What did early sources think the witch sabbath was?

The imagery of witches riding through the night sky has long haunted European folklore.

These tales are more than metaphor, since they represent a cultural memory of altered states, visionary ecstasies, and nocturnal journeys.

On Walpurgisnacht, the veil between worlds was said to thin, and a coven would meet under the moon not only to revel, but to ride, soul first, through places both real and mythic.

How do early modern trial records frame the sabbath?

Let us begin with the early modern trial records.

As Professor Wolfgang Behringer explains, already by the fifteenth century the idea of witches traveling by flight to secret sabbaths had become embedded in late medieval proceedings.

These narratives were central to the theology of witchcraft, including pacts with a demon, magical harm, worship of infernal beings, and flight to night meetings.

The belief in nocturnal flight, sanctioned by both Church and secular courts, became one of the most mobilized elements of witchcraft ideology.

Professor Behringer notes a peak between 1560 and 1630 in the Holy Roman Empire and Switzerland, with Catholic regions in southern Germany and Austria preserving ideas of ecstatic flight longer than elsewhere.

What broader European context does Behringer describe?

In his later work, Professor Wolfgang Behringer draws attention to the historical reality of “magical folk-culture,” a layer of rural belief, customs and traditions often untouched by elite discourse.

Many in Central Europe trusted in the effectiveness of magic and often treated it as morally neutral.

These practices, such as ritual gestures, charms, and soul journeys, coexisted with religious structures.

Nachtschar in Germany: why does it matter for the origin?

The Nachtschar tradition in Germany, while less dramatic than the Italian Benandanti or the Slovenian Krsnik, still points to visionary survivals, including dreamlike night rides of the spirit.

These echoes are protective (especially of crops, acreage, and harvest) and seasonal rather than uniformly diabolical. When such accounts reached an inquisitor, however, this was recontextualized.

A seasonal aid to fields or herds looked like a forbidden gathering. This is how local lore fed witch trials across regions according to Behringer's research.

What did Carlo Ginzburg argue about ecstatic flight and the witches’ sabbath?

Turning to Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath brings together Italian Benandanti, Livonian werewolves, and the Wild Hunt across northern Europe.

He traces how ancient Eurasian cults of the dead, female forest goddesses, and shamanic trance were compressed and reinterpreted as “witches’ sabbath,” then codified by theologians.

Motifs of transformation, such as cats, hares, and ravens, served as soul vehicles in ecstatic journeys.

Female figures like Despoina, Artemis Orthia, or the Mistress of Animals recur in stories of ritual dismemberment and rebirth, themes that reappear in testimony from the Middle Ages and the early modern century.

Cultural survivals: Wild Hunt, Basque records, and regional threads

Folklorists such as Jacob Grimm tied these accounts to pre-Christian cycles of death and renewal, especially in stories of the Wild Hunt.

In Basque records, Akerbeltz appears as a black goat figure or an ox that can be read as protective sorcerer, a protector of livestock, harvest and fields.

Such regional survivals show how a single label, sabbath, covered very different local practices and visions across Spain, the Pyrenees, the region's formerly belonging to the Roman Empire, and Northern Europe.

Shamanic models and presentational symbolism

The Shamanism encyclopedia edited by Neumann Fridman and Walter describes the “soul journey” as a widespread pattern.

Chanting, drumming, and dance can induce vivid inner visions that Charles Laughlin calls presentational symbolism.

These inner journeys reconfigure awareness and enable diagnosis or spiritual travel.

When read with care, the Witches’ Sabbath looks like a cultural layer that placed importance on visionary practice.

Why does this matter for modern readers?

These altered states, dreamlike, rhythmic, and embodied, mirror reports and the ethnographic records as well as local folklore of witches flying to mountaintop sabbaths on Walpurgisnacht.

The ecstatic journeys may link less to diabolical intent and more to an older legacy of visionary practices and spiritual healing systems.

Not always seen, not always understood, yet remembered in bells, bonfires, and stories.

On nights when the world tilts and the veil feels thin, it is easy to imagine that someone still knows how to ride the wind.

References

Behringer, Wolfgang. Hexen: Glaube, Verfolgung, und Erinnerung. Munich: C.H. Beck, 1995, p. 35.

Behringer, Wolfgang. "Austria, Germany and Switzerland." In Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief, edited by Jonathan Barry, Marianne Hester, and Gareth Roberts, pp. 78–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Ginzburg, Carlo. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991, pp. 135–38.Neumann Fridman, Eva Jane, and Mariko Namba Walter, eds. Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2004, p. 189.