CHAPTER 1
The Witch Cult in Britain
My Directorship of the Museum of Magic and Witchcraft at Castletown, Isle ofMan, brings me a great deal of correspondence from all parts of the world; someinteresting, some abusive (a very little, just enough to enliven matters), somefantastic, and some funny in all senses of the word.
However, my more serious correspondents want to know the origin of witch-craft.Where, they ask, did it come from? What is behind this thing that obsessed theminds of men for centuries? Is it an underground cult of devil-worship? A darkthread running through history? An irruption of the supernatural into normallife? Or is it an enormous delusion? What is the meaning of it all?
This is a matter which of late years has exercised the ingenuity of a number ofwriters. These may be roughly divided into three schools. Firstly, those whotake the severely rationalist view that witchcraft was a kind of mass hysteria,arising from psychological causes. Secondly, those who maintain that witchcraftis real, and that it is the worship and service of Satan, in whom its devoteesappear to be great believers. This is the attitude taken by that very prolificwriter, the late Montague Summers, and his many imitators. Thirdly, that school,headed by anthropologists like Dr. Margaret Murray, which has tried to look atthe subject without either superstitious terrors and theological argument on theone hand, or materialistic incredulity on the other. This school of thoughtmaintains that witchcraft is simply the remains of the old pagan religion ofWestern Europe, dating back to the Stone Age, and that the reason for theChurch's persecution of it was that it was a dangerous rival. I personallybelong to this third school, because its findings accord with my own experience,and because it is the only theory which seems to me to make sense when viewed inthe light of the facts of history.
Perhaps I had better state briefly what that experience is. I am at present theDirector of the only museum in the world, so far as I know, which is exclusivelyconcerned with magic and witchcraft. I was a Civil Servant in the Far East(Malaya) until my retirement, and I made a large collection of magicalinstruments, charms, etc., which formed the nucleus of the present collectionhere. I am also an archaeologist and an anthropologist, and through thesestudies I became interested in the part played in the life of mankind by magicalbeliefs, and by what people did as a result of these beliefs.
When I was out East, before I had any contact with witchcraft in Britain, Iinvestigated much native magic without finding anything which could not beexplained by telepathy, hypnotism, suggestion or coincidence, and frankly Iconsidered magic as an instance of the curious things that people will believe.In those days I was very much interested in Dr. Margaret Murray's theory thatwitchcraft was the remains of an ancient religion; but as all authorities seemedagreed that while there was evidence that some people may have been witches,there was not the slightest evidence that witches had ever been organised intocovens; and as Charles Godfrey Leland, who had known many witches in Italy andelsewhere, and wrote a lot about them, never mentioned any coven or anyorganisation, I dismissed witchcraft as something which had possibly happenedonce, but even if it had existed it had been "burnt out" three hundred yearsago.
The earlier books I read on the subject all seemed to agree to a certain extent.They said that witches existed everywhere, and were both male and female. Theywere intensely wicked people. They worshipped the Devil, often in the form of aheathen god (but then, all heathen gods were the Devil). They had a bigorganisation, regular religious ceremonies on fixed dates, a priesthood withpriests, priestesses and officers, and an organised form of religion; thoughtheir deity might be called "a god" and "the Devil" almost in the same sentence.This was explained by saying that all non-Christian gods were really the Devilin disguise.
However, in the late 17th and the 18th centuries public opinion seemed tochange. In spite of the strong views of John Wesley and other clergymen, peopledid not believe in witches any more, to the extent that when two clergymeninduced a jury to convict Jane Wenham of talking to the Devil in the form of acat, and she was sentenced to death for this in 1712, the judges protested andshe was released. In 1736 the penal laws against witchcraft were repealed; and Idid not think that anyone, with the exception of the Rev. Montague Summers,dared hint that there might be anything in witchcraft today without beinglaughed at. Charles Godfrey Leland had been regarded as a romancer who hadwritten up a few Italian fortune-tellers, and while Dr. Margaret Murray wasknown as a good anthropologist, it was thought that she was writing about thingsthat happened three or four hundred years ago, when people were superstitious,and believed silly things.
However, after Dr. Murray's books appeared, some other people were bold enoughto admit that there were some witches left, but said that they were only villagefortune-tellers, impostors who knew nothing about the subject, and there neverhad been any organisation, and anyone who thought otherwise was just beingimaginative. I was of these opinions in 1939, when, here in Britain, I met somepeople who compelled me to alter them. They were interested in curious things,reincarnation for one, and they were also interested in the fact that anancestress of mine, Grizel Gairdner, had been burned as a witch. They keptsaying that they had met me before. We went through everywhere we had been, andI could not ever have met them before in this life; but they claimed to haveknown me in previous lives. Although I believe in reincarnation, as many peopledo who have lived in the East, I do not remember my past lives clearly; I onlywish I did. However, these people told me enough to make me think. Then some ofthese new (or old) friends said, "You belonged to us in the past. You are of theblood. Come back to where you belong."
