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Here in the Midwestern US, 2015 is a sabbatic year. At the beginning of harvest, the tribe of Witches will once again foregather in immemorial Grand Sabbat.

But while the adults are busy kissing the Devil's ass (makes the herds fertile), having promiscuous sex (makes the crops grow), and eating ragoût de bébé non baptisé (tastes great), what about the kids? Once they've been presented to the Devil but before they're old enough to join in the fun, what to do? Kids and rituals: the perennial problem.

When in doubt, consult ancestral precedent. The Basque witches came up with a neat solution.

As I'm sure I don't need to tell you, after the Devil f**ks the bejesus out of you and nips your shoulder, to seal the deal he gives you your very own toad to be your intimate familiar. You suckle it (blood's OK if you don't happen to be lactating at the time) and sew little outfits for it, and in return it helps out with all your spells.

Warning: Contains material some readers may find offensive.

You've heard the stories. Do you know what those wacky-ass witches do at their sabbats? They actually kiss the Devil's hairy bung-hole: the Kiss in tergo, as the chroniclers coyly put it.

Ah, yes: the osculum infame, “the notorious kiss,” as it's known. You might think that this is one of the parts of medieval witchery that didn't quite make it to the modern witchcraft revival, but I think that you'd be wrong on that count. Twelve'll get you thirteen that the good old Kiss from Behind is ancestral to the Book of Shadows' Fivefold Kiss. Breathes there a Wiccan who would admit it, though? 

Holidays are not my thing.  If you come to my house, you won’t see cute fall leaves (unless they are on the ground) or other holiday decorations.  It has never been my thing.  It seems like a lot of effort for little meaning or return. 

Halloween has a lot of mischief, candy, horror movies, and bad images for witches.  Even as a child I didn’t like this holiday.  As an adult and a Pagan, I’ve found other ways to honor the season. 

The Horned One holds the baby in his arms.

He sits on the altar, cross-legged, shining in the firelight, each tine of his branching antlers tipped with its own delicate bud of flame. He holds the child to his chest, as if suckling him. Not everyone is privileged to drink from the breast of the witches' god. It is a promise, the ancient gesture of adoption.

He rises to his feet, towering—his horns reach up to heaven—and holds the infant out to the assembled people.

The morning after our first Grand Sabbat, a friend approached, a little hesitantly.

“That was you in the horns and the paint up on the altar last night?”

I pause, then smile and nod.

In Old Craft iconography, the Old Master is sometimes depicted as a horned (or antlered) skull with a flame between its horns. He is thus the Flammifer, the líht-bera, the Lucifer.

The image takes its origin from Continental trials; French witches frequently deposed that the Devil appeared at the sabbat in the form of a He-Goat with a candle burning between his horns. This is how Jeanne Bosdeau saw him at the Puy de Dôme in 1594. The witches would then light their own tapers or torches (as we still do) from the god's fire: the Lord of the Sabbat giving illumination to his people.

The witch-fire is the power of life that burns in each of us. It is said to be threefold: the fire in the head, the fire in the heart, and the fire in the loins.

Paul Rucker's evocative photo, “Horned One's Farewell,” which accompanied my post Grand Sabbat: Final Blessing, has occasioned so much comment on Facebook that I'd like to offer a little more context for the image.

For the past 25 years or so, here in the Upper Midwestern US, we've been holding—at the requisite irregular intervals—Grand Sabbats in the Grand Old Style: the Horned Man up on the altar, the oaths made crouching, the sacrifice, the wild dancing, the love-making in the woods afterward. Just like in the woodcuts, as they say.

Last year's Grand Sabbat was a four-day event that took place in late July among the hollow hills of southwestern Wisconsin's Driftless region, with the Sabbat itself on Saturday night. Over the course of the four days, we saw Old Hornie (as my friend and colleague Keith Ward remarked at the time) in several different characters: as He Who Hears the voice of His people, Bringer-of-Fire, as the Black Buck of the Sabbat, between Whose Antlers constellations wheel, as the sun-dappled Lord of Field and Forest.