Witchcraft

The Brocken, also called the Blocksberg, was the most famous meeting place for witches in Europe. An old-fashioned poet, Matthison, wrote of it with gruesome awe.

The horn of Satan grimly sounds; On Blocksberg’s flanks strange din resounds, And specters crowd its summit high.

One wild story even claimed that here on Walpurgis Night (30th April or May Eve), was held the Grand Coven of all the witch-leaders of Europe.

Because in Germany the activities of the witch-hunters, both Catholic and Protestant, reached a degree of frightfulness which exceeded that of anywhere else in Europe, the name of the Brocken as an alleged site of witches’ Sabbats became notorious.

In later years Goethe brought the tradition of the Brocken into his famous work, Faust, describing a fantastic Sabbat upon its haunted heights.

In the eighteenth century, German map-makers usually added to any map of the Hartz Mountains, of which the Brocken is the highest peak, a few witches flying on broomsticks towards its summit.

One of these old maps, drawn by L. S. Bestehorn and published at N Nuremberg in 1 751, is particularly interesting.

This map also contains a short description of the Brocken, which states that at the summit of the mountain is the famous ‘Witches’ Ground’, where the Sabbats take place, and close to it is an altar, which was formerly consecrated to a pagan god.

There was also a spring of water here, and both the spring and the altar were used in the witches’ ceremonies.

This explains why the Brocken was so famous as a witches’ meeting ground.

It is evidently an old sacred mountain, on the summit of which pre-Christian rites took place.

The scenery in the Hartz Mountains is among the wildest and most beautiful in Germany.

Hence the Brocken’s remoteness added to its aura of mystery and terror.

The famous ‘Spectre of the Brocken’, though a natural phenomenon, was frightening enough to deter a lonely traveler.

When the atmospheric conditions are right, the ‘Spectre’ will appear, as a huge shadowy giant, looming up before one.

Actually, it is caused by the climber’s own shadow being projected by the sun’s rays upon a bank of mist.

On paper, this explanation sounds very matter-of-fact and reassuring; but to be confronted, in the silence of some lonely mountain, with this gigantic apparition, can still send a shiver down one’s spine.

A curious episode took place on the Brocken in June 1932, when the late Harry Price staged a reconstruction of an alleged black magic ritual there.

Accounts of what, if anything, happened are hazy and contradictory.

Apparently, a goat was involved, which was supposed to turn into a human being at midnight, but failed to do so.

This was certainly one of the oddest phrases in the controversial career of this famous psychical researcher.

The Brocken in the Hartz Mountains was not the only witches’ meeting-place which was known as the Blocksberg. Other hills and mountains which bore a similar reputation, also acquired the same name.

In Pomerania, there were several high places known as the Blocksberg; and the Swedish witches called their meeting-place Blocula.

It is advantageous that you realize just what is accessible through this technique.

I have spent many years charting and understanding the concept of thought and the body of the mindscape as a way of understanding and tapping into what I was sure was there as a latent or uncontrolled power.

I have always been subject to random flashes of telepathy and have traveled the timescape through the use of Tarot to predict future events that have occurred exactly, explicitly, and, in many, many cases, word for word.

It is not in my nature to leave things that are open to misrepresentation alone until I have an understanding of their pattern, so I experimented with the concept of consciousness to gain a handle on the function.

What I uncovered is the pattern of thought-it moves as light moves and is, therefore, instantly there and instantly not. It is both particle and wave, as is light, which, incidentally, is why spells are told to no one.

To speak a thing is to collapse the wave, sending the spell into a form of manifestation that may not be material in the observable sense, but is vibratory, therefore having presence in material reality.

Please think about this!

There is both foreground thought and background thought dancing through the mindscape at differing rates of recognizable frequency, and they both exist within a medium; this medium is like space through which both energy and matter realize themselves, but which is a vessel in its own right.

Space, both within the mindscape and within recognizable manifest reality, is a matrix-and the matrix is the medium through which all things travel.

It is a thing of profound silence. It is the spaces between thought, and it is through consciously accessing this medium that telepathy and all forms of spell crafting find their expression.

There are no dividing lines here between that which is within and that which is without.

Fully realizing this removes the illusion of separateness that is the stumbling block to the activation of spell crafting.

Let’s not confuse the word service with the word servitude.

You service the forces with which you interrelate.

You are in service to life itself.

This is our deity, which we consider both our Goddess and our God.

This is Witchcraft at the core.

Your service is to the truth of that which you perpetuate and the need to be on call when you are moved by the intelligence of these forces.

Nothing is required beyond the truth,

and while the truth may be exceedingly confrontational to either you or another,

it does not engender harm.

You will strive to dispel unwarranted fear by reaching beyond the face of fear to seek its source.

It is knowledge and understanding of ourselves at the very source that is contacted through confrontation with adversity (the dark faces of Goddess and God).

To know and understand what it is that engenders fear enables us to penetrate and address perceived inadequacies where possible,

hence to grow beyond what we thought we were.

You will seek to remain unattached to the outcomes of your endeavors,

knowing that the above has been understood;

for to do other w0uld be to become entrapped in a place of resentment, blame, or rejection.

