the mythology of witchcraft

7/29/2019 The Mythology of Witchcraft

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Witchcraft: Mythology and Reality

David Griffiths

The figure of the witch is one that has been subject to more misrepresentation, mythologization and

romanticism through the ages than just about any other. From the decree of Yahweh in Exodus 22:181

to

the brief period of heightened persecution in the late 16th

to mid 17th

Centuries, the witch has been

perceived by the Judeo-Christian world as a threatening, supernatural - yet pathetic - figure of moral

weakness, revulsion and purely malicious intent. This mode of thought has birthed a culture of rumour,

fear and misunderstanding. In turn this has led to a degree of false and fantastic speculation regarding

the nature and existence of witches that was still detectable in the reaction of the modern press to

Gerald Gardners Wiccan religion in the 1950s and 1960s. With the exception of a few sympathetic

portrayals that movement was, like its historical forebears, largely perceived as being one which

consisted of morally dubious outcasts living on the peripherals of society.

To an extent, that judgment of the character of the historical witch has a ring of truth about it.

The historian Robin Briggs2 argues that the witch hunts of Early Modern Europe were local, chaotic,

societal manifestations of the need to project frustration and anger onto scapegoat figures during times

of social change and upheaval in places with relatively weak government. Those tried and executed aswitches usually represented badly behaved or poorly socialised older women

3without a sufficient

degree of financial, familial or social support who struggled to fit in with their neighbours and often

threatened or bullied them into providing food or assistance that they could scarcely afford to spare.

When a refusal to provide help was given any misfortune that subsequently befell those who refused4

was seen as cumulative evidence that the witch was practicing evil magic against those who declined to

accept them and aid them. This is not to suggest that such a parallel exists in the neo-pagan community

of today of course, but a degree of disenfranchisement and disaffection with society, religion and the

modern world may very well play a role in the fringe nature of that community in the modern era.

It is the perceived purpose and intent of witches however, rather than the perception of their

roles as social misfits, that has led to the terms witch and witchcraft becoming words with powerful

psychological connotations. Although witchcraft was taboo in early medieval Europe, we can see fromthe cultural attitudes expressed in the Synod of Reisbach in 799, Charlemagnes law prohibiting the

burning of witches on the symbolic grounds of it signifying continuing pagan beliefs and the Anglo-Saxon

laws of Athelstan5, that belief in witchcraft in the early Middle Ages was discouraged and that

punishment for practicing it at that time was not particularly severe. In the 11th Century, the Canon

Episcopi of Burchard of Worms revealed that the thought of that time was still one which expressed that

the existence of the witches sabbat was inherently untrue. It was not until the development of a more

overt religious paranoia became established, following the heresies of sects such as the Cathars and the

Waldensians and the persecution of Ritual Magicians, that we begin to see the first major examples of

accusations of organised Satanism being used as unscrupulous tools to literally blacken an opponents

reputation6. By the time of the Renaissance, the belief in witches sabbats, which involved flying to a

remote location, with or without ones physical body (or in animal form), eating foul meats, copulating

with devils, spoiling crops, cursing villages, plotting the downfall of Christendom and, ultimately, kissing

Satans backside, had entered popular folklore and were occasionally used as a particularly vindictive

means to bring the attentions of the torturers and executioners of the religious and secular authorities

upon a rival.

Following the political, religious and societal disturbances of the Reformation, Early Modern

Europe became a hotbed, in parts7, of occasional and short bursts of witch-hunting activities, which, in

the majority of cases, had an entirely local flavour and were rarely sanctioned by either the crown or the

church. On some occasions, official complaints of witchcraft were made to a magistrate which would


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then lead to the state becoming officially involved in the administration of justice. Such involvement,

when it occurred (it is believed to have been a relative rarity), would result in the trials based on the

evidence that confessions under the torture techniques such as strappado8, the application of hot

irons, racking, thumbscrews and the boot tend to generate - that dubious writers such as Margaret

Murray, of whom more shall be said later, would eventually base their hypotheses about the nature and

origins of the witch cult upon.

