Europe's inner demons

Writing in 1435-7, the German Johann Nider tells the story of a peasant woman who imagined herself to fly at night with Diana.⁽³⁴⁾ When a visiting Dominican tried to disabuse her, she offered to show him how she did it. One night, in the presence of the Dominican and another witness, she placed herself in a basket, rubbed herself with an ointment, and fell into such a stupor that not even falling to the floor could wake her. When finally she awoke she assured the observers that she had been with Diana, and could hardly be persuaded that she had never left the spot at all. At the same date the Spaniard Alfonso Tostato also tells of such women, and adds that while in their stupor they are insensible to blows and even to fire.⁽³⁵⁾

A century later the Italian Bartolommeo Spina knew of women who anointed themselves and, in a deep stupor, imagined themselves to fly through the air with their mistress and a host of dancers.⁽³⁶⁾ And by 1569 the Dutch physician Johannes Weyer was even able to supply recipes of solutions and ointments that were supposed to be favoured by witches.⁽³⁷⁾

How seriously should all this be taken? The fact that some of the recipes include real narcotics, such as belladonna, has roused curiosity. Some bold spirits, notably in Germany, recently tried them out on themselves — and promptly experienced very much what the witches are supposed to have experienced.⁽³⁸⁾ Yet there are grounds for doubt. Not one of those tales about women anointing themselves even pretends to come from an eyewitness — even Nider, who goes into most detail, merely repeats what his teacher had once told him about an unnamed Dominican. Moreover the earliest recipes, from the fifteenth century, consist not of narcotics but of such disagreeable but nontoxic substances as the flesh of snakes, lizards, toads, spiders and (of course) children; and the ointments are less commonly applied to the witch’s body than to the chairs and broomsticks on which she rides.⁽³⁹⁾

All in all, there is hardly more reason to take these stories seriously than to believe that the witch Pamphile, in Apuleius, was really able, with the help of a concoction of laurel and dill, to grow an owl’s feathers, beak and claws and fly off hooting.⁽⁴⁰⁾ The true explanation lies in quite a different direction — not in pharmacology but in anthropology; for the night-witch is known in many non-European societies today.

The anthropological literature on witchcraft is vast and continues to grow at a prodigious rate, but to clarify this particular problem one need only turn to J. R. Crawford’s Witchcraft and sorcery in Rhodesia

.⁽⁴¹⁾ Mr Crawford’s book, which is based on judicial records of witchcraft and sorcery allegations between 1956 and 1962, shows very clearly what the Shona peoples of Rhodesia believe about night-witches. They believe that certain women strip themselves naked and fly through the air at night, usually on a hyena, ant-bear, owl or crocodile. The purpose of the flight is cannibalism or, rather, necrophagy — something which the Shona regard with even greater horror, if possible, than does our own society. The witch is supposed to exhume newly buried corpses and eat the flesh — but also to kill people, especially children, in order to devour them.⁽⁴²⁾ That is the general belief amongst the Shona, and it has many counterparts in other areas of Africa, and, indeed, in Asia and Central and Southern America also. The point, however, is that some Shona women apply it to themselves. The following comes from a confession of a woman called Muhlava: