Demonic Possession, Sorcery & Satanic Pacts - Witchcraft and Exorcism in 17th Century Loudon France

as The Witch Trials of early modern Europe came into their most intense most lethal period starting in the early 17th century the phenomenon interestingly mutated rather than being an overwhelmingly rural Affair there was an urban shift victims and accusers were increasingly among the middle and the upper classes careful trial records began to be kept accusations by women were made against some powerful men and in some of those cases did lead to those men's execution and more striking than all of this was now the association of mass demonic possession with those cases of Witchcraft largely emerging

from France these Mass possessions SL sorcery trials would reach their Zenith with the affair of ludong from around 1630 through the final exorcisms in 1637 and the execution for sorcery of the priest oang grandier on 18th of August 1634 indeed this case would produce one of the most curious documents from the entire period one of the few surviving alleged packs with the devil and other demons the Lynch pin artifact of the entire elaborated theory of Witchcraft now if you're interested in magic or hermetic philosophy Alchemy cabala or the history of the occult make sure to

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but now let's turn to the Diabolical possessions of Lun and the satanic pact which in part along with a heap of politics doomed obier to the P I'm Dr Justin Sledge and welcome to esoterica where we explore the Arcane in history philosophy and [Music] religion [Music] the evil that would befall Lun through the 1630s was probably foreshadowed even precipitated with the arrival of the plague killing around 3,700 of the City's population of only 4 14,000 people fled the city out of the fear of the literal wrath of God and those that remained isolated themselves for

months to weather the epidemic not that that doesn't strike a bell even as the plague subsided appears it was followed by longterm social anxiety mistrust and a kind of lingering Madness in the town the disastrous effects of the mental health of people surrounded and isolated by months with death and sickness among those locked away were the world of the ursaline nuns those Convent founded there in 1626 from 1632 the convent of only 17 Nuns with an average age of only 25 was led by xanda as most of the young women there were from aristocratic backgrounds

and frankly were involuntarily sequestered in the convent they weren't there because they wanted to be religious they were there because they were unmarriageable for a range of reasons from financial hardship of Simply Having two many daughters and one family to frankly things like physical difference as was the case for Jean it was a positively difficult life for these young women who were otherwise used to some degree of luxury they came from aristocratic backgrounds their food was Spartan their Convent was an old home converted into a Convent in fact it was allegedly haunted as the rumors

go with little in the way of accommodation it said that these women even slept on the floors for lack of basic Furniture it was a life of poverty Chastity and tedium and 5 months into the Twilight of the plague it became a life of Supernatural and demonic Obsession and then widespread possession the prioris would be the first to see a spectre in her room at night was apparently the ghost of a recently deceased Confessor requesting simply that she prayed with him over time this ghost would appear increasingly through the night and then in the day

as well and the simple requests for prayer were now increasingly replaced with lewd and obscene commands the priest was morphing in appearance in fact well began as an appearance of just a everyday ghost everyday ghost soon revealed itself to be a demonic presence and one by one the women of the convent began to show the telltale signs of possession the early exorcisms were largely a private affair they were confined secretly inside the walls of the convent though the people of Lun knew and were pretty suspicious frankly of the women of the convent as in many

cases of early exorcism the ritual just made the situation worse it exaggerated exacerbated The Possession it spread and intensified the behavior of the women became increasingly disturbing and it was also becoming quite clear that a lone rookie Exorcist was simply not up to the task of confronting a dozen or more violently possessed women and possessed frankly with a real who's who of demons we got asteroth and bbub and levith and the Devils here I mean of course this is a real retinue of true diabolical Aristocrats around the same time that the possessions began to take

hold the world of politics would also come to bear on Lun Cath and Protestants these are the hugenots of History were split not only religiously but also into a relation on a very thorny issue about the very walls of the city the city of Lun the walls and the keep the king and his allies especially the famed Cardinal rishu wanted to demolish the defensive structures as part of their centralizing monarchial absolute power the Protestants on the other hand for relatively obvious reasons and even a chunk of the Catholics a plurality of the Catholics Town people

