Post by KittyLane on Mar 9, 2007 23:33:11 GMT -5
A NEW OR OLD WESTERN PAGANISM?
THE CONTROVERSY OVER MARGARET MURRAY
(c) Jani Farrell-Roberts
Excerpted from The Cauldron, 2003
My initial motive to write on this topic came from discovering a widely
repeated specific and serious charge made against Margaret Murray was false and that this falsehood had been used by academics as a basis for a thesis that medieval witchcraft was entirely based on delusion rather than on real European animistic or shamanistic practices, beliefs and customs.
When I returned to England in the late 1980s, I was introduced to the works of Pagan historians such as Dr Ronald Hutton. His works were praised - but disconcertingly I found in them the bold assertion that ALL Pagan religions had died out in the British Isles by the end of the 11th century. Yet I found nothing in his work to prove this. I found instead hints that the opposite might be true. He acknowledged that some had continued to honor sacred wells but he seemingly had dismissed these acts summarily as either Christian or as "trivialities".
I could understand how he might have been annoyed by Pagans who had wrongly claimed that their rituals had been performed exactly the same for centuries - but such claims were irrelevant to my understanding of a "religion", and presumably to Ronald Hutton's, whose book _The Triumph of the Moon_ would give a definition of "religion" as "a belief by humans in spiritual beings and a need for humans to form relationships with them". A religion thus did not need to have set rituals or institutional structures.
But what of the rituals found in the witch-trial records? Were these
accounts accurate? If they were, well, these rites were different from Wicca - but were they Pagan? A major element in Hutton's argument for the death of "Old Religions" thus came to be his assertion that the work of Dr Margaret Murray had been discredited by two historians who had allegedly proved her guilty of deliberately distorting evidence.
In the mid-twentieth century many Pagans had been pleased that Murray, an Assistant Professor of Egyptology at London University, reported that a form of pagan witchcraft existed in medieval Europe. They thought their magic and Craft had ancient antecedents, but it was good to have the backing of a respected historian. Gerald Gardner thus asked her to contribute an Introduction to his influential 1956 work. Witchcraft Today. Her principal thesis, as presented in _The God of the Witches_ (1933), and in other works, was that a coven-based witchcraft survived in Britain up until at least the 17th century. She held that some aspects of this cult, such as the worship of a horned god, were inherited from more ancient times. A century earlier, Jacobs Grimm had similarly reported in his _Deutsche Mythologie_ (Gottingen 1835) that witch beliefs were lingering relics of a pre-Christian Teutonic religion.
In her Introduction to Gardner's work, Murray gave him the credit for
finding that modern witchcraft was 'a true survival and not a mere
revival copied out of books.' She held in Europe 'the feeling which
underlies both the primitive and the civilized is the same', that
humans 'worshipping together always devise a form of ritual, especially when the worship takes the form of a dance… the rhythmic movements, the rhythmic sounds, and the sympathy of numbers all engaged in the same action, induce a feeling of exhilaration, which can increase to a form of intoxication. This stage is often regarded by the worshippers as a special divine favor, denoting the actual advent of the Deity into the body of the worshipper.' She concluded that rituals expressing intense
gratitude towards God could be experienced in modern Christianity, in other faiths, and in 'the jumping dance of the medieval "witches".
She also suggested that 'under a change of name, much of the Old
Religion still survives in Europe'. The animistic and other central
belief-elements might have survived, but the practice of the Wicca I
know is very different from the medieval Craft she described, and so
too is my own more personal Craft. I am thus skeptical about several of her specific claims, but I believe her argument that England was not speedily converted but continued to have a significant Pagan population for some centuries requires a significantly deeper study than that provided by Hutton in his work.
Hutton, in his 1991 book, _The Pagan Religions of the British Isles_,
said Murray's thesis had been completely discredited by earlier
authors. They had proved, he claimed, that she had omitted from the testimony of the witch-trial victims she cited anything that would have discredited them. Hutton is an eminent academic and his conclusions had a devastating impact on her credibility - and on that of these witch-trial victims.
This immense charge against Murray was initially made by Norman Cohn. He had justified his thesis that medieval witchcraft was entirely delusional by endeavoring, in _Europe's Inner Demons_, to discredit Murray. Other authors repeated this charge, quoting Norman Cohn rather than their own independent research. Thus Ronald Hutton as before cited, and James Sharpe, who merely commented in his _Instruments of Darkness_ that Murray's ideas were discredited "among serious scholars" because of
Cohn's effective "demolition job on her theories"'[Sharpe 1996, 8].
Even the eminent Carlo Ginzburg cited Cohn, and Cohn alone, when he said Murray had falsified evidence. If it turned out that Cohn was wrong, then this was a terrible case of unjustified "Chinese whispers".
In _Pagan Religion_ Hutton wrote; "In the case of Wicca, its initiates
have paid no attention to the most important recent work upon either ancient paganism or the Great Witch Hunt." He particularly severely criticized Vivienne Crowley's work "Wicca" and Margot Adler's "Drawing Down the Moon" for "taking some fleeting notice of Norman Cohn's attack upon the Murray thesis, but only to dismiss it with a few general and quite inadequate remarks, ignoring the vast bulk of a detailed, meticulous and formidable book". Hutton concluded that Cohn's research "cast doubt on the truth of anything else claimed in these [alleged witches'] confessions."
