#British Traditional Witchcraft

[visardistofelphame]

A trigger warning for the content below. Suicide and abuse are lightly touched upon, so please keep that in mind when reading.

Here is the old article (if you need context)

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“Witchcraft is an old hag, dead and rotting. She sits on a pile of bones, and hides behind the graves of her elders. It is here where she lurks waiting for the right moment. Witchcraft hungers for youth, it hungers for you.”

It is said that the Craft has continued to survive, despite being ‘destroyed’ time and time again. No matter how many times it has been uprooted, it is a weed that will regrow. So why the visceral description? What is it about Witchcraft that invokes such violence and wrath within the imagination? Why link it to death? To cannibalism? To these things that are faux pas in our modern world?

Within the British traditions (as well as others I am certain), there was a push to change the viewpoint of what the Craft was to the general populace. The hope being to reveal it not as some boogeyman cult, but as a private faith as genuine and fulfilling as any other. The idea of acceptance and freedom was forefront, and it can be understandable why. Who doesn’t want those things? 

As a queer woman, I certainly crave acceptance and freedom. I imagine it's what we all want: to live as we will, unafraid of the threat of shame or assault. But what happens when societal mechanisms press down upon you? No one is specifically stopping you from living your life, free and happy. Yet, can anyone truly achieve those if we cannot even afford shelter and food? I can only speak from my understanding of the world, living within the USA. What was once the American Dream has transformed into a nightmare. The paralysis demon that is Despair and Dread, a future with no hope.

I sometimes wonder if my passion for the occult and (more specifically) witchcraft is an act of escapism? It's easy to understand why one would turn to the past for relief from the thought of what the future will bring. A bit of “Yeah, obviously” sort of thing. The idea of nostalgia isn’t new, whether it’s a longing for your childhood or for a history you were never a part of. I feel like it is a perfectly natural thing to experience. I know for me, it is less nostalgia for my childhood and more towards general history. 

I flocked to fairy tales, folktales, old Irish ballads, ghost stories, and was thrilled to learn history. I’ve always been fascinated by how people lived their lives, how the world once was. It seems natural that I would get caught up in the obscured parts of it, into the secret histories of the Occult. Though there was also a hidden side to my interests, an obsession with death. This is what led me to find Witchcraft. I know that not all are drawn to the Craft have experienced trauma in their life, but many I know have. I certainly have. Perhaps it is an aspect of the Craft being counter-culture, being quite attractive to those that are othered.

So what is my point? All I’ve described and talked about isn't revolutionary. These topics have all been discussed by far better writers than I. Yet, we each individually come to our own revelations and realizations about these things in our own time. It is the nature of the mystery, to be experienced. And for me, all this has brought me to the understanding that we aren’t any different from the peoples of the past. The struggles I’ve described have been universal, social society evolving alongside mankind. These feelings of a hopeless future, dread and despair? The only thing that’s different is the specific nuances: technology, our understanding of how the physical world operates, etc etc.

When writing the original piece, it was fueled by my feelings of anger and frustration, fueled by a spiteful hope - The acknowledgement that I will die, traditions die, movements die. Yet, death is part of a greater cycle and that such primal and universally human desires will never be gone for long. They can only be suppressed for so long, before boiling over. 

So I ask myself again, why did I write with such bloody description? I find the modern world to be oppressive when it comes to allowing the presence of healthy feminine rage. I was taught to be quiet and calm, only pleasing to others. The abuse and pain I had experienced was mere inconvenient to everyone else. It is a culmination of the many times that I had tried to end my own life, only to somehow still be alive and learn how to keep on living. A feeling of kinship to peoples long dead. 

Yet with all that said, who I am now is very different from who I was then. It's true of everyone and everything, we’re moments in time: always changing and always becoming. True of people and everything we have and will ever create. The revelation of my own understanding, both as a spiritual and physical creature. The even greater revelation that this is true for every person. 

“The very moment you step within the Sabbat these secrets are made possible. The witches are waiting there ready to teach and pass their secrets; however, are you ready to be dined upon by their wicked cannibalism? For when you are torn apart and thrown into the cauldron, the witch blood truly takes hold.”

I bring my entirety, whether I want to or not. The good and the bad, the love and hatred. No one is exempt from this. Things are not cookie cut perfectly as desired, everything is thrown in both good and bad. To a practice of those who have been othered, one cannot live in the fantasy that being othered prevents them from those same acts. We are all susceptible to misinformation, propaganda, bigotry and hate. The witches have a wicked cannibalism, they dine upon all of me. They dine upon all of those that seek this. And as I said before, “You are what you eat”

So to this diabolical nature, the untamed current of Witchcraft. No one group can ever hope to have ownership, despite some who have tried. No one controls when the witch cult rises and falls, it simply is and will continue to be. 

Please keep in mind that all this said, I do wish to note that all this is more towards the nature of Witchcraft as I understand it and have experienced it. The untamed nature is its own beast, so do not confuse it with the depths that is the well of magic. Even so, I know that the greatest mystery for any who explores these hidden paths: to know yourself.

Hope you all enjoyed going over an older article I had written back in 2018. My current practice has been heavily influenced from my dive into philosophy, so it's good to be able to write a think-piece like this. Nothing like a healthy dose of self analyzing to help get the creative juices flowing, though I hope that I'm not the only one~

[traegorn]

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[haggishlyhagging]

The evidence marshaled by anthropologists showing the effects of Western colonialism on traditional female power and authority is impressive. The work of some writers has led to the conclusion that "the penetration of Western colonialism, and with it Western practices and attitudes regarding women, have so widely influenced women's role in aboriginal societies as to depress women's status almost everywhere in the world." In this chapter two case studies showing the manner in which European influence eroded the bases of traditional female authority are presented.

In one case, the Igbo of southeastern Nigeria, the struggle was between Igbo women and British administrators, with Igbo men playing a passive but supportive role. In the other case, the Iroquois, the struggle was between Iroquoian women and the followers of a charismatic Iroquoian male who, aided by Quaker missionaries, sought to revitalize Iroquoian life and institute a new sex-role plan. In both cases women resisted the forces of change. Igbo female resistance led to the "women's war," in which thousands of women marched against the British and destroyed property. Iroquoian female resistance led to witchcraft accusations, resulting in the execution of some women for following traditional female patterns. The killing and wounding of approximately 100 Igbo women and the token executions among the Iroquois broke the spirit of resistance.

-Peggy Reeves Sanday, Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality

[ihearhercalling]

Please like or reblog (ideally reblog so other people in your sphere can find the post) if you post content about any of the following. If you reblog, please say which, or if you just like please reply and say which! I want to be more active on this blog and need people to follow.

- Celtic polytheism (Irish, Welsh, Brythonic, Gaulic, any really)

- Celtic witchcraft and folk magic, particularly Welsh

- British folk traditions

- Druidry

- Proto Indo-European polytheism

- Venus, Aphrodite, Ishtar and Inanna worship

- Actual genuine Wicca as opposed to the random stuff that gets passed off as Wicca in mainstream book shops

- Feri tradition

- Goddess-centric paganism (Dianic tradition, Deanism, Filianism, Reclaiming, Avalonian) and female mysteries

- Arthuriana from a pagan or feminist perspective (or pagan/feminist friendly)

- Sacred sexuality and tantra

- Herbalism, particularly with herbs native to the UK

[salixsociety]

Yes, I Hate Wicca.

A hopefully comprehensive guide to all my strifes.

More often than I care to admit I find myself quarrelling with people over my seemingly baseless hate for all things popular and simple. I'm accused of being a pretentious traditionalist, of being a snob, even of being a white supremacist on grounds of talking about European culture as a replacement for conventional witchcraft. I will not deny that I am a touch snobby and pretentious - such is my biggest flaw - but I am not a white supremacist, and my loathing for many seemingly innocuous witchcraft practices is not for nothing. It is because I hate Wicca, and everything related to and derived from it, and I have good reason to. Today I would like to introduce you to every single reason I have to loathe Wicca passionately, so that I can hopefully defer future debate partners to this post instead of retyping the same arduous messages.

What is Wicca?

Per the r/Wicca subreddit:

Wicca is a neopagan religion based on ancient pagan beliefs. It's an earth-based religion that believes in a God and Goddess as representative of a greater pantheistic godhead. Wicca includes a system of ethics and teaches that we all are ultimately responsible for our own actions. We believe in gods. We believe in magic. We believe in multiple realities. We practice alone, or in groups. We practice witchcraft.

I chose the r/Wicca subreddit for my first primer because it's easy to accuse people of misrepresenting a faith if you do not allow the community to speak for itself on what their faith constitutes. As much as I hate Wicca, and do not think it is redeemable, I have no desire to be accused of letting my hate set the tone of my arguments against it. I don't want to give militant Wiccans leeway to claim that I speak on their behalf and therefore my points are wrong. The Wicca subreddit is a large community and often referred to by Wiccans, and it features this brief description of 'The Craft'. In any case, though Wicca nowadays is divided and will be described slightly differently by everybody you ask about it, the description provided by the subreddit is a pretty good example of common ground between all Wiccans. That description mostly matches up with how the average Wiccan would describe their faith. My personal description of what Wicca is would look slightly different. I would take care to note, for one, that Wicca is a form of Western Esotericism, more specifically Western Occultism. [1] I also find it important to note that whether or not Wicca is an earth religion, or nature religion, is of some debate, and not all consider it such. What is also subject of some variation across traditions and individuals is whether or not The Craft is pantheistic: some people accept the two gods of Wicca as figureheads for every pagan god in existence, others simply worship them as one single masculine god and one single feminine god. 'Witchcraft' is also a term that has no set definition - I can only assume that the mention of it on r/Wicca intends to broadly refer to most or all forms of magic accepted within Wicca.

Worth noting is that Wicca has spread very far beyond the confines of British Traditional Wicca (BTW), which are streams of Wicca that still adhere strongly to their roots. What is and is not Wicca is something that is of some debate among Wiccans themselves. That's why I think it is highly important to establish a few definitions that we'll be using for the rest of this post:

WICCA: I'll admit to using this term loosely. When I say 'Wicca' in this post I'll mainly be referring to the community of people who consider themselves Wiccans, i.e. the Wiccan religion. I may also use it to describe the broader influence of Wicca, however.

