Janicot

An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Janicot

The history of witchcraft is an obscure and difficult subject, because most of the documents are written, not by witches themselves, but by the witch-hunters. The latter not only have a strong vested interest in proving witches to be either vile and malicious, or else the dupes of evil spirits, or both. They are also committed to the view that witchcraft is devil worship, and therefore any deity invoked by a witch must be Satan, either in person or under some disguise.

To find out the truth about what witches really believed and did, is therefore rather like a detective story, in that one has to look into the evidence we possess, for small but significant clues. The pioneer in this respect was Margaret Murray. Abuse has been heaped upon her work since her death, even to the extent of students being advised not to read it—a fact which in itself shows that Dr. Murray’s books are worth reading.

However, her essential thesis, that behind all the horrors and fantasies of the witch persecutions, there lay the remains of an old religion, which was a hated rival of Christianity, cannot be disproved.

One of the clues which Margaret Murray noted was in the appearance of the name of the old Basque god Janicot in the account given by Pierre De Lancre of his crusade against witchcraft in the Pays de Labourde in the early seventeenth century.

De Lancre had been sent by the Parlement of Bordeaux, to investigate the alleged prevalence of witchcraft among the Basque-speaking people of the countryside called the Pays de Labourde. He found, to his horror and indignation, that the rumours were all too true. Big Sabbats were being held, at which large numbers of country people attended; and what was worse, many of the clergy, instead of denouncing witchcraft, actually belonged to the Old Religion themselves, by a sort of dual allegiance. In fact, some of them had permitted witch meetings to be held in their churches.

In spite of the hostility of the populace, De Lancre proceeded to carry out a purge of the district, with the usual concomitants of torture and burning at the stake. Later he wrote a detailed account of his experiences, entitled Tableau de l’Inconstance des Mauvais Anges (A description of the Inconstancy of Evil Angels), which was published in Paris in 1612, and was followed by two other works of a similar nature.

De Lancre found among the Basque witches a sort of rhyme, mentioning the old Basque god Janicot:

In nomine patrica,

Aragueaco petrica

Gastellaco Janicot,

Equidae ipordian pot.

He had the impression that this was used instead of Christian words when the witches made the sign of the cross; and they told him that it was translated: “Au nom du Patrique, petrique d’Arragon, Janicot de Castille, faites-moi un baiser au derrière.” This seems to mean, “In the name of the Father, the father of Aragon, Janicot of Castile, give me a kiss on the backside”—a reference to the Osculum infame.

A male witch, Gentien Le Clerc, confessed that, while at a witches’ Sabbat, they had poked fun at the Christian Mass, saying that the Host was “un beau Janicot”. This may be interpreted as meaning that Janicot to them was synonymous with God. Margaret Murray points out that in the Basque countryside still, there are legends of Basa-Jaun, “now degenerated into a sprite”. His name means homme de bouc, ’goat-man’, according to Dr. Murray; and it is significant that the Basque word for the witches’ Sabbat is Akhelarre, meaning ’The Field of the Goat’. Basa-Jaun, or Jaunis, is a spirit of the woods, a satyr.

The Basque word for God is Jaincoa, which is believed to be the origin of our term ’By Jingo!’ According to Chambers’ Dictionary, the word ’Jingo’ appears first as a conjurer’s summoning call, which may be significant in this connection. There is also an old-time children’s game called the Jingo-Ring, in which the players form a ring and dance round one of their company, who stands in the middle; just as the witches at their Sabbats danced round the Devil, according to the old accounts. The dance of the Sabbat has survived in attenuated form as a children’s game.

What is particularly notable about the name Janicot is that it connects back to the old Roman deities Diana and her consort Dianus or Janus. Dianus was known as the King of the Wood, Rex Nemorensis; and the priest of Diana was named after him.

Sir James Frazer, in his famous book on ancient mythology, The Golden Bough, tells us of these woodland divinities. Their connection with witchcraft is shown by the fact that in Naples a witch is still known as jana or janara.

Dianus was particularly connected with the oak tree, and it was in the oak-grove of Nemi that Frazer found the figure of that mysterious priest which so intrigued him and which inspired his book, that has become a classic of its kind. So much of the religion of our pagan ancestors, Roman, Celtic and Teutonic, is bound up with the oak-tree; it is natural that it should be the representative of the mysterious king of the wood, from its wonderful longevity, its imposing beauty, and its usefulness to man. The concept of the god of the woods lingered long in medieval art, as the figure of the Green Man, depicted with oak-leaves surrounding him and growing from his mouth. (See GREEN MAN.)

As Janus, he was the god of doors, both literally and figuratively. His image, with two faces, was set up at doors; and Frazer thinks that the Latin janua, a door, is derived from his name. In the figurative sense, he opened the door of the year; the month of January is named after him. But as the consort of Diana, there would have been another door that he opened. Diana of Nemi was a goddess of fertility. Frazer tells us that on the site of her shrine “there have been found many models of the organs of generation, both male and female”. The god of the woods is the male spirit of life, typified by the phallus, the opener.

But that which is born into this world by the gate of life, must in its time depart hence by the gate of death. Hence the phallic gods are also gods of death and what lies beyond. The phallic ’Devil’ of the Tarot is called in certain occult titles of the cards, ’The Lord of the Gates of Matter’, ’The Child of the Forces of Time’. Some figures of Janus represent him with two faces, one that of a young man, the other that of an old one.

It is a curious fact that this is what the Basque witches described the Devil’s grand array as possessing, when he appeared at the Sabbats; namely, two faces, one in the usual place, and the other, evidently a mask, upon his buttocks. This was offered to his worshippers to kiss, in the osculum infame which the old writers about witchcraft found so shocking and shameful. A folk-memory of this practice may well linger in the popular vulgar expressions such as ’you may kiss my arse’, and so on. What was originally a religious rite of genuine solemnity, became a piece of buffoonery; even as the most sacred words of consecration in the Catholic Mass, Hoc est corpus, were jeeringly made into the expression ’hocus-pocus’.

To kneel and kiss the mask upon the Devil’s buttocks was an act of homage by his worshippers, and there are many references to it in old writings. But it should be recognised that by ’the Devil’, his followers understood the human representative of their time-honoured pagan god, who was the giver of life, not a being of evil.

The reference to “Janicot of Castile” may be explained by the Devil of the Basque witches being a Spaniard. He was certainly Spanish speaking. De Lancre describes how he learned that the Devil made marriages between the male and female witches at the Sabbat, by joining their hands and saying:

Esta es buena parati

Esta parati lo toma.

This is simply Spanish for “This woman is good for thee, Take this woman for thyself.” De Lancre added that, before the married pairs lay with each other, the Devil coupled with the girls, and took their virginity (“Mais avant qu’ils couchent ensemble, il s’accouple avec elles, oste la virginité des filles”). This is in accordance with very old religious ideas, by which a maiden sacrificed her virginity to the god before she gave herself to man.

De Lancre was very interested in obtaining detailed accounts from the young witches of how they coupled with the Devil, and of what his member was like, and so on; and he does not seem to have been content until he obtained a suitably horrifying description. The truth, however, probably was that an artificial phallus was used; as it was in the worship of the phallic god Priapus, to whom brides sacrificed their virginity in ancient Rome. This is the rite which became debased into the notorious droit de seigneur of the Middle Ages, which the Church seems to have permitted. Was it only the pagan version of it which they objected to?