T his article concerns the image of the witch in modern society. This includes the children's witch, which we learned at our mother's knee. The Wiccan witch, a social movement of some importance. The 'witch' hunt, something we are so far from and yet so close to.
First, the children's witch. You see her in the kids' costumes wear at Halloween. Adults may mistake her for bugbears parents use to get their kids to eat their spinach. But she actually teaches kids that sometimes all we have to fear is fear itself. She is obviously a comic character.
Purposely, we have forgotten her origin. Her tall hat is connected with the religious bigotry of the 17th Century. A Mr. Gummere in 1901 pointed out her tall hat was the headdress of a Quaker woman minister. We don't associate the Quakers with being tools of the Devil. But in the 17th Century, the Anglicans, the dominant Church, did. The personal magnetism of George Fox and the enthusiasm of the Quaker meetings was enough. Mere "enthusiasm" was enough after 1660 and the heady days of Oliver Cromwell.
Some Quakers who reconverted back to Anglicanism did in fact claim that their fellow Quakers were shoulder to shoulder with Old Nick.
Also, there were exposes. In one, an Anglican minister, a Mr. Peden, was traveling and was put up for the night by a Quaker. The Quaker took him to the meeting house. And there a black raven sat on one man's head after another making them vehement and froth at the mouth. Mr. Peden convinced his host this was a sign of the Devil.
Having dealt with the tall hat, why is the dress of the children's witch black? Probably for the same reason the Pilgrims' attire is black. To the 19th Century, black was the color of 17th dissenters. They wanted to make most seem sober. Of course, not the witch. On the other hand, black is associated with Evil too.
The attire of the 17th Century witch has been lost along with these origins. The most normal attire for her was her birthday suit, or, as someone put it, the nudity of Eve. The 17th Century regarded the witch as fearful not funny. She and the Devil sought to turn the established world order topsy turvy. And it was very important for most people it remain right side up.
Of course, the nude witch has been inappropriate for children.
Why does the children's witch ride the broomstick? The ancient Romans, at least ancient Roman peasants, believed that witches took the form of a bird and flew. This seemed to be the idea too of the early Germanic people who conquered the Empire.
However, by 900 A.D., witches flew on an assortment of animals. Often these were thought, in reality, to be demons. By the 13th Century a broomstick is mentioned as the mode of transportation, along with a poker. Even though the anonymous poet who mentioned this was being facetious, others do not seem to have been.
By the 15th Century, while accused witches still confessed to flying on horses, the pictoral and literary witch flew on goats almost exclusively. Then, in the early 16th Century, the painter Baldung shows witches using long forks as well. Later on in the Century, they were pictured as using broomsticks, but with the handle in back. Only in the early 17th Century are they pictured with the handle pointing in front. Then the witch hunter Pierre de l' Ancre, claimed that only the highest witches use a goat.
A type of children's witch is the white witch, the good witch. She is not unhistorical. Each village had a wizard or White Witch. Some merely prayed in unconventional ways for the sick. Others found treasure by calling up spirits. The established churches did not like them, but the general public found them useful. So they tolerated them despite the howlings of Puritans.
It is true in England she or he might be brought up before an ecclesiastical court; but they would be freed if compurgators came to court and testified to their good character. Some had compurgators aplenty. Also, in Scotland, the Lorraine and some parts of Germany, they might find themselves being burnt as real witches.
One image of the witch we hide children from, but we have a morbid fascination for it, the Witches' Sabbath. This is purely an adult thing. There witches were supposed to come together to revel in their misdeeds and hear the Devil's orders.
Modern writers, and readers, have tended to see the idea of a Sabbath as a psychological aberration, mass psychosis. Particularly in the psychoanalytic '50s.
But there were precedents from the Ancients and the early Church, important during witch hysteria. The accusations against witches very much resembled the accusations of the Romans against "antisocial" groups: infanticide, cannibalism, the drinking of blood, orgies. The Romans called it the Thyestean feast. The Roman rebel Catiline in the First Century B.C. was accused of drinking blood. The Jews, and the Christians, were accused of infanticide, etc. Later the established Christian church accused heretics, like the Montanists. St. Augustine accused the celibate Manichaean elect of conducting orgies.
Another modern witch is the Wiccan witch. Some will disagree with my history. But remember I am doing the history of the documents and this has nothing to do with their history of the heart. I do not seek to dethrone George Washington and his cherry tree. Or the Masons, or anyone else's secret history. And I do not seek to dethrone Wicca's witch of the New Stone Age and the Burning Times.