Prudence Jones and Nigel Pennick in the _A History of Pagan Europe_, similarly relied on Cohn to provide their principal argument for dismissing Murray. They said Murray had omitted from accounts of witch-trial testimony "fantastic details such as shape shifting, flying through the air, making rideable horses out of straw and so on".
I checked Cohn to discover what texts Murray had allegedly omitted. I then checked Murray's work to see if Cohn were accurate. To my utter astonishment, I found that Murray had in fact considered all but one of them in detail. It seems Hutton, Jones and Pennick had relied on Cohn's word without checking his accuracy. Cohn was evidently seriously at fault – but my surprise was more that well-respected historians within the pagan community had taken him at face value in using his work to so crushingly dismiss Murray.
Cohn alleged Murray omitted the following testimony to make a source credible: "I was in the Downie-hills and got me from the Queen of Fairie, more than I could eat. The Queen of Fairie is bravely clothed in white linen." But Murray quoted this at length. She also told how Aberdeen witches honored the "Queen of Elfin" who "has a grip of all the craft". In folk belief "downie Hills" or "fairy mounds" were the Otherworld homes of the "Little Folk" as well as ancestral sacred places or burial mounds. The fairies were said to be led by Queens or Goddesses. Professor Eva Pocs described many cases of "fairy witches" who honored such spirits in her unique study of two thousand central European witch-trials entitled _Between the Living and the Dead_,
published in 1999, the same year as _The Triumph of the Moon_.
Cohn saw as damning to Murray's research the following alleged
omission;
"All the coven did fly like cats, jackdaws, hares and rooks … rode on
a
horse that we would make of a straw or a beanstalk" - and that a witch
allegedly turned herself into a horse. But Murray dealt at length with
such testimonies, quoting many similar cases. There was an ancient and
Europe-wide folk-belief in the magical adept's ability to so identify
with other creatures that they could shape-shift or fly. Magical straw
horses also were common symbols. Pocs noted that the accused frequently
claimed to fly to witch gatherings, and that flying was a symbolic
expression of a journey to the other world.
Cohn quoted another testimony as allegedly a Murray omission, that one
of the accused dug up the corpse of a baby to eat its flesh. Again Cohn
does Murray a great injustice. She wrote about it at length, noting
that
cannibalism accusations were also falsely aimed at early Christians and
Jews.
Cohn alleged she omitted: "The Devil was with them in the shape of a
great horse and they decided on the sinking of a ship… The devil
would
be like a heifer, a bull, a deer, a roe or a dog… and he would hold
up
his tail while we kissed his arse." But Murray did not omit many of the
strange aspects of this story. The truth was very much the opposite.
She
included other aspects of this story that could have been seen as even
more discrediting. Pocs concluded, after a vast study of records, that
the devil was only mentioned in evidence produced after torture.
"Kissing his arse" might have been a wryly humorous response to being
asked if the devil was worshipped.
Cohn also alleged she had omitted; "they [went] through at a little
hole
like bees and took the substance of the ale". He insisted, if Murray
had
not omitted this, it would have been obvious her source was lying. I
could not find this particular quotation in Murray but this was a harsh
judgment by Cohn. "Small holes" represent, in shamanic accounts,
entries
to the Otherworld. Cohn forgot that he himself had cited as authentic
the ancient story that the followers of the Goddess entered houses
through small holes to take food and drink left out for them while
leaving presents or blessings. Feasting was commonly associated with
witches' gatherings - as reported by Murray, Pocs and others.
Cohn's research on Murray was thus remarkably flimsy and inaccurate and
did not deserve the ringing endorsement that Hutton gave it as
"meticulous and formidable".
I have tried to work out why Cohn made these errors. When I noted he
seemingly had only checked her 1921 work, despite saying he was looking
at both, I thought I had found the reason. But I found on further
reading, that it was worse than this. He had even misrepresented the
1921 work, falsely alleging she omitted material when that book
included
it.
Her 1921 book is packed with learned citations from witch trials, in
French, German and Old English. She dealt with disreputable elements in
great detail. The 'exclusions' Cohn noted were nothing more than her
having separated out the various parts of testimonies thematically –
for
example, so she could put in one place all citations of witches' feasts
and in another all citations of witches kissing the devil. Cohn should
have noted this.
In 1921 Murray was one of the first to note a similarity between
English
witchcraft and shamanism. 'The best example of transformation by means
of a magical object placed on the person is from Northumberland (1673),
where Ann Armstrong stated that "Anne Forster come with a bridle, and
bridled her and ridd upon her crosse-leggd, till they come to [the]
rest
of her companions. And when she light of her back, pulld the bridle of
this informer's head, now in the likenesse of a horse; but, when the
bridle was taken of, she stood up in her owne shape…"' Murray
commented,
'This is again a clear account of the witch herself and her companions
believing in the change of form caused by the magical object in exactly
the same way that the shamans believe in their own transformation by
similar means.' [Murray 1921 Chapter 8]
She was greatly influenced by Sir Petrie, the Professor of Egyptology
at
University College, who 'regarded contemporary customs as the remains
of
primitive religion', and by the Reverend Professor Edwin James who
wrote
_The Cult of the Mother Goddess_ and who was, like her, also influenced
by Frazer's _Golden Bough_. Her theories were also influenced by oral
traditions she gathered from country people in Ireland and Britain.