WICCA-DERIVED: I'll mostly use this term when I don't want to paint something as being inherently Wiccan, just related to or derived from it. Wiccan practices often escape the bounds of their respective culture and then grow into staples of various traditions that aren't meant to be Wiccan at all. When referring to such things I'll refer to them as derived from Wicca, or similar.

Wicca's Origins

To understand the history of Wicca we have to travel back a bit further than its founding: to the 16th and 17th century Witch Hunts in Europe. I have another post on this same blog detailing the relationship between Wicca and the Witch Trials, which I highly recommend reading to get a better understanding of the accusations of antisemitism I will be making shortly. At any rate: the witch trials happened across Europe and its colonies throughout the early modern period, after a time of much disaster. As I state in my other article:

Before the early Church turned its hateful eye to the concept of 'witches,' it was firmly on jews. Jews, alongside other heretics and oppressed minorities like the Rroma, were considered utterly worthy of damnation. They were seen as antagonistic to the Church, going against everything the Church stood for, and furthermore as misanthropic, greedy, unreliable enemies. They were the scapegoats for many disasters and indeed frequently accused of practicing magic or poisoncrafting to invoke these disasters on the 'Good Christian Folk'. Furthermore, and this may sound familiar to you, jews were accused of 'consorting with the devil' and murdering children in order to consume their blood to mock the Eucharist, often referred to as blood libel. It was often claimed that this (nonexistent!) practice was done on the Shabbat, alongside other practices twisting and mocking those done in Church on Sunday. The persecution of Jews in Medieval Europe was horrific and seemingly endless, having origins in antiquity and reaching a peak during the Crusades, and another when the Plague ran rampant. Jews were banished, forced to convert to Christianity or brutally murdered, not infrequently by burning or strangulation.

It is fairly easy to see, with some research and critical thought, that it wouldn't logically be real witches being murdered during the witch hunts. For starters, it's hard to believe that there were really people out there flying through the sky on brooms, to mythical locations, to dance naked under the full moon, have sex with the devil, and cannibalize children. There were of course those people who confessed to having done such things, but they were under threat of torture. Indeed, this archetype of the 'witch' has its origins in the Church's loathing for non-Christians and heretics. As Lily Climenhaga states [2]:

"Magic" acted as a description for individuals or groups who did not subscribe to the perceived societal norms of the medieval Christian community. Jews and heretics, the principle Others within Medieval Europe, existed outside of the societal norms and played an important role in the formation of the Christian perception of witches and witchcraft. Common elements existed between stories surrounding Jews, heretics, and witches. These beliefs created the preliminary conditions necessary for the mass persecution and intolerance toward witches and became inherent to the idea of the witch as the diabolical Other within Medieval Christian thought.

Furthermore, the stereotypical image of the witch is directly derived from hateful depictions of the marginalized. The conical, wide brimmed hat that we often see a cartoon witch depicted with actually comes from the conical hat known as a judenhut (jew hat), which was compulsory for many jews to wear in the Middle Ages. [3] Then there is of course the typical red or black hair, short and stocky figure, buckled shoes, large hooked nose, green skin, et cetera. All of this to say: It was not witches being hunted during the witchcraze. There is no such thing as a human person able to fly on broomsticks, cause storms at will, magically steal money from a distance, and curse someone to death with one glance. The medieval and early modern 'witch' is a mythical figure used to justify the persecution and eradication of the already marginalized. This idea is fairly commonly accepted now, as it should be, but it wasn't always.

In 1828, German lawyer and professor Karl Ernst Jarcke proposed the witch-cult hypothesis: a now discredited theory that the people persecuted and murdered during the witch trials were not marginalized innocents, but rather members of a pan-European pagan religion. He posited that this pagan witch-cult was older than Christianity, but had been driven underground by it, and only came to light when the accused of the witch trials confessed to witchcraft. This hypothesis was affirmed and adapted by other scholars throughout the 19th century but remained of moderate popularity at best, until 20th century Egyptologist Margaret Murray became one of its most avid proponents, incorporating it into many of her works. Most notably, she featured it in 1921's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe and 1933's The God of the Witches. [1] Murray's writing is the origin of many Wiccan motifs, such as the thirteen member coven, the Horned God (based on the works of James Frazer) and the cross-quarterly gathering. Furthermore, as a radical skeptic and rationalist, Murray wished to strip the witch-cult hypothesis of all supernatural notions. [4] She claimed that the secret society of witches were not Satanists but nature-worshippers, and that the gatherings were actually orgies, where a priest dressed in ritual skins and horns fornicated with all the gathered women. She also proposed that these rituals were actually benevolent fertility rituals for the good of the witches' communities, and there was little to no malevolent magic involved. She was also the one to introduce the idea that the people who confessed to curses and other malevolent magic were actually witches who had forgotten their own original intent, or had been misinterpreted by the court. [5] Murray herself [5]:

For centuries both before and after the Christian era, the witch was both honoured and loved. Whether man or woman, the witch was consulted by all, for relief in sickness, for counsel in trouble, or for foreknowledge of forthcoming events. They were at home in the courts of Kings [...] their mystical powers gave them the authority for discovering culprits, who then received the appropriate punishment.

These writings were a turning point for the associations of the word 'witch'. Prior to these hypotheses, 'witch' was a bad word, an insult even, reserved only for people - especially women - believed to have evil intentions and use spiritual methods not sanctioned by the Church for their own benefit. The use of the word 'witch' nowadays, as a self-imposed title for anybody using any magical means, can be traced back to this pivotal moment in time. While Murray did great PR for the nonexistent witch archetype, erasing the idea that their practices were Satanic and supernatural, she unfortunately did much harm to marginalized peoples by propagating the idea that it was not them being persecuted, but some mythical clan. Therein lies my first problem: Wicca minimizes the impact of what it calls the 'Burning Times' on marginalized peoples and instead adopts all this suffering for itself, painting the 'witch' as a marginalized, oppressed, and beloathed historical figure, when it's the very people who would've been doing the burning who founded, shaped, and maintain Wicca. In doing so, it also adopts various words, like Sabbat(h), which is a word unique to Judaism and has been weaponized against Judaism since the Middle Ages. Despite much criticism, even from Murray's contemporaries, she was invited to write a highly influential piece for the Encyclopaedia Brittanica in 1929. She used the opportunity to promote her hypothesis as fact, and it quickly grew so influential that according to Jacqueline Simpson, the ideas got to be "so entrenched in popular culture that they will probably never be uprooted." [4] But we haven't even gotten into when Wicca was actually founded, so let's get to that.

One of, if not the only contemporary fan of Margaret Murray's hypothesis, was Folklore Society fellow Gerald Gardner. He was an interesting and well-travelled man, having come from a wealthy family, growing up with nursemaids and a family firm. As a result of his illnesses (namely asthma) and constant travels abroad during childhood, he never received a formal education, nor did he attend school. Instead, through his travels and family acquaintances, he developed quite the interest in spirituality. At first he developed an interest in the Buddhist beliefs of the Singhalese natives on his tea plantation, later in British and Celtic folklore from his relatives the Surgenesons. In his biography, it is revealed that it is from these relatives that he learns that his grandfather, Joseph, was rumored to be a practicing witch. [6] Different accounts of Gardner's life had it that it was also rumored within his family that a Scottish ancestor of his had been burned as a witch in 1610. [7] A few years after this time with the Surgenesons, Gardner was initiated as an Apprentice Freemason in Ceylon. He quickly rose in the ranks, but eventually lost interest in the Masonic activities and resigned in 1911, presumably because he wanted to leave Ceylon. [6] After this he moved around Asia a fair bit more, taking a great interest in Indigenous beliefs there, and even participating in some of their tattoo and ritual traditions. During this time of travel, Gardner also decided to take the Shahada, the Muslim confession of faith and, technically, final step in the process of becoming Muslim; but Gardner never became a practicing Muslim, mostly using the Shahada as a means to gain trust from the locals in Malaya. [7] In 1927, Gardner's father's health deteriorated, and he went back to Britain to visit him. During this time in Britain he researched various spiritual and religious movements, namely Spiritualism and Mediumship, and he reported many spiritual encounters with whom he interpreted as deceased family members. [6] [7] He attended many Spiritualist churches and seances, and had a number of spiritual experiences that, according to his biographer, changed his interest from a purely amateur anthropological one to one of genuine personal belief. [6] He became re-involved with Freemasonry, and started taking a serious interest in magic. When he, after his retirement, officially moved back to Britain, he started pursuing magic there with some seriousness. He became involved in such things as nudism, and, in September 1937, he requested a Doctorate of Philosophy (Ph. D) from the Meta Collegiate Extension of the National Electronic Institute, an organization based in Nevada. This organization was widely known for providing illegitimate degrees and diplomas through mail order, for a fee. After this he began to introduce and style himself as 'Dr. Gardner' despite having no academically recognized qualifications. [7]

He started allowing spirituality to shape his life, such as when he bought land on his beloved Cyprus because he came to believe that he had actually lived on the island before, in a past life. He wrote a book referencing this as well, influenced by his dreams: his first novel, A Goddess Arrives, followed a British man in the 1930s who had, in a past life, been a bronze age Cypriot. [7] When World War II became an imminent threat, Gardner and his wife moved to Highcliffe, just south of the New Forest, to escape potential bombings. [7] He becomes involved with the Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship, a magico-religious tradition in Western Esotericism. The Fellowship had been founded in 1920 by George Alexander Sullivan, based upon a blend of Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Freemasonry and his own personal innovations. [7] It requires mentioning that Western Esotericism and all of its more modern traditions (Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Freemasonry, Occultism, et cetera) are inseparable from white supremacy. This is something fairly well-recorded, if shrouded, and so complex I am hesitant to delve into it in great amounts of detail. It is, however, pivotal for the reader to understand that many of Western Esotericism's greatest thinkers from the Middle Ages onward were antisemites, racists, misogynists, colonialists, and even nazis. Western Esotericism also had a gigantic impact on 20th century race studies, and the idea that there was such a thing as a superior or aryan race. Defenders and fans of Western Esotericism are quick to point out that there are also many non-white thinkers in Western Esotericism that were pivotal to its formation, and I would never deny that. I am, however, denying that what Western Esotericism has turned into is productive. Having been founded upon the backs of indigenous and marginalized peoples, by appropriating their practices and denying their suffering, such as the appropriation of Kabbalah and the denial of the persecution of jews, shaped by men who were famously evil, such as Aleister Crowley, and used as pseudoscientific justification for some of mankind's greatest atrocities, I cannot stand with Western Esotericism. Ever. It is true that Western Esotericism has been the victim of white supremacy as well: Freemasons being persecuted and incarcerated as part of the 'jewish conspiracy' in Nazi Germany for example, but at the same time the connections between Esotericism and the nazi, half-Nordic, half-Hindu German Faith Movement cannot be denied. Folkish and Odinist 'traditions' find their roots in nazi occultism as well, as they sprang from the desire for a Pan-Germanic ethnic identity. These faiths persist to this day, attracting many different types of people and turning them into white supremacists or even neo-nazis.