Some Wiccans believe that the Burning Times happened, when witches were persecuted for their Earth religion. And that the modern Wiccan's Earth religion is in a direct line with those witches, a line which goes back to the New Stone Age, if not the Old Stone Age. Born Agains accept this, although they consider all witches to have been the spawn of the Devil. And maybe even rightly persecuted.
Gerald Gardner first publicized the Burning Times in the '50s. Aidan Kelly is famous for claiming this in his Crafting the Art of Magic: Book 1 (1991). However, someone told me the same thing during the '60s, long before Kelly's book. In his book, Aidan examined several of Gardner's Burning Times documents and found them to be modern forgeries.
These were likely white lies. Gardner was known as a nice person. His fellow witches left his coven only because, unlike him, they did not wish to have their practices publicized. Even then they bore an affection for him. What was Gardner's background? Gardner had long been active as an occultist. A lot of his Book of Shadows were copied with only a little modification from Turn of the Century occult works: e.g., from Aleister Crowley and the Mather's translation of the grimoire The Key of Solomon the King.
However, Gardner apparently got the idea of the Burning Times from the works of the Egyptologist cum anthropologist Margaret Murray from 1921 on. She claimed witchcraft was an Earth religion and had a long lineage. Secretly, it lasted into Christian times and was persecuted during the great Witch Hunt, the 15th through the 18th Centuries. She made the further claim in Divine King in England (1954) that the kings of England from William the Conqueror to the 17th Century James I secretly headed this witch cult. Murray lived to a 100 and died in 1963.
It was left for Gardner to talk about their modern descendants. Gardner's rituals are still being practiced by some covens, even though they include bondage and scourging. Something, most of his followers are more than a little embarrassed about.
The Wiccan tradition is supposed to be Celtic, and more precisely Druidic. However, theirs is not the Druidism of the original Druids, but as interpreted by Roman writers and writers of the 16th through the 18th Centuries. Modern historians believe that Druidism was actually hundreds of local religions with hundreds of local gods. Which is why they are reluctant to mention specific gods. That Druids kept theirs an oral tradition probably helped keep their religion local.
Still, many modern Wiccans will talk about Cernunnos and Lugh as the universal gods of the Celtic tradition. Ancient Roman writers fostered this idea because they were always looking for equivalents of their universal gods, like Mercury or Venus.
That the Druids worshipped nature is a conceit popular during the 16th through the 18th Centuries. Then, people were looking for the "Ancient Theology" that was the basis of modern day religions. It had to be based on reason, and reason then was thought natural. Ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Persia and ancient India all were candidates for the birthplace of the Ancient Theology. The most popular Ancient Theologian was Hermes Trismegistus, supposedly an Egyptian despite his name. He had competition from Zoroaster, Orpheus and others.
William Stukeley, physician, minister, archaeologists and friend of the old Sir Isaac Newton, is particularly famous for this. Later in his life, he tried to prove that the Druidic religion resembled 18th Century Anglicanism. You cut a little here and a little there. (And a lot here and a lot there.) Some historians have regarded him as having gone a little batty, but it was to his personal advantage to do this.
Others had a far more liberal idea of the religion they claimed was Druidic.
This has come down to modern Wiccans. However, they are even more eclectic than that. The Wiccans' chakras obviously were copped from Hinduism, and were adopted with other New Age lacunae. The arthame, the ritual knife, was used by Gardner in his rituals. He probably got it from Turn of the Century occultists. Ultimately, its origin was probably Medieval Jewish. The Wiccans' Tarot originated in 14th or 15th Century Italy. The symbolism on the cards is unremittingly Medieval; the attempts of so many modern commentators at a "pure" deck have not erased that.
Also, many things Wiccan come from the Classical Mythology of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Certainly Hecate, which many Wiccans talk about, is a Classical goddess. The Mother Goddess is apparently too. She is usually referred to as the Goddess or Mother Goddess, and not called a Druidic or even quasi-Druidic name. Furthermore, I have a difficult time not thinking of her as Demeter or Gaia. She could even be the Egyptian goddess Isis, who was known in Classical times. Many modern day pagans have found her attractive.
The horned god is usually called Cernunnos, and his horns are antlers. But I have a hard time not thinking of him as Pan and his horns as goat's horns. Pan was a popular god among the nature worshippers of the '20s, who were the precursors to Wicca.
Anyway, the witch having been the villainess is now the fool and the heroine.