The countersign of the Witches’ Sabbath was the closed hand with the thumb between the first and second fingers pointing downward to the abyss. The meeting place was lighted only by the altar fire, where the human sacrifice sizzled to attract the phantoms and ghosts. And the devotees, singing mystic songs, danced hand in hand in a circle around the god Pan. They used the holy grail like the churches and mystic societies, and the drafts from this poisonous cup, the singing, the whirling dance and the incense from the altar brought on the oft-times fatal frenzies in which the victims fell shrieking to the ground, as they do among certain Christian sects. They were seized and possessed by foul fiends from the Pit, or elementary spirits, and sometimes by the spirits of serpents that materialized themselves in the writhing human victims and crawled out of the prostrate bodies in plain view of the audience. There in the blackest hour of the night the Vinum Sabbati was prepared, a few grains of white powder thrown into a glass of water. And each one that drank found himself attended by a companion, a shape of glamour and unearthly allurement beckoning him apart to share in joys more exquisite, more piercing than the thrill of any dream.—Machen’s House of Souls, 438. Similar to these convulsionaries are the miserable creatures in Russia afflicted by strange disorders, which people attributed to possession by the Devil. They throng the entrance of cathedrals without daring to enter, lest their controlling demons cast them on the ground. At the Elevation of the Host, these half maniacs, half mediums begin crowing like cocks, barking, bellowing and braying, and finally fall down in fearful convulsions. They prophesy and see visions. Paracelsus, the magician, could cast the demons out of the persons so possessed by the power of a stronger demon which he carried around in his pocket. That reminds us of the Salem witch that fled from a mob of Christolators who were intent on burning her, but when they were about to seize her, she crawled into a bottle, and nobody ever saw her afterward. In the Devil’s Mass of the Yezdis, or Devil worshippers and sorcerers of Mesopotamia, the Jakshas or aerial spirits carry their prayers to the Devil and the Afrites of the desert. In their prayer meeting they dance in a ring about their high priest and whirl and leap in the air and cut each other with daggers until they are soaked with blood for the purpose of attracting the ghosts. The mystic circle induces Satan to manifest himself in miracles. Enormous globes of fire appear and assume the shapes of monsters.