Imperial Privileged National Gazette

...of miserable rhymes, printed in quartoA book size where each sheet is folded twice, creating four leaves in the year 1639 at Halle.

Answer to a Literary Inquiry.

The actual and complete title of the book which Prätorius wrote about the BlocksbergThe Brocken, the highest peak in the Harz Mountains, legendary in German folklore as the meeting place of witches and the witch-flight thither—which was inquired after in No. 152, page 1456 of the New GazetteOriginal: "N. A." likely referring to the "Neuer Anzeiger"—is as follows:
“The Activities of the Blocksberg original: "Blocks-Bergs Verrichtung", or a detailed geographical report of the high, ancient, and famous Blocksberg: likewise of the witch-flight and the sorcerers' Sabbath, which the demons from all over Germany hold annually on such a mountain on May 1st and Walpurgis NightThe night of April 30 to May 1, associated with Saint Walpurga and folkloric witch gatherings. Compiled from many authors and adorned with beautiful rarities, together with appropriate figures by M. Johannes Praetorius, Imperial Poet LaureateA title of honor for poets bestowed by the Holy Roman Emperor. Leipzig 1660. 8vo octavo, spanning 582 closely printed octavo pages.”

This edition is decorated with a ghastly copperplate title engraving, which is actually a woodcut, depicting a witches' dance and procession around a hideous goat sitting on a tripod, whose backside a sorcerer is kissing. The same Prätorius also wrote a Latin work about the Brocken, which he falsely calls the Melibokus original: "Moelibocus" (in German, Matzenberg), but which is an entirely different mountain lying in the Hessian-Darmstadt county of Upper-Katzenelnbogen on the BergstraßeThe "Mountain Road" in southwestern Germany: “Geographical description of Melibokus and Baumann’s Cave original: "Descriptio geographica de Meliboco et specu Baumanni".” This Prätorius was a native of Zettlingen in the NeumarkA historical region east of the Oder River, then part of Brandenburg-Prussia, a Master of Philosophy in Leipzig, and Imperial Poet Laureate; he wrote a multitude of other adventurous and monstrous books, of which I will cite only a few as a sample, so that one may see what is to be expected from these treatises. The Antichrist detected through geometry original: "Antichristus per geometriam detectus"—On the suspended declination of the Pole and the eccentricity of the firmament or the ruin of the heavens original: "De suspensa Poli declinatione et excentricitate firmamenti vel ruina coeli"—Discourse on coscinomancy or the magic sieve original: "Diatriben de coscinomantia seu cribro magico"—The Demonology of the Silesian Rübezahl original: "Daemonologia Rübenzablii Silesii" etc., all in this same vein; the Master believed everything

he wrote, firmly and steadfastly; he also sought to convict the unbelievers, the neologiansRationalist theologians of the Enlightenment, and the "Enlighteners" of his time using Holy Scripture and other books. Today, these writings can prove little else than the darkness in which even degreed scholars lived just a century ago; but is not the foolish labor of trivialities original: "stultus labor ineptiarum" present in all centuries? How will it go for us a hundred years from now, when literary inquiries arise concerning SchröpferianaTales related to Johann Georg Schröpfer, a famous 18th-century charlatan and ghost-seer, Mesmeriana related to animal magnetism, Thuniana, Martiniana, Bletoniana, and a hundred other "-anas" that may yet appear before the fast-approaching end of the present century? — Honor to whom honor is due! It is a man of letters' duty to prevent the confusion of names and thereby avoid causing defamatory suspicion to fall upon other worthy men. Therefore, I briefly point out that there were two other scholars named Prätorius who also bore the first name Johann, but who had neither a blood nor spiritual relationship with the adventurous Poet Laureate. One was the famous Altdorf Professor of Mathematics, who invented the plane tableA surveying instrument which is still called the Praetorian table original: "mensula praetoriana" after him; he died in 1616. The second was a Master and Adjunct of Philosophy in Jena, and in the year 1670, tutor to the royal princes in Gotha; he died in 1705. Our patron of witches died in 1680, at a time when a hideously terrifying comet stood in the sky. Furthermore, anyone who wishes to be informed in detail about the "goat-rides" and "cloak-flights"—and how such things can be performed by elementary air-spirits—I recommend the following classic work in this field: “Abraham Seidel, Pastor of Nimritz, Report on Spirits. Erfurt 1648.” Master Bernhard Waldschmid also treats witchcraft quite beautifully and extensively in his The Witch of Endor original: "Pythonissa endorea", or 28 Sermons on Witches and Ghosts; in the 14th sermon, he describes how the devil treats the witches quite unclearly when they refuse to appear at the witches' ballet on the Blocksberg atop brooms, oven forks, goats, and the like.