Oates and Wood of the Folklore Society recorded that many remembered
her
with fondness as 'Ma' Murray, a woman with an excellent sense of humor,
although on at least one occasion she was 'vitriolic' in reviewing work
with which she strongly disagreed. [Oates and Wood 14-22, 35]
Eva Pocs reported, as had Murray, that the accused often spoke of
journeys undertaken to feast and dance at "merriments," bright
glittering occasions of great beauty at which splendid silken flags
might fly and at which the Goddess or the "Lady of the Forest" might
appear. Women condemned as witches still spoke afterwards of their
happy
memories of such gatherings.
There are many other scholars who follow the same line as Pocs. Max
Dashu noted; "Hutton's failure to address the growing body of European
scholarship on pagan cultural themes in the witch hunts, including such
eminent writers as Giuseppe Bonomo, Carlo Ginsberg, Bengt Ankarloo,
Gustav Henningsen, Eva Pocs and Tekla Dömötor, is a serious
omission."
I should stress that it is the defaming work of Norman Cohn that my
criticism mostly focuses on as far as Murray is concerned - and the
works of others insofar as they gave uncritical credibility to his
defamation of Murray.
However I also found flawed the other author on which Hutton told me he
relied. This was Keith Thomas _Of Religion and the Decline of Magic_,
whose thesis I found flawed. But specifically on Murray; Thomas quoted
her as saying: "the only explanation of the numbers of witches who were
legally tried and put to death in Western Europe is that we are dealing
with a religion which was spread over the whole continent." He
dismissed
this by saying: "the absence of any organization, co-operation,
continuity or common ritual among witches makes it impossible to speak
with Margaret Murray of a "witchcraft" let alone of the "old religion."
However Pocs and other researchers have since shown that there was, on
the contrary, a remarkable continuity of witchcraft belief and practice
across Europe. Pocs based this on studies on witchcraft in France,
England, Belgium, Germany and in Eastern Europe.
Thomas had presumed, as seemingly had Hutton, that a "religion" could
not exist unless it was more tightly organized than demanded by the
dictionary definition of "religion".
Thomas' worldview was not that of the time of the witch-trials. I quote
here Normal Cohn, with whom I do not always disagree. He wrote; "The
early church already regarded all magical practices as manifestations
of
paganism". The Church thus regarded the witch's magic as essentially
Pagan even if beneficial or couched in Christian terms. Pocs wrote of
the "taltos" put on trial in this period, saying these were the
equivalent of the pre-Christian shaman. She concluded; "the belief
systems of European shamanism and witchcraft developed as twin siblings
from common parentage and were closely bound to each other. This is how
we see things in the light of both German and Slav documentation." She
also suggested that shamanistic witchcraft traditions continued into
modern times.
Carlo Ginsburg, in _Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath_,
linked
the witch-trial stories of witches' sabbats or gatherings back to much
older shamanic traditions, as did also Pocs. Pocs summarized the
evidence to "unambiguously refute" the suggestion that the witch-trial
evidence on these gatherings was greatly distorted by torture. The same
was said by the tortured and the untortured. She saw their testimony as
based on remarkably uniform "visionary experience." Pocs also found
that
the practice of "contacting the Supernatural through trance in order to
achieve community tasks', often with the help of a guide or spirit, was
common both to European witchcraft and to Shamanism strictly so-called,
or as practiced in Siberia.
The medieval grimoire described in _Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's
Manual_ of the 15th Century contained directions for creating illusions
like to the flying straw horses mentioned by Murray. It's author,
Kieckhefer, commented that illusion spells "done for entertainment"
sadly "became sources of Boschian nightmares of the witch-trials."
This grimoire is typical of many that survived. Other spells mentioned
were psychological - intended to have an impact on the thoughts or
imaginations of others; - and divinatory using a mirror, crystal or
polished fingernail. The book detailed several ways of setting up
magical circles to protect and focus energy. Exorcisms were also of
interest - as they were to the Church.
I am not arguing here that Murray's description of a Medieval Craft was
completely accurate, but that her academic reputation has been wrongly
damaged by unjustified specific allegations. My issue is that certain
scholars of high repute have helped destroy the reputation of a woman
of
considerable achievement by relying on the work of Cohn without
checking
to see if he were accurate.
Hutton conceded in his work that folk and magical practices survived in
Britain from pagan to modern time. He spoke of the blessings of wells -
but saw such acts as entirely Christian. Offerings are still hung on
thorn trees at many healing springs. Likewise he acknowledged that many
medieval Europeans believed in a Wild Hunt led by Herne, Selga or other
deities or spirits, and that this belief was Europe-wide - but then he
perhaps too quickly, dismissed these as having nothing to do with
Paganism for they were only, he alleged, "dreams or fantasies", the
product of "a vivid medieval realm of imagination which extended across
the whole of Europe."