You may have fixed concepts about what you believe will provide happiness, and this may be a false focus.

You will trust that the thrust of your destiny, which places you in a situation you don’t consciously want to be in, is leading you on your quest.

At all times, when these events occur, you will seek to understand why without necessarily comprehending the entirety of the process, as this will, in retrospect, become obvious in its patterning.

You will most certainly consider the phrase “your gods will not barter,” because they won’t־no matter how you moan.

Personal gain may not come to you in material form; that is a limited ideology of wealth-the universe does not necessarily consider the need for payment for services rendered in recognizable goods.

Know the Law of Congruity! Understanding yourself is the first key; seeking to reconcile seeming opposites is the second key; coming to know that, and how, magic works is the third key.

The term “harm” is perpetrated through either ignorance or intent.

Ignorance is a social problem brought about because the flesh we eat is prepackaged and is often not considered flesh; because our fruit and vegetables are all stacked on the shelves at the local shop and other foods are boxed or jarred or tinned or wrapped in neat containers.

These products very often give no hint of their having lived at all; because at some time or other hunting became product distribution and disassociation, and separation became acceptable.

It’s all a lie, isn’t it? Absolutely everything we consume was killed to feed us.

Mass producers of trendy foods appeal to the hedonist in people.

They use trickery to coerce the public into believing their products are “good for them” or are somehow socially impressive.

The ease of fast foods is a trickery that caters to the idea of affluence, creating a false sense of detachment to the whole life-and-death process.

Intent, relative to harm, is all about cowardice, as Oscar Wilde said in The Ballad of Reading Gaol when he wrote,

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

The person who lies creates disillusionment and perpetuates the closed door of their victims’ intuition and ability to live safely, and knows what he or she is doing.

The person who mutilates a garden or a forest for greed and with an “I’m all right, Jack, and that’s all that matters!” attitude knows what he or she is doing.

The person who does not consider the repercussions of their actions (this also applies to a society or a culture) knows what he or she is doing.

An institutional or authoritative body that tells us how to live and threatens or humiliates those who do otherwise (either by choice or circumstance), and a society that has come to expect our government and judicial system to lie and to perpetuate preferentialism is as responsible as the system that perpetuates the dysfunction, because “to acquiesce is to condone” (John F. Kennedy).

To be awake to what you do and to do it without denial, is to honor the interwoven dance of life and death, the certainty of change, your right to choose, and a clear awareness based on the principles of your priesthood, of how you approach, act, and resolve each and even• event and issue.

The biological animal and the soul that infuses it has an innate ability to handle its own life and transcend both the internal and the external problems that arise through merely being alive (in this time, within certain conditions).

I will begin this section by throwing into the ring a particular word that is crucial in the category of detriment: conditioning.

The majority of dysfunctions that arise and entrench themselves in our lives are caused because of preconditioned expectations and assumptions.”

Have a good honest look at your life as it is right now: the people, things, and events around you, the way they affect you, how you react or respond to them, what you think about when thinking about the individuals who are close and not so close to you, and about those who pepper your life.

How much time do you spend dwelling on past events?

How much time is spent speculating on the future?

There!

Hours of time!

People relinquish ownership of their lives to others so quickly (especially where love is concerned) that the responsibility for what happens to us relative to knowing those people automatically falls on them as if we had no control.

Take, for example, the commonly used expressions,

“Look what you are doing to me!”

or

“It’s all your fault!”

Why?

When did it transpire that another ordinary person was given the power over your life to such a degree?

Whatever happened to freedom of choice?

Everyone has the power to change their living arrangements if they are threatened or disempowered by what is happening to them.

To lay the blame of one’s own inadequacy of responsibility on someone else and expect them to comply is to deny both you and them the right to a mind, a spirit, and the pleasure of living.

For a witch, it is unacceptable!

An occultist cannot afford to place the  control of his or her life in the hands of anyone or anything else,

Contemplation is a very natural way of focusing and inspiring the mindscape.

It is best accessed through an activity (sometimes repetitive) that doesn’t require the mental concentration of reading or learning (e.g., rocking, watching a fire, simple weaving, unhurried gardening, unhurried cleaning, unhurried, purposeless walking).

Contemplation is a time-to-spare active meditation that also gives surcease to foreground mental activity.

Out of all of the above, I recommend rocking (preferably in a rocking chair) where no interruption will occur.

Issues will arise that require resolution, and in the state of contemplation, they will be resolved.

Restraints of consciousness will be recognized in this state; doubts in relation to one’s integrity can be addressed here; lies that we perpetuate, or that are perpetuated against us, will come into the full light of awareness.

In a state of true contemplation, revelation can also occur, and the space to create change in accordance with these realizations is available.

Mulengro is the name of an entity that is like an alien barb; one that has become an out-of-control arrow that pierces generation upon generation with its poison.

It feeds on its own likeness, and people are its host.

Mulengro could be considered to be like the Qliphoth of Qabbalah and the devil that Christianity invented in the Middle Ages to ensure obedience to its dogma.

Certain regimes utilize Mulengro’s force as a tool of manipulation.

