WITCHCRAFT

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 52, 2 March 1934, Page 14

WITCHCRAFT

-STRANGE BELIEFS

THREE INTERPRETATIONS

;WERE yfOJJF STORIES

It is a sad thought that the present Trill provide bo little mystery for the future. Our books and our photographs will leave few loopholes for speculation. Helen of Troy is a legend of beauty for all time, but everybody will know what Garbo looked like; nor will Napoleon ever fire the imagination like King Arthur. The uncertainty of ' the ; past'is • provoking. One man puts a few pieces together and says, "This is the truth"; and if another says, "Why, necessarily?" he can always roplv^ like the March Hare, "Why not?" "Why" and "why '-not" havo lately been having a battle royal in print on the subject of witchcraft, says a writer in "John'o' London's Weekly." Many. different interpretations on the same material is contained in three now books, "The God of tho Witches," by Margaret A. Murray; "Witchcraft and Demonianism," by C. L'Estrange Ewcn; and "The Werewolf," by. Montague Summers. The first of these is constructive. ;the second destructive; and •the, third frankly credulous. All, on their individual merits, are fascinating. THE OLD GOD, THE NEW DEVIL. Miss Murray's theory is that witchcraft as we know it, Sabbaths, broom-sticks,-charms, and all,'is the survival of the old indigenous European, faith as opposed to the new faith of Christianity. ; A.miracle in your own faith, she remarks, is Black Magic (with capitals) in another, arid the' Christiana uncharitably labelled : the Qlcl god' Devil; JFor centuries tho two faith existed side by side in England. Christianity was just a "veneer in the top layers of society. The people were openly pagan; anxl not only the people, for in 1303 the Bishop of Coventry was accused before the Pope of doing homage to the Devil in the form of a sheep. The Devil was, in fact, the old Horned God of a people to whom cattle wcro tho main thing" in life. His worshippers, whom we call witches, were the fairies, the Little People, tho descendants of the early, races who inhabited "Western and Northern Europe. (Shakespeare was responsible for the shrinkage in size of fairies; they only began to.^creep into acorD cups- and have gossamer wings after the "Midsummer Night's Djfceam." Before that they were evidently mortal in every way.) . . . ' THIRTEENS.; The witches' covens (assemblies of thirteen) were the highly organised priesthood, of the Horned ,God; tho Incarnate God was the supremo chief of the coven, and there were twelve others, including a leader known as the officer, and a woman-member called the Maiden (hence Joan of Arc's .title of "La Pucelle," tho Maid), A garter was a sign of authority. Sometimes the covens combined; ' thirty-nine peqple for instance, i.e., three covens, •conspired to destroy-James VI of Scotland. The members of the covens met weekly at an Esbat, and four times a year there were grand Sabbats, or openair meetings of the believers, at there was music, feasting, dancing, worship, and certain -fertility rites which seem gross to Christian ideas,'but were natural enough to a primitive people. HUMAN SACRIFICE. One of the.main ideas in the worship of the Horned God was that of the Divine .Victim. Lest the- god should grow oid and fail in his powers, he must be' killed after a certain period of years. This meant that tho supreme chief, the man who represented the god to the worshippers, had to die, unless" he found a substitute or sacrificed an animal instead. Miss Murray attempts to prove that William Rufus and Thomas a Becket both died as Divine Victims; that in'the end they courted the death they knew to be their fate, and that the hews of it had been expected by everyone Who understood the cult. Other historical points which she clears up in tho light of her theory are Robin Hood and the Order of'the Garter. Robin Hood's name, she. says, icfcrs to the animal headcovering worn by leaders of this' cult; he had his ■: coven of twelve; and Christian priests were his natural prey be- . cause they belonged-to the opposing Faith: ' The story of the Order of the Garter is that a lady dropped her garter while dancing with Edward 111, and was overcome with confusion. The King picked it up, fastened it on his own leg, with the words, "Honi soit gui mal y pense," and founded, the Order of the Garter with twenty-six knights in •honour- of-the. event. Miss Murray suggests that it took more.than a dropped garter to shock a lady of the four-teenth-century, and that she was confused because tho possession of it showed her holding of authority in the Old Religion. Moreover. Edward, by taking it himself,-put himself in the position of the Incarnate God in the eyes of hia pagan subjects. SATANISM. ■ ' After this Teligious exaltation o£ witchcraft Mr. C. L'Estrangc Ewen's book seems like a cold douche. The witches' Devil, in his view, was not an old god relabelled, but simply Satan, tho Old Seducer, tho Spirit of Evil. He denies any organisation'in tho cult of Satanism, refutes any examples of the covens of thirteen, and throws a very humiliating light on the whole black business. • St. Guthlae (c. 700) was relieved to find that some midnight marauders, were only devils, and .not, as he liad feared, "Welshmen! .' I£ a woman had a child,.and.didn't like to account for its parentage, she put it down 'to the Devil, which apparently freed her from any possible blame. Indeed, it is suggested that the Devils clothed in- black wcro often simply renegade priests; also'that a good deal of exorcism, was practised as a moneymaking fraud. As for the witches— poor old things, pointed at by the vil-lage-children—no . wonder they cursed! Coincidence and. ignorance lent colour to their supposed powers. Two things stand out. First, the folly of"..professing witchcraft, from which no' benefits were to be- had, and much hardship. And second,- the uucomfortable thought that Christians were not only responsible for the belief in'witches, but infinitely more cruel than any, witch could ever hope to be. John Wesley said that to give up belief in witchcraft was "in effect giving up the Bible." And what did a few people blasted by the evil eyo weigh in the' balance against 300,000 people executed on the strength of tho bull Issued in 1485 by Pope Innocent VIII .against devil-worshippers, ineendiarists, and the like? TBIAIiS FOR WITCHCRAFT. Mr. Ewen is concerned chiefly with tho legal history of witchcraft in England,, from, the time in 1542 when witchcraft and sorcery,were first made punishable by death, to the time in 1685 when the. last witch was executed in England. The body of his book is a very valuable collection of reports of trials. ' The charges were often petty, and the trials more'than discreditable to the people who held them. Superstitions were accepted without question, the opinions of hysteripal people and - the • c'pnf essions of the witches under pressure,.. though not (in England) torture, were taken as evidence of guilt; and conditions in prisons were so bad that many of the accused died before they came to trial. Nor was

