Misconceptions About Witches

For starters...we aren't what TV witches are. Afraid not. No mystical powers. No flying through the air. No fire on the tips of our fingers. We're just ordinary people. Anyone can make magick!

"Magick" is written with the "k" so as to discern the real thing from Hollywood wizards. The term was actually used as early as the 17th century to describe the Neo-Platonist alchemists, healers and mediums.

Firstly, we DO NOT worship the devil! There are a few theories about the origin of the devil myth. The most common is that it was created as anti-Pagan propoganda. It had never existed in written literature prior to the New Testament. The association appears to have sprung up in force during the 17th century as the Western world saw a change in philosophies. Neo-Platonists were one of the three major contestants in this change. The other two were Aristotelianism, the exsisting philosophy, and Mechanism, which said that the world was a machine and could be reduced to a series of laws. (This one is still alive and well, especially in the realm of science) Many Neo-Platonists were practisers of magic. There were two streams of this: Natural Magic, which involved mainly alchemy and healing; and Demonic Magic, which involved communicating with spirits (much as modern Witches do in many spells). The Mechanists, in order to cast shadow over their competition, started adopting many of their ideas while spreading doubt about the Demonic-Magicians, saying that their methods were against god. This, among other things, led to the witch burnings. The devil-worshipping myth must have had many small causes that eventually led to such a belief. Goats or horned creatures, for example, represent the god in paganism. In Christianity, however, these creatures are seen a over-sexed and perverse creatures. To find people worshipping them must have been a great shock.

The Craft is a pre-Christian religion which has been around much longer than the church or its concept of Satan, who was never worshipped as a deity of the Old Religion. The devil is strictly a part of the Christian belief system, not this Nature-loving earth religion. In fact, only about 3 major relgions in the world involve the existence of a hell.

The religion of Witchcraft dates back about 25,000 years, to the Paleolithic Age, where the God of Hunting and the Goddess of Fertility first appeared. Out of respect for the overwhelming power of Nature grew a belief in beings, gods, who controlled the winds, the seas, the earth and the fires.

Pagan gods and rituals were very strong in communities, especially farming ones. Christian leaders, although able to superficially convert these people, were not able to destroy their traditions. It is interesting to note that many pagan traditions exist even now. Christmas (Yule) signified the rebirth of the sun, among other things, and present giving and hanging holly and mistletoe were ways of celebrating it; May-Day was a pagan fertility festival. (What do you think the may-pole is??); and Easter was named after a fertility, bunny-shapeshifting goddess, Oestra.

In the year 1233, Pope Gregory IX instituted the Roman Catholic tribunal known as the Inquisition in an attempt to suppress heresy. In 1320, the church (at the request of Pope John XXII) officially declared Witchcraft and the Old Religion of the Pagans as a heretical movement and a "hostile threat" to Christianity. Witches had now become heretics and the persecution against all Pagans spread like wildfire throughout Europe. (It is interesting to note that before a person can be considered a heretic, he or she must first be a Christian, and Pagans have never been Christians. They have always been Pagans.)

Witches... along with countless numbers of "innocent" men, women, and children who were not Witches were persecuted, brutally tortured, often sexually molested or raped, and then executed by sadistic, bloodthirsty authorities who taught that their God was a god of love and compassion. Once denounced, a suspected Witch was arrested and then hideously tortured into a confession. She was not told what she had been accused of, but was expected to reveal all her evil deeds. She was searched for witches marks, a third nipple that could suckle a familiar. It could take the form of a mole, a scar or mark that when squeezed secreted a liquid, or even an insensitive patch. Suspects were subjected to thumbscrews, the rack, boots which broke the bones of the legs; they were deprived of sleep, starved and beaten. At times, hundreds of suspected Witches were killed in a day. The jail was pretty terrible, but prisoners could pay the jailers to let them out for a day to see family. There were cases where families gave jailers fortunes to overlook an "escape". However, that said, once a "witch" confessed his or her crimes, named accomplices and swore never to transgress again, he or she might be released or put under house arrest. I can't find a good source on this, but I believe the majority were not killed, depending on the area. Hundreds of thousands more people would have been tortured and bullied without conviction.

The destruction of Witches was also embraced by the medical world. They resented the fact that women were out there healing without licenses. (The fact that they were women was enough.) While this makes up for only a relatively small proportion of the accused it shows the extent to which the craze was embraced.

Witchcraft in England was made an illegal offense in the year 1541, and in 1604 a law decreeing capital punishment for Witches was adopted. Forty years later, the thirteen colonies in American also made death the penalty for the "crime" of Witchcraft. By the late seventeenth century, the followers who remained loyal to the Old Religion were in hiding and Witchcraft had turned into a secret underground religion after thousands and thousands of people had been put to death in Europe in the name of Christianity.

The study of the witchcraze of Europe has only been studied fairly recently. Records are sketchy and embellished at best, but they can offer great insight into the minds of ordinary people. However, this also means that there is yet no accurate estimate of the number of deaths. The current estimate is around 1/4 million, which is perhaps a low figure. There are no documents for rural areas and many did not survive even in urban courts. More often than not estimates have been wildly exaggerated, from 1 million in central Europe, to 9 million as quoted by Gerald Gardner. (It is guessed that he was trying to impress is listeners and since his public life began not long after the haulocaust, he was probably trying to top it. There is no evidence for such a figure.)

I also don't believe that many at all of those accused during witchcraze were witches of any sort. High magic, such as alchemy and astrology, were widely accepted court practices, so practitioners of these certainly were not under threat. Many of those accused may have been healers or wise women, but again I doubt these made up any kind of majority. Instead the victims were ordinary, usually poor people, who often lived on the outskirts of society or were slightly odd. While the magickal world is yet to catch up, historians have very much refuted the claims of Margaret Murray, who believed that the accused were member of a Dianic cult who practiced underground, peaceful magic. There is no evidence of such a cult and even if there was it most definitely did not make up any kind of majority of those accused.

Unfortunately, when the persecutions ended in the 18th century, the stereotype of Witches as devil worshippers remained for those who were uninformed of the true nature of the Craft.

I'm still working on all this. I eventually plan to write a lot more on these subjects.

from "One Leaf Shaking: Collected Later Poems 1977-1990", p245.
Copyright 1996 Robin Skelton
Beach Holme Publishers Victoria BC Canada