(c) 1994 SIRS, Inc. -- SIRS Researcher Volume : SIRS 1990 Religion, Volume Number 3, Article 86 Subject: Witchcraft Title : Paganism and Witchcraft Author : James R. Dibble Source : Detective Publication Date : Spring 1990 Page Number(s) : 6-11 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ . . . Reprinted from DETECTIVE U.S. Army Spring 1990, pp. 6-11 ________________________________________________________________________ PAGANISM AND WITCHCRAFT by CWO 2 James R. Dibble Fort Campbell District CWO 2 James R. Dibble has been a student of the occult for 10 years. Besides lecturing on the subject, Dibble provides technical advice to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. Recently, Dibble participated in "Operation Just Cause" in Panama where his knowledge of occult paraphernalia allegedly belonging to Gen. Manuel Noriega gained national attention. The facts, opinions and beliefs expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent a military or CIDC position on the subject. Foreword For years, the fascinating subject of the occult remained obscure and remote. Now it seems many newspapers and tabloids carry reports of bizarre or heinous rituals involving satanic activity. The occult is all around us; we can no longer afford to deny its existence. To some, the occult is mysterious and frightening; to others, the world of the occult is a way of life, and agents may sometimes discover occult practices intermingled with crimes they are investigating. We as investigators must therefore understand what the occult is--and what it is not. The information presented here may help investigators understand how witchcraft began and may perhaps provoke thought on where witchcraft is going. The material is not meant to undermine, demean or question anyone's religious convictions nor to violate anyone's first amendment right to freedom of religion. Hopefully, agents will use the information as a frame of reference with which they can more objectively approach cases involving the occult. We must remember that it doesn't matter what we believe--it's what some of them may believe that is significant. To understand what witchcraft is today, we must look back at what it was--at its history. The late Dr. Margaret Murray, an expert in the field of witchcraft, traced its origins to the Paleolithic period, some 25,000 years ago. According to Murray, witchcraft existed as a fully organized religion throughout western Europe for centuries before Christianity. Paleolithic man and woman depended on hunting animals for survival; animals were their source of food; animal skins provided clothing and shelter; and Paleolithic man and woman fashioned tools and weapons out of animal bones. Nature to these people was overwhelming, and out of respect for the different natural forces of the earth--the gusting wind, the violent lightening, the rushing stream--man and woman ascribed a spirit to each of these forces. These spirits were deities, or gods. This is what is known as "animism." A god controlled the wind, a god controlled the sky, a god controlled the waters, and so on. But most of all, a god controlled the all-important hunt. Thus, the god of hunting was born. During those early days, many of the animals hunted were horned, so some cultures pictured the god of hunting as also being horned. For them, magic and religion became intertwined. The earliest form of magick* (*magick: Used to signify ceremonial magic as opposed to prestidigitation or sleight of hand.) was probably sympathetic: At that time, people believed similar things have similar effects, that like attracts like. If, for example, a life-sized animal was fashioned out of clay, then attacked and killed, it was reasoned that a real hunt of the same animal should end in a similar manner--a kill. Religiomagical rituals were born when one of the tribe members donned an animal skin and antlered mask and played the part of the hunting god who directed the attack. This form of sympathetic magick still exists today. High mortality rates made the tribes realize the importance of their people's fertility. Again, sympathetic magick played an important role. Clay models were made of the animals mating and used in accompanying rituals. A goddess represented the great provider and comforter as Mother Nature or Mother Earth. The goddess grew in importance with the development of agriculture, as she now watched over the fertility of the crops as well as the tribe and animals. The year naturally fell into two halves, so during the summer when food could be grown, the goddess predominated; in the winter when the tribes relied on hunting, the god predominated. All other deities in the pagan pantheon, like thunder and wind, gradually became of secondary importance. Tribal religions and beliefs continued to evolve as man and woman progressed and developed. As people migrated across Europe, they took their gods with them; sometimes the gods acquired different names yet they remained essentially the same deities. People learned not only to grow food, but also to harvest and store food for the winter, so hunting became less important. The horned god came to be looked upon