As well as serving as a vent for societal frustration and insecurity, the period of witch-

persecution acted as a vessel for those who genuinely did practice magic (as it seems likely that the

majority of those actually accused and executed for witchcraft did not) to ply their trade as benevolent

magicians for hire, who, as white witches served God and waged war against the black witches of

Satan. These were the cunning men, who employed a measure of trickery, charlatanism, folk magic,

fragments of ceremonial magic and genuine charisma in their art. In certain ways the cunning men

would prove to be more accurate forerunners to the modern witch tradition9. The cunning folk used

their art, in the majority of cases, to supplement their living financially, which, in times of turmoil such

as those that led to the witch persecutions, made them at least dependant on and occasionally quite

wealthy from - their extra curricular work. They therefore relied on finding and countering the work of

witches wherever they went and, ironically, in many instances, these true ancestors of modern witchery

were actually responsible for the deaths of those who were later claimed to have been the victims of theoppressors of the purported pan-European, magical, pagan religion. As a further matter of irony, Briggs

discloses that study of the documentary evidence of the trials reveals that the majority of those who

accused others of witchcraft were in fact women. This makes the claims of radical feminist American

Wiccans in the 1970s - that nine million witches were killed by men as an act of gynocide (which were

in turn inspired by an act of creatively exaggerated guesswork by 19th

Century proto-feminist author

Matilda Joslyn Gage10

) - even more implausible.

Combined with the historical mashing of data that the aforementioned Margaret Murray

committed, it can be seen that the misrepresentation that comes with the modern mythologization of

witchcraft is very much based on the same kinds of logical errors and manipulations that it was

subjected to in the past, although such relationships are by no means linear in nature. Norman Cohns

breakthrough work on the reality of the European witch-hunt, Europes Inner Demons

11

, revealed themeans of deliberate deceit by which the modern misunderstandings were made possible. It appears to

be with Murray that the largest portion of blame can be firmly laid. Cohn reveals that Murrays work The

Witch Cult in Western Europe, which, for over forty years since its intellectual inception in 1929 (which

was also the forty years that the Wiccan religion was largely developed in) was held to be the

authoritative work on European Witchcraft, was in fact based on large and deliberate falsehoods which

were only uncovered when Cohn thought to do what no-one else had actually yet done and examined

the source documents that Murray cited in her work.

The discrepancies revealed in her editing and presentation of the source material are quite

unbelievable. Murray portrays the historical sabbat (from a document relating to the trial of Helen

Guthrie in Forfar in 1661) as a fairly innocuous event that consisted of nothing more than sitting at a

table eating, drinking and dancing with the devil. Cohn however, reveals that the gaps that Murray

worked into her presentation of the document represented the parts where Guthrie, clearly under the

torturers scourge, confessed to witnessing her fellow witches flying to the sabbat through a hole in the

form of bees, seeing the devil appear as a horse - a form that she herself also had a predilection to

taking - conspiring to sink a ship and digging up a babys corpse and eating it in a pie12. It would have

doubtlessly been very difficult for Murray to choose to portray her hypothesis which posited the

existence of an ancient, matriarchal Dianic, pagan cult that had survived from antiquity into the Early

Modern period, when it was brutally oppressed - had she left those vital pieces of information in place.


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When we consider Murrays influences, her decision to rebuke objectivity and replace it with

her own personal agenda with such conviction becomes easier to understand. Her work follows the

tradition established in the 19th

Century of presenting works of subjectivised, quasi-fictional

hypothesising as history. As far as the history of witchcraft was concerned, it was the French historical

fantasist Etienne-Lon de Lamothe-Langon and the German writer and publisher Karl Ernst Jarcke who

respectively fabricated a series of trial documents relating to a dualist heresy tradition in 14th Century

France and posited the existence of an organised society of witches dating back to pre-Christian times.

Aspects of these ideas were incorporated into Jules Michelets 1862 publication La Sorciere, which was

supposedly an attempt to provide a sociological explanation of the Witch trials13. Michelet states his

purpose

was purely to give, not a history of Sorcery, but a simple and impressive formula of the Sorceress's way of

life, which my learned predecessors darken by the very elaboration of their scientific methods and the

excess of detail. My strong point is to start, not from the devil, from an empty conception, but from a

living reality, the Sorceress, a warm, breathing reality, rich in results and possibilities.14