Back to Gardner. During his time with the Rosicrucian Order he had also joined the Folklore society, where he published some works and became member of the governing council, where he was a distrusted man. He had also joined the Historical Association. [7] He ran into some quarrels and troubles with the Rosicrucian Order and found himself increasingly cynical of their practices, especially when Sullivan claimed that World War II would not come the very day before Britain declared war on Germany. [6] There was, however, a select group of people within the Order with whom he got along quite well. [7] Biographer Philip Heselton theorized upon who this group could be and claims they may have been Edith Woodford-Grimes, Susie Mason, her brother Ernie Mason, and their sister Rosetta Fudge, all of whom had originally come from Southampton before joining the Order in Highcliffe. Per Gardner himself: "unlike many of the others [in the Order], [they] had to earn their livings, were cheerful and optimistic and had a real interest in the occult". He was "really very fond of them", claiming he "would have gone through hell and high water even then for any of them." [6] It was these very people who took him to the house of a woman Gardner calls 'Old Dorothy' Clutterbuck, a wealthy local to the New Forest area. They, according to him, made him strip naked and take part in an initiation ritual, wherein he caught the words 'Wicca' and 'Wicce', which he recognized as the Old English words for witch. Though research by the likes of Hutton and Heselton shows that the New Forest Coven, as Gardner calls them, were likely only formed in the 1930s, Gardner took this experience as proof of the witch-cult hypotheses which he had learned about from Margaret Murray's writings. [7] Gardner spent a significant amount of time with them but only ever described one of their rituals in detail, one intended to ward off the Germans from coming to Britain. It is attested in both Bracelin's and Heselton's biographies. Gardner went on, after these events, to also become involved with druidry and be ordained as priest in the Ancient British Church, and he conducted some rituals according to the Lesser Key of Solomon with his nudist and occultist friends. [7] In 1947 Gardner was introduced to Aleister Crowley, a man of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the founding father of Thelema, a Western Occultist new religious movement. Crowley is one of those ubiquitous, evil figureheads in Western Esotericism that people prefer not to give too many words to. His history with occultism, racism, antisemitism, misogyny, and sexual abuse is too vast to summarize in one paragraph. Still, Thelema persists to this day, as do Crowley apologists. Crowley elevated Gardner to the IV° of Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) and issued a charter decreeing that Gardner could admit people into its Minerval degree. The charter was written in Gardner's handwriting and only signed by Crowley. [6] [7] [8] When Crowley passed away, Gardner appointed himself the leader of the O.T.O.. He would, however, lose interest in leading the O.T.O. within a few years. [7] During this time Gardner also travelled through America, especially in hopes of learning about Voodoo and Hoodoo. [7]

Gardner wished to spread his newly founded Wiccan religion, and wrote another work of fiction in order to do so. He described various Wiccan rituals in this book as 'High Magic' and based it heavily on the Solomonic Keys. He was also working on a scrapbook which he did not intend to publish, which he called 'Ye Bok of Ye Art Magical'. Therein he wrote down various Wiccan rituals and ceremonies, and this book would later form as the prototype for the Wiccan Book of Shadows, a term he himself coined. He claimed the book to be of ancient origins to his followers. During this time he also gained his first initiates, and the first covens were formed. [7] During this initial time of true organized religion, Gardner ran into several problems. People important to him left his faith due to his actions with the press, and he had quarrels with some members who recognized that many of his rituals and such had been adapted straight from Thelema. [4] In 1954, Gardner wrote arguably the most influential work on Wicca: Witchcraft Today. It was his first non-fiction work, and contained a preface by Margaret Murray, the woman who had popularized the witch-cult hypothesis on which Wicca was built. In this book, Gardner praised Murray's theories, and added some of his own: namely that the European belief in faeries was actually because of a hidden pygmy race living alongside mankind, and that the Knights Templar were actually initiates into The Craft. [7] After this, Gardner started cultivating larger scale attention for Wicca. He invited the press to write about his religion, and most of the tabloid articles produced painted him and his cult in a negative light. They were made out to be devil worshippers, cultists, et cetera. Nevertheless, Gardner persisted, and encouraged the press to write more. He thought the publicity, even if negative, would help prevent the 'Old Religion', as he called it, from dying out. [7] [8]

In 1960, Gardner's official biography, Gerald Gardner: Witch, was published. It was penned in its entirety by Gardner's friend Idries Shah, a Sufi mystic, but Shah used the name of one of Gardner's High Priests, Jack L. Bracelin, because he was wary of being associated with witchcraft. In 1963, Gardner visited Lebanon. On his way home, he had a heart attack on ship, en route to Tunisia. He was buried there, the funeral only attended by the ship's captain. [9] Many authors have speculated on Gardner's life since his passing. Though he was devoted to his only wife, Donna, it was claimed that Gardner spent many evenings 'cuddling up' to a young High Priestess named Dayonis. Biographer Philip Heselton claims that Gardner had a longterm affair with Edith Woodford-Grimes, nicknamed Dafo by Gardner. This theory was affirmed by Adrian Bott. [10] Gardner was one of, or possibly the first person to use what Wiccans know as a 'Craft name', a magical name used for magico-religious purposes in Wicca. Gardner was known as Scire by his followers. Reportedly, Wicca was not known as Wicca at the time of its initial development. Gardner often referred to his adherents as 'the Wica', but the religion was only ever referred to as 'Witchcraft', capital W.

In Wicca's founding lies my second problem with it. Wicca was founded by a white man, based on a combination of Western Esoteric notions and experiences, Spiritualism, Mediumship, appropriation of indigenous European, Asian and even American spirituality. It was built on a hypothesis that denies the suffering of marginalized peoples and claims it for nonmarginalized, white, privileged Europeans instead. It poses itself as something with roots in academics, while the founder had never enjoyed any form of education and possessed a fake PhD. It was influenced heavily by cults, occultists who are generally acknowledged to be terrible people, and pseudoscience. It claims to be ancient, but was founded in the 1900s. And, importantly, it contributes heavily to white supremacy through the idea of a pan-European cultural identity and pan-European pagan religion.

Wicca Today: Innocuous Propagation of White Supremacy

Wicca has grown exponentially since its founding, now being by far the largest pagan religion actively being practiced in the modern era. It has both organized covens and solitary adherents across the world, and most people who have access to the internet will have heard of Wicca once or twice. Wicca is, truly and undeniably, inescapable in pagan and magical spaces. It's easy, and common, for adherents to claim that Wicca is not what it once was. 'Yeah, the origins are bad, but that doesn't make the whole Craft bad,' is a favored argument against the idea that Wicca's origins make it inherently irredeemable. I disagree strongly with this, and always will; something that was built with bricks made of appropriation and lies can't be separated from those evils. If you took the appropriation out of Wicca, it would cease to be Wicca. Deconstructing Wicca would leave you with a blend of Freemasonry, Thelema, folk magic, Christianity, various Indigenous beliefs, Kabbalah, Occultism, and some misrepresented paganism. If you take the appropriation and harm out of Wicca, it simply ceases to exist. Nevertheless, many people think Wicca can be separated from its evil origins. That's why in this section of the article, I'd like to delve into why that is not true, and how Wicca continues to do harm in this day and age.

For starters, of course, Wicca has not ceased to be appropriative simply because time has passed. Rather, the appropriation gets increasingly less attention, until it becomes so integral to the Craft that people don't even notice or stop to think that it may have come from somewhere that never wanted it to be taken in the first place. A prime example, which I've already touched on very briefly, is the use of the word 'sabbat', in reference to 'Wiccan' holidays. As I wrote in my other post about this topic:

The very root of this word is the Hebrew ש־ב־ת (sh-b-t). It is the root word for many words pertaining to rest and not working (or more broadly: 'cessation'). This word evolved into שַׁבָּת (shabát), which translates to Saturday or weekly rest-day, normally. This word, also often spelled Shabbos from Ashkenazi Hebrew, travelled through various antique languages (Ancient Greek -> Latin -> Old French) directly to Middle English, where it became 'Sabat', and later Sabbath. While this word, in its travel through Europe, has influenced some words, you'll notice that it has also stayed one unique word, with a unique meaning: the Jewish Rest Day. The Sabbath, Shabbos, Sabbat, Shabat, et cetera, will always and has for most of its history been the word uniquely reserved for Saturday in Judaism. To those not very well read on Judaism, it may be helpful to know that Judaism is what is considered a closed practice. It is only permissible to practice Jewish religious tradition, and to a large extent, Jewish culture, if you are a Jewish convert. By extension, that should clue you in on the nature of the word and holiday of Shabbat.

