Witch Covens and the Grand Masters - The Witches' Journey to the Sabbat, and the Sabbat Orgy (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

Montague Summers

• Publisher: Fantasy and Horror Classics
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781447406273
• eBook ISBN: 9781447480365
• Subtopic: Customs & Traditions

"Witch Covens and the Grand Masters" is a detailed treatise on the subject of witchcraft written by Montague Summers, exploring in particular their hierarchy, their 'sabbat', and related practices. Augustus Montague Summers (1880 – 1948) was an English clergyman and author most famous for his studies on vampires, witches and werewolves—all of which he believed to be very much real. He also wrote the first English translation of the infamous 15th-century witch hunter's manual, the "Malleus Maleficarum", in 1928. This vintage book will appeal to those with an interest in the occult and is not to be missed by collectors of Summers' famous work. Other notable works by this author include: "A Popular History of Witchcraft" (1937), "Witchcraft and Black Magic" (1946), and "The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism" (1947). Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author and essay by Caroline Taylor Stewart.

WITCH COVENS AND
THE GRAND MASTERS

THE WITCHES' JOURNEY TO THE
SABBAT, AND THE SABBAT ORGY

So vile and pestilent a superstition, whose evil and reprobate adherents the common consent of society holds as enemies to general order and, indeed, the foes of the human race. —Pope John Xxii.

Satan calleth them together into a Devilish Synagogue, and that he may also understand of them how well and diligently they have fulfilled their office of intoxicating committed unto them, and whom they have slain.
—Lambert Daneau.

The dark and secret Society of Witches spreads—a huge network of evil—over the whole world. Throughout Europe and America in particular the organization of Satanists is very thorough and very complete. In less than the span of a limited lifetime, not more than sixty years indeed after the first settlers had landed at Massachusetts Bay, Cotton Mather notes as a detail significantly dangerous in itself and worthy of particular attention the systematic and methodized federation of the Salem witches. He says, “ ’Tis very Remarkable to see what an Impious and Impudent imitation of Divine Things is Apishly affected by the Devil,” and after showing that in many striking incidents the sorceries of the native Indians might be taken to be a burlesque of the Biblical narrative, he continues: “The Devil which then thus imitated what was in the Church of the Old Testament, now among Us would Imitate the Affairs of the Church in the New. The Witches do say, that they form themselves much after the manner of Congregational Churches; and that they have a Baptism and a Supper, and Officers among them, abominably Resembling those of our Lord.”

There are, it is true, cases upon record and instances to be met with to-day of the solitary witch, dwelling apart and alone in some remote and unfrequented corner, apparently leading an almost isolated and eremitical life, but this is a rather rare exception.

The members of the witch society in various districts, large or small, villages, towns, great cities, or even shires and provinces, are linked up, and a correspondence is maintained between them in many mysterious ways. There is an active freemasonry of evil.

One of the oaths demanded from a novice is generally a pledge to frequent the midnight assemblies. These conventicles or covens are the meetings of bands or companies of witches summoned and forgathering under the discipline of an officer, who naturally was assisted in his work by other functionaries. Obviously the members of a coven would all belong as nearly as possible to the same neighbourhood, and especially was this the case in former years when the means of transit were far more slow and difficult than at the present day. It appears from the evidence at numerous trials, both at home and abroad, that those who belonged to a coven were bound to attend the weekly Esbat or rendezvous. The arrest of one member of a coven often led to the implication of many more who belonged to the same gang.

The number of witches which constituted and still constitutes a coven has been much discussed. In a famous Scotch trial of 1662 when the revelations of Isobel Gowdie, of Auldearne, gave the fullest details concerning almost every circumstance of witchcraft, amply describing the Sabbats, the minor meetings, the ceremonies and instructions in malefic charms, she confessed “ther ar threttein persons in ilk Coeven”. In a very exhaustive investigation of this point Mr. Alexander Keiller thus sums up: “To those unaware of the probable organization of what might be termed the Witch Sect in Europe, in at any rate the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it may be explained that the Administrative and Executive Unit of Witchcraft customarily consisted of thirteen persons, and was usually termed a ‘Coven’ or ‘Coeven’.” This scholar has explored in great detail “The Territorial Distribution of Witchcraft in Aberdeenshire”, and he has also set forth “The Personnel of the Aberdeenshire Witchcraft Covens in the years 1596–7” showing that there were five distinct covens each formed of thirteen members, as well as three other covens which owing to the lack of necessary data cannot be precisely completed.