The main problem with this text was the use of a poetic, rather than factual, interpretation of truth that

succeeds in creating a contradiction of purpose and a deliberate confusion of fact and fantasy. This isseen at its most fantastic in his description of the living reality of the priestess of the sabbat, who

allegedly had

the face of a Medea and the beauty of Our Lady of Sorrows; her eye deep-set, tragic, and restless, her hair

a dark untameable torrent, falling round her shoulders wildly like writhing snakes. Perhaps to crown all,

the vervain crown above her brow, the funereal ivy, and the violets of death.15

This is clearly a purely romantic, fictional representation of the priestess of the supposed religion; and,

like the efforts of Lamothe-Langon, whom Michelet quotes as a Principal Authority16, stains the

historical attempt to discover the truth about European witchcraft. Unfortunately, the practice of

breaching the lines between historical fact and subjective agenda did not end with Michelet. The work

of the American anthropologist Charles Godfrey Leland, in his 1899 book Aradia, or Gospel of theWitches,continues this dubious line of assertion. Lelands claim was that the gospel he presented was

a collection of Tuscan peasant religious traditions centred around the worship of Aradia, Queen of the

Witches, and the practice of witchcraft. Ronald Hutton17

asserts that there seem to be three extreme

positions that can be taken when considering Aradia. Firstly, that the document allegedly received by

Leland from a practitioner of the religion named Maddalena, known as the Vangelo manuscript,

represents a genuine text from an otherwise undiscovered religion. Secondly, that Maddalena wrote the

text herself, either with or without Leland's assistance, possibly drawing from her own background with

folklore or witchcraft. And finally, that the entire document was forged by Leland. In balance it would

seem (especially when considering Lelands citing of Michelet18

) that Lelands work probably cannot be

considered to be as genuine as it is presented to be.

The first of the final two sources that inspired Murrays position appear to be theaforementioned proto-feminist writings of Matilda Joslyn Gage in Women, Church and the State - the

work which claimed nine million witches had been slaughtered in what would later be labelled the

Burning Times. Murrays furious defence of any attempt to question the authority of her work reveals a

tenacious and sometimes vindictive nature propped up on a forebear of radical feminism which, at least

to some extent, seemed inspired by the radical proto-feminism of Gages works. On having the

assumptions of the primacy of a goddess cult in her work challenged by archaeologist Peter Ucko in

1962, Murrays contemptuous, condescending and wholly irrational response was that he had no right


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to speak about the goddess because he was first, far too young, and, second, a man19

. The second of

those final influences was the mainstay of early twentieth century folkloric research, Sir James Frazers

The Golden Bough. To be inspired by The Golden Bough was not an uncommon occurrence in the early

20th

Century, and to draw assertions from it (which is itself not without flaws) based upon a backing of

weak evidence, as Murray did, was not a sufficient act to restore truth to otherwise false assertions.

Murrays own work was to prove to be the lynch pin between the romantic view of the witch

portrayed in 19th Century pseudo-history and the academic acceptance of similar beliefs in the 20th

Century. Her view was, between the 1940s and the 1960s, the dominant, accepted theory on witchcraft

and was party to only a few voices of objection (which were often shot down by Murrays sharp

derision). Tellingly, the works of Gerald Gardner, who claimed to have discovered and subsequently

publicised20 a mystery religion based on the principles of witchcraft named Wicca, based his 1949

novel21High Magics Aidvery closely on the ideas set out in the Murray hypothesis. Equally tellingly, in

terms of the lineage of contact and ideas, Murray was to write the preface to Gardners opening

commentary on the Wicca movement, Witchcraft Today,in 1951.

What becomes increasingly clear, from expressions and ideas about the old witchcraft to those

of the new, is the prominence of personal (or political) agendas, romantic fantasies, conjectures and

egoism that surround those who have shaped the beliefs in it. Witchcraft has often been a phenomenon

at the peripheral of the conscious mind and imagination, just as the witch figure has been at theperipherals of the imagination and fears of society

22. As the perception of witchcraft, as a psychological

phenomenon, has always been close to the imagination, to fear, to excitement and to the unnatural, it is

of no great wonder that it has been so common for most people attempting to define what witchcraft is

to end up producing a picture of what witchcraft, in reality, is not.