more as a god of nature and a god of death and what lies after. The goddess remained symbolic of fertility and rebirth, as man and woman developed a belief in life after death. A priesthood was a natural offspring of the different rituals that developed over time. A select few were among those who successfully brought about results as they directed the rituals, and in some areas of Europe, these leaders became known as the Wicca, or "the Wise Ones." The Wicca not only led the religious rites but were also required to have knowledge of herbal lore, magick and divination; they had to be doctor, lawyer, magician and priest. To the pagan people, the Wicca were the links between them and the gods. During great pagan festivals, in fact, the Wicca became like gods. The Old Religion survived even after the advent of Christianity. In some cases, whole countries were classed as Christian when in actuality many people held fast to their old beliefs. The Old Religion, in its many varied forms, was still prominent through the first thousand years of Christianity. Pope Gregory the Great attempted a mass conversion to Christianity. He believed one way to get the people to attend the new Christian churches was to have them built on the sites of the older temples, where people were accustomed to worshipping. He instructed the bishops to destroy all "idols" and to sprinkle the temples with holy water to rededicate them. Pope Gregory was successful to a large extent. However, when the Christian churches were being built, the only artisans available were pagans. In decorating the churches, the stonemasons, woodcarvers and other artisans cleverly concealed figures of their own deities in the structures. Thus, the people could still worship their own gods even if they were forced to attend the churches. Along with the spread of Christianity came the gradual decline of the Old Religion. At the time of the Reformation, in fact, the Old Religion existed only in the outlying country districts. Non-Christians became known as pagans and heathens. The word "pagan" comes from the Latin pagani and simply means "people who live in the country." The word "heathen" means "one who dwells on the heath." As the centuries passed, the campaign against non-Christians continued. Whatever the Wiccans did was reversed and used against them. If the pagans performed magic to promote fertility and increase their crops, the Church claimed that they made women barren and blighted the crops. In one old fertility ritual, for example, the villagers would go to their fields by the light of a full moon and dance around the field astride pitchforks, poles and broomsticks. They would leap high into the air as they danced to show the crops how high they should grow. The Church claimed the pagans worked against the crops and that they actually flew through the air on their poles, surely the work of the devil. We tend to hold on to the traditional prejudices that have been institutionalized over the years, as old beliefs are hard to discard. Even today, witches are characterized as ugly old hags with warts on their noses, who wear conical hats and ride broomsticks. As a matter of fact, the hat we typically associate with witches was a popular women's headdress in the 15th century. The tall, conical hat sometimes had a brim; often, however, the hat was brimless. By the early 16th century, the headdresses were no longer fashionable in the larger cities and towns, though women in the outlying villages and farms continued to wear them. The new religion wanted to purge the beliefs held by people of the Old Religion, and part of the process included showing that the Old Religion was outdated; witches were therefore depicted wearing the outdated hats, proving they were "behind the times." In 1484, Pope Innocent VII produced his Bull Against Witches, and two years later, two infamous German monks, Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, produced their incredible concoction of anti-witchery, the "Malleus Maleficarum" ("The Witches Hammer"). This three-part work dealt with witches, their associations with the devil, their works, successful dissolution of their works, and directions for Judicial and Ecclesiastical Proceedings (the trial). In this book, definitive instructions were given for the identification and prosecution of witches. However, when the book was submitted to the theological faculty of the University of Cologne, the appointed censor at the time, the majority of the professors refused to have anything to do with it. Kramer and Sprenger nonetheless forged the approval of the whole faculty, a forgery that was not discovered until 1898, approximately 400 years later. Gradually, the hysteria kindled by Kramer and Sprenger began to spread throughout Europe, and for 300 years, the persecutions raged. The inhabitants of entire villages and towns where one or two witches were suspected of residing were put to death amid cries of: "Destroy them all, the Lord will know his own." In 1586, the Archbishop of Treves decided that the local witches were responsible for the recent severe winter; he directed that they be tortured, and as a result of a "confession" elicited from them, 120 men and women were charged with interfering with the elements and were burned to death. The frenzy continued. The word "witch" had sinister connotations, and some estimates say that over the 300 year period, several million people charged with witchcraft were burned, hanged or tortured to death. Not all these people, however, were followers of the Old Religion; the furor against witchcraft was an opportune method of getting rid of individuals against whom one bore a grudge. But what about satanism? The witches were called devil worshippers. Was there a factual basis for that claim? Some historians believe the early Church was sometimes extremely harsh on the people. Many of the peasants rebelled, although the rebellions were clandestine. While a majority of the Christians found their lives bettered by praying to the "God of Love," not everyone accepted the faith. Those who rejected the faith decided to pray to the "God of Love's" opposite instead, hoping the devil would help them where the Christian God had not. Thus, satanism came into being. The devil didn't help the poor peasants, either, though praying to the devil was their way of showing contempt for the authorities. It didn't take the Church long to learn about the rebellion. Satanism, the Church said, was anti-Christian; witchcraft was also anti-Christian so satanism and witchcraft became synonymous. In 1604, King James I passed his Witchcraft Act, which was repealed 132 years later. It was replaced by an act that stated there was no such thing as witchcraft, and that those who claimed to have occult powers would be charged with fraud. By the late 17th century, the surviving members of the Old Religion, also known as the "Craft," had gone underground. For the next 300 years, witchcraft was dead, at least to all outward appearances. But witchcraft did not die. It survived in covens, oftentimes consisting of only family members. The Craft continued. It wasn't until 1951 that the last laws against witchcraft were finally repealed in England, and the way was now cleared for witches to have their say. In 1954, Dr. Gerald Gardner published a book entitled "Witchcraft Today" in which he wrote: "What Margaret Murray has theorized is quite true. Witchcraft was a religion and in fact still is. I know, because I am a witch myself." Covens throughout the world, which had been forced into hiding, contacted Gardner. Gardner's lifetime study of religion and magick convinced him that the existing witchcraft was incomplete and, in places, even inaccurate. For centuries, the Old Religion had been an oral tradition. Nothing was put in writing until the persecutions began, when the covens were forced to separate. At that time, the witches met in the shadows, and their rituals were recorded in what became known as "The Book of Shadows." Over the years, the book was copied and passed from coven to coven. Since it was only natural that errors were made in recording some of the rituals, Gardner took the rituals of the coven to which he belonged--a basically English and Celtic group--and rewrote them as he felt they should have been written. This became known as "Gardnerian Witchcraft." The first person in America who claimed to be a witch was Raymond Buckland, a disciple of Gardner. Together, the two men set out to dispel many of the long-held misconceptions surrounding witchcraft and to show the Craft for what it truly was--and is. Today, witchcraft can be found in many variations: Gardnerian, Celtic (in many forms), Saxon, Alexandrian, Druidic, Algard, Norse, Irish, Scottish, Sicilian, Huna, among others. Their traditions and rituals are as varied as the types. Some witches prefer to worship in groups, while others opt to worship privately. The Philosophy of Witchcraft The Craft is a religion of love and joy and believes in the goodness of man. The Wiccans empathy with nature is reminiscent of early people who, through necessity, lived in harmony with nature. These people were part of nature, not separate from it. Men and women tended the fields, and in return, they received food for their tables. Yes, they killed animals for food, but then, animals killed other animals to eat. In essence, men and women were part of the natural order of things. Many witches today still hold to this philosophy. For example, it's not unusual to see a witch who is walking through a forest suddenly stop and hug a tree; neither is it unusual to see witches remove their shoes to walk barefoot through a freshly ploughed field to feel and absorb the earth. This is their way of keeping in touch with nature, of securing their heritage. This, too, is how witches attempt to live with others. The main tenet of witchcraft, also known as the "Wiccan Rede," is: "An' it harm none, do what thou wilt," meaning do what you will, but don't do anything that will harm another. In April 1974, the Council of American Witches adopted a set of Principles of Wiccan Belief composed of 13 separate points. Point eight states that calling oneself a witch does not make one a witch; heredity, collecting titles, degrees and initiations do not make one a witch, either. The principles