Anthesteria, Lummi Island, WA. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
The Modern Age of Witchcraft
Most of what we know as witchcraft today bears only a nodding resemblance to the practices of the past. In the Western world, it is usually conflated with modern Neo-Paganism. Or, conversely, any practice that includes a form of witchcraft tends to be lumped under the umbrella of Neo-Paganism whether or not it actually qualifies. It is important to note that not all Neo-Pagans practice witchcraft, and not all Western practitioners of magick and witchcraft are Neo-Pagans. The popularity of the Neo-Pagan movement’s most visible faction, Wicca, is part of the reason for this combination. Gerald Gardener, the founder of Wicca, had his roots in Western Esotercism and a keen interest in reviving Margaret Murray’s supposed “witch-cult”. He claimed to have based the Wiccan Laws on ancient teachings, however their anachronistic nature and lack of any actual proof of their existence before 1957 are evidence to the contrary. Gardener is a very contentious figure for many modern Neo-Pagans, a hero to some, a blight to others. Some choose to ignore his near-pathological need to fabricate facts and history to suit his needs. He claimed many titles, honors, and degrees that later were discovered to be at best half-truths. Despite Wicca’s image as a feminist belief system, the reality is that Gardner structured much to the religion around his own misogynistic sexual gratification, even going so far as to write into the laws that the High Priest had the right to remove the High Priestess from her position once she reached a certain age so that he could instill a younger, more attractive High Priestess in her place. This would make the sexual ritual he called the “Great Rite” more palatable to the High Priest. I do not mention these things in an attempt to invalidate Wicca and its history. Rather, I think that it is important that its practitioners acknowledge the truth and realities of its history and work to make it live up to the ideals they seek in it, rather than cling to a static past built on misinformation and propaganda.
Modern witchcraft is syncretic and flexible. This creates a wonderful environment for exploration and growth, but it also raises the beastly specter of cultural appropriation. This can be a tricky area for modern practitioners. How do you explore a tradition that has been so divided from its roots except to borrow from the outside cultures that surround you? This leads to confusion about what is an actual cross-cultural trait of magick and what has been adopted and adapted from another tradition. I have seen many American Neo-Pagans who believe that sage “smudging” is part of their historical practice. It isn’t. In fact it is a practice that has been lifted in an erroneous and inappropriate way from Native American cultures. Likewise, concepts like the vision quest, transcendental meditation, and chakras, are often borrowed, discussed, and written about as if they are part of the traditions of Northern Europeans. While there may have been similar beliefs in some cases, generally these are practices from contemporary cultures that give the modern witch a sense of depth and validity to their practice. Practicing magick without guidance can be dangerous, and when your traditions have been orphaned for centuries you seek out someone to foster you. Our culture still has little patience with alternative religions and a belief in the supernatural, and the modern media does not help with its 2-dimensional portrayals of witchcraft either for horror or comedy.
This is where the modern depiction of the witch takes an interesting turn. The popularity of the Harry Potter series has given an entire generation a perspective on the practice of magick, and the subject of witchcraft is discussed in film, books, and on television with a refreshingly broad range of representations. From positive characters like Willow the Wicca on Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Angelina Jolie’s more nuanced portrayal of the complex witch Maleficent, witches are no longer only relegated to the role of malevolent hag. The wide spread acceptance of astrology, tarot, and magickal practices is not something unique to our age, but it has been a long time since these things were as openly embraced as they are now. The flip side of this is that witches are still viewed with fear and mistrust. Time and time again we are treated to images of the power-hungry “warlok”, the witch as villain, seductress, or murderess. A quick YouTube search reveals many videos of supposed witch sightings of a creepy and paranormal nature. Of course, most of these sightings are not only clearly not witches, they most likely are either faked or completely misconstrued phenomenon. But the belief that malevolent forces are still manipulated by men and women with uncanny abilities and nefarious associations persists.
The practice of witchcraft has come a long way in the Western world, but it still has a long way to go before it comes full circle and is reintegrated into our society once again. In other parts of the world, it is still reviled and met with paranoid hostility. In Africa, women, children, and the elderly can still fall prey to violent witch hunts and be executed in the most brutal and inhuman ways. The financial and social instability of such places makes scapegoating as appealing a way of handling the frightening uncertainty of life as it was in post-plague Europe. Even in our own country we have seen the hysterical “Satanic Panic” of the 80s, and our own continent is far from free of prejudice and suspicion against magick and its practitioners. And still, its adherents march on like their predecessors before them. Magick is more than a tradition or a practice, it is a human instinct found in many different cultures and practiced in many different ways. In this ISP, we have seen its persistence in the face of judgment and adversity over the entire course of human history. Throughout centuries of inquisitions, persecutions, and even the dismissal of so-called scientific reason, magick is still in our world view. It is an innate part of our psyche, a gut reaction to the strange and wonderful world we inhabit, and an inseparable part of the human experience.
References
Carroll, P. J. (1987). Liber null & psychonaut. York Beach, Me.: S. Weiser.
Cavendish, R., Burland, C. A., Innes, B., & Eliade, M. (1995). Man, myth & magic: The illustrated encyclopedia of mythology, religion, and the unknown. New York: M. Cavendish.
Cornish, H. (2009). Spelling out history: Transforming witchcraft past and present.Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies Pome, 11(1). doi:10.1558/pome.v11i1.14
Davy, B. J. (2007). Introduction to pagan studies. Lanham: AltaMira Press.
Oldridge, D. (2002). The witchcraft reader. London: Routledge.
