s sake confess something, whether it be true or not.. One torture will follow another until you say you are a witch..’ He was forced to invent absurdities about a Sabbat and about plotting to kill his children. When his invention dried up they proposed to subject him to the strappado in which the hands are bound behind the back and the vict
im hauled into the air by a rope around his wrists, so the shoulder joints are twisted. They proposed to push Junius off a ladder in this position, so his arms would have become dislocated; so he invented more absurdities. The letter ends: ‘Good night, for your father Johannes Junius will never see you more.’

  Jehanne de Brigue was also, at one point, stripped naked and tied to a ladder; it was this that led her to implicate Macette. So the whole involvement of Macette is suspect. It does seem likely that Jehanne was practising some kind of witchcraft against Ruilly, and that he suspected as much, which explains why he accused her in the first place. (After all, he otherwise had no reason, since she had ‘cured’ him.)

  So the case of Jehanne de Brigue illustrates the difficulty encountered by a modern commentator in understanding the 'witchcraft craze’. But we can justly accuse the Parlement of Paris of over-reacting to Jehanne de Brigue’s misdemeanours. It is clear that this over-reaction caused the death of thousands of innocent people, like Johannes Junius. But let this not blind us to the fact that the Church was reacting to a reality, and not to a pure delusion.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Malleus Maleficarum

  The most influential book on witchcraft was the work of two Dominicans; it did more to fan the flames of witch hysteria than any other single work. Jacob Sprenger was Dean of Cologne University, and Heinrich Kramer was the Prior of a monastery. Their book Malleus Maleficarum means Hammer of Witches. Montague Summers calls it ‘one of the most important, wisest and weightiest books of the world’. Rossell Hope Robbins calls it ‘the most important and most sinister work on demonology ever written’. The truth lies between the two.

  In spite of Pope John XXII’s bull Super illius specula in 1326, which allowed Inquisitors to treat witchcraft itself as a crime (instead of heresy), the witch persecutions started off slowly. In 1459-60, the Inquisitors accused various people of Arras, in northern France of witchcraft and heresy, torturing a weak minded woman named Deniselle Grenières to make her name accomplices. Deniselle and four people she named were burned alive; but when the Inquisitors went on to arrest and torture others, commonsense prevailed, and the Archbishop of Rheims and two bishops declared the whole thing to be an illusion, and the Parlement of Paris ordered the release of the suspects—most of whom had been tortured. This was also a triumph for the views of the Canon Episcopi which declared witchcraft an illusion. In Germany also, witchcraft persecution was sporadic and brief.

  Pope Innocent VIII, who came to the papal throne in 1484, was deeply disturbed by this general disbelief in witches. He admired Heinrich Kramer who had been Inquisitor for Tyrol, Salzburg, Bohemia and Moravia since 1474, and who had written an influential tract on witchcraft. So one of the first things Innocent did on becoming Pope was to issue a bull Summis desiderantes affectibus (‘desiring with the most profound anxiety’) which denounced those ‘who have abandoned themselves to demons, incubi and succubi’ and praised ‘our dear sons Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger’ for trying to stamp out this evil. This was in 1484, two years, later there appeared the first edition of the huge tract Malleus Maleficarum, discussing witchcraft at enormous length and explaining how it could be combated. No doubt its questions about sexual matters made it one of the most widely read books of its time, ‘..the foulest venereal acts are performed by such devils, not for the sake of pleasure, but for the pollution of the souls and bodies of those to whom they act as incubi and succubi’. Demons can have sexual intercourse with witches, but the semen with which they pollute them is received from another (presumably a male witch). There is a learned discussion as to whether witches can cause a man’s penis to disappear. Understandably, this piquant combination of sex and demonology went into several editions and many languages. Significantly, it mentions that witches worship Diana and Herodias, and says that incubi are satyrs, called Pans in Greek. The Church clearly suspected that witchcraft was a pagan cult.

  The invention of printing turned the Hammer of Witches into the first best-seller, and spread the witch hysteria across Europe.

  Young witch being visited by an incubus.

