Candace Savage,

author of Witch: The Wild Ride from Wicked to Wicca,

the witch who has been victim rather than

perpetrator, most notoriously in Europe during the era known
alternately as the Burning Times, the Witch-hunts or the Witch-craze.
This was quite a long period, spanning roughly from the fourteenth
through the eighteenth centuries and affecting to varying degrees,
with very few exceptions, virtually the entire European continent.

At what
point are you a witch? Do you need a year and a day of study, as
some believe, or does one single spell or experiment with divination
define you as a witch?

“Witchcraft: the craft of the wise, the

knowledgeable.”

Others also perceive a

religious root but differ on other aspects: according to these
authorities the whole concept of “witchcraft” is a construct created by
Christians who had hostile perceptions of Pagan spirituality.

pagan
deities were degraded into demons and devils, their devotees
maligned as witches: one person’s god transformed into another
person’s devil, in other words. These spiritual traditions aren’t one
but many: what unifies them is the Christian perception of them as
evil and devilish

That concept would surprise—and perhaps disappoint—many

people. Witchcraft as religion does offer the possibility of witchcraft
without magic. If you accept the definition of witchcraft as being a
suppressed Pagan religion, then it exists even if magic doesn’t. One
can celebrate the cycles of the year, the inherent sacredness of
Earth, without recourse to magic.

“ritual witchcraft,” the ancient religion of Western Europe.

The
Malleus Maleficarum

every
woman’s personal connection with the divine Feminine; every
woman a magical goddess on Earth, a living conduit to the sacred,
something to be encouraged,

Once upon a time,

women held significant, prominent roles as community healers. As
medicine became an exclusively male profession, legally enforced
as such, women who attempted to maintain their former roles were
branded as dangerous “witches.” Women were forbidden to study
medicine, forbidden to practice medicine—leading to a medieval
definition of witchcraft: “If a woman dare to cure without having
studied, she is a witch and must die.” Essentially these witches are
practicing medicine without a license, a practice that remains illegal
today, although with far less dire consequences

• It is no accident that the heavenly body universally

associated with witchcraft is the moon, whose shape
changes continually, although her rhythm is constant
• It is no accident that the element universally
associated with witchcraft is water, whose tides are
ruled by the moon; water appears, disappears,
changes shape, shifts co

. You’re fascinated by the magical arts, the occult

sciences, and/or the hidden powers of Earth.
2. You perceive Earth as sacred, filled with mystery,
worthy of awe.
3. You feel an affinity with wild weather, wild
creatures, and Earth’s wild places.
4. You perceive power, positive strength, and magic,
maybe even the divine, in women.
5. You can maintain a relationship with an individual
of another species, such as a bird or an animal.
(Whether you define your opposing gender as
another species is up to you.)
6. By nature, you’re nocturnal.
7. Darkness doesn’t scare you—not consistently
anyway.
8. You have an independent nature; you like to make
your own rules and you value your privacy and
autonomy.
9. You possess curiosity and a thirst for knowledge.
10. Ancient stories (myths, legends, fairy tales) enthrall
you.
11. You think the universe might hold undiscovered
mysteries. Not everything can be explained by
science; not everything can be controlled by
people.
12. The mysteries of birth and death fascinate you.
13. You consider yourself a witch, or sometimes
suspect that you are one, or think you might like to
be one.

Recognition of magic power and the accompanying urge to

manipulate it exists from earliest creation. Folklorist and practitioner
of magic Zora Neale Hurston identified God as the original hoodoo
doctor, because he spoke the world into creation with a series of
magical words. That’s a concept that would have been familiar to the
ancient Egyptians. Among their many creation stories is one where
Ptah the craftsman god, the original mason, also brings the world
into existence using magic words. Other creation stories from all
over Earth posit a similar magical creation. The world and all
inhabitants, including people, are created via incantation, song
(charm), visualization, spell-casting or image-magic: figures molded
from Earth, life magically breathed into them.
Other creation stories make the magical connection very explicit.
In another Egyptian creation tale, the Creator, having contemplated
creation, realizes that all will not be well and that people are
potentially in for a lot of grief, heartache, and trouble. Feeling
remorseful, the Creator quickly invents magic power (heka, to the
ancient Egyptians) for people to use to ward off the harsh blows of
fate. Magic is thus a crucial necessity of divine origin.