This word, which should have stayed what it was meant to be, a word for the Jewish rest day, first became associated with the archetypal witch during the late Medieval period, when jews, and later witches, were accused of going to Sabbaths or Synagogues to perform evil rituals. Though there were attempts by the likes of Margaret Murray to claim that the word 'sabbat(h)' as used by 'witches' was not in any way related to Judaism, those claims have been strongly disputed. Murray claimed in her 1921 book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe that 'sabbat' actually came from Old French s'esbattre, meaning to frolic and amuse oneself. This theory has no proof, nor is it readily academically received or accepted. The word in conjunction with witchcraft is deeply hurtful to Judaism and jewish people across the globe, as it reminds them of the persecution they faced when their faith and culture was considered evil and worth being killed over. I highly recommend reading Why I Don't Call Them Sabbats, Why You Should Stop, and Other Thoughts on Problematic Aspects of Western Witchcraft by Nile Sorena for more thoughts on this topic, as well as Jews and the Witchcraze by Jewitches.

The Wheel of the Year, the cycle of yearly Wiccan holidays (the very ones referred to as 'sabbats', which I refuse to do and will not start doing), is just as appropriative as the use of the word sabbat, but, hilariously, it is also quite magically and religiously dysfunctional. The Wheel of the Year is a Wiccan invention, initially based on the works of James Frazer, Robert Graves and Margaret Murray, the latter of whom was a big proponent of the theory that 'witches' gathered on cross-quarterly days, something that is still a big motif in Wicca. These theories were adopted by neopaganism by Gardner's Bricket Wood Coven and the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, a neo-Druidic group founded by Ross Nichols. Supposedly, these people harmonized the eight primarily holidays described by the former academics to create an easy-to-use calendar for neopagans in Britain. [11] In the 1970s, prolific Wiccan Aidan Kelly gave names to some of the previously unnamed Wiccan equinoxes (Mabon and Ostara) and the Wiccan summer solstice (Litha). [12] This leaves us with the contemporary wheel of the year, which looks like this:

There are many reasons I find the Wheel of the Year appropriative and dysfunctional. For starters, Wiccan lore claims that the spokes-on-a-wheel structure is borrowed from Celtic mythology, but there is no evidence that Celtic myth ever depicted the passing of time as a wheel. Nevertheless, there is no inherent problem with viewing the passing of time as a wheel; cycles are very important in paganism across Europe. More cumbersome than the supposedly ancient wheel structure, is the combination of pagan holidays from various only passively related cultures. Beltane (Bealtaine), Lughnasadh, Samhain, and Imbolc are Celtic; specifically Gaelic. They all work well in conjunction, and were historically celebrated by the same people(s) throughout their years. Yule is Germanic, being celebrated by the Norse, continental Germanic, and Anglo-Saxon peoples. It was not in any way historically related to the four primary Celtic festivals, and doesn't work in conjunction with them very well, as many things that made Yule significant to the Germanic peoples, were celebrated during Samhain by the Gaels. Mabon is a contrived festival, filling an autumnal gap. The Germanic peoples did not have a specialized holiday for the autumn equinox, nor did the Celts, so Wiccans filled this gap with a 'lesser Sabbat' in the 1960s, named 'Mabon' by Aidan Kelly in the 1970s. [12] It was named for Mabon ap Modron, a figure in Brythonic mythology. As Wicca is wont to do, it paints itself and its traditions as incredibly ancient and cultural, and Mabon is no exception to this rule. Wiccans generally paint Mabon as a 'Celtic harvest festival' filled with rich traditions of sacrifice and preparation for winter, but factually, nothing is less true. Mabon (ap Modron) as a deity has nothing whatsoever to do with the autumn equinox, and there is no solid record of consistent autumn equinox festivities as celebrated by the Celts (nor by the Germanic peoples, for that matter). Noteworthy also is that on top of this usage of the name of Mabon for an unrelated festival often being deemed appropriation by Welsh and other Gaelic people, additional offense is often taken to the likening of the 'Mabon' celebrations to Thanksgiving, as many leftist people involved in Celtic culture have no respect for, nor wish to be associated with, colonialism. Ostara is an almost equally contrived festival, based on a single attestation by a Christian in England, Bede, who claimed in his work The Reckoning of Time that there was an Anglo-Saxon goddess named Ēostre, to whom a spring feasts were dedicated during the month of Ēosturmōnaþ (modern April). Litha, too, finds its origins in Bede's The Reckoning of Time. Per Aidan Kelly himself:

Summer was also rather easy. The Saxon calendar described by Bede was lunisolar. It usually had twelve months, but in the third, fifth, and last month of an 8-year cycle, a 13th month was added to keep it (more or less) in sync with the solar years. The last and first months in the calendar were named Foreyule and Afteryule, respectively, and obviously framed the holiday of Yule. The sixth and seventh month were named Forelitha and Afterlitha; furthermore, when the thirteenth month was added, it went in between them, and the year was then called a Threelitha. Obviously, by analogy with Yule, the summer solstice must have been called Litha. (I later discovered that Tolkien had figured this out also.)

Now, there is nothing wrong with being inspired by various open, European cultures and using that inspiration to create something new. Traditions don't have to be centuries old to be valid. What makes this thing that Wicca does appropriation, is that it refuses to acknowledge its traditions as modern, and its inspirations as cultural. This started way back in its origins, when Murray popularized the witch-cult hypothesis and Gardner espoused it, and it survives into the modern day with Wiccans either refusing to admit or pointedly ignoring the fact that their traditions are modern and were established in the modern period.

Wicca also breeds tolerance for cultural (mis)appropriation. When one is not taught to feel any animosity toward appropriation like the use of the word 'sabbat(h)' outside of its original context, even when the usage of the word is of active detriment to the people to whom the word originally belonged, one will feel confident doing other, similar appropriation elsewhere as well. This is why you'll often notice that it is Wiccans, and people who practice Wiccan-derived practices, who end up appropriating such things as white sage, dreamcatchers, sound bowls, reiki, et cetera. Some of those things should never be used by people who are not native to the culture those things come from, such as white sage, which is not only strictly closed but also a severely endangered plant; others are open to foreigners, but should be treated with respect and acknowledged as belonging to a certain culture. Wiccans who readily appropriate such things are often unable or unwilling to provide substantial information on where those practices or items come from and why they should be within their rights to have them, except through arguments which minimize the cultural value of something. A great example of this is this famed argument: "white sage can't be closed, it's a plant. Plants belong to the earth, and the earth belongs to everyone. I should be allowed to use white sage." Ignoring the fact that white sage is endangered and white sage in stores is generally poached, which entirely negates the 'respecting the earth' aspect of that argument, this argument also diminishes the cultural importance of white sage to Native Americans.

A different reason that appropriation runs rampant in Wiccan communities is, actually, white supremacy. The goal of white supremacy is to homogenize the white race into a single white cultural and ethnic identity, so that all white people may band together and rule over the inferior races, as it were. People think that white supremacy has to be quite drastic, only recognizing it in such things as fascism and neo-nazism, but in actuality, white supremacy is propagated in many far more innocuous ways. The wish to eradicate minority languages, various conspiracy theories about aliens, many commonly accepted forms of pseudoscience, and many forms of cultural appropriation that are popular to this day are huge cultivators of white supremacy. Something does not need to explicitly state, or even have the intent or desire to create a homogenous white ethnic identity to further white supremacy. This topic is so vast and complex it is impossible to summarize in any effective way in this post, which is why I encourage all magical practitioners and pagans to see witchcraft as highly intersectional an do their research about white supremacy and other harmful ideologies that survive in western spirituality to this day. Folkism and Odinism are great examples of not explicitly, but undeniably white supremacist spiritual organizations that further white supremacy by attempting to create a universal Germanic (and then European) cultural and ethnic identity. Wicca also engages a lot with the idea of various pan-European identities. This is particularly visible in two ways: one, the idea that there is a pan-European witch-cult that has survived from prehistory into the modern age. Magic, throughout Europe, as well as paganism throughout Europe, is highly variable and culturally dependent. Though it follows many of the same themes, as it does mostly have its roots in Proto-Indo-European common origins, it is distinctly different. If Europe had one, shared, culture, our world would look very different. Indeed, Europe is just as culturally diverse as any other place, even if nowadays (thanks to white supremacy) that is harder to see. There is not and never has been one singular secret society of witches in Europe. Instead, folk magic, which is culturally and linguistically dependent, and extremely variable across Europe, has survived under the radar of the church into the modern era, and it is one of Europe's most beautiful assets when it comes to illustrating our cultural richness. The second way that Wicca propagates pan-European identities is through their dual divinity system. Wicca's divinities, the Great Horned God and the Triple Goddess, who both are also, in turn, appropriated from Gaulish and Celtic lore respectively, are often said to be a sort of figurehead for all pagan divinities and serve as a sort of shorthand way to worship them all, in a soft pantheist way. The Horned God or Lord, the divine masculine, represents all male pagan gods, and his counterpart represents all female pagan gods as the Divine Feminine. Now, pantheism is not inherently problematic, but when one tries to reduce every pagan divinity in existence, gods which all have wildly different cultural and historic backgrounds, to two deities, without even being so courteous as to make those deities liminal and featureless, I fear that does turn into a problem. No, it is not possible to worship every single pagan god in existence by paying respects to just two deities who are mostly modern inventions. Every deity and every religion, every culture, has distinct needs, requirements, and ways of paying respect, and attempting to reduce all of that to the idea that two gods can serve as a prism and replacement for all the gods which have ever existed is a major flaw to this religion as well as a serious indicator of a strong tie to white supremacy.