Russell, J. B. (1980). A history of witchcraft, sorcerers, heretics, and pagans. London: Thames and Hudson.
Norse Seiðr Doll Project. Project and Photo by Scarlett Messenger
NOTE: This journal entry was written as a companion piece to a presentation I gave in my Cross-Cultural Shamanism class. Since the subjects overlapped, I thought it would be an appropriate place to discuss at least one aspect of magick in Medieval Europe. This presentation also included a slide show and I created a doll with a costume based on the description of Þórbjörgr Lítilvölva. The rather abrupt nature of the writing is due to it being designed as notes for an oral presentation.
Norse Seiðr
Seiðr (pronounced SAY-thur, or SAYTH) is the name for the system of oracle practiced by the Norse and Germanic tribes of Northern Europe from the Caspian Sea to North America in the Pre-Christian era. It was believed to be shamanic in nature. The practitioners of Seiðr were called Völva, and were almost exclusively female, as male participation in Seiðr was seen as taboo and “unmanly”. The position of the völva was held in high esteem by their communities, and they were compensated well for their services. They have historically been depicted as traveling oracles or soothsayers, which was one of the most critical services offered in Norse society. The Norse considered the nature of the world to be a woven tapestry, with each person representing a thread within the tapestry and each thread crossing and mingling with others to create the “big picture”. The importance of the völva in Norse society is illustrated by the fact that she carries a distaff, or Seiðstafr, as a symbol of her power and mastery over destiny. A distaff is normally used in the spinning of wool, and is associated with the Norse fates, or the Norns, who spin the the thread of one’s life.
Seiðr contains many of the shamanic traits we have discussed this quarter. The graves of völvas were found to contain henbane and cannabis seeds, which when burned could create altered states of consciousness (ASC). While the use of drums and bells is not explicitly spelled out in the historical record, there are allusions to their use, as well as some linguistic evidence to support this. The Norse were the original “appropriators”, and were known to borrow heavily from their neighbors the Celts and the Saami, both of whom did use bells and drums in their rituals. Yggdrasil, the world tree and the Axis Mundi of the Norse, is the location of the nine worlds. The name means “the Horse of Ygg (Odin)” and is kenning for the gallows, as it is also presumed to be the tree that Odin hung himself from in order to acquired the runes and the gift of oracle from the “other world”. He also sacrificed an eye to gain knowledge of the future and sees his own death in the jaws of the wold Fenrir. He is a man of great wisdom with the ability to speak to birds, and in fact gets his information about the world from 2 ravens that travel on his behalf. Odin is strongly tied to the practice of Seiðr in spite of its “unmanly” associations. He is the ultimate shamanic figure in Norse mythology.
I know that I hung on a windy tree
nine long nights,
wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,
myself to myself,
on that tree of which no man knows
from where its roots run.
No bread did they give me nor a drink from a horn,
downwards I peered;
I took up the runes, screaming I took them,
then I fell back from there.
-Hávamál
While the runes are used in the modern age for the purposes of oracle, the historical reality is that we don’t know for certain that they were the actual “lots” cast by the völva. However, between their frequent historical association with curses, hexes, charms, and spells, as well as their association with Odin’s ordeal on the tree, it seems likely that they are the symbols described by Tacitus and other historians. The various rune poems have told us what each symbol represented, and we can extrapolate how they may have been used, but the modern system of divination is not based in any real historical fact. We simply do not know if or how the runes were used for magickal purposes.
The account of Þórbjörgr Lítilvölva (“Thor’s salvation, little völva”), known as “The Seeress of Greenland” in Eiríks saga rauða (The Saga of Erik the Red) describes the arrival of a völva and discusses her costume in great detail.
“Now, when she came in the evening, accompanied by the man who had been sent to meet her, she was dressed in such wise that she had a blue mantle over her, with strings for the neck, and it was inlaid with gems quite down to the skirt. On her neck she had glass beads. On her head she had a black hood of lambskin, lined with ermine. A staff she had in her hand, with a knob thereon; it was ornamented with brass, and inlaid with gems round about the knob. Around her she wore a girdle of touch wood, and therein was a large skin-bag, in which she kept the talismans needful to her in her wisdom. She wore hairy calf-skin shoes on her feet, with long and strong-looking thongs to them, and great knobs of latten at the ends. On her hands she had gloves of ermine-skin, and they were white and hairy within.”
Eiríks saga rauða (The Saga of Erik the Red)
Norse Seiðr Doll Project. Project and Photo by Scarlett Messenger
Norse Seiðr Doll Project. Project and Photo by Scarlett Messenger
Norse Seiðr Doll Project. Project and Photo by Scarlett Messenger
This description demonstrates the high status of the völva as well as the more practical elements that could facilitate the harsh realities of life in Norse society. She is described as wearing many beads, which were items of great value that Norse women collected and wore in what is now referred to as a “treasure necklace”. This was often used to fasten a cloak or overdress in place. These beads were also symbols of trade and travel, and beads from North Africa and Central Asia have been found in the graves of völva and high status women. Her fur lined gloves and hat would have provided a traveler with the warmth necessary to brave Greenland’s arctic climate. It also shows the transient nature of the völva. She is a traveler, a nomad, who goes where she is hired to go. This might also explain her belt, that is described as being made from “touchwood”. Touchwood is actually a material known also known as amadou. It is made from a type of inedible bracket fungus that is frequently used as tinder for fire starting. It has been proposed that wearing a long belt or sash of amadou would give the bearer a source of tinder in a rather barren landscape should the need arise. Ötzi the Copper Age natural mummy found in the Alps also carried items made from amadou, showing how far back use of this material goes. Amadou is a somewhat labor-intensive material to make, but could have been indicative of not only the status of the völva, but her itinerant nature.
