The Witches Sabbath was said to be performed by groups of naked women dancing and fornicating with the devil and his demons. They did so in order to gain magical powers, powers supposedly used to harm good God fearing Christians. It does not require much effort to understand how these supernatural events were based on much earlier myths regarding the Greek Gods Pan and Dionysus. 

The Horned God motif can be found in a number of cultures that existed in pre-Christian Europe. A goat was but one interpretation and often it was a stag that represented this wild untamed aspect of nature. Shamanic cultures revered the natural world and believed the environment was alive. From mountains to caves, rivers, springs, trees and animals, every aspect was accompanied by some kind of nature spirit. 

Nymphs, elves, fairies, a wide variety of names have been used to describe the elementals. Pan was a pastoral god that lived in Arcadia and was associated with the goat. The goat has long been a symbol of virility, fertility, and abundance, the phallus embodying this sexual prowess and life affirming qualities. Pan and the Nymphs dancing and reaching ecstatic states of consciousness was mirrored in the Greek myths of Dionysus and the Maenads. 

These myths were already starting to become less prominent and that’s why the call, ‘The Great God Pan is Dead’ encapsulates the movement away from mythology towards theology. Christian apologists at the time proclaimed that Pan died because Christ was born. Superstition was superimposed on top of superstition. The big difference was the fact that the Nymphs or any human attendees to the mystery schools were not branded as evil and practitioners of Black Magic. 

This labelling of the beliefs and practices of the Pagan cultures was done by the Church Fathers. The Old Testament is filled with this type of rhetoric towards the followers of Asherah and Baal. It was only during the Middle Ages and the time of the Grail legends and Crusades that theses ideas resurfaced. Christians managed to rid the territories they occupied from pagan beliefs by saying that none of it was real, it was all fake, superstition, bs. 

The idea that humans could have physical interactions with fallen angels had long been debunked by the church. That’s why the Book of Enoch was banned. Enochs entire religious worldview and philosophy was founded upon the sexual interaction between human females and fallen angels. The early church rejected these views, only to resurrect them during the Albigensian Crusade, the Holy Inquisition, and Witch Trials that followed, a period of about 600 years between 1200-1800.

Initially the focus was on heresy and the alternative Christian beliefs of the Cathars and others. It was really only after the Black Plague killed more than 50 million people, as much as 50% of Europe’s population between 1346-1353, that the focus turned to women, witches, and witchcraft. 

Christians were still recovering from the loss of the Holy Land to the Saracens, the unexpected arrest and mass murder of the Knights Templar, and then the Plague hit. A general loss of faith due to all of these events happening in quick succession required a SCAPEGOAT – the devil and his diabolical brood of witches. 

Sexuality and women were rejected in favor of purity and virginity. This belief was reinforced by using the rediscovery of Mary Magdalene’s relics in Sainte-Baume in 1273 to focus on the penitent aspects of her life. She might have been a fallen woman and prostitute in her past, but thanks to Jesus she was forgiven and therefore saved. The only thing required was for her to spend 30 years in penance begging for even more forgiveness. 

Mother Mary was the ideal, the perfect woman, untainted by sin. The church created a massive chasm between the orgiastic fertility cults of the ancient world, and the complete rejection of sexuality by proclaiming both Jesus and Mary to be perpetual virgins.

As with everything else, the stories of the religious practices of other religions were often overblown and sensationalist in conception. It was done to shock, to illicit disgust, exactly how the Witches Sabbath was presented to Europeans. Pure propaganda. The imagery was so vivid and disturbing that Witch Hunts were normal, par for the course in many Medieval societies. 

The charges levelled at the Knights Templar followed this exact pattern. Create outrage by promoting the most salacious and disturbing accusations possible. Proof never accompanied these charges, the point was to stir the emotions of the people, once this was achieved proof became irrelevant. 

The same scenario is playing out in global politics today, America being at the forefront of this sinister movement to distort reality by ‘flooding the zone with shit’ as Steve Bannon likes to say. 

Joseph Tomanek Nymphs Dancing to Pan’s Flute 1920