I realised that I had stumbled on something interesting; but I was half-initiatedbefore the word "Wica" which they used hit me like a thunderbolt, andI knew where I was, and that the Old Religion still existed. And so I foundmyself in the Circle, and there took the usual oath of secrecy, which bound menot to reveal certain things.
In this way I made the discovery that the witch cult, that people thought tohave been persecuted out of existence, still lived. I found, too, what it wasthat made so many of our ancestors dare imprisonment, torture and death ratherthan give up the worship of the Old Gods and the love of the old ways. Idiscovered the inner meaning of that saying in one of Fiona MacLeod's books:"The Old Gods are not dead. They think we are."
I am a member of the Society for Psychical Research, and on the Committee of theFolklore Society; so I wanted to tell of my discovery. But I was met with adetermined refusal. "The Age of Persecution is not over," they told me; "giveanyone half a chance and the fires will blaze up again." When I said to one ofthem, "Why do you keep all these things so secret still? There's no persecutionnowadays!" I was told, "Oh, isn't there? If people knew what I was, every time achild in the village was ill, or somebody's chickens died, I should get theblame for it. Witchcraft doesn't pay for broken windows."
I can remember as a boy reading in the papers of a woman being burned alive inSouthern Ireland as a witch; but I could not believe that there could be anypersecution nowadays in England. So, against their better judgment, they agreedto let me write a little about the cult in the form of fiction, an historicalnovel where a witch says a little of what they believe and of how they werepersecuted. This was published in 1949 under the title of High Magic's Aid.
In 1951 a very important event occurred. The Government of the day passed theFraudulent Mediums Act, which repealed and replaced the last remainingWitchcraft Act, under which spiritualists used to be prosecuted in modern times.This Act is, I believe, unique in legally recognising the existence of genuinemediumship and psychic powers.
I thought that at last commonsense and religious freedom had prevailed; but evenso, the passage of this Act was highly obnoxious to certain religious bodieswhich had been preaching against Spiritualism for years and trying to outlaw itas "the work of Satan," together with any other societies to which theyobjected, including Freemasonry and, of course, witchcraft.
About a year previously, this Museum had been opened, and I had flattered myselfthat showing what witchcraft really is, an ancient religion, would arouse nohostility in any quarter. I was to find out in due course how wrong I was!
Any attempt to show witchcraft in anything even remotely resembling a favourablelight, or to challenge the old representation of it as something uniformly eviland devilish, or even to present it as a legitimate object of study, can stillarouse the most surprising reactions. The virtues of humanism, which CharlesSaltman defined as "sensitivity, intelligence and erudition, together withintegrity, curiosity and tolerance," have still quite a long way to go in theirstruggle against the mentality which produced the Malleus Malejicarum.
In 1952 Pennethorne Hughes wrote a book, Witchcraft, which gave a very goodhistorical account of witchcraft, but stated that while in mediaeval timeswitches had a fully worked-out ritual of their own which they performed, modernwitches were simply perverts who celebrated "Black Masses," which he describedas being blasphemous imitations of the Christian Mass. This made some of myfriends very angry, and I managed to persuade them that it might do good towrite a factual book about witchcraft, and so I wrote Witchcraft Today. Inwriting this latter book, I soon found myself between Scylla and Charybdis. If Isaid too much, I ran the risk of offending people whom I had come to regardhighly as friends. If I said too little, the publishers would not be interested.In this situation I did the best I could. In particular, I denied that witchescelebrated the Black Mass, or that they killed animals—or even unbaptisedbabies—as blood sacrifices.
One of the first questions I had asked witches as soon as I had got "inside"was, "What about the Black Mass?" They all said, "We don't know how to performit, and if we did, what would be the point of doing so?" They also said, "Youknow what happens at our meetings. There is the little religious ceremony, thegreeting of the Old Gods; then any business which has to be talked over, orperhaps someone wants to do a rite for some purpose; next there is a littlefeast and a dance; then you have to hurry for the last bus home! There is notime or place for any nonsense of 'Black Masses,' and anyhow why should we wantto do one?"
I think this is just common sense. To a Roman Catholic who believes inTransubstantiation, that is, that the bread and wine of the Mass are literallychanged into the flesh and blood of Christ, a ceremonial insult to the Hostwould be the most awful blasphemy; but witches do not believe this, so it wouldsimply be absurd to them to try to insult a piece of bread.
