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Created by Questing Rat
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Witches and Witchcraft are another pair of words which, like 'Occult' inspire different reactions in different people. For some people, the word witch has the same connotation as the word unicorn, or vampire. For others, it has the same connotation as Satan, or beelzebub. Ceremonial magickians see tend to view witches as quaint, or less sophistocated. Chaos magickians tend to think witches cloud thier magick with undo religiousity and morality.
So who exactly are witches?
A not-so Brief History.
Prehistory
There is a saying amongst occultists, "Ask ten witches what witchcraft is and you'll get eleven answers." The histories are as varied as they come.
One of the most popular histories traces the roots of modern witchcraft back to prehistoric tymes. This view is often supported with the work of Dr. Margaret Murray(The Witch Cult of Western Europe, 1921). Murray's work claimed that the witches persecuted in the middle ages were direct spiritual descendents of an ancient fertility cult that once encompassed all of western Europe. For evidence she sited the details of rites 'drawn' from wiches during the inquisition compared to what would be expected from an ancient fertility cult. The Devil the inquisitor's claimed witches worshiped was actually the ancient Horned God of the forest. And to complement him, witches celebrated the Great Goddess in ritual. Most anthropologists today do not accept her findings. For one thing, Dr. Murray did not consider that the consistancy in 'confessions' that defined the rites of witchcraft could be explained by the consistancy of questions designed to draw out specific responses.
Other 'historians' attempt to get at the roots of witchcraft via linquistic routes. They point out that the old English root of witch is wic-. Issac Bonewits takes it even further: "This in turn seems to be based ... on the IndoEuropean root weik, some of the meanings of which involve (a)magic and sorcery in general and (b)bending, tiwsting and turning."(I. Bonewits, Real Magic, 1989 p104) Bonewits goes on to point out that the original wicca or wicce were benders, twisters of reality. When this word was translated into other languages, it was applied to peoples as divers as sorcerors, magickians, singers, healers, midwifes, charmers, druggers and diviners. Dispite this however, only in Ireland was this term given any specific religious meaning.(Bonewits, p105). This of course, directly contradicts Dr. Murray.
The Burning Tymes
Regardless of who was ment by the word witch early on, during the middle ages it had become quite clear who was a witch. Or had it?
During the inquisition, or 'The Burning Times' as it is known amongst witches, estimates run as high as 9 million people who were killed on charges of witchcraft. Most scholars find that number incredibly high, however figures such as 200,000 to 300,000 aren't hard to document and estimates of more than a million are still seriously considered. Of that number, some may have been witches, some may even have been satanists as the Catholic Church claimed. However many of them were midwives, herbalists, ugly people, handsome people, outcasts, people with too much influence, prostitutes, homosexuals, Gypsies, Jews etc. Anyone with a grudge to bear and a finger to point could work the worst magick and end someone elses life.
If anything is clear about this tyme in our history, it's that nothing was clear during this tyme in our history. Spotty records exist in the best of places, documenting standard sets of questions that were to illicit standard sets of answers. This of course makes those very answers supsect. But what the Church was fighting against wasn't the prehistoric fertility cults, or the 'benders and twisters'. In fact, prior to around the mid 1300's, claims of witchcraft were often dismissed as hogwash. Certainly there were 'Wisewomen', midwives, etc, but they were no more supernatural than the practisioners of the budding medicinal field.
Rather than hunting generic 'witches', they were on the march against Satan, and specifically Satanic Witchcraft. More confusion set in of course as noone is really sure such a beast existed, or existed in particularly high numbers. European society was suffering cataclysmic upheavals. From the Black Plague, to divisions amongst the Catholic church, to the invasions of the Turks, Europe seemed to be beset on all sides by demonic influence.
Any witchcraft that did exist at this tyme was either stamped out or went underground. Many families claim to have passed on the craft from mother to daughter secretly. Many authorities claimed that witchcraft didn't ever really exist, and those who were considered witches were simply herbalists, Jews, and housewives who had invoked the ire of some other goodman's wife. Murray suggests that the craft existed through this tyme in a complex network of covens that went underground. Donald Kraig points out another possible way the craft stayed alive while he discusses the persecution of Jews around the same tyme:
"Others [Kabalistic Jews] hid in the countryside,
aided by the people of the countryside, many of whom
were Witches. The same sort of thing appears to
have happened all over Europe, with Witches
protecting Kabalistic Jews, and in some cases, Jews
protecting Witches."(D. M. Kraig,
Modern Magick, 1992, p298)
The Forgotten Years and Rebirth
Late in the nineteenth century the Golden Dawn began to flurish in England and the European continent. It and it's offshoots were ceremonial, magickal, fraternal lodges. Early in the twenteith century, Spiritualism became commonplace, especially in England and America. However, none of these people would have called themselves witches. In fact the Golden Dawn would probably have been insulted, and most of those who practiced spiritualistic practises were generally hard working protestants. The Age of Enlightenment had put an end to witches.