If witchcraft is largely not what it has been purported to be, what then, is it? Etymologically, the

Modern English word witchcraft originates from the Old English wiccecrft, a composite of wicce,

female practitioner of magic23

and crft, strength, power, skill. Thus witchcraft can be more

accurately defined as simply meaning one who is skilled or powerful in the practice of magic. The

original cultural understanding of this definition can be augmented by looking to extant cultural

evidence from Anglo-Saxon England. In the laws of Alfred and Ine wiccan24 that is, wizards or

soothsayers - are equated in categorization to gealdorcrftigan - those skilful in incantations andscinlcan - necromancers or sorcerers. Elsewhere in Anglo-Saxon law25, semantic correlations also

seem evident in the terms lyblacs26, mordaeds

27 and wiglere

28. From these words alone we already

have some idea of the kinds of practices that those involved in the arts ofwiccecrftwere purported to

have been involved in; the bringing of death and woe, the raising of or communication with the dead,

divination and the knowledge and use of herbs and drugs. Witchcraft, in its purest meaning, is a very

specific term relating solely to the practice of magic and is, in isolation, free from the false religious

connotations of the vilified sabbats of Medieval and Early Modern Europe and the secret, heroic,

feminine folk cult invented by 19th

and 20th

Century writers.


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Collection of herbs, Museum of Witchcraft, Boscastle.

*

Although Wicca has become an accepted, relatively popular and not entirely false expression of modern

witchcraft, it has only become such by continuing with the ruses set up by the likes of Michelet and

Murray in its adoption of a specific, and pagan, religious function. I would personally argue that

witchcraft, in its original form as a solely magical practice, does not necessarily equate to the expression

of pagan religiosity. To begin with, although pre-Christian societies tolerated the practice of magic while

Christendom, at least nominally, did not, magic is by no means a purely non-Christian phenomenon. Like

farming, hunting, brewing, music, warfare or any other ancient human endeavour you could care to

think of, magic has roots which, despite often employing a certain amount of religious symbolism, areessentially independent of religion. If we briefly examine different cultural manifestations of magic

throughout the ages we can not only see very clear threads of similarity running through them in terms

of practice, but can also detect the ultimately arbitrary nature of the god names being invoked by the

operator29

. This, in my view, suggests that magical practices can be separated from religion, and do not

objectively require the belief in the intervention of a specific god be it Amon-Ra, Ares, Neptune or

Jehovah - to fulfil the purpose of the working30

.

The first example31, from the Egyptian Book of Overthrowing Apep, concerns the application of

the magical figures that were used as part of the daily ritual at the Temple of Amon-Ra. In the instance

of a spell designed to prevent an oncoming storm, a wax representation of Apep was burnt on a fire

made of khesau grass, the remains of which were then mixed with excrement before being placed onto

a second fire. After that, the remains were spat on several times per hour until the storm wasprevented. A variation of this ritual represented the overthrowing of ones enemies by carving their

names into the effigy which would be bound with black rope, burnt, spat upon, trampled by the left

foot, stabbed with a spear or sword, mixed with urine and then pressed into yet another fire.

Moving on to examples from Ancient Greece32, we can again see that wax figures were

prominent in magical operations. A Greek spell to obtain the love of a woman sees the magician

construct two waxen figures; one in the form of Ares, and the other in the form of a woman. The female

figure is placed into a kneeling posture with her hands tied behind her, while the male figure stands over


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her with his sword at her throat. On the limbs of the female figure a large number of the names of

demons are to be written and when this has been done, the lover must take thirteen bronze needles

and stick them in her limbs while saying "I pierce.that she may think of me." The lover must next

write certain words of power on a leaden plate, which must be tied to the wax figures with a string

containing three hundred and sixty-five knots, before both figure and plate are buried in the grave of

someone who has died young or who has been slain by violence. He must then recite a long incantation

to the infernal gods, and if all these things are done in a proper manner the lover will obtain the

woman's affections. Theocritus also reveals to us some evidence of the magical use of wax figures in

Pharmakeutria33 where Simaetha, spinning her wheel and addressing the Lynx, says "even as I melt this

wax, with the god to aid, so speedily may he by love be molten!" She also keeps a fringe from her lover's

cloak which she shreds and throws into the fire.

The Roman practice of inscribing curses upon tabellae defixionum34 provides the third example

of the ways that differing cultural expressions act as a front for what are essentially identical practices35.

