Post by KittyLane on Jan 30, 2007 18:53:43 GMT -5
DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC?
copyright © 2004 by David C. Petterson
If a campaign of genocide succeeds, it may be very difficult to learn
much about those persecuted. The persecutors may well work hard to
destroy or twist any accurate information about their targets. But
sometimes, gems of good information will get through, often buried
within the persecutor's own propaganda.
So it is with Witchcraft and Paganism. Though a few people have claimed
to be part of hidden family traditions going back centuries, there are
many scholars - and most modern Pagans - who dismiss such claims.
Further, there are increasing numbers of scholars - and of Pagans! - who
claim there never were any old traditions. Medieval Witchcraft, it's
frequently said, never actually existed. It sometimes seems as if
there's a new sub-industry dedicated to "proving" Gerald Gardner (and
maybe a few friends) made it all up over a weekend.
The evidence, however, argues otherwise. But you have to dig a little,
because those who commit genocide try to be thorough.
In the opening years of the eleventh century, the Bishop of the See of
Worms, a man named Burchard, published a vast collection of church law
culled from councils, papal letters, and the writings of theologians
from centuries past. This collection is called the Decretum. As Book 19
of the Decretum, Burchard composed a series of questions which
confessors were supposed to ask people in their parishes, to determine
whether they were following Christian beliefs and practices. This
anthology of questions is called the Corrector Burchardi, a title which
can be loosely translated as, "Burchard's Manual of Corrections."
Within the Corrector are dozens of questions dealing with Pagan and
Magical practices and beliefs. In fact, of the 194 questions in the
Corrector, 73 of them - nearly 40% - deal with these topics. It's hard
to overstate how seriously Burchard took this subject.
These questions reveal a lot of detail about the beliefs and customs of
which the Church disapproved. Burchard tried to be accurate and
complete. Since he sought to root out and eliminate actual beliefs and
practices, it wouldn't do to intentionally misrepresent these things. If
you ask a person, "Do you believe X?" and "X" is an intentional
misrepresentation of that person's belief, the person is obviously going
to say, "No! Of course not!" and you'll have made no headway in
identifying what that person actually does believe - or identifying who
believes in the things you dislike. For this reason alone, it is likely
Burchard's questions represent, as accurately as a Churchman can be
expected to represent them, the actual beliefs of actual people.
Here are a couple of samples. Prepare to feel right at home:
**Question 61. Have you observed the traditions of the Pagans, as if
by a demonically-administered law - as if a hereditary law, one which
fathers have ever left to their sons even to these days - that is, that
you should worship the elements, the moon or the sun, or the course of
the stars, the new moon; or at the eclipse of the moon, that you should
be able by your shouts or by your aid to restore her splendor; or that
these elements [would be able] to succor you; or that you should have
power through them; or have you observed the new moon for building a
house or making marriages? If you have, do penance for two years on
designated fast-days; for it is written, "All, whatsoever ye do in word
and in work, do all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ [Col 3:17]."**
Here, Burchard is complaining about worship of the Moon, the Sun, the
Elements. He condemns observations of the lunar phases, and the seasons
of the year ("the course of the stars"). There is a hint at astrology,
and an awareness of lucky and unlucky days for beginning projects,
making marriages, and so on. There is an interesting custom described
concerning helping the Moon to return during a lunar eclipse, and there
is acknowledgement of comfort and protection ("succor") - and power -
being provided by the intelligences represented by the Sun and the Moon.
All of this is described as Pagan tradition, as hereditary custom "which
fathers have ever left to their sons even to these days." And it is all
specifically said to be non-Christian, for it is not done "in the name
of our Lord Jesus Christ." There is very little here which would be
unfamiliar to a modern Witch, other than some details of practice.
Certainly the ideas behind that practice are obvious and are quite in
keeping with modern ideas about the Craft.
Of course, these things are hardly shocking. All can be traced to
verifiable pre-Christian religious practices and beliefs. What may be
surprising is to find them still being condemned in the eleventh century
in the heart of supposedly Christian Europe - and to find them so
concisely described, in a form which provides quite a good (if biased)
capsule description of something nearly indistinguishable from the
modern Craft.
