Post by KittyLane on Mar 13, 2007 21:27:11 GMT -5
Cannibalism and Witchcraft
Where I was wont to feed you with my blood,
I'll lop a member off and give it to you,
In earnest of a further benefit,
So you do condescend to help me now.
-- Henry VI, Part One, V.iii.14-17
I'll lop a member off and give it to you,
In earnest of a further benefit,
So you do condescend to help me now.
-- Henry VI, Part One, V.iii.14-17
As seen in such tales as Hansel and Gretel, cannibalism is a trait associated with witchcraft. Although human bodies were thought to have been used for magical purposes, they were also thought to have been perversely used as food. One demon specialist wrote, "Our witches have slain many infants as appears everywhere in their trials; what is still more abhorrent to nature, they cut out their hearts and eat them" (Sidky 33).
Another demonologist believed "They tear living infants to pieces...and drink their blood to rejuvenate themselves, or else they roast them and eagerly devour them druing their obscene rituals" (Sidky 33).
The pious doctors spared none of the lurid details when describing the horrifying cravings of these man-eating monsters. One demonologiest reported that in Lausanne, Switzerland, witches cooked and ate their own children, while in the Canton of Berne at least thirteen infants belonging to others were devoured in this manner. The witches arrested for these scabrous crimes divulged the horrifying details of their activities: "We set our snares chiefly for unbaptized children, and even for those that have been baptized, especially when they have not been protected by the sign of the Cross and prayers...and with our spells we kill them in their cradles or even when they are sleeping by their parents' side, in such a way that they afterwards are thought to have been [smothered] or to have died of some other natural death. Then we secretly take them from their graves, and cook them in a cauldron, until the whole flesh comes away from the bones to make a soup which may be drunk. Of the more solid matter ewe make an unguent which is of virtue to help us in our arts and pleasures and our transportations; and with the liquid we fill a flask or skin, whoever drinks from which, with the addition of a few other ceremonies, immediately acquires much knowledge and becomes a leader of our sect." Thus, by killing and eating the flesh of Christian children, demonographers attested, witches acquired their magical abilities, especially the power to fly through the air, a feat they accomplished by means of an ointment made from the fatty residue of their cannibalistic meals.
Aside from devouring infants, witches were thought to regularly consume the putrid flesh of human corpses, which they secretly exhumed from cemeteries in order to serve up during their hideous noctunal banquets. The witches' lust for gore, it seems, had no bounds (Sidky 33-36).
The Skeptics' Take on Cannibalism
Contemporaries of the demonologists believed accusations of anthropaphagy were absurd. Dr. Meyfarth (1635), professor of Holy Writ at the University of Erfurt, said "it is impossible that dead and buried children should be eaten and yet still be found untouched in their graves. He also cited reports by physicians who observed that the consumption of putrid carcasses, the main course during the Sabbat repast, could cause illness and death" (Sidky 66, 67).
Unfortunately, even the evidence of supposedly eaten corpses being found in their rightful graves was nonsufficient for some witch-hunters.
At Lindheim...six women were executed because they confessed, under torture, that they had stolen the body of a child for witch-purposes. After the execution the husband of one of the women opened the grave and found the child's body there uninjured; and the monk Inquisitor declared the body to be a counterfeit made by the devil and ordered it to be burned (McCabe - Religious Controversy)!
www.shanmonster.com/witch/traits/cannibal.html