Works Cited
Blain, Jenny. Nine Worlds of Seid-magic: Ecstasy and Neo-shamanism in Northern European Paganism. London: Routledge, 2002. Print.
Davidson, H. R. Ellis. The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe. London: Routledge, 1993. Print.
Davidson, H. R. Ellis. Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1988. Print.
Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstacy. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton U, 1964. Print.
Grammaticus, Saxo. “Gesta Danorum: Book Seven.” Online Medieval and Classical Library. Online Medieval and Classical Library, n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2013.
Larrington, Carolyne. The Poetic Edda. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.
Lindow, John. Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.
Paxton, Diana L. “High Seat Seið and the Core Oracular Method.” Seeing for the People. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2016.
Price, Neil S. The Archaeology of Shamanism. London: Routledge, 2001. Print.
Schnurbein, Stefanie V. “Shamanism in the Old Norse Tradition: A Theory between Ideological Camps.” History of Religions 43.2 (2003): 116-38. Web.
Sturluson, Snorri, and Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur. The Prose Edda. New York: American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1916. Print.
Viðar, Hreinsson. The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. Reykjavik: Leifur Eiríksson, 1997. Print.
Cairn, Fairhaven Park, Bellingham, WA. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
The Climate of the Hunter
After several false starts, I have made the executive decision to lump a huge swath of history together and discuss the phenomenon of the witch hunt from the late Medieval period through to the Enlightenment (about 1400-1800). I plan on returning to the Medieval era to discuss Norse Seiðr at a later date, but this snowball kept growing and I felt like I needed to address it.
We are all familiar with the image of the witch hunt. Anyone with even a superficial knowledge of the subject of witchcraft has heard of the Salem Witch Trials, the ducking stool, and “The Burning Times”. However, there is much misinformation in popular culture about the motives and scope of the the witch hunts of early modern Europe. Everything from horror films to the feminist Neo-Pagan movement have served to misrepresent, sensationalize, and downplay various aspects of the historical reality of one of the uglier phases in Western civilization’s history. The witch hunt has been used as a form of social control, a way of disposing of political enemies, and even a rallying cry for for cultural identity. The phrase itself has come to mean any overzealous persecution in the interest of the moral purity of the community.
First, let us deal with a few misconceptions about witchcraft and magick through the Early Modern era.
Witchcraft in the Early Modern Era was part of an organized, matriarchal religion that managed to survive into the modern era. This is an idea that gained popularity through the work of esteemed Egyptologist Margaret Murray and gained a foothold with the many of the First Wave Feminists of the time. Although Murray’s proposal of a historic “witch cult” are not as outlandish and unsupported as they are often painted to be, they are still very much projected wishful thinking based on factual cherry picking. Her work was inspired by ideas that sprang from the German Romantic era, which was obsessed with the fanciful, pastoral, pagan days of old, when man was one with nature. Jacob Grimm hypothesized that the contemporary concept of the witch was a combination of pre-Christian folk traditions and Medieval views of heresy (Grimm). His work, as well as the work of others of his era, was misconstrued as being evidence of a continuous line of Pagan religion, persecuted for centuries at the hands of a cruel and brutal church. While some modern scholars like Eva Pocs tend to support theories that are very close to Murray’s, there is still not the robust evidence either in primary sources or the archaeological record to support little more than the expected folk magick and medicine handed down through family lines and the occasional solitary seer or shamanistic practitioner.
Witch hunts were an attempt to destroy women. While there is no denying that women were disproportionately targeted by witch hunters, this was most likely due to the vulnerability their reduced status in society gave them. They were targeted because they were easy pickings rather than any organized attempt at gendercide. The fact that women were seen as being weak-willed and inherently sinful certainly contributed to their disproportionate culling. The standards for behavior for women was (and still is) high, particularly around the subject of sexuality, and accusations of witchcraft were loaded with salacious accounts of unbridled perversions with the Devil himself. These tales lost a lot of their lurid pulp-fiction flavor when the witch was male.
Witch hunts were run by the church. While church’s culpability in the execution of thousands is undeniable, the fact of the matter is it was more often governments, communities, and individuals that accused and prosecuted their own people. In her article Recent Developments in the Study of The Great European Witch Hunt, Jenny Gibbons sets the record straight as to the churches participation in the witch hunts:
For years, the responsibility for the Great Hunt has been dumped on the Catholic Church’s door-step. 19th century historians ascribed the persecution to religious hysteria. And when Margaret Murray proposed that witches were members of a Pagan sect, popular writers trumpeted that the Great Hunt was not a mere panic, but rather a deliberate attempt to exterminate Christianity’s rival religion. Today, we know that there is absolutely no evidence to support this theory. When the Church was at the height of its power (11th-14th centuries) very few witches died. Persecutions did not reach epidemic levels until after the Reformation, when the Catholic Church had lost its position as Europe’s indisputable moral authority. Moreover most of the killing was done by secular courts. Church courts tried many witches but they usually imposed non-lethal penalties. A witch might be excommunicated, given penance, or imprisoned, but she was rarely killed. The Inquisition almost invariably pardoned any witch who confessed and repented. (Gibbons)
Gibbons mentions that during the late middle ages, very few witches were murdered. At this point in history, the church’s official stance was that witchcraft was an illusion propagated by the Devil. The Canon Episcopi of 900 C.E. is the first time the church clearly states that it is the belief in witchcraft that is the transgressive act and an affront to God. The true force behind the witch hunts was secular, the heresy of a belief that you have powers equal to the Christian God was the justification.
