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Norman Cohn (Europe's Inner Demons) fits well into the mold of the Standard School. If anything, he takes it a bit farther. He says there never were any Witches. He bases his argument on what he sees as the stereotyped image of the Witch, an image which centers around the things Witches were generally accused of doing – poisoning wells, causing storms, eating babies, promiscuous orgies, worshipping a half-animal, half-human god, and so on. These are accusations frequently made against any scapegoated minority. Even the early Christians, for example, were charged by the Romans with cannibalism, baby-eating, wild orgies, and even having a half-animal, donkey-headed god.¹ In the case of Witches, these accusations, he says, are all transparently false; therefore, there were no Witches.

Somehow, though, Cohn avoids applying this logic to early Christians. If the falsity of the accusations proves there were no Witches, one would think the equal falsity of identical accusations would also prove there were no early Christians. The difference, apparently, is that there are other parts to the definition of a Christian; once you remove these false charges, there's quite a lot left by which a Christian can be recognized. For a Witch, however, this isn't so; all there is to a Witch, Cohn implies, is these stereotyped charges. Once you discount them, there's nothing left.

Cohn points out how the early Roman charges against Christians could well have been misinterpretations of actual rites: charges of cannibalism were misrepresentation of the Communion; charges of orgies were twisted descriptions of the Agape feast; charges of donkey-worship were based on the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey; and so on. Thus, there was some sort of reality behind the charges, though the charges themselves are stereotyped hate-mongering. But Cohn does not for a moment imagine the same logic could be applied to the charges against Witches. Could not these absurd and slanderous images have been misrepresentations – intentional or not – of Witches' actual rites? Cohn doesn't ask this question. Rather, he implies that in the case of Witches, as contrasted with the case of the Christians, these charges were based on nothing at all.

Cohn spends nearly a hundred pages carefully building his series of stereotyped scapegoating images – eating babies, having wild orgies, poisoning wells, and so on. Many people, at many points in history, were accused of exactly these things. Then he gives a rather lengthy description of a Sabbat, as Sabbats were pictured during the persecutions, a description assembled from Witch-trials and from the "memoirs and manuals by half a dozen witch-hunting magistrates; and the figure of the witch that emerges," he says, "could not be clearer or more detailed."²

Surprisingly, Cohn's description of the typical Sabbat contains his carefully-built-up stereotyped scapegoat images as extremely minor after-thoughts. The "witch craze" actually is almost wholly different from his stereotyped scapegoating. It is almost wholly unique. Remove those scapegoat charges, and there's still a lot left. The majority of his argument to this point is almost irrelevant to his depiction of the Sabbat.

This is how Cohn describes the "stereotype of the witch." This is how Cohn defines a Witch; so if it doesn't match the following, it's not a Witch.³ Witches were believed to cause sickness, insanity, death, disease; kill, maim, or sicken cattle; cause accidents, cause marriages to dissolve, cause impotence, hailstorms, and crop failures. They were infant-eating cannibals. These sorts of accusations of malefic magic and anti-social obscenity are the only portions of Cohn's description that fit his stereotyped scapegoating; all the rest is unique to Witches, including the way Witches come by their power. "A witch," he writes, "was a human being – usually a woman but sometimes a man or even a child – who was bound to the Devil by a pact or contract, as his servant and assistant."

When the Devil first appeared to a future witch he was clad in flesh and blood; sometimes his shape was that of an animal but usually it was that of a man, fully and even smartly dressed. Almost always he appeared at a moment of acute distress – of bereavement, or of utter loneliness, or of total destitution. A typical pattern was that an elderly widow, rejected by her neighbors and with nobody to turn to, would be approached by a man who would alternately console her, promise her money, scare her, extract a promise of obedience from her, in the end mate with her. The money seldom materialized, the copulation was downright painful, but the promise of obedience remained binding. Formally and irrevocably the new witch had to renounce God, Christ, the Christian religion, and pledge herself instead to the service of Satan; whereupon the Devil set his mark on her – often with the nails or claws of his left hand, and on the left side of the body.⁴

Reward, while seldom material or erotic, did come: the ability to do maleficium (harmful Magic). "This was her reward; for a witch's will, like her master's, was wholly malignant, wholly set on destruction." The Witches' powers, then, were granted by the Devil, which is one of the things Macfarlane claimed; they were not from an internal source within the Witch, the other thing Macfarlane claimed.

Witches would get together at "synagogues," later called "sabbats." There were small ones held usually on Fridays, and large ones, three or four times a year, always ending at either midnight or cockcrow. They were held at a churchyard, or "a crossroads, the foot of a gallows; though the larger sabbats were commonly held at the summit of some famous mountain in a faraway region." A flying ointment was used to get there, an ointment whose secret of making had been taught to the Witches by the Devil. Sometimes the Witches would fly on the back of rams, goats, pigs, oxen, black horses, sticks, shovels, spits, or broomsticks. "And meanwhile the husband or wife would sleep on peacefully, quite unaware of these strange happenings; sometimes a stick laid in the bed would take not only the place but the appearance of the absent spouse."

