Nipples are related to genitals. Genitals are kind of important when it comes to sex. Over time, humankind has become gradually more enlightened about how our sex organs function. We no longer accuse wombs of wandering or believe that testicles are connected to the vocal chords, causing the voice to deepen when they descend.
What’s colder than a witch’s tit? Before today, I would say an Arctic blizzard or that bottle of whiskey waiting in the fridge. Now, I’d have to say that it's the people who thought it was OK to kill someone because they had a third nipple.
Witch-hunters in medieval Scotland and England believed that witches received a complimentary nipple at their first meeting with Satan. From then on, the little devil-dandy or imp (known as a “familiar” or assigned magical helper) could get icy blood on tap for nourishment. If the imp wanted something warmer, they’d just go suck some boring milk-bearing nipples.
“Witch-prickers” specialized in examining these alleged witch tits. Their professional consultations included fool-proof testing methods. If the accused party felt pain or drew blood when witch-pricker jabbed the supernumerary nipple, then their chances of surviving the trial increased. In the witch-pricker's expert opinion, both bleeding and crying out were symptoms of innocence. I guess they figured that if the accused was actually using the nipple to suckle an impish attendant from hell, it would be probably be dried out and numb from incessant gnawing.
Mystics and occult practitioner have been consorting with interdimensional beings and the unseen world since ancient times. They also created entities that were specifically designed to serve a magical purpose. I can’t help but try to make sense of how this witch tit lore could have possibly come to be. As a practitioner of witchcraft, I automatically wondered if this belief could have derived from some widespread misinterpretation of a popular magical practice. Although there are a number of other traditions around the world that have similar practices, they’re called “servitors” in Chaos magick because they’re specifically created to do your bidding. In their basic state, they’re “tulpas” because, like tulpas, they’re thought-forms sprung to life, but they always have a designated manifestive purpose to fulfill, whereas not all tulpas are made that way.
You can create a servitor to do anything by embedding whatever energies you want into them with the use of various techniques. And yes, some people prefer to use blood to assist them with that process.
If the witch-pricker slipped up, they misdiagnosed moles and warts as witch-tits. Nowadays, medical specialists think of an extra nipple as “supernumerary” and quite common; it occurs in 1:50 women and 1:18 men. Medieval witch-hunters in Scotland and England thought of the extra nipple as incriminating evidence of witchcraft. Although the exact number of deaths remains unknown, 75 percent of the thousands slain were women.
Earlier on, men were accused more frequently and 95 percent of the victims in Icelandic witch trials—for example—were men.
If these statistics reflected how commonplace third nipples were back in the day, you'd think that the witch-prickers would've gotten hip to the witch tit and realized it was super-natural, not supernatural.
