On Witches and Female Soothsayers

☞ Ulrich: What do you think, most worthy prince?
☞ Sigmund: I do not agree. ☞ Ulrich: What moves you to assert this?
v b

☞ Sigmund: For it is stated in the Decree, in the chapter Episcopi The "Canon Episcopi" (ca. 900 AD) was a foundational legal text used to argue that witchcraft and transformations were mental delusions rather than physical realities., Case 26, Question 5, where the text says: "Whoever believes that any creature can be made, or changed for the better or the worse, or transformed into any species or likeness, except by the Creator himself who made all things and through whom all things were made, is an infidel and worse than a pagan." This is what the text says. ☞ Conrad: I do not intend to oppose the Canon. But I wish to recite what I remember reading among the historians. What, then, is said of Virgil, who in the eighth Eclogue of his Bucolics relates that when Ulysses, exiled from Troy with his companions, turned aside to Queen Circe, this same Circe, receiving such guests, administered to them wicked potions? And so, after these guests had drunk the poisoned cups, they were turned into various species of animals: this one into a wolf, another into a boar, and another into a lion. ☞ Sigmund: You recite a fable. Poets invent things that are not believed. ☞ Conrad: Certainly poets are not to be rejected. For Caelius Lactantius An early Christian author (c. 250 – c. 325) often called the "Christian Cicero." says that poets wrote histories, but veiled them under hidden fiction. Moreover, Boethius, a Catholic doctor, recites this in his fourth book of The Consolation of Philosophy, and says:

The sails of the Neritian leader Ulysses/Odysseus
And his wandering ships on the sea
The East Wind drove to the island
Where the beautiful goddess dwells,
Born of the seed of the Sun.
She mixes for her new guests
Cups touched by a magic song.
When the hand powerful in herbs
Changed them into various forms,
The face of a boar covers this one;
That one becomes a Marmarican lion.