But there is another problem to the dual divinity system of Wicca, which is gender essentialism. On top of cultural variability being completely forsaken by this prism-pantheistic idea, it also completely fails to acknowledge that there are many deities across Europe and across the globe which do not conform to the gender binary. The abrahamic God Himself is a great example, but so is Loki, a deity who is oddly well-beloved by Wiccans despite the religion's bioessentialist nature. So are Hermaphroditus from Hellenic myth, various South American divinities, even deities in Tagalog lore. As a matter of fact, gender-neutral depictions of divinity have been found on Celtic gold. [13] Divinity itself, as a concept, has no gender. Rejecting the gender binary has also been crucial to magic and witchcraft across Europe, see for example crossdressing being a prerequisite to successful Seidhr practices, and the associations of men practicing seidhr with unmanliness and even homosexuality. [14] Rejecting the gender binary was a powerful act when it came to magical skill, as it furthered ones journey into the liminal and undefined, the strange and 'other', which is where all manner of magical creatures resided. In fact, the residents of the Otherworld, the Faeries themselves, are not too keen on gender binary. The Divine Male archetype of aggressor, protector, avenger and ruler is one that, in Faery Courts, is generally represented by the Queen, not the King. If there even is a King. I find this ironic, considering Wicca's desire to be closely associated with Celtic mythology and antiquity. The concept of Divine Femininity and Divine Masculinity is also directly contradictory to feminism. To attempt to reduce a woman to nothing but the soft, sensual, sagely, nurturing caretaker is undeniably misogynistic. The idea of a Divine Masculine, too, is antifeminist, though only in the sense that it is entirely patriarchal. Men are leaders, providers, and warriors, according to the gender essentialist archetypes that the Divine Feminine and Masculine reference. This is harmful to men, as well, because it places them in the position of needing to be manly and invulnerable at all times, much to the complaint of both men and women in the modern age. It is simply unproductive and anti-feminist, in a way that is hard to ignore. The bioessentialism of Wicca goes beyond just the Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine archetypes of their deities, however. There is a strong emphasis within Wicca on depictions of genitalia, and many Wiccan authors and figureheads draw comparisons between really any long object and a phallus, believing that everything in magic has to eventually circle back to fertility. Wands are phallic, athames are phallic. The average Wiccan supply store will have penis shaped candles, penis carvings of various crystals. Wicca propagates bioessentialism the likes of which are not seen in any other form of paganism, not even historic paganism. This attitude towards the nonconforming and emphasis on the gender and sex binary make many people feel excluded from Wicca. Trans people, nonbinary people, really any queer or gay person, of any sort, can experience Wicca as a hostile environment. Wiccans may argue that it isn't transphobic by saying that they are including both sexes and never intentionally exclude trans, gay and nonconforming individuals, but what they fail to realize is that the binary, any binary, is outdated. There are more than two gender identities, and there are more than two sexes. Intersex people can never feel included when the religion so heavily affirms that there is, or should be, only penis and vulva.

Furthermore, Gardner himself was a flagrant homophobe, and well-known for it. Lois Bourne, a High Priestess of the Bricket Wood Coven, Gardner's own coven, wrote this about him: [15]

Gerald was homophobic. He had a deep hatred and detestation of homosexuality, which he regarded as a disgusting perversion and a flagrant transgression of natural law ... "There are no homosexual witches, and it is not possible to be a homosexual and a witch" Gerald almost shouted. No one argued with him.

Wicca Tomorrow: Cultural Erasure and Loss

Admittedly, none of what I've said so far has truly captured my biggest, and primary, reason for hating Wicca as much as I do. Other than the fact that I myself am indigenous, and have felt the effects of white supremacy, cultural erasure, and homogenization of white peoples all my life, other than the fact that I am queer and in a gay relationship, other than the fact that I have family who were victims of the holocaust, other than the fact that I am, at my core, an intersectional, radical leftist - the thing I hate the most about Wicca is its potential. Not potential for greatness, mind. I hate Wicca's potential for destruction. I already get to witness it in action every day, and it strikes fear into my heart like nothing else.

I, personally, have always believed that the first antidote to white supremacy, in an ironic but poetic spin, is love for one's own culture. White supremacy, in an attempt to make the white man feel at home in his whiteness and like he has one thing (superiority) in common with all other white men, strips him from his local culture. He is forced to view himself as part of something great, something that spans all of Europe, or all of Germania, or what have you, and he is made to turn a blind eye to what he already has. Local culture. His language, more specifically even, his dialect. His mother's lilt, and his father's flowery cadence. His neighbors. Their celebrations, their cooking traditions. His city. Its architecture, its communal sites, its judicial system. His land. Its medicines, its foods, its magics. The animals upon it. His companions, his livestock, rarely even his foes. Everything a person truly needs is within walking distance when in nature. Every ecosystem is equipped with everything we could possibly need, from a varied diet, to our medicines, to our shelters, to our hygiene products, all the way to the very things that keep us in check. That is not coincidence: we were grown, woven fiber by fiber by that land, that soil, over thousands, millions, billions of years. We do not need the whole world, there is no reason to try to conquer it. But we want to colonize, and so we must make larger and larger teams, clans, armies, races. The man from Truthan must become Cornish, then Celtic, then English, then British, then European, then white, then better. He would have been better off, happier, had he stayed Cornish.

In the worldwide community of people who take an amateur and personal interest in magic and paganism, Wicca is white supremacy's most effective tool in stripping people of their local culture. Wicca did not become this by design; shoddy and evil though its origins may be, I do not think Wicca was created with the intention of homogenizing and radicalizing the white race. However, in the 1950s, when all cultural magic in Europe were flying low under the radar of the church, hiding in families, in villages, in cookbooks and journals, in visits to the local keening woman to cure the evil eye the neighbor gave your cow, Wicca was the first community, first organized religion, to wave a flag and loudly and proudly proclaim to be pagan, to be witches. To do magic. It was the first to associate itself with those labels and voluntarily take them on, to be known by them. Through this singular association with those terms, it became the first thing people thought of when they thought about magic. Because the magic of the common people, the folk magic, is never termed magic by the ones doing it. "This rowan stick in my windowsill against lightning? Magic? You mean that stuff those witches in London do?" Nowadays, as the first form of magic and paganism to go mainstream in Europe since Christianity's taking over, Wicca is ubiquitous when the amateur goes to research magic and paganism. When the internet came along, this became a bigger problem than it may already have been before the digital age. Now, when people are introduced to the concept of modern magic and paganism, when they go to research it, they will only find Wicca. Not for utter lack of sources on (other) cultural magic, on the contrary: there are plenty, but one needs to use specific key words to find them. More scientific, more academic, more secular. When one wants to research cultural and specific magic, one must assume the author does not believe himself, nor does he believe you do. Wicca, however, has resources that do assume the researcher is interested in practicing, which is yet another reason that people go to Wicca rather than something else. They won't find the folk magic, and if they do, it won't be as comprehensive, accessible, entertaining, and personable as Wicca. Wicca will always win, because it was never challenged in the first place. This has led to a huge disparity in the amount of people who know about and/or practice Wicca, and the amount of people who know about and/or practice folk magic and/or cultural paganism. And as Wicca gains more and more popularity, both because it was always set up for success by chance, and because it subtly purveys white supremacy in a way that most people do not even recognize, it will continue to smother cultural, traditional, and folk magic.

Wicca's Reach: Contemporary Magic

Many people who would not consider themselves, or do not identify as Wiccan, still get called that by me in an intentionally derivative way. Not usually to their faces, but when I am discussing reasons why I do not like Wicca, I find it hard to draw a substantial, or even relevant, line between people who identify as Wiccans, and people who do not identify as such but still, functionally, are. Due to Wicca's chokehold on the first several pages of Google when you look up most things pertaining to magic, most practitioners of magic are essentially Wiccan without the label. They do not associate with Wicca intentionally, but they have no idea how to access, or any awareness of the existence of folk magic resources, and so end up practicing the magic Wicca teaches. In witching communities, well-known Wiccan authors are considered staples to read, such as Scott Cunningham. Authors that do not call themselves Wiccan (anymore) but do promote the magic are just as popular, such as Arin Murphy-Hiscock and Nathan M. Hall. These authors all have the same fatal flaw, which makes them Wiccans and automatically unreliable in my eyes: they promote the very idea which Wicca all but created, that there is one, single, universal way to do magic. That you, a Hawai'i Native living on the Islands, will do the best magic you've ever done with this set of European herbs that do not grow on your own soil. With this set of half-baked, appropriative Laws and methods, contrived out of a mishmash of appropriated indigenous practices and European traditions; like the Threefold Law, which is nothing but a cheap and terrible misinterpretation of the Dharmic concept of Karma. Except Wicca doesn't call them that. It calls the herbs staples, essentials. It calls the half-baked rules Ardanes and Magical Theory. Nothing is more ironic to me than a supposed nature religion telling people to forsake the nature around them in favor of the 'universal subsitute' Rosemary (salvia rosmarinus), a plant they've never even seen in real life save for in the jar in their spice cabinet.

Nowadays, thanks to the omnipresence of Wicca, there is a whole new magical tradition, yet unnamed. It consists of all those secular practitioners of magic who do all of their research via resources actually pandering to practitioners, all those people who claim 'we are the daughters of the witches you couldn't burn', all those people who have never heard of or hardly ever think about magic that isn't 'witchcraft'. I like to refer to it as 'contemporary magic', or sometimes 'modern magic', in a context where the label contemporary could be cause for confusion. This 'modern magic' is that more-or-less universal, monotone, Wiccan derived, secular magic that most people would term 'witchcraft'. The magic you see on TikTok. The spell jar magic. The cord-cutting magic. The lemon hex magic. The 'spiritual but not religious' magic. The sound bowl and smoke cleanse magic. The light and love magic. The 'white' magic. Magick. This magic is not culture-less, not at all. It is its own culture, as it were, and not only that, most of the spells, rituals and rules it has have their origins in European culture. But this magic is, in a way, anti-culture. Colonial. It smothers and endangers local magic, more relevant magic, and spreads like wildfire because it is so easy to never have to research beyond Wicca. What makes this modern magic inherently harmful is that it, too, is appropriative. The resources that provide you with this magic, which like the religion that sprouted it, is a huge, sometimes dysfunctional and clashing mosaic of culture, do not actually inform you of the origins of any of the practices that they teach you. They teach you what to do, how to do it, what materials to use, et cetera, but they don't teach you where these rituals came from, why these plants had those associations, what culture sprang this curse. And contrary to popular belief, those things are crucial to magic. The cultures at hand deserve to be honored for what they've given, and every culture has the right to be preserved. Culture is important elsewhere, but it is fundamental to magic. Magic cannot exist without culture. Gods are nothing but a lens to view the world through, magic is nothing but a response to struggle in a language that every human shares: the language of wonder and learning. Magic, at its core, is nothing but humanity's ability to feel amazed, and learn from the elegant language the earth speaks to us. And it is propagated by our ability to speak, to share, to teach to one another. Mother to daughter, brother to sister, chieftain to peasant, wife to warrior. Carry this, eat that. Don't do this, don't go there. Wicca does not acknowledge this importance of culture, nor does it make any efforts to teach the practitioners of it and its derivatives what cultures it was built on and off of. That is the crux and definition of cultural appropriation.

