Witchcraft Narratives

Hans Gackstalt was a six-year-old boy who started to tell stories about how he, his mother and several other members of the community flew to witch Sabbaths.   Like the Godless Children that Roper talked about, this young boy was believed by the town council and eventually this tale eventually led to the prosecution of both the boy and his mother, Magdalina.  I still cannot understand how old men believed a story of a six-year-old boy over the testimony of his mother.  I also cannot believe that if Hans had not wavered between the story being true and having the story be told to him by an older boy named Peter, the trail could have had disastrous consequences.  A reason that the council believed him was because they thought that such a young child could not come up with such a story unless it had actually happened to him.  But even at such a young age Hans probably would have heard about witches and what they supposedly did, especially from the older boys in the community.  It makes sense that Hans would make this story up in order to gain popularity among his peers, because he must have thought he sounded so cool and worldly.  However, his story had disastrous consequences. 

It is astonishing that the thumbscrews and lashing were used on Hans because these were adult punishments.  I think this is much to severe a way to attempt and try and pry information out of someone so young, and it would have only frightened and confused them even more.  The punishment that Magdalina had to suffer through was also quite atrocious for there were only the stories her son told and unsubstantiated rumors. 

The author repeats often that even if Magdalina were not a witch she still would have been considered a bad mother, which would also have been terrible.  This would have been mostly because a woman’s main jobs was to take care of the house and to raise her children correctly, which apparently she did not do if her son was telling these types of stories.  The thing I found most interesting about this whole reading was that only the mother, and not the father, was blamed for Hans’ behavior.  I am not sure if this was because he was so young and therefore still associated with his mother, or if this still would have been the case if the boy had been a teenager. 

Purkiss

Purkiss focused on the women’s role in testifying against other women and in the role of the women themselves in their trails for witchcraft.  She believes that, even though many people say that the testimony of women from witch trails cannot be trusted because it was written down by a man, that something can still be learned from these statements.  I think that Purkiss is right in this because even if we do not get what a woman said verbatim, we could still learn something about how society was structured and how these women were viewed by the things that were emphasized in their speeches. 

This reading focuses a great deal on how a woman’s role was defined in terms of the household.  There has been quite a common thing in most of what we have read about witches and why women were accused more often then men.  Witches were considered to kind of be a anti-housewife and therefore they posed a threat to everything that wives and mothers did for their homes and their families.  Purkiss argues that it was one of the woman’s most important duties to keep a boundary between the outside world and the home, and that when this boundary was crossed that a witch had the chance to enter and cause problems. 

One of these situations of boundary crossing was when women would go to meet each other to exchange gifts or gossip.  I cannot imagine how terrifying life must have been to always be wondering if you neighbor or friend was planning to harm you every time you stepped out of your house or everything that they stepped into your home.  Another situation in witch witches could do quite a great deal of harm when the boundary of the house was down was during childbirth.  The normal boundaries that surrounded the house were not present at this time and by inviting someone to come to your house you were opening yourself up to witchcraft, especially if you had unwomanly emotions during the pregnancy.  However, witches could not just enter your house, they could also punish you for not entering your house.  All of this must have put an immense amount of strain on the mother, and it’s a wonder that they kept having children at all, except it was their place and duty in life.

Godless Children!!! (and Mass Alegations of Satanist Child Abuse)

s old women started to be less of a threat, many young children and adolescents started to call themselves witches, which sparked a fascination with children and their fantasies.  I think it is very interesting that two of the major groups that were accused of with craft because they were thought to be harmful were also two of the least physically threatening groups.  I would be more afraid of a large man then a little old lady of a young child, but they had very different fears back then.  Despite the shift is who was considered a threat, both women and children were closely tied to the home and to the nursery, which was, were a lot of witch craft occurred. 

In the case of children though, they were most often the ones claiming to be witches, unlike older accused witches who were accused mostly by others.  Also, often the odd behavior of the children was much more visible than adult witches.  In the case of Regina, she ate her own excrement, which I think anyone from most times would find quite disturbing.  However, if this event ad happened today and children started to claim that they were witches and that they were flying off to magical Sabbaths than most people and parents would just think that they had an over active imagination.  The fact that so many people truly believed these children’s stories shows that these people still lived in an enchanted world. 

