Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/71

 CHAPTER VII

ITCHES form a distinct caste, very small in number, which is kept and guarded with great secrecy. A witch is trained from infancy to her profession. The young novice, who must not be baptised, is adopted by some adept in the black art and brought up in her lair, a dilapidated cottage or a cave in the forest; there she is kept from all contact with other people. Her mistress does not allow her to see anybody, nor to go to the neighbouring village. During her solitude the young girl learns a multitude of magic formulæ, incantations, soothsayings; she studies the properties of herbs and grasses; she is worked up into a state of almost continuous excitement, mystical terror, and nervousness, which in an immature child may cause acute neurasthenia or even epilepsy.

When the pupil reaches her fifteenth year the teacher arranges her "betrothal with the devil." The bride is dressed in a flowing white linen robe adorned with wreaths of water-lilies, on her front is placed a magic sign of Beelzebub, and she is left all alone, fettered, her dowry at her side, in a secluded spot, somewhere on a reedy bank of a lonely lake, in a jungle, or amidst