This gift
stimulates the Corn Maidens to form a pair of lines facing the sun
and begin a dance in tribute: the birth of religion and agriculture, with
full approval from the witches. This is a nice witch story. The witches,
however, also bear another gift: death. They insist death is
necessary to prevent Earth from becoming overcrowded. People,
however, are horrified and behold witches, responsible for life-saving
sustenance and the introduction of death, with suspicion ever after. It
is an early acknowledgement of ambivalence toward witchcraft: the
power to heal and preserve may also be wielded to harm and
destroy.

Creation stories tend to end with that magical act of

creation. What happened next? Quite often, as in that Zuni tale, the
witches show up bearing life-saving knowledge and skill.
Imagine the earliest people on Earth, our most remote ancestors,
encountering new plants, strange animals, and substances never
before seen. They have no pre-existing scientific context.
Science posits a lengthy trial-and-error period. Conventional
shamanic wisdom suggests that those animated plants, animals, and
substances identified themselves and explained their gifts and
dangers in a manner comprehensible to the shaman, who served as
their medium to the greater human community.

Earth: the tangible realm of mortal people and creatures

• Spirit World: the realm of deities and spiritual beings—angels,
fairies, djinn, and so forth
• Dreamland: experiences in dreams really happen; just on a
different plane of existence
• Realm of the Dead: the after-life

Communication with other realms, including those of the spirits and

the deceased
• Soul retrieval and other forms of healing
• Location of lost or stolen items, in particular buried treasure

Hard as it may be to believe today, once upon a time in

many places, menopausal women were regarded with a
reverence verging on awe; their wise blood retained,
its power increased exponentially within
• If a woman survived child-bearing, she was also more
likely to survive into old age, a phenomenon that may
still be witnessed if you calculate the percentage of
women to men in virtually every retirement community
• On the other hand, a woman with no children to
provide for her old age might have a strong incentive
to develop psychic skills in order to remain a valued,
cared-for member of society

Although some enlist, many more are drafted. Very frequently the
individual has little choice in the matter. The spirits choose you, their
call manifesting through dreams, visions (not necessarily your own),
illness, bad luck, and/or animal attack. Traditionally, in some places,
surviving bear, snake, or jaguar attacks was interpreted as a
shamanic call.
Sometimes the shaman’s refusal to heed the call affects a whole
community adversely: bad luck spreads around, as in the biblical tale
of Jonah. (Read it again. He didn’t just accidentally end up in that
whale’s belly; there was a reason Jonah found himself lost in the
depths of the sea.) If the cause of misfortune is traced back to her
recalcitrance, the community may insist that the shaman assume her
role or risk ostracism, banishment, or worse—being sacrificed to
appease the spirits

The use of the word “cult” is the tip-off that we are outsiders
looking in. Cult is a word used by outsiders to describe a
phenomenon of which they are not part and toward which they bear
either ambivalence or disapproval. “Cult” in modern usage carries a
negative connotation: we have religion, strange other people have
cults. At best, “fertility cult” has an archaic ring evoking Orientalist
images of sacred prostitution. At worst, “cult” carries sinister
overtones: people must be rescued from “cults,” deprogrammed from
the brainwashing kind.
Over the centuries reverence for women’s reproductive
abilities evolved into a trap with women only valued for potential
fertility, like some prized chicken or cow.

At its most primal and ancient, the fertility cult, for lack of anything
better to call it, acknowledges that life is precious, sacred, potentially
full of joy but all too often tenuous and fraught with danger. Earth is a
wonderful place; there is no better place to be but life is short and
continually threatened.