Until at least the latter part of the seventeenth century a well-organized group of witches existed between Shotley Bridge and Corbridge in the county of Northumberland. Ann Armstrong a farm servant at Burtree House, a few miles from Stocksfield-on-Tyne, was for a time partially drawn into the society and when in February, 1672–3, she voluntarily deposed before a number of magistrates her witness was most clear and detailed. Lieut.-Colonel G. R. B. Spain writes: “It is obvious from the evidence that Ann Armstrong was closely in touch with a witchcraft organization over a large district of some fifty square miles.” (“The Witches of Riding Mill, 1673”: Cornhill Magazine, March, 1929.) Ann Armstrong described how the witches were divided into “coveys, consisting of thirteen persons in every covey”.

On the other hand it can be equally well shown that in many cases the local group or coven of witches did not consist of thirteen members. Sixteen witches belonged to the St. Osyth coven in 1582; ten witches formed the coven that infested the Waltham and Hedingham countryside five years later. The witches of Warboys who so plagued the Throgmbrtons and killed Lady Cromwell were three in number. No less than thirty-five witches can be traced in connexion with the famous Pendle Forest trials (1613). To attempt to divide this total into covens of thirteen is singularly futile. In the effort to do so not only has evidence been juggled, but Mother Demdike and Mother Chattox are placed in the same group, upon which Mr. L’Estrange Ewen justly comments: “This is a wild argument. Demdike and Chattox could not have been in the same coven because they were very keen rivals.” Some of the London covens of Satanists to-day are composed of as many as thirty or forty men and women; other circles again are quite small and only comprise ten initiates.

The Officers among the witches, of whom Cotton Mather speaks, were in the first place the local Chiefs or Masters of a coven, above whom was the Grand Master of a district.

There is very ample proof that “the Devil” of the Sabbat was not infrequently a human being, none other indeed than the Grand Master of the district, and since his officers and immediate attendants were also termed “Devils” by the witches some confusion has on occasion ensued. In Jersey the Grand Master, the Devil’s deputy, was known as “Le Tchéziot”. In a few cases where sufficient details are given it is possible actually to identify “the Devil” by name.

During the trial in December, 1481, at Neuchatel, of Rolet Groschet, he confessed that when quite a lad he had been taken to a meeting of witches by Jaquet Duplan. Here he was welcomed by “the Devil”, a tall dark man, named Robin, to whom he did homage and who made much of him. The second time Groschet went to a rendezvous of sorcerers the gathering was much smaller, and the president was Captain Hanchement, evidently a well-known figure in the town, by whom he was appointed the local messenger for the society, and he used to go up and down to the various witches’ houses giving notice of the assemblies and other bad businesses. At another time he attended a meeting of some other covens than his own belonging to Vauxtravers a few leagues away, and here the Provost was Etienne Goynet.

In 1579 at Windsor there used to meet “within the backside of Master Dodges in the Pittes” a coven presided over by Father Rosimond, of Farnham. It has been too ingeniously suggested that Father Rosimond alias Osborne, whom Mother Stiles of the coven named as her “chief”, was a priest. But, no, this “wise man” (as he is termed) was a widower with a daughter who proved wellnigh as versed in sorcery as himself.

It is true that sometimes a clergyman stands revealed as a high official among the witches. The Rev. George Burroughs, pastor at Wells, Maine, was accused by eight of the Salem witches “as being an head Actor at some of their Hellish Rendezvouses, and one who had the promise of being a King in Satan’s Kingdom”. He was often heard to brag “that he was a Conjuror, above the ordinary Rank of Witches”, whilst several of the Satanists declared that “he was the Person who had Seduc’d, and Compell’d them into the snares of Witchcraft”. Now it is established beyond all question that George Burroughs was the Grand Master of the district. Admittedly in the wave of extreme rationalism which so inexplicably swept over Massachusetts at the beginning of the eighteenth century the General Court reversed George Burroughs’ attainder and awarded damages to his heirs, but this does not in the least (as a recent historian appears to think) clear him from the guilt of witchcraft nor yet does it rebut even one particular of the charges which were proven up to the hilt again and again. Cotton Mather, for example, never altered his opinion of Burrough’s culpability, and did not spare to express his sternest disapproval of the general volte-face.

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• Montague Summers
• WITCH COVENS ANDTHE GRAND MASTERS