by Dan Clore
Walpurga was an eighth-century English nun who became a missionary in Germany. Her feast day fell on April 30 — May Day Eve — the night when witches reputedly gathered on the Brocken for their great Sabbath. The saint's name passed into the literary vocabulary of supernatural fiction, carrying its cargo of bonfires, flying ointment, and infernal congress from Goethe's Faust to Lovecraft's Arkham, from Crowley's Moonchild to Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Dan Clore compiled these appearances in April 2004, asking for further citations.
— Dan Clore, compiling sources, April 2004
[A note from the author: further citations welcome.]
Walpurga, Walburga, pr.n. An eighth-century English saint and missionary to Heidenheim, Germany, whose feast day falls on April 30, May Day Eve, on which witches reputedly celebrate their Sabbath.
For the hound squatted upon his haunches, and seemed to grin at Jurgen; and there were other creatures abroad, that flew low in the twilight, keeping close to the ground, like owls; but they were larger than owls and were more discomforting. And, moreover, all this was just after sunset upon Walburga's Eve, when almost anything is rather more than likely to happen.
— James Branch Cabell, Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice
Walpurgis, n. [< St. Walpurga or Walburga, whose feast day falls on April 30, when almost anything is rather more than likely to happen.] The orgiastic Witches' Sabbath held on May Day Eve, known as Walpurgis-night or (after the German) Walpurgisnacht. Also found in other compounds, such as Walpurgis-dance, Walpurgis Eve, Walpurgis-revel, Walpurgis-rhythm, Walpurgis-riot, Walpurgis Sabbat, Walpurgis Time.
a. Alone:
Over the stepping-stones, pulling up her dress, she skipped
with her long, lank legs, like a witch joining a Walpurgis.
— J.S. LeFanu, Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh
This the lamp ancestral hands have lit
Deep in the doorless crypts of blood and bone. . . .
For you and me, it is a witch-fire blown
Where secret airs and obscure pinions flit,
That has outburned Walpurgis and the moon
And lifts in quenchless rose to a cloudy noon.
— Clark Ashton Smith, "Amor" (ellipsis in original)
b. In Walpurgis-night or Walpurgisnacht:
The poppy visions of Cathay,
The heavy beer-trance of the Suabian;
The wizard lights and demon play
Of nights Walpurgis and Arabian!
— John Greenleaf Whittier, "The Haschish"
Ukalepe. Loathers' leave. Had Days. Nemo in Patria. The Luncher Out. Skilly and Carubdish. A Wondering Wreck. From the Mermaids' Tavern. Bullyfamous. Naughtsycalves. Mother of Misery. Walpurgas Nackt.
— James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
I walked to the gate and looked over it. Something was moving on the grass outside, and soon a sound which I could not instantly identify came to my ears. Then I remember what it was: it was the purring of a cat. I lit a match, and saw the purrer, a big blue Persian, walking round and round in a little circle just outside the gate, stepping high and ecstatically, with tail carried aloft like a banner. Its eyes were bright and shining, and every now and then it put its head down and sniffed at the grass.
I laughed.
"The end of that mystery, I am afraid," I said. "Here's a large cat having Walpurgis night all alone."
— E.F. Benson, "The Room in the Tower"
Little by little the Old Lady beguiled Iliel, and one day, while they were setting a trap to catch a viper, and a vineyard, and a violin with their unicorn, and their umbrella, and their ukulele, she suddenly stopped short, and asked Iliel point-blank if she would like to attend the Sabbath on Walpurgis-night — the eve of May-day — for "there's a short cut to it, my dear, from this country."
— Aleister Crowley, Moonchild (aka The Butterfly-Net or The Net)
Now he was praying because the Witches' Sabbath was drawing near. May-Eve was Walpurgis-Night, when hell's blackest evil roamed the earth and all the slaves of Satan gathered for nameless rites and deeds.
— H.P. Lovecraft, "The Dreams in the Witch House"
"Have you been up to the Brocken yet?"
"Just hit town, actually."
"I've been up there every Walpurgisnacht since I had my first period."
— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
It was April 30, Walpurgisnacht (pause for thunder on the soundtrack), and I was rapping with some of the crowd at the Friendly Stranger. H.P. Lovecraft (the rock group, not the writer) was conducting services in the back room, pounding away at the door to Acid Land in the gallant effort, new and striking that year, to break in on waves of sound without any chemical skeleton key at all and I am in no position to evaluate their success objectively since I was, as is often the case with me, 99 and 44/100ths percent stoned out of my gourd before they began operations.
— Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus! Trilogy
c. In other compounds or as modifier:
She could not tell how I might take it; but she quickly rallied, burst into a loud screeching laugh, and, with her old Walpurgis gaiety, danced some fantastic steps in her bare wet feet, tracking the floor with water, and holding out with finger and thumb, in dainty caricature, her slammakin old skirt, while she sang some of her nasal patois with an abominable hilarity and emphasis.
— J.S. LeFanu, Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh
I had no reply but shrieks of laughter, and one of those Walpurgis dances in which she excelled.
— J.S. LeFanu, Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh
Moloch and Ashtaroth were not absent; for in this quintessence of all damnation the bounds of consciousness were let down, and man's fancy lay open to vistas of every realm of horror and every forbidden dimension that evil had power to mould. The world and Nature were helpless against such assaults from unsealed wells of night, nor could any sign or prayer check the Walpurgis-riot of horror which had come when a sage with the hateful key had stumbled on a horde with the locked and brimming coffer of transmitted dæmon-lore.
— H.P. Lovecraft, "The Horror at Red Hook"
He seemed to know what was coming — the hideous burst of Walpurgis-rhythm in whose cosmic timbre would be concentrated all the primal, ultimate space-time seethings which lie behind the massed spheres of matter and sometimes break forth in measured reverberations that penetrate faintly to every layer of entity and give hideous significance throughout the worlds to certain dreaded periods.
— H.P. Lovecraft, "The Dreams in the Witch House"
The passage through the vague abysses would be frightful, for the Walpurgis-rhythm would be vibrating, and at last he would have to hear that hitherto veiled cosmic pulsing which he so mortally dreaded. Even now he could detect a low, monstrous shaking whose tempo he suspected all too well. At Sabbat-time it always mounted and reached through the worlds to summon the initiate to nameless rites. Half the chants of the Sabbat were patterned on this faintly overheard pulsing which no earthly ear could endure in its unveiled spatial fulness.
— H.P. Lovecraft, "The Dreams in the Witch House"
This was April 30th, and with the dusk would come the hellish Sabbat-time which all the foreigners and the superstitious old folk feared. Mazurewicz came home at six o'clock and said people at the mill were whispering that the Walpurgis-revels would be held in the dark ravine beyond Meadow Hill where the old white stone stands in a place queerly void of all plant-life.
— H.P. Lovecraft, "The Dreams in the Witch House"
Late in April, just before the æon-shadowed Walpurgis time, Blake made his first trip into the unknown.
— H.P. Lovecraft, "The Haunter of the Dark"
Phantasmal fire burns the band of sorcery,
The bat-things weave,
And taloned shapes of evil stalk, for one night free,
Walpurgis Eve.
— Donald Wandrei, "Witches' Sabbath"
He well knew from his activity in the witch-cult that at the time of the monstrous Sabbat-rites held at Walpurgis Time and Hallowmass, curious numbers of unfamiliar guests turned up at the old inn; he well understood that these were in reality departed shades seeking entrance to the nether world, and he knew also that the monstrous being under the pool, especially vigilant on these occasions to prevent unwarranted passages into the underworld, was itself frustrated in not being able to attend the hellish rites so dear to it.
— Donald R. Burleson, "The Pool"
Colophon
Compiled by Dan Clore and posted to the Usenet newsgroups alt.magick.tyagi, alt.magick, alt.tarot, alt.divination, alt.thelema, and alt.pagan.magick on April 28, 2004. Clore was a scholar of occult literature and author of The Unspeakable and Others (Wildside Press, 2004). This essay is a lexicographic compilation tracing the term Walpurgis through English supernatural fiction, from the Gothic novel tradition (LeFanu's Uncle Silas, Cabell's Jurgen) through the Lovecraftian weird tale to postmodern fiction (Pynchon, Shea and Wilson). Lovecraft's repeated use of the term in "The Dreams in the Witch House" — where it appears as Walpurgis-Night, Walpurgis-rhythm, Walpurgis-revels, and Walpurgis time — is particularly notable.
This entry is a companion to Clore's essays on scin-lāca, arthame, egregore, and esbat, all posted to alt.magick in the same period.
Original Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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