Anonymous work entitled "The dance of death". Germany. Century XVI.

Grabado de Gustave Doré llamado "Apocalipsis: Visión de la muerte".

“Y miré, y vi un caballo amarillo (pálido); y el que lo montaba tenía por nombre Muerte, y el Hades lo seguía; y les fue dada potestad sobre la cuarta parte de la tierra, para matar con espada, con hambre, con mortandad y con las fieras de la tierra.”

(Apocalipsis 6:8)

Engraving by Bernardino Genga, which is included in his work on anatomy: "Anatomia per Uso et Intelligenza del Disegno" (1691)

Work by  Cornelis Anthonisz. 1537

Work by Albrecht Dürer entitled "Death and the Landsknecht" (1510)

Series of engravings made by Hans Holbein around 1523 and collected in his famous work "The Dance of Death" where he shows the conquering and equalizing power of death before all human beings.

Series of engravings made by Hans Holbein around 1523 and collected in his famous work "The Dance of Death" where he shows the conquering and equalizing power of death before all human beings.

Series of engravings made by Hans Holbein around 1523 and collected in his famous work "The Dance of Death" where he shows the conquering and equalizing power of death before all human beings.

Series of engravings made by Hans Holbein around 1523 and collected in his famous work "The Dance of Death" where he shows the conquering and equalizing power of death before all human beings.

Series of engravings made by Hans Holbein around 1523 and collected in his famous work "The Dance of Death" where he shows the conquering and equalizing power of death before all human beings.

Here is a vulgar but "honorable" gesture of defiance in the face of the barbarism of our time, obviously it is not an oath pose but without a doubt if our good gentleman with his hand on his chest from the Golden Age raised his head he would certainly raise his middle finger with a clenched fist.

Formerly the use of the comb simulated and was linked to the male phallus and its magical power to ward off the evil eye, a kind of phallic amulet against curses.

However, its practice as an obscene gesture comes from Roman times when Caligula offered his hand to his effeminate tribune to be kissed, the delirious and depraved emperor threw his finger in that position to humiliate his subjects.

As a direct insult we must go back to the Hundred Years War that faced the kingdoms of England and France when the French cut off the middle finger of all British archers, who, demoralized, were prevented from using their powerful bow. As the war favored the English, they showed them their middle finger to challenge and mock them.

We leave it to your imagination who to direct such an effective and ancient posture ...

In 409 the first Germanic invasion took place in the peninsula, Swabians, Vandals and Alans entered Hispania. The Arian Visigoths, with Alaric in command, sacked Rome (410) and headed, led by Ataulfo, towards France and Iberia. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476) and the great defeat of Vouillé (507), the Regnum Gothorum of Tolosa fell, which definitively displaced the Visigoths towards Hispania. There is a rapprochement between the barbarian Goths and the civilized Roman aristocracy. Confrontations, friendship and alliances that favor the birth and formation of Regnum Gothorum and the strengthening of the Hispano-pagoda monarchy of Toledo. Leovigildo will be the true organizer of the political unity that seeks the fusion between the Hispano-Roman and Gothic populations. His son Recaredo will achieve the desired legislative and religious unity in the III Council of Toledo (589), and his descendants will settle the Regnum Hispaniae with the territorial unity...

The son of the wolf, the Goth Wulfilias, converted the Visigoths of Germania to the Arian religion. Upon their arrival in Iberia, they came into contact with the pagan pre-Roman and Spanish-Roman peoples, with the newcomers Vandals, Swabians and Alans - who also practiced Arianism - and with the Jews who had settled since the 6th century. A heterogeneous society is configured where different pre-Christian beliefs coexist alongside primitive Christianity - Manichaeism, Arianism and Gnosticism. The Council of Nicea in 325 will condemn the Arian heresies, the subsequent syncretism process, the conversion of Recaredo and the final unification of the Third Council of Toledo (589) will displace all religious tendencies in favor of Catholicism.

However, in that Visigoth Hispania sacred and perhaps heretical elements will appear, such as those that appeared in the mysterious hermitage of Santa María de Quintanillas de las Viñas in Burgos. We speak of “pagan” reliefs such as the undefeated sun, the spirit of life, and the crescent Moon, the mother life, of oriental Manichean reminiscences, capable of separating light from darkness, good from evil ... perhaps Gnostic inscriptions perhaps last outbreaks of Arian heresy ... In any case, despite the assimilation of Christian orthodoxy, we find in the ruins secrets of a pagan spirituality so latent in the stones, in the art and in the soul of this people ...

