Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 24.djvu/502

 notoriety and power, and loved the consciousness of causing fear, in spite of the risk attached. Many perfectly sound-minded and innocent women could not be sure that they were not witches. They had dreams suggested by the popular notions, or had suffered from nervous affections which fell in with the popular superstitions.

There is, however, a certain amount of anthropological interest to be obtained from the various beliefs centered around the mediaeval witchcraft delusion. Thus cannibalism, human sacrifice, and the eating of the man-god are primitive ceremonials. It is not to be believed, however, that the civilized people of Europe ever practised these customs. Nevertheless, it is not unusual to accuse unpopular personages of such offenses. Thus the Jews of Russia, as well as the so-called witches, have constantly been under the accusation of child-eating. Riding on broomsticks, the possession of familiar spirits, the power to blight crops and injure animals and people, the carnal intercourse with demons, are beliefs of varying antiquity. None of them have ever been founded on the remotest facts, yet some of them are still accepted as truths by the ignorant masses of Europe today.

The third variety of witchcraft ritual, as mentioned above, may be classed under the inverted Christianity heading. Thus the Witches' Sabbath, the homage to the devil, the use of urine as a substitute for holy water, the peculiar burning of candles, and the still more peculiar partaking of the Devil's sacrament; what are these customs but a mockery of the Christian ritual? Why should Miss Murray seek to refer these rites back to paganism when their true explanation is so apparent?

It would be needless to discuss further the bewildering mass of false inferences which Miss Murray has extracted from her material. If, on the one hand, it may startle the casual reader to be told that the devil had intercourse with his worshippers by means of artificial phalli, this blunder pales in comparison with the author's later presumption in accusing Joan of Arc of actual witchcraft. Truly, if history is to receive any benefit from anthropology, as it well may, books of the present nature cannot be regarded as furthering the interest of such a movement.

It may be that the present book has a certain amount of scientific value inasfar as it has organized and presented the evidence of the witch trials in Western Europe. But the main thesis of the book, that "witchcraft was a definite religion with beliefs, ritual, and organization as highly developed as that of any other cult in the world" remains, and will always remain, unproven.

Author:Edwin Meyer Loeb