southerncunning:

elegantshapeshifter:

Am I a Murrayite? No. I did a post explaining why the approach I’m referring to is non-Murrayite, it’s called “A pagan-animistic witchcraft history after Margaret Murray” and you can read it here: https://elegantshapeshifter.tumblr.com/post/170696469766/a-pagan-animistic-witchcraft-history-after

However, the core idea of Margaret Murray was that all the accused witches were real witches.
I say the the exact opposite.

In fact we can say that in *no* trial – included those in which the same defendant turn herself in as a witch in front of inquisitors or judges – we can prove that an accused witch was a real witch.

.: The trials as glimpses of folklore :.

But what we can prove is that the trials – ALL the trials – had the ideas discussed in the courtroom taken from somewhere, right?

Clearly the ideas of the accused witch are qualified as parts of the folklore.

Therefore we have two possibilities for the accused:
– or she is an authentic witch (so… no problem, right?)
– or she is an innocent person that reports folk legends.

Even the Church, the inquisition, the judges with their trials and their sermons influenced the popular beliefs, and so even if the accused echoed the words and the ideas of the judges, that source (the judges) can still be classified as part of the folklore (either before the trial with the priests’ sermons or after the trial with the bystanders that attended during the delivery of the judgment and then spread the ideas that were spoken).

If we admit that some witch existed outside the trials, we can imagine that there was a sort of heredity in family, with friends, etc. but in order to accomodate the critics, let’s say that no witch ever let in inheritance their tradition.

For the same reason, even if it’s possible that between all those accused witches a real witch could be there,
in order to accomodate the critics, let’s say that no accused witch ever was a real witch.

They were all innocents.

Ok, done. And now? Now what’s left?
The folklore of the time.
In fact, through the trials we can tap into the folklore of the time.
Trials reveal parts of folklore, and therefore trials are a good source for the knowledge of the folklore.

.: The emulation :.

So… witches existed only in folk legends and not really?
Even supposing that initially that was the case, there is the phenomenon of emulation.
That is, somebody could have taken inspiration from the folklore in order to emulate these beliefs in real life.

Probably the emulation required several steps, for example it is possible that:
1) there was a vast majority of the population who believed in legends about witches;
2) there were certain people who let food offerings to these legends’ characters;
3) there was a minority of people who dreamt these legends;
4) there was an even more restricted minority of people who believed that their dreams about witchcraft meant something and that they were actual witches;
5) there was a minority of minority of minority of people who emulated in physical reality the Sabbath they dreamed.

This idea was put forward by prof. Sabina Magliocco, who writes in her article
“Who Was Aradia? The History and Development of a Legend”:

“Ostension is Degh and Vazonyi’s term for the enactment of legends. […] Ostension always derives from a pre-existing legend: the legend precedes the existence of its enactment. […] Hypothetically, legends about spiritual journeys to dance with the fairies and receive healing can easily be transformed by creative individuals into healing rituals with food offerings to the fairies and ecstatic dancing to special music. What if some women, inspired by utopian legends of the Society of Diana/ Herodias, decided to try to replicate such a society in medieval Europe? 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. The use of the term giuoco (“game”) by Sibillia and Pierina suggests the playful, prankish character of ostension. A “game” based on legends of Diana/ Herodias and the fairies 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.”

Furthermore Magliocco specifies that: “However, it is important to
remember that 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.”

I, therefore, don’t believe

that the statements of the accused are sources because they were all true witches (Murrayite hypothesis), but they are sources because they record the folklore of the time and so they tell us what possible emulations somebody has or could have carried out.

.: The torture and the discrepancy :.

“But many trials were performed under torture, so they don’t count!”

Even under torture if you were saying things that were in contrast with the expectations of the judges or the inquisitors, then obviously you were not (totally) adapting to their pressures, you were not (totally) reporting (only) their ideas, but also previous elements.
So, in order to understand if a confession contained real elements of pre-Christian origin or not, this is the method: if the confession is exactly like what
inquisitors or judges imagined Witchcraft was (i.e. the Devil, the
blasphemy, etc.), the accused was probably repeating what the inquisitors or judges were expecting from her. However, if the story told
during the confession wasn’t aligned with what the inquisitors thought,
it was probably previous to their influences.
So, for example, if the judges wanted to know
about the Devil, and then the accused talked about the Fairy Queen
and/or King, or about Madonna Horiente, or about Herodias, or Diana, it wasn’t a simple repetition of the fantasies of the inquisitors or the judges, it was *something else*.

