5 - Witchcraft on the Wing

Among the ancient myths that carried over to the Middle Ages was that of a skyland called Magonia, whose inhabitants sent fleets of ships disguised as clouds to plague the people of this earth. Very probably, the shapes of certain clouds suggested mammoth sailing ships, while the way in which low clouds scudded swiftly before a heavy wind seemed further proof that they were bound upon some monstrous mission. But the final and most convincing touch was supplied by hailstorms, which were plausibly attributed to the Magonians dumping cargoes overboard, obviously with malice aforethought, because they not only damaged crops, but drove people to shelter, so that it was impossible for people to protect their fields.

This led to the belief that the cloudmen landed their ships at the finish of such storms, loaded the crops that the hailstones had beaten down, and took off again for Magonia, greatly enriched at the expense of the poor earthly peasants, who were left to reap the pitiful remnants of their devastated harvests.

This fitted the pattern of ancient pirate raids along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, as well as later ravages of the Vikings and the Norsemen on the coasts of England and France. Just as such invasions were often aided by spies who signalled from land, so did the Magonians depend upon treacherous earthly folk. Their raids were blamed on a special class of witches known as Tempes-tarii, who actually raised the storms that brought the ruthless cloudmen.

Fleecy clouds, drifting over the ripening fields, were cover for Magonian scout ships, picking up signals from the ground below. Flashes of lightning, rumbles of thunder and especially chill winds that preceded hailstorms, were proof that the Tempestarii were at work. After the damage was done, the outraged peasants, looking up to the sky, not only saw long rakish clouds that represented departing Magonian ships; sometimes they spotted stray, scudding wisps that resembled human shapes. Those, of course, were the Tempestarii, chasing after the Magonians to collect their fees, fitting the notion of witches flying into the sky.

As a result, the peasantry was easily bamboozled by a special class of practitioners who claimed they could nullify the machinations of the Tempestarii, but demanded a share of the undamaged crops in return. Thus the ancient art of witchcraft merged with the coming science of insurance. Unfortunately, these practitioners lacked the modern devices so necessary to their trade — statistics and computers. When they guessed wrong, which was often, they attributed it to increased activity by the Tempestarii and a witchhunt was apt to follow.

Charles Godfrey Leland (1824-1903), noted student of European folklore and gypsy sorcery, has traced the Magonia legend back to the ancient Etruscans (about 600 B.C. or before), basing his findings on the survival of such myths among the natives of modern Tuscany. Other scholars, however, have found similar legends throughout the Orient, notably in Japan, and amid the Mayan lore of Mexico and Central America.

Around the year 820, Agobard, Bishop of Lyons, rescued three men and a woman from a mob that was about to stone them to death, thinking that they were Magonians who had fallen from one of their cloud ships. More probably they were stray members from a band of roving gypsies. Agobard also denounced other superstitions prevalent in his time, but to little avail. They continued to spread and the Magonian legend was confirmed four centuries later by a historical writer, Gervase of Tilbury, who told how one of their ships dropped an anchor from a low cloud, only to have it hook so firmly in a mound of earth that they could not free it.

Thereupon a sailor came down the rope, but before he could release the anchor, he slumped to the ground, gasping from the increased air pressure. Some people arrived and started pulling the rope downward and the Magonians, hearing the shouts from below, cut the rope and took off through the clouds, abandoning their comrade to his fate. He soon died from the crushing force of air pressure upon his chest and was buried with due ceremony, while the anchor was mounted over the door of the local church as proof positive that the Magonians had been there.

Oddly, this account may have had some bearing on modern talk of flying saucers and mysterious space ships, a phenomena which can be traced back through the centuries. Maybe the Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO's) of today were the things that they reported then. Whether they were or not, is something that does not matter. That people will believe in anything, no matter how absurd, is an axiom, or self-evident truth that does not have to be proven.