When he wrote The Triumph of the Moon, he said it was in part to answer
questions he had previously left open. This evidently included defining
"religion". He now adopted a definition proposed by a relatively
obscure
writer, Sir Edward Taylor, who in 1871 had defined it as a belief in
the
existence of spiritual beings with which humans had a need to form
relationships. Hutton had thus adopted a definition of religion that
allowed a relationship with nature spirits to be a religion — but
nonetheless, he still maintained that no pagan religion had survived in
Western Europe.
Perhaps his difficulty lay in the way he separated "Christian" from
"Pagan" practices? If a vicar in a Derbyshire parish blessed a sacred
well, keeping up a very ancient custom, is he being Pagan or Christian?
Perhaps the honest answer is that he is being both - that his system of
belief is not entirely inherited from Israel but incorporates local
Pagan elements. But Hutton said these elements were no longer Pagan for
"It is necessary to demonstrate that certain things, although now
existing within a Christian structure, kept alive a memory of, and a
reverence for, the old deities. Otherwise they are part of
Christianity." I would suggest that honoring a well is not part of the
Christian Revelation but a belief that comes from a far older origin.
It
keeps alive a reverence for a Pagan belief that has existed from
pre-Christian times.
Hutton documented how Christian authorities once condemned as Pagan the
practice of venerating the Deity or spirit symbolized by a sacred
spring. Wulfstan, Archbishop of York condemned this repeatedly around
1001. In the 13th century the bishops of Wells, Hereford, Exeter and
Worcester all condemned this practice. After this time no more
condemnations were issued, yet some such springs have continued to be
ritual sites until today. Hutton argued that either "the old religions
were effectively dead by the mid-eleventh century" - "or the Christian
establishment chose to call off the attack on them around that time."
He
then concluded surprisingly that this "second option seems very
unlikely" and with this presumption dismissed the survival of a Pagan
practice without further argument.
Eliade in _Shamanism: Archaic techniques of Ecstasy_, held that while
shamanism had its most defined forms in certain ancient pagan
societies,
it could and did coexist with other forms of magic and religion. Eva
Pocs concluded that witchcraft in the 16th to 18th centuries was
powerfully shaped by surviving pagan shamanistic elements. This was
within a society that was officially Christian. It thus may be a
mistake
to presume that a system of belief originating in pre-Christian times
cannot co-exist alongside other beliefs.
Such scholars as Pocs and Ginzburg hold that the records of the witch
trials contain a wealth of information on the belief-systems underlying
witchcraft practices in Europe, and their role in the lives of many
communities. Nevertheless Cohn tried to recruit Ginzburg as a supporter
of his theory that witches 'sabbat' accounts were totally delusional;
Ginzburg responded: 'Equally unjustified… is the assurance with which
N.
Cohn, in polemic with Russell (and also because of a misinterpretation
of my book) concluded that the "experiences of the benandanti [an
Italian group that apparently carried out crop fertility rites] …
were
all trance experiences." 'On the basis of the available documents, the
existence or non-existence of an organized sect of witches in
fifteenth-to-sixteenth Europe seems to be indeterminate.' He thus did
not exclude the possibility of real activities and real witch meetings
took place, as the accused had claimed.
Hutton in Triumph of the Moon misinterpreted Ginzburg similarly, saying
he held 'pretty well the opposite' of the Murray thesis 'that Witches'
sabbats were real and material events'. Hutton even suggested that
Ginzburg was 'fulfilling Cohn's agenda' by showing how a 'new set of
fantasies was created at the end of the Middle Ages'. He clearly had
not
noted Ginzburg's clarification. Hutton had however noted that Ginzburg
held there was a 'kernel of truth' in Murray's theory, repeating this
in
two books, saying he kept to this opinion despite the risk of being
called a "Murrayist". Hutton deeply deplored Ginzburg saying this,
saying it had 'caused tremendous confusion among modern British
witches'! This "confusion" perhaps was a perfectly legitimate
questioning of Cohn and Hutton's theories.
There is a history for the Craft. A one that Pocs eluded to when she
demonstrated a shamanistic tradition that can be found in witch-trial
evidence. She suggests this may come from ancient times. But in seeking
this history, it is important not to get stuck in a model of historical
analysis that only looks for what has "survived" from the past. The
truth is more that witchcraft is a living Craft that is constantly
evolving, with periods of winter and of spring. There is a basic core
of
beliefs that are expressed differently in different cultures and times.
Finally on my own status, since it has been challenged by Hutton. I
wear
the badge of a freelance investigative journalist with pride, as well
as
that of a high priestess. My investigative work over thirty years has
focused on human rights and corporate responsibility, and been funded
by
numerous well-known charities as well as by the BBC and Channel 4. Two
years ago I testified at a US Congressional Hearing on Human Rights.
Currently I am working with Survival International on behalf of the
evicted Bushmen of the Kalahari. I am even more proud of having worked
for well over a decade with many Australian Aboriginal civil rights
organizations. It is the same sense of justice that then motivated me
that now moves me to defend Murray. I hold a Masters in Theology (thus
my critique of Hutton's definition of religion) as well as a Summa Cum
Laude in Philosophy and a B.Sc. Hons. in Sociology, the latter from the
London School of Economics. I have also written and produced
award-winning documentaries on historical and contemporary issues shown
on the ABC, BBC2 and Channel 4, and have authored three very
well-received historical works published in Australia.
