# An Examen of Witches/Chapter 12

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Chapter XII.
Whether such Copulation Exists in the Imagination Only.
But since there are some who maintain that the coupling of which we have just spoken exists in the imagination only, it will be well to say something here on this subject. For some treat the matter with derision, some are doubtful about it, and others firmly believe it to be a fact. de Civitate Dei, V. 23.St. Augustine appears to be among these last, as also St. Thomas Aquinas and several other later learned authorities. But the witches’ confessions which I have had make me think that there is truth in this matter; for they have all admitted that they have coupled with the Devil, and that his semen was very cold; and this is confirmed by the reports of Paul Grilland and the Inquisitors of the Faith. Jacquema Paget added that she had several times taken in her hand the member of the Demon which lay with her, and that it was as cold as ice and a good finger’s length, but not so thick as that of a man. Thievenne Paget and Antoine Tornier also added that the members of their demons were as long and big as one of their fingers; and Thievenne Paget said, moreover, that when Satan coupled with her she had as much pain as a woman in travail. Françoise Secretain said that, whilst she was in the act, she felt something burning in her stomach; and nearly all witches affirm that this coupling is by no means pleasurable to them, both because of ​Satan’s ugliness and deformity, and because of the physical pain which it causes them, as we have just said.
The ugliness and deformity lies in the fact that Satan couples with witches sometimes in the form of a black man, sometimes in that of some animal, as a dog or a cat or a ram. With Thievenne Paget and Antoine Tornier he lay in the form of a black man; and when he coupled with Jacquema Paget and Antoine Gandillon he took the shape of a black ram with horns: Françoise Secretain confessed that her demon appeared sometimes as a dog, sometimes as a cat, and sometimes as a fowl when he wished to have carnal intercourse with her. For all these reasons I am convinced that there is real and actual copulation between a witch and a demon; for what is there to prevent the Devil, when he has taken the form of an animal, from coition with a witch? Bodin, Demonom. lib. 3. c. 6.In Toulouse and Paris women have been known to make sexual abuse of a natural dog; and it seems to me quite to the point to refer here to the legends of Pasiphaë and other such women.
Another matter that I must mention, which is as strange as it is true, concerns one Antide Colas of Betoncourt in the district of Baume. She was imprisoned at that place for witchcraft, and it was found when visiting her that she had a hole beneath her navel, quite contrary to nature. This hole was examined on the eleventh of July, 1598, by Master Nicolas Milliere of Regnaucourt, Chirurgeon, who thrust his probe deeply into it in the presence of his servant, and of Antoinette Mongin, Jannette Bolet and Claudine Menestrey, who were required to be there as witnesses; ​and then the witch confessed that her Devil, whom she called Lizabet, had sexual connexion with her through this hole, and her husband through the natural hole; but afterwards, when she was taken by order of the Court to the prison of Dôle, and they wished to examine this hole, it was found to be closed up, and there remained nothing but a scar. This woman was burned alive on the twentieth of February, 1599. But who would believe that Satan even lies with witches in prison? Yet this woman of whom we have just told confessed that he did so; as also did Thievenne Paget, who said that the Devil had lain with her three times while she was in prison.
When Satan means to lie with a witch in the form of a man, he takes to himself the body of some man who has been hanged. But even if he has only a body formed from the air, there is still nothing to prevent him from intercourse with a witch; for in that case he makes the body of air so dense that it is palpable (for air is, of itself, palpable), and consequently capable of coition with, and even defloration of a woman. And why should not this be easy for him, seeing that he is powerful enough to overthrow a town or a city or a kingdom? And as for his semen, he has but too plentiful a supply, even were there no other source of it, in that which he receives when he acts as a Succubus.
Vair, de Incant. II. 13. Thyr. de loc. infesnt. I. 21. Pliny, VII. 2.And therefore I thoroughly believe all that has been written of Fauns, Satyrs and woodland gods, which were no more than demons, and were inordinately lustful and lascivious. Also I think that we may consider under this head the stories we are told of the wantonnesses of Numa, ​and of the nymph Egeria, and of several others whom the poets have particularly mentioned.
Similarly we find in the West Indies that their gods, which they call Cocoto, lay with women and had sexual intercourse with them; unless it was really certain lickerish men who abused them, as Decius Mundus, a Roman knight, whose story Josephus tells in his Antiquities, did to Paulina under pretence of being the God Anubis.
But to return to Françoise Secretain, it is a strange thing that Satan lay with her in the shape of a fowl. Paracel. de Malefic. c. 15.I am of opinion that she meant to say a gander instead of a fowl, for that is a form which Satan often takes, and therefore we have the proverb that Satan has feet like a goose. Yet it would be as easy for him to take the shape of a fowl as that of a gander. For we know that he has at different times assumed the shape of a dog for the same purpose, and we have two remarkable examples of this: Wier.one of a dog, said to be a demon, which used to lift up the robes of the nuns in a convent of the diocese of Cologne in order to abuse them; Bodin, Demonom. III. 6.the other, of certain dogs found on the beds of the nuns of a convent on Mount Hesse in Germany.