wanted to keep their walls both in the interest of short-term defense against mercenary armies which had hassled the region but also just in the interest of local autonomy people like their walls let them have their walls this would all come to a head when a local militia actually blocked the attempt of the king's agent to demolish the walls in the tower keep and at the center of this resistance was The Dashing arrogant and popular priest bankier popular with the hugenots and the lady apparently grandier had made a host of enemies through his serial philandering and

had been previously censored in the years previous he was forbidden to even officiate Mass he openly mocked his enemies in the town he lambasted risho and a at least allegedly mocked him in a satire and he even argued against the necessity of Priestly celibacy because you know reasons he really would he really wasn't about that L de the king's agent returned to Paris to report on this whole matter of the walls and the towers not being torn down like the king wanted but also on this increasingly outof control situation of the possessions at the Earth

saline Convent a situation that had taken a positively decisively dangerous turn for Kier as during one of the exorcisms on October 11th 1632 kind of around now time of the year he was indicted by name as having used sorcery to bewitch the convict spiritually breaching the sacred Community by throwing a corrupt bundle of roses over the wall the situation had now all come together into a perfect storm to kill Kier now it's rather clear that kier's arrogance blinded him to the gravity of his situation his lenus lifestyle had earned him the eye of many powerful

men in the region his sympathy and popularity with the Protestants made him suspect to the more Ardent Catholics in the area he probably maybe mocked the power of cardinal rlu he employed cronyism in his position in the church to get restored to his positions after being officially found guilty of immorality and he was seen as part and parcel of the resistance to the demolition of lon's walls a top all of that the possessed women were now directly naming him as nothing less than the cause of their demonic infestation by the use of diabolical sorcery this

is really bad perhaps guier didn't realize his situation or maybe he thought that his cronies would again deliver him out of the situation perhaps he dismissed the cackling of the ursines like many citizens of Lon did as nothing more than the acting out a kind of macabra stunt pulled by the once spoiled women nuns of the convent or maybe he knew that any accusation of sorcery this would be a capital case of course if convicted would be sent all the way over to the parliament of Paris where no sorcery cases had actually come to execution

even strong conviction since 1624 the parliament being one of the greatest breaks on the witch hunts in Europe regardless he miscalculated and he miscalculated badly the king's agent returned not only to demolish the walls but to investigate The Possession case and kier's role in it as you can imagine Gander was arrested on a range of charges in November of 1634 and by May the following year the king's agent had fully closed the Trap he received complete royal power of a full investigation over both the criminal proceedings of the wall and what was going on with

the women possessed at lutun and most importantly he had been granted the power to prevent any outside interference in including any appeals to the parliament of Paris now it's difficult not to imagine this whole business as anything other than some elaborate rub Goldberg machine for the destruction of guier by rishu and the host of enemies that he had made along the way the philandering regardless the trial would now shift to the testimony of two voices that of the nuns especially Jean deage and that of the host of demons the voice of the demons that was

now speaking through them the Lun Affair is perhaps the best documented sorcery trial in all of European history there is a mountain of archives spread over several different massive archives from the minutes of the exorcisms themselves to the proceedings of the trial and it's frankly rightly become Grist for the mill for novels plays films and music at the center of this drama is without any doubt Jean deange the prior of the convent and ground zero for the possessions alleged to be possessed by no less than seven different demons Leviathan Amon macaron balam osmodius and Behemoth

it's quite a party in there she would display the most violent tortures of possession and yet her naming gonier is powerfully sus don't trust this she actually admitted during the proceedings for having fallen love with him though they never met it seems and she would both indict and then recant the role guier allegedly played in all of this even going so far as claiming that she would hang herself unless the sorcery trial against quer was stopped of course with the Trap sprung there was there's no way he was getting out of this thus between the

politics of the walls the religious tensions between Catholics and Protestants the litanies of animosities against gonier people personally hating him we can also add a clear psychosexual drama to the mix as well I mean these are pinned up young women one of which was clearly in love with him at some point but the situation was to become even more bizarre if you could believe that the once private exorcisms again in the secrecy of the convent with now with several active priests even some visiting Bishops were involved there was a range of doctors and apothecaries administering

a range of compounds on these women at times this is just little else than human experimentation frankly and no doubt a lot of these concoctions only deepen the crisis God knows what these apothecaries were giving some of these young women well what was once private now became public exorcisms public spectacles with thousands of people visiting Lun over the following years as Spectators indeed the spectacle of women barking screaming and luridly writhing about in public would even convince some of the local Protestants for the truth of the Catholic Church you know I mean they got the

