What follows is the first part of an account given by a late sixteenth-century cloth merchant who claimed to have witnessed a witches' sabbath in southern Germany:
While passing the night at a boarding house I was forced to take my evening meal in the tavern, where there worked a trio of most comely young serving wenches: one was blonde, one a brunette, and one a redhead. They were most immodestly dressed and lascivious in manner, and I took them at first for no more than common prostitutes. But then as I went to relieve myself behind the tavern, I saw them conversing with a beautiful young nun, with whom they exchanged certain cryptic hand signals and spoke several phrases in Latin, which seemed most strange.
I was restless that evening, and sat up in my room looking out at the town and the dark forest beyond from my window, when I saw the three wenches venturing forth from the tavern into the darkness. Seizing my cloak, I stealthily made my way downstairs and made to follow them. They took with them a candle lantern, and I followed their light as they took a narrow cattle path into the forest and up the hillside.
At length they came to a clearing, where they extinguished their lantern, and in the light of the moon I watched them cast aside their clothing until they stood naked and shameless as Eve in the Garden. I followed their pale, shapely forms as they climbed yet a little higher, and reached at length another clearing before a low cliff, where there awaited them the nun I had seen earlier, alongside a crackling fire.
The nun greeted the wenches in a strange tongue, and she stripped herself as well, shamelessly revealing her gorgeous, consecrated body, and her hair, which was black as the night around her. She produced a flask from among her things, from which she poured a greasy unguent, with which the nun and the wenches proceeded to smear one another's luscious young bodies, their hands roving freely over one another's juicy breasts and creamy thighs, until their lovely forms shone and glistened in the firelight.
The nun then pulled out a shallow metal dish, which she placed on the ground before them, and produced a large golden phallus, studded with polished gems, which she handed to one of the wenches. One by one the wenches pleasured themselves with it, their lustful juices pouring forth from their eager young pussies and dripping into the dish. When all had been commingled, the corrupt nun sported with the well-moistened phallus as well, until her own nectars of delight poured forth into the dish. That done, she licked the phallus clean with obvious relish, and then secreted it among her belongings.
Drawing forth a dagger, she killed first a bat, then a toad, casting each hissing into the fire, followed by handfuls of various herbs, which created clouds of peculiar smoke, intoning all the while in a bizarre tongue as the wenches, naked and oiled, danced about her in a most salacious manner. Then, kneeling before the fire, the gorgeous nun took up the dish of their commingled juices, intoned a solemn and ominous utterance in her tongue, and cast the fluids into the flames. There was a great hiss, and plumes of steam and odd-colored smoke erupted from the fire, filling the whole clearing and obscuring it from view.
When at last the smoke cleared, it took all my might and faith in God to keep from crying out in terror. There before the fire knelt the four women, in a posture of servile obeisance, and behind the fire there sat a large table set for four, sumptuously bedecked with fine tableware and goblets of precious metals. But it was not the apparition of this dinner setting, startling as it was, that so affrighted me, but rather that which lay beyond it. For behind the table, in the shadows at the foot of the cliff, stood four mighty thrones of iron, in each of which sat a demon fresh from the pit of damnation, their fearsome mighty forms yet smoking with wisps of hellfire. Their red bodies had each the feet of a lizard, the legs, trunk and arms of a man, four clawed fingers on each hand, and a long, smooth tail. Their heads were various and horrible, like and yet not like the beasts of the earth: one like a goat, another like a dog, another like a boar, the fourth like a lion. Each bore two sets of horns, variously like those of bulls, rams, or goats. They left no doubt as to their sex, for they lounged in the thrones with their legs spread wide, giving clear view of their demonic members, which stood tumescent and immense against their stomachs, their massive testicles hanging beneath.