Here's another sample:
**Question 62. Have you observed the Kalends of January [i.e., Jan 1]
with rites of Pagans, in this way or other, making things on account of
the new year, just before or just after, as it is customary to make -
that is, making your household table ready with stones or with a feast
at that time; or else leading song-charms and ring-dances through the
hamlets and streets; or else sitting on the roof of your house and
drawing a circle around yourself with a sword, so as to see and know
what will happen for you in the coming year? Or, have you sat on a
bull-skin at a cross-roads, so that there you will know the future? Or,
have you at night made a loaf of bread to cook, proclaiming it to have
your name, so that if it rises well, and it happens to thicken and
strengthen, then you will foresee prosperity for your life in the year
to come? For these things, because you have turned away from being a
creature of God, and towards idols and such vanity, it is apostasy you
are doing; do penance for two years on designated fast-days.**
The actual customs here may be very unlike most modern Craft traditions,
but the ideas behind those customs are quite familiar. Circle dances,
song-charms, divination for the future, feasting, all this is very
common in modern Paganism. Items such as the bull-skin and the
crossroads will most certainly become part of the imagery of later
Medieval Witchcraft. Doing divination at the New Year, when the veil is
thinnest, is also familiar, though the modern Craft usually places the
New Year at Samhain. Again, Burchard called these customs and ideas
"Pagan," and he condemned them specifically because they are non-Christian.
But perhaps most interesting in this passage is the reference to drawing
a Circle with a Sword - and for the purpose of divination, no less. Such
a thing is often claimed to be a particularly Judeo-Christian
Ceremonialist Magick practice. The presence of such a ritual element in
modern Craft has even been said to "prove" the Craft has no real history
reaching back farther than the 1950's or so. But here, the practice is
being criticized for being Pagan. And do recall, Burchard wrote this
hundreds of years before most of the well-known Ceremonialist grimiores
were supposedly written. We have the beginnings of evidence of the
Ceremonialists having stolen this ritual idea from the Witches, rather
than the other way around.
The era in which Burchard compiled these condemnations is important,
too. The evidence of Witchcraft in the Medieval Witch-trials is
sometimes said to be undependable because those accused of Witchcraft
were often tortured in an effort to get them to admit to whatever the
torturers wanted to hear. But Burchard assembled these questions nearly
three centuries before the first recorded cases of torture being used in
any Witch-trial. In fact, Buchard lived three centuries before the Holy
Office of the Inquisition was even created. No one was subjected to
torture under these provisions. Period. No one.
There is much, much more. Burchard has page after page of Pagan custom.
Taken together, it presents a picture of Pagan and Magical practice very
well integrated into the daily lives of the people, and pretty much
identical to the modern Craft notions of what ancient and Medieval
Witchcraft must have been like. There are New Years' customs and funeral
rites, spells and observances for the Faeries, cord Magic and weaving
Magic, hints at an annual calendar of festivals and of sacred days, all
of it explicitly associated with Pagan custom and Pagan Gods. Take one
more short sample:
**Question 66. Have you come to any place to pray other than a church
or other religious place which your bishop or your priest showed you,
that is, either to wells or to stones or to trees or to crossroads, and
there in reverence for the place lighted a candle or a torch, or carried
bread or any offering there, or eaten there, or there asked for any
healing of body or soul? If you have done or consented to such things,
do penance for three years on designated fast-days.**
Here Burchard condemns worship at verifiable Pagan sacred sites - wells
and standing stones, sacred trees and cross-roads - all of which also
are traditional meeting places for Witches. There are candles and
torches, Magical healings, offerings of bread and of sacred meals - all
very familiar stuff. Sometimes a critic of the idea of a historical
religion of Witchcraft will admit to there having been quaint
folk-customs and Magical remedies, perhaps even Magical customs and
spells - but will insist these things do not constitute a religion.
Here, these things are tied specifically to worship at natural shrines,
and to prayers, and to places unapproved of by "your bishop or your
priest." Such a passage as this cannot be mistaken for anything other
than a religion of Witchcraft.
The Corrector Burchardi was intended to seek out individual Pagans and
people who practice Pagan customs and who hold Pagan beliefs, and to
punish such things on an individual level. The Church responded on a
larger level, too. Not only did the Church try to discourage individual
examples of Pagan worshippers; the Church also wanted to destroy the
Pagan places of worship, so as to make Pagan worship itself impossible.
In Book 10 of Burchard's Decretum is the following bit of advice:
**Bishops and their ministers must work and struggle so that trees
consecrated to demons and worshiped by the vulgar, and held in great
veneration, such that not a branch or twig is cut off, are to be
destroyed to the roots, and completely burned. Also stones which are in
deserted places and forests, venerated due to the mocking deceptions of
demons, and where vows are dedicated and announced, must be dug up by
their foundations, and that place shunned, so it will never again be
venerated by the cultists. And it must be announced to all how great a
crime is idolatry, and those who venerate and worship in this way deny
God himself, and negate Christianity. And appropriate penance must then
be maintained since an idol is adored: all are forbidden to make any
vows, or light candles, or do any other reverent service, unless it is
to the church of the Lord God himself... Any who do this transgression
destroy the faith, and are worse than unbelievers. And for that reason,
all people such as these are immediately to be ejected from the assembly
of the divine Church, and unless sufficient penance is done, not taken
back.**
Not only penance and fasting, but exile - a virtual death-sentence - was
required for those who insist on worshipping the Old Gods - Gods which
the Church insisted, time and again, were demons in disguise.
