The gate of the year

Engraving showing some witches who are going to flight to the Sabbath, taken from The Illustrated Bartsch, Vol. 87 (1490).
According to historian Carlo Ginzburg’s interpretation, behind the tradition of women and (more rarely) men who went to lonely places to meet the figure of a “good” nocturnal goddess (Diana, Herodias, Dame Habonde, etc.) one can glimpse the survival of an ecstatic cult. “To the world of the beneficent female figures who bestowed prosperity, wealth, knowledge, one can access through a temporary death. Their world is the world of the dead” (Ginzburg 1989, p. 77). For the Friuli of Sixteenth-Seventeenth centuries have been discovered documents which relate the presence of the so-called “benandanti”, individuals who, in a state of ecstasy, were able to travel riding animals or turning themselves into animals, to recover the wheat germs or to fight against the witches for assuring fertility to the crops (Ginzburg 1966). Only in a successive period such testimonies were utilized by the inquisitors to confirm the existence of satanic ceremonies and meetings, during which the dictates of true religion were subverted and the participants abdicated to the Christian faith

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Human-Animal Transformation

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Engraving showing some witches who are going to flight to the Sabbath, taken from The Illustrated Bartsch, Vol. 87 (1490). According to historian Carlo Ginzburg’s interpretation, behind the tradition of women and (more rarely) men who went to lonely places to meet the figure of a “good” nocturnal goddess (Diana, Herodias, Dame Habonde, etc.) one can glimpse the survival of an ecstatic cult. “To the world of the beneficent female figures who bestowed prosperity, wealth, knowledge, one can access through a temporary death. Their world is the world of the dead” (Ginzburg 1989, p. 77). For the Friuli of Sixteenth-Seventeenth centuries have been discovered documents which relate the presence of the so-called “benandanti”, individuals who, in a state of ecstasy, were able to travel riding animals or turning themselves into animals, to recover the wheat germs or to fight against the witches for assuring fertility to the crops (Ginzburg 1966). Only in a successive period such testimonies were utilized by the inquisitors to confirm the existence of satanic ceremonies and meetings, during which the dictates of true religion were subverted and the participants abdicated to the Christian faith [Image: http://library.artstor.org]