Witch-cult hypothesis
The witch-cult hypothesis is a discredited theory that the witch trials of the Early Modern period were an attempt to suppress a pagan religion that had survived the Christianization of Europe. According to its proponents, accused witches were actually followers of this alleged religion. They argue that the supposed 'witch cult' revolved around worshiping a Horned God of fertility and the underworld, whose Christian persecutors identified with the Devil, and whose followers held nocturnal rites at the witches' Sabbath.
The theory was pioneered by two German scholars,
Contemporary experts in European witchcraft beliefs view the 'pagan witch cult' theory as pseudohistorical. There is now an academic consensus that those accused and executed as witches were not followers of any witch religion, pagan or otherwise. Critics highlight several flaws with the theory. It rested on highly selective use of evidence from the trials, thereby heavily misrepresenting the events and the actions of both the accused and their accusers. It also mistakenly assumed that claims made by accused witches were truthful, and not distorted by coercion and torture. Further, despite claims the 'witch cult' was a pre-Christian survival, there is no evidence of such a 'pagan witch cult' throughout the Middle Ages.
The witch-cult hypothesis has influenced literature, being adapted into fiction in works by
Early modern precedents
The witch-hunt of the 16th and 17th centuries was an organized effort by authorities in many countries to destroy a supposed conspiracy of witches thought to pose a deadly threat to Christendom. According to these authorities, witches were numerous, and in conscious alliance with Satan, forming a sort of Satanic counter-religion. Witch-hunts in this sense must be separated from the belief in witches, the evil eye, and other such phenomena, which are common features of folk belief worldwide. The belief that witches are not just individual villains but conspirators organized in a powerful but well-hidden cult is a distinguishing feature of the early modern witch-hunt.
This idea of an organized witch-cult originates in the second half of the 15th century, notoriously expounded in the 1486 Malleus Maleficarum. In the following two centuries, witch trials usually included the charge of membership in a demonic conspiracy, gathering in sabbaths, and similar. It was only with the beginning Age of Enlightenment in the early 18th century, that the idea of an organized witch-cult was abandoned.
Early Modern testimonies of accused witches "confirming" the existence of a witch cult are considered doubtful. Norman Cohn has argued that such testimonies were often given under torture, and that their details were determined mainly by the expectations of the interrogators and by free association on the part of the accused, reflecting only the popular imagination of the times.[1] Carlo Ginzburg and Éva Pócs hold that some of these testimonies can still give insights into the belief systems of the accused. Ginzburg discovered records of a group calling themselves benandanti, the "good walkers" who believed that they combatted witches (streghe) by magical means. The benandanti were persecuted for heresy in the period of 1575 to 1675.[2]
The early theory
Jarcke and Mone
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the common belief among educated sectors of the European populace was that there had never been any genuine cult of witches and that all those persecuted and executed as such had been innocent of the alleged crimes.
The first modern scholar to advance the claim that the witch trials had been designed to wipe out an anti-Christian sect was the German
Jarcke's theories were adopted and altered by the German historian
Michelet, Gage, and Leland
In 1862, French historian
In 1893, an American suffragist, Matilda Joslyn Gage, published Woman, Church and State, in which she claimed that in the prehistoric world, humanity had been matriarchal, worshiping a great Goddess, and that the witches of the witch cult had been pagan priestesses preserving this religion.[13]
In 1897, the English scholar Karl Pearson, who was the professor of Applied Mathematics at University College London and an amateur historian and anthropologist, expanded on Michelet's theory. Pearson agreed with the theory of a prehistoric matriarchal society, and concurred with Gage that the witch-cult was a survival of it. Pearson theorized that during the Christian era, the religion began to emphasise the male deity, which was then equated with the Christian Devil. Pearson also made the claim that Joan of Arc had been one of the last few priestesses of the religion. He was, however, unlike Michelet or Gage, opposed to the group and to Goddess worship in general, believing that it was primitive and savage.[14]
The impact of Margaret Murray
In 1915,
Returning to London, she began to work on the concept of witchcraft.
