Raising Hell (8 page)

The ingenuity of witch judges and Inquisition officials in inflicting pain was quite remarkable—they invented a whole array of instruments and techniques to cause unbearable agony and elicit the wanted information. When in 1611 Father Louis Gaufridi was accused of having bewitched and seduced a nun in Aixen-Provence, he was subjected to several forms of torture, including two of the most horrible.

First, he suffered the strappado: his arms were tied behind his back and then hooked to a hoist which was used to lift him high off the floor; hanging in agony, he had weights tied to his feet to intensify the pain. Then the torturers proceeded to the
squassation, dropping him suddenly, then pulling up on the rope just before his feet touched the ground. Done right, squassation could wrench out of place every joint in the body.

The tortures worked so well on Gaufridi that, although he had repeatedly proclaimed his innocence, in the end he signed a confession that included not only the original charges—"More than a thousand persons have been poisoned by the irresistible attraction of my breath which filled them with passion"—but additional crimes, such as eating babies and celebrating the Black Mass. As a final mercy, and because he had begged the pardon of God, he was strangled before his body was burned over a slow fire.

The tortures had to be designed to do two things, really: to inflict great pain while at the same time preserving the life of the victim long enough to ensure there’d be time for both that highly desirable confession (customarily, witches could not be put to death until they’d actually admitted their guilt) and a public execution. The burning or hanging of the witch was considered more than entertainment for the crowd that would gather; it was considered an edifying experience, the culmination of the judicial process and a clear indication that dealing with demons would not be tolerated.

In Bamberg, Germany, the town fathers even had the foresight to construct what was, for 1627, a kind of maximum-security prison for witches, which they called the Hexenhaus ("House of Witches"). Several stories high, and built above a running stream, the Hexenhaus could hold up to twenty-six witches at a time, each one in a private cell with a small window up near the ceiling. There was a chapel, an interrogation room, and, of course, a state-of-the-art torture chamber (where the stream came in handy for drowning techniques). Though drawings and floor plans of the Hexenhaus still exist, the building itself has long since been torn down.

But awful as the physical agonies were for anyone convicted of practicing black magic, the spiritual penalty was almost as bad. In Catholic countries, to be excommunicated from the church was to be sentenced to an eternity of pain and loss. In
effect, the sorcerer or witch was cursed by the church itself, in a ritual that stemmed from the lines of Matthew 18:18: “Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth,” Jesus tells his disciples, “shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” In other words, judgments made here would be upheld there. If a soul was cast out of the Christian community on earth, and failed to offer sufficient repentance to gain readmission, it was doomed in the afterlife, too.

The House of the Witches at Bamberg. Seventeenth-century print preserved in the Staatsbibliothek at Bamberg.
**

The ceremony of excommunication came to be known as bell, book, and candle, as these were the three elements needed to see it through. The curse of excommunication was first read from a book, which the cleric then closed. A bell was tolled, as if for a dead man, and then candles were blown out, to signify the extinguishing of the offender from the very sight of God. In a variation of the ceremony, devised by Pope Zachary in the eighth century, the pope wore his miter and violet robes, he was
assisted by twelve priests carrying the candles, and he deliberately deprived the guilty party of the Mass and of any commingling with uncorrupted Christians: “We exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in heaven and on earth . . . and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance and satisfy the Church.”

RAISING THE

DEAD

The Church does not deny that, with a special permission of God, the souls of the departed may appear to the living, and even manifest things unknown to the latter. But, understood as the art or science of evoking the dead, necromancy is held by theologians to be due to the agency of evil spirits. . . .

The Catholic Encyclopedia

NECROMANCY

Of all the black arts, undoubtedly the most dangerous was necromancy—the summoning of the dead. In a way, it was the pinnacle of the magician’s art, the most extreme and impressive feat he could add to his professional résumé. In part this was due to its difficulty—the ritual requirements were extraordinarily elaborate—and in part it was due to the great risks any magician was expected to encounter the moment he summoned ghosts and devils from the underworld. These spirits were often quite unhappy at having to make the trip.

So why bother them? Necromancers had all kinds of motives, some of which were more pure than others.

Spirits were sometimes conjured up out of affection—the magician missed a loved one who had departed this vale of tears.

Sometimes spirits were summoned up because the sorcerer wanted the arcane or secret knowledge that only spirits were reputed to possess.

And sometimes—perhaps quite often—spirits were called upon to divulge the whereabouts of hidden treasure hoards. It was generally understood that the dead may have lost their lives in the normal sense but that they had gained the ability in the afterlife to uncover all secrets and see into all things. According to the common folklore, these spirits could be found loitering around their burial place for one year after their interment. After that, however, getting in touch with them became increasingly difficult, if not impossible.

Not that it was ever easy. First, the proper location had to be found to perform the magical rites. Some of the preferred spots for necromancy were underground vaults, hung with black cloth and lighted with torches, or forest glens where no one was likely to intrude. Crossroads were popular, too—perhaps on the theory that many souls, both living and dead, were accustomed
to passing by. Ruined castles, abbeys, monasteries, churches, were all considered good venues, as were, of course, graveyards.