demon thing and perhaps the Catholics knew they knew the truth you should never let a good possession go to waste the exorcisms and sorcery trial of Gander would produce two of the more fascinating documents in demonological history a kind of topology inventory of the possessed women the demons doing so were said to have possessed them in the locations where inside of their bodies the demons were to be located interestingly enough one of the Demons for instance Cerberus no less lodged above the heart of one of a young woman another about the age of 19 had

four such demons including Barth lodged in the opening of her stomach and indeed she had gone long period without eating another Isabelle aged 18 or 19 had Maron underneath her left breast P underneath her heart bbub and asteroth beneath her left armpit another Leon deur was underneath her navl coal of impurity was beneath her left hip and other demons were seem to be moving throughout the body just beneath the skin so Cronenberg body horror again they would always elude the exorcists and the Physicians chasing them and trying to expel them many of these demons mentioned

in these lists eventually 27 women would become possessed obsessed or otherwise mfic or demonic Stars Leviathan bbub asteroth as modius among others some of the others are pretty obscure but nevertheless do appear in demonic lists such as those found in the necromantic literature of the time Barth being a prime example now knowledge of these specifically necromantic demons is also going to prove Germain in just a moment so keep beareth in your in your back pocket yeah other demons appear to be be just forces of pollution or corruption even kind of demonic animals one of them

is named baruk ironically Hebrew for blessed and another is named Luther Luther like Martin Luther perhaps a demonic Protestant take that hugenots regardless the Demonic catalog and the bodily cartography of this women are a lesser known but I think very important addition to the great demonic cataloges such as the Le Des which would become the core of the sud Monarch demon of Johan V which in turn of course would become the core of the goisha of the Lesser key of Solomon so to be added to the list of cataloges of demonic entities we have to

go to the trials at lud the second document or really a set of documents of Interest are the Diabolical packs which emerge from the proceedings now as you probably know from my episodes on the early modern Witch Trials which you can check check out a whole playlist about that the Diabolical pact was core to what Scholars now denote as the elaborated theory of Witchcraft this is the mature notion of Witchcraft as developed in the minds of the inquisitors of the jurists the theologians and the philosophers of late medieval and early modern Europe in this period

this idea this Theory held that a new largely women-led heretical sorcery sect had appeared in Europe and it was marked by the entering into a pact or a covenant with with the devil and thus apostasy from Christianity that's very important it's not just a sin of sorcery it's heresy this included sexual relations with the devil and various demons aerial flight for the purposes of attending a thing called the Sabbath or the Sabbath sometimes a synagogue because why not add some anti-Semitism in there which is of course presided over by Satan himself in which he would

initiate in people into said pack which would be followed of course by incestuous and promiscuous sex because why do they get to have all the fun the general practice of Maleficent magic the slaughtering of fetuses and babies and various means of preventing human beings from procreating largely by using magic to make pen men's penises disappear it's really worried people in the malice malif Forum the aim of all this was to undermine Christianity and all of Christendom as part of the devil's ongoing war with God in fact by the mid-5th century this series just became positively

apocalyptic and actually argue that the new witch heresy was part of the final attempt to on the part of Satan to Forstall his impending doom by sending all of human beings down a spiral of sin and crime as the Devils want to do as a kind of final outrage against God but core to this theory was The Pact that the devil made with the said witch or sorcerer that brought them into this anti-christian demonic service it armed them with demonic Supernatural powers and it induced them to well to go from just mere Sinners as I

mention to recalcitrant Heretics that's why witchcraft in this period is so viciously persecuted of course no evidence no evidence of witches along the lines of this Theory have ever come to light it was basically a European wide murderous conspiracy theory we've all moved on since conspiracy theories right folks that's not a thing anymore is it it and thus virtually none of these packs have survived because there were just no witches with a few exceptions the trial of urban Gontier being one of those rare exceptions we get it packed in this trial in fact three such

packs two in French and one in Latin were produced throughout the trial one of which was introduced in a positively bizarre sequence during an exorcism on May 17th 1634 there was was an exorcism a public exorcism going on in a pack Church in the presence of the bishop so you can imagine it was quite a show the possessed woman our sister Don was possessed at that time by Leviathan Behemoth and asmodus and The Exorcist and the demons were fussing about one was tricking the other one and it's kind of humorous actually at any rate at