The Witch-Cult in Western Europe: 1921
In The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, Murray stated that she had restricted her research to Great Britain, although made some recourse to sources from France, Flanders, and New England.[24] She drew a division between what she termed "Operative Witchcraft", which referred to the performance of charms and spells with any purpose, and "Ritual Witchcraft", by which she meant "the ancient religion of Western Europe", a fertility-based faith that she also termed "the Dianic cult".[25] She claimed that the cult had "very probably" once been devoted to the worship of both a male deity and a "Mother Goddess" but that "at the time when the cult is recorded the worship of the male deity appears to have superseded that of the female".[26] In her thesis, Murray claimed that the figure referred to as the Devil in the trial accounts was the witches' god, "manifest and incarnate", to whom the witches offered their prayers. She claimed that at the witches' meetings, the god would be personified, usually by a man or at times by a woman or an animal; when a human personified this entity, Murray claimed that they were usually dressed plainly, though they appeared in full costume for the witches' Sabbaths.[27]
Members joined the cult either as children or adults through what Murray called "admission ceremonies"; Murray asserted that applicants had to agree to join of their own free will, and agree to devote themselves to the service of their deity. She also claimed that in some cases, these individuals had to sign a covenant or were baptized into the faith.[28] At the same time, she claimed that the religion was largely passed down hereditary lines.[29] Murray described the religion as being divided into covens containing thirteen members,[30] led by a coven officer who was often termed the "Devil" in the trial accounts, but who was accountable to a "Grand Master".[31] According to Murray, the records of the coven were kept in a secret book,[32] with the coven also disciplining its members, to the extent of executing those deemed traitors.[33]
Describing this witch-cult as "a joyous religion",[34] she claimed that the two primary festivals that it celebrated were on May Eve and November Eve, although that other dates of religious observation were 1 February and 1 August, the winter and summer solstices, and Easter.[35] She asserted that the "General Meeting of all members of the religion" were known as Sabbaths, while the more private ritual meetings were known as Esbats.[36] Murray claimed that these Esbats were nocturnal rites that began at midnight,[37] and that they were "primarily for business, whereas the Sabbath was purely religious." At Esbats, magical rites were performed both for malevolent and benevolent ends.[38] She also asserted that the Sabbath ceremonies involved the witches' paying homage to the deity, renewing their "vows of fidelity and obedience" to him, and providing him with accounts of all the magical actions that they had conducted since the previous Sabbath. Once this business had been concluded, admissions to the cult or marriages were conducted; ceremonies and fertility rites took place; and the Sabbath concluded with feasting and dancing.[39]
Deeming Ritual Witchcraft to be "a fertility cult", she asserted that many of its rites were designed to ensure fertility and rain-making.[40] She claimed that there were four types of sacrifice performed by the witches: blood-sacrifice, in which neophytes write their names in blood, the sacrifice of animals, the sacrifice of a non-Christian child to procure magical powers, and the sacrifice of the witches' god by fire to ensure fertility.[41] She interpreted accounts of witches' shapeshifting into various animals as being representative of a rite in which the witches dressed as specific animals which they took to be sacred.[42] She asserted that accounts of familiars were based on the witches' use of animals, which she divided into "divining familiars" used in divination and "domestic familiars" used in other magic rites.[43]
Murray asserted that paganism had survived the Christianization process in Britain, although that it came to be "practised only in certain places and among certain classes of the community."[44] She believed that folkloric stories of fairies in Britain were based on a surviving race of dwarves, who continued to live in the island up until the Early Modern period. She asserted that this race followed the same pagan religion as the witches, thus explaining the folkloric connection between the two.[45] In the appendices to the book, she also alleged that Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais were members of the witch-cult and were executed for it,[46] a claim which has been refuted by historians, especially in the case of Joan of Arc.[47][48]