  CHAPTER 12

  Magic and Magicians

  Very close to the witchcraft tradition, yet clearly separated from it, is the ancient tradition of natural magic. This tradition undergoes certain fundamental changes after the appearance of the Zohar, or Book of Splendour, around 1300; thereafter it becomes specifically ‘cabbalistic’ (based on the Kabbalah).

  Magic may be defined as man’s discovery of the peculiar powers of his own mind, and the recognition that his mental efforts could influence reality. The shamans who drew images of wild animals on the walls of caves believed that their ceremonies could influence the hunt. We may regard this simply as a manifestation of early man’s religious impulse, in which he asked the gods to help the hunters. But anyone who knows something about modern African witchcraft and sorcery, or the voodoo of Haiti and Brazil, may feel that it was not entirely a matter of superstition; there is a great deal of evidence that magic ‘works’. At the moment we are in no position to know how it works, since there are two major unknown factors: the powers of the unconscious mind, and the hidden forces of nature. When a dowser’s rod responds to underground water—or to standing stones—a part of his mind is responding to forces that have so far remained unidentified by science. When a ‘psychometrist’ holds a letter, or some other object, in his hand, and is able to describe the person to whom it belongs, he is apparently picking up some kind of recording, whose nature is probably similar to that of an ordinary magnetic tape recording; but again, we do not know what forces cause the recording, and what ‘picks it up’. (The late Tom Lethbridge thought that electrical fields are involved.) Telepathy is now so well authenticated that even the most sceptical psychical researchers would agree that it is now ‘proven’; Upton Sinclair called it ‘mental radio’; but again, we do not know anything about the transmitter, the receiver, or the ‘ether’ that carries the transmission.

  But it is probably true to say that the basis of all ‘occultism’ in all ages has been a belief in some form of ‘psychic ether’ that can transmit thoughts, feelings, impulses and mental acts of will.

  Magic is also based upon the notion that there exists a world of disembodied entities, or spirits, and that these can be persuaded to carry out certain tasks. Commonsense finds the idea unacceptable; but again, the study of modern witchcraft in Africa and Brazil suggests that it could be correct.

  The earliest magic, then, involved trying to influence wild animals through drawings or clay models. Sorcerers then discovered that these methods would also work on human beings. Fertility rituals could be used for blasting crops as well as encouraging them. ‘Black magic’ came into being. Budge’s book Egyptian Magic links together the use of ‘shabti’ figures—small wooden images placed in the tomb to perform services for the deceased in the afterworld—and other forms of ritual magic. In short—to state the obvious—magic sprang out of religion, and was always closely linked with it.

  One of the earliest magical texts, The Key of Solomon, contains rituals for destroying enemies by cursing a waxen image, and for cursing food to make it cause illness. It is emphasised that these ceremonies must be pronounced at the right time: for example food is cursed when Mars or Saturn are in the ascendant. Ancient man was intuitively aware of the forces of the universe—of how the sun and moon affected the earth’s magnetic field, and of how it was also influenced by the planets. The great stone circles were almost certainly calendars—or calculators—to enable the priests to perform their rituals at precisely the right moment, when the forces of the mind could combine with the forces of the earth. Again, this tradition can be found in all ritual magic.

  An equally important part of ritual magic was—and is—the consecrating of talismans. Again, the assumption is that a state of mind can be ‘recorded’ upon natural objects. Stephen Skinner, a modern historian of magic, has written: ‘Talismans are made to specific specification
s of ritual purity and with specific designs for a particular type of energy. These work like storage batteries and, if properly consecrated, will go on performing their job for long after the consecration, before they ‘wind down’. It is the type of talisman that can be used extremely effectively by a person who merely knows the details of its construction, quite independent of any faith he may have in it.’ He goes on: ‘The main considerations for producing such talismans are (1) that the right kind of force (usually categorised by planet or element) is employed. (It is as much use using a talisman of Mars in an operation of love as trying to use a magnet to pick up wooden blocks.) (2) The talisman, like the battery, must be charged, by its cutting, casting and inscribing which are to be done in a specific way at a specific hour of each day, (3) the talisman, again like the battery, must be connected appropriately to the thing, event or person which it is designed to affect/alter or cause. If all this is done properly, the rawest non-psychic novice will get results.’ According to Skinner, magic works because it is an exact science, designed to take advantage of certain energies of the solar system.