Witchcraft Today: Chapter 2

Notes made while reading “Witchcraft Today” by G.B.G.

What is a witch?

• Men and women with knowledge of spells (via charms, potions etc) for healing, love, harming
• Can affect the weather
• Communicated with spirits, the dead, small gods
• Power or craft ran in families
• Reps of small gods who will help small folk, vs e.g. Christian priests/gods and the nobility
• “Wild dancers” – evocative imagery! In a world of staid covered-up Xtians sitting in stone churches, witches are dancing naked under the sky, careless of the laws of men – natural and free.
• Identifies myth of witches flying on broomsticks as fertility charm performed by straddling a pole and jumping, to make crops grow.
• Persecution myths of witches: flying on brooms, fertility magics, women, children initiated by parents, young or aged especially likely, crazy, has pet animals, unpopular in community
• Scandinavian sagas: riding on staffs, wild wavy hair, soul leaving body, shape changing
• Mexican witch cult: Women naked but for necklace, and/or short cape, men wearing skin flap loin cloth

History of witches

• GBG clearly well-read in anthropology of his time, and has built up a legit-sounding theory of Stone Age witch craft. I suspect it felt right and there wasn’t evidence to gainsay him so he was comfortable writing it uncited, as whole theory.
• Witch as priest/magician and center-pin of community during matriarchal age.
• Tribal religion: male god, priestesses and husbands managing magic. Chief priest dominant during tribal meetings but priestesses ruled individual tribes.
• GBG links this theoretical history to modern craft: “My witches speak of him…”
• Discusses witches in the Bible, then links to Church-led subjugation of women and sexuality
• Cave of Adullam – retreat or refuge. GBG identifies historical persecuted witch cult as psychological refuge for women not helped by Church: “emotional women, repressed women, masculine women, and those suffering from personal disappointment, or from nervous maladjustment…” Overtones of judgement here? TBD
• Craft became hereditary to avoid spies, and unsuitable recruits. Comparison of cunningman “ignorant herbalist and charm-seller” and witch “priest/ess of old religion… initiated into the circle… recipient of certain ancient learning”.
• Church ignoring witches initially, but transition to rivalry and persecution. Causes suggested for persecution of other Xtians: suppression of heresy, money directed away from Church, hedonism.
• GBG includes estimate of 9 million people tortured to death in Europe during witch hunts; an out-of-date estimate, now.
• Considers linking Celtic Druid/esse/s to witches: “priests, doctors and teachers”, reincarnation, shape changers, weather control, initiation required – but acknowledges more info required.
• “primitive hunters’ cult” infiltrated by Celtic goddess myths, or orthodox Celtic cult affected by primal hunters’ cult following Xtian/Roman invasions? “We must take into account the effects of the Greek and Roman mystery religions.”
• Under Saxon Xtianity, witches driven to smaller communities, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany. Intermarriage with Picts led to “the Little People” or Pictsies, esp. in comparison with big Saxon bloods.

Gods

• Great Mother: caves, trees, moon, stars as Her emblem and women as Her priestesses.
• Hunter god: animals.
• Desire for paradisal afterlife, and then reincarnation into same tribe, leading to god of Death, wearing the horns of the hunted animal slain for life.

Death

• Paradise for worshippers, to prepare for reincarnation into tribe
• In time, become might ones/mighty dead/demi gods/saints – ancestors(?)