The Corrector Burchardi was used by confessors from the beginning of the
eleventh century until the closing years of the fifteenth. Throughout
that time, it was seen as useful and necessary, and its provisions were
timely and applicable. The issues it dealt with were still of living and
current concern. The people refused to give up the Old Ways and Old
Gods. In fact, the problem grew worse, and in the intervening centuries
the condemnations from bishops and theologians grew increasingly
forceful and desperate. The Corrector did finally stop being used - not
because people were no longer following the Old Ways, but because a
better manual came along, one which prescribed far stricter penalties
and far more violent methods of fact-finding: the Malleus Maleficarum,
or Witches' Hammer. That's when the Church started using torture in a
big way, and started killing thousands of men and women on suspicion of
Witchcraft.
Much of Burchard's Decretum has never been translated into English, and
indeed, as far as I'm aware, some of the excerpts here are seeing
English publication for the very first time. This is part of the reason
why some writers can insist Witchcraft never existed. The documentation
which proves it did exist is simply not available to anyone but
specialists.
There is a strong make-it-up-as-you-go-along movement in modern
Paganism. This movement survives, in large part, because its supporters
have bought into the argument of Craft non-history. Since Gardner just
made everything up, and since Witchcraft as a religion was invented in
the 1950's, it's said, there's no reason not to continue making things
up. In fact, that'd be more faithful to Gardner, Witchcraft's inventor,
than would any pretense of traditionalism, wouldn't it?
But no, claiming to be a Witch, and then denying our history, does a
stunning disservice to the Old Gods and to all those passed the Old Ways
down to us. The claim of Gardner as the creator of Wicca plays into the
hands of the Medieval persecutors of Witches. They did their best to
make people forget the Old Ways and the Old Gods. If we today pretend
Witchcraft is a newly-minted do-it-yourself religion - if, that is, we
insist there never were any Old Ways or Old Gods - then Burchard will
have won after all.
copyright © 2004 by David C. Petterson
If a campaign of genocide succeeds, it may be very difficult to learn
much about those persecuted. The persecutors may well work hard to
destroy or twist any accurate information about their targets. But
sometimes, gems of good information will get through, often buried
within the persecutor's own propaganda.
So it is with Witchcraft and Paganism. Though a few people have claimed
to be part of hidden family traditions going back centuries, there are
many scholars - and most modern Pagans - who dismiss such claims.
Further, there are increasing numbers of scholars - and of Pagans! - who
claim there never were any old traditions. Medieval Witchcraft, it's
frequently said, never actually existed. It sometimes seems as if
there's a new sub-industry dedicated to "proving" Gerald Gardner (and
maybe a few friends) made it all up over a weekend.
The evidence, however, argues otherwise. But you have to dig a little,
because those who commit genocide try to be thorough.
In the opening years of the eleventh century, the Bishop of the See of
Worms, a man named Burchard, published a vast collection of church law
culled from councils, papal letters, and the writings of theologians
from centuries past. This collection is called the Decretum. As Book 19
of the Decretum, Burchard composed a series of questions which
confessors were supposed to ask people in their parishes, to determine
whether they were following Christian beliefs and practices. This
anthology of questions is called the Corrector Burchardi, a title which
can be loosely translated as, "Burchard's Manual of Corrections."
Within the Corrector are dozens of questions dealing with Pagan and
Magical practices and beliefs. In fact, of the 194 questions in the
Corrector, 73 of them - nearly 40% - deal with these topics. It's hard
to overstate how seriously Burchard took this subject.
These questions reveal a lot of detail about the beliefs and customs of
which the Church disapproved. Burchard tried to be accurate and
complete. Since he sought to root out and eliminate actual beliefs and
practices, it wouldn't do to intentionally misrepresent these things. If
you ask a person, "Do you believe X?" and "X" is an intentional
misrepresentation of that person's belief, the person is obviously going
to say, "No! Of course not!" and you'll have made no headway in
identifying what that person actually does believe - or identifying who
believes in the things you dislike. For this reason alone, it is likely
Burchard's questions represent, as accurately as a Churchman can be
expected to represent them, the actual beliefs of actual people.