THE CONTROVERSY OVER MARGARET MURRAY
(c) Jani Farrell-Roberts
Excerpted from The Cauldron, 2003
My initial motive to write on this topic came from discovering a widely
repeated specific and serious charge made against Margaret Murray was false and that this falsehood had been used by academics as a basis for a thesis that medieval witchcraft was entirely based on delusion rather than on real European animistic or shamanistic practices, beliefs and customs.
When I returned to England in the late 1980s, I was introduced to the works of Pagan historians such as Dr Ronald Hutton. His works were praised - but disconcertingly I found in them the bold assertion that ALL Pagan religions had died out in the British Isles by the end of the 11th century. Yet I found nothing in his work to prove this. I found instead hints that the opposite might be true. He acknowledged that some had continued to honor sacred wells but he seemingly had dismissed these acts summarily as either Christian or as "trivialities".
I could understand how he might have been annoyed by Pagans who had wrongly claimed that their rituals had been performed exactly the same for centuries - but such claims were irrelevant to my understanding of a "religion", and presumably to Ronald Hutton's, whose book _The Triumph of the Moon_ would give a definition of "religion" as "a belief by humans in spiritual beings and a need for humans to form relationships with them". A religion thus did not need to have set rituals or institutional structures.
But what of the rituals found in the witch-trial records? Were these
accounts accurate? If they were, well, these rites were different from Wicca - but were they Pagan? A major element in Hutton's argument for the death of "Old Religions" thus came to be his assertion that the work of Dr Margaret Murray had been discredited by two historians who had allegedly proved her guilty of deliberately distorting evidence.
In the mid-twentieth century many Pagans had been pleased that Murray, an Assistant Professor of Egyptology at London University, reported that a form of pagan witchcraft existed in medieval Europe. They thought their magic and Craft had ancient antecedents, but it was good to have the backing of a respected historian. Gerald Gardner thus asked her to contribute an Introduction to his influential 1956 work. Witchcraft Today. Her principal thesis, as presented in _The God of the Witches_ (1933), and in other works, was that a coven-based witchcraft survived in Britain up until at least the 17th century. She held that some aspects of this cult, such as the worship of a horned god, were inherited from more ancient times. A century earlier, Jacobs Grimm had similarly reported in his _Deutsche Mythologie_ (Gottingen 1835) that witch beliefs were lingering relics of a pre-Christian Teutonic religion.
In her Introduction to Gardner's work, Murray gave him the credit for
finding that modern witchcraft was 'a true survival and not a mere
revival copied out of books.' She held in Europe 'the feeling which
underlies both the primitive and the civilized is the same', that
humans 'worshipping together always devise a form of ritual, especially when the worship takes the form of a dance… the rhythmic movements, the rhythmic sounds, and the sympathy of numbers all engaged in the same action, induce a feeling of exhilaration, which can increase to a form of intoxication. This stage is often regarded by the worshippers as a special divine favor, denoting the actual advent of the Deity into the body of the worshipper.' She concluded that rituals expressing intense
gratitude towards God could be experienced in modern Christianity, in other faiths, and in 'the jumping dance of the medieval "witches".
She also suggested that 'under a change of name, much of the Old
Religion still survives in Europe'. The animistic and other central
belief-elements might have survived, but the practice of the Wicca I
know is very different from the medieval Craft she described, and so
too is my own more personal Craft. I am thus skeptical about several of her specific claims, but I believe her argument that England was not speedily converted but continued to have a significant Pagan population for some centuries requires a significantly deeper study than that provided by Hutton in his work.
Hutton, in his 1991 book, _The Pagan Religions of the British Isles_,
said Murray's thesis had been completely discredited by earlier
authors. They had proved, he claimed, that she had omitted from the testimony of the witch-trial victims she cited anything that would have discredited them. Hutton is an eminent academic and his conclusions had a devastating impact on her credibility - and on that of these witch-trial victims.
This immense charge against Murray was initially made by Norman Cohn. He had justified his thesis that medieval witchcraft was entirely delusional by endeavoring, in _Europe's Inner Demons_, to discredit Murray. Other authors repeated this charge, quoting Norman Cohn rather than their own independent research. Thus Ronald Hutton as before cited, and James Sharpe, who merely commented in his _Instruments of Darkness_ that Murray's ideas were discredited "among serious scholars" because of
Cohn's effective "demolition job on her theories"'[Sharpe 1996, 8].
Even the eminent Carlo Ginzburg cited Cohn, and Cohn alone, when he said Murray had falsified evidence. If it turned out that Cohn was wrong, then this was a terrible case of unjustified "Chinese whispers".
In _Pagan Religion_ Hutton wrote; "In the case of Wicca, its initiates
have paid no attention to the most important recent work upon either ancient paganism or the Great Witch Hunt." He particularly severely criticized Vivienne Crowley's work "Wicca" and Margot Adler's "Drawing Down the Moon" for "taking some fleeting notice of Norman Cohn's attack upon the Murray thesis, but only to dismiss it with a few general and quite inadequate remarks, ignoring the vast bulk of a detailed, meticulous and formidable book". Hutton concluded that Cohn's research "cast doubt on the truth of anything else claimed in these [alleged witches'] confessions."