Later historian Ronald Hutton commented that The Witch-Cult in Western Europe "rested upon a small amount of archival research, with extensive use of printed trial records in 19th century editions, plus early modern pamphlets and works of demonology".[49] He also noted that the book's tone was generally "dry and clinical, and every assertion was meticulously footned to a source, with lavish quotation."[49] It was not a best seller; in its first thirty years, only 2,020 copies were sold.[50] However, it led many people to treat Murray as an authority on the subject; in 1929, she was invited to provide the entry on "Witchcraft" for the Encyclopædia Britannica, and used it to present her interpretation of the subject as if it were universally accepted in scholarship. It remained in the encyclopedia until being replaced in 1968.[51]
The God of the Witches: 1931
Murray followed this book with The God of the Witches in 1931; although similar in content, it was aimed at a mass market audience and published by the popular press Sampson Low.[52] Whereas the tone in The Witch-Cult in Western Europe had been "dry and academic, the second bubbles with enthusiasm", as her language becomes "emotionally inflated and coloured with religious phraseology"; in particular she refers repeatedly to the cult as "the Old Religion".[53] In this work she "cut out or toned down" many of the claims of her previous book which would have painted the cult in a bad light, for instance regarding animal and child sacrifice, and also omitted any mention of sex.[53]
In this book she began to refer to the witches' deity as the
The Divine King in England: 1954
In 1954, she published The Divine King in England, in which she greatly extended on the theory, taking in an influence from
Academic reception: 1921–63
Upon initial publication, Murray's thesis gained a favourable reception from many readers, including a number of significant scholars, albeit none of whom were experts in the witch trials.
Canadian historian Elliot Rose suggested that the reason why Murray's theory gained such support was partly because of her "imposing credentials" as a member of staff at UCL, a position that lent her theory greater legitimacy in the eyes of many readers.[67] He further suggested that the Murrayite view was attractive to many as it confirmed "the general picture of pre-Christian Europe a reader of Frazer or [Robert] Graves would be familiar with".[67] Similarly, Hutton suggested that the cause of the Murrayite theory's popularity was because it "appealed to so many of the emotional impulses of the age", including "the notion of the English countryside as a timeless place full of ancient secrets", the literary popularity of Pan, the widespread belief that the majority of British had remained pagan long after the process of Christianisation, and the idea that folk customs represented pagan survivals.[50] At the same time, Hutton suggested, it seemed more plausible to many than the previously dominant rationalist idea that the witch trials were the result of mass delusion.[50] Related to this, folklorist Jacqueline Simpson suggested that part of the Murrayite theory's appeal was that it appeared to give a "sensible, demystifying, liberating approach to a longstanding but sterile argument" between the rationalists who denied that there had been any witches and those, like Montague Summers, who insisted that there had been a real Satanic conspiracy against Christendom in the Early Modern period replete with witches with supernatural powers.[68] As Hilda Ellis Davidson noted; "how refreshing and exciting her first book was at that period. A new approach, and such a surprising one."[68]
"Surely, discussion of what confessedly is so unripe is premature. When Miss Murray has broadened her study to all the lands where she can find the "cult"; when she has dealt with documents worthier the name of records than the chap-books and the formless reports that have to serve us for the British trials; when she has traced back witch-sabbath and questionary through the centuries of witch and heretic hunting that precede the British; when she has trusted herself to study the work of other students and fairly to weigh their conclusions against her own in the light of the further evidence they may adduce: then perhaps she may have modified her views. Whether she changes or confirms them, she will then have earned the right to a hearing."
