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The witch's teat and the animal familiar [in English witch trials] served well enough to prove the same basic contention as confessions of demonic copulation: that someone was having corporeal interactions with demons. The corporeal contact involved in suckling is about as intimate as sexual intercourse. Although the physical sensations may be more sedate, they are still sensuous, and there is an exchange of bodily fluids (to use the current mechanistic euphemism). In early-modern physiology, milk was supposed to be produced by the transformation of blood in the mother's body, so there was no essential difference between suckling a familiar with blood and giving milk to one's child.
Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (2002)
Witchcraft treatises were anything but illogical or irrational, and we are still living with their legacy. Their theories were perhaps insane, but insanely logical. They were not produced by the sleep or dreaming of reason, as Francisco Goya maintained; they were reason's daydream, produced by its insomnia and hyperactivity. Witchcraft theorists superficially resembled modern proponents of social intolerance and incivility. But a far more important question is how far we--the 'good people'--resemble witchcraft theorists.
Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief.
Transvection, the concept that witches were carried bodily by demons, was central to witchcraft theory far longer than descriptions of the Sabbat. Contrary to modern cliché, witches could not actually fly because they were defined as powerless in themselves. Like maleficium, a witch's flying could only be performed for her by a demon. In exchange for the witch's submission ("body and soul," by means of the pact), the demon struck her victim with disease or misfortune, and it was the demon who carried aloft the witch's broomstick or other aircraft, enabling her to fly.
Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (2002)
Once exorcism has taken place, holy objects acquire an automatic power to drive demons away and keep them from helping witches or harming good Christians. Salt could be consecrated and was used in the preparation of holy water, so some witchcraft theorists claimed that Satan avoided serving it at the Sabbat. This fiction harmonized with the supposed automatic efficacy of salt as a demonifuge; the connection was so obvious that there was no need to make it explicit. Someone was bound to complain about the lack of salt at Satan's banquets because they were unpalatable even when they featured no disgusting or horrifying foods. So several theorists told of a husband who followed his wife to the Sabbat out of curiosity. He naively but forcefully insisted on being served salt with the banquet and suddenly found himself alone, either because the salt was brought or because he exclaimed, "Praise God! Here's the salt!"
Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (2002)
Questions of sex and gender are central to witchcraft in somewhat unexpected ways. Necromancers were not stereotyped as sex partners of demons. This was not simply because they were men but because, being men, they could read. Because most women were illiterate, their sexuality was the only trait that literate men could imagine bringing them into contact with demons. Since women's sexuality was defined as passive, women were imagined as being dominated by demons rather than as controlling them. [Heinrich] Kramer could imagine women as the ideal witnesses, the testes expertae to demonic reality, because a woman who confessed to being ravished by a demon was testifying to the existence of a suprahuman presence that left her no choice but to believe in its reality.
Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (2002)
Demonic corporeality and sexuality are not even "hidden" topics; they have been staring us in the face all along, in what we know about the peculiarities of European witchcraft between 1400 and 1700. Witchcraft in this period differed from witchcraft in other cultures - including the culture of European intellectuals and churchmen before 1400 - in its twofold emphasis on maleficia and demonolatry. Maleficia, or acts of harmful magic, are the basis for any definition of witchcraft around the world; but demonolatry, the intentional worship of and subservience to demons, is peculiar to early-modern European witchcraft.
Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (2002)
Texas Plumber Walter Stephens Finds Decomposing Human Skull While Mowing Lawn
In the sweltering heat of a San Antonio afternoon, what began as a routine lawn-mowing task for a local plumber turned into a scene straight out of a crime thriller. On September 15, 2025, Walter Stephens, a dedicated employee at Harrell Commercial Plumbing, stumbled upon a grim discovery that has left the community reeling and authorities scrambling for answers. While trimming the grass along…