Prudence Jones and Nigel Pennick in the _A History of Pagan Europe_, similarly relied on Cohn to provide their principal argument for dismissing Murray. They said Murray had omitted from accounts of witch-trial testimony "fantastic details such as shape shifting, flying through the air, making rideable horses out of straw and so on".
I checked Cohn to discover what texts Murray had allegedly omitted. I then checked Murray's work to see if Cohn were accurate. To my utter astonishment, I found that Murray had in fact considered all but one of them in detail. It seems Hutton, Jones and Pennick had relied on Cohn's word without checking his accuracy. Cohn was evidently seriously at fault – but my surprise was more that well-respected historians within the pagan community had taken him at face value in using his work to so crushingly dismiss Murray.
Cohn alleged Murray omitted the following testimony to make a source credible: "I was in the Downie-hills and got me from the Queen of Fairie, more than I could eat. The Queen of Fairie is bravely clothed in white linen." But Murray quoted this at length. She also told how Aberdeen witches honored the "Queen of Elfin" who "has a grip of all the craft". In folk belief "downie Hills" or "fairy mounds" were the Otherworld homes of the "Little Folk" as well as ancestral sacred places or burial mounds. The fairies were said to be led by Queens or Goddesses. Professor Eva Pocs described many cases of "fairy witches" who honored such spirits in her unique study of two thousand central European witch-trials entitled _Between the Living and the Dead_,
published in 1999, the same year as _The Triumph of the Moon_.
Cohn saw as damning to Murray's research the following alleged
omission;
"All the coven did fly like cats, jackdaws, hares and rooks … rode on
a
horse that we would make of a straw or a beanstalk" - and that a witch
allegedly turned herself into a horse. But Murray dealt at length with
such testimonies, quoting many similar cases. There was an ancient and
Europe-wide folk-belief in the magical adept's ability to so identify
with other creatures that they could shape-shift or fly. Magical straw
horses also were common symbols. Pocs noted that the accused frequently
claimed to fly to witch gatherings, and that flying was a symbolic
expression of a journey to the other world.
Cohn quoted another testimony as allegedly a Murray omission, that one
of the accused dug up the corpse of a baby to eat its flesh. Again Cohn
does Murray a great injustice. She wrote about it at length, noting
that
cannibalism accusations were also falsely aimed at early Christians and
Jews.
Cohn alleged she omitted: "The Devil was with them in the shape of a
great horse and they decided on the sinking of a ship… The devil
would
be like a heifer, a bull, a deer, a roe or a dog… and he would hold
up
his tail while we kissed his arse." But Murray did not omit many of the
strange aspects of this story. The truth was very much the opposite.
She
included other aspects of this story that could have been seen as even
more discrediting. Pocs concluded, after a vast study of records, that
the devil was only mentioned in evidence produced after torture.
"Kissing his arse" might have been a wryly humorous response to being
asked if the devil was worshipped.
Cohn also alleged she had omitted; "they [went] through at a little
hole
like bees and took the substance of the ale". He insisted, if Murray
had
not omitted this, it would have been obvious her source was lying. I
could not find this particular quotation in Murray but this was a harsh
judgment by Cohn. "Small holes" represent, in shamanic accounts,
entries
to the Otherworld. Cohn forgot that he himself had cited as authentic
the ancient story that the followers of the Goddess entered houses
through small holes to take food and drink left out for them while
leaving presents or blessings. Feasting was commonly associated with
witches' gatherings - as reported by Murray, Pocs and others.
Cohn's research on Murray was thus remarkably flimsy and inaccurate and
did not deserve the ringing endorsement that Hutton gave it as
"meticulous and formidable".
I have tried to work out why Cohn made these errors. When I noted he
seemingly had only checked her 1921 work, despite saying he was looking
at both, I thought I had found the reason. But I found on further
reading, that it was worse than this. He had even misrepresented the
1921 work, falsely alleging she omitted material when that book
included
it.
Her 1921 book is packed with learned citations from witch trials, in
French, German and Old English. She dealt with disreputable elements in
great detail. The 'exclusions' Cohn noted were nothing more than her
having separated out the various parts of testimonies thematically –
for
example, so she could put in one place all citations of witches' feasts
and in another all citations of witches kissing the devil. Cohn should
have noted this.
In 1921 Murray was one of the first to note a similarity between
English
witchcraft and shamanism. 'The best example of transformation by means
of a magical object placed on the person is from Northumberland (1673),
where Ann Armstrong stated that "Anne Forster come with a bridle, and
bridled her and ridd upon her crosse-leggd, till they come to [the]
rest
of her companions. And when she light of her back, pulld the bridle of
this informer's head, now in the likenesse of a horse; but, when the
bridle was taken of, she stood up in her owne shape…"' Murray
commented,
'This is again a clear account of the witch herself and her companions
believing in the change of form caused by the magical object in exactly
the same way that the shamans believe in their own transformation by
similar means.' [Murray 1921 Chapter 8]
She was greatly influenced by Sir Petrie, the Professor of Egyptology
at
University College, who 'regarded contemporary customs as the remains
of
primitive religion', and by the Reverend Professor Edwin James who
wrote
_The Cult of the Mother Goddess_ and who was, like her, also influenced
by Frazer's _Golden Bough_. Her theories were also influenced by oral
traditions she gathered from country people in Ireland and Britain.
