Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality

use o f belladonna, aconite, and other drugs, felt that

they did become animals. * The effect o f the belief in

lycanthropy on the general population was electric: a

stray dog, a wild cat, a rat, a toad —all were witches,

agents o f Satan, bringing with them drought, disease,

death. Any animal in the environment was dangerous,

demonic. The legend o f the werewolf (popularized in

the Red Riding Hood fable) caused terror. At Labout,

*

For a contem porary account o f lycanthropy, I would suggest The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, by Carlos Castaneda (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968), pp. 170-84.

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two hundred people were burned as werewolves. There

were endless stories of farmers shooting animals who

were plaguing them in the night, only to discover the

next morning that a respectable town matron had been

wounded in precisely the same way.

Witches, of course, could also fly on broomsticks,

and often did. Before going to the sabbat, they an-

nointed their bodies with a mixture of belladonna and

aconite, which caused delirium, hallucination, and gave

the sensation of flying. The broomstick was an almost

archetypal symbol of womanhood, as the pitchfork was

of manhood. Levitation was considered a rare but

genuine fact:

As for its history, it is one of the earliest convictions, common to almost all peoples, that not only do supernatural beings, angels or devils, fly or float in the

air at will, but so can those humans who invoke their

assistance. Levitation among the saints was, and by the

devout is, accepted as an objective fact. The most famous instance is that of St. Joseph of Cupertino, whose ecstatic flights (and he perched in trees) caused embarrassment in the seventeenth century. Yet the appearance of flight, in celestial trance, has been claimed all through the history of the Church, and not only for

such outstanding figures as St. Francis, St. Ignatius

Loyola, or St. Teresa.. . . In the Middle Ages it was

regarded as a marvel, but a firmly established one.

. . . It is not, therefore, at all remarkable that witches

were believed to fly. . . [though] the Church expressly

forbade, during the reign of Charlemagne, any belief

that witches flew. 31

With typical consistency then, the Church said that

saints could fly but witches could not. As far as the

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149

witches were concerned, they trusted their experience,

they knew that they flew. Here they aligned themselves

with Christian saints, yogis, mystics from all traditions,