This 2007 paper represents historiographical research done for a graduate history seminar at Murray State University under the supervision of Professor Alice Walters, to whom I am grateful. I am posting it here on American Pathos so I may more easily share it with an interested friend.

One of the most enduring and provocative images of the witch-hunts of the Early Modern Period in Europe is that of the witches’ sabbath. The cartoon witches that were once popular fare in modern entertainment often appeared in groups, and the glamorized (and sometimes eroticized) witch imagery that appears throughout the western world each October portrays the witch as a gregarious creature, meeting with other witches, stirring pots, and flying about. To the people of the witch-hunt era, however, and especially to secular and church officials who sought out and punished suspected witches, the witch sabbaths were deadly serious business.

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