Various accounts of the Sabbat differ in detail, but not in general. "The sabbat was presided over by the Devil, who now took on the shape not of a mere man but of a monstrous being, half man and half goat: a hideous black man with enormous horns, a goat's beard and goat's legs, sometimes also with bird's claws instead of hands and feet. He sat on a high ebony throne; light streamed from his horns, flames spouted from his huge eyes. The expression of his face was one of immense gloom, his voice was harsh and terrible to hear." The Witches knelt and prayed to him, then kissed him, "often on his left foot, his genitals or his anus." Witches who'd been insufficiently evil were punished with beatings. Then came a parody of the Mass; black vestments, a sermon against reverting to Christianity, promise of a better reward than the Christian heaven. Seated again, the Devil would receive offerings of "cakes and flour, poultry and corn, sometimes money."

"The proceedings ended in a climax of profanity." The witches again adored the Devil, and kissed his backside. There was a parody of the Eucharist, with a noxious liquid and a solid substance like shoe leather, hard to chew. After that would be a meal, often with horrid foods – rotting meat and fish, wine that tasted like manure, babies' flesh. Then there was an orgiastic circle-dance, to trumpets, drum, and fife. In the middle, one Witch would bend over, head touching the ground, with a candle in her anus to make light. The dance would become an orgy, with indiscriminate coupling, and the Devil would mate with all present – men, women, and children.

The Witches were thus thought of as "assembling at regular intervals, bound together by communal rites, subject to a rigid, centralized discipline. In every respect they represent a collective inversion of Christianity – and an inversion of a kind that could only be achieved by former Christians. That is why non-Christians, such as Jews and Gypsies, though they might be accused of maleficium [harmful Magic], were never accused of being witches in the full sense of the term... Witches were regarded as above all a sect of Devil-worshippers." This is also why Cohn thinks Witches could not have been Pagans; since the description of their rites includes so much in the way of Christian parody, if they had existed at all, Witches would have been a type of Christian or Christian heretic.

Cohn is partly right: this is, in fact, a description which could only be generated by a devout Christian. The actual rites, if there were any such, could well have been very different, or very differently understood. Take four details, more or less at random: 1) offering gifts to the Deity, 2) using corporal punishment for discipline, 3) desecrating other people's religious symbols, and 4) including a meal as part of the rites. 1) There is nothing particularly Satanic about giving gifts of "cakes and flour, poultry and corn, sometimes money" to a Deity. In fact, this is done in nearly every religion on Earth, particularly those based on Nature imagery. 2) Beating as a form of discipline was certainly a common practice throughout Medieval Europe. 3) Warnings against reversion to former religions are frequently given to new converts nearly everywhere, and sometimes converts are even encouraged to desecrate the symbols of their former religion. If such things happened at all, they may well signify a person who no longer belongs to the religion being shown contempt. 4) A meal as part of a religious celebration is also part of most religions; its presence most certainly does not imply an inversion of Christianity, or even any necessary connection to Christianity at all.

So, many of these practices, if they took place, don't imply Christian parody, and would certainly be compatible with Pagan rites. Nor are they necessarily as demonic and horrid as Cohn's description – and the Churchmen's – would have us believe. For one thing, looking again at these four details, Christians do them as well, with no reference to Satan at all. Offerings to the Church, as well as beatings as a form of discipline, have always been a part of Christian observance. Early Christians have even desecrated the symbols and shrines of Pagans, and converts were violently warned to avoid reversion to their former faith. As for a sacred meal being an intentional parody of the Communion, the Communion itself could be depicted as a parody of the older Jewish Seder. Yet no one dismisses Christianity as merely a "collective inversion" of Judaism.

Though Cohn follows the Church in presenting such details of Witch-imagery as abominable and execrable and sacrilegious, many of these details are not, in themselves, the least bit unusual in the history of the world's religions; and, divorced from the propaganda, many of them would seem quite reasonable as religious observances.

It's quite possible for there to have been rites of some other kind, misinterpreted or with absurd details added, in the same way the Romans misrepresented the early Christian rites. The presence of absurd and obscene details – or perfectly reasonable details to which an absurd or obscene spin is added – does not prove the non-existence of the rites or sects in question, and in fact says nothing whatever about the tone of the practices of the people involved. The Roman tales of early Christian cannibalism can't be taken to imply actual cannibalism on the part of Christians. In the same way, the Christian tales of Witches' perversions and abominations needn't be taken to mean Witches actually practiced such perversions and abominations. But nor does an accusation of abomination prove that nothing at all took place, else one would have to insist there never were any early Christians.

