One of the ceremonies of the initiation of the neophytes into witchcraft was “kissing the devil’s bare buttocks.” (Reg. Scot. “Discoverie,” pp. 36, 37.) Pope Gregory IX., in a letter addressed to several German bishops in 1234, describes the initiation of sorcerers as follows: The novices, on being introduced into the assembly, “see a toad of enormous size.... Some kiss its mouth, others its rear.” Next, “a black cat is presented.... The novice kisses the rear anatomy of the cat, after which he salutes in a similar manner those who preside at the feast, and others worthy of the honor.” (“Med. in Middle Ages,” Minor, p. 41.) Again, “At witches’ reunions, the possessed kissed the devil’s rear, kissing it goat fashion, in a butting attitude.” (Idem, p. 50.) “Le baiser d’hommage est donné au derrière du Diable parce qu’il n’a été permis à Moïse, selon l’Exode, de voir que le derrière de Dieu.”—(Mélusine, Paris, July-August, 1890, p. 90, art. “La Fascination,” by J. Tuchmann.)
The devil hates nothing more than human ordure. (On this point, see Luther’s Table Talk.) The devil cannot be more completely frustrated than by placing upon some of his works human ordure, or hanging it in the smoke of the chimney. The Laplanders were reputed to be able to detain a ship in full sail; yet when such a vessel had been besmeared along its seams in the interior with the ordure of virgins, then the efforts of the witches were of no avail. (Paullini, p. 260.) “A certain man bewitched a boy, nine years old, by placing the boy’s ordure in a hog’s bladder and hanging the ‘sausage’ in the chimney. (Idem, p. 261.) But some believed that by this smoking of ordure the evil often became worse; that the diseased person gradually dried up until at last he died, as he experienced in the case of his own father-in-law.... Farmers’ wives, to make the butter come in spite of the witches, poured fresh cow’s milk upon human ordure, or down into the privy, and the witches were thereupon rendered powerless.”—(Idem, p. 263. See also citation from Schurig, “Chylologia.”)
The Magi also taught to drink the ashes of a pig’s pizzle in sweet wine, and so to make water into a dog’s kennel, adding the words, “Lest he, like a hound, should make urine in his own bed.” If a man, in the morning, made water a little on his own foot, it would be a preservative against mala medicamenta, doses meant to do him harm.—(“Saxon Leechdoms,” lib. i. p. 12, quoting Pliny. See citations already made from that author.)
Beckherius (Med. Microcosmus, p. 114) tells the story of the Lapland witches being able to hold a ship in its course, except when the inner seams of the vessel had been calked with the ordure of a virgin; see extract already entered.
Again, Beckherius quotes Josephus as narrating that a certain lake, near Jericho, ejected asphalt which adhered so tenaciously to a ship that it was in danger of wreck, had not the asphalt been loosened by an application of menstrual blood and human urine.—(Idem, p. 43, quoting Josephus, “De Bello Judaico,” lib. iv. c. 47.)
Beckherius, “Med. Microcosmus,” p. 43, cites Josephus in regard to a certain plant to which magical properties were ascribed, but only to be brought out by watering it with menstrual blood and the urine of a woman.—(Josephus, “De Bell. Jud.” lib. vii. c. 23, p. 146.)
Dittmar Bleekens, speaking of the “Islanders” (Icelanders), says: “And truly, it is a wonder that Satan so sporteth with them, for hee hath shewed them a remedie in staying of their ships, to wit, the excrements of a maide being a Virgin; if they anoynt the Prow and certaine plancks of the ship hee hath taught them that the spirit is put to flight and driven away with this stinke.”—(In Purchas, vol. i. p. 646.)
Josephus says (his remarks have already been given in quotation, but are repeated to show exactly what he did say): The bitumen of Lake Asphaltites “is so tenacious as to make the ship hang upon the clods till they set it loose with blood and with urine, to which alone it yields.”—(“Wars of the Jews,” Eng. trans., New York, 1821, book 4, c. 7.)
The people of the Island of Mota, or Banks Island, “have a kind of individual totem, called tamaniu. It is some object, generally an animal, as a lizard or snake, but sometimes a stone, with which the person imagines that his life is bound up; if it dies or is broken or lost, he will die. Fancy dictates the choice of a tamaniu; or it may be found by drinking an infusion of certain kinds of herbs and heaping together the dregs. Whatever living thing is first seen in or upon the heap is the tamaniu. It is watched, but not fed or worshipped.”—(Frazer, “Totemism,” Edinburgh, 1887, p. 56.)
Compare the preceding paragraph with the practice, elsewhere noted, of determining whether or not a woman is pregnant by pouring some of her urine upon bran and allowing it to ferment and then watching the appearance of animal life. Also, the method of determining whether or not a man was stricken with leprosy.