The Phantom World; or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c.Calmet, Augustin
Religion
The Phantom World; or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c.
Calmet, Augustin
Apparitions; Demonology; Spirits
The cooper not believing this, told him that assuredly he was come
thither to rob him, and had him taken before the magistrate of Bar,
who having interrogated him concerning the circumstance just spoken
of, he related to him with great simplicity, that, having set off
about four o'clock in the morning to come from Heiligenstein to
Bar--there being but a quarter of an hour's distance between those two
places--he saw on a sudden, in a place covered with verdure and grass,
a magnificent feast, brightly illuminated, where a number of persons
were highly enjoying themselves with a sumptuous repast and by dancing;
that two women of his acquaintance, inhabitants of Bar, having asked him
to join the company, he sat down to table and partook of the good cheer,
for a quarter of an hour at the most; after that, one of the guests
having cried out "_Cito, Cito_," he found himself carried away gently
to the cooper's garret, without knowing how he had been transported there.
This is what he declared in presence of the magistrate. The most
singular circumstance of this history is, that hardly had the
carpenter deposed what we read, than those two women of Bar who had
invited him to join their feast hung themselves, each in her own
house.
The superior magistrates, fearing to carry things so far as to
compromise perhaps half the inhabitants of Bar, judged prudently that
they had better not inquire further; they treated the carpenter as a
visionary, and the two women who hung themselves were considered as
lunatics; thus the thing was hushed up, and the matter ended.
If this is what they call the witches' sabbath, neither the carpenter,
nor the two women, nor apparently the other guests at the festival,
had need to come mounted on a demon; they were too near their own
dwellings to have recourse to superhuman means in order to have
themselves transported to the place of meeting. We are not informed
how these guests repaired to this feast, nor how they returned each
one to their home; the spot was so near the town, that they could
easily go and return without any extraneous assistance.
But if secrecy was necessary, and they feared discovery, it is very
probable that the demon transported them to their homes through the
air before it was day, as he had transported the carpenter to the
cooper's garret. Whatever turn may be given to this event, it is
certainly difficult not to recognize a manifest work of the evil
spirit in the transportation of the carpenter through the air, who
finds himself, without being aware of it, in a well-fastened garret.
The women who hung themselves, showed clearly that they feared
something still worse from the law, had they been convicted of magic
and witchcraft. And had not their accomplices also, whose names must
have been declared, as much to fear?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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