2 3 6 THE OCCULT SCIENCES. 



forward the Sabbath was merely the trysting-place of sorcerers and sorceresses 

 who assembled from all quarters, traversing space with the rapidity of 

 lightning, some mounted upon animals of fantastic shape, or hoisted upon 

 the shoulders of demons, others bestriding the magic broomstick (Fig. 170)- 

 It was here that Satan held his assizes, and received the impure homage of 

 his subjects, distributing to novices the mark and sign of the infernal 

 initiation. De Lancre, in his "Treatise upon the Inconstancy of the 

 Demons," says, " The devil, at the Sabbath, is seated in a black chuir, with 

 a crown of black horns, two horns in his neck, and one in the forehead, which 

 sheds light upon the assembly, the hair bristling, the face pale and exhibiting 

 signs of uneasiness, the eyes round, large, fully opened, inflamed, and hideous, 

 with a goat's beard, the neck and the rest of the body deformed, the body of 

 the shape of a man and a goat, the hands and the feet of a human being." 



The horrors and sacrileges committed at the Sabbath were no merely 

 imaginary crimes ; the sorcerers could not impute their misdeeds to credulity 

 or ignorance, and M. Ferdinand Denis says, " All that the wildest imagina- 

 tion can conceive, mythological recollections, fantastic traditions, terrible 

 traditions, form the compound of the court of Satan. Diseased minds 

 invent new crimes, and the strident laugh of the devil encourages the 

 commission of a thousand nameless sins. Beelzebub himself ceases to put 

 on the image of a foul goat." Thus the faggots of the stake burnt through- 

 out the whole of the sixteenth century, and all kinds of torture were 

 applied, without distinction of age or sex, to persons accused of having 

 assisted at the Sabbath and given themselves up to Satan. 



