Witch Seasons.
In Central India, witches are supposed, by the aid of their familiars, who are known as Bîr, or “the hero,” to inflict pain, disease, and death upon human beings. Their power of witchcraft, like that of all Indian witches, exists on the fourteenth, fifteenth, and twenty-ninth of each month, and in particular at the Diwâlî or feast of lamps, and the Naurâtrî or nine days devoted to the worship of Durgâ.
In the same way the Irish witches flit on November Eve, and “on that night mortal people should keep at home, or they will suffer for it; for souls of the dead have power over all things on that night of the year, and they hold a festival with the fairies, and drink red wine from the fairy cups and dance to fairy music till the moon goes down.”[15] Of the Allhallows demon Professor Rhys writes: “This night was the Saturnalia of all that was hideous and uncanny in the world of spirits. It had been fixed as the time of all others when the Sun god, whose power had been gradually falling off since the great feast associated with him on the first of August, succumbed to his enemies, the powers of darkness and of winter. It was their first hour of triumph after an interval of subjection, and the popular imagination pictured them stalking abroad with more than ordinary insolence and aggressiveness.”[16]
At other times the Indian witches appear, dress, talk, and eat like other women, but “when the fit is on them, they are sometimes seen with their eyes glaring red, their hair dishevelled and bristled, while their heads are often turned round in a strange, convulsive manner. On the nights of those days, they are believed to go abroad, and after casting off their garments, to ride about on tigers and other wild animals; and if they desire to go on the water, alligators come like the beasts of the forests at their call, and they disport in rivers and lakes upon their backs till dawn of day, about which period they always return home, and resume their usual forms and occupations.”[17]