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CHAPTER 1

What Is Witchcraft?

The word Witchcraft comes from the Old Anglo-Saxon word wiccecraeft, meaning "the craft of the wise." For many people today, the word carries a wide variety of connotations, but originally it was quite specific.

For thousands of years before Christianity, there were many variations of Pagan worship. In the big cities of Greek and Roman times, the forms of religion were well organized, with dedicated temples and an established priesthood. But out in the country areas, the common people did not have this luxury. They worshiped the same deities, but their temples were the woods, the mountains, and the open fields. They were close to nature and, by virtue of this closeness, felt close to their gods. Every man and woman was his or her own priest, able to commune with divinity on the same level as the official priesthood in the towns and the cities. Although the principal deities worshiped were the same in most areas, the names that were used frequently varied in different areas of Europe and Asia, with local titles and appellations prevailing.

The Beginnings of Religio-magic

By looking at the development of religio-magic from earliest times, we can fully understand the development of this relationship of men and women to the gods. Twenty-five thousand years ago, in upper Paleolithic times, humankind lived in awe of nature. Life was ruled largely by such factors as weather and successful hunting. Before the development of agriculture, it was necessary to kill and eat animals in order to survive. The australopithecines of East and South Africa, the first upright primates, evolved from primate vegetarians to become predatory meat-eating hunters. The cave art of the period shows magical images designed to bring about successful hunting.

As E. Adamson Hoebel points out in Anthropology: the Study of Man, "Upper Paleolithic art had the gross purposes of filling men's stomachs and of maintaining the population by serving as a magical aid in hunting and procreation." This early art is an important clue to those times. As Hoebel says, most of it was almost certainly for magical purposes. This is evident from the fact that the artworks were invariably painted in nearly inaccessible places, in niches in caverns deep in the bowels of the earth — places where they were obviously not just decoration but part of some ancient mysteries.

In that early time, humankind had a great fear of and reverence for nature: the thunder and lightning of a storm, the howling winds, the roaring waters of a raging river. Gods were seen dwelling within all of these things.

Humans, unlike other anthropoids, are omnivorous by nature. Early humans believed that the gods ruled the hunt and its success or failure. Therefore, to ensure its success, magical rituals were performed. These were addressed to the God of the Hunt in the form of theater — acting out the hunt with a successful conclusion. Many times one of the tribe would play two parts — that of the god and that of director of the actor-hunters. The "hunters" would suggest to the god what they would like him to do for them.

The God of the Hunt was believed to be horned or antlered (as were most of the beasts hunted). Therefore, the person officiating — in effect, the first priest — would dress in the skin of the animal to be hunted and wear a mask and its horns or antlers. There are cave paintings of such figures, the most famous of which is known as The Sorcerer and found in the Caverne des Trois Frères, in Ariége, France. There is another at Fourneau du Diable, Dordogne, France. In relatively recent times, Mandari hunters of eastern Sudan, Australian aboriginal hunters, and Native American hunters such as the Mandans have adopted the same techniques that were used in those ancient times.

Along with the God of the Hunt was a female deity who was especially important. This was the Goddess of Fertility. Primitive art includes paintings and carvings of animals copulating (at Le Tuc d'Audoubert, for example), together with figurines — dubbed Venus figurines — of pregnant human females. The copulating animals are obviously magical figures designed to promote growth and expansion of the herds to be hunted. Figures of human females were intended to magically ensure the tribes' increase in times of high mortality. The Fertility Goddess was later to become especially important, as fertility of the fields, along with its native wildlife, remained a constant concern.

Domestication of both animals and plants was a gradual process, eventually leading to the storage of food for winter use. This, in turn, led to a virtual elimination of dependence on successful hunting. The God of the Hunt dropped into the background, becoming more generalized as a god of nature, while the Goddess remained vital as a deity of fertility.

As humankind spread across Africa, Europe, and Asia, these concepts of the deities also spread. The many gods and goddesses of wind, water, fire, and so forth, were always led by the two major figures — those of fertility and of hunting/nature.

