The Witches Sabbat

During the Middle Ages, the Witches Sabbat was recognized as the midnight gathering of diabolists who would endeavor to renew their contract with Satan through blasphemous rites and orgiastic rituals. While this period of history is riddled with affluent superstitions, the event of the Witches Sabbat stands out as a remarkable ritual expression that still serves to inspire fear in the religiously conservative and morally proper.


Though veiled in historical mystery, observing the practices associated with the Witches Sabbat reveal themes synonymous with other shamanic traditions of the past and present. Similarly, this tradition still resonates in contemporary times through those sorcerers and witches aspiring towards an intensification of consciousness and the prospect of self-realization, otherwise regarded as the left hand path.


The symbols identified with the Witches Sabbat serve as a catalyst for recognizing the subtle mechanics of the subconscious and the base instincts of the participating witches and sorcerers (here forward referred to as the celebrants). These symbols awaken consciousness and the desire to find union, sexual or otherwise, with the living daemonic intelligences sought by the celebrants of the midnight gathering.


Satan, literally the "adversary," and chief supervisor of the Witches Sabbat, symbolically represents self-realization through rebellion. The celebrant utilizes rebellion as the means by which consciousness can be moved to challenge one's own personal convictions as well as those complacencies that inhabit the conditions of the celebrant's everyday life. The medieval servant of Satan was often the one who sought liberty from the limiting conditions of the Christian church and society, during a period in which the two were closely entwined. Through this rebellion a new possibility for self-realization emerges through an introspection of one's most natural state and camaraderie with the daemonic agents summoned at the Witches Sabbat.


The Witches Sabbat is perhaps most palpable as a rite of passage. The celebrant prepares oneself in such a way as to embark on an otherworldly journey, introspecting into the imagination and falling into a deep trance inspiring uncommon states of consciousness. The general shamanic rite of passage, outlined by the anthropologist Mircea Eliade, begins with a visionary episode of death followed by an adventure into the underworld wherein the celebrant is instructed and taught by a divine teacher and is then sent back into the living world where the celebrant discovers a newfound relationship between the human and divine. In the case of the Witches Sabbat, this divine teacher is represented by Satan who achieves a new relationship with the celebrant and a pact is affirmed by a contract signed in blood. In turn of course, it is noted that Satan grants magical powers to the celebrant as a result of this merger.


One may also make a parallel reference to the rite of passage with respect to the Sadhaka of the Tantric cults in India who seek to internalize "external" experiences. These adepts lose the need to use implements and tools during rituals and instead rely upon the rapt ecstasy of meditation and "waking" dreaming. The imagination of the satanic celebrant similarly creates the ritual act itself as a vivid ceremonial practice:

"In the Witches Sabbat, the celebrant's body lies in restful prose seeking the very cradle of the grave which beckons to the shades of the daemonic world. If successful, the celebrant rises up in the spirit-cloak of wolf, owl, or serpent and goes forth to the fields and forests, hidden from the eyes of the sleeping. At the gathering, the celebrant may find Cain, the Man of the Sabbat, picketing the very Fire of Iblis, the gift of humanity which is that of perception and self-knowledge. In the counter-clockwise dance of daemons around the fire, the drums will raise the flames higher as Lilith comes to the circle, empowering the participants with the kiss of the serpent."

Words and such ritualistic descriptions may only cast partial insight into the Sabbat experience. The authentic realization of the practice comes through individual application. For example, some celebrants seek the gates of the Sabbat by the Devil's Salve, a psychotropic ointment made from various plants. These substances can include anything from belladonna, hemp, aconite, or other ingredients which are rubbed over the skin in sensitive areas, such as the inner thighs, armpits, or over the anus. Shamans from other cultural contexts are recorded performing similar activities, such as the Siberian shamans who would use flybane (amanita muscaria) to inspire their spirit journeys. Regardless, it is not necessary that psychotropic agents be used to achieve alternative states of consciousness. Rather, there is the option of engaging in trance states or what the magician, Austin Osman Spare, referred to as "Neither Neither," the dual opposing tensions between dreaming and waking. This practice experiments with the threshold of sleep wherein consciousness is carried into the normal states of slumber, causing the celebrant to awaken in conditions that are not privy to normal awareness.


Most celebrants of the Witches Sabbat work toward the gathering through solitary chant. Such invocations may include the ascription of a celebrant's own daemon to a particular fetish such as a skull or staff, or through the counting of serpent bones while reciting mantras of one's own import. Any method that successfully communicates to the celebrant, in preparation of the initiatory process, should suit. Imagination and isolation herewith draw the celebrant into a twilight state of trance that aims to move one's daemon beyond the flesh of waking reality, leaving behind the objective paradigm of the outside world so that the celebrant may rise up into the shadowed veil and take flight into the darkest dreams of the infernal world they affirm. In this very practice the celebrant confronts and commands the pleasures of the flesh, fears, desires, and the passion to live as gods and goddesses in the waking world.


The Witches Sabbat is both paradise and hell, the fire of Lucifer given to each practitioner as they face the king and queen of the infernal rite. This strain between the sacred and sacrilegious is evidenced by the themes and behaviors of the celebrants. The cunning craft, being of an occult nature, evidences its importance to its practitioners by its secrecy. The left hand path becomes a solitary and private one held affectionately sacred by those who have succeeded in realizing themselves and their visions through its black art. In turn, this process of realization, through the rebellion of doubt, challenge, and inquiry, inspires a profanation of what is commonplace and otherwise held sacred, namely the symbolic rituals and icons of Christendom that were widespread during the Middle Ages. It is for this reason that the Black Mass of the Witches Sabbat serves as an irreverent and backwards rendering of the otherwise holy Christian mass.


At its core, the Sabbat is a dream which is more viable than any experience in the waking world. It involves an intensification of consciousness that traverses the flesh and communes with those who have accomplished the same. The Witches Sabbat thereby acts as an assembly wherein practitioners of the left hand path may gather and revel in their freedoms, delights, and joy of their nature. It is the primal rite awakening the dreamer in the flesh of the celebrant. With a deep breath, the celebrant may go forth to the Sabbat and then rise up again in the shell of living flesh, guarded by the daemonic shades that are cordially bound to them.


Throughout history the Sabbat has been a living reality. From the nocturnal battles of the Benandati to various other witch cults, the rite of the Sabbat holds varying cultural interpretations. In modern times, we do not go forth to battle with the enemies of the crops; rather we open forth the gates of hell for the very infernal and chthonic powers within ourselves. Comparatively, one may reference the Maskhara, the revelers who dance widdershins around a fire, chanting and calling the totemic spirits of their animal servitors. Likewise are the Persian Yatukivah, the ones called daevas or demons, who like the celebrants of the Witches Sabbat, gather around the fire to copulate with daemons and other witches in the primal ecstasy of desire.


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