The Witch of Endor evoking the Prophet Samuel. Johann Heinrich Schönfeld (seventeenth century). Author’s collection.
**

The best time for necromancy was, as might be expected, midnight to 1:00
A.M.
If a bright full moon hung in the sky, that was fine. But even better was a tempestuous night, one filled with wind and rain, thunder and lightning. And it wasn’t just for effect. Spirits, it was thought, had trouble showing themselves
and remaining visible in the real world, but stormy weather for some reason helped them in their efforts.

The necromancer had many preparations to make. In the nine days preceding an attempt to raise the dead, he and his assistants were required to steep themselves in every way imaginable in the gloom of death. They took off their normal, everyday attire and put on faded, worn clothes that they had stolen from corpses; as they put them on for the first time, they were required to recite the funeral rites over themselves. And until the actual necromancy had been performed, they were forbidden to take these clothes off.

There were other restrictions, too. They were not allowed even to look at a woman. The food they ate had to be taken without salt, because salt was a preservative—and in the grave, the body, putrefied, did not remain intact. Their meat was the flesh of dogs, for dogs were the creatures of Hecate, goddess of ghosts and death, whose appearance was so terrible that anyone conjuring her was warned to avert his gaze; one look at her, and the mind would be destroyed. And, in a kind of necromantic version of the Holy Communion, the bread they ate was black and unleavened; their drink was the unfermented juice of the grape. These symbolized the emptiness and despair of the realm they were about to explore. In all these preparations, the aim was to create a kind of sympathetic bond between the necromancers and the souls of those they were hoping to summon.

Once everything was in order, the necromancer and his accomplices went to the churchyard and, by the light of their torches, drew a magic circle around the grave they were planning to disturb and set fire to a mixture of henbane, hemlock, saffron, aloes, wood, mandrake, and opium. After unsealing the coffin, the body was exhumed, then laid out with its head to the east (the direction of the rising sun) and its limbs arranged like those of the crucifed Christ.

Next to the body’s right hand, the necromancer placed a small dish, burning with a mixture of wine, mastic, and sweet oil. Touching the corpse with his wand three times, the conjurer recited a conjuration from his grimoire. Though the wording of
these conjurations differed from book to book, one of them went: “By the Virtue of the Holy Resurrection and the agonies of the damned, I conjure and command thee, spirit of [the name of the person] deceased, to answer my demands and obey these sacred ceremonies, on pain of everlasting torment. Berald, Beroald, Balbin, Gab, Gabor, Agaba, arise, arise, I charge and command thee.”

In a slight variation, if the soul being summoned had committed suicide, the sorcerer was required to touch the cadaver nine times and invoke it using other powers, including the mysteries of the deep and the rites of Hecate; he could also ask it why it had cut short its own life, where it resided now, and where it was likely to go hereafter. The spirit was enjoined to answer the sorcerer’s queries “as thou hast hope for the rest of the blessed and the ease of all thy sorrow.”

If all went well, the spirit reentered its old, cast-off body and caused it slowly to stand up. In a weary, sepulchral voice, the deceased would answer each question the necromancer put to it—what lay beyond this world of tears, which demons were causing us harm, where a buried treasure might lie. When the interrogation was over, the sorcerer rewarded the spirit for its cooperation by assuring it of undisturbed rest in the future; he burned the body or buried it in quicklime, which would dissolve it. Either way, the spirit knew the body would be gone, and it could never be forced to enter it again.

GRAVE ENCOUNTERS

Although with some adjustments necromancy could be performed in the comfort of one’s own home, graveyard necromancy, or raising the dead right where they lay, was understandably the most popular form of the black art. There were many precedents, and several famous cases often cited in legend and lore, which no doubt provided much encouragement to would-be raisers of the dead.

Norse wizards were reputedly so skilled at the art that they
didn’t even need to wait for the body to be plunked into the grave; they could enjoin hanged men, still swinging from the gallows, to speak to them.

In medieval Spain, necromancy was taught, like any other discipline, in Toledo, Seville, and Salamanca—except that the classrooms were deep, dark caverns, often lying beneath cemeteries and mausoleums. When Isabella, a Catholic, came to the throne, she sealed up these subterranean lecture halls.

One of the earliest stories of necromancy appears in the Bible’s First Book of Samuel, chapter 28. Looking out over the enemy army of the Philistines, King Saul “was afraid, and his heart greatly trembled.” Wondering what to do, and what the outcome of the battle would be, he turned to his seers, who could tell him nothing; he looked to his dreams, but they were unclear; he prayed to the Lord, but the Lord was silent. Finally, in desperation, he begged his servants to find him someone who could raise spirits, and they advised him to consult with the woman known as the Witch of Endor.

Disguising himself (which was especially important, in view of the fact that by his own decree all wizards and such had been banished from the land), Saul went to the witch and asked her to summon a spirit for him. At first, she was reluctant; she knew the law, and she was afraid she was being lured into a snare. But Saul swore to her that no punishment would befall her, and she finally agreed. She asked whom he wanted to see, and Saul told her the prophet Samuel.