Great civilizations, such as Greece and Rome, developed sophisticated hierarchies of gods and goddesses, but the country folk always had far simpler versions of the complicated rituals developed by the powerful priesthood in the cities and towns. In Western Europe, after the passing of the Roman Empire, the Celts held sway. Much of what we know as Witchcraft today comes from that Celtic way of life. As the editors of The Celts put it (The Emergence of Man series), "On the Continent, Celtic culture — with its rigidly structured social organization, its religion administered by the Druids, its eloquent tradition of heroic legends passed down orally from generation to generation and its fantastic art — merged with Roman customs and traditions, sometimes losing its Celtic identity altogether. In England, Celtic culture gave way to various aggressors: Romans, Anglos, Saxons, Vikings, Normans." Indeed, these invasions brought great variety to British religious thought and practice. But the basic Celtic teachings remained. In the outlying villages and farms, religious beliefs were slow to change. The farmer and his wife and family still worshiped the Goddess of Fertility alongside the gods of nature and death, and what came after.

Survival of the Old Religion

Many of the old rites lived on, both in practice and in legend. In early spring, it was accepted magical practice for a farmer and his wife to lie in the first furrow of a field and have intercourse to ensure that field's fertility and productivity. When the crops first began to appear, it was common for all to take up pitchforks, poles, and broomsticks and to dance around the fields, riding the poles like hobbyhorses. As they danced around the fields, the people would leap high in the air to show the crops how high to grow. It was simple imitative, or sympathetic, magic. At harvest-time, of course, it was time to thank the gods for all that had been produced. Many Pagan rituals and customs such as these are still found across Europe and elsewhere.

In the villages were invariably found one or two "wise ones," those who had the wisdom of herbs and of magic. As the local doctors, they tended the sick with herbal concoctions, decoctions, infusions, and macerations. They also knew the spells and charms passed on from generation to generation. These "doctors" were known by the old Anglo-Saxon name of wicce (feminine) or wicca (masculine). (In fact, the Saxon kings of England always had a Council of Wise Ones known as the Witan.)

When it came to the worship of the old gods and the forms of the rituals, the wise ones conducted the rites. They became the priests and priestesses of the countryside, leading groups from the villages or from neighboring farms in the major celebrations of the seasons. Later on, any followers of this Old Religion became known as Wiccans, or Witches.

These wise ones, then, were the original Witches. Although the late Dr. Margaret Murray, in her books The Witch-Cult in Western Europe and God of the Witches, suggested that there was an unbroken line of Witchcraft from the early cave-dwelling days through to the Middle Ages, this is not so. There was a progressive line of religio-magic, yes, but this does not indicate that the actual form of the Witchcraft rites and customs of more recent times were the same as those performed by peoples of the upper Paleolithic age.

The Rivalry of the New Religion

The rise of a new religion — Christianity — came to threaten and almost destroy the belief in, and worship of, the gods of nature. Unlike the "Old Religion" (as we might term Witchcraft), the "New Religion" was human-made and full of contradictions. Yet it became established and, for many hundreds of years, existed alongside witchcraft. Initially Christianity was content to gain converts gradually, but, as we shall see, in time it became more impatient.

In Great Britain, when a king of a particular region was converted to the New Religion, it was declared by the church that all his subjects were also similarly affected, even though the majority of them were still worshiping the old gods.

Between 597 and 604 C.E. (Common Era), during Augustine's mission to Britain, London remained Pagan but King Aethelbert of Kent was converted. After his death, Kent reverted to Paganism. In 604 C.E., similar events occurred with the king of the East Saxons — the king was converted, but upon his death his successor reverted to Paganism. The years 627 and 628 C.E. saw the conversions of the kings of Northumbria and East Anglia, respectively. The king of Wessex was converted in 635 C.E., and in 653 C.E. the king of Mercia. But by 654 C.E., it was necessary to reconvert the king of the East Saxons. So there was not a regular, smooth transition from the Old Religion to the New. Far from it; what had been part of everyone's lifestyle for generations would not easily be swept aside.

In an effort to appeal to more pagans, the New Religion adopted many of the ancient conventions. The Christian Trinity is a good example. This was based on the ancient Egyptian triad of Osiris, Isis, and Horus. The immaculate conception and the resurrection were copies of old Pagan beliefs found in many parts of the ancient world. Even the name Jesus was taken from the Celts' Esus, a nature god. The Pagan festival of Yule was adopted as Christmas (even to the inclusion of the phallic tree). Easter was based on the goddess Eostre's springtime festival. The festival of contact with the spirits of the dead, known as Samhain, became the Christian's All Souls' Day. And for many centuries there were priests who served both the Pagan and the Christian populations.

One giant step forward for the New Religion came when Pope Gregory (590–604 C.E.) issued instructions to his bishops in Britain that they were to take all pagan temples and consecrate them to the New Religion, installing new altars and rededicating the temple On the open sites of regular pagan gatherings, new churches were to be built.

