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Rheims Cernunnos
Gallo-Roman relief, 1st century CE
Those seeking a native vocabulary for modern witchery could do worse than to look North.
In Early Modern times, the sabbat was known in Scandinavia as (to translate into English cognates) the witch-thing—a suitably Nordic name for the witches' assembly.
(Modern Witchery's mixed origins are readily revealed by its mixed vocabulary. Sabbat, originally a Hebrew word, is an etic—outsider's—name opprobriously applied to a gathering also known as the “synagogue of Satan.”)
The Norse term thing—as in althing—best preserves the word's original sense: “a meeting, an assembly.” Back in old tribal days, that's what it meant in English, too. A witch-thing is thus a “witch-meeting,” a “witch-assembly”: a suitably objective term for a gathering of witches.
(Contemporary use of the word sabbat to mean a witch's holiday—as in "the Eight Sabbats"—is a derived sense, extending the name of the gathering itself to the occasion for the gathering. Clearly, such an extended usage is not suitable to witch-thing.)
(Among lovers of the Old Tongue, such occasions tend to be called—for obvious reasons—firedays.)
Exactly how English's old word for “assembly” came to take on its current sense of “item, entity,” is not entirely clear. (Perhaps because things gather to deal with things.) Plainly, the word has had something of a roundabout journey over the course of the last 1000 years.
Witch-thing reads rather humorously to the contemporary English ear, but—be it admitted—not inaptly so. Little is more characteristic of Witching than the Sabbat.
Remind you of anything?
The “Devil” card, maybe?
Welcome to the Sabbat.
The Horned, tall on the altar.
(His antlers reach up to heaven. Between them, constellations wheel.)
Standing before him, priestess and priest.
All of them naked as gods.
Shall I tell you a secret?
They are not so much priest and priestess, as the twin Hands of the God.
Right and Left, respectively.
Which came first, you ask, card or Sabbat?
Historians tell us that the concept of the Witch's Sabbat as revolutionary counter-worship arose at a particular time in a particular place: to whit, the Western Alps in the early 15th century. Of necessity one asks: why there, and why then?
The answer, my friend, is love.
This is the story of the love between a god and his people.
Listen, now.
In the darkest days of our persecution, the Horned heard our cries and looked with ruth—compassion—upon the sorrows of his people.
(So it was in ancient days, when he brought us the Fire from Heaven.)
For love of us, he gave us a gift, that we might have the soul-strength to endure: a love-gift to lift our burdens, even for a little, that we might know freedom in the midst of bondage, a foretaste of the joy that shall someday be ours.
Once we dwelt in the fertile plains. Beef was our food, the milk of cows our drink.
Then we were driven out.
Into the rocky, unfertile hills we fled, which cannot sustain a cow.
We became a people of the goat, for whom the Horned wears caprine horns and hide.
Like goats, we witches are survivors.
That's why it can't help but seem to me something of a moral failing that I don't like goat's milk.
Oh, I've tried. “This chèvre has a nice, lemony tang to it,” I say hopefully.
But in my heart, I understand that it's really myself that I'm trying to talk around.
Maybe it's just a matter of what I'm used to.
Maybe I'm secretly longing for those fat days of our onetime freedom.
If I told you that one of the greatest masterpieces of Christian art is actually at heart a depiction of the Witches' Sabbat, would you believe me?
While the imagery of the central and focal panel of Hubert and Jan van Eyck's monumental polyptych the Ghent Altarpiece (completed 1432), known to art historians as The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, is impeccably Biblical and orthodox, the painting has a haunting and frankly disturbing quality that reads as anything but.
It depicts the worship of the Animal God.
In an idealized landscape, worshipers converge from all directions on a central altar. The altar is encircled by kneeling winged adorants. On the altar itself stands a hornless Ram, white and shining. The god himself gazes outwards, meeting the eyes of the viewer. From his head shines light.
(By the way, that's not actually an extremely pendulous scrotum hanging between his legs, though it sure does look like one: it's his tail.)
Yeah, yeah, the Lamb of God. Yeah, yeah, angels, virgin martyrs, confessors, knights of Christ. Yeah, sure.
They're worshiping a Ram.
Any witch that's ever been to the Sabbat recognizes this scene, though she may not tell you so. The Horned on the altar, surrounded by his coven, with every witchly eye turned towards him. This is the Eternal Sabbat, the witch's true Paradise. We know, because we've been there.
No, I'm not suggesting that van Eyck was a secret member of what Margaret Murray called the “Witch cult.” (It sure would make an interesting story, though, if not a novel.) It is interesting to note, though, that in fact Adoration of the Mystic Lamb was painted at exactly the time—and near to the geographic locus from which—the concept of the Witches' Sabbat, as an iconic counter-worship, first emerged.
No, I'm suggesting something deeper: that van Eyck's mystic painting embodies, under the guise of Christian orthodoxy, an atavistic longing of the human heart, something that will never change because it is intrinsic to who we are.
Full Wolf Moon: coven flying night.
The ointment makes the rounds; those who wish to, partake.
We lay down and Fly.
I am at the Sabbat in the firelit woods, kneeling at the altar.
I take His hand and kiss it. I tell Him I love Him. (I won't say there are no tears.) I lay my head in His lap. I speak the secret fears.
After a time, He takes His hand from my head and raises me up. His smile sears my soul.