George L. Burr, 1922.[69]
Nevertheless, Murray's theories never received support from experts in the Early Modern witch trials,
One of the foremost specialists of the trial records, L'Estrange Ewen, brought out a series of books specialising in the archival material which rejected Murray's ideas.[70] In 1938 Ewen launched a vociferous attack on Murray's scholarship, dismissing her theory as "vapid balderdash".[76] Similarly, W.R. Halliday reviewed her work for the Folklore journal and exposed the flaws in her use of sources.[70] E. M. Loeb criticised her in his review of The Witch-Cult in Western Europe for American Anthropologist.[77] In Noble's words, "There is no constructive criticism between peers here; it is a frontal attack on an author Loeb clearly believes has no place among published historians, at least on the topic of witchcraft."[78]
In his 1962 work A Razor for a Goat, Rose asserted that Murray's books on the witch-cult "contain an incredible number of minor errors of fact or of calculation and several inconsistencies of reasoning."[79] He accepted that her case "could, perhaps, still be proved by somebody else, though I very much doubt it."[79] Highlighting that there is a gap of about a thousand years between the Christianisation of Britain and the start of the witch trials there, he asserts that there is no evidence for the existence of the witch-cult anywhere in the intervening period.[80] He further criticises her for treating pre-Christian Britain as a socially and culturally monolithic entity, whereas in reality it contained a diverse array of societies and religious beliefs. In addition to this, he challenged Murray's claim that the majority of Britons in the Middle Ages remained pagan as "a view grounded on ignorance alone".[81]
Simpson noted that despite these critical reviews, within the field of British folkloristics Murray's theories were permitted "to pass unapproved but unchallenged, either out of politeness or because nobody was really interested enough to research the topic."[82] As evidence, she noted that no substantial research articles on the subject of witchcraft were published in the journal Folklore between Murray's in 1917 and Rossell Hope Robbins' in 1963.[82] However, she also highlighted that when regional studies of British folklore were published in this period by folklorists like Theo Brown, Ruth Tongue, or Enid Porter, none adopted the Murrayite framework for interpreting witchcraft beliefs, thus evidencing her claim that Murray's theories were widely ignored by scholars of folklore.[82]
Murray did not respond directly to the criticisms of her work, but did react to her critics in a hostile manner; in later life she asserted that she eventually ceased reading reviews of her work, and believed that her critics were simply acting on religious prejudice.[83] Noble later stated that Murray "repeatedly dismissed [her critics] in print as close-minded, bigoted, or uninformed."[84]
Academic reception: 1963–present
Murray's work came to be increasingly criticised following her death in 1963, with the definitive academic rejection of the Murrayite witch-cult theory occurring during the 1970s.[85] At this time, a variety of scholars across Europe and North America began to publish in-depth studies of the archival records from the witch trials, leaving no doubt that those tried for witchcraft were not practitioners of a surviving pre-Christian religion. Such critics of Murray included Alan Macfarlane, Erik Midelfort, William Monter, Robert Muchembled, Gerhard Schormann, Bente Alver and Bengt Ankarloo.[86]
In his 1971 book Religion and the Decline of Magic, English historian
"That this 'old religion' persisted secretly, without leaving any evidence, is of course possible, just as it is possible that below the surface of the moon lie extensive deposits of Stilton cheese. Anything is possible. But it is nonsense to assert the existence of something for which no evidence exists. The Murrayites ask us to swallow a most peculiar sandwich: a large piece of the wrong evidence between two thick slices of no evidence at all."
