The History and Philosophy of Witchcraft.
Info from Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft by Raymond Buckland 1997
The late Dr. Margaret Murry traced back and saw witchcraft's origins in Palaeolithic times 25,000 years ago. She saw it as more or less an unbroken line through to the present and as a fully organized religion throughout western Europe for centuries before Christianity.
25,000 years ago Man/Woman believed in a multitude of gods. Nature was overwhelming. Out of awe and respect for the gusting wind, the violent lightning, the rushing stream, Man/Woman ascribed to each spirit and made each a deity, a god. This is what we call Animism. A god controlled wind, a god controlled the sky. A god controlled the waters. But most important of all god controlled the hunt, the God of Hunting.
Most of the animals hunted were horned so Man/Woman pictured the god of hunting as being horned. It was at this time that magik became mixed with these first steps of religion.
Along with the god of hunting, there was a goddess. It there was animals, to hunt there had to be fertility for those animals. If the tribe was to continue, then there has to be fertility of woman.
With the development of agriculture, there was further elevating of the goddess. She now watched over the fertility of the crops, as well as of the tribe and of animals. The year then fell into 2 halves. In the summer, food could be grown and so the goddess predominated. In the winter, man/woman has to revert to hunting, so the god predominated.
As woman/man developed. so did the religion. And that is what it has become slowly, and man/woman spread across europe taking the gods along. As different countries developed, the god and goddess acquired different names.
By now, woman/man had learned not only to grow food but also to store it for the winter, so hunting became less important. The horned god came now to be looked upon more as a god of nature, and a god of death, and of what lies after.
With the development of different rituals for fertility, for success in the hunt, for seasonal needs, there necessarily developed a priesthood, a select few more able to bring results when directing the rituals. In some areas of Europe, those ritual leaders or priests and priestess' became known as wicca or wise ones. In fact, by the time of the anglo-saxon kind in England, the king would never think of acting on any important matter without consulting the witan, the counsel of wise ones.
With the coming of Christianity, there was not an immediate mass conversion that is often suggested. Christianity was a man-made religion. Whole countries were classed as christian, when, in actuality, it was only the rulers who has adopted the new religion. Throughout Europe generally the old religion, in its many varied, forms was still prominent for the first thousand years of Christianity.
An attempt at mass conversion was made by Pope Gregory the Great. He thought that 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 gather.
It has frequently been said that the god of an old religion becomes the devil of a new. This was certainly the case here. The god of the old religion was a horned god, so apparently was the Christian devil. The church reasoned that the pagans were devil worshippers.
The devil is a purely christian invention. There was no mention of him as such before the new testament. In fact, the whole concept of evil associated with the devil is due to an error in translation.
As christianity gradually grew in strength, the old religion was slowly pushed back. Until about the time of the reformation, it only existed in the outlying country districts.
In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII produced his bill against witches. Two years later, 2 infamous german monks Heinrich Insitoris Kramer and Jakob Sprenger produced there incredible conception of antiwitches, the Malleus Maleficrum(the witches hammer).
Gradually, the hysteria kindled by Kramer and Sprenger began to spread. For nearly 300 years, the fires of persecution raged.
In 1586 the archbishop of Treves decided that the local witches had caused the recent severe winter. By way of frequent torture, a confession was obtained, and 120 men and women were burned to death.
A rough estimate of the total number of people burned, hung, or tortured to death on the charge of witchcraft is 9 million.
In 1604, King James I passes his witchcraft act, but was repealed in 1736.
By the late 17th century, the surviving members of the craft had gone underground, into hiding. For the next 300 years, to all appearances witchcraft was dead.
In England, in 1951, the last laws against witchcraft were finally repealed. In 1954, Dr. Gerald Brousseau Gardner wrote a book called "Witchcraft Today."
For a while, Gerald Gardner's was the single voice speaking of the craft.
For a millenia, the old religion has been a purely oral tradition.
When the witches were having to meet in the shadows, the rituals were finally written down in what became known as the Book of Shadows. The book was then copied and recopied, passed on over the years from coven leader to coven leader. Gardner took the rituals of the coven to which he belonged and re-wrote them as he felt they should have been. This formed what became known as Garderian witchcraft.
