Some Witches are trained by individual Witches and others come into Wicca through a coven operating an initiatory system. In some cases Witches come from Witch families, but most come from outside the tradition. They feel they are drawn to Wicca or are natural Witches seeking to make contact with teachers who can help them develop along the path. There are books through which it is possible to learn much. Books can add to our store of knowledge but it is difficult to learn Wicca from books alone. Learning Wicca is like learning anything else: at some stage we need to practise with others to improve our skill and knowledge and to assess how good we really are. Wicca is also a bit like learning a language. We can read books, listen to tapes, but in the end we need to speak that language with others to know how to use it.
Each coven has teachings derived from the accumulated generations who have worked in that particular coven. If it is part of an initiatory tradition, it will also have the core material of the tradition. This is recorded in a book of rites and spells, the Book of Shadows. Computers notwithstanding, each Witch must make his or her own handwritten copy. Wicca is part of the modern world, but it is also an inheritor of past traditions.
ORIGINS OF WICCA
Wicca’s history is that of natural magic, the Pagan mystery traditions, such as those of Egypt and Eleusis, and of Celtic spirituality. Wicca draws on mysticism, astrology, runes, tarot and, in modern times, on insights from psychology. It also draws on the traditions of healing of body and of soul.
Although the Wiccan practice I describe here is European in origin, Wicca represents universal and fundamental beliefs and skills. Similar traditions exist all over the world; wherever native indigenous spirituality has not been suppressed. We find similar ideas in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, Polynesia, everywhere where people have sought to honour the Divine and to use the innate powers of the human psyche.
The Wiccan revival in the twentieth century began in England, sacred Albion, home of Glastonbury, Stonehenge and the legends of the Grail. This is perhaps no accident. The idea that the Western islands of Europe were Holy Ground and sacred soil is a long-held tradition. The greatest Druid training schools in the Celtic era were in Britain and Ireland. In Medieval times, scholars claimed that Britain was given to their ancestors by the Goddess Diana. In 1136, the historian Geoffrey of Monmouth described in his History of the Kings of Britain how refugees escaping in pre-Christian times from the siege of Troy were desperately seeking a new homeland. Their leader called upon Diana to help them:
O powerful Goddess,
terror of the forest glades,
yet hope of the wild woodlands,
you, who have the power to go in orbit,
through the airy heavens and the halls of hell,
pronounce a judgement which concerns the Earth.
Tell me which lands you wish us to inhabit.
Tell me of a safe dwelling-place
where I am to worship you down the ages,
and where, to the chanting of maidens,
I shall dedicate temples to you.
This he said nine times; four times he proceeded round the altar, pouring the wine which he held upon the sacrificial hearth; then he lay down upon the skin of a hind which he had stretched before the altar. Having sought for slumber, he at length fell asleep.
It was then about the third hour of the night, when mortal beings succumb to the sweetest rest; that it seemed to him the Goddess stood before him and spoke these words to him:
Brutus, beyond the setting of the Sun,
past the realms of Gaul,
there lies an island in the sea,
once occupied by giants.
Now it is empty and ready for your folk.2
These Pagan links are part of the reason why Witchcraft has revived most quickly in England rather than in other parts of Europe. Another is England’s remoteness from Rome. This meant that it was Christianized later than some parts of Europe and with the Protestant Reformation could more easily break from Rome. English Protestantism was not a fanatical variety. It did not engage in Witch persecutions with the same enthusiasm as some of its Catholic and Protestant neighbours. English Protestantism was a curious hybrid of moderate Catholicism and Lutheranism in a church headed not by a religious figure but by the monarch – the King or Queen. This Church of England was a state church whose interests were as much about creating a stable society as about religion.
On the fringes of western Europe many Pagan ideas endured in ways they could not elsewhere. Other than Celtic Brittany in north-west France, Britain and Ireland are the parts of Europe where Pagan sacred sites have best survived. Scottish, Welsh, English and Irish cultures all show their Pagan origins. Scratch the surface and you will find village customs such as May-pole dancing, well-dressing, the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, Morris Men, Harvest festivals – all remnants of Pagan religious customs.
People often think of Europe as having being Christian for two thousand years, but this is not the case. Paganism and Christianity were still struggling over a thousand years later. Medieval laws tell us much about Paganism because they tell us what it was necessary to suppress. This included making offerings to non-Christian Gods, performing Witchcraft or divination, swearing vows at wells, trees or stones, and gathering herbs with non-Christian incantations. In the eleventh century when King Canute issued laws against Heathenism or Paganism, this is what he forbade.
We earnestly forbid every Heathenism:
Heathenism is, that men worship idols;
that is, that they worship Heathen Gods,
and the Sun or the Moon,
fire or rivers,
water-wells or stones,
or forest trees of any kind;
or love Witchcraft.3
Witchcraft and Paganism survived in rural areas as part of the folk traditions and folk medicine of the people. This does not mean that the ruling classes of society were not exposed to these folk traditions. Communal festivities such as May Day were celebrated by both high and low.
Witches were consulted by all strata of British society well into the nineteenth century. Hannah Green of Yeadon in Yorkshire, known as the ‘Ling Bob Witch’, inherited her mother’s practice which she ran for forty years. In 1810, she left a thousand pounds in her will, an enormous sum of money in those days. Cunning Murrell, who died in 1860, was a male witch from Essex who practised healing, averting the evil eye, astrology, herbalism, and spellcraft for clients as far away as London. After his death he was found to have owned a trunkful of books and manuscripts including magical texts from the seventeenth century.
Witchcraft and Pagan religious traditions survived in rural areas, but Witchcraft would have remained an underground tradition if it was not for the work of one man, Gerald Gardner, who became familiar to many thousands of people