Jeffrey B. Russell and Brooks Alexander, 2007.[91]
In 1994, the English folklorist
In 1996, historian Diane Purkiss asserted that Murray's thesis was "intrinsically improbable" and that it "commands little or no allegiance within the modern academy".[95] She nevertheless felt that male scholars like Thomas, Cohn, and Macfarlane had committed "ritual slaughter" when setting up their own histories of witchcraft by condemning Murray's. In doing so, she identified a trend for them to contrast their own perceived methodologically sound and sceptical interpretations with Murray's "feminised belief" about the witch-cult, hence ignoring any theoretical considerations regarding the male-centric nature of their own perspectives.[96]
In his 1999 book The Triumph of the Moon, Hutton asserted that Murray had treated her source material with "reckless abandon",[70] in that she had taken "vivid details of alleged witch practices" from "sources scattered across a great extent of space and time" and then declared them to be normative of the cult as a whole.[52] Concurring with this assessment, historian Jeffrey B. Russell and Brooks Alexander stated that "Murray's use of sources in general is appalling".[97] They went on to assert that "Today, scholars are agreed that Murray was more than just wrong – she was completely and embarrassingly wrong on nearly all of her basic premises."[97] In his sociological study of the Early Modern witchcraft, Gary Jensen highlighted that Murray's work had been "seriously challenged" and that it did not take into account "why it took so long for the heretic witch to be invented and targeted", noting that had the Murrayite witch-cult been a reality, then it would have been persecuted throughout the Medieval and not just in the Early Modern period.[98]
Later writers
During the 1930s and 1940s, Neo-Pagan
In 1985 Classical historian
While Murray's theory had received some negative critical attention at the time of its first publication, it was not until the 1950s and 1960s that her books became best sellers, reaching a larger audience and thereby subsequently causing experts to decide that "the Murray thesis had to be stopped once and for all".[104]
Literature
Simpson noted that the publication of the Murray thesis in the Encyclopædia Britannica made it accessible to "journalists, film-makers popular novelists and thriller writers", who adopted it "enthusiastically".[93] It influenced the work of Aldous Huxley and Robert Graves.[93]
Influence on occultism and contemporary Paganism
The Murrayite thesis provided the blueprint for the contemporary Pagan religion of Wicca.[93]
In the 1950s, several British occultists claimed they had found remnants of the surviving Witch Cult. The first of these was
Carlo Ginzburg and the benandanti
From the 1960s Carlo Ginzburg documented the beliefs of a number of early modern groups of sorcerers, seers and healers. He claimed they were rooted in pre-Christian paganism, and credited Murray with a "correct intuition" in identifying the remnants of a pre-Christian 'religion of Diana', and in believing that witch-trial testimonies did at times represent actual or perceived experiences.[107]
In the original Italian preface to I benandanti, published in 1966, Ginzburg discussed the work of Murray, claiming that although it contained "a kernel of truth", it had been "formulated in a wholly uncritical way", containing "serious defects".[108] With the complete academic rejection of Murray's theories in the 1970s, Ginzburg attempted to clarify his work's relationship to Murray's Witch-Cult theory in his "Preface to the English Edition", written in 1982. Here, he expressly stated that "Murray, in fact, asserted: (a) that witchcraft had its roots in an ancient fertility cult, and (b) that the sabbat described in the witchcraft trials referred to gatherings which had actually taken place. What my work really demonstrated, even if unintentionally, was simply the first point."[109] He added that although he rejected her ideas, there was a "kernel of truth" in Murray's thesis.[109]
Some historians have viewed Ginzburg's ideas as being related to Murray's; Hungarian historian Gábor Klaniczay stated that "Ginzburg reformulated Murray's often fantastic and very inadequately documented thesis about the reality of the witches' Sabbath" and thus the publication of I Benandanti in 1966 "reopened the debate about the possible interconnections between witchcraft beliefs and the survival of pagan fertility cults".[110] Similarly, Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade commented that while Ginzburg's presentation of the benandanti "does not substantiate Murray's entire thesis", it did represent a "well-documented case of the processus through which a popular and archaic secret cult of fertility is transformed into a merely magical, or even black-magical practice under the pressure of the Inquisition."[111] Historian of witchcraft Michael D. Bailey suggested that Ginzburg's work "somewhat revived" Murray's "discredited notion of witchcraft representing an ancient fertility religion".[112]
