San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1889-01-18
WITCHES SABBATH.
A LUoIcRoUs SUPERSTITION OF THE
FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

Transplanted to the New world-uses
Made of the Folly by Famous Poets-A
Madman's Vision.
There were superstitious beliefs concerning
magic and wItchcraft which had existed
from the earliest times, but which ragged With
extraordinary fury throughout the Fifteenth
century, drawing upon its neophytes and
practicers the vengeance of the law and the
curses of the spiritual authorities Thou
sands of people in every country of Europe
were tried, convicted and executed for the
crimes of witchcraft, and the fatal fires-for
the witches were usually burned at the stake
were even kindled on the shores of the new
world. Belief in these crimes was universal,
and the most astonishing stories of the mon
strous and abomnable acts Of the witches
were made Che subject Of serious examina-
zion by the tribunals of justice and were es-
TabliShed by witnesses of apparently the
highest credibility.
1t is difficult in this age of free and enight-
ened thought to believe those terrible annals
and we find it impossible to realize the con-
ditions which made such a state of things
possible.
MACBETH AND TAM O. sHANTEI.
When, therefore, we read of Macbeth ac-
sosted at night on the blasted heath by three
hags whose prophecies filled his ambitious
soul with projects of murder, we credit the
great master with having evoked from his
wonderful Imagination a scene which in
Shakespeare's time could easily have been
drawn from the records of the courts. We
are equally unable to realize the possibility
of the orgy witnessed by stout hearted Tam
o. Shanter, when the witches danced at mid
night in the old and ruined Kirk AllOway,
and yet it was nothing more than picture of
the obscene celebration of the Witches Sab
bath, universally believed in even as late as
300 years ago.
And now music is heard, harsh and broken
like the growing of distant thunder or the
tumult of an approaching storm. Some
times it startles and shocks the sensibilities
like a mocking laugh in a chamber where
the dead are laid out for burial The sky is
dark with the gloom of a night when the
moon is buried in clouds, but nevertheless
affords light enough to show that the land
scape is wild and desolate. Among the rocks
where four roads meet stands family out
lined against the sky gibbet whose creaking
irons announce an invisible corpse slowly
swinging in the ftful breeze There is over
head in the air a beating as of the wings of
mOnstrOus birds and a murmur of innumer-
able voices whispering as they pass in their
tumultuous flight These are the witches,
anOinted on the shoulders and on the soles of
the feet with the fat of murdered and I'm.
baptized children to enable them to fly
and mounted on broomstiCks, they assemble
from every quarter to join their demon
lovers in perpetrating the most hideOus sac
rilegeS and blasphemOus rites. The air is
filed with the rumor and hum of a great
multitude There are the hoarse voices of
men and the shrlll tones of women, but sup
pressed and murmurous.
A HIDEOUs NIGHTMARE.
Suddenly there is a wild and startling
blast of trumpets and burst of light reveal
ing a vast and astonishing assemblage of
strange beings adjoining by the most shocking
and obscene rites their internal prince and
diabolic patron, who wears the form of
huge he goat The worshipers appearing at
a distance as hideous monsters, the phantoms
of a nightmare, are seen on near approach to
be men and women the latter in rich and
gaudy CARDS or clad only in the costume of
the paradise from which they had been de-
servedly driven. The blasphemOus rites con-
cluded, an orgy, extravagant in Its shame
lessness, monstrous in its depravity, accom-
panied 10y Internal music, then follows and
proclaims this the Walpurgis night of
Goethe.
This should be the vision of a mailman, the
creation of the. imagination of demon, but
it was tlOng a current matter of belief. 1t
was a vast fabric of superstition that had
grown up out of the ignorance and darkness
which had chung to mankind from the day
that the rebels against the Most High had
bUilded on the plains of Shinar a tower
whose top was TO reach into the heavens and
force for them passage to that bliss which
their crimes had forfeited. 1t was the curse
which the Titans, who vainly piled up noun
tains that they might scale Olympus had en-
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