In 409 the first Germanic invasion took place in the peninsula, Swabians, Vandals and Alans entered Hispania. The Arian Visigoths, with Alaric in command, sacked Rome (410) and headed, led by Ataulfo, towards France and Iberia. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476) and the great defeat of Vouillé (507), the Regnum Gothorum of Tolosa fell, which definitively displaced the Visigoths towards Hispania. There is a rapprochement between the barbarian Goths and the civilized Roman aristocracy. Confrontations, friendship and alliances that favor the birth and formation of Regnum Gothorum and the strengthening of the Hispano-pagoda monarchy of Toledo. Leovigildo will be the true organizer of the political unity that seeks the fusion between the Hispano-Roman and Gothic populations. His son Recaredo will achieve the desired legislative and religious unity in the III Council of Toledo (589), and his descendants will settle the Regnum Hispaniae with the territorial unity...

If you have seen women running through the streets from one place to another being chased by some half naked guys in wolf skins who whipped and whipped them with bloody strips of ram, do not be alarmed! they are just remembering an old pagan festival, something lewd that yes, but it was a sacred rite of purification and fecundity celebrated in Ancient Rome every February 15 called the lupercales or Lupercalia.

The word comes from lupus, that is, wolf and its Roman god of fertility and male sexuality Fauno Luperco (Greek mythological deity Pan, the one who protected the wolf), a strange, hairy being, with legs and horns of a goat and large, pointed ears with a voracious and infinite sexual appetite.

One of the legends tells that in the ancient city of Alba Longa, the evil Amulio after deposing his brother Numitor from the throne, ordered to kill all his first-born, turning his daughter Rea Silvia into a virgin so that she would not have successors, but The god of war Mars was enraptured by the girl and they procreated the brothers Romulus and Remus, who managed to escape from the clutches of their uncle Amulio, managing to survive in the forests thanks to the woodpecker and the she-wolf Luperca who nursed and raised them. Years later they would return to their homeland to take revenge and kill him.

Due to the shortage of fertility and women in Rome, the oracle of the goddess Juno announced that the mothers of Lazio would be fertilized by a male goat. For this purpose, a ritual was held every February 15 in the Lupercal cave - there where Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf - where the most virile young men were selected - those ephebos who, on their initiation path, had lived in the forests as human wolves—, called loberos or luperci (friends of the wolf), and their faces were marked with the blood of a dog and a sacrificed male goat.

To make the rite more fun and interesting, virile members were created in the form of strips with the skin of the goat ... The libido to the surface, the lustful participants launched themselves in the carnal search for women eager to be impregnated, who agreed in a Shameless sexual play, whipping and spanking included, in a depurifying act that increased fertility.

Christianity erased with a stroke of the pen this fun bacchanal, so beneficial to health and to the women of Ancient Rome, moving it to February 14, Valentine's Day.

If you have seen women running through the streets from one place to another being chased by some half naked guys in wolf skins who whipped and whipped them with bloody strips of ram, do not be alarmed! they are just remembering an old pagan festival, something lewd that yes, but it was a sacred rite of purification and fecundity celebrated in Ancient Rome every February 15 called the lupercales or Lupercalia.

The word comes from lupus, that is, wolf and its Roman god of fertility and male sexuality Fauno Luperco (Greek mythological deity Pan, the one who protected the wolf), a strange, hairy being, with legs and horns of a goat and large, pointed ears with a voracious and infinite sexual appetite.

One of the legends tells that in the ancient city of Alba Longa, the evil Amulio after deposing his brother Numitor from the throne, ordered to kill all his first-born, turning his daughter Rea Silvia into a virgin so that she would not have successors, but The god of war Mars was enraptured by the girl and they procreated the brothers Romulus and Remus, who managed to escape from the clutches of their uncle Amulio, managing to survive in the forests thanks to the woodpecker and the she-wolf Luperca who nursed and raised them. Years later they would return to their homeland to take revenge and kill him.

