The Witch-cult in Western Europe: A Study in AnthropologyMurray, Margaret Alice
Religion
The Witch-cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology
Murray, Margaret Alice
Ethnology; Witchcraft -- Great Britain
'the devill had a great meeting of witches in Loudian, where, among
others, was a warlock who formerly had been admitted to the ministrie
in the presbyterian tymes, and when the bishops came in, conformed
with them. But being found flagitious and wicked, was deposed by them,
and now he turnes a preacher under the devill of hellish doctrine; for
the devill at this tyme preaches to his witches really (if I may so
term it) the doctrine of the infernall pitt, viz. blasphemies against
God and his son Christ. Among other things, he told them that they
were more happy in him than they could be in God; him they saw, but
God they could not see; and in mockrie of Christ and his holy
ordinance of the sacrament of his supper, he gives the sacrament to
them, bidding them eat it and to drink it in remembrance of himself.
This villan was assisting to Sathan in this action, and in
preaching.'[589]
Fountainhall in writing of the same convention of witches says that the
Devil 'adventured to give them the communion or holy sacrament, the bread
was like wafers, the drink was sometimes blood sometimes black moss-water.
He preached and most blasphemously mocked them, if they offered to trust in
God who left them miserable in the world, and neither he nor his Son Jesus
Christ ever appeared to them when they called on them, as he had, who would
not cheat them.'[590]
The Abbé Guibourg (1679), head of the Paris witches, 'a fait chez la
Voisin, revêtu d'aube, d'étole et de manipule, une conjuration.'[591] The
same Abbé celebrated mass more than once over the body of a woman and with
the blood of a child, sacrificed for the occasion, in the chalice (see
section on Sacrifice). The woman, who served as the altar for these masses,
was always nude, and was the person for whose benefit the ceremony was
performed. Marguerite Montvoisin makes this clear:
'Il est vrai aussi qu'une sage-femme qui demeurait au coin de la rue
des Deux-Portes, distilla aussi les entrailles d'un enfant dont la
mère y avait accouché.... Avant la distillation, les entrailles de
l'enfant et l'arrière-faix de la mère avaient été portés à
Saint-Denis, à Guibourg, par sa mère, la sage-femme et la mère de
l'enfant, sur le ventre de laquelle sa mère, à son retour, lui dit que
Guibourg avait dit la messe.'[592]
Guibourg acknowledged that, besides the one just quoted, he celebrated
three masses in this way. At the first he used a conjuration. 'Il dit la
deuxième messe dans une masure sur les remparts de Saint-Denis, sur la même
femme, avec les mêmes cérémonies.... Dit la troisième à Paris chez la
Voisin sur la même femme.'[593] The woman mentioned in Guibourg's
confession was Madame de Montespan herself. The following conjuration was
used at the first mass:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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