So what was the catalyst for the 400 years of death and paranoia that swept across two continents? Many factors are plausible, and all might have contributed. Life in the post-apocalyptic world of Europe after the Black Death could only have been a place of fear and horror. The continent was crawling with religious unrest from schisms and rapid replenishment of the decimated ranks of priests and friars who had died ministering to the sick and dying. The loss of entire villages and feudal strongholds left contested power vacuums in local districts – not to mention a landscape dotted with abandoned farms and towns. In fact, the drastic loss of population completely shifted the socio-economic climate from centuries of feudalism to one of upward mobility in as little as 5 years. Workers were needed to rebuild and able bodies were in short supply. However this relative prosperity and newly found freedom was set against a desolate backdrop of death and the memory of the swift and unrelenting annihilation of one third of the population in less than 3 years (Gottfried). Rising suspicion of anyone and everyone who could have brought down this wrath of God on humanity triggered a rash of finger-pointing. The Romani and foreign travelers were often implicated in having started the plague, but no group faced persecution quite like Europe’s Jewish population. In 1349, 900 Jews were burned to death in Strasbourg (Landau). Although these pogroms were ostensibly driven by trade disagreements and political unrest, hatred and mistrust of the Jews had been brewing since they were first accused of causing the plague by poisoning wells. It was in this climate of tribulation that the witch hunt came into its own.
What did witchcraft look like during this time? The truth is, outside of the opinions of those who’s job it was to hunt them, we don’t know much. Those accusations are described through he rhetoric of the darkest side Christianity has to offer, so it can become difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. We can extrapolate that it was most likely built on the foundations of the shamanistic traditions, cunning folk, and traditional medicine seen throughout the middle ages. However, actual magick and witchcraft had so little to do with the accusations hurled at people during the trials that it is almost a moot point to bring the subjects up. As I mentioned before, the actual crime most witches were accused of was heresy. The act of magick was not the issue, it was the fact that in the mind of the church, supernatural powers could only belong to the Christian God. Therefor, to profess to have supernatural abilities was to be deceived by the Devil. In the Malleus Maleficarum, most important crimes committed by the witch were devotion to the Devil, sacrificing unbaptized infants to the Devil, renunciation of the Catholic faith, and participating in demonic orgies. In other words, the worship of a false god was more important than any act of conjuration, divination or herbalism. Other powers witches were accused of tended to revolve around acts that were harmful to the community. Souring milk, causing birth defects or still births, preventing crops from growing, and outbreaks of strange diseases were all attributed to witches. These were a few of life’s many unexplained hardships, and they were easy to blame on the village outcast. Odds were good the accused were not engaged in any level of occult behavior, but most likely of the ones that were, very few were actually guilty of little more than business as usual.
Aside from political motivations, the elderly who had become burdens on their family, people seeking their inheritance early, petty squabbles between neighbors, and the frantic finger-pointing of those themselves accused and tortured, we can hypothesize that certain vocations and situations lead to people being accused as witches when things went badly. Healers who failed to heal, cunning folk whose love spells backfired, or people with sudden and unexplained prosperity or luck might find their otherwise tolerated services called into question. Midwives, the guardians at the gates of life itself, could be ripe for such accusations, as they dealt patriarchal establishment had little understanding of. Ask any modern OB/GYN how high their malpractice insurance premiums are and it will give you an idea of how desperation can drive new parents to look for a scapegoat when childbirth goes wrong.
For most of us living in what we think of as the modern world, the idea that people could have so fervently believed in such things that they would spend the better part of 400 years torturing and slaughtering others for it seems preposterous. Tony Robinson’s Gods and Monsters is a British documentary series discussing some of the supernatural beliefs of Britain’s past. In the episode about witches, Tony and one of the show’s historians set up a very informal experiment. They had several people come in with a photo of their loved ones; grandparents, children, siblings, etc. They have the subject discuss the important of the people in the photo at length. They then hand the subject a knife and ask them to stab the photo. Each person looks shocked at the suggestion and refuses to do it. Tony points out that it is only a photograph, not the actual person. Each subject states that they are fully aware of this, and admit that they feel a bit silly about their unfounded reluctance, but not one of the subjects can bring themselves to do it. My husband and I discussed this, and we both admitted that we couldn’t bring ourselves to stab the other’s picture either. Why? Because the potency of the symbol persists for us. Because whether we consider it magick or quantum entanglement or “The Force”, we cannot psychologically separate the symbol from what it symbolizes. Humanity senses the essence of the thing held within the symbol of the thing. This is at the core of magick. People of early modern Europe and colonial America didn’t believe in magick and witchcraft out of ignorance or naïveté. They believed because it was part of their cultural zeitgeist, and it seemed no less rational than our belief that the recipe to happiness in the 21st century is found in the sorcery of advertising. Because we forget that our ancestors considered themselves just as rational, moral, and knowledgeable of their world as we do today.
References
Cavendish, R., Burland, C. A., Innes, B., & Eliade, M. (1995). Man, myth & magic: The illustrated encyclopedia of mythology, religion, and the unknown. New York: M. Cavendish.
Oldridge, D. (2002). The witchcraft reader. London: Routledge.
