Michael Howard

By Moonlight and Spirit Flight Michael Howard

The flight of the medieval witches was a rapturous transportation to the distant, ecstatic rite of the Sabbat. As has been established by modern historians, the elements of the Witches' Sabbat to are now known to contain far more than religious heresy and the deranged projections of churchly inquisitors, and also included localized folk-beliefs and remnants of pre-Christian religion, such as the cult of the moon-goddess Diana. The witches' flight itself also contained such historical rudiments, notably the night-roving armies of the Wild Hunt, and the exteriorized or shape-shifted 'spirit-double'. Howard's text examines such elements as the ancestral horde, the flight of the Furious Host, and the entheogenic Witches' 'Flying Ointment', each of which played a unique role in the 'flight' of the medieval witches. The mythos of the Sabbatic conclave, containing infernal and diabolical elements, is taken beyond its Christian pathology to connect it with actual practices in folk-magic. Originally released in 2013 as part of the limited Three Hands Press Occult Monographs series, it has long been out of print and is not available in a redesigned stand-alone edition.