Oates and Wood of the Folklore Society recorded that many remembered
her
with fondness as 'Ma' Murray, a woman with an excellent sense of humor,
although on at least one occasion she was 'vitriolic' in reviewing work
with which she strongly disagreed. [Oates and Wood 14-22, 35]
Eva Pocs reported, as had Murray, that the accused often spoke of
journeys undertaken to feast and dance at "merriments," bright
glittering occasions of great beauty at which splendid silken flags
might fly and at which the Goddess or the "Lady of the Forest" might
appear. Women condemned as witches still spoke afterwards of their
happy
memories of such gatherings.
There are many other scholars who follow the same line as Pocs. Max
Dashu noted; "Hutton's failure to address the growing body of European
scholarship on pagan cultural themes in the witch hunts, including such
eminent writers as Giuseppe Bonomo, Carlo Ginsberg, Bengt Ankarloo,
Gustav Henningsen, Eva Pocs and Tekla Dömötor, is a serious
omission."
I should stress that it is the defaming work of Norman Cohn that my
criticism mostly focuses on as far as Murray is concerned - and the
works of others insofar as they gave uncritical credibility to his
defamation of Murray.
However I also found flawed the other author on which Hutton told me he
relied. This was Keith Thomas _Of Religion and the Decline of Magic_,
whose thesis I found flawed. But specifically on Murray; Thomas quoted
her as saying: "the only explanation of the numbers of witches who were
legally tried and put to death in Western Europe is that we are dealing
with a religion which was spread over the whole continent." He
dismissed
this by saying: "the absence of any organization, co-operation,
continuity or common ritual among witches makes it impossible to speak
with Margaret Murray of a "witchcraft" let alone of the "old religion."
However Pocs and other researchers have since shown that there was, on
the contrary, a remarkable continuity of witchcraft belief and practice
across Europe. Pocs based this on studies on witchcraft in France,
England, Belgium, Germany and in Eastern Europe.
Thomas had presumed, as seemingly had Hutton, that a "religion" could
not exist unless it was more tightly organized than demanded by the
dictionary definition of "religion".
Thomas' worldview was not that of the time of the witch-trials. I quote
here Normal Cohn, with whom I do not always disagree. He wrote; "The
early church already regarded all magical practices as manifestations
of
paganism". The Church thus regarded the witch's magic as essentially
Pagan even if beneficial or couched in Christian terms. Pocs wrote of
the "taltos" put on trial in this period, saying these were the
equivalent of the pre-Christian shaman. She concluded; "the belief
systems of European shamanism and witchcraft developed as twin siblings
from common parentage and were closely bound to each other. This is how
we see things in the light of both German and Slav documentation." She
also suggested that shamanistic witchcraft traditions continued into
modern times.
Carlo Ginsburg, in _Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath_,
linked
the witch-trial stories of witches' sabbats or gatherings back to much
older shamanic traditions, as did also Pocs. Pocs summarized the
evidence to "unambiguously refute" the suggestion that the witch-trial
evidence on these gatherings was greatly distorted by torture. The same
was said by the tortured and the untortured. She saw their testimony as
based on remarkably uniform "visionary experience." Pocs also found
that
the practice of "contacting the Supernatural through trance in order to
achieve community tasks', often with the help of a guide or spirit, was
common both to European witchcraft and to Shamanism strictly so-called,
or as practiced in Siberia.
The medieval grimoire described in _Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's
Manual_ of the 15th Century contained directions for creating illusions
like to the flying straw horses mentioned by Murray. It's author,
Kieckhefer, commented that illusion spells "done for entertainment"
sadly "became sources of Boschian nightmares of the witch-trials."
This grimoire is typical of many that survived. Other spells mentioned
were psychological - intended to have an impact on the thoughts or
imaginations of others; - and divinatory using a mirror, crystal or
polished fingernail. The book detailed several ways of setting up
magical circles to protect and focus energy. Exorcisms were also of
interest - as they were to the Church.
I am not arguing here that Murray's description of a Medieval Craft was
completely accurate, but that her academic reputation has been wrongly
damaged by unjustified specific allegations. My issue is that certain
scholars of high repute have helped destroy the reputation of a woman
of
considerable achievement by relying on the work of Cohn without
checking
to see if he were accurate.
Hutton conceded in his work that folk and magical practices survived in
Britain from pagan to modern time. He spoke of the blessings of wells -
but saw such acts as entirely Christian. Offerings are still hung on
thorn trees at many healing springs. Likewise he acknowledged that many
medieval Europeans believed in a Wild Hunt led by Herne, Selga or other
deities or spirits, and that this belief was Europe-wide - but then he
perhaps too quickly, dismissed these as having nothing to do with
Paganism for they were only, he alleged, "dreams or fantasies", the
product of "a vivid medieval realm of imagination which extended across
the whole of Europe."
