To endeavor to give a description of the infernal sabbath, is to aim
at describing what has no existence and never has existed, except in
the craving and deluded imagination of sorcerers and sorceresses: the
paintings we have of it are conceived after the reveries of those who
fancy they have been transported through the air to the sabbath, both
in body and soul.

People are carried thither, say they, sitting on a broom-stick,
sometimes on the clouds or on a he-goat. Neither the place, the time,
nor the day when they assemble is fixed. It is sometimes in a lonely
forest, sometimes in a desert, usually on the Wednesday or the
Thursday night; the most solemn of all is that of the eve of St. John
the Baptist: they there distribute to every sorcerer the ointment with
which he must anoint himself when he desires to go to the sabbath, and
the spell-powder he must make use of in his magic operations. They
must all appear together in this general assembly, and he who is
absent is severely ill-used both in word and deed. As to the private
meetings, the demon is more indulgent to those who are absent for some
particular reason.

As to the ointment with which they anoint themselves, some authors,
amongst others, John Baptista Porta, and John Wierius,[209] boast that
they know the composition. Amongst other ingredients there are many
narcotic drugs, which cause those who make use of it to fall into a
profound slumber, during which they imagine that they are carried to
the sabbath up the chimney, at the top of which they find a tall black
man,[210] with horns, who transports them where they wish to go, and
afterwards brings them back again by the same chimney. The accounts
given by these people, and the description which they give of their
assemblies, are wanting in unity and uniformity.

The demon, their chief, appears there, either in the shape of a
he-goat, or as a great black dog, or as an immense raven; he is seated
on an elevated throne, and receives there the homage of those present
in a way which decency does not allow us to describe. In this
nocturnal assembly they sing, they dance, they abandon themselves to
the most shameful disorder; they sit down to table, and indulge in
good cheer; while at the same time they see on the table neither knife
nor fork, salt nor oil; they find the viands devoid of savor, and quit
the table without their hunger being satisfied.

One would imagine that the attraction of a better fortun