As far as cursing was concerned, the Romans considered it effective to write the victim's name upon a

thin sheet of lead covered with magical formulas or symbols before burying it in or near a fresh tomb, a

place of execution or a battlefield to give the lingering spirits of the dead power over the victim. A victim

of theft might seek the god's vengeance or double the likelihood of divine help by transferring

ownership of his stolen property to the god who would then want to retrieve the item for his or her self.In the British Isles, the Roman use of the tablet was combined with the traditional beliefs in the power

of springs to bring about harm to enemies36

. This type of operation was carried out by throwing pieces

of rolled or folded lead or pewter, upon which would be inscribed the victims plea to favoured gods for

justice, into a spring. Typically the aggrieved would make a statement such as:

Lord Neptune, I give you the man who has stolen the solidus and six argentioli of Muconius. So I give the

names who took them away, whether male or female, whether boy or girl. So I give you, Niskus, and to

Neptune the life, health, blood of him who has been privy to that taking-away. The mind which stole this

and which has been privy to it, may you take it away. The thief who stole this, may you consume his blood

and take it away, Lord Neptune37

J. A. MacCulloch38 describes a relatively modern account of how a similar practice remained in use in19th Century Wales.

An excellent instance of a cursing-well is that of Fynnon Elian in Denbigh, which must once have had a

guardian priestess, for in 1815 an old woman who had charge of it presided at the ceremony. She wrote

the name of the victim in a book, receiving a gift at the same time. A pin was dropped into the well in the

name of the victim, and through it and through knowledge of his name, the spirit of the well acted upon

him to his hurt.

The above examples, which all feature similar methods relating to the practice of sympathetic magic,

show that despite the different gods and cultural surroundings evident in them, the forms and

mechanics behind them remained very similar. In Christendom, where magic was taboo, the religious

aspects of magic are far more pervasive, as the religious devotion and symbolism evident in its

ceremonial magicians reveal:

O Saint Michael bring thine aid unto all mine Operations, for who is like unto the Lord of Virtues; and

assuredly there is none else but my Lord God, the only Great and terrible over all who be in His Army, for

hereunto by vow are they vowed unto my Lord God Jesus, Who possesseth and defendeth me by His

Grace. Also may the Lord God Jesus having imposed upon me His Law, be ever mine in every Day and

moment of my life as my Father and God, and thus truly my beloved Emmanuel.39


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The cunning folk, who were the practical forebears, in many respects, to the modern pagan witch

tradition, also displayed a strong connection to the Christianity of Ceremonial Magic in their practices, as

recalled here in the papers of the famed Harries family of Cwrt y Cadno.

After this is done, let him compose an earnest prayer unto the said Genius, which he must repeat thrice

every morning for seven days before the invocation When the day is come wherein the magician would

Invocate his prayer to Genius he must enter into a private closet, having a little table and silk carpet, and

two waxen candles lighted; as also a crystal stone shaped triangularly about the quantity of an apple,

which stone must be fixed upon a frame in the centre of the table; and then proceeding with great

devotion to Invocation, he must thrice repeat the former prayer concluding the same with Pater Noster,

etc., and a Missale de Spiritu Sancto. Then he must begin to consecrate the candles, carpet, table and

crystal, sprinkling the same with his own blood, and saying: I do by the power of the holy names Agalon,

Eloi, Eloi, Sabbathon, Anepturaton, Jah, Agian, Jah, Jehovah, Immanuel, Archon, Archonton, Sadai, Sadai,

Jehovaschap, etc. sanctifie and consecrate these holy utensils to the performance of this holy work, in the

name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.40

It would appear then, that the inclusion of religious symbolism is a common but entirely interchangeable

factor in the practice of magic. Where modern witchcraft falters however, is in its conclusion thatwitchcraft is connected to a specific, self contained religion. In reality, those who have historically

practiced the art of witchcraft have practiced the extant religions of their time. When contextualised in

this manner, it seems plausible that this is still the case with todays neo-pagan witches, who, being

involved in the practice of an eclectic mix of various postmodern, post-Christian ideas, are practicing a

religion that summarises the dominant culture of the age quite succinctly.

Cursing Doll, Museum of Witchcraft, Boscastle.

