The Witch-Cult In Western Europe: A Study In Anthropology
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The chapter headings say it all: ADMISSION CEREMONIES, THE SABBATH, THE ESBAT, THE RITES, THE DANCES, THE MUSIC, THE FEAST, CANDLES, THE SACRAMENT, SACRIFICES, MAGIC WORDS, RAIN-MAKING, FERTILITY, THE COVENS, DUTIES, DISCIPLINE, THE FAMILIARS AND TRANSFORMATIONS, THE DIVINING FAMILIAR, THE DOMESTIC FAMILIAR, METHODS OF OBTAINING FAMILIARS, TRANSFORMATIONS INTO ANIMALS, FAIRIES AND WITCHES, SOME NOTES ON ‘FLYING’ OINTMENTS… This in-depth study of very ancient European pagan religion is derived from examination of officially authorized records of “Burning Times” trials, pamphlets giving accounts of individual witches, and the works of Inquisitors and additional writers. In equal parts informative, disturbing and inspiring, THE WITCH-CULT IN WESTERN EUROPE forms the right Past cornerstone upon which Gerald Gardner and others built the 20th Century Witchcraft revival.
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Margaret Murray has unwittingly documented the same phenomena as that of U.F.O. researcher Jacques Valle, only showing it existed centuries earlier. “Faerie bolts” were thought to be flicked into their victims by being launched between a fairy’s thumb and middle finger. This parallels tiny arrowhead-shaped implants extracted from U.F.O. abductees today.
“Cattle blasting” unnerved the populace and inflamed the witch hunts, just as cattle mutilations disturb ranchers today. The incubus and succubus were sexual predators, just as today there are reports of sexual predation. One medieval informant described the sexual member as icy cold.
Then, the U.F.O. cargo cult danced around “faerie circles.” Radiation-deformed vegetation around today’s U.F.O. landing sites are generally circular. Flying ointment recipes, using toxic plants extracted in baby stout, recreate the abductee experience of flying and are suggestive of changelings.
Just as Jacques Valle notes in “Messengers of Deception,” the U.F.O. contactees’ negative experiences of the diminutive grays is seen through many cultural filters. It fits the Judeo-Christian construct of Fallen Angels; and the Native Americans’ construct of the Trickster; and the Irish belief about the small people; that nothing excellent comes out of the experience in spite of the grand promises. That this cult sought to stay outside Christianity supports the stats of Churck Missler, i.e., that no baptized Christian can be abducted lacking long-suffering the invitation of the U.F.O. beings, that is, they cannot be taken lacking the permission of a person who has been consecrated to the Creator.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Margaret Murray’s Witch Cult is classic research into the witch trials of the middle ages and their tie to pre-christian pagan religion. Although some of her conclusions are not controversial the past research remains must reading for persons studying the history of witch trials or modern Wicca. The style is predictable of early 20th century English scholarly. There are obscure passages that beg research into the source material, and in fact Ms. Murray might have been better to do more research into sources herself. Nevertheless it is said by some that Gerald Gardner used the Witch Cult descriptions as a pattern for some of his first neo-pagan Wicca ritual outlines. Its excellent that it has been reprinted, and ought to be in every Wiccan’s library.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
This book is a terrible source. Murray’s premise is based on the records of confessions of “witches” during torture and examination. The book consists of fake pseudo-information. It’s like a name defining the truth of the Spanish Inquisition on what the victims said during their “confessions.” I’ve seen this book referred to again and again, during years of anthropological research, and can’t judge Murray has any credibility. One can’t write seriously about this theme, and use this terrible information, extracted under duress by the Church. Murray really postulates that the consistency of the practices described in the confessions is evidence of a widespread witch religion. Yes, it is evidence, but evidence pertaining to the consistant beliefs of the Papal Bull of Innocent VIII against witchcraft. As a replacement for, aquire the worthy series of six volumes edited by Bengt Ankarloo, called “Witchcraft and Magic in Europe.” Try works on shamanism by Wade Davis and/or Richard Evans Schultes.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I give this two stars only because it’s historically vital as a Wiccan/Neopagan foundation document. I don’t know how anyone ever took Murray’s “theory” seriously because it’s so incoherent. Having read this book twice, I’m still not sure exactly what she meant to prove; her “thesis” only becomes clear when filtered through additional authors. Murray seems to have assumed that if she kept lobbing enough “witch examination evidence” at readers (especially if such documents were in foreign languages), they’d judge her through sheer exhuastion. Judging by this tome, Murray would not pass a college level elementary logic course today. She would certainly never have been admitted to a basic cultural anthropology class.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Readers should be warned: this book, and the “Murray thesis” itself, have been painstakingly discredited for a generation. This book is most useful as a demonstration of the power of dishonest erudition and the willingness of people to judge a collection of lies. Murray, an Egyptologist, has been shown to have misquoted, misused and abused the sixteen sources that make up the basis for this study. Her methods have been discredited, her deliberate ignorance of contradictory evidence has been illuminated, and her refusal to consider that the confessions of convicted witches were gained through torture and were scripted before the fact mark her as a treacherous and unprincipled scholar. In Witch Cult, Murray founded a myth of an planet-based cult, extant alongside the official Church, sustained in the covens of witches who worshiped at the “sabbat.” This picture, conjured from the scripted confessions of witches, had and has a powerful appeal to Wiccan and additional neo-pagan groups, who gained through it a past provenance that simply does not exist. So powerful was its appeal that Murray rode this book to a sort of scholarly noteriety, gaining print-space for a few years in the Encyclopedia Britannica as cutting-edge witch erudition. It wasn’t long, though, before real historians started a re-examination of Murray and her sources. One cannot now find a serious scholar who still accepts the Murray thesis, nor can anyone who has seen the archival records accept that the poor individuals who died a very painful death for the crime of witchcraft be guilty of devotion to an alternative religion. I have no problem with neopaganism or any of the additional harmless groups who aver to have magical powers or some deep tie with planet-based wisdom. I do, but, deeply resent wiccan or additional adherents of “witchcraft” who aver a relationship to the thousands of innocent people who died in the European Witch craze. It is simply incorrect to call them as witness to and ancestors of a purely modern irrationality. Buy this book as a study of the present, as a text in the long litany of deeply-felt and deeply-flawed thoughts, but do not buy it as a serious study. It is incorrect, it is misguided, it is treacherous.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5