I think it is extremely interesting that parents treated children they thought to be witches like a disease.  They thought that one child could infect their other children and that’s why they sent them away.  Although they also might have unloaded them on the authorities because they thought that they were attacking the marriage bed and the parents sexual union, which as Roper has stated on many occasions, was a very sacred and extremely important place.  I can understand parents not knowing what to do with their children, especially if they did not understand what was happening to them, but the corporal punishment that some parents handed out was extreme.  In one case a father ended up cutting off one of his sons fingers and one mother starved her daughter to death.  Even the town Council, who was simply a father figure before this time, because actively involved in punishing these children believing it would help them. 

Roper ends the chapter talking about how these children were released, but it seems odd that these parents and this society that were so ready to have their children in prison would be pushing for them to be let out.  Although this makes more sense when you take into account that the parents thought that their children had been “cured” of their witchcraft.  Although to me it just seems like the children grew up and out of their fantasies, but this is a modern and jaded view. 
The second reading that was done on these godless children was done from a psychiatric and modren view of the topic, which are both good and bad things.  The thing that I found most interesting from this article, was that the children who claimed to have flown to a witches sabbath then testified against other children.  These other children did not even know that they had been to these sabbaths until they were picked out and had their parents threaten and bribe them until they said they had been there.  All of this just shows how much children's imaginatiosn and fantasies played a role in the idea of beleif in these diobolical children.  I also was surprised to read that many people believe that some of these children were actually kidnapped by cannibalistic satanic sects.  They said that the reason they thought this was because no one could come up with these stories from no where.  Although I think this is false.  I used to be able to imagine anything and everything when I was younger so I don't undertand why children several hundred years ago could not do the same.  Especially when they grew up hearing stories of witches and the devil.

Class Notes 1/24

In class this week we talked mostly about Jews and how before witches they had been the group that the Christian population placed its fears on.
1475 was the Trail of Simon of Trent who was a young boy that was supposedly killed in a blood libel.  The blood libel was a fear of Christians that Jewish people were killing Christian children in order to mimic the death of Jesus Christ.  They also believed that they could accomplish the task of hurting Jesus again by stabbing the Eucharist which supposedly bled until it could find Christians to come avenge it.  Christians thought that they did these things because Jews needed blood for matza and to stop the mentration of their men.  I really do not understand where they got these ideas from.  They seem extremely outlandish to me to say the least.  I can understand them using the Jews as scapegoats for their fears but these fears just seem so out there that I really can not understand what they would have orginated in.
The first instance of a blood libel was in 1180 in England and it later spread to Europe where is increased in the 1300's.  These trails though fizzled out when the witch hunt started in the 1550s and 1560s.  After witch craft emerged as the predominate threat to Christians, Jews sort of fell into the background.  This makes a lot of sense to me because it seems like a natural progression.  The Jews and the witches both had the same place in European socities, which helped Christians to have someone that they could blame for all of the terrible things that they could not explain.  And when the witches started to become the enemy a lot of the terrible things that Jews were believed to do were then passed onto witches.
The Nazi's were not the first people to mark the Jews so that they would be easily recognizable.  this actually started in the early Middle Ages.  In pictures depicting Jews in this time theyw ere always shown as wearing these identifiable markers.  However, they were also portrayed with the things that they rejected in order to wound them even more.  This was a very effective techinque in order to mentally harm the Jewish people.  Especially by placing them in pictures in which they were wearing pictures of pigs or eating a pigs bowel movements or milk.  These images became quite common motifs for artists to use and they often became daily objects.
The markers that Jews had to wear made them easily identifiable to Christians so that they knew who to avoid and who to blame.  With witches however, this was differnt.  There were no visable markers so people could only guess at who was a supposed threat to them.

Rolands

Ok, so I am pretty sure I have been doing this whole blogging thing wrong because I’ve just been putting up my outlines from what I’ve been reading but after looking at other peoples blogs I’ve decided I should probably attempt to liven things up a bit and actually add some commentary. 

Rolands main focus for his research was Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany and the trial of Appolonia Glaitter.  I liked that he really stuck to these two specifics because although the Roper book is extremely informative its often hard for me to figure out where or who he is talking about because there are so many different places and people included. 

