and its not so symbolic substitute, animal sacrifice, was
a vital part of the ritual of all early religions, including the Jewish one. The witches participated in this tradition rather modestly: they generally sacrificed a
goat or a hen. It was the Christians who developed and
extended the Old World system of sacrifice and cannibalism to almost surreal ends: Christ, the sacrificial lamb, who died an agonizing death on the cross to
ensure forgiveness of men’s sins and whose followers
symbolically, even today, eat of his flesh and drink of
his blood — what is the Eucharist if not fossilized cannibalism?
The final activity of the sabbat was a phallic orgy —
heathen, drug-abetted, communal sex. The sex of the
sabbat is distinguished by descriptions of pain. It was
said that intercourse was painful, that the phallus of the
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masked coven leader was cold and oversized, that no
woman ever conceived. It would seem that the horned
figure used an artificial phallus and could service all
the celebrants. T h e Old Religion, as opposed to the
Christian religion, celebrated sexuality, fertility, nature
and woman's place in it, and communal sex was a logical
and most sacral rite.
T h e worship o f animals is also indigenous to nature-
based religious systems. Early people existed among
animals, scarcely distinct from them. Through religious
ritual, people differentiated themselves from animals
and gave honor to them —they were food, sustenance.
There was a respect for the natural world — people were
hunter and hunted simultaneously. T heir perspective
was acute. T hey worshiped the spirit and power they
saw manifest in the carnivore world o f which they were
an integral part. When man began to be “civilized, ” to
separate himself out o f nature, to place himself over
and above woman (he became Mind, she became Carnality) and other animals, he began to seek power over nature, magical control. The witch cults still had a
strong sense o f people as part o f nature, and animals
maintained a prime place in both ritual and consciousness for the witches. The Christians, who had a profound and compulsive hatred for the natural world, thought
that the witches, through malice and a lust for power
(pure projection, no doubt), had mobilized nature/animals into a robotlike anti-Christian army. T h e witch hunters were convinced that toads, rats, dogs, cats,
mice, etc., took orders from witches, carried curses from
one farm to another, caused death, hysteria, and disease. They thought that nature was one massive, crawl
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Woman Hating
ing conspiracy against them, and that the conspiracy
was organized and controlled by the wicked women.
They can in fact be credited with pioneering the politics