some point during the proceedings they were trying to force the demons to produce The Pact a core contention during the trial it's a core contention of this whole belief during the exorcisms the woman was eventually bound down and she was Ring about as as people do and demonically declared that The Pact was evidently beneath the suane of the attending Bishop it was beneath the bishop and upon inspection a blood soaked paper was found that read I'm quoting here I deny god father Son and Holy Spirit Mary and all the saints particularly St John the Baptist

that guy the church both triumphant and militant all the sacraments all the prayers prayed therein I promise never to do good to do all the evil I can and would wish not to be a man at all but to have my nature changed into a devil so that I could better serve thee thou my Lord and Master Lucifer and I promise thee that even if I be forced to do some good work I will not do it in God's honor but in scorning him and in thine honor that all of the devils and that I

ever give myself to thee and pray thee always to keep well the bond that I gave thee signed urer of course The Pact informs us that it was actually Written in Blood but it's only a copy of the original which of course remains in the infernal archives it was taken out of the infernal archives copied by a demon then put underneath the sutan of the bishop another such pack written in abbreviated Latin perhaps also Written in Blood with one page actually written backwards in reverse order because you spin the record around backwards and you get

sad Satan and Led Zeppelin here was previously housed in The Archives of puer where it has since gone missing please don't steal things from archives no matter how metal they are this two-part pack the first of which swears gu's allegiance to Lucifer and his rejection of the Catholic church just like the first one the second enumerates that he will be given quote the love of women the flower of virgins the respect of monarchs honors lusts and powers that he' be allowed to live another 20 years or so and that he would later join us the

demons to sin against God now perhaps the most fascinating element without any doubt the most fascinating element about this pact are the Demonic seals and signatures of lucer Beelzebub s Satan asth Leviathan elmy and the Demonic scribe we should never forget the Demonic scribe someone has to do the writing here ball breth which endorses the document now while the Eerie symbols that mark the text do not exactly match any specific demonic seals that I know of and admittedly haven't checked them all this would be a fun project for AI it's profoundly interesting to note that

they are in fact very much consistent with the Demonic seals found in the necromantic literature of that time which is to say and I think this is terribly fascinating whoever composed this document unless it was really demons did in fact have some knowledge of the style one can say the the aesthetic of demonic seals found in contemporary books of magic at that time many of which were actually in print by the 1630s for instance the Opera Omnia of agria had been printed around 1600 with one of the two volumes being basically a small portable library

of all the popular magical books of the day including of course the three books of oul philosophy the arbitel for planetary magic the Hep tamaron for summoning Angels the ARs notoria without the notai the spous fourth book of ult philosophy Etc people actually had access to lots of magical books thus the pack regardless of who composed it certainly belongs in the history of demonological semiotics right alongside the famous sigils of the ler of Solomon which by the way would be composed just across the channel in England less than a decade from the affair at ludong

demonological semiotics this sounds like a craus album I mean look at least you get pretty good band titles here if nothing else here esoterica during the course of the trial Grande would be brought before the possessed women in the hopes that he could exercise them from the very demons that he was alleged to have well Unleashed upon them that failed did did not work the demons just mocked the very certainly doomed grandier at this point of course he was going to be found guilty and in August of 1634 and he was he was found guilty

and he was subjected to the torture of the boot his legs were broken and crushed all the while and he refused to name or confess at all he refused to name accomplices because there just weren't any not breaking under such horrific torture is surely testimony to his extreme courage and fortitude but fate would not even allow him the mercy of strangulation before he was incinerated ultimately he was burned alive and his ashes were disposed of the execution of grandier did not however bring an end to the possessions little by little the demons did exit over

the course of the next 3 years again the public spectacle of this continued and and it became a kind of demented tourist attraction people would just go down to Lun one day to go see some exorcisms though I have to admit frankly I'd have probably gone I mean that's quite a show and free rishu perhaps having accomplished his mission with the execution of Gander would eventually put the whole Affair to an end he would have them sequestered and the public exorcisms ended the first woman possessed having experienced everything from hysterical pregnancy to suicidal gestures and