"In this way," the pope said, "I hope the people (seeing their temples are not destroyed) will leave their idolatry and yet continue to frequent the places as formerly." He desperately hoped to fool, or even coerce, the people into attending Christian churches.

For a long time, Gregory's plans seemed to bear fruit, and more and more of the population became (at least nominally) Christian. But finally, the saturation point appeared to have been reached. By this time, the church fathers had enjoyed their taste of power and were determined that Christianity should be the only religion; all others were to be destroyed. This brought about the start of the persecutions, when anything non-Christian was automatically labeled anti-Christian and therefore undesirable.

The Old Religion Slandered

The Old Religion was lumped together with Satanism (which itself was an offshoot of Christianity, for the older religions had no concept of an all-evil entity such as the Christian devil). This was where the word Witchcraft began to take on a strongly negative meaning when used by people other than the Wiccans themselves.

The wise ones, for example, had a knowledge of poisons, among other things. This was essential in order for them to administer to those who accidentally poisoned themselves by eating the wrong plants. Persecutors turned this knowledge against them, saying that they used the knowledge to poison others! In fact, King James I's later translation of the Bible took this line of reasoning. The original words of the Bible said, "Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live." James' translators — whether by ignorance or design — confused the Latin words veneficor and maleficor and chose to say, "Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live," by virtue of her knowledge of poisons.

It didn't take long for the trickle of venom generated by the Christian Church to swell into a raging torrent. In 1235, Pope Gregory IX instructed the archbishop of Sens: "Thou shouldst be instant and zealous in this matter of establishing an Inquisition ... to fight boldly the battles of the Lord." Thirteen years later, Alexander IV issued a papal bull against Witchcraft, with a second one two years later. By the time Pope Innocent VIII issued his bull, in 1484, printing had been invented; with it came wide distribution of such utterances in writing. The Inquisition came into its own with the reappearance of this bull two years later, as a foreword to a diabolical book written by two German monks, Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger. These men were designated by the pope "Inquisitors of these heretical depravities."

The "heretical depravities" to which the pope referred were the generations-old Pagan practices of promoting fertility of human, beast, and crop, and of worshiping the old gods. Kramer and Sprenger's book was titled Malleus Maleficarum — the "hammer of the Witches." Perhaps typical for two such monks, their writings and attacks focused on fertility and other sexual aspects of the Old Religion. Everything positive that Wiccans did was reversed and shown as negative. Rather than promoting fertility, Wiccans were accused of impeding it. They were said to "hinder men from generating and women from conceiving," to bring about sterility in all things, and to have sexual intercourse with demons. This nefarious volume would be used by trial judges for the next two hundred years, bringing about the torture and destruction of millions of men, women, and children on charges of "Witchcraft." Not until the very end of the nineteenth century was it discovered that the two German monks had forged a letter of support from the theological faculty of the University of Cologne, the official censor of books at that time. This, apparently, was done in order to give themselves more prestige.

The persecutions turned out to be a powerful tool for the unscrupulous. By making a charge of Witchcraft — or even suggesting someone might be a Witch — it was possible to get rid of an enemy, acquire land that was otherwise unavailable, or generate personal power. Persecution became very much a political tool. When someone was accused of Witchcraft, his or her land and goods became forfeit to the state or church. This was a great temptation for many, including Christian dignitaries.

In Scotland and throughout most of Continental Europe, being burned alive at the stake was the penalty for those found guilty of Witchcraft — and most people accused were so pronounced. In England and in New England, the penalty was hanging. The case of the so-called Witches of Salem village, in New England in 1692, was typical of what happened throughout much of Europe. Most of the accused were previously devout Christians, indicted simply by hysterical children, confused neighbors, or overzealous church officials.

Once accused, the victim had no defense. If the accused had a perfect alibi, then "spectral evidence" was admitted, which said that it was possible for a Witch to be in two places at the same time. Eventually, twenty people were put to death in this little New England village. Still, this was a very small number compared to Europe, where two or three hundred people might be executed on a single occasion, simply at the nod of a bishop. In France, for example, the bishop of Treves had a whole village put to death because of an especially harsh winter, which he determined had been caused by Witches. Not knowing who the Witches were, he executed everyone. In Germany, on February 16, 1629, Prince-Bishop Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg executed 157 people.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Wicca for Life"
by .
Copyright © 2001 Raymond Buckland.
Excerpted by permission of KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP..
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