Appolonia Glaitter was 56 years old, was married four times, and was from the countryside around Rothenburg.  Her neighbors the Klenckhsin accused her of witchcraft July 1671.  The reason that this family accused Appolonia of witchcraft was because she supposedly had caused their daughter’s foot to swell up with pus when she had kindly offered them plants from her yard.  This is the hardest thing for me to understand about witchcraft.  How neighbors and family members could say that someone they know so closely is a witch, especially when what they are doing is actually kind, and when they know that such an accusation could lead to that persons imprisonment, execution and torture. 

While Roper talked about why older women were disproportionately represented, Rolands gives slightly different reasons for why these elderly women were so often seen as witches.  When I think of witch today, unless I am thinking about TV shows in which witches are all young, beautiful, and use their powers for good, I usually think of the old, bent, evil witches from Disney movies.  And this apparently is not a new thing.  It must have been easier for someone to think an old, wrinkled, and possibly bitter woman was more capable of the malevolence required to be a witch then young fertile women.  Rolands makes this point, saying that the sagging breasts and shriveled stomach that Roper claimed were the markers of an infertile woman were not really what people would have most often associated with old women.  Instead, he says that it is the hunched over, wrinkled, toothless woman, which closely resembles modern stereotype, would have been the one to be considered infertile and elderly, and therefore have a greater possibility of being accused of witchcraft. 

However, Rolands goes on to say that it was not even truly the appearance of the women that mattered in these witch trails, but their actions.  I think it was terrible how after a woman was accused of witchcraft everyone that knew her then poured over all their memories of her in an attempt to find evidence of witchcraft, even when the woman had often only been helpful or kind to them.

I was quite shocked when I learned that a majority of women accused of witchcraft were married or widowed.  I always had this picture that witches were spinsters who lacked family and were therefore alone in the world.   Rolands says that widows were particularly susceptible to accusations of witchcraft because they had lost the protection of their husband and often these widows had been thought to be witches for years.  The belief that a woman was a witch could also increase with her age if her poverty decreased and she became more dependent on others for assistance.  So, Rolands says that often times poor women were those accused of witchcraft, but this could have been because they had already been suspected of being witches, so their pleas for assistance only fueled an already lit fire.   

Witch Craze Part 2

·      Chapter 6- Fertility

o   Sex was prohibited during the six weeks after giving birth (the lying in) until the woman could be churched

o   The women were susceptible during this time to either becoming witches themselves or to “witches” around them- mostly women close to them that were around them before, during, or after the birth

o   This made being nice to these people an imperative- so they would not hurt the mother or the child through the occult

o   In the 15^th and early 16^th centuries both Catholic and Protestant governments started to control marriage in order to limit population and therefore the amount of poor

o   Council of Trent- said “all marriages must take place in front of a priest, with witnesses, and after banns had been read” (129)

o   Guilds and trade association also started to implement similar rules- only allowing independent masters who had their own workshop to marry

o   Because of all these rules the poor often waited longer to marriage or never married at all

o   Many women waited till their mid to late twenties to marry which resulted in less children

o   Suspected witches in Wurzburg were asked about their reproductive history when they were first being questioned

o   Women who became pregnant but were not married “were punished, exiled and shamed for their sin” (132)

o   During the 16^th century women were beginning to bear more and more of the blame and punishment for baring and illegitimate child

o   The women who killed their illegitimate babies because they were unable to get their seducer to marry them, faced the death penalty

o   Parents were given more authority over who their children married

o   People, and government, at this time had to walk a thing line between insuring fertility for the continuation of lineages and keeping population growth under control

o   Johan Peter Sussmilch – Divine Order in the Transformation of the Human Race, through Birth, Death and the Reproduction of the Same

§  Tried to explain population growth and decline through scientific and statistical means

§  Still very concerned about fertility but did not turn to witches to explain this

