Note 66 — Chapter I · The Witch: Heretic and Anarchist

The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, p. 16. It is true that the Brethren of the Free Spirit, anarchists, who vaunted the Adamite heresy, in the Thirteenth century, went to the stake with pæans of joy. But they were probably drugged. J. L. Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History. London. 1819. III. p. 278. sqq. The Adamites were a licentious sect who called their church Paradise and worshipped in a state of stark nudity. They were Gnostics and claimed complete emancipation from the moral law. They lived in shameful communism. Bohemian Adamites existed as late as 1849. In Russia the teleschi, a branch of the sect known as the “Divine Men,” performed their religious rites in a state of nature, following the example, as they asserted, of Adam and Eve in Paradise. These assemblies were wont to end in promiscuous debauchery.