Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/63

 where every circumstance of horror and iniquity found expression. This in itself is an argument against Miss Murray’s theory, as none of the earlier religions existed for the express purpose of perpetrating evil for evil’s sake. We have but to read the eloquent and exquisite description of the Eleusinian Mysteries by that accomplished Greek scholar Father Cyril Martindale, S.J., to catch no mean nor mistaken glimpse of the ineffable yearning for beauty, for purity, for holiness, which filled the hearts of the worshippers of the goddess Persephoneia, whose stately and impressive ritual prescribing fasts, bathing in the waters of the sea, self-discipline, self-denial, self-restraint, culminated in the Hall of Initiation, hallowed by the Earth-Mother, Demeter, where the symbolic drama of life, death, and resurrection was shown by the Hierophant to those who had wrestled, and endured, and were adjudged worthy. How fair a shadow was this, albeit always and ever a shadow, of the imperishable and eternal realities to come! How different these Mysteries from the foul orgies of witches, the Sabbat, the black mass, the adoration of hell.

In truth it was not against heathenism that Innocent VIII sounded the note of war, but against heresy. There was a clandestine organization hated by the Church, and this was not sorcery nor any cult of witches renewing and keeping green some ancient rites and pagan creed, but a witch-cult that identified itself with and was continually manifested in closest connexion with Gnosticism in its most degraded and vilest shapes.

There is a curious little piece of symbolism, as it may be, which has passed into the patois of the Pyrenees. Wizards are commonly known as poudouès and witches poudouèros, both words being derived from putere, which signifies to have an evil smell. The demonologists report, and it was commonly believed, that sorcerers could often be detected by their foul and fetid odour. Hagiographers tell that S. Philip Neri could distinguish heretics by their smell, and often he was obliged to turn away his head when meeting them in the street. The same is recorded of many other Saints, and this tradition is interesting as it serves to show the close connexion there was held to be between magic and heresy. Saint Pachomius, the cenobite, could distinguish heretics by