Hutton, Ronald. “Revisionism and Counter-Revisionism in Pagan History.” Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies Pome 13.2 (2013): 225-56. Web.
Klassen, C. (2004). The Colonial Mythology of Feminist Witchcraft. Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies Pome,6(1).
Thiselton-Dyer, T. F. (1978). Folklore of Shakespeare. Williamstown, MA: Corner House.
Russell, J. B. (1980). A history of witchcraft, sorcerers, heretics, and pagans. London: Thames and Hudson.
Kounine, L. “The Gendering of Witchcraft: Defence Strategies of Men and Women in German Witchcraft Trials.” German History 31.3 (2013): 295-317. Web.
Koning, Niek. “Witchcraft Beliefs and Witch Hunts.” Hum Nat Human Nature 24.2 (2013): 158-81. Web.
Grimm, Jacob, and Elard Hugo Meyer. Deutsche Mythologie. Berlin: F. Dümmler, 1875. Print.
Pócs, Éva. Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers in the Early Modern Age. Budapest: Central European UP, 1999. Print.
Gibbons, Jenny. “Recent Developments in the Study of The Great European Witch Hunt.” Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies POME 13.5 (2012): 2-16. Web.
Scaliger, Joseph, Nicolaus [Pseud.] Vicentius, and Yvo [Pseud.] Villiomarus. Hippolyti Episcopi Canon Paschalis. Leiden: Raphelengius, 1595. Print.
Gottfried, Robert S. The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe. New York: Free, 1983. Print.
Landau, Lazarus. “Le Massacre Des Juifs De Strasbourg.” Le Massacre Des Juifs De Strasbourg. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2016.
Institoris, H. (2006). Malleus maleficarum. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Tony Robinson’s Gods and Monsters. Dir. Matthew Wortman. Perf. Tony Robinson. Channel 4, 2011. Netflix.
Chateau, Aragon, France. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
Magickal Pursuits in the Ancient World
The age of Classical Antiquity is where the history of Western culture is first inscribed with the permanence of writing. The discovery of the 2,000 year old Magical Papyri in the late 18th through early 19th centuries revealed records of the spells, potions, and practices used by the Greco-Roman sorcerers of Egypt to confront the challenges of daily life at the dawn of Western civilization. Spells of protection, divination, healing, and prayers for self-improvement are all described as they were practiced by people who lived before Christianity was born. Even before that, the Classical and Hellenistic Greeks mused over the spark of modern high magick and occult practices with the art of “theourgia”, or “theurgy” (Russell 29). This is a highly ritualistic effort to unite with a god and achieve spiritual perfection or received knowledge, and will be a topic that we discuss more in depth as we approach the 19th and 20th century occult movement. Although this technique of magickal congress with god was eyed with some suspicion in Greek society, it was nonetheless utilized by some forms of organized religion in specific, controlled situations. At the Oracle of Delphi the priestess, or Pythia, would become possessed by Apollo, and her ecstatic prophecies were delivered in the first-person as if from the lips of the god himself (Cavendish 2823). This invocation of the god constitutes a theurgic magickal variant of divination. Allowing the mind of the god to enter your mind reveals knowledge and foresight. The Oracle was used by heads of state and great thinkers alike. The Pythia was feared and respected, unlike many of her later descendants who practiced such rites.
The Dionysian Maenads were feared for other reasons, but garnered less respect. Their frenzied rites included intoxication, manic dancing, and the bare-handed slaughter of sacrificial animals. They served to bind the revelers to the god in an intimate and euphoric experience for its own sake rather than for the purposes of oracle or healing. The Maenad’s reputation of nocturnal gatherings for moonlit blood rites and sexualized adoration of a phallic fertility god would become the core template for many of the wild tales of witch cults and covens of later centuries. These kinds of rites were not new to humanity; voluntary possession and direct ecstatic communion with the divine are seen around the world in shamanistic and spiritual traditions. However, the techniques the Greeks documented and the Romans later elaborated on would eventually become the core for many modern Western occult and esoteric movements, as well as having an influence on how future Western cultures perceived and treated the archetype of the sorcerer and the witch. The overlay of local cultures would give each region its own flavor of witchcraft, but much society’s reaction from the Middle Ages on could be found in the Roman influenced Catholic church.
Participation in public ritual was a lynchpin in the social indoctrination of Roman society, and sorcerers divided that loyalty. If prayer and sacrifice to the established Roman deities couldn’t get you what you wanted, taking your business elsewhere might. Controlling the participation of the citizenry in theurgical and magical rites became crucial to the survival of the status quo. In 186 BCE, the Roman senate strove to ban private participation in the rites of Bacchus, the Roman variant of Dionysus (Evans 112). Predominately the domain of women and what was viewed as the “feminized” man, the cult of Dionysus was comprised of the more marginalized members of Roman society who worshiped a mad, eroticized god imported from another land (most likely Etruscan). This “outsider” reputation made them a prime target for a witch hunt, as witnesses could be bribed into placing political opponents at the scene of blood-soaked orgies and human sacrifice. Adherents were frequently put to death or imprisoned with little to no evidence as to their involvement in what were usually manufactured crimes. This is one of the first recorded instances of a good old-fashioned witch hunt on the European continent, and as Christianity gained a foothold in the Roman Empire, the distrust of those who practiced magick only increased.