a range of fits and states of position Jean deange would be the last to be freed of the Demons after a pilgrimage the last of the Demons Behemoth Behemoth is the last hold out fled jaage leaving behind a miraculous sign the names of Jesus Mary and Joseph and a recent recent French Saint permanently imprinted upon her hand she would ultimately travel France as a kind of religious celebrity and people went on pilgrimage to touch the hand of Miracles others involved in the affair were less blessed some went insane some died oddly and prematurely Surin the

final Exorcist in the whole matter eventually found himself possessed for years and nearly committed suicide and was regularly tormented by the demons one of his letters to a Confessor priest survive and it's Eerie to read he would be eventually exercised and nursed back to health by the Jesuits thank you Jesuits the physicist and Diplomat Balthazar de mon would himself see the sacred hand of Jean and grasping her hands like so many other pilgrims he managed to rub off a bit of the M from the name of the Virgin Maria he rubbed off a bit of

the M make of that what you will johnan would die herself on January 29th 1665 over 30 years after the torture an incineration of urban Gander at her indictment the affair at Lun is a chapter in the early modern Witchcraft Trials bookmarked by the ex and provance possessions of April of 1611 which I will cover at some point it's a real blueprint for what happened at Lun all the way to the trials in colonial Salem in Massachusetts through February of 1692 through May of 1693 all of which where you have a situation where alleged Witchcraft

and diabolical possession form a kind of sinister circuit what to make of these events is a another question frankly contemporary accounts run the gamut of absolute credulity the women spoke languages they they didn't know allegedly they contorted in ways that should have broken their bones and allegedly they levitated in plain sight we even get measurements of just how far they levitated off the ground and for how long they levitated you also get much more guarded rep reporting like this nice little 1694 volume that I have here which in fact is the earliest document that extensively

quotes through the trial record and gives us some sense of what was actually lost during the records this preserves things that would have otherwise been lost frankly it reads a bit like a true crime text especially reving in the more lurid and supposedly Supernatural elements of the whole business part of why I hate the True Crime genre of course it also gleefully describes the probing of Grand's body with pins basically nails to find the devil's Mark which they found they pushed virtual Nails an inch into his flesh sometimes all the way into the bone along

with his torture in the boot and his botched execution which all make for positively cheery reading others like the philosopher John Lock saw the entire matter at Lun as pure conspiratorial murder organized by Crown and collar even some of the women that were possessed broke the act from from time to time there was an instance where some burning sulfur landed on the lips of one of the women who was possessed and she suddenly stopped being possessed she stopped performing and even briefly admitted the fraud to The Exorcist who just kept going lock himself deemed it

all a cheat the possessions at lud spawned a mountain of literature during their time a virtual cottage industry of Publications sprung up around the incident I mean who doesn't want to read lured stories about I don't know sex and nuns and all this and they continue down to this day with music film and tourism at Lun greatly benefiting from the whole sorted Affair in fact in my opinion one of the best books written on the topic it's one that intersects with the philosophy and the early modern Witch Trials is by Michelle durero it's a fantastic

book if you like French postmodernism and Satanism of course the Devils of ludum by adelus Huxley is also a mustre on the topic and well Russell's much banned 1971 x-rated the Devils should be on any esoteric as fan like you should watch it it's fantastic it was even a bit cozy frankly to I don't know kind of charming to Cozy up with this 1694 volume only to realize how bad my French has gotten frankly and it's gotten pretty chilly here and there was a fall raining coming down and I just lit the first fire of

the season and I would so and had a healthy dose of red wine to read about exorcism and possession and torture cheery the ludum possessions have a lot to teach us about human weakness corruption Pol political opportunism sexual repression and sexual excess those those always go together a society frankly with no productive role for a whole class of Women Within it to the evils of church and state mental illness all brought together as public theater with exorcism and demonology acting as director now esoterica is not my bully pulpit but the affair at Lun is a

moment where The Well of History I think offers us a great many lessons I hope this episode encourages you to give it a good study we all can learn something from The Possession case at Lun and I hope we T to repeat what went on there until next time I'm Dr Justin Sledge thank you thank you for watching and I'll see you next time here at esoterica where we explore the Arcane in history philosophy and religion