Five-Pronged Demon Wangs

I couldn't resist. This story must be told by me otherwise I'll be portrayed as some kind of crazy deviant or something.

For whatever reason, during the course of our study of Journeys, we got onto the topic of witchcraft. Or the legal system. Or something. I forget, but it was relevant.

I referenced a passage I had read in Sadakat Kadri's The Trial. (London, 2006), pp. 118-119.

There it is: Some of the most graphic details [of Sabbaths] came courtesy of an inquisitor called Pierre de Lancre, commissioned by King Henry IV in January 1609 to cleanse the Labourd region of southwestern France. De Lancre was a man of rivalrous temperament, and over the course of a four month investigation that saw him interview hundreds of suspects and send more than fifty of them to the stake, he rarely overlooked an opportunity to outdo the discoveries of his contemporaries. the sabbaths to which his suspects were involved attracted thousands of male and female witches, who danced the night away alongside smoke-wreathed wizards and gyrating lines of fauns, snakes, dragons and tigers. He agreed with other demonologists that Satan was especially likely to manifest himself as a billy-goat, but the goat that attended his sabbaths had up to five horns, including an illuminated one at the centre of its forehead. De Lancre also lost himself in pornographic reveries for paragraphs on end, although no demonologist lacked for libido, his tales of sodomitic beasts and women shared between men and demons are in a class of their own. He devoted particular attention to Satan's penis, and it is probably fair to say that he gleans more information on the topic that anyone else in history.

That is not to say that others lacked interest. As far back as 1521, Sylvester Prieirias had warned that Satan often appeared with a forked penis to double his debauchery or a triple-pronged one to maximise it [Robert E.L. Masters, Eros and Evil. The sexual psychopathy of witchcraft (Baltimore, 1974), p. 17.]. Nicolas Rémy noted that the diabolical organ could be as long as a kitchen utensil, 'even when only half in erection', and as thick as a spindle. Like several other demonologists, he also commented on the temperature of Satan's semen, so bitterly cold that women recoiled in shock upon receiving it [Nicolas Rémy, Demonolatry, tr. E. Allen Ashwin (London, 1930), pp.12-14].

Sixteen-year-old Jeanette d'Abadie, while trying to explain to de Lancre just how depressing and painful she had found her sexual experiences with the Devil, had told him that the organ in question was over a yard long, coiled like a snake, and covered in scales. Fifteen-year-old Marie de Marigrane had recalled it to be half-iron and half-flesh. Petry de Linarre got the impression that it was made of pure horn, which is why it made women scream so much. De Lancre's competitive instincts did not desert him even here. After reporting that a teenager called Marguerite had found the Devil to be hung like a mule, with an appendage as long and thick as an arm, he recalled that the demons found by Hebri Bouget in the Franche-Comté rarely had penises bigger than a finger. 'The witches of the Labourd,' mused de Lancre, 'are better served by Satan than those of the Franche-Comté.'

There. My remarks were taken out of context by my classmates. Never did I say the demon had a five-pronged penis. The fact that that certain version of events was the one recounted ad infinitum during Modern History merely goes to show that my classmates ought to listen harder when I reference medieval texts regarding witch burning.

Here's an easy way to remember it for future reference: French Satan = 5 horns + 3 penises.

The British Satan was utterly underwhelming in comparison.