Since witches could raise tempests at command, they naturally could perform other wonders, such as damaging property, killing animals or people, causing injuries, sickness, love, hate, in fact about anything they wanted, especially if it happened to be baleful. This demanded a cooperative effort on the part of witches, including the instruction of new recruits, the exchange of trade secrets, and above all, worship of the Devil as grand master of the entire show. Hence, by the time such aristocratic Satanists as Gilles de Rais were invoking His Mephistophelean Majesty with bloody rites in secret crypts, witches of the commoner sort were allegedly assembling in vast conclaves for the same insidious purpose.

This was by no means a mere reversion to the almost totally forgotten Diana cult in a new guise of devil worship, though a few off-trail authorities are inclined to such opinion. Other factors were definitely involved and loomed to greater proportions as time went on. Almost from its beginning, the Christian Church was confronted by one heresy after another, the term "heresy" meaning "a religious error held in willful and persistent opposition to the truth after it has been defined and declared by the Church in an authoritative manner."

Before the year 400 or so, the heretical trend was to inject pagan elements into the Christian faith, so a recurrence of Diana worship would have been understandable. But by that time, the Church had attained a distinctive character that rendered it virtually immune to such inroads. In later centuries, the situation changed. Then, many of the heresies became differences in the interpretation of Christian truths, which, according to one school of thought, did not really threaten the very life of the Church.

Others, however, saw a new and greater menace from such sects as the Cathars, or Cathari, who flourished from A.D. 900-1300. These worshippers attributed so much earthly power to Satan that they came to regard him as almost the equal of God in heaven. Hence the Cathari were charged with a dualistic form of worship and were accordingly branded as heretics. Wholesale suppression of such groups caused their scattered remnants to go underground and become still more virulent; while other sects arose who finally went all-out for devil worship.

About the year 1350, one cult, the Luciferians, were accused of catering to demons with rites as foul as they were fiendish. Their infernal ceremonies, according to confessions that some allegedly made to their inquisitors, read like something out of modern fantasy fiction. Possibly, when questioned, they tried to cover up their actual activities with fabrications that they thought were too ridiculous to be believed; yet they were. Or possibly, they remained so sullenly silent that their interrogators simply wrote their own imaginary accounts, confident that people generally would believe anything, which, in those times, they did.

Until that period, witchcraft, though denounced and punishable in various ways, had seldom evoked severe penalties from civil and ecclesiastical courts. But witchcraft was apparently on the increase, if only because more people were on the watch for it, so the obvious conclusion was that many cases were probably the outcrop of the underground activities of the suppressed heretic sects. There was one sure way to counteract that; namely, to denounce witchcraft itself as a form of heresy and treat it just as rigorously.

During the three hundred years between 1450 and 1750, death at the stake was the common mode of dealing with heretics in Europe, and as it was believed that most witches were heretical in their views, witch-burning followed as a logical matter of course.

Actually, as we have already seen, witchcraft was surging to the fore in all its Satanic fury, prior to 1450, as witness the case of Gilles de Rais; and it was to carry over long after the year 1750, indeed into the world of today. But those three centuries represent the Great Witch Delusion in all its fiery fury. So widespread was the mania that no exact figures can be compiled as to the extent of its ravages, but conservative estimates run to about 200,000 victims, half of those in Germany alone, although others claim that the total may have run into millions.

So ardent was the urge to stamp out witchcraft that any trumped up charge was sufficient to bring an unfortunate victim to trial. Equally great were the efforts to tie in individual witches with groups ranging in size from local covens to massed assemblages, in order to prove the added crime of devil worship. Decrepit hags were frequently accused of witchery by spiteful neighbors and, since they were often too infirm to hobble to the alleged witch meetings, they were credited with riding broomsticks or fiends disguised as animals in order to reach their goal.

