TYPE 4

"re-emergence of british witchcraft

THE RE-EMERGENCE OF BRITISH WITCHCRAFT

In 1951 the British Parliament repealed the Witchcraft Act of 1735 -

largely at the urging of Spiritualist churches, who objected to its

prohibition of mediumship. This statutory change unexpectedly led to

the emergence into public view of a religious tradition thought to be

extinct: Witchcraft.

These British witches defied definitions of the term common both in the

vernacular and in anthropology textbooks. They were of both sexes, all ages,

and were not isolated practitioners of maleficent magic; rather they claimed

to be inheritors of the islands' pre-Christian religions. Their religion was

duotheistic: they worshipped a male god, often called Cernnunos, Kernaya, or

Herne; and a goddess, sometimes called Aradia or Tana. Of the two, sometimes

seen as manifestations of a nonpersonal Godhead, the goddess had the

greater importance, and her earthly representatives, the coven's priestess,

had greater ritual authority.

Greatly condensed, this is a description of what came to be known as

"Gardnerian Witchcraft," after Gerald Gardner (1884-1964), who retired

from the British colonial customs service in Malaya in 1936, returned

to England and - as he described - was initiated into what he himself

thought was a dying religion in 1938. This was no overnight conversion:

Gardner was fascinated for many years with magical religion and "practical

mysticism". A recognised avocational archaeologist and anthropologist in

Malaya, during a visit to England in the 1920s, he set out to investigate the

claims of British Spiritualists, trance mediums and the like.

As he wrote: "I have been interested in magic and kindred subjects all

my life and have made a collection of magical instruments and charms.

These studies led me to spiritualist and other societies..."

Gardner wrote three books on Witchcraft, one novel, and two nonfiction

works. The novel was High Magic's Aid (1949), a stirring tale of late-

medieval English coveners dodging secular and clerical foes with

something of the feel of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe or Robert Louis

Stevenson's The Black Arrow to it. Interestingly enough, the "witchcraft"

portrayed in High Magic's Aid differs from what was later called "Gardnerian

Witchcraft." In it the goddess is de-emphasised; the rituals are more in line

with the post-Renaissance traditions of ceremonial magic.

Gardner's next two books, The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959) and Witchcraft

Today (1954), are more definitive of the tradition. All three of the

forenamed remain in print; an earlier novel, with the suggestive title A

Goddess Arrives, is long out of print. Gardner and his followers also

produced a "book" that was, until the early 1970s, passed on as handcopied

manuscripts: "The Book of Shadows." It is a collection of "laws" and

suggestions for running a clandestine coven, performing rituals, resolving

disputes between witches inside the group, and so forth.

It appears to be written in perhaps the English of the 17th century.

The Egyptologist Margaret Murray of University College, London.

Professor Murray, known mostly for her work with Sir Flinders Petrie in

Egypt, began researching Pagan carryovers while convalescing from an illness

in 1915. World War I had interrupted her work in Egypt, and she wrote in her

autobiography, My First Hundred Years: "I chose Glastonbury [to convalesce

in]. One cannot stay in Glastonbury without becoming interested in Joseph of

Arimathea and the Holy Grail. As soon as I got back to London I did a

careful piece of research, which resulted in a paper on Egyptian elements in

the Grail Romance...

Someone, I forget who, had once told me that the Witches obviously had

a special form of religion, 'for they danced around a black goat.' As ancient

religion is my pet subject this seemed to be in my line and during all the

rest of the war I worked on Witches... I had started with the usual idea that

the Witches were all old women suffering from illusions about the Devil and

that their persecutors were wickedly prejudiced and perjured. I worked only

from contemporary records, and when I suddenly realised that the so-called

Devil was simply a disguised man I was startled, almost alarmed, by the way

the recorded facts fell into place, and showed that the Witches were members

of an old and primitive form of religion, and that the records had been made

by members of a new and persecuting form."

Murray's researches into medieval and Renaissance witch-trial documents from

Britain, Ireland, and the Continent (including those relating to Joan of Arc

and Gilles de Rais) led to her writing three books, The Witch-Cult in

Western Europe (1921), The God of the Witches (1931), and The Divine King in

England (1954). In them she described her evidence for the survival of a

pre-Christian religion centred on the Horned God of fertility (later

labelled "The Devil" by Christian authorities) up until at least the 16th

century in Britain.

As the late historian of religion Mircea Eliade wrote, "Murray's theory was

criticised by archaeologists, historians and folklorists alike. " Pointing

out some parallels between medieval witchcraft and Indo-Tibetan magical

religion, Eliade gives qualified approval to part of Murray's conclusions.

The most important assumption was that there existed a pre-Christian

fertility cult and that specific survivals of this pagan cult were

stigmatised during the Middle Ages as witchcraft....recent research seems to

confirm at least some aspects of her thesis. The Italian historian Carlo

Ginsburg has proved that a popular fertility cult, active in the province of

Friule in the 16th and 17th centuries, was progressively modified under

pressure of the Inquisition and ended by resembling the traditional notion of

witchcraft. Moreover, recent investigations of Romanian popular culture have

brought to light a number of pagan survivals which clearly indicate the

existence of a fertility cult and of what may be called a "white magic,"

comparable to some aspects of Western medieval witchcraft."

British witchcraft existed prior to Gerald Gardner's initiation into the

craft. The works he and his associates produced gave a style of worship, a

new set of ritual texts and increasing emphasis on the goddess-aspect as the

tradition grew.

The older tradition was more balanced, as God / Goddess were equal & one.

BLESSED BE.