Due to the shortage of fertility and women in Rome, the oracle of the goddess Juno announced that the mothers of Lazio would be fertilized by a male goat. For this purpose, a ritual was held every February 15 in the Lupercal cave - there where Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf - where the most virile young men were selected - those ephebos who, on their initiation path, had lived in the forests as human wolves—, called loberos or luperci (friends of the wolf), and their faces were marked with the blood of a dog and a sacrificed male goat.

To make the rite more fun and interesting, virile members were created in the form of strips with the skin of the goat ... The libido to the surface, the lustful participants launched themselves in the carnal search for women eager to be impregnated, who agreed in a Shameless sexual play, whipping and spanking included, in a depurifying act that increased fertility.

Christianity erased with a stroke of the pen this fun bacchanal, so beneficial to health and to the women of Ancient Rome, moving it to February 14, Valentine's Day.

If you have seen women running through the streets from one place to another being chased by some half naked guys in wolf skins who whipped and whipped them with bloody strips of ram, do not be alarmed! they are just remembering an old pagan festival, something lewd that yes, but it was a sacred rite of purification and fecundity celebrated in Ancient Rome every February 15 called the lupercales or Lupercalia.

The word comes from lupus, that is, wolf and its Roman god of fertility and male sexuality Fauno Luperco (Greek mythological deity Pan, the one who protected the wolf), a strange, hairy being, with legs and horns of a goat and large, pointed ears with a voracious and infinite sexual appetite.

One of the legends tells that in the ancient city of Alba Longa, the evil Amulio after deposing his brother Numitor from the throne, ordered to kill all his first-born, turning his daughter Rea Silvia into a virgin so that she would not have successors, but The god of war Mars was enraptured by the girl and they procreated the brothers Romulus and Remus, who managed to escape from the clutches of their uncle Amulio, managing to survive in the forests thanks to the woodpecker and the she-wolf Luperca who nursed and raised them. Years later they would return to their homeland to take revenge and kill him.

Due to the shortage of fertility and women in Rome, the oracle of the goddess Juno announced that the mothers of Lazio would be fertilized by a male goat. For this purpose, a ritual was held every February 15 in the Lupercal cave - there where Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf - where the most virile young men were selected - those ephebos who, on their initiation path, had lived in the forests as human wolves—, called loberos or luperci (friends of the wolf), and their faces were marked with the blood of a dog and a sacrificed male goat.

To make the rite more fun and interesting, virile members were created in the form of strips with the skin of the goat ... The libido to the surface, the lustful participants launched themselves in the carnal search for women eager to be impregnated, who agreed in a Shameless sexual play, whipping and spanking included, in a depurifying act that increased fertility.

Christianity erased with a stroke of the pen this fun bacchanal, so beneficial to health and to the women of Ancient Rome, moving it to February 14, Valentine's Day.

How to approach witchcraft and not fall into the imaginary that we have about it throughout history since its demonization as an independent woman, enemy of the people through inquisitorial texts such as that written by monks in the Malleus Maleficarum through the persecution of the Church, the witch hunt, the romantic corruption, the self-serving deformation of the Victorian bourgeois society fearful of women's liberation, the morbid, the superstition and the occultism of modernity to pop culture where we find that evil witch of covens with goats eater of children.

An ancestral look returns us to the primordial tradition, esotericism and occult sciences, to the sorceress as a woman of power, free and independent, connoisseur of magical wisdom, botanical and healing knowledge, who approaches the darkness to do the well, transmitted that knowledge from generation to generation as a closed circle through the three ages of women (the young, the mature and the old).

If we have to look for references, there we have the mothers of all the witches of pagan times such as Circe, Medea and Cassandra, those visionaries or women watchmen who accompanied the hero, endowed with magical knowledge, or the mysterious women of the medieval forest as priestesses and epicenter of knowledge, or the witchcraft manifestations of the 19th century (represented in certain pre-Raphaelite paintings) as the last vestiges of a magical and sapiential society.

The history of witchcraft is stained with blood, dark rites and crimes, terrible trials, persecutions, intolerance, scapegoats... Faced with black clichés and legends, let's stay with the true origin of witchcraft, a good time to remember and recover the lessons and virtues of ancient wisdom and magical thinking.