further provide that witches seek to control the forces within themselves that make life possible in order to live wisely and well without harm to others and in harmony with nature. According to point 10, the Wiccans' animosity toward any other religion or philosophy of life is directed against those institutions' claims to be "the only way." The Wiccans believe these institutions seek to deny freedom to others and to suppress other religious practices and beliefs. Point 12 states that the Wiccans do not accept the concept of absolute evil, and that they do not worship any evil entity. Wiccans do not seek power through the suffering of others and do not accept the premise that personal benefit can be derived only by denial to others. Magick--Sabbats--Esbats Witches have always believed in the powers emanating from the body and have developed ways to collect it, increase it and use it for what is termed "constructive magick." Spells and charms are not necessarily tied in with the religious side of witchcraft but are an integral part of the Craft. The regular meetings of the witches are called Esbats. Any work that is needed, such as healing or magick, is done at these meetings. Esbats normally occur monthly at each full moon, for a total of at least 13 meetings a year. In addition to the full moon, many covens also celebrate the new moon. In addition to the Esbats, witches have festivals known as Sabbats. There are eight Sabbats, spaced more or less equidistant throughout the year. There are four "greater Sabbats": Samhaln (pronounced Soe-In), Imbolc (pronounced Im bulk), Beltane (pronounced B'yal-t'n), and Lughnasadh (pronounced Loo-n'sar); the four "lesser Sabbats" are the Spring and Autumn Equinox and Summer and Winter Solstice. According to Dr. Murray, the two most important Sabbats--Samhain and Beltane--coincide with the breeding seasons of wild and domestic animals. Sabbats are a time for rejoicing and celebration, and no work is done on a Sabbat unless there is some emergency, such as a healing that must be done. Similarities exist between some Wiccan rituals and other religious ceremonies. The Wiccan "seigning" is much like a portion of a baptismal rite, where a high priest or priestess presides over the seigning and reads from a ceremonial book. According to some covens, the baby receives gifts of healing powers and psychic abilities from the other witches. Some covens engage in and perform rituals "sky clad"--clad only by the sky, as they feel that clothes inhibit the powers emanating from the body. This practice, however harmless it may appear, has given rise to claims that witches engage in sexually deviant activities. The very substance, the epitome, of Wiccan belief, however, can be illustrated by a passage from a basic Wiccan Esbat ritual: Priest, Priestess: An' it harm none, do what thou wilt. All: An' it harm none, do what thou wilt. Priest, Priestess: Thus runs the Wiccan Rede. Remember it well. Whatever you desire; whatever you would do; be assured that it will harm no one--not even yourself. And remember that as you give, so shall it return threefold. Give of yourself--your love; your life--and you will be thrice rewarded. But send forth harm and that too will return thrice over. In effect, the Wiccan belief is that everything that is done, either good or evil, returns three times. Understanding the philosophies and roles of the traditional Wiccans and the origins of their beliefs will help investigators who must deal with crimes involving the occult, as we must overcome biases if we are to retain our objectivity. Witchcraft has evolved over time, and many of the traditional Wiccan beliefs have become obscure along the way. Today, covens exist that transcend the traditional boundaries and perform "black" or malevolent rituals not addressed in this article. Witchcraft was not born out of evil, for the true Wiccans were not evil people. Unfortunately, as the Craft underwent its evolution, some of its followers abused traditional witchcraft to suit their own needs; this melding of different beliefs and practices was not always good. In many cases, the effects have been horrifying. Orthodox pagan beliefs have an important place in history; by understanding the origins of these pagan beliefs, one can better gauge just how considerably the witchcraft of yore differs from the witchcraft of the present. Diabolical witchcraft seems to be a misuse of pagan and Wiccan beliefs. Today, we are seeing some groups that assimilate whatever philosophies suit their particular needs. Have the traditional pagan and Wiccan beliefs deteriorated to the point that what was once basically good has now become hopelessly evil? We don't have all the answers but are learning to distinguish between some of the renegade factions and the more traditional groups. The experimentation and misuse of these traditional beliefs is only limited by the imagination of those who align themselves with malevolent beliefs. References Valiente, D. AN ABC OF WITCHCRAFT, St. Martin's Press (1973). Russel, J.B. A HISTORY OF WITCHCRAFT, Thames and Hudson (1980). Buckland, R. BUCKLAND'S COMPLETE BOOK OF WITCHCRAFT, Llewellyn Pubs. (1988).