There have been males who did a business in discovering witches by pricking a suspected lady’s body throughout with a pin until they found some place insensible to the pain of the prick, when they might triumphantly announce this to be the “Devil’s Mark” that the Devil or one in every of his imps at occasions visited her in the guise of some animal–a dog, a cat, even an enormous butterfly, to suck some part of her physique, and that, whatever the part of her body chosen, it and no different spot was always resorted to by the impish creature thereafter. Then again, it is interesting to note in connection with this the report in the Apocryphal Gospels as to the appearance of an angel customer to Mary within the guise of a handsome youth, and the opinion expressed to Joseph by the virgins left accountable for her throughout Joseph’s absence, that it was the angel who had made her pregnant. And, therefore, the command of Mary’s Heavenly Bridegroom that Joseph was not to strategy her as a husband till after the birth of the mysteriously begotten youngster would be strictly in keeping with Borderland laws, monogamy, and not bigamy, being the law of Borderland, because it’s the very best best of both worlds.

For obvious causes, I suppress even localities: “A gentleman who was intensely darkish, of a Spanish kind, was in love with a lady of the true blond type. They never married, but later on she married another person and moved to a different a part of the nation. One evening this gentleman had a very vivid dream, in which he fancied himself to be her husband. So real appeared the experience that he might scarcely convince himself on waking that he had not actually simply come from her presence. Several years later, he happened to be in that a part of the country, and bethought himself of searching up his former lady love. He found her husband to be a determined blonde, like herself. Somewhat youngster, a determined brunette, ran as much as him, exclaiming joyfully, “Papa, Papa! There is little doubt that many of the witches did practice a sorcery of essentially the most diabolical kind, a sorcery primarily based upon the rules of hypnotic suggestion, and of the wilful projection of the astral, or double; a sorcery whose object was to cause evil, and which did cause evil in lots of circumstances where the victims were not protected from occult mischief-working by living pure and upright lives; a sorcery, lastly, whose impelling motive was attributable to insane hallucinations resulting in a very large number of instances from having violated the legal guidelines of right dwelling in sex relations on the Borderland.

Some ladies could have achieved this sometimes, in anticipation of a vacation or a hot date, whereas some ladies may have adopted the follow to avoid particularly painful menstrual periods. It is noticeable that a lot of the witches who came to grief, and who confessed to intercourse with the Devil, referred to certain ceremonies customary at each “Sabbath”, though information of witchcraft point reasonably to subjective illusion of performing abominable rites than to actual apply of the identical. Within the witchcraft days, what is known as “repercussion” was a typical phenomenon. The witness, who was on guard, testified with much detail of circumstance to having seen a huge “fly”, like a miller, which buzzed in among the many hair of the sick girl and after a while flew away, when the witch called to the witness to elevate up her hair, that she may present a sore place on the scalp which, she stated, was where the Devil, within the form of a fly, was wont to suck her.

Sometimes witnesses testify to seeing these animal familiars, as within the case of a witch ailing in bed who was being carefully watched. In the first place, the witch (poor woman) lived in days when the physiological relations of husband and wife occupied a far lower place in fashionable estimation than it did in the times of Mary and furthermore, in the Orient, Mary’s dwelling the relation of husband and spouse had then and nonetheless has a holiness on its physiological side which is international to European or American habits of thought. It’s an fascinating question, nevertheless, as to whether kids might really be begotten by a double upon a virgin or, as in the case tried earlier than the Grenoble Parliament, upon a married woman whose husband is away. Within the “Dictionaire Infernal” there’s a report of a trial before the Parliament of Grenoble, in which the query was, whether or not a certain infant could be declared legitimate which was born after the husband had been absent from his wife 4 years. In consequence, the Parliament ordained that the infant must be adjuged legit, and its mother should be considered a true and honourable spouse.