The Encyclopedia Of Demons And Demonology

262 Vepar
Then, she saw a black man sitting with his hands
bound to his knees. She took him by the hair and cast
him to the ground, holding his head down with her foot.
She prayed, and a light shone down from heaven, illuminating
her cell. She saw in heaven the cross of Christ with
a dove on it. The dove said, “Blessed art thou o Margaret,
the gates of paradise attend thy coming.”
Margaret demanded that the demon give his name,
and he asked her first to remove her foot from his head.
She did, and he gave the name Veltis. He said that he and
other demons had been locked up in the brazen vessel.
Babylonians found it and, thinking that it contained gold,
smashed it and thus freed the demons. Ever since, Veltis
and the others have lain in wait to annoy the just.
REGINALD SCOT, a skeptic about the powers of the
DEVIL and demons, dismissed the legend as a fiction, saying
Margaret could not have possibly had the eyesight
and hearing to perceive anything as far away as heaven.
Surely, the demons could have used their fiery nature and
breath to melt the brazen vessel at any time. “The devils
carry hell and hell fire about with them always; insomuch
as (they say) they leave ashes evermore where they stand,”
he noted.
Scot opined that anyone who burned a candle in the
name of St. Margaret “shall never be the better, but three
pence the worse.”
FURTHER READING:
Scot, Reginald. The Discoverie of Witchcraft. 1886. Reprint,
Yorkshire, England: E. P. Publishing, 1973.
Vepar (Separ) FALLEN ANGEL and 42nd of the 72 SPIR-
ITS OF SOLOMON. In HELL, Vepar is a duke with 29 LEGIONs
of DEMONs under his command. He appears as a mermaid
and has jurisdiction over certain things pertaining to the
sea: He guides the waters and battleships and causes the
sea to seem full of ships. When commanded, he will
raise storms at sea. He can cause a person to die in three
to five days of wounds that putrefy and become filled
with maggots. According to JOHANN WEYER, a person so
afflicted can be healed “with diligence.”
Vienna Possession (1583) Teenaged girl possessed of
more than 12,000 DEMONs, allegedly sent by her grandmother.
The Vienna Possession case has political overtones
of anti-Protestant propaganda.
In 1583, a 16-year-old girl in the village of Manx near
Vienna, Austria, began suffering from severe cramps. She
was determined by local authorities to be possessed and
was sent to Vienna to the Jesuit chapel of St. Barbara for
EXORCISM. After eight weeks of intense daily exorcisms, the
priests succeeded in expelling 12,652 DEMONS, one of the
highest numbers on record in demonic possession cases.
The thousands of demons who had possessed her
made her so heavy that she could scarcely be carried from
place to place. The wagoner who transported her every
day from the hospital to the chapel said that she seemed
to be made of lead and iron, and the horses sweated profusely
in pulling her cart.
The priests, of course, sought to assign blame. The girl
told them that she was often in the company of her grandmother,
Elisabeth Pleinarcher, who took her to Lutheran
weddings and church services. The priests pressured her
to state that Pleinarcher kept demons in the forms of flies
in a bottle, and she had used these against the girl.
The confession enabled Kaspar Neubeck, the bishop
of Vienna, to arrest Pleinarcher. The 70-year-old woman
was imprisoned and tortured until she said that her granddaughter’s
story was true that she had accomplished the
possession by sending the DEVIL into an APPLE that she had
given the girl to eat. Pleinarcher also confessed to attending
SABBATs for 50 years. She had copulated with the Devil
in the forms of a cat, a goat, and even a ball of thread.
Pleinarcher was tied to the tail of a horse and dragged
through Vienna to the Richplatz, where she was burned
alive.
Not long after the execution, a Jesuit priest, Georg
Scherer, preached a lengthy sermon about the case, urging
Viennese officials to increase their diligence against
WITCHCRAFT.
FURTHER READING:
Lea, Henry Charles. Materials toward a History of Witchcraft.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1939.
Vine FALLEN ANGEL and 45th of the 72 SPIRITS OF SOLO-
MON. In HELL, Vine is a king and earl. He appears either
as a monster or as a lion seated on a black horse, holding
a viper. When commanded, he assumes human form.
Vine discerns hidden things, reveals witches, and knows
the past, present, and future. Upon command, he will
build towers, demolish walls, and make seas stormy. He
governs 35 LEGIONs of DEMONs.
Vual FALLEN ANGEL and 47th of the 72 SPIRITS OF SOLO-
MON. Once a member of the angelic order of powers, Vual
is a duke in HELL with 37 LEGIONs of DEMONs under his
command. He appears first as an enormous dromedary
camel, then changes into human form and speaks in
imperfect Egyptian. He procures the love of women;
knows the past, present, and future; and makes enemies
become friends.