another there, and always in confusion; for their dances are such as those of the fairies, which are truly devils in bodily form who had power no long time since.
After the dancing the witches begin to couple with each other; and in this matter the son does not spare his mother, nor the brother his sister, nor the father his daughter; but incest is commonly practised. The Persians also believed that, to be a competent and complete witch and magician, a person must be born of a mother by her son.
Catul. XC.Of son by mother is a witch conceived,
If the foul Persian creed may be believed.
I may safely leave to the imagination the question whether or not every other kind of lechery known to the world is practised at the Sabbat: what is even more remarkable is that Satan becomes an Incubus for the women and a Succubus for the men. This is a fact to which George and Antoine Gandillon have testified and, before them, Antoine Tornier, Jacquema Paget and several others.
These incests and lecheries bring to my mind the practices of the Euchites and Gnostics. They used to meet together on Good Friday evening with certain women, who were their sisters and aunts and cousins, and had carnal connexion with them. Nine months later, they again met at the same place and, taking the children that had been born of these incestuous couplings, they cut them about all over their bodies and collected their blood in phials, and afterwards burned the bodies. They then mixed the blood with ashes and made a sauce, with which they seasoned their food and drink.