Here are a couple of samples. Prepare to feel right at home:
**Question 61. Have you observed the traditions of the Pagans, as if
by a demonically-administered law - as if a hereditary law, one which
fathers have ever left to their sons even to these days - that is, that
you should worship the elements, the moon or the sun, or the course of
the stars, the new moon; or at the eclipse of the moon, that you should
be able by your shouts or by your aid to restore her splendor; or that
these elements [would be able] to succor you; or that you should have
power through them; or have you observed the new moon for building a
house or making marriages? If you have, do penance for two years on
designated fast-days; for it is written, "All, whatsoever ye do in word
and in work, do all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ [Col 3:17]."**
Here, Burchard is complaining about worship of the Moon, the Sun, the
Elements. He condemns observations of the lunar phases, and the seasons
of the year ("the course of the stars"). There is a hint at astrology,
and an awareness of lucky and unlucky days for beginning projects,
making marriages, and so on. There is an interesting custom described
concerning helping the Moon to return during a lunar eclipse, and there
is acknowledgement of comfort and protection ("succor") - and power -
being provided by the intelligences represented by the Sun and the Moon.
All of this is described as Pagan tradition, as hereditary custom "which
fathers have ever left to their sons even to these days." And it is all
specifically said to be non-Christian, for it is not done "in the name
of our Lord Jesus Christ." There is very little here which would be
unfamiliar to a modern Witch, other than some details of practice.
Certainly the ideas behind that practice are obvious and are quite in
keeping with modern ideas about the Craft.
Of course, these things are hardly shocking. All can be traced to
verifiable pre-Christian religious practices and beliefs. What may be
surprising is to find them still being condemned in the eleventh century
in the heart of supposedly Christian Europe - and to find them so
concisely described, in a form which provides quite a good (if biased)
capsule description of something nearly indistinguishable from the
modern Craft.
Here's another sample:
**Question 62. Have you observed the Kalends of January [i.e., Jan 1]
with rites of Pagans, in this way or other, making things on account of
the new year, just before or just after, as it is customary to make -
that is, making your household table ready with stones or with a feast
at that time; or else leading song-charms and ring-dances through the
hamlets and streets; or else sitting on the roof of your house and
drawing a circle around yourself with a sword, so as to see and know
what will happen for you in the coming year? Or, have you sat on a
bull-skin at a cross-roads, so that there you will know the future? Or,
have you at night made a loaf of bread to cook, proclaiming it to have
your name, so that if it rises well, and it happens to thicken and
strengthen, then you will foresee prosperity for your life in the year
to come? For these things, because you have turned away from being a
creature of God, and towards idols and such vanity, it is apostasy you
are doing; do penance for two years on designated fast-days.**
The actual customs here may be very unlike most modern Craft traditions,
but the ideas behind those customs are quite familiar. Circle dances,
song-charms, divination for the future, feasting, all this is very
common in modern Paganism. Items such as the bull-skin and the
crossroads will most certainly become part of the imagery of later
Medieval Witchcraft. Doing divination at the New Year, when the veil is
thinnest, is also familiar, though the modern Craft usually places the
New Year at Samhain. Again, Burchard called these customs and ideas
"Pagan," and he condemned them specifically because they are non-Christian.
But perhaps most interesting in this passage is the reference to drawing
a Circle with a Sword - and for the purpose of divination, no less. Such
a thing is often claimed to be a particularly Judeo-Christian
Ceremonialist Magick practice. The presence of such a ritual element in
modern Craft has even been said to "prove" the Craft has no real history
reaching back farther than the 1950's or so. But here, the practice is
being criticized for being Pagan. And do recall, Burchard wrote this
hundreds of years before most of the well-known Ceremonialist grimiores
were supposedly written. We have the beginnings of evidence of the
Ceremonialists having stolen this ritual idea from the Witches, rather
than the other way around.
The era in which Burchard compiled these condemnations is important,
too. The evidence of Witchcraft in the Medieval Witch-trials is
sometimes said to be undependable because those accused of Witchcraft
were often tortured in an effort to get them to admit to whatever the
torturers wanted to hear. But Burchard assembled these questions nearly
three centuries before the first recorded cases of torture being used in
any Witch-trial. In fact, Buchard lived three centuries before the Holy
Office of the Inquisition was even created. No one was subjected to
torture under these provisions. Period. No one.
There is much, much more. Burchard has page after page of Pagan custom.