That rather unorthodox manner of transportation gave them unlimited range, but still allowed them an alibi if they were never seen to leave the hovels where they dwelt; so to offset that, imaginary flights were accepted as realities. Anyone seen and recognized as a participant in a diabolical conclave, had no course but to admit having been there, which, in turn, meant naming others who were present. During the years, such accounts increased in number because the interrogators found new and more terrifying instruments of torture for squeezing confessions from the persons they accused.

Germany was a special target of such campaigns, primarily because it had been a hotbed for so many rebellious outlanders who had indulged in diabolical rites. Some of those groups may have done no more than mock the solemn pomp of the Church, which the rebels felt was allied with the feudal barons who tried to rule them; while others might have represented outright Satanism. Either way, the fact that they persisted in secret was proof that the Devil had really taken over; hence the continued reports of vast assemblages of witches and their accompanying fiends on the summit of the Brocken.

Such a rendezvous was styled a sabbat, or witches' sabbath, and the Brocken was the reputed scene of an annual convention of international proportions, which brought witches from all parts of Europe to celebrate Walpurgis Night, the eve before May Day. Regional meetings were also held there and at certain high, forbidding summits, bearing the common title of Blocksburg, in countries other than Germany.

But lofty heights were not always needed for the grand Sabbats, as the more important events were known. In Brittany, witches were supposed to meet among the ancient cromlechs of that land, which like the ruins of Stonehenge are of Druid origin. In England, open commons served as meeting spots, though the witches sometimes preferred the depths of forest glades, where the Devil would obligingly appear to them at high noon. In the Channel Islands, between England and France, witches chose open beaches or the shelter of high rocks; but either formed convenient lookouts from which they could combine their efforts to produce sudden and unexpected storms to wreck the fishing fleets plying in those waters.

Lesser Sabbats were held in any handy place that people habitually shunned at night, such as a remote crossroad, a cemetery, a ravine, a ruined church or a supposedly haunted house. They were held weekly, originally on Thursdays, which through some form of rationalization, was regarded as neutral; but sooner or later, the Devil was allowed his due on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. That raised the question: Why shouldn't he have them all? So he was granted any day, which meant that every day could be Devil's day, where witches were involved.

The approximate data of 1450 is significant, as it represents one of the earliest mentions of the witches' sabbat. The link with the night riders who worshipped Diana is quite evident, along with Norse and other legends, including that of Magonia. The "flying ointment," as the mixture used by witches for aerial transportation came to be called, can be traced back to the time of Apuleius. The emergence of such old ideas in the new guise of devil worship simply served to mark witchcraft as a heinous crime indeed.

The pattern was set for things to come. As fast as witches were brought to trial, they were questioned regarding their attendance at their secret conclaves and the wilder they let their imagination run, the more their inquisitors embroidered upon it. On the contrary, if they minimized their descriptions, or truthfully detailed the stupid get-togethers of local malcontents who had nothing to gain and everything to lose, their confessions were reduced to the most sordid terms. Instead of feasting on rich delicacies, as described at so many Sabbats, they were presumably compelled to dine on pie baked from disinterred corpses, garnished plentifully with garbage.

On at least one occasion, the choicest delicacies were replaced with rancid, stinking fare and the finest wines were supplanted by a thick, unsavory liquid that looked, smelled and tasted like blood, because it was blood. Yet the participants were supposed to enjoy such banquets; and what was more, they did. Acceptance of such ghoulish provender was the sure way to establish oneself as a Grade-A witch.

Such ideas did not spring full-blown in the year 1450. Rather, they were the result of slow, but steady evolution during the next thirty-five or forty years, when they were forged, tempered and finally struck into the most powerful weapon of their day — the Malleus Maleficorum, or "Hammer of the Witches," as it was appropriately termed. This was a literary work penned by a pair of highly able, but much less amiable, authors, who set a pace for persecution that persisted for the next few centuries.

So strong were the strokes of that hammer, both theoretically and theologically, that the Malleus Maleficorum deserves a chapter of its own.