I am not the first to have pointed this out; Eliphas Levi, the celebrated Frenchoccultist, who was also a devote Catholic, stated in his book, Dogme et Rituelde la Haute Magie, that the first condition of success in the practice of blackmagic was to be prepared to profane the cultus in which we believed.
Some may hold that anyone who does not believe in Transubstantiation is lackingin the True Faith and doomed to Hell. I am told that certain Nonconformistministers preaching against Transubstantiation obtained consecrated Hosts andheld them up to mockery in the pulpit; but I have never heard that this madethem witches.
What about the Christian people who carry such consecrated Hosts about inlockets as personal charms? Are they being reverent or not? And are theywitches? (We have some of these charms in this Museum.) I know very well thatsome people would be shocked at this practice, but this does not alter the factthat it is done.
The point which those writers who persistently link the witch cult with theBlack Mass fail to appreciate is that they can either maintain that witches arepagans, or that they celebrate Black Masses; but that in the name of logic andcommon sense they cannot have it both ways.
Unlike a number of sensational writers, I do not wish to convey the impressionthat there are witches at work in every corner of the land. On the contrary,there are very few real witches left, and those keep themselves very much tothemselves. They are generally the descendants of witch families, and haveinherited a tradition which has been preserved for generations. This is, indeed,the traditional way in which witchcraft was spread and preserved; the childrenof witch families were taught by their parents, and initiated at an early age.In fact, this is very probably the origin of all those frightful stories of thewitches bringing babies to the Sabbat to eat them; what really happened was thatwitch parents dared not omit to have their babies baptised, for fear ofinstantly arousing suspicion, so they used to bring the babies to the Sabbatfirst, and present them in dedication to the Old Gods. Then, they felt, itwouldn't matter if a ceremony of Christian baptism was later gone through "forshow." ("When I bow my head in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon Thy servantin this thing.") However, as the persecution of the Old Religion grew morefierce, it became dangerous to admit children. Innocent children prattled amongthemselves about where their parents went and what they did, and one unluckyword overheard by the wrong person might have meant death to the whole family.There are terrible records of children being hanged or burned with theirparents, merely because they were of the witch blood. Margaret Ine Quane, forinstance, who was burned as a witch here in Castletown in 1617, had her youngson burned with her, simply because he was her son. Hence the custom ofinitiating the children was less and less observed, and this, coupled with thewholesale extermination policy carried on at the Church's instigation, soongreatly reduced the numbers of the cult.
However, there is one factor in the continuity of the tradition which theopponents of the cult had not reckoned with. The witches are firm believers inreincarnation, and they say that "Once a witch, always a witch." They believethat people who have been initiated into the cult, and have really accepted theOld Religion and the Old Gods in their hearts, will return to it or have an urgetowards it in life after life, even though they may have no conscious knowledgeof their previous associations with it. There may be something in this; becauseI know personally of three people in one coven who discovered that, subsequentto their coming into the cult in this life, their ancestors had had links withit, and I have already mentioned the witches who "recommended" me.
Of course, witch rites today are somewhat different from what they used to bemany centuries ago. Then the great meetings, called Sabbats, used to be attendedby large numbers of the population, who arrived provided with the wherewithal tocook a meal for themselves (hence the "hellish Sabbat fires" we have heard somuch about), and prepared to spend a night on the heath in merrymaking, once themore serious rites were over. In fact, most traditional country merrymakingshave some connection with the Old Religion; the Puritan Stubbes, in his Anatomieof Abuses, fiercely denounces the people who stayed out all night in the woods"Maying" on the old Sabbat date of May Eve; and Christina Hole, in her EnglishFolklore, notes how the Northamptonshire "guisers"—folk-dancers dressed infantastic costumes—are called "witch-men" to this day. Such instances might begreatly multiplied.
The English climate, of course, did not always permit these gatherings to beheld on the heath; and I think that in this event they probably took place insomeone's barn, or in the hall of a great house whose owner was friendly to thecult. In the Basque country of Pays de Labourd in 1609 the official investigatorfrom the Parlement of Bordeaux, Pierre de Lancre, was horrified to find that theSabbat was sometimes held in the local church, apparently with the priest'sconsent. He was particularly scandalised to find how many Basque priestssympathised with the Old Religion.
We are often told horrid tales of witch meetings in churchyards, and of witcheswho, in the words of Robert Burns, "in kirkyards renew their leagues owre how kitdead." But in the old times the churchyard was the regular place for villagemerrymakings. In those days a churchyard was not, as it is today, a place ofgravestones, but simply a green sward. From M. C. Anderson's Looking for Historyin British Churches we may see that dancing in the churchyard was quitefeasible in the old days as the author says that it was not the practice toerect gravestones to those who were buried there. "The great folks were buriedbeneath sculptured tombs within the church.... The little people remainedanonymous in death before the 17th century."