Then in 1921, Margaret Murray published The Witch Cult in Western Europe effectivly bringing pre-Christian Europe to public light in a religious sense. This coupled with other works, such as Robert Grave's The White Goddess, became the avant guard of academic anthropological theorizing. At this tyme (1936) a book was published on Malay Weapontry and it's authour retired. Little did he know, this amatuer anthropologist and folklorist was about to become the granddaddy of all Neo-Witches.
Gardner
Gerald B. Gardner (1884-1964) lived a relatively unimportant life (from our standpoint) as a rubber planter, tea planter, and even as a customs officer up until his retirement.
In 1939 he joined a Rosicrucian occult society. Apparently Gardner noticed that the group itself seemed to be seperated into at least two distinct cliques; of which, one was looked down upon by the other. It was this first group who attracted his attention. First of all, they had to work to earn thier livings (something unusual for a member of an Occult Society at the tyme.) Secondly, they seemed to have a real thirst for occult knowledge. As opposed to the armchair occultism in the rest of the group.
These people took him to meet "Old Dorothy." Old Dorothy initiated him into her coven.(Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon, 1986, p60-61)
From this point on Gardner wanted to spread the word that the craft was still alive and he wanted to spread it as quickly and loudly as possible. He feared that the craft was in the brink of winking out of existance. However, at the tyme, there were still anti-witchcraft laws on the books in England, so he was forced to keep relatively quiet. That changed however, in 1951 when the last anti-witchcraft law was repealed (to be replaced by the fraudulant medium law). In 1954 and 59 Gardner published two books that broke the tradition of silence and secrecy the craft had held so long.
This much is in little dispute.
In these books Gardner claimed to have gathered the fragments of the ancient rites that Old Dorothy's coven had preserved from antiquity, and through his own anthropological and magickal training, filled in the little gaps. Those two books and Gardner's own teachings became the foundation for Gardnerian Wicca. Gardner moved to the Isle of Man and assisted in the administration of a Museum of Witchcraft located there. Quickly, people started writting to him for more information and a coven formed with himself as it's High Priest. Wicca, in most of it's currant guises is a direct ofshoot of Gardenarian Wicca.
Or:
Gardner's critics attack him as an eccentric old man who simply created the rites of Wicca. He did much more, they say, than fill in the gaps in ancient ceremonies. He simply created the entire batch from scratch, or what he didn't create, he enlisted the aid of Aleister Crowley (whom he had presumably met during his stint in the Rosicrucian group) to write up -- Indeed, some claim, he paid Crowley a hefty sum to write the rituals of the new religion. There are undeniable traces of Gardner's personality in Gardnarian Wicca, for instance the required nudity (Gardner was a practising naturalist) and the odd Masonic phrasology used on occasion. While it could be said that these elements were what drew Gardner to the craft, it seems to fit entirely too well.
The Modern Witch
Regardless of it's historical validity, Gardner had let the cat out of the bag and there was no way in the seven hells it was going back. With his death a struggle ensued for leadership and eventually Alexander Sanders gained predomenance. It is here that the truth birth of modern Wicca began [insofar as Wicca has become a religion _of_ it's parishioners rather than _for_ them] . Sanders changed the things that he disliked about Gardenarian Wicca, made it more ceremonial, and changed it's name to instate the Alexanderian Tradition. Others, such as Raymond Buckland also formed thier own traditions (It is said that Buckland's Seax Wicca may even have started as a joke against the Gardenarians.)(Adler, p93)
These three traditions, as well as other splinter groups eventually found themselves migrating from England to the continent and America where they were picked up by others and mutated still further. Wicca, regardless of it's birth, had taken it upon itself to grow and quickly spread throughout the western world. Eventually the cover of secrecy started to relax. Books like Starhawk's Spiral Dance and Margot Adler's Drawing Down the Moon began shattering public opinion about Witches. People who couldn't find covens to join simply created thier own circles and initiated themselves into Wicca. There came to exist traditions for everyone -- covens accepting only women, covens accepting only men, covens accepting only homosexual men or women, covens focused on a specific cultural pantheon, etc etc. Gradually, the number of books on Wicca increased to the overwhelming number there exists today. At one point, the only way to get into the craft was to know another witch. Now, there are more people who practise Wicca than there are covens to hold them. Solitary practitioners are a very large contengent of the population of Modern Wicca.
At last it has become clear who Witches are. Hasn't it?
Many still claim to be witches without any claim of alliegence to Wicca. The largest group, by far, using the word 'witch' to describe it's members, is modern Wicca. If the word is used to describe someone from before the twentieth century, it is unsure exactly what is ment, but if it is used to describe someone now, odds are they are Wiccan. However, Fam Trads (Family Traditions) exist that claim to have been descended from antiquity whose rituals (if any) and magick little resemble that of Wicca. Additionally, to cloud the issue, many people still use the word 'witch' to describe any 'low magick' magickian regardless of any religious bent. To make matters worse certain famous self styled Satanists have taken to use the word to describe themselves. Who has the right to use the word? The question is, "Who doesn't?"