It doesn’t matter how fertile Earth is, if it doesn’t rain or if irrigation

isn’t otherwise provided, there will be no harvest. No rain, no growth.
No semen, no pregnancy. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to
understand these simple facts.
• The stick in the broom
• The broomstick between the legs

Horns on a male deity invariably indicate that he’s virile, sexually

insatiable, always ready, willing and able, hot, horny.

This veneration hides

in the Bible too: not only in the obvious golden calf, believed to
represent Hathor or her son, but also in Leah, the only innately fertile
biblical matriarch, whose name may be translated as “wild cow.”
Even today describing a woman as “cow-eyed,” like the goddess
Hera, is still considered a great compliment in Greece, a testament
to female beauty, although it doesn’t translate well into English

Its birthplace seems to have been in Persia, in what is now

modern Iran, from whence it spread through the Middle East, the
Mediterranean and beyond. Dates vary as to when Zoroaster
(Zarathusra) was born in Iran. Conservative Zoroastrians, members
of the religion founded on his teachings, suggest 6000 BCE.
Historians generally suggest sometime between 1500 and 1000 BCE.
Previously, Iranian religion had been similar to that of polytheistic
Mesopotamia and the Pagan Middle East. Zoroaster preached a new
faith with a new perspective. Initially he was attacked for his ideas,
but eventually he found favor with the king. Zoroastrianism became
the state religion and remained so until the Islamic jihad arrived in
Persia in 650 CE. Many Zoroastrians fled to India where a community
remains, as they do in Iran and elsewhere.
Although these facts may be unfamiliar to most Western readers,
elements of Zoroastrian religion will be familiar to many:
• Zoroastrianism envisions the universe as a battleground of two
gods who existed from the beginning: the Lord of Light and
Righteousness and the Lord of Darkness and Evil. The universe is
divided between into their armies, including people, who must
choose a side. Fence-sitting is not an option; there is no gray area,
no middle-ground; it is a world of distinct, clear boundaries. One
must actively, consciously enlist in the army of the Lord of Light
because if one does not do so then one willingly or inadvertently
supports the opposition, the Lord of Darkness
• Many Zoroastrians believe in a savior born from a virgin of the
lineage of Zoroaster who will raise the dead and preside over the
Final Judgment
• In the inevitable final show-down, the apocalyptic battle between
the forces of good and evil, the Lord of Darkness and his forces will
be destroyed. The dead will be resurrected and the world purged
and cleansed via a flood of molten metal, although only the wicked
are scalded. The righteous will wade through this fiery flood as if
through warm milk
• There is a Final Judgment of souls. Sinners are punished (but
ultimately forgiven) and then humans will be immortal, free from all
Earthly ills: death, disease, old age, hunger, poverty
This vision of a world struggling between forces of good and evil
permeates the philosophies and spiritual traditions known as
“Gnosticism” as well.
In the most literal sense, gnosis refers to the knowledge or
understanding (divine comprehension) that produces, or at least
supports spiritual salvation. The Gnostic is saved when he
personally sees the light and experiences epiphany.
There was never one unified Gnostic movement. Instead the term
refers to a series of schools and teachers, emerging in strength
during the first century CE, centered mainly in Egypt and Judea.
There’s wide variety, a broad spectrum of beliefs held by the various
Gnostic schools, and Pagan, Jewish, and Christian schools of
Gnosticism exist. Eventually, Gnostic philosophy would exert a
profound influence on mainstream Christianity