Taken together, it presents a picture of Pagan and Magical practice very
well integrated into the daily lives of the people, and pretty much
identical to the modern Craft notions of what ancient and Medieval
Witchcraft must have been like. There are New Years' customs and funeral
rites, spells and observances for the Faeries, cord Magic and weaving
Magic, hints at an annual calendar of festivals and of sacred days, all
of it explicitly associated with Pagan custom and Pagan Gods. Take one
more short sample:
**Question 66. Have you come to any place to pray other than a church
or other religious place which your bishop or your priest showed you,
that is, either to wells or to stones or to trees or to crossroads, and
there in reverence for the place lighted a candle or a torch, or carried
bread or any offering there, or eaten there, or there asked for any
healing of body or soul? If you have done or consented to such things,
do penance for three years on designated fast-days.**
Here Burchard condemns worship at verifiable Pagan sacred sites - wells
and standing stones, sacred trees and cross-roads - all of which also
are traditional meeting places for Witches. There are candles and
torches, Magical healings, offerings of bread and of sacred meals - all
very familiar stuff. Sometimes a critic of the idea of a historical
religion of Witchcraft will admit to there having been quaint
folk-customs and Magical remedies, perhaps even Magical customs and
spells - but will insist these things do not constitute a religion.
Here, these things are tied specifically to worship at natural shrines,
and to prayers, and to places unapproved of by "your bishop or your
priest." Such a passage as this cannot be mistaken for anything other
than a religion of Witchcraft.
The Corrector Burchardi was intended to seek out individual Pagans and
people who practice Pagan customs and who hold Pagan beliefs, and to
punish such things on an individual level. The Church responded on a
larger level, too. Not only did the Church try to discourage individual
examples of Pagan worshippers; the Church also wanted to destroy the
Pagan places of worship, so as to make Pagan worship itself impossible.
In Book 10 of Burchard's Decretum is the following bit of advice:
**Bishops and their ministers must work and struggle so that trees
consecrated to demons and worshiped by the vulgar, and held in great
veneration, such that not a branch or twig is cut off, are to be
destroyed to the roots, and completely burned. Also stones which are in
deserted places and forests, venerated due to the mocking deceptions of
demons, and where vows are dedicated and announced, must be dug up by
their foundations, and that place shunned, so it will never again be
venerated by the cultists. And it must be announced to all how great a
crime is idolatry, and those who venerate and worship in this way deny
God himself, and negate Christianity. And appropriate penance must then
be maintained since an idol is adored: all are forbidden to make any
vows, or light candles, or do any other reverent service, unless it is
to the church of the Lord God himself... Any who do this transgression
destroy the faith, and are worse than unbelievers. And for that reason,
all people such as these are immediately to be ejected from the assembly
of the divine Church, and unless sufficient penance is done, not taken
back.**
Not only penance and fasting, but exile - a virtual death-sentence - was
required for those who insist on worshipping the Old Gods - Gods which
the Church insisted, time and again, were demons in disguise.
The Corrector Burchardi was used by confessors from the beginning of the
eleventh century until the closing years of the fifteenth. Throughout
that time, it was seen as useful and necessary, and its provisions were
timely and applicable. The issues it dealt with were still of living and
current concern. The people refused to give up the Old Ways and Old
Gods. In fact, the problem grew worse, and in the intervening centuries
the condemnations from bishops and theologians grew increasingly
forceful and desperate. The Corrector did finally stop being used - not
because people were no longer following the Old Ways, but because a
better manual came along, one which prescribed far stricter penalties
and far more violent methods of fact-finding: the Malleus Maleficarum,
or Witches' Hammer. That's when the Church started using torture in a
big way, and started killing thousands of men and women on suspicion of
Witchcraft.
Much of Burchard's Decretum has never been translated into English, and
indeed, as far as I'm aware, some of the excerpts here are seeing
English publication for the very first time. This is part of the reason
why some writers can insist Witchcraft never existed. The documentation
which proves it did exist is simply not available to anyone but
specialists.
There is a strong make-it-up-as-you-go-along movement in modern
Paganism. This movement survives, in large part, because its supporters
have bought into the argument of Craft non-history. Since Gardner just
made everything up, and since Witchcraft as a religion was invented in
the 1950's, it's said, there's no reason not to continue making things
up. In fact, that'd be more faithful to Gardner, Witchcraft's inventor,
than would any pretense of traditionalism, wouldn't it?
But no, claiming to be a Witch, and then denying our history, does a
stunning disservice to the Old Gods and to all those passed the Old Ways
down to us. The claim of Gardner as the creator of Wicca plays into the
hands of the Medieval persecutors of Witches. They did their best to
make people forget the Old Ways and the Old Gods. If we today pretend
Witchcraft is a newly-minted do-it-yourself religion - if, that is, we
insist there never were any Old Ways or Old Gods - then Burchard will
have won after all.