*

The level of falsehood, fantasy and opinionated conjecture that the heredity of witchcraft has been

subjected to by those with an agenda of interest in it over the centuries has made the distinction


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between mythology and reality very blurred indeed. Despite this, we can, and probably should, draw

some lines of distinction between what witchcraft actually is and probably is not. In the social line of

thinking presented by Robin Briggs, accusations of witchcraft were equated with long running

neighbourly disputes in times of hardship and pressure. Although he does not equate witchcraft with

the art of being a bad neighbour, his portrayal of the reality of the figure of the witch in Early Modern

Europe is that of a particularly obnoxious, malicious and quite likely eccentric and lonely person of poor

means, who is probably female, advanced in years and in close, regular proximity to those she alienates

and is in turn alienated by. She may also make threats to get her own way, including ones that could

involve the casting of spells. A contemporary equivalent of this sociological model of the witch can be

found in the example of an elderly lady by the name of Dorothy Evans from Abergavenny,

Monmouthshire, who appeared in numerous news articles in 2007 for the anti-social behaviour she

subjected her long-suffering neighbours to. Her activities included calling one of the neighbours a

prostitute, hitting her with her stick, attempting to run her off the road on several occasions and telling

the 13 year old daughter of the family that she was a witch and would cast a spell on her family and kill

her pet dog41.

Dorothy Evans

In lines which are more fitting to the generally accepted view of the witch however, the cunningfolk who supplemented their living dispensing spells, charms and potions by means of trickery and

genuine need between the 16th

and mid 20th

centuries provide what is the closest historical example of

witchcraft. Ironically, though probably out of great fear, the cunning folk refuted the term witch as

that which belonged to the servants of the Devil, and provided services flushing out suspected witches

and negating the perceived effects of the spells they were purported to have cast.

The final example of what a witch can be perceived to actually be lies in the definition that I

have highlighted from the strict etymological semantics of the word. This is the position that states a

witch is one who is simply skilled in the practice of magic. This is a deliberately broad and unspecific

categorisation which naturally covers the practitioners of Wicca and other neo-pagan groups who have

developed sentimental attachments to the terms witch and witchcraft, merely because they

themselves are practitioners of magic.When it comes to defining what witches are not and were not, it would appear to be a sensible

and objective concluding statement to reiterate that they were not the elite priestesses of the ancient

feminist goddess cults that Michelet, Murray and those who followed their lines of thought purported

them to be. Neither were they the imaginary groups of organised Satanists who flew to sabbats at night

on their broomsticks as the religious extremists, dubious politicians and superstitious peasants of the

15th

to 17th Centuries purported them to be. Nor do they purely consist of those who practice the

religions that followed the example of Gerald Gardner in the modern era, though, as I have stated


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above, there are reasons why such practitioners claims to be witches, in the semantic sense at least, are

valid.

The creative and fantastic arguments that have been presented as explanations on the origins of

witchcraft in the past two centuries have created many obstacles to the truth about that particular

cultural phenomenon. In the past thirty years however, many gains have been made in the uncovering

of more accurate depictions of what witchcraft actually was and is. In terms of new religio-magical

traditions such as Wicca, as well as other forms of reconstructionist paganism, the mistakes made in

believing the pseudo-historical obstacles that cropped up between Lamothe-Langon and Gardner are

ones which need to be capitulated upon and replaced by a greater need to pay attention to as much

empirical, historical, archaeological, sociological and folkloric evidence as possible. Tradition needs the

fuel of serious thought and discovery to survive and to be taken seriously. The creation of subjective,

neo-mythologies will ensure that any attempts to revive the ancient traditions of Europe will only ever

remain on the margins of society, where they shall become twisted out of all remaining proportion by

those who are more concerned with furthering their own positions and interests than preserving and

promoting the genuine remnants of our deep and ancient cultural roots.

In Memorandum Lindisfarnae

1Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live

2In Witches and Neighbours: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft. Blackwell Publishing, 1996.

