SORCERY

"In order to unite his faithful, Satan will cause signs to appear in the air which they shall grasp the meaning of, or he will send a bat, a moth, and sometimes a sheep to remind them at home. Some of them arrive at the designated site on a broom handle, a vulgar parody of hyperborean Apollo's marvelous arrow which he presented to Abaris, and upon which this latter traversed the air. De Lancre tells us that, when one took off on this singular means of transport, it was necessary to recite the words EMEN ETAN several times in order to avoid tumbling down from among the clouds. In the Satanic slang the words simply mean HERE and THERE. Others rubbed themselves with magical unguents, or the venom spat by a toad that was frightened or irritated, and through the effect of these drugs alone they found themselves transported to the meeting place all at once. When the sorcerer wished to go to the Sabbath he would also at times strip bare and, having rubbed his armpits, elbows, fists, and the soles of his feet with a grease the ingredients of which will be given below, he climbed up the chimney and there at the very top he found a large horned man, hairy and black, who transported him with the speed of thought to the meeting place. This man, we may guess, was the devil, who would even go so far as to take the initiate for a ride on his shoulders. But this mode of transport was not without danger, for it often came to pass that the evil spirit, humiliated by his role, or simply taking a notion to do something malicious, would buck like a wild horse. The rider thus thrown would break his neck after plunging through the air, and would be discovered the next morning tangled in the treetops or lying bloody on the road wearing Sabbath garb. From this, says a Demonologist, comes the belief in human rain.