§  Said that sexual disease stopped fertility not women tying a not in a string

§  Provided statistics for deaths of children – blamed illness and mother neglect

o   Matrons were largely the ones who reported supposed infanticide and illegitimate births

o   Catholics, despite their belief and elevation of Mary, saw women as Eve- easily corrupted and carnal- Proverbs XXX- “There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, a fourth thing which say as not, It is enough; that is, the mouth of the womb.  Wherefore for the sake of fulfilling their lusts they consort with devils.” (136)

o   Strong devotion to Mary and witch-hunting often went hand in hand – this was because they could attribute all the honorable ideals of womanhood to Mary and all the traits they did not like to earthy women, who they prosecuted for it

o   Not all witch hunters though were misogynists who hated women

o   Protestants believed Mary to be “a woman like any other” (138)

o   For them “a woman’s destiny was to become a wife and bear children, enduring the subjection to her husband which God had ordained” (138)

o   Although Protestants and Catholics and very different views of women, they had many in common - mainly that women were lustful which was contradictory to the perfect image each religion had created for women (for Catholics this was Mary and for Protestants this was the good wife and mother)

o   For both denominations “marriage was the great social divider” (140) – so the married and unmarried were divided in most social situations

o   They both also celebrated childbirth and pregnancy (this can be seen in the arts)

o   Paintings of children being ripped from suckling at their mother’s breast was one of the most painful and evocative image painters could paint when trying to depict disaster

o   A woman’s fertile body was a theme used by many 16^th and 17^th century artists – they often have large hips, breasts, and stomachs – which was the ideal woman back then because all of this fleshiness showed fertility

o   Fertility, and the protection of that fertility, often had to be prayed for

o   Luther said “Let them bear children to death; they are created for it” (150)

o   Hans Baldung Grien’s Witches’ Sabbath was the first mass-produced woodcut depicting witchcraft

§  He used the same depiction of women’s bodies at the three stages of their fertility and life, in order to depict witches, show contrast, and show that anyone could be a witch

§  Also, all the women have their hair down and loose which is in exact opposite of the hair styles of respectable matrons who always had their hair up

§  From the first two decades of the 16^th century

o   Artists and writers during this time often enjoyed mocking or joking about their subject matter

·      Chapter 7 - Crones

o   Even though witch hunters told people that a witch could be either gender at any age, even they still believed that older women (those who were no longer fertile but many of whom had given birth) were mostly responsible

o   Hatred of older women was shown in “German art, literature, medicine, and popular culture” (162)

o   When who had gone through menopause were thought to be uncleam and full of impurities because they no longer had their period which would get rid of such things

o   Desire and lust (sex) that did not lead to offspring was terrifying – especially the desire of old women which they believed was intensified because she was drying up and needed the mans seed

o   There was a lot of literature about the repugnance of old women – and these stories often helped to shape how people viewed these women

o   Young women accused of witchcraft often said that older women led them down that path and introduced them to the Devil – and even watched while he seduced them

o   This helps to explain the mother-daughter pairs that were often tried in witch hunts – it is also explained by the fact that they believed witchcraft was in the blood (although apparently it only occurred in mother-daughter pairs because rarely was there a mother- son or a father-niece type of situation)

o   The naming of a mother or a daughter as an accomplice was often caused by the questions that interrogators asked – and they asked these questions because they believed that this bond existed

o   Sebastian Sailer wrote plays that were based on religion and village life

§  But he also wrote a satirical love poem about an old woman that was supposedly written by her recently widowed husband

§  Many of his descriptions used in this are similar to descriptions used when talking about witches

§  He was a junior assistant priest at Seekirach which was the parish in which Alleshausen (which experienced a witch hunt in 1745-1747) was in

§  He defended the continuation of the lying in period

·      Chapter 8 – Family Revenge

o   After the end of the heyday of mass witch trails and persecutions was over (in the middle of the 17^th century) withes were still prosecuted, but they were done on a more individual basis and these interrogations “became more thorough, more detailed, and more systematic” (181)

o   So, these trails became extremely well documented

o   Also these persecutions involved young women, youths, and children as witches more often then before

o   Children began to be viewed as separate from their parents and possessing their own imagination, which helped to make them witches

o   Juditha Johannes

§  Her mother died and her father remarried

§  She was taken to her new mothers relatives and then to an orphanage

§  When she was allowed to come back home at 19 she told stories about being a witch and about having killed her 2 half siblings and her step-grandmother and step-uncle who had died when she lived with them – so all those killed were related to her stepmother