It is in this way that even trials that were performed under torture
count and are valid and useful for rediscovering the names of
pre-Christian Spirits that were still alive in the folklore of the time
and possibly objects of veneration in the emulations of folklore. 

This is the method that the famous historian Carlo Ginzburg used. In fact, in we can read from his book “Threads and Traces: True False Fictive” that:

“Between “the image underlying the interrogations of the judges and the actual testimony of the accused,” there was, I explained, a “discrepancy,” a “gap” which “permits us to reach a genuinely popular stratum of beliefs which was later deformed and then expunged by the superimposition of the schema of the educated classes”“.

This gap, this discrepancy, therefore,

allow us to accept even trials in which the torture was used.
In those trials we simply look if there was such gap, and we look only at the elements that arise from that discrepancy.

.: Satanic Witchcraft vs Pagan-Animistic Witchcraft :.

However, the fact that we can understand which trials bring pre-Christian elements doesn’t mean that only those trials were emulated, that only the beliefs that arose from those trials were emulated.

All the beliefs had the same probability of being emulated.

Even when the judges or the inquisitors pressured the defendant and the accused slavishly repeated their fantasies, this created folklore.
Why? Because after the trial, when the sentence was pronounced before the population, the population assimilated those beliefs.

Thus, as previous ideas led to the emulation of a Pagan-Animistic Witchcraft (Animistic because, as I said in previous posts, former pagan Gods became Spirits in a Christian-dominated society), the new ideas produced by the influence of the Church or the judges led to emulate a Satanic Witchcraft.

Between these two possibilities (Pagan-Animistic Witchcraft and Satanic Witchcraft), we also have a third one:
When the accused is using the name of the Devil to hide another being, a pre-Christian or non-Christian Spirit (for example in Basque Country Akerbeltz, the local demon which is at the head of the Sabbath, comes from the Goddess Mari; while in Great Britain the Devil is often the spouse of the Queen of Elphame, therefore is the King of Elphame in disguise).

This last hypothesis, however, does not coincide with the Murrayite idea of an “Horned God”: demonization didn’t happen for a single cult throughout Europe, but could cover practically any pre-Christian Spirit, including female spirits (for example Mari in Basque Country) and not just male spirits.

So, the idea that the Devil is actually a God in disguise and the same God in all Europe is false: he is not a single male horned God that the priests have “mistaken” for the devil, it is the demonization that the priests were working towards *any* non-Christian Spirit.
Therefore, to believe that in Spain as in Scotland as in Italy the character that often could be hidden behind the Devil was the same is totally wrong.
Whenever the term “Devil” hides a pre-Christian Entity, this Entity is almost always a different one.
Therefore we have many Devils for every Nation and region that hide different Gods and Spirit, not a single Devil that hides only one Entity.

However, excluding this third possibility, we can say that there were two kinds of emulators: Animistic-Pagan emulators and Satanist emulators.

The existence of these two types of emulators (although Cohn limits himself to the emulation in dreams) is shown by Norman Cohn in his book “Europe’s Inner Demons”, where he writes:

“It is clear that already in the Middle Ages some women believed themselves to wander about at night on cannibalistic errands, while others believed themselves to wander about, on more benign errands, under the leadership of a supernatural queen. Later, after the great witch-hunt had begun, some women genuinely believed that they attended the sabbat and took part in its demonic orgies: not all the confessions, even at that time, are to be attributed to torture or fear of torture.”

All that we have said so far can therefore make us understand why witch trials are an excellent source for better understanding of both the folklore of the time and the possible emulation of it, even if we admit that almost all of those accused of witchcraft were not really witches.

This is such a huge part of how I practice witchcraft. I’ve touched on it in a bit of my writing, but this does an amazing job of really laying the philosophy out there.