Book contents
Chapter 2
from Question 1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2015
Summary
THE method of making the sacrilegious avowal in connection with an explicit agreement for faithfulness with the demons is varied, inasmuch as the sorceresses themselves engage in various practices in the infliction of acts of sorcery. To understand this, it should first be noticed that while the sorceresses appear in three kinds (those who harm but are unable to heal, those who cure and do not harm as a result of a particular agreement entered into with a demon, and those who harm and heal), as was discussed in Part One of the treatise, among those who harm one kind is supreme, and those who belong to this kind are able to commit all the acts of sorcery, while the others practice only some each. Hence, when the method by which the former make their avowal is described, a sufficient explanation of the other, lower varieties is given. It is they who, contrary to the tendency of human nature, indeed of all wild animals with the sole exception of wolves, devour and consume babies of their own kind. This is the kind that is supreme in practicing acts of sorcery. For it is they who have a propensity for all other forms of harm. It is these sorceresses who stir up hailstorms and harmful winds with lightning, who cause sterility in humans and domestic animals, who offer to demons, as was explained above, or else kill the babies whom they do not devour. (This concerns babies who have not been reborn in the Font of Baptism; those that they devour have been reborn, as will be explained, but they do this only with God's permission.) They also know how to cast infants who are walking near water into it without anyone seeing, even within the sight of their parents; how to make horses go crazy under their riders; how to move from place to place through the air, either in body or imagination;
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- The Hammer of WitchesA Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, pp. 281 - 292Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009