§  She also said she had killed 6 children in the orphanage

§  Christele, a relation of Juditha’s mother, was the only one who really paid attention to the girl after her mother died and Juditha eventually said Christele was the one who had led her into witchcraft

§  Juditha, by saying she was a witch, was able to commit suicide, but still go to heaven since she had not technically done it herself

o   Margaretha

§  Juditha’s step grandmother

§  Had married her grandfather, who was over twice her age

§  She supposedly was responsible for Juditha’s mothers death

§  Juditha said she saw her at a witches’ dance

§  “A classic witch” (197)

§  Not tried for 25 years

§  Eventually she was let go under the oath that she would leave and return to her homeland 

Witch Craze

1.     Prologue

a.     Ursula Gotz was called “You shitty witch!” by Hundersinger’s wife because she blamed Ursula for the death of several of her animals and because of this she faced a four year trial that sent her to her death

                                               i.     Gotz was born and raised in the smithy were she helped her brother and nephew (both widowers)

                                              ii.     Ursula was blamed by her nephew for the partial paralysis of his daughter who she took care of

                                            iii.     She supposedly caused her maid to grow sick and die

                                            iv.     Gotz confessed to being a witch once threatened with torture and a criminal trial

                                              v.     Federlin (“Little Feather”) was her personal devil whom she had met thirty years before- he was dressed as a farm servant and came into her bed and after a week she agreed to have sex with him and signed the pact that made her the devil’s servant

                                            vi.     She was saved a burning at the stake and was beheaded

b.     Those accused of witchcraft were often old, had spent years caring for others, raising children and on whose house keeping the community depended on- all this caring for made attention from these women seemed “malign”

c.      Giving of small gifts could seem suspect

d.     Witchcraft supposedly ran in the blood

e.     Ursula Gotz said two other women were her accomplices- they were burned at the stake

f.      Often victims and interrogators gradually, over a prolonged time, which would reveal the Satan drama beneath their everyday actions

g.     Young women, children, and men also found themselves accused

h.     Over the coarse of the witch hunt more then 50,000 died

i.       Germany had the most executions- about 25,000

j.       Old women targeted because they probably wanted to affect the fertility of others since they weren’t fertile anymore

k.     Ursula Gotz’s story was a demonic cliché

l.       People were inclined to see threats against fertility everywhere

m.   “Alongside demography, any explanation of the witch hunt has to consider factors such as the willingness of the authorities to prosecute, the legal framework he role of individual witch-hunters, and the particular features of the phenomenon of mass witch-hunting”

n.     Imagination played a large role

o.     Witches had “Devil’s mark” – darkened mole or lump, she defecated when “witch smoke” was lit, and she had a lot of sex

p.     “The harm witches were believed to accomplish was directed principally against pregnant women, babies, children, and fertility in the natural world”

q.     Midwives in particular could be witches

r.      Reasons witch craze ended:

                                               i.     People started to doubt confessions given during torture

                                              ii.     Shocked by means of execution and torture

                                            iii.     New scientific and intellectual idea

                                            iv.     Some places were “cauterized” by major witch hunts

                                              v.     Changes in law

                                            vi.     Change in what people feared

2.     Part 1 –

a.     Chapter 1 – Persecution

                                               i.     Most mass persecutions took place in land ruled by Catholic prince-bishops

                                              ii.     Jesuits saw themselves as fighting against agents of Satan

                                            iii.     Period from 1550-1650- epoch of witch craze (Peak in the 1580s and 1590ss)

                                            iv.     75-80% if executed were women

                                              v.     The forces of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation confronting each other directly created a moral fundamentalism that saw the devils work everywhere

                                            vi.     Baroque period- from the Catholicism of the Counter Reformation to its climax

                                           vii.     Cabinets of curiosities- collections of rocks, crystals, objects from the New World- collections by Princes and intellectuals

                                         viii.     “Little Ice Age”- late 16^thc- 1630- caused bad harvest

                                            ix.     Carolina- the Imperial Law Code (created by Charles X) provided legal framework for witch hunt but only gave “ barest skeleton” for trail procedure= before torture could occur had to show they had committed harm and said that witches deserved burning at the stake