3Though not exclusively; the estimates of modern historians quoted by Briggs (Witches and Neighbours, p. 6)

suggest that about 20-25% of the 40-60,000 people believed to have been executed for witchcraft in the period in

question were male.4

Such as failed crops, the illness or sudden death of a family member, or the loss and illness of cattle or horses.5

On the punishment for Witchcraft, Athelstan (924-939) proclaimed and we have ordained respecting witch-

crafts, and lyblacs, and mordaeds: if any one should be thereby killed, and he could not deny it, that he be liable

in his life. But if he will deny it, and at threefold ordeal shall be guilty; that he be 120 days in prison: and after that

let kindred take him out, and give to the king 120 shillings, and pay the wer to his kindred, and enter into borh for

him, that he evermore desist from the like.6

Phillip the Fairs dismantling of the Knights Templar in the early 14th

century being the best known example.7

Namely France (particularly Lorraine), Switzerland, central and southern Germany, Bavaria, the Basque region of

northeast Spain, Denmark, Eastern England, Hungary, Austria, Sweden, southern Scotland, Iceland and the Low

Countries.8

This consisted of binding the arms behind the back and then hanging the suspect from the chamber ceiling by the

arms, placing the weight of the body which was sometimes augmented by the attachments of weights to the feet

upon the dislocated shoulders. For extra effect, the suspect could also be winched up and dropped from the

attachment that they hung from, adding further wrenching and agony to their limbs.9

As they actually practiced magic, including, like Wicca, magic with Ceremonial elements.10

In Woman, Church and State, 1893. She appears to have plucked this number out of thin air.11

Europes Inner Demons: the Demonisation of Christians in Medieval Christendom. Pimlico, 1975.12

Ibid, 155-156.13

From http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/sor/index.htm, accessed 30/03/2008.14

La Sorciere, 326.15

Ibid, 104.16

In the section Principle Authorities in Part Two of La Sorciere, Lamothe-Langons Inquisition de France is cited.17

In Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford, 1999. 144-149.18

Aradia, 102-619

Triumph of the Moon, 282.20

Despite allegedly being sworn to secrecy


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21

There is a frequent correlation between writers on the subject of Witchcraft and Wicca, from the 19th

Century to

the present, and the authorship of fictional works. Clearly creative writing is a required skill when one has a

sensational claim to make about the subject.22

They were often the scapegoats for the kinds of activity that produced the greatest amounts of fear and

insecurity in a society, such as the destroying of loved ones, children, crops, and livestock with curses. This is

reflected today to a certain extent in the accusations of ritual child abuse made against supposed devilworshippers.23

Wicca being the term for a male practitioner24

Which may correlate with the P.Gmc. *wikkjaz necromancer25

The Laws of Athelstan26

Sorcery or witchcraft dependant on the use of potions, herbs, drugs and poison.27

A deed which causes destruction of a) the body and/or b), the soul. A deadly sin. An evil deed. Definitions from

the Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon dictionary.28

Diviner. Specified in The Laws of Alfred, Guthrum, and Edward the Elder29

Despite the arbitrary nature of the names, the cultural matrix that surrounds a human being is, in such systems,

deeply and irreversibly connected with the psyche and identity and thus, whether known to the individual or not,

plays a large role in the effectiveness of their magical work.30

Though it may be the case that belief in the god or gods being invoked plays an important psychological role in

the operation.31

Taken from Chapter 3 of Wallis-Budge, E. A., Egyptian Magic. 190132

Ibid33

Witchcraft34

Curse Tablets35

See http://curses.csad.ox.ac.uk/ Curse Tablets of Roman Britain for further archaeological examples.36

The Water Cults of the Celts are well documented in the British Isles and may have influenced the magical

practices of their Roman occupiers to a certain extent. See Pagan Celtic Britain: Studies in Iconography and

Tradition by Ross, Anne. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967.37

http://www.csad.ox.ac.uk/rib/ribiv/jp4.htm accessed 06/06/2008.38

In Religion of the Ancient Celts, 1911.39

From The Grimoire of Armadel, tr. MacGregor Mathers.40

Extract from Davies, Carredig J., Ghost-Raising in Wales, 328-9, cited in Allen, Richard C.,Wizards or Charlatans -Doctors or Herbalists?: An Appraisal of the "Cunning Men" of Cwrt Y Cadno, Carmarthenshire. North American

Journal of Welsh Studies, Vol. 1, 2 (Summer 2001).41

BBC News article Neighbour from hell' OAP jailed. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/6560537.stm

accessed 30/03/2008.

the mythology of witchcraft

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