Wicca will continue to spread. I think one of my toxic traits is that I resigned myself to this idea a long time ago, much like how many people resign themselves to the idea of white supremacy or climate change. I can't help but see Wicca and the damage it does as irreversible. Wicca occupies the first pages of any google search about magic, the first thought anyone has when you self-identify as a pagan or practitioner of magic. 'Witch' as a word is completely different than it once was, as is the word sabbat. It feels inescapable, and this weighs heavily on me as somebody whose culture, too, is growing lost in part due to the priority of Wicca over cultural magic. I started writing this post in hopes of getting out all my grievances with this tradition. Ten thousand words and a great many sources later, the wound Wicca carved into me when I realized people would choose it over the valuable cultural knowledge I have and want to preserve no longer throbs, it just aches emptily. If this post manages to change one person's mind on Wicca, it has done its job, and I can die happily. If this post motivates one person to look beyond Wicca and glance at the rich and wild world of cultural magic, especially their own culture, I'll spend eternity in the afterlife gloating.

If there was one thing I wanted the reader to take away from this post, it is not that they should hate Wicca and actively fight to eradicate it. It is that culture is beautiful. All cultures are beautiful. There is no such thing as 'white culture' and we should strive to dismantle that, but the way to do that is to acknowledge the real culture. British culture, English culture, Cornish culture. Low Saxon culture. Silesian culture. Yakutian culture. Tibetan culture. Qazaq culture. Yup'ik culture. Irish culture. Amazigh culture. Cree culture. Sámi culture. Maori culture. Aymaran culture. Muscogee culture. Zulu culture. Find what is rightfully yours, because no matter who or where you are, there is culture in your ancestry, and there is culture in your neighborhood. You are entitled to it like you are entitled to air and water. Learn about the plants that are native to your area. Learn about the medicines your peoples used when conventional medicine was not available to them. Learn about their faith before Christianity, learn about the way they thought the universe came to be and what made humans human. Eat cultural foods, both yours and not. Talk to your elders, and really listen to what they say. Try to remember the weird superstitions and turns of phrase you grew up with. I promise it's there, and I promise it's beautiful. I promise it will make you feel at home.

In the following weeks I will try my best to dedicate some posts to the beginnings of folk magic. How to get involved, where to look for resources, what makes a good resource, what keywords to use when searching, what to do when it feels like there's nothing out there for you, how to find which culture you are a part of. Until then, I will leave you with my sincerest gratitude for reading this ridiculously long complaint.

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Doyle White, Ethan (2016). Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. 

Climenhaga, L. (2012). Imagining the Witch: A Comparison between Fifteenth-Century Witches within Medieval Christian Thought and the Persecution of Jews and Heretics in the Middle Ages. Constellations, 3(2). 

“The Dehumanization and Demonization of the Medieval Jews.” Medieval Antisemitism?, by François Soyer, Arc Humanities Press, Leeds, 2019, pp. 45–66.

Simpson, Jacqueline (1994). Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her, and Why? Folklore, 105:1-2: 89-96.

Murray, Margaret Alice (1933). The God of the Witches. S. Low, Marston & Company, Limited.

Bracelin, Jack (1960). Gerald Gardner: Witch. Octagon.

Heselton, Philip (2012a). Witchfather: A Life of Gerald Gardner. Loughborough, Leicestershire: Thoth.

Valiente, Doreen (2007) [1989]. The Rebirth of Witchcraft. London: Robert Hale.

"Britain's chief witch dies at sea". News of the World. 23 February 1964. Archived from the original on 8 September 2018.

Heselton, Philip (2003). Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration: An Investigation Into the Sources of Gardnerian Witchcraft. Capall Bann.

Lamond, Frederic (2004), Fifty Years of Wicca, Sutton Mallet, England: Green Magic, pp. 16–17.

Kelly, Aidan. About Naming Ostara, Litha, and Mabon. Including Paganism. Patheos.

Ambiguous Deities on Celtic Gold, Numismatic News. February 27, 2023.

Price, Neil (2002). The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. Uppsala: Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University.

Bourne, Lois (2006). Dancing with Witches. London: Robert Hale. p. 38.

[elegantshapeshifter]

Hey!! I want to know more about Traditional Witchcraft.

I have been reading Aradia and the Gospel of Witches and I want to know if there is a Northwestern European, British or Scottish idea of Aradia and her mother and father??

Thank you so much!! I can’t wait to convert to the Traditional Witch Path!

Aradia is Herodias, which is, according to Carlo Ginzburg, a Christianization of the Goddess Hera, but according to Sabina Magliocco, also a remains of Hecate, because she flights in the night.

She is a Deity which is not only Italian, but pan-European, in fact in the Canon Episcopi we read about women who dreamt/imagined to fly with both Diana and Herodias.

Herodias became Redodesa in Veneto, Araja/Arada/Sa Rejusta in Sardinia, Arada and Irodeasa in Romania, and so on.

The point is that probably she wasn't always the daughter of Diana, but assimilated/synchretized to her. In fact, Herodias is actually the name of the mother of Salomé, which in the Gospels killed John the Baptist. In the medieval folklore he blows from the mouth of the cut head and from that moment on Salomé is condamned to fly forever, especially in the night. In many folklore tales, both the mother and the daughter, Salomé and Herodias, are seen together, and Herodias of the Canon is actually Salomé called with her mother's name.

Probably, therefore, the legend that Leland writes and re-elaborates to create the Aradia (because the original legends are found both in Etruscan Roman Remains and in Legends of Florence, so we know that Aradia is just a re-elaboration of original folk legends from Florence and Tuscany-Romagna region) is influenced by this idea of Salomé seen with her mother Herodias. So Salomé (called Herodias for the medieval conflation and mispelled Aradia by the people) is the daughter of Diana like she is the daughter of Herodias in other legends (and in the original Gospel tale).

We also have the original legend about Diana seducing his brother, but here there is no daughter, and instead of going to the "Fathers and Mothers of the beginning", in the original tale she goes to other witches.

Moreover, in the original tale from Legends of Florence, the brother isn't called by name.

However, in many trials in Northern Italy, the Domina Nocturna (ex. Lady of the Game) is paired with the Devil. Moreover, many folk magicians in Italy prayed to the "Star Diana"... which is Lucifer. So Lucifer is both the Devil and Diana herself, and the Devil could be associated with Diana as his partner because the same happened to the Lady of the Game (and overseas with the Queen of Elphame).

We also know from The Strix by Della Mirandola that nearby the areas in which Leland found the folktales from which he will elaborates to make the Aradia, people still associated Diana with the Moon. So if Diana is the Moon, for symmetry Lucifer should be the Sun.

So this brother for symmetry could be seen as both the Devil and associated with the Sun, but also with stars for the Stella Diana which is Lucifer. In fact, in Aradia he is the God of the Sun, the Light and the Stars.

So Diana is associated with Aradia for the Salomé-Herodias pair and with Lucifer because of the Stella Diana, the pair with the Devil and the folk idea that the Sun is the brother of the Moon.

However, Lucifer is still a name for Apollo, even in Orphic Hymns (where it's Phosphoros), but I don't think it's been done willingly, it's a coincidence, or better a synchronicity.

For the British context, in Sir Orpheo, Dame Heurodis is kidnapped by the King of Fairies, and Heurodis is a variation of Herodias.

Also the Canon is quoted a lot in Britain while they talk about the idea of the Fairy Queen or Queen of Elphame.

So probably in Great Britain both Diana and Herodias are synchretized with the Queen of Elphame. The Queen, which is usually called Nicnevin (or Titania/Mab in Shakespeare) is the spouse of the King of Elphame, Oberon, who is sometimes demonized, and sometimes is also called Christsonday.

I hope having answered :)

[breelandwalker]

Hello! I was wondering if you have any resources on changelings in folklore/history, or even just on fae in general? I've been eyeing fae magic for a few years now and am now thinking of taking up study of the topic in earnest. Love ur blog btw, and can't wait for the book!

I don't work with the Good Neighbors myself and fairy magic isn't my area of expertise, but I do have a few older books of related lore and folktales I can direct you to:

British Goblins, Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions, by Wirt Sikes (1880)

Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, Edited and Selected by W. B. Yeats (1888)

Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, by Thomas Crofton Croker (1827)

The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, by W.Y. Evans-Wentz (1911)

The Fairy Mythology, by Thomas Keightley (1870)

The Magic of the Middle Ages, by Viktor Rydberg (1865)

The Origins of Popular Superstitions and Customs, by T. Sharper Knowlson (1910)

The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies, by Robert Kirk (written 1691, pub. in print 1893)

West Irish Folk-Tales and Romances, by William Larminie (1893)

All of these titles are in the public domain and should be available for free on sites like Project Gutenberg or Global Grey Ebooks. (There may also be some other titles there that you can use for historical lore reference.)

While they may not be resources for modern versions of fae magic, they definitely provide a lot of background information that was written and published BEFORE the rise of modern witchcraft, which means the authors were just recording the folklore as they found it, rather than trying to bend it into a witchy shape. (It's pretty much invariably viewed through a Christian lens, but one should keep in mind that this is part of the culture of the countries of origin when it comes to fairies and spirits.)

I also have this list of JSTOR articles related to the history of witchcraft, occultism, witch trials, and related folklore - including fairies.

Thanks for tuning in! Hope this helps!

[knoxvillerose-blog]

What is a Witch?

Witch is very broad term as it relates to various practices. You have Christian Witches, Pagan Witches, Heathen Witches, Hedge Witches, Green Witches, Jewish Witches.... What do they all have in common?

I don't know a Witch who does not honor Nature in their practice.

Most honor a Goddess along side a God.