the medica,! profession much more helpful than the law.- 'Diseasesnot understood, including hysteria and' epilepsy, were ■ put 'down to tf derhoniacai possession, and many tubercular declines were no doubt attributed to the evil power of tho witches. "Evidence" of familiars was considered proof of tho black art. Familiars (a distinguished- feature of English witchcraft) were animals, cats, dogs, toads, or anything else, sent out by the witches to effect their ill designs. Some of their names, are entertaining: Hercules," Vinegar Tom, Pretty, Rutterkin, Tewhit, Joekeyj Elimanzor, and Germany. It was supposed that as a reward' for their services the familiar sucked the witch's blood from some part of her body,. thereby making a "devil's teat." Women accused of witchcraft wero sear-shed for these marks, and any wart or protuberant •mark was damning evidence of guilt. Altogether a sorry business. WEREWOLFERY. Mr. Montague Summers breaks different ground in his book on the werewolf. It must be said in the beginning that, though he is an excellent and painstaking- scholar (the bibliography. of his sources is frightening, and a working knowledge of Latin and Old French is presumed in his readers), neither tolerance nor - impai-tiality can bo counted .among his virtues. His method is simple. 'He himself believes iv the existence of were wolf cry; anybody who bears him out in this belief is.'.'celebrated" and" eminent,". the disbelievers being dismissed as cheap sneerers; Stories convenient to hisi theory are "amply proven," while' those that are inconvonieht are "unworthy of record." However, why grumble, since the book fulfils the purI pose of bringing together a vast amount lof evidence on the widespread belief in werewolferyl ! A' werewolf-is defined as "a, human being who cither voluntarily or involuntarily changes or is metamorphosed into tho apparent shape of a wolf/and who is then possessed of all tho characteristics of that:animal." So whereas a vampire is dead, a werewolf is fearfully alive. ' Tho belief in transformation into an, animal is found all over tho world. In Abyssinia there are ! werehyena's; in India tigers; in Malay | leopards; in North America buffaloes, 1 and in Mexico and Peru sagles and serI pents. Circe shaped her victims into i animals. "Apollo on occasion assumed the shape of a wolf. Not to mention the story of Little Red Ridinghood. AN ENGLISH WPREWOLF. There^aro "different theories as to how the,'transformation into wolf-form was effected. It might-be a .body change; or the man's,soul might enter a wolf; I or.the man might be encased with the I demoniacal body of a wolf. A usual [,> recipe for becomirig n. wolf was to put |on a wolf's" pelt; to resume shape, I bathe in water. Whatever happened, numerous grisly stories attest the prevalence of the idea that a man or woman bore tho mark of any wounds dealt them when they were in the shapo of wolves. In 1542, apparently, Constantinople was plagued by werewolves. Solyman tho Magnificent led an attack on them and destroyed about a hundred and fifty. Unluckily, though there are many tales of werewolf cry from France and j elsewhere on the .Continent, not many i instances' are recorded in England.'Mr. I Summers fills the gap with a story of an, Oxford professor in Merionethshire in tho late eighties,' who picked up a skull like that of a dog and took it home. At :night "nails scratched at the kitchen; window. To their horror, in a stale phosphorescent-light they saw the hideous: mask of a .wolf with the eyes of a man glaring through the glass, eyes that were red with hellish rage." The phantom werewolf como for his skull! > .< . - Whether you personally, believe in werewolfery or not, the subject has a murky fascination, and Mr. Summers makes the most.of it: After all this gruesomeness'and occultism it is a relief to turn to Byron's view:— ' "Lykanthropy I comprehend, for without transformation Men become wolves on any slight occasion."