In a society as prone to patriarchal authoritarianism and paranoia as Roman society was, non-sanctioned practitioners of magick were viewed as wild cards. Their preternatural rites stood as a threat to the establishment, as attacks or assassinations by magick would be impossible to trace and could be used to seize power from those who opposed you. These practices grew to be mistrusted and eyed with suspicion, even when used for ostensibly benevolent purposes. Magickal actions have consequences, and if the practitioner was not adept or misjudged their target, the result could be dire. It has even been reported that the poet Lucretius allegedly hung himself in lustful agony after a love potion went horribly awry (Jerome). Because the potential of being held accountable for the occasional poisonous potion or spell that backfired, the people who concocted such things typically practiced in private. Daily life in Rome was incredibly public, to what we would consider an intrusive degree in our modern culture. Privacy was not to be sought nor trusted. If you had to do it in private, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. There are a reasons they call these “occult” practices. Not only do they rely on the revelation of hidden knowledge, the discipline itself is veiled from the sight of the uninitiated and unsympathetic. It was safer that way.
In the ancient world, we see the seeds of magick’s future on the European continent. From the maturation of theurgy and birth of the formal witch hunt to the prototype for the debauched nocturnal sabbat alleged to be practiced by the witches of early modern Europe, magick was changing with the increasing urbanization of Western civilization. And sadly for those involved with magick, these changes were not always for the better, as Christianity took hold of the continent and condemned those who claimed to have powers ascribed only to the Christian God.
References
Jordan, D. (2000). Ephesia Grammata at Himera. Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik, 130, 104-107.
Merrifield, R. (1988). The archaeology of ritual and magic. New York: New Amsterdam.
Oldridge, D. (2002). The witchcraft reader. London: Routledge.
Russell, J. B. (1980). A history of witchcraft, sorcerers, heretics, and pagans. London: Thames and Hudson.
Cavendish, R., Burland, C. A., Innes, B., & Eliade, M. (1995). Man, myth & magic: The illustrated encyclopedia of mythology, religion, and the unknown. New York: M. Cavendish.
Ogden, D. (2002). Magic, witchcraft, and ghosts in the Greek and Roman worlds: A sourcebook. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Evans, A., & E. (1988). The God of ecstasy: Sex-roles and the madness of Dionysos. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Betz, H. D. (1996). The Greek magical papyri in translation: Including the Demotic spells. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Beltane Fire, Lummi Island, WA. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
What is Witchcraft?
(Note: I will be using the terms “Magick” and “Witchcraft” somewhat interchangeably, however there are subtle differences in the practices, as we will see later in this course. For now, consider them 2 sides to the same coin.)
Even in our modern world, the fundamental symbols of many of our core rituals often stem from an primordial world view steeped in sympathetic magick. In some cultures this means burying the dead as if planting a seed for rebirth, or the association with the abundance or restriction of sexual activity with a fertile harvest. Humans are symbolic thinkers, it is what gives us the gift of language and writing (or, alternately, our linguistic abilities are what helped develop our symbolic thinking.) At it’s foundation, Magick and Witchcraft are simply the art of influencing the world around you at an energy-based level. And yet it is so much more than that. For some Witchcraft is a religion or a component of their spiritual practices. Others view it as a skill or an art. Witchcraft can be used to heal or harm, to protect or prosper. One of the factors that makes differentiating between Witchcraft and other religious practices difficult is that it comes in so many flavors. People invoke the powers of gods, land spirits, ancestors, the elements, nature spirits, and the dead. They practice alone or in groups, indoors, outdoors, openly or in secret. Some believe they can actually alter the physical world, others view it more as a meditative practice. There are even some branches of Magick that profess an atheistic world view and consider their practices as rooted in physical science. With no set unifying dogma and little prescribed praxis, recognizing Magick and Witchcraft often boils down to “I know it when I see it”.
Not unlike Schrödinger’s cat, the definition and reality of Witchcraft is partially determined by who is observing it. Whether or not practices such as Shamanism or the rites of the Catholic church fall under the category of Witchcraft depends on the perspective of the observer. Specifically, some sects of the Abrahamic religions dictate that all forms of conjuring, spellcraft, or communing with spirits are are Satanic in nature- even down to accusing other Abrahamic groups as engaging in Witchcraft. The Catholic mass, with its symbolic acts of ritual cannibalism and abundance of gestures, bells, candles, and chanting, holds more than just a superficial resemblance to many Magickal rites, however I would not advise suggesting this to a devout Catholic. The term is often also used to describe traditions, beliefs, and rituals that are viewed by the Western world as being “primitive”. This view is often inaccurate. Animism or tribal religions do not automatically equate to what could be defined as Witchcraft. Others doubt its existence entirely and find those who adhere to its practices laughable. I believe that a lack of knowledge about what Magick and Witchcraft actually are and the functions they serve within a society partially contribute to this attitude, and that the more deeply we look at these phenomena the more we can appreciate the elegance of magical thinking regardless of how factually accurate we believe it to be.
Finally, researching this subject, especially with a focus on Western Europe and its colonies, is proving to be profoundly difficult. There is much in the way of information about the historical, sociological and political aspects of Magick and Witchcraft, but shockingly little scholarly work about how to define it and how it “works”. My belief is that this is not considered a reputable area of study for most serious academics unless it is shrouded in the safe filter of historical context or the exoticized “otherness” of an aboriginal culture. I have had to resort to using some of the more academically trustworthy books by New Age publisher Llewellyn. While I do not normally consider them to be a reliable source, in some cases they can certainly be considered a primary source, as many of their authors are the creators and advocates of the modern Pagan and Witchcraft revival.
