What Are the Sabbats?

From the Old French s'ebattre, "to revel or frolic," the word sabbat relates to the key celebrations of Witchcraft. There are eight such celebrations, spread relatively equidistant throughout the year. They mark the agricultural and solar divisions of the year.

Originally the year was divided into two parts, summer and winter. During the summer, when it was possible to grow food, the Goddess prevailed as a goddess of fertility, watching over the crops and the flocks and herds. But in the winter months, before man learned how to store food, dependence on successful hunting became the main focus, and the God prevailed as a god of hunting and death. The divisions of the year take place at May eve and November eve, also known as Beltane and Samhain respectively, and these divisional points became times for the pagans to celebrate the transfer of emphasis between the deities. Later, other celebrations were added halfway through each of these periods, marking the mid-point and also recognizing particular occasions in the agricultural year. These mid-points were named Imbolc (February eve) and Lughnasadh (August eve). Today, these four celebrations are known by modern Witches as the four Major or Greater Sabbats.

Ultimately, the sun festivals were added to the agricultural ones: the summer and winter solstices and the spring and autumn equinoxes, known as the Minor or Lesser Sabbats. Margaret Murray suggests that the equinoxes were never observed in Britain, although more recent research reveals that they were observed by the pre-Celtic Megalithic people of Britain.

With all of the old festivals, celebrations began on the eve of the date and customarily carried on throughout the night until the following dawn. Fertility was the focal point. For the Beltane Sabbat, contemporary Witches have adopted a version of a Rudyard Kipling rhyme:

Oh, do not tell the priests of our rites,
For they would call it sin,
But we will be in the woods all night
A'conjuring summer in!

It was this emphasis on fertility --essential for existence, of course--that came to be the focus of the Christian chroniclers during the persecutions. Artwork of the period invariably depicts naked witches indulging in immoral practices, while the text of the notorious Malleus Maleficarum centers again and again on sex organs and the sex act. According to the Church of the time, the purpose of the sabbat was to parody Christian rites and to worship the Devil, culminating in wicked orgies.

The feast was a key element of the sabbat celebrations. Sabbats were commonly large affairs, frequently held by a number of covens gathering from the neighboring regions. Traveling to the location of the sabbat, the Witches would have the benefit of food to enjoy after their journey and before the rituals. Live poultry may be driven along with them, then cooked there. One large cooking pot, or cauldron, would be brought and filled with water from a nearby brook and local wild herbs. While the feast took place indoors, it was akin to many of the later sabbat feasts. Still today, contemporary Wiccans will have a feast-usually a "potluck"-at the sabbats.

Witches purportedly traveled to the sabbat by riding naked astride broomsticks that flew through the air. This story was derived from a combination of assorted pieces of propaganda publicized by the early Christian Church in its attempt to discredit the old religion. One of the old forms of sympathetic magic, intended to promote fertility of the crops, was for the pagans to go to the fields with their broomsticks, pitchforks, and poles. Riding them astride, they would dance around the fields, leaping up in the air as they danced. The belief was that the higher they jumped, the higher the crops would grow. This sparked the idea of pagans or witches riding their poles, forks, and brooms through the air to their meeting sites. Undoubtedly such a misrepresentation made good anti-pagan propaganda for the early Church, who could maintain it was the work of the devil.

Not all reported sightings of witches' sabbats were well-founded. It was a common practice for Gypsies to camp at a crossroads. Often they would feast, dance, and sing into the late night. A traveler might well chance upon such a gathering and assume it to be a witches' sabbat.

Bibliography:
Murray, Margaret Alice: The Witch Cult In Western Europe, Clarendon Press, 1921
Robbins, Rossell Hope: The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonlogy. Crown, 1959