So how would something which did happen have been presented? As one possibility: by the time of the Middle Ages, any ritual which involved candles and a sacred meal could be seen – by Christians – as a "collective inversion of Christianity." But there's no reason to think it was seen in this way by someone who practiced it. Medieval Jews, for instance, had just such a sacred meal, by candle-light, every Friday night – and yet never viewed themselves as a "collective inversion of Christianity" any more than did Christians view themselves as Jewish heretics.

Further, even Cohn's horrific description of a Sabbat contains a great deal of recognizably Pagan imagery, imagery having nothing at all to do with Christianity and which thus can't possibly be seen as a perversion of Christian ideas. Take, for example, his reference to the Sabbat happening in a churchyard or at "a crossroads, the foot of a gallows," or "at the summit of some famous mountain." Christian churches were often built on old Pagan sacred sites,⁵ so the presence there of Pagan worshippers should not be surprising. Crossroads have been sacred to Hecate and other Pagan divinities for many thousands of years; Odin was the God of the Gallows, and one of his names was Hanga-Tyr, the Hanged God. Hecate and Odin are two of the deities – one pre-Hellenic, one Norse or Germanic – who are commonly associated with Witchcraft, ancient and Medieval as well as modern. And so-called "High Places" – the summits of mountains or hills, or of man-made mountains such as ziggurats and pyramids – have also been associated with Pagan worship since long before the advent of Christianity, or even Judaism.

The idea of holding religious festivals at most of these locations – crossroads, gallows, and mountains – is most assuredly not Christian, or even anti-Christian, and cannot possibly be seen as an "inversion" of Christianity. But it is Pagan. Because of the Christian tendancy to build churches on old Pagan sacred sites, even the use of churchyards may having nothing to do with Christianity. None of these details are necessarily connected with Christianity in any way, other than as borrowings from Paganism, and their presence here argues strongly for non-Christian sources for at least some of the imagery associated with Witches – and with Witches specifically, not with any of the other persecuted minorities Cohn mentions, such as Jews, lepers, or Moslems. As he points out, most of these accusations were not made against anyone other than Witches.

Cohn summarizes his stereotype of the Witch as a person who 1) practiced maleficium, 2) is bound to the Devil, 3) flew through the air to "wild and desolate places" to do evil (such as baby-eating); and 4) is a member of a sect holding Sabbats, where Christianity is parodied and the Devil is worshipped and has sexual intercourse with members of his sect.⁶ Since many – perhaps all – of these things are impossible, Cohn argues, Witches never existed.

Early in the 20th century, Lea thought the "witch craze" was an episode of credulous superstition, which humanity eventually outgrew as society became more skeptical and rational. The reality of two devastating World Wars, however, dispelled the notion of there having been any progress in human reason, so post-war theorists had to come up with something else to explain the rise and decline of Witch trials. Most scholars still see it all as irredeemably irrational, but they've accepted irrationality as part of human nature. Cohn compares the Inquisitors to Nazis; others (such as Trevor-Roper) compare them to Communists or to rabid anti-Communists such as Joseph McCarthy. The question has shifted since Lea's time, from documenting the triumph of Reason to attempting to explain this particular form of Unreason.

Cohn differs from other scholars in one important respect. Most feel there was, at least occasionally, something to the charges against Witches. Midelfort, Macfarlane, Lea, Trevor-Roper, Notestein, all admit there were attempts to do Magic going on. All except Midelfort are mystified by the occasional unforced confession (Midelfort claims they all were forced). All mention cases in which the accused seemed to honestly believe at least some of the charges. All refer to pre-existing folklore that the Church bent to its own purposes. A few writers, such as Elliot Rose and J. B. Russell, go so far as to theorize an actual heretical sect, a self-conscious parody of the Church, which the Inquisition attempted to wipe out. Not so Cohn, who seems to say there was nothing at all going on, anywhere, ever. Cohn even criticizes Rose directly for believing that anything at all had been happening, that there was a real sect.⁷ At least Cohn notices this in Rose; most other writers seem to think Rose "disproved" the whole idea of a Witch-sect.

All confessions, in Cohn's view, were forced by torture or the threat of torture. All ideas concerning Witches were created by the Church and then imposed upon others. Cohn's is an extreme position, one so extreme as to be rare within the community of scholars who have actually studied the issues – but it's surprisingly common outside of that community.

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¹ Norman Rufus Colin Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, Basic Books, New York, 1975, p1-4.

² Cohn, p99.

³ Cohn, p99-102.

⁴ Cohn, p99-102.

⁵ For example, Sulpicius Severus, the biographer of Martin of Tours (bishop from 371 to 397) writes that Martin "immediately built a church or monastery at every place where he destroyed a Pagan shrine" (Sulpicius Severus, On The Life Of St. Martin, ch 13; quoted by Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion from Paganism to Christianity, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1997, p49].

⁶ Cohn, p147.

⁷ Cohn, p118.

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