My objective in this class is not to determine if Witchcraft is “real”. I am going to approach the subject as if its efficacy and credibility are unquestioned, simply because my job here is not to determine it’s reality but to discuss it as it stands. I will be using certain contentious terms, like “superstition”, not to degrade the belief or action, but because there really isn’t another accessible term for it. Even the term Witchcraft itself is considered controversial by some, as we will see later in this course. Ultimately, I want this course to unfold in an organic way, rather than working towards supporting a specific agenda. This may lead to some disjointed or contradictory journal entries, but hopefully as the course progresses it will lead to a more cohesive and deeper understanding of the subject at hand,
References
Russell, J. B. (1980). A history of witchcraft, sorcerers, heretics, and pagans. London: Thames and Hudson.
Oldridge, D. (2002). The witchcraft reader. London: Routledge.
Merrifield, R. (1988). The archaeology of ritual and magic. New York: New Amsterdam.
Thistles, Lummi Island, WA. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
Pre-History: Separating Religion and Magick
One challenge faced in studying magick is trying to differentiate what is magick or witchcraft from the concept of religion. Much of religion revolves around magickal thinking, ritual, and symbolism, and much of magick revolves around gods or spirits and the enforcement of moral and social order. Trying to find an agreed-upon definition of religion is tricky, but trying to find a definition that clearly outlines how magick does not fit this mold has proven to be a trip down a rabbit hole rife with cultural bias, outdated theories, and academic shoulder-shrugging. The general consensus seems to be there is no general consensus. Many seem to define magick as what “others” do, as compared to what “we” do. However some scholars have tried to expand this definition to be more inclusive. Durkheim defines religion as
“…A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden — beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them. The second element thus holds a place in my definition that is no less essential than the first: In showing that the idea of religion is inseparable from the idea of a Church, it conveys the notion that religion must be an eminently collective thing.” (Durkheim 44)
This leaves the door wide open to include magick, however it seems to limit the concept to magick that is specifically prescribed and sanctioned by an organized spiritual community. This would mean that the rites of communion or baptism in the Christian faith could be seen as magickal, but the love spell of the local cunning woman is not usually seen as religious. However, this delineation is not so clear when we discuss religions like Vodou, where a practitioner might appeal to the loa for assistance in the matters of love. Is this magick, religion, or both? The best conceptualization I can come up with so far is that magick and religion almost always go hand in hand as facets of one another, but are not the same thing as a whole. There are exceptions to this correlation, but even many of those are not as clear-cut as to make it easy.
It is likely that humanity’s first expressions of religion have their roots in magickal practices. Apotropaic magick, or protection magick used to ward off bad luck or evil intent by spirits or other people, is one of the earliest forms of magick known, dating back at least to the Paleolithic era (Miller 768). Apotropaic magick frequently utilizes a physical object or gesture such as an amulet, sigil, or making the sign of the cross. The flip-side of this practice is the use of a talisman or “lucky charm” to draw luck or good fortune to the possessor. Both the amulet and talisman are not limited to trinkets, sigils, and gestures. Actions and avoidance of actions or objects can be used as well. Not walking under a ladder can be seen as an apotropaic act, because to do so is to avoid bad luck. These objects and actions bring the supernatural into the physical world, giving the user a substantive and tangible reminder of the forces that are working in their favor.
The advent of tangible symbols such as the corpulent Venus figures of Paleolithic and Neolithic Europe was likely to ensure fertility using the philosophy of sympathetic magick, or “like begets like”, which is a common theory in the construction of magickal practices around the world. By making symbolic mental connections and observable cause and effect, early humans concluded that an object shaped like a human in nature could function as a symbolic homunculus for a living human and be used in the healing or harm thereof. To endow this object with the physical essence of that person, such a bit of hair or bodily fluid would strengthen that bond. As civilizations began to drift towards agriculture, the need to control the weather and other natural forces became critical. Observing that oak trees tended to be struck by lightning more often than other trees, the oak became associated with the Thunder God for many Indo-European cultures (Frazier). Therefore, the acorn had the power to protect the bearer from lightning strikes. Managing disease in a world without germ theory meant trial and error. The enigma of mental illness and neurological disorders meant the victim was possible possessed, and exorcisms or trepannation often followed. As none of those forces were controllable by what we consider conventional means today, magick became a reasonable response. Most importantly, it clearly often worked.
The continued reliance on magick in the modern world when other alternatives are available is a testimony to its importance to humanity. We still rely on supernaturally charged symbols, whether it is a rabbit’s foot or a crucifix. The placebo effect works, but science still cannot explain exactly how. We are still acting out tiny rituals and beliefs that have been a part of our human culture for tens of thousands of years. Magick gives modern humans the same sense of control and power over our own destinies that it gave our Paleolithic ancestors and every subsequent generation since.
References
Durkheim, E. (1965). The elementary forms of the religious life. New York: Free Press.
Miller, B. D., & Wood, B. A. (2006). Anthropology. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon.
Merrifield, R. (1988). The archaeology of ritual and magic. New York: New Amsterdam.
Russell, J. B. (1980). A history of witchcraft, sorcerers, heretics, and pagans. London: Thames and Hudson.
Vitebsky, P. (2001). Shamanism. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Cavendish, R., Burland, C. A., Innes, B., & Eliade, M. (1995). Man, myth & magic: The illustrated encyclopedia of mythology, religion, and the unknown. New York: M. Cavendish.
Frazer, J. G. (1951). The golden bough; a study in magic and religion. New York: Macmillan.