At the end of the day, the Mysteries cannot be owned, cannot be codified and are available to everyone.

I always am skeptical of anyone who wants to question how another Witch practices. Leave elitism to the Christian Faith, which honors the myths of the mind over the health of our planet and the planetary consciousness. There are lineaged traditions in British Traditional Witchcraft, and even in some eclective Wiccan traditions, which require an oath of secrecy, which should always be honored. But don't tell someone they're not a witch because their practice doesn't look like yours.

I am an animistic Witch, and do not 'worship' gods or goddesses. However, I do work with them as energies resonating within, representing a natural or organic truth, a specific energy that aligns my microcosmic being with a more macrocosmic psychic expression. YMMV Bit of a Kitchen Witch, too. I enjoy charging my food, herbs & spices with specific energies that resonate with the plant or animal.

You do you.... in my book, a good witch honors nature and works to protect the environment, sees the power in all living things, and seeks to integrate with Nature, not command it.

[darkforestfae-tea]

How Studying Witchcraft Changed Nature

This ended up being way longer than I was anticipating.

Grab a tea or coffee (I’m a both girl, depends on the mood!) and a snack and buckle in! I promise it’s worth the read. 

₊‧ʚ・︵︵ ₊˚๑ ᕱᕱ ꒱✦ ₊ ︵︵・₊﹆ɞ‧₊ CHILDHOOD ₊‧ʚ・︵︵ ₊˚๑ ᕱᕱ ꒱✦ ₊ ︵︵・₊﹆ɞ‧₊ I’ve always loved nature. Being outside, playing outside as a kid, it was always so magical. Growing up me and my friends would go into these woods that were behind my grandparents house and just hang out literally all day. I remember we would clear out this small spot by the creek and just sit and read books or just talk. I remember once we brought a pot and a box of Mac and cheese and tried to start a small bonfire to cook it. yes the fire was contained and safe. We knew fire safety. There was this one fallen tree that landed perfectly to create a bridge crossing over the creek. We called it the “Bridge to Terabithia” I know I’m aging myself here.

₊‧ʚ・︵︵ ₊˚๑ ᕱᕱ ꒱✦ ₊ ︵︵・₊﹆ɞ‧₊ Religious Searching

₊‧ʚ・︵︵ ₊˚๑ ᕱᕱ ꒱✦ ₊ ︵︵・₊﹆ɞ‧₊

When I started researching around religiously, I came upon Bohemian Christianity first. I was raised in a household that was predominantly Christian, but it wasn’t for me.

Upon further researching, I decided that route wasn’t for me either. It was slightly better; I was interested in the history of the Romans but it was all still heavily involved with Christianity.

Absolutely no hate on either religion, it’s just not for me.

₊‧ʚ・︵︵ ₊˚๑ ᕱᕱ ꒱✦ ₊ ︵︵・₊﹆ɞ‧₊ Stumbling Forward

₊‧ʚ・︵︵ ₊˚๑ ᕱᕱ ꒱✦ ₊ ︵︵・₊﹆ɞ‧₊

Not long after deciding I was going to keep looking, I stumbled onto Wicca. I don’t exactly remember how- this was when I was 16, so 12 years ago. I want to say I was looking up nature based religions to see what came up.

I started out just reading whatever I could. I’d lay in bed scrolling through articles on my phone when I was supposed to be sleeping. I’d get books about Wicca & watch YouTube channels. I took notes before I discovered what a Book of Shadows or a Grimoire even was.

I knew grimoire but only from pop culture.

₊‧ʚ・︵︵ ₊˚๑ ᕱᕱ ꒱✦ ₊ ︵︵・₊﹆ɞ‧₊ Was Wicca what I was searching for?

₊‧ʚ・︵︵ ₊˚๑ ᕱᕱ ꒱✦ ₊ ︵︵・₊﹆ɞ‧₊

I loved almost every aspect of Wicca. I loved the nature based, how the deities were, simply put, just personifications of the elementals & nature. I loved how relaxing it was. I loved how everything was green… and white.

Now I’m not one to use the terms “white magic” or “black magic”. Or good and bad. Chaotic or Orderly. This was one of the things I didn’t like about Wicca. I don’t believe magic is only good or only bad. I believe there is just- magic. A balance.

Another thing I wasn’t a huge fan of was honestly the Wiccan Rede. As a poem itself, it was nice. I liked the way it read. I liked what it stood for. However, there is a lot of Wiccan practitioners that are taking that rede to the letter and if you research it a certain amount you will find that some Wiccan don’t even use the Wiccan Rede and there’s definitely different eclectic versions, but a high majority balances off of that we can read, and it gave me impressions of the Bible with Christianity.

I also am not bashing on Wicca. I’m not bashing on the rede. I wanna make that clear.

I followed Wicca for almost 6 years. I studied the different types. I studied the Celtic Wicca and the British traditional Wicca, even though I’m not British and I studied the Gardenarian & the Alexandrian. And eventually just the Eclectic Solitary. I then realized that what I am following could be classified as an eclectic solitary Wiccan. or I could not use Wiccan at all in the title and it wouldn’t make a difference because what I wasn’t what would traditionally be called “Wicca”.

₊‧ʚ・︵︵ ₊˚๑ ᕱᕱ ꒱✦ ₊ ︵︵・₊﹆ɞ‧₊ Still Following Nature

₊‧ʚ・︵︵ ₊˚๑ ᕱᕱ ꒱✦ ₊ ︵︵・₊﹆ɞ‧₊

During all of my religious searching I was still sticking to what I knew and what I enjoyed. I went on nature-walks on a weekly basis. I gathered things I found from outside to use on my altar (which was a windowsill at the time- and currently.)

When gathering things from outdoors on my walks, it wouldn’t be any specific item. I didn’t go out and say “I need to find a pinecone today. My altar needs a pinecone.” Instead I let it speak to me.

I very distinctly remember this one item I gathered. I was walking along this wilderness trail in my hometown, and I was looking up ahead of me mostly, as it was a rocky terrain and I didn’t want to trip. I had an urge to look down suddenly, and when I did I spotted this leaf. It was bright red, and it was the only one that was that color. It was perfectly preserved- no hungry bug holes, or rips or tears. I decided to pick it up and carry it with me for the remainder of the walk.

Generally I would gather things during the walk, and then at the end of the trail, go over what I gathered and see which ones I should bring home. The ones I didn’t end up keeping I left at the base of a tree for the Guardians to keep, along with something from my bag. As long as it was nature friendly.

Before researching witchcraft I was never had that intuition with nature. That random pull to look, or stop, or keep going.

I never stopped to feel the trees, the breeze, the rocks. The energy that pulled through them. That got me started on Energy work.

₊‧ʚ・︵︵ ₊˚๑ ᕱᕱ ꒱✦ ₊ ︵︵・₊﹆ɞ‧₊ Energy Work

₊‧ʚ・︵︵ ₊˚๑ ᕱᕱ ꒱✦ ₊ ︵︵・₊﹆ɞ‧₊

Energy work, when starting, is difficult. You have to have a grounded state of mind, and balanced energy points to really grasp control. as someone who suffers with depression believe me this was no easy task.

I am planning on making some Energy Work projects specifically, so I won’t go too in depth here. But I highly suggest sitting with your back to a tree, and just seeing if you can feel it. Try to sync your breathing or your own energy flow with that of the tree.

₊‧ʚ・︵︵ ₊˚๑ ᕱᕱ ꒱✦ ₊ ︵︵・₊﹆ɞ‧₊ I Found Home

₊‧ʚ・︵︵ ₊˚๑ ᕱᕱ ꒱✦ ₊ ︵︵・₊﹆ɞ‧₊

Eventually I found home. I found where I felt the most comfortable. And some may argue and say it’s still Wicca, or it’s this label or that label. But to me, it’s just mine. And It’s just Nature.

And if I never would have stumbled upon Wicca & Witchcraft & Paganism I never would have found the difference it can make with how you view the natural world around you.

Thank you so much for reading! This took me a few days to put together and I am so happy of how it turned out.

if you read all of it, leave a comment of your favorite thing about Nature, or your favorite thing to collect! I’d love to hear them.

— All pictures from Pinterest.

Thank you for Reading! I absolutely love sharing my knowledge & learnings with others. I try to make posts a few times a week! & they are all organized on my profile.

Until we cross paths once more! Best wishes to all you wonderful witches! Warm regards, Tea.

꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶ ๋ ࣭ ⭑꒷꒦

For Support on my Blogs:

Facebook: The Black Dahlia Emporium

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Pagans & Witches Amino @ darkforestfae

[visardistofelphame]

"Wicca is the modern manifestation of the Traditional British Witchcraft that was popularized in the mid to late 1950s and has since become a world-wide religious phenomena. This is extraordinary because in western culture Witchcraft was outlawed, villified and persecuted by the church and state authorities alike from times immemorial. Yet perhaps because of all this persecution Witchcraft has persisted in folk tradition as a 'Religion of Protest' against those self-same authorities." - VII Foreword, A Witches' Canon part 1, Roy H Blunden

Coming into this book, I knew that the history and focus would be specifically around BTW and Traditional Wica. Its nice that the author goes out of his way to set the tone as such, making sure readers don't confuse his specifics to encompass all of the craft.

Also anytime I see Witchcraft being a practive of protest, I'm just in love haha

[spiralhouseshop]

New in the Spiral House Shop!

Cloven Country: The Devil and the English Landscape by Jeremy Harte

Uncover the dark origins of England's idyllic countryside with Cloven Country. Explore the legends and myths that paint a sinister picture of the rolling hills and country lanes, believed to have been created and shaped by the Devil himself. From tales of rocks hurled into place and valleys carved out by infernal labor to the devilish origins of great roads and scars on the land, these medieval folklore stories paint a picture of an ogre-like Satan, easily fooled by humankind. Learn about how clever individuals outwitted the Devil, striking a blow for the underdog and discover the stories of those who were beyond redemption. Dive into the fascinating world of these distinctly English tales with Cloven Country, a captivating exploration of the dark side of England's pastoral landscape.