Conversely, other scholars drew a clear divide between the ideas of Murray and Ginzburg; in 1975, Cohn stated that Ginzburg's discovery had "nothing to do" with Murray's witch-cult hypothesis.[113] Echoing these views, in 1999 English historian Ronald Hutton stated that Ginzburg's ideas regarding shamanistic fertility cults were actually "pretty much the opposite" of what Murray had posited. Hutton pointed out that Ginzburg's argument that "ancient dream-worlds, or operations on non-material planes of consciousness, helped to create a new set of fantasies at the end of the Middle Ages" differed strongly from Murray's argument that an organised religion of witches had survived from the pre-Christian era and that descriptions of witches' sabbaths were accounts of real events.[114] The folklorist Juliette Wood stated that while Ginzburg articulated a "more sympathetic" stance to Murray's ideas than other specialists in the witch trials, he "does not propose anything approaching the pan-European cult which Murray advocated".[115]
Sabina Magliocco and the ostension
In 2002 Sabina Magliocco theorized a middle way between Hutton's idea that pre-Christian elements in witchcraft were only legends, dreams or trance experiences and Murray's idea that there was an organized pagan witches' society, by stating that although being diffused as legends, witchcraft beliefs, as all the legends, "occasionally become dramatic enactments known as "ostension"".[116]
Ostension, according to Magliocco, "always derives from a pre-existing legend, the legend precedes the existence of its enactment, therefore even if a group decided to enact aspects of the legend of Diana/ Herodias, it would not have been a revival of pre-Christian paganism, but an attempt to act out certain ritual aspects described in the legends. Moreover, the more magical aspects from the trial reports—night flights on the backs of animals, ever-replenishing banquets, resurrection of dead livestock—could not have been achieved through ostension. We need to consider these as fantastical legend motifs, reports of experiences from trances or dreams, or both".[116]
Furthermore, Magliocco specifies that the accused of witchcraft who reported pagan themes such as the Society of Diana and Herodias "constituted only a small minority of all those accused of witchcraft".[116]
By taking the example of two women condemned as witches in Milan in 1390, Sibillia Zanni and Pierina de' Bugatis, she states that, even though "we have no proof such a society ever existed, it is not inconceivable that a few inspired individuals might have decided to dramatize, once or repeatedly, the gatherings described in legends"[116] in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. A gathering based on legends of Diana and/or Herodias "would probably have been secret and limited to the friends and associates of the creative instigators, who might well have been folk healers. One or more women might even have played the role of Diana or Herodias, presiding over the gathering and giving advice. Feasting, drinking and dancing might have taken place, and the women may have exchanged advice on matters of healing and divination".[116]
See also
- History of Wicca
- Stregheria
- Horned God
- Cult of Herodias
References
Footnotes
- ^ Cohn, Norman (1977) Europe's Inner Demons
- ^ Ginzburg 1990.
- ^ a b Cohn 1975, p. 103.
- ^ a b Cohn 1975, p. 103; Hutton 1999, p. 137.
- ^ a b Hutton 1999, p. 137.
- ^ Cohn 1975, pp. 103–104; Purkiss 1996, p. 34; Hutton 1999, p. 136.
- ^ Hutton 1999, p. 136.
- ^ Cohn 1975, p. 104; Hutton 1999, pp. 136–137.
- ^ Cohn 1975, p. 104.
- ^ Cohn 1975, p. 105; Hutton 1999, pp. 136–137.
- ^ A New History of Witchcraft, Russell & Alexander, Thames & Hudson, page 147
- ^ a b c Hutton 1999, p. 140.
- ^ Hutton 1999, p. 141.
- ^ Hutton 1999, pp. 149–150.
- ^ Sheppard 2013, p. 161.
- ^ Sheppard 2013, pp. 98, 162.
- ^ Sheppard 2013, p. 163.
- ^ Sheppard 2013, pp. 164–165.
- ^ Sheppard 2013, pp. 166–167.
- ^ Sheppard 2013, p. 167.
- .
- .
- ^ Hutton 1999, p. 195.
- ^ Murray 1962, p. 6.
- ^ Murray 1962, pp. 11–12.
- ^ Murray 1962, p. 13.
- ^ Murray 1962, pp. 28–31.
- ^ Murray 1962, pp. 71, 79, 82.
- ^ Murray 1962, p. 225.
- ^ Murray 1962, pp. 190–191.
- ^ Murray 1962, p. 186.
- ^ Murray 1962, pp. 194–197.