                                              x.     Nicolas Remy (1530-1612) responsible for the death of over 800 people- had “sadistic impulses against women but had empathy”

                                            xi.     Witch hunters and executioners corresponded with each other

                                           xii.     Prince-bishops (only 9 of them) responsible for 6,000 deaths

                                         xiii.     Julius Echter of Mespellrunn- “saw women as especially prey to the Devil’s wiles and who believed female lust could undermine social and religious order; indeed, could destroy Christendom itself”

                                         xiv.     Princes could occur in enclosed institutions- especially covenants- so even clergy convicted and burned

                                           xv.     Belief in witches did not stop after Great Trials did

                                         xvi.     Men were victims more often in great crazes – less pattern among them compared to women

                                        xvii.     In villages witches attacked fertility of all nature while in towns they mostly caused harm to people (especially midwives)

                                      xviii.     Protestants as well as Catholics engaged in witch-hunt

                                         xix.     Witch hunt was “a collective endeavor”

                                           xx.     Protestants and Catholics saw witch hunt as an extension of their normal endeavors in their fight against Satan and they took “similar lines” against witches 

                                         xxi.     Witchcraft belief was often connected to old beliefs about Jews (such as killing children for blood)

                                        xxii.     It was common for churches dedicated to Mary to be built on site of old synagogue 

b.     Chapter 2 – Interrogation and Torture

                                               i.     The rack was often used on accused witches normal for 15-30 minute intervals

                                              ii.     Would be suspended from rack by arms tied behind her back and weights added to feet

                                            iii.     Torture would continue till a long, detailed narrative about her life with the Devil had been given

                                            iv.     Torture “allowed her to escape the power of the Devil” pg 45

                                              v.     Thought confessions good for the witches because it could allow reconciliation with church

                                            vi.     Anything admitted under torture had to be confirmed later

                                           vii.     Witch confessions involved so much life stories that profiles could be made from them

                                         viii.     Thought Devil would help them not confess under torture

                                            ix.     Thumb screws usually used 1^st especially for women

                                              x.     Leg screws also used

                                            xi.     Torture on the bench = tying to bench and whipping

                                           xii.     Degrees of Torture- (often not followed) – 1^st- show instruments of torture and order confession

                                         xiii.     Every executioner had own style and instruments of choice

                                         xiv.     Also had psychological torture (long period locked away in dark) – often would receive “advise” from jailers about what to say

                                           xv.     Women who died due to torture but didn’t confess still considered witches and were buried as such

                                         xvi.      Some women managed not to confess and their persecutors let them go believing they were innocent

                                        xvii.     Usual trial lasted 6 weeks but could take months of even years

                                      xviii.     “There was always more to find out about the Devil” pg 51

                                         xix.     Didn’t stop until she had told everything she knew- not just after confession

                                           xx.     Skepticism was present throughout witch hunt

                                         xxi.     Confession has to convince interrogator

                                        xxii.     Hangman wore bright clothing in contrast to the interrogators black clothing

                                      xxiii.     Hangmen had to try and find witch marks on women’s bodies- threat of this could make them confess because they didnt want to be polluted

                                      xxiv.     Hangmen “could pollute by his very touch”- pg 53

                                        xxv.     Some witches tried to think of the pain they dealt with as a sharing of Jesus’ suffering

                                      xxvi.     Some felt God had abandoned them- which convinced the women they were damned

                                     xxvii.     “The interrogator’s role was like that of a priestly confessor” pg 57

                                   xxviii.     Sexual component to interrogation- possible masturbation, rape, or torture of/ around genitals, undress women to find devil’s mark

                                      xxix.     It only took a few “gruesome accounts” to keep a witch craze going or to start one- pg 61

                                        xxx.     Some accused witch thanked interrogators for letting them confess or for catching them

                                      xxxi.     “Envy, hatred, and anger were felt to be literally murderous” (62) so if a woman felt these she must have acted upon them

                                     xxxii.     Successful prosecution meant that part of her property was confiscated – so it was the prosecutors who felt this evil emotion

                                   xxxiii.     “The witch was a sworn enemy of Christendom whose evil deeds were an affront to Christ’s body and a mockery of His sacrificial death”- pg 64

