Sabbat

Once the name of an imagined night gathering of witches, today one of the eight festivals of the Wheel of the Year.

Sabbat has two meanings that lie five hundred years apart.

Today a sabbat is one of the eight festivals of the Wheel of the Year: the two solstices, the two equinoxes and the four days between them, from Samhain to Mabon. Witches celebrate them alone or together, with a meal, a ritual or a walk.

In the age of the witch hunts the "witches' sabbath" was something quite different: a night gathering to which witches were said to fly, to worship the devil, feast and plan harm. The picture took shape in the western Alps around 1430 and spread through sermons and printed books. No such gathering ever took place. The descriptions are the same from Scotland to Hungary because the judges asked the same questions, under torture, and the accused gave the expected answers, including the names of those they had "seen" there. That is how one trial became fifty.

The name is part of this history. It was taken from the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest. Before "sabbath" the texts said "synagogue". The fantasy of secret meetings with child murder and devil worship had been aimed at Jews and at Christian heretics before it was turned on supposed witches, and the word carried the hatred with it.

The word reached modern witchcraft through Margaret Murray, who in 1921 took the trial records for reports of real festivals. Wicca adopted it in the 1950s for its seasonal feasts. Since then it has meant what witches actually do: mark the turning of the year.

Related: esbat, the European witch hunts.