When he wrote The Triumph of the Moon, he said it was in part to answer
questions he had previously left open. This evidently included defining
"religion". He now adopted a definition proposed by a relatively
obscure
writer, Sir Edward Taylor, who in 1871 had defined it as a belief in
the
existence of spiritual beings with which humans had a need to form
relationships. Hutton had thus adopted a definition of religion that
allowed a relationship with nature spirits to be a religion — but
nonetheless, he still maintained that no pagan religion had survived in
Western Europe.
Perhaps his difficulty lay in the way he separated "Christian" from
"Pagan" practices? If a vicar in a Derbyshire parish blessed a sacred
well, keeping up a very ancient custom, is he being Pagan or Christian?
Perhaps the honest answer is that he is being both - that his system of
belief is not entirely inherited from Israel but incorporates local
Pagan elements. But Hutton said these elements were no longer Pagan for
"It is necessary to demonstrate that certain things, although now
existing within a Christian structure, kept alive a memory of, and a
reverence for, the old deities. Otherwise they are part of
Christianity." I would suggest that honoring a well is not part of the
Christian Revelation but a belief that comes from a far older origin.
It
keeps alive a reverence for a Pagan belief that has existed from
pre-Christian times.
Hutton documented how Christian authorities once condemned as Pagan the
practice of venerating the Deity or spirit symbolized by a sacred
spring. Wulfstan, Archbishop of York condemned this repeatedly around
1001. In the 13th century the bishops of Wells, Hereford, Exeter and
Worcester all condemned this practice. After this time no more
condemnations were issued, yet some such springs have continued to be
ritual sites until today. Hutton argued that either "the old religions
were effectively dead by the mid-eleventh century" - "or the Christian
establishment chose to call off the attack on them around that time."
He
then concluded surprisingly that this "second option seems very
unlikely" and with this presumption dismissed the survival of a Pagan
practice without further argument.
Eliade in _Shamanism: Archaic techniques of Ecstasy_, held that while
shamanism had its most defined forms in certain ancient pagan
societies,
it could and did coexist with other forms of magic and religion. Eva
Pocs concluded that witchcraft in the 16th to 18th centuries was
powerfully shaped by surviving pagan shamanistic elements. This was
within a society that was officially Christian. It thus may be a
mistake
to presume that a system of belief originating in pre-Christian times
cannot co-exist alongside other beliefs.
Such scholars as Pocs and Ginzburg hold that the records of the witch
trials contain a wealth of information on the belief-systems underlying
witchcraft practices in Europe, and their role in the lives of many
communities. Nevertheless Cohn tried to recruit Ginzburg as a supporter
of his theory that witches 'sabbat' accounts were totally delusional;
Ginzburg responded: 'Equally unjustified… is the assurance with which
N.
Cohn, in polemic with Russell (and also because of a misinterpretation
of my book) concluded that the "experiences of the benandanti [an
Italian group that apparently carried out crop fertility rites] …
were
all trance experiences." 'On the basis of the available documents, the
existence or non-existence of an organized sect of witches in
fifteenth-to-sixteenth Europe seems to be indeterminate.' He thus did
not exclude the possibility of real activities and real witch meetings
took place, as the accused had claimed.
Hutton in Triumph of the Moon misinterpreted Ginzburg similarly, saying
he held 'pretty well the opposite' of the Murray thesis 'that Witches'
sabbats were real and material events'. Hutton even suggested that
Ginzburg was 'fulfilling Cohn's agenda' by showing how a 'new set of
fantasies was created at the end of the Middle Ages'. He clearly had
not
noted Ginzburg's clarification. Hutton had however noted that Ginzburg
held there was a 'kernel of truth' in Murray's theory, repeating this
in
two books, saying he kept to this opinion despite the risk of being
called a "Murrayist". Hutton deeply deplored Ginzburg saying this,
saying it had 'caused tremendous confusion among modern British
witches'! This "confusion" perhaps was a perfectly legitimate
questioning of Cohn and Hutton's theories.
There is a history for the Craft. A one that Pocs eluded to when she
demonstrated a shamanistic tradition that can be found in witch-trial
evidence. She suggests this may come from ancient times. But in seeking
this history, it is important not to get stuck in a model of historical
analysis that only looks for what has "survived" from the past. The
truth is more that witchcraft is a living Craft that is constantly
evolving, with periods of winter and of spring. There is a basic core
of
beliefs that are expressed differently in different cultures and times.
Finally on my own status, since it has been challenged by Hutton. I
wear
the badge of a freelance investigative journalist with pride, as well
as
that of a high priestess. My investigative work over thirty years has
focused on human rights and corporate responsibility, and been funded
by
numerous well-known charities as well as by the BBC and Channel 4. Two
years ago I testified at a US Congressional Hearing on Human Rights.
Currently I am working with Survival International on behalf of the
evicted Bushmen of the Kalahari. I am even more proud of having worked
for well over a decade with many Australian Aboriginal civil rights
organizations. It is the same sense of justice that then motivated me
that now moves me to defend Murray. I hold a Masters in Theology (thus
my critique of Hutton's definition of religion) as well as a Summa Cum
Laude in Philosophy and a B.Sc. Hons. in Sociology, the latter from the
London School of Economics. I have also written and produced
award-winning documentaries on historical and contemporary issues shown
on the ABC, BBC2 and Channel 4, and have authored three very
well-received historical works published in Australia.