Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/160

 confessed … that he had done homage to the aforesaid Satan, who appeared in the shape of a ram, by kissing his buttocks in token of reverence and homage.” A very rare tract of the fourteenth century directed against the Waldenses among other charges brings the following: “Item, in aliquibus aliis partibus apparet eis dæmon sub specie et figura cati, quem sub cauda sigillatim osculantur.” (The Devil appears to them as a cat, and they kiss him sub cauda.)

Barthélemy Minguet of Brécy, a young man of twenty-five, who was tried in 1616, said that at the Sabbat “he often saw [the Devil] in the shape of a man, who held a horse by its bridle, & that they went forward to worship him, each one holding a pitch candle of black wax in their hands.” These candles, as Guazzo tells us, were symbolic and required by the ritual of the Sabbat, not merely of use for the purpose of giving light: “Then they made an offering of pitch black candles, and as a sign of homage kissed his fundament.” The candles were ordinarily black, and one taper, larger than the rest, was frequently carried by the Devil himself. At the North Berwick meeting when the witches were all to assemble in the church, “Iohn Fein blew up the Kirk doors, and blew in the lights, which wer like Mickl black candles sticking round about the Pulpit.” Boguet relates that the witches whom he tried confessed that the Sabbat commenced with the adoration of Satan, “who appeared, sometimes in the shape of a tall dark man, sometimes in the shape of a goat, & to express their worship and homage, they made him an offering of candles, which burned with a blue light.” John Fian, also, when doing homage to the Devil “thought he saw the light of a candle … which appeared blue lowe.” This, of course, was on account of the sulphurous material whence these candles were specially compounded. De Lancre expressly states that the candles or flambeaux used at the Sabbat were made of pitch.

An important feature of the greater Sabbats was the ritual dance, for the dance was an act of devotion which has descended to us from the earliest times and is to be found in every age and every country. Dancing is a natural movement, a primitive expression of emotion and ideals. In the ancient world there can have been few things fairer than that rhythmic thanksgiving of supple limbs and sweet voices