Reminiscent of the ancient belief that the witches held their annual chapel at Easter on top of the mountain Blakulla, today Swedish children dress as witches on Easter Eve and run around to their neighbors to throw Easter letters, paskbrev, on their friends’ doorsteps. In an unpublished manuscript in the library of the Swedish Museum in Philadelphia, there is a statement that in the time when this belief in witches was prevalent, an infallible method of detecting the witches in the community was to place three eggs in the pocket before starting to church on Easter Sunday. These eggs must be the first laid by the young chicken. Part of the witches’ creed required them to attend church on Easter Sunday morning. The three eggs in the pocket gave the person carrying them the power to see the witches and hear them read their prayers backward.
