capot ou manteau, puis il commande qu'on l'adore; si bien qu'obeyssans & estants mis à genouil, ils baisent le Diable auprés de l'œil gauche, à la poitrine, à la fesse, à la cuisse, & aux parties honteuses, puis leuant la queue ils luy baisent le derriere.'[1]
The novice was then marked by a scratch from a sharp instrument, but was not admitted to the 'high mysteries' till about the age of twenty.[2] As no further ceremonies are mentioned, it may be concluded that the initiation into these mysteries was performed by degrees and without any special rites.
At Lille, about the middle of the seventeenth century, Madame Bourignon founded a home for girls of the lowest classes, 'pauvres et mal-originées, la plus part si ignorantes au fait de leur salut qu'elles vivoient comme des bètes'.[3] After a few years, in 1661, she discovered that thirty-two of these girls were worshippers of the Devil, and in the habit of going to the Witches' Sabbaths. They 'had all contracted this Mischief before they came into the House'.[4] One of these girls named Bellot, aged fifteen, said 'that her Mother had taken her with her when she was very Young, and had even carried her in her Arms to the Witches Sabbaths'.[5] Another girl of twelve had been in the habit of going to the Sabbath since she also was 'very Young'. As the girls seem to have been genuinely fond of Madame Bourignon, she obtained a considerable amount of information from them. They told her that all worshippers of the Devil 'are constrained to offer him their Children. When a child thus offered to the Devil by its Parents, comes to the use of Reason, the Devil then demands its Soul, and makes it deny God and renounce Baptism, and all relating to the Faith, promising Homage and Fealty to the Devil in manner of a Marriage, and instead of a Ring, the Devil gives them a Mark with an iron awl [aleine de fer] in some part of the Body.'[6]
It is also clear that Marguerite Montvoisin[7] in Paris had