- ^ Murray 1962, pp. 197–200.
- ^ Murray 1962, p. 15.
- ^ Murray 1962, pp. 12–13, 109.
- ^ Murray 1962, p. 97.
- ^ Murray 1962, pp. 111–112.
- ^ Murray 1962, p.112: "The business carried on at the Esbat was usually the practice of magic for the benefit of a client or for the harming of an enemy".
- ^ Murray 1962, p. 124.
- ^ Murray 1962, p. 169.
- ^ Murray 1962, pp. 152–162.
- ^ Murray 1962, pp. 30–32.
- ^ Murray 1962, pp. 205–208.
- ^ Murray 1962, p. 19.
- ^ Murray 1962, pp. 14, 238.
- ^ Murray 1962, pp. 270–279.
- ^ Pernoud, Regine. "Joan of Arc By Herself And Her Witnesses", pp. 16-20, 56, 65, 87, 155.
- ^ Noble 2005, p. 14.
- ^ a b Hutton 1999, p. 195.
- ^ a b c d Hutton 1999, p. 199.
- ^ Simpson 1994, p. 89; Sheppard 2013, p. 169.
- ^ a b Hutton 1999, p. 196.
- ^ a b Simpson 1994, p. 93.
- ^ Murray 1952, p. 13.
- ^ Murray 1952, pp. 24–27.
- ^ Murray 1952, pp. 28–29.
- ^ Murray 1952, pp. 32–37, 43–44.
- ^ Murray 1954.
- ^ Noble 2005, p. 12.
- ^ a b Thomas 1971, p. 515.
- ^ Pp 191-2 Writing witch-hunt histories : challenging the paradigm / edited by Marko Nenonen and Raisa Maria Toivo. Boston Brill, 2013.
- ^ Runciman 1962, p. 5.
- ^ Cohn 1975, p. 108.
- ^ Hughes 1952.
- ^ Welbourn 2011, pp. 156–159.
- ^ Rose 1962, p. 14.
- ^ a b Rose 1962, p. 15.
- ^ a b Simpson 1994, p. 90.
- ^ a b Burr 1922, p. 782.
- ^ a b c d Hutton 1999, p. 198.
- ^ Eliade 1975, p. 152.
- ^ Sheppard 2013, p. 169.
- ^ Burr 1922, pp. 780–783; Burr 1935, pp. 491–492.
- ^ Burr 1922, p. 781.
- ^ Noble 2005, p. 10.
- ^ C. L'Estrange Ewen (1938) Some Witchcraft Criticism: A Plea for the Blue Pencil. London: C. L. Ewen.
- ^ Loeb 1922, pp. 476–478.
- ^ Noble 2005, p. 11.
- ^ a b Rose 1962, p. 56.
- ^ Rose 1962, pp. 56–57.
- ^ Rose 1962, pp. 57–61.
- ^ a b c Simpson 1994, p. 94.
- ^ Thomas 1971, p. 516; Simpson 1994, p. 90.
- ^ Noble 2005, p. 5.
- ^ Hutton 1999, p. 362; Russell & Alexander 2007, p. 154.
- ^ Hutton 1999, p. 362.
- ^ Thomas 1971, p. 514.
- ^ Cohn 1975, p. 107.
- ^ a b Cohn 1975, p. 109.
- ^ Eliade 1975, pp. 152–153.
- ^ Russell & Alexander 2007, p. 42.
- ^ Simpson 1994.
- ^ a b c d Simpson 1994, p. 89.
- ^ Simpson 1994, pp. 90–91.
- ^ Purkiss 1996, p. 62.
- ^ Purkiss 1996, pp. 62–63.
- ^ a b Russell & Alexander 2007, p. 154.
- ^ Jensen 2007, p. 147.
- ^ Hans Sebald, "Nazi ideology redefining deviants: Witches, Himmler's witch-trial survey, and the case of the bishopric of Bamberg" in: Levack (ed.), New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology (2001), pp. 113ff.
