If becoming a witch rarely brought either wealth or erotic pleasure, it had other rewards to offer. A witch was able to perform maleficium, i.e. to harm her neighbours by occult means. The pact meant that the Devil would demand this from his servant, but it also meant that he would supply her with supernatural power for the purpose. With the Devil’s aid a witch could ruin the life of anyone she chose. She could bring sudden illness, or mental disorder, or maiming accidents, or death, on man, woman or child. She could bedevil a marriage by producing sterility or miscarriages in the woman, or impotence in the man. She could make cattle sicken or die, or cause hailstorms or unseasonable rain to ruin the crops. This was her reward; for a witch’s will, like her master’s, was wholly malignant, wholly set on destruction.
Witches were believed to specialize in the killing of babies and small children. More than mere malice was at work here — witches needed the corpses for all sorts of reasons. They were cannibals, with an insatiable craving for very young flesh; according to some writers of the time, to kill, cook and eat a baby which had not yet been baptized was a witch’s greatest pleasure. But the flesh of infants was also full of supernatural power. As an element in magical concoctions it could be used to kill other human beings, or else to enable a captured witch to keep silent under torture. It could also be blended in a salve which, applied to a witch’s body, enabled her to fly.
At regular intervals witches were required to betake themselves to the sacrilegious and orgiastic gatherings known first as “synagogues”, later as “sabbats”. There were ordinary sabbats, which were usually held on Fridays and were small affairs, involving only the witches of a given neighbourhood; and there were œcumenical sabbats, held with great ceremony three or four times a year, and attended by witches from all quarters. A sabbat was always a nocturnal happening, ending either at midnight or, at the very latest, at cockcrow. As for the locality, it might be a churchyard, a crossroads, the foot of a gallows; though the larger sabbats were commonly held at the summit of some famous mountain in a faraway region.
To attend the sabbat, and in particular to attend the œcumenical sabbat, witches had to cover great distances in very little time. They did so by flying. Having anointed themselves with the magic salve they would fly straight out of their bedrooms, borne aloft on demonic rams, goats, pigs, oxen, black horses; or else on sticks, shovels, spits, broomsticks. And meanwhile the husband or wife would sleep on peacefully, quite unaware of these strange happenings; sometimes a stick laid in the bed would take not only the place but also the appearance of the absent spouse. Thanks to this arrangement, some witches were able to deceive their mates for years on end.
The very numerous accounts of the sabbat differ from one another only in minor details, so it is easy to construct a representative picture. The sabbat was presided over by the Devil, who now took on the shape not of a mere man but of a monstrous being, half man and half goat: a hideous black man with enormous horns, a goat’s beard and goat’s legs, sometimes also with bird’s claws instead of hands and feet. He sat on a high ebony throne; light streamed from his horns, flames spouted from his huge eyes. The expression of his face was one of immense gloom, his voice was harsh and terrible to hear.
The term “sabbat”, like the term “synagogue”, was of course taken from the Jewish religion, which was traditionally regarded as the quintessence of anti-Christianity, indeed as a form of Devil-worship. For the sabbat was above all an assertion of the Devil’s mastery over his servants, the witches. First the witches knelt down and prayed to the Devil, calling him Lord and God, and repeating their renunciation of the Christian faith; after which each in turn kissed him, often on his left foot, his genitals or his anus. Next delinquent witches reported for punishment, which usually consisted of whippings. In Roman Catholic countries witches would confess their sins — for instance, attending church — and the Devil would impose whippings as a penance; but everywhere witches who had missed a sabbat, or who had performed insufficient maleficia, were soundly whipped. Then came the parody of divine service. Dressed in black vestments, with mitre and surplice, the Devil would preach a sermon, warning his followers against reverting to Christianity and promising them a far more blissful paradise than the Christian heaven. Seated again on his black chair, with the king and queen of the witches on either side of him, he would receive the offerings of the faithful — cakes and flour, poultry and corn, sometimes money.
The proceedings ended in a climax of profanity. Once more the witches adored the Devil and kissed his anus, while he acknowledged their attentions in a peculiarly noxious manner. A parody of the Eucharist was given, in both kinds — but what was received was an object like the sole of a shoe, black, bitter and hard to chew, and a jug full of nauseous black liquid. After this a meal would be served; and often this too would consist of revolting substances — fish and meat tasting like rotten wood, wine tasting like manure drainings, the flesh of babies. Finally, an orgiastic dance, to the sound of trumpets, drums and fifes. The witches would form a circle, facing outwards, and dance around a witch standing bent over, her head touching the ground, with a candle stuck in her anus to serve as illumination. The dance would become a frantic and erotic orgy, in which all things, including sodomy and incest, were permitted. At the height of the orgy the Devil would copulate with every man, woman and child present. Finally he would bring the sabbat to a close by sending the participants off to their homes, with instructions to perform every conceivable maleficium against their Christian neighbours.
That is how witches were imagined when and where witch-hunting was at its height. It will be observed that they were thought of as a collectivity: though they perform maleficium individually, they are a society, assembling at regular intervals, bound together by communal rites, subject to a rigid, centralized discipline. In every respect they represent a collective inversion of Christianity — and an inversion of a kind that could only be achieved by former Christians. That is why non-Christians, such as Jews and Gypsies, though they might be accused of maleficium, were never accused of being witches in the full sense of the term. Witchcraft was regarded as apostasy — and apostasy in its most extreme, most systematic, most highly organized form. Witches were regarded as above all a sect of Devil-worshippers.
How did this strange stereotype come into being? Ever since historical research into these matters began, in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, two principal explanations have been offered. Some scholars have argued that a sect of witches really existed, and that the authorities who pursued and tried witches were in effect breaking the local organizations of that sect. Others have argued that the notion of a sect of witches first developed as a by-product of the campaign of the Inquisition against Catharism, and that the stereotype was first used in a massive inquisitorial witch-hunt that claimed hundreds of victims in southern France during the fourteenth century.