                                   xxxiv.     There was a foggy area if a repentant witch should be given communion before her death

                                     xxxv.     Many witch were killed before burning – but death depended on their crimes and their contribution

3.     Part 2 – Fantasy

a.     Chapter 3 – Cannibalism

                                               i.     “Cannibalism was a 16^th c. preoccupation”- pg 71- this was in part because of New World exploration where cannibalism occurred

                                              ii.     Witches used all parts of children for their purposes

                                            iii.     Cannibalism was related to the communion

                                            iv.     Children were always eaten by groups of witches

                                              v.     Motherhood and birth were key themes

                                            vi.     Digging up children was birth in reverse

                                           vii.     Witchcraft didn’t cause lasting division in the town

b.     Chapter 4 – Sex with the Devil

                                               i.     By having sex with the Devil = supposedly marry him and become his

                                              ii.     Sex with the Devil is “degrading, filthy and anal” pg 84

                                            iii.     A witch was someone who had sex with the Devil – its what cemented their bond and pact

                                            iv.     Sex with the Devil was the “fall or beginning of their demonic narrative- pg 84

                                              v.     In many stories the devil wore black- with a feather in his hat to represent duplicity and it was phallic

                                            vi.     Some women described the Devil as the “ideal lover” pg 86

                                           vii.     Some even saw the devil as a pastor or priest or as a man they loved

                                         viii.     Some see him as a young man

                                            ix.     “Colour is always mentioned” - pg 87

                                              x.     Devil told women “she would have good things” is she slept with him – pg 88

                                            xi.     For women already married the Devil would promise to be a better husband

                                           xii.     The Devil knew when a woman was unhappy and would make false promises to her that would make her think he could make her happy

                                         xiii.     A problem was posed when men started to say they were witches but the Devil could also take on female form – often in the form of someone they know and were more likely to have sex with more than one Devil lover

                                         xiv.     Many men also committed bestiality that the Devil tempted them into

                                           xv.     Devil is often described as having animal parts

                                         xvi.     Culture did not approve of depression because it separated the person from the community and made them susceptible to the Devil or to temptation

                                        xvii.     Before the Reformation there was quite a bit of ambiguity about marriage

                                      xviii.     Sometimes mothers could be the “ go between” between the Devils and their daughters (pg 97) – this was probably because parents such an influence in normal courtship and marriages

                                         xix.     Witchcraft was in the blood

                                           xx.     “Sex with the Devil results in the killing of children” (97)

                                         xxi.     Some babies were believed to become monsters because of their mothers (witches) imagination or to be possessed by the Devil – the Church said these babies had to be killed

                                        xxii.     Sex with the Devil did not produce offspring

c.      Chapter 5 – Sabbaths

                                               i.     “Flight is the attribute most closely associated with witches” (pg 104)- although this helped the skeptics

                                              ii.     At Sabbaths witches obeyed no rules and partied like no bodies business

                                            iii.     Sabbath could be imaginary but that didn’t make them less real

                                            iv.     Some people believed only parts of witch legends

                                              v.     Every witch made the story in her confession her own

                                            vi.     Some forms of torture involved suspension which would have made the women literally feel like they were flying

                                           vii.     Fling also had sexual components (like everything else involving witches) because they rode things (often phallic in shape) and over with their lover

                                         viii.     “Demonic revelry” at the Sabbath- pg 108

                                            ix.     Sabbaths normally took place at tucked away at local spots

                                              x.     Sabbaths divided the rich from the poor

                                            xi.     Each witch was paired with a devil in these celebrations – ended with sex

                                           xii.     The happening of the Sabbath were opposite to Christian ritual

                                         xiii.     “Diabolic baptism” occurred (115) – sometimes the Devil would tell them his name at this time and give them a new diabolical name

                                         xiv.     Witches supposedly flew into cellars and stole wine- in a time when the sanctity of a house represented the sanctity of the person occupying it – the cellar may have represented the guts or sexual organs

                                           xv.     Witchcraft was “part of the culture of entertainment” in literature, wood cuts, and pamphlets

                                         xvi.     The motifs of the witch craze were the same often as what charges had been brought against heretics- this gave them added force

                                        xvii.     The goat was considered the most sexual of animals