This vision of a world struggling between forces of good and evil

permeates the philosophies and spiritual traditions known as
“Gnosticism” as well.
In the most literal sense, gnosis refers to the knowledge or
understanding (divine comprehension) that produces, or at least
supports spiritual salvation. The Gnostic is saved when he
personally sees the light and experiences epiphany.
There was never one unified Gnostic movement. Instead the term
refers to a series of schools and teachers, emerging in strength
during the first century CE, centered mainly in Egypt and Judea.
There’s wide variety, a broad spectrum of beliefs held by the various
Gnostic schools, and Pagan, Jewish, and Christian schools of
Gnosticism exist. Eventually, Gnostic philosophy would exert a
profound influence on mainstream Christianity.
Although there are many variations on the theme, a typical
Gnostic vision goes something like this: despite religious
propaganda to the contrary, the material world was not created by
the highest, good God. A lower being formed the physical world but
in the process, true divine sparks of light were trapped. Thus Earth is
corrupt, tainted, or even possibly evil, but it contains sparks of godly,
divine, trapped goodness that can potentially be nurtured, saved,
freed, and redeemed. Human suffering derives from entrapment in
this physical world, which is governed by an Evil Being who
impersonates God and usurps His power.
Some ancient Gnostic Christians perceived that the
creator of the physical world—the demi-urge in Gnostic#speak—was the God of the Old
Testament. Christ was
an emissary sent to bypass the demi-urge by the true
God. Once the notion of the Trinity became established,
incorporating the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, however,
this perception became problematic and was
considered heretical.

Siddhartha Gautama, the Lord Buddha, was born in 623 B.C. in the famous gardens of
Lumbini, which soon became a place of pilgrimage. Among the pilgrims was the Indian
emperor Ashoka, who erected one of his commemorative inscribed Ashoka pillars
there. The inscription on the pillar is the oldest in Nepal.

is to entirely separate spiritual light

from material darkness. If and when this process is complete, then
the Kingdom of Darkness will be for ever defeated. A microcosm of
this war is fought within each human being as the soul struggles to
break free from the corporal body, while simultaneously the corporal
body, under the dominion of the Lord of Darkness, tempts and
encourages backsliding. Each person must achieve individual
salvation: each human is a battlefield for the forces of Light and
Darkness. You must actively choose your side.
Some people are closer to that goal than others. Persons on the
verge of spiritual liberation were known as the Elect. The Elect led
highly disciplined, ascetic lives, abstaining from sex because
indulgence in sensual pleasures (sex for its own sake) strengthens
the body at the expense of the soul, and because babies, the result
of sex for reproduction, are but fresh prisons for entrapped sparks of
light. Furthermore, those precious sparks of light may be contained
within sperm, which should thus be protected from the moist,
darkness of the womb

female deities like Bastet, Diana, Freya, Hathor, Hecate, Kybele, and
Lilith.

These various conflicting perceptions are best exemplified by the

story of Dr William Harvey and the witch, as told in an anonymous
seventeenth-century manuscript. Dr Harvey (1578–1657), the
discoverer of the circulation of blood, visited Newmarket with his
patron King Charles I. Hearing stories about a local witch, Dr Harvey
decided to investigate. He paid a call on the anonymous witch at her
home at the edge of Newmarket Heath. Her first instincts were to be
wary and secretive but Dr Harvey worked to put her at ease.
Engaging her in conversation, he managed to pass himself off as a
fellow magical practitioner. Enjoying the company, the witch relaxed.
When Dr Harvey asked to see her familiar, she obliged. Putting out a
saucer of milk, the witch made some toad-like noises and a toad
hopped out from under a chest to lap up the milk.
Dr Harvey gave the woman a shilling and sent her out to buy
them some ale. In her absence, he caught and dissected her toad.
Imagine someone coming into your home and secretly dissecting
your pet. Having dissected the creature, Dr Harvey formed the
scientific conclusion that the familiar was not an imp or a demon but
was, in fact, really a toad and thus, in his understanding, not truly a
familiar.
When the woman returned with the ale and learned what had
happened, she was absolutely devastated, screaming and lunging at
the doctor. He tried to calm her with gifts and explanations, all to no
avail. Eventually he lost patience and identified himself as the king’s
physician, telling her that instead of crying for her toad, she should
be rejoicing that he wasn’t having her tried for witchcraft. Dr Harvey
was an early scientific hero and this story is often understood as a
parable recounting an early triumph of science over superstition