Magic Library

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that could be found offensive in a moral sense.

The first law for the historian is truth and impartiality, and so I certainly must not pass over in silence here that the Pauline words 1 Cor. XI. 10. regarding women, who for the sake of the angels should cover their head (their head-hair), have been explained by several church fathers and later ecclesiastical writers—up to the authors of the Hexen-Hammer Witch-Hammer/Malleus Maleficarum—in the sense of Gen. VI. 1—4. Genesis 6:1-4, which describes the "sons of God" taking wives from the "daughters of men.". This explanation was based on the general, strange notion that the described race of spirits would be particularly attracted to women's hair. In the following, where we shall speak of Lilith, we will have to commemorate the Talmudic-rabbinical legend, in which the countless devils who had established themselves in the beautiful hair of this woman, or more correctly of this demonic spirit of lust, are mentioned by name. In more recent times, Corrodi, in his History of Chiliasm, explained this passage as referring to succubus-demons. This scholar believes that Paul might truly have been caught up in the general notion of the magical allure of beautiful hair for that brood of spirits. Be that as it may, this is the only allusion to the primordial interpretation of Gen. VI. 1—4. that can be found in the New Testament, and the passage contains nothing that, as I said, could be found offensive in a moral regard, or inappropriate for a divine revelation, even assuming that Paul had in fact