- ^ Clark, Stuart et al. The Period of the Witch Trials p. 14
- ^ Friederike Müller-Reimerdes. Der christliche Hexenwahn. Gedanken zum religiösen Freiheitskampf der deutschen Frau.
- ^ Magic and Superstition in Europe, Michael David Bailey, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2006, pp. 236-238
- ^ a b Luck, Georg (1985). Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Collection of Ancient Texts. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 6–7.
- ^ The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations. Reviewed by Ronald Hutton. http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/hutton.html Archived 23 June 2002 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Sanders, Maxine (2008) Firechild; Hutton, Ronald (1999) Triumph of the Moon.
- ^ Hutton 1999, p. 218.
- ^ Ginzburg 1990, p. 9.
- ^ Ginzburg 1983, p. xix.
- ^ a b Ginzburg 1983, p. xiii.
- ^ Klaniczay 1990, p. 132.
- ^ Eliade 1975, pp. 156–157.
- ^ Bailey 2008, p. 83.
- ^ Cohn 1975, p. 223.
- ^ Hutton 1999, p. 378.
- ^ Wood 2001, pp. 46–47.
- ^ a b c d e Sabina Magliocco (2002). 'Who Was Aradia? The History and Development of a Legend' in The Pomegranate: The Journal of Pagan Studies, Issue 18.
Bibliography
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- Burr, George L. (1922). "Review of Margaret Murray's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe". American Historical Review. Vol. 27, no. 4. pp. 780–783. JSTOR 1837549.
- Burr, George L. (1935). "Review of Margaret Murray's The God of the Witches". American Historical Review. Vol. 40, no. 3. pp. 491–492. JSTOR 1838913.
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- Klaniczay, Gábor (1990). The Uses of Supernatural Power: The Transformation of Popular Religion in Medieval and Early-Modern Europe. Susan Singerman (translator). Princeton: ISBN 978-0691073774.
- Loeb, E. M. (1922). "Review of The Witch-Cult in Western Europe". American Anthropologist. 24 (4): 476–78. .
- Murray, Margaret A. (1962) [1921]. The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Murray, Margaret A. (1952) [1931]. The God of the Witches. London: Faber and Faber.
- Murray, Margaret A. (1954). The Divine King in England.[full citation needed]
- Noble, Catherine (2005). "From Fact to Fallacy: The Evolution of Margaret Alice Murray's Witch-Cult Theory". The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies. 7 (1). London: Equinox Publishing: 5–26. .
- ISBN 978-0415087629.
- Rose, Elliot (1962). A Razor for a Goat: A Discussion of Certain Problems in Witchcraft and Diabolism. Toronto: Toronto University Press.
- Runciman, Steven (1962). "Foreword". In Margaret Murray (ed.). The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Russell, Jeffrey B.; Alexander, Brooks (2007). A New History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-28634-0.
- Sheppard, Kathleen L. (2013). The Life of Margaret Alice Murray: A Woman's Work in Archaeology. New York: Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-7391-7417-3.
- .
- Thomas, Keith (1971). Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
- Welbourn, Terry (2011). T.C. Lethbridge: The Man Who Saw the Future. Winchester and Washington: O-Books. ISBN 978-1-84694-500-7.
- Wood, Juliette (2001). "Margaret Murray and the Rise of Wicca". The Pomegranate: A New Journal of Neopagan Thought (15): 45–54.
Further reading
- Halliday, W.R. (1922). "Review of Margaret Murray's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe". Folklore. Vol. 33. pp. 224–230.
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- Whitehouse, Ruth (2012–13). "Margaret Murray (1863–1963): Pioneer Egyptologist, Feminist and First Female Archaeology Lecturer". Archaeology International. 16 (2012–2013). Ubiquity Press: 120–127. doi:10.5334/ai.1608.
- Valiente, Doreen (1989). The Rebirth of Witchcraft. London: Robert Hale. ISBN 978-0709037156.