Book of dope stories by Howard Marks

Author:Howard Marks [Marks, Howard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780099428558
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2001-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

Antonio Escohotado

Drugs, Lust, and Satan

SOME CONSIDER THAT the medieval witch, cooking children to obtain their fat, desiring only infamy, was an invention of the inquisitors that ended up being generally believed. Others feel that they were in fact unusual beings, tending to look for artificial paradises in plants. There are also those who consider them to be representatives of the old, basically Celtic region of Western Europe. In any case, they were accused of organizing demonic rites, the so-called Sabbats, using ointments and potions. Very few people confessed to being witches until Gregory IX issued the first papal bull against them, granting the inquisitors the right to confiscate their property and belongings. Some time later, the number of sorcerers and witches had grown to grandiose proportions, and the Roman de la Rose, for example, declared that ‘one-third of all French women’ were witches.

The relationship between drugs, lust and witchcraft is exact. In 1692 the inquisitor Johannes Nider described an old woman who rubbed a certain ointment in her armpits and groin: ‘After disrobing and applying this ointment she fell asleep, and with the aid of the Devil, she dreamt of the lustful Venus.’

Centuries before, in the trials of Carcasonne, the confession of an old herbalist woman read: ‘In the Sabbat I found a gigantic male goat, I surrendered to him, and in return he taught me the poisonous plants.’

In 1324 a document of the Inquisition explained the belief in flying brooms: ‘While searching the attic of the lady, an ointment was found that she used to anoint a walking stick, mounted upon which she could wander and gallop through any obstacle.’

In 1470 another inquisitorial document declared ‘the witches confess that on some nights they anoint a stick in order to reach a certain location, or else they rub themselves with an ointment in their armpits or in other places on the body where hair grows.’

In a woman, the other place where hair grows is that which is in contact with a broom when she rides it. The stick was used to rub or insert ointment in areas that the modesty of the inquisitor prevented him from describing, the stick serving as a sort of chemically reinforced dildo.

The same thing is suggested by a confession extracted from two women in 1540, since they ‘many times, in solitude, carnally knew the Devil; and when questioned whether they had known some special delight in doing so, they repeatedly denied it, and that because of the incomparable coldness they felt in their diabolic parts.’

When inquisitors were absent, the women responded in a somewhat different manner, although the erotic might still remain. Using a certain sorcerer’s ointment provided by a constable, Andres de Laguna, doctor of Charles V and Julius III, put a hysterical patient in a deep stupor. Upon her return to a normal, she addressed the doctor and her own husband, saying, ‘Why did you wake me up at this time, when I was surrounded by all the pleasures of the world?’ And

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