It is with these and similar questions that the first part of the "Witch-hammer" is occupied. The second part, describing the various kinds and effects of witchcraft and the celebration of the Witches' Sabbath is prefaced with an account of the power of witches. They produce hail, thunder and storms whenever they wish; they fly through the air from one place to another; they can make themselves insensible on the rack; they often subdue the judge's mind by charms, and _confuse him through compassion_; they deprive men and animals of reproductive power; they can see the absent, and predict coming events; they can fill, at their pleasure, human hearts with relentless hatred and passionate love; they destroy the foetus in the womb, cause miscarriages, change themselves and others into cats and were-wolfs; nay, they are able to enchant and kill men and beasts by their very looks. Their strongest passion is to eat the flesh of children; still they eat only unchristened children: if at any time a baptized child is taken by them, it happens by special divine concession. Their compact with the devil is of two kinds: either a solemn one entered into with all formalities, or a mere private contract. The former is concluded as follows: The witches assemble upon a day set apart by the devil. He appears in the assembly, exhorts them to faithfulness, and promises them glory, happiness and long life, and orders the older witches to introduce the novices whom he puts to the test and causes to take the oath of allegiance; whereupon he teaches them to prepare from the limbs of new-born babes witch-potions and witch-salves, and presents them with a powder, instructing them how it is to be used to the injury of men and beasts.[49] When then the novice has renewed the ceremony of allegiance on the next Witch Sabbath she is a genuine witch. The children needed for the witches' kettles and the sabbath banquets are obtained as follows: The victims are killed by looks or by the above-mentioned powder, when they lie in their cradle or in bed with their mothers. Simple people will then believe that they have died from some natural cause,--from sickness or suffocation. Then when buried the witches steal them from the grave. It has happened that judges have opened, after similar confessions, the grave and found the child in it; but in such cases the judge must consider that the devil is a great taskmaster who may have cheated the eyes of the servants of justice, in order to protect his servants, and in such a case the confession of the witch (forced from her by torture) should prove more than the easily deluded vision of the judge. [What a triumph of supernaturalistic argumentation!]