Imbolc, Lummi Island, WA. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
The Nature of Magick
Magick is a vague term. How its practices differ from the rituals of religion or the dark corners of psychology is a matter of frequent debate. Its origins are clearly in what is usually considered to be the “superstitious” observations of early man. We witnessed coincidental events and drew a connection of cause and effect, or believed a certain root’s human-like form gives it inherently healing or harmful properties. However, how do these so-called “superstitious” observations differ from Freud’s conclusion that phallic objects hold the power to trigger neurotic behaviors in people under the right circumstances? Does this make magick psychological, or does it make psychology magickal? This extension of magical faith does not end with the mysterious workings of the human mind. As someone with an autoimmune disease, I can personally attest to the fact that while much of modern medicine is rooted in explainable science, many diagnostic methods are based on little more than educated intuition. To the patient, hearing your doctor say, “It’s not disease X or disease Y, therefore it must be disease Z, so we are going to throw this highly toxic treatment at it. We won’t know if it works, we will only know if it isn’t working and you get sicker.” is not very comforting.
Yet we don’t question the existence of psychology or medicine. We don’t doubt Wall Street analysts know what they are talking about when they predict the future of the stock market, in spite of the fact that they have proven to be so inaccurate that you would do better with random chance (Light). Why is it the western world is comfortable with these paths of magickal thinking, yet we tend think of the sorcery of the Zande as stemming from a naive and simplistic world view and the practices of the modern Neopagan (among those who do practice magick, which is common but not universal) as silly self-delusion? The reality is, all cultures throughout history have supported some form of magical thinking. We all seek to control our world through whatever means necessary, especially in times of deprivation, danger, or conflict. Magick accesses culturally accepted symbolism and puts it to work in order to alter the fabric of reality. Unlike Witchcraft, which is considered innate to the witch from birth (Vitebsky), magick is a learned discipline and can involve a lifetime of study. The correlation of natural phenomenon, colors, elements, plants, animals, celestial bodies, or enchanted objects must be learned. The moral implications of the practitioner’s actions must be weighed. If the practitioner is to provide their services publicly, they must learn to inspire awe and foster trust. These are often traditions handed down through generations, and their efficacy within their cultures are usually undisputed by those who utilize them.
Many of these beliefs and traditions date back to times and places so ancient and remote that the practitioners don’t even know their origins. In the early 20th century, the hunters of Oregon County, Missouri refused to kill a buck if it was white or showed signs of leucism (Randolph). Most likely they were not aware of the ancient Celtic belief that the white stag was an enchanted messenger from the Otherworld, in spite of the predominately English and Scots-Irish ancestry of the area’s residents. Yet the power of the symbol persisted, and in some locations persists today. Somehow, the notion of the white buck or stag as a taboo animal was handed down through time and across oceans and was kept alive in the New World.
Many magickal practices seem to be based on such arbitrary notions, but once you recognize how a belief removed from its place of origin can change the perception of that belief you can see why. Many groups of American Neopaganism practice the holidays based on the Celtic Wheel of the Year. These holidays fall on the equinoxes, solstices, and the midpoints between these days, sometimes known as the cross-quarters (Cunliffe). While not all Neopagans practice a Celtic based variety of Pagansim, they often conform to this schedule as it increases the possibility of participating in broader community events where their particular group may be underrepresented. One of the more confusing holidays for many Neopagans is early February’s Imbolc, or what is considered “the first day of Spring”. This is confusing to many Neopagans, who see Ostara in late March as being a better candidate for this designation. What is missing from this modern celebration for most Neopagans is the connection the pastoral Celts made between the beginning of February and the birthing of the year’s first lambs. This is not “the advent of sweater weather” as we have come to know Spring in the modern world, but an event that was significant to the survival the ancient people who celebrated this day. An American Neopagan living in the Arizona desert might have hard time wrapping her head around the idea of February 1st as being “the first day of Spring”, but she will practice the rituals and access the symbols of her faith in order to secure a fertile and prosperous year. The origin of the symbol is not what matters here, it is the power of the symbol and the intent of the practitioner that matters.
While magick is a universal concept, its form and implications vary greatly from place to place and at different times in history. In Western Europe and North America, our cultures have gone from revering the sorcerer as village servants, to reviling them as malignant diabolists who curdle milk and eat children, to our current associations of magick with the New Age and Neopagan movement (Russell). In the Age of Information, magick practitioners use the Internet to network and study, giving rise to new symbols, methods, and syncretisms. In spite of our perceptions of our society as being based in science, logic, and progress, we still cross our fingers, pray, play the Powerball with our children’s birthdates, keep good luck charms, make sure there are certain foods on the table for certain holidays, teach our children to not step on a crack or walk under ladders. We inject magical thinking into so many aspects of our lives that we aren’t even conscious of it. If you don’t believe me, try changing the order you do your morning ritual each day. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself feeling “out of sorts” all day, or even possibly invigorated. In concrete reality, this change should have no physical effect on your day. And yet…
References
Light, J. (2013, December 20). Why market forecasts are so bad. Wall Street Journal.
Russell, J. B. (1980). A history of witchcraft, sorcerers, heretics, and pagans. London: Thames and Hudson.
Jolly, K. L. (1996). Popular religion in late Saxon England: Elf charms in context. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Randolph, V. (1947). Ozark magic and folklore. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Vitebsky, P. (2001). Shamanism. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press
Cunliffe, B. W. (1997). The ancient Celts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
