THE TIMES FOR SABBATHS

D 30 October 2010 H 10:16 A terrificator C 0 messages

Oct.30th, 2010 - The oldest demonstrations of sorcery are lost in the mists of time. During Antiquity, Petronius, and especially Apuleius, spoke already of the strange night meetings they attended, in the hope to obtain the favours of the gods.

However the golden age of the Sabbath was certainly the Middle Ages. At that time, indeed, were ceremonies inspired by the ancient mysteries: Saturnalia, Orgies, feasts for honouring the greek god Priape, whose names evoke rites where licentiousness was the rule.

The great Sabbaths were celebrated during the periods of equinoxes and solstices, the 21st of March, June, September and December, whereas the small ones, took place weekly on Wednesday, Thursday or Saturday, on the occasion of old pagan feasts. After the first millennium, Sabbaths were often the pretext for secret meetings where plots were fomented by serfdoms, tired to be the slaves of despotic lords.

Who haunted the Sabbaths? Wizards and witches, serfdoms and churls, middle-class men, even nobles who were not afraid of promiscuity, their masks allowed them to preserve their anonymity. Men were a minority there. These ceremonies had a matriarchal flavour and where held by contempt by the church which during millenia regarded women as the symbol of the sin.

Sabbaths were the revenge of women on men because among ten members, one counted near nine women and the male judges and ecclesiastics were particularly keen to put them in jail, to torture them
and roast them alive at the stake.

The places for Sabbaths were selected carefully. Generally deserted places, moors or feet of gibbets, crossing of ways or cemeteries, dolmen or menhir, hovels or castles ruins that people fled from the fallen of the day in fear of vrykolakas and striges. Before the ceremonies, some witches greased their body with an ointment made up of the lard of a killed child, the heart of the child was mingled with poisonous and toxic plants: belladonna, hyoscyamus, jimson weed, hashish, mandrake, nepenthes… All these plants are dangerous poisons, moreover hallucinogens which act upon intelligence.

The witches thus took care of their body with this reputed magic ointment, pronouncing the formula: "Emen-Hétan, Hémen-Hétan." (Here and there.) Then they went to bed, closed their eyes and asserted, they went out by the chimney, symbol of the fires of hell, to transport themselves on the place of the Sabbath.

The popular imagery representing the witch overlapping her brush is still present in the memories. However, they borrowed also other means of locomation: a goat, a black mare or an ass.

The members attending to the Sabbaths undressed themselves, keeping only their mask and waiting for Satan. If this one was a long time coming, one of the witches was used to stretch on the ground near a cauldron which sang on embers, offering herself to Satan, begging him to come to possess her.

THE WITCH SONG

First, she sang the old witch’s song:
"Black spirits and white, red spirits and grey,
Mingle, mingle mingle, you that mingle may.
Here’s the blood of a bat,
Put in that, oh, put in that.
Here’s libbard’s bane.
Put it again.
Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may."

Then she sang her work song:
"Two spoons of sherry
Three oz. of yeast,
Half a pound of unicorn,
And God bless the feast,
Shake them in a collander,
Bang them in a collander,
Bang them to a chop,
Simmer slightly, snip up nicely,
Jump, skip, hop.
Knit one, knot one, purl two together,
Pip one and pop one and pluck the secret feather.
Baste in mod. oven,
God bless our coven,
Tra-la-la!
Three toads in a jar.
Te-he-he!
Put in the frog’s knee.
Peep out of the lace curtain.
There goes the Toplady girl, she’s up to no good that’s certain.
Oh, what a lovely baby!
How nice it would go with gravy.
Pinch the salt.

Here she pinched it very nastily.
Turn the malt."
Here she began twidling round widdershins, in a vulgar way.
With a hey-nonny-nonny and I don’t mean maybe.

At the end of this song, Mrs Mim took a sentimental turn and delivered herself of several himns, of a blasphemous nature, and of a tender love lyric which she sang sotto-voce with trills. It was:

"My love is like a red, red nose
His tail is soft and tawny,
And everywhere my lovely goes
I call him Nick or Horny."

Nowaday, Sabbaths exist pratically no more in the Western Europe. Indeed it seems difficult to hold a secret meeting in a moor or an even desert place without no one not being informed! ... and so, the black masses have replaced gradually the Sabbaths, held in secret in closed and more secured places...

Do people believe always in the devil at the begining of the XXIst century? Our answer will be illustrated by this recent report: 24th-oct,2010 - in Versailles, close to Paris, eleven people of african origin have jumped of the second floor of their building because they said "we have seen the devil". Ten people are wounded and a baby is deceased." No comments are necessary.