Hardcover 1.7" H x 8.1" L x 5.7" W 336 pages

[sag-dab-sar]

I wrote a post trying to figure out why on earth some Pagans & Witches refer to Imbolc (an Irish spring agricultural holiday associated with St Brigid, a potential Christianization of the Goddess Brigid/Bríg) as Candlemas, the completely Christian holiday celebrating The Purification of Mary & Presentation of Jesus at The Temple— which originated in the eastern part of the Roman Empire (which the only "pagan" aspect was it competing with Roman Lupercalia for celebrants).

Many pagan & witch spaces online have a constant disdain for Christianity thus I could not wrap my head around them using such an important point of Jesus' & Mary's life as one of their festivals/'sabbats'.... then, after writing a bunch of stuff, I stumbled onto the answer on Wikipedia's Wheel of The Year page, which has citations for its claims:

Margaret Murray (very early 20th century scholar) in her now discredited witch-cult hypothesis said that the Scottish "witch" Issobell Smyth in 1661 confessed to attending meetings for witches on the cross quarter days included Candlemas. Robert Graves (oh how I loathe you ehem I mean: poet folklorist), mentioned that Candlemas was part of the 8 ancient British agricultural festivals. And Doreen Valiente ("The Mother of Wicca") included Candlemas in her list of Greater Sabbat Fire Festivals, while also listing "Gaelic counterparts," in this case Imbolc.

Sigh.

Early (read: 19th-20th century) paganism and witchcraft, or scholarly work about it, really was just: put every claim regardless of accuracy from any culture in this jar, shake it up real good, see what pops out from the mix, then pretend its historically attested to and traditional despite any and all evidence.

Also whatever Wikipedia writer wrote this, I appreciate your sassiness ... even if it was unintentional:

Due to early Wicca's influence on modern paganism and the syncretic adoption of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic motifs, the most commonly used English festival names for the Wheel of the Year tend to be the Celtic ones introduced by Gardner and the mostly Germanic-derived names introduced by Kelly, regardless whether the celebrations are based on those cultures.

EDIT: To be clear, not all neo/pagans, witches, wiccans, occultists, people-who-use-wheel-of-year are anti-Christian! I'm not trying to say that. But as a worshipper of Mary now, I notice it more and more. Nor am I saying all those people follow Murray/Grave/Valiente blindly but published works and trusted blogs often seem to. This is simply an observation, I've taken notice of, its not the entire communities.

[k00318429]

A Brief History of Witchcraft in Europe

Early witches were people who practiced witchcraft, using magic spells and calling upon spirits for help or to bring about change. Most witches were thought to be pagans doing the Devil’s work. Many, however, were simply natural healers or so-called “wise women” whose choice of profession was misunderstood. 

Witch hysteria really took hold in Europe during the mid-1400s, when many accused witches confessed, often under torture, to a variety of wicked behaviors. Within a century, witch hunts were common and most of the accused were executed by burning at the stake or hanging. Single women, widows and other women on the margins of society were especially targeted. 

Witches were commonly believed to cast curses by inscribing sigils on an object to give that object magical powers; burning or binding a wax or clay image of a person to affect them magically; or using herbs, animal parts and other substances to make potions or poisons. Witchcraft has been blamed for many kinds of misfortune, like impotence in men, infertility in women, and lack of milk in cows. 

Between the years 1500 and 1660, up to 80,000 suspected witches were put to death in Europe. Around 80 percent of them were women thought to be in cahoots with the Devil and filled with lust. Germany had the highest witchcraft execution rate, while Ireland had the lowest. 

In Ireland, so-called witchcraft practices — old cures and customs — were part of life. The supernatural was not demonized. This regard for the old ways was strong, even now it lingers on. When tragedy calls, a candle is lit as often as a kettle is boiled. Rituals like well visitations, an awareness of fairy forts, a respect for certain hawthorns still in existence, along with a solid tradition of celebrating Samhain.   

The publication of “Malleus Maleficarum”—written by two well-respected German Dominicans in 1486—likely spurred witch mania to go viral. The book, usually translated as “The Hammer of Witches,” was a guide on how to identify, hunt and interrogate witches. 

"Malleus Maleficarum" labeled witchcraft as heresy, and quickly became the authority for Protestants and Catholics trying to flush out witches living among them. For more than 100 years, the book sold more copies than any other book in Europe except the Bible. 

Sources:

[windvexer]

What would a different form of magic be that isn't witchcraft? I know this is probably a dumb question but I'm honestly just trying to learn 😅

This is what bums me out about people insisting that it's okay and not harmful to call literally everything witchcraft!

It's erased an entire world of magic!

People! Literally! Don't! Know! Other! Stuff! Exists!

So let me tell you from the bottom of my heart, Anon: this is NOT a dumb question. This is a really important question, and not enough people ask it, and that's how we get to people tagging literally anything nonwhite and/or nonchristian as #baby witch #witch tips #witchblr #witchcraft 101.

Witchcraft has, until very recently, been a term to denote bad, harmful, or malicious magic. This is in contrast to good, helpful, or benevolent magic.

In a community, you can have a cunning person who practices good community-oriented magic, and you can have a witch who practices stealing delicious milk from the teats of cows.

This implies that it is more than likely the good cunning person and the bad witch were more or less practicing the same variety of bioregional folk magic, just to different ends.

In this context, witchcraft is any application of magic which is culturally subversive or harmful.

But there's so much more to the story!

In the mid 20th century, there was a witchcraft revival movement in England. Long story short, small groups of people worked to create a cohesive religious practice which they claimed was authentic British witchcraft. These practices are called Wicca and Traditional Witchcraft (2 separate things).

These practices were mostly ceremonial, involving elaborate rituals, magic wands, four elements, circle casting/compass laying, and so on.

These magical practices fueled and were fueled by an exploding culture shift in the western world and became so popular that they dominated perceptions of, and understandings of, what magic was.

Witch stopped being a person who used magic in bad ways, and started being a word for any person who uses magic.

Unfortunately, this is a problem, because now we have one word being used too many ways:

On one hand, witch is still a word that to many people denotes an evil or bad person who uses magic in evil or bad ways.

And, on the other hand, witch is now a word that refers to practitioners of a modern British magical tradition and its offshoots and variations, regardless of that person's maliciousness.

And, on the third hand, because Wicca had become so danged popular, witch has become a word that is applied to any person who practices magic, whether or not their practice is British and whether or not it is malicious.

The topic is further confused because witchcraft is so personal that one witch's witchcraft may look nothing like another witch's witchcraft.

What witchcraft is exists, and must be understood, contextually. In modern usage, a person claiming they practice witchcraft may mean any of the following (not a cohesive list):

"I am Wiccan."

"I practice magic derived from the British witchcraft revival period, but I am not specifically a Wiccan or follow any particular system."

"I practice magic which isn't derived from that British stuff, but I believe the title 'witch' best fits my practice."

"I practice magic that isn't witchcraft, but I call myself a witch as a term of convenience."

"I practice magic and I thought the word for that is 'witch', but if I put some thought into it I might realize I don't think that label suits me."

"I do not practice magic or Wicca but I enjoy nature and I pray to the moon."

With a word stretched so thin, outlining exactly what is and is not witchcraft can be a bit of a chore. However there are things which we can pretty safely say are just down right not witchcraft.

Before we go on, it's vital to mention that witchcraft is a term people get to choose, or reject, for themselves. So if someone from the following traditions is like, "nope, it's witchcraft to me," you should listen to them.

Anyway, here are some things that are not witchcraft:

Jewish mysticism (I've even seen posts about straight up Judaism, not even mysticism, just like, Judaism, being tagged as witchcraft)

Voodoo

Pow-wow

Folk magic

Chaos Magick

Santeria

Palo

Ancestor veneration

Praying to saints, angels, Mary, etc.

Faith healing (for example, as seen in Evangelicalism)

New Age

Spirit keeping

Worship of any nonchristian god or goddess

Heka

[elegantshapeshifter]

On this Night of the Dead I would like to remember Michael Howard, a prominent figure in the Cultus Sabbati tradition.I would also like to take the opportunity to give attention to some very important figures in Traditional Witchcraft who gave their lives so that the cult would continue: Isobel Gowdie, Bessie Dunlop, Andro Man, Sibillia Zanni, Pierina de' Bugatis, and Bellezza Orsini.

Isobel, who died in 1662, is one of the witches who left as much detail as possible in her process, she influenced Margaret Murray's work the most (and the parts she influenced are the only parts of Murray's content that are worthy!), who in turn contributed to the birth of Wicca and the latter to the rediscovery of Traditional Witchcraft. We are all infinitely indebted to Isobel for being here to worship our beloved Gods. Thank you, thank you very much Isobel.

Bessie Dunlop was a woman whose Familiar Spirit was Tom Reid, a ghost of a soldier who died in battle, and who had a vision of the Queen of Elphame, the Domina Nocturna worshipped in British lands.

Andro Man was a man who had had visions of the Queen of Elphame but also of an angel her partner: Christsonday. Thus, in his vision there was a very strong connection between spirits of the Other World (fairies) and angels.

Sibillia Zanni and Pierina de' Bugatis, on the other hand, were two women burned in Italy, Milan, in 1390, for confessing to worship Madonna Horiente, a Goddess who taught them the properties of herbs. Sibillia died without trying to distort the content of her worship; she died out of love for Madonna Horiente.

Pierina, on the other hand, because of unspeakable tortures could not make it and said she worshipped Lucibello, as the inquisitors had forced her to do, but they still sent her to her death. But it does not matter, because they both showed courage above that of anyone else, and we remember them as martyrs of our Ancient Tradition, a tradition that some would like to induce us to forget, because "reconstructionism is dead paper," but we do not forget the blood, nor the tears that spread on the ground mark the history of our worship.

Finally, we remember Bellezza, from Collevecchio, who in the first half of the 1500s was tried and committed suicide in her cell with a nail driven into her throat. Thanks to her we know the connection between Epiphany and witchcraft; thanks to her the cult of Befania has come down to us.

A thought to them and the other women (and other men, to a lesser extent) martyrs of Witchcraft, on this Night of the Dead.