In Machiavelli’s work of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, he outlines the strategy (in his infamous book The Prince) of getting and keeping political power over a people based on the principle of divide and conquer.

I cite Machiavelli as he is synonymous with Mulengro, and his tools of manipulation are still taught today.

Mulengro denies the individual the right to be an individual and assures that its victims remain emotionally crippled.

Mulengro is passed on like a virus through the perpetuation of the seven attributes of greed, envy, guilt, deceit, denial, expectation, and assumption. The only way of ridding the psyche and the spirit of the virus is to abruptly and completely stop hosting it!

Do not allow others to perpetuate any of the these seven faces of Mulengro on you, and do not use them to abort the truth, no matter what the seeming advantage.

These faces (behind each of them are the other six) are all vices of disrespect.

How are you to know what is really true or false when Mulengro clouds your vision?

It is like a voracious weed seeking to smother a mother forest.

Know, at all times, why you are doing what you are doing.
Know your own motives well.
Exercise caution in your undertakings, as each action, each thought, is to be clearly of your own choosing.
Each thought and every action will engender, progressively, a response relative to it for which you are solely responsible.
I say progressively because you will become aware, in this manner, of a deepening of self as the illusions drop from you like a
snake shedding an outmoded skin.
There is no reason to set up a ritual circle or cleanse with the intent of purification unless there is an intent.
That intent can be as simple as seeking contemplation as a passive form of ritual, or as complex as the experiment of a Qabbalistic Mass in the tradition of the Golden Dawn.
It matters not if your intent is unclear.
The lack of intent will reflect on the evolving whole, as each witch will have an effect.

Green Witchcraft is a term often used interchangeably with the descriptor Hedge Witch.

There are certain similarities between the paths but the fundamental core of each path is very different.

Where the Hedge Witch is focused on journeying to the Otherworld and receiving wisdom from the spirits she encounters, the Green Witch’s focus is much more concerned with the physical realm and the Earth on which she lives.

The path of the Green Witch is a path of Nature and of growing things.

The Green Witch will likely have a good understanding of plant life and herbalism and she will have acquired knowledge and experience in relation to both growing individual plants and herbs and using them to best effect once harvested.

Many Green Witches dislike the idea of buying plants and herbs ready-harvested as they believe the relationship between the grower and the plant is integral to the results that can be achieved with the plant or herb.

To this end, a Green Witch is likely to be a witch who enjoys gardening.

A Green Witch’s relationship with the Earth goes deeper than just the work she does with plant life.

The Green Witch will utilise other natural objects from the world in her workings.

She or he will use rocks, crystals, animal parts and even fossils to cast her magic.

She or he is also likely to make use of the weather in the form of snow, bottled rain, hailstones, morning dew and parched earth.

The Green Witch is likely to work with the four elements and this may take the form of using representations of Earth, Air, Fire and Water in her workings or invoking the spirits of the elements in His or her rituals.

A Green Witch may/may not invoke deity depending on her personal conviction.

Some Green Witches choose to honour Pan (The Greek God of hunting) or Gaia (The Greek Goddess who according to mythology gave birth to the Earth and who is the source of the ancient inspiration for what we would now term as Mother Nature).

It would be incorrect to say that every Green Witch works with the fey but many of them do choose to.

Fairies are often viewed as land spirits and offerings are made to them in return for their help in looking after plots of earth or woodland.

A Green Witch may choose to develop a relationship with the land spirits on the area where she lives or works and may make gifts of honey or brightly coloured ribbon to keep the goodwill of the faery folk.

The environment is an important concern for most Green Witches.

This is true in both the respect of their own immediate personal environment and the state of the Earth at large.

The Green Witch is likely to live in a dwelling with plants (ideally with a garden but if this is not possible you can usually recognise a Green Witch by the pots of herbs and plants growing on every window sill.

If he or she can, a Green Witch will favour natural materials over man-made and use Earth-friendly sources of building materials.

A Green Witch is very likely to be environmentally aware and will limit her footprint on the Earth as much as possible.

There is an echo of living in simpler times with Green Witchery – a link back to the traditional witches of old who grew their own produce and who tended their own lands and livestock.

The energy of the earth is utilised in the workings of a Green Witch and she may work with key sources of that energy such as ley lines or stone circles.

She or he is unlikely to be inclined to work indoors as she sees the primary source of her power as the link between herself and the Earth.

As such any ritual, she takes part in is likely to be undertaken outdoors.

Note..Not all witches work with deities ( Gods and Goddesses)

The choice is your’s, it is your path.

Alister Crowley’s “love under will.” When we consider Wilt.

The saying goes love under will. But he says do what thou wilt. Turning will…into a verb.

This could possibly be of some great importance.

It may indicate the opposite of static nature.

As a witch, you may be for ever-changing and hopefully learning as you go along Your will could be the desire and all that it entails.

Wilt could imply the action of making that desire come to fruition through action

Taking action as a witch could possibly be the most important part of your craft.

Witches are constantly changing their lives as Witchcraft evolves. As witches, we can create the life given to us

So we quite literally create the life given to us, making us as much a part of our own active creation.

Every man and woman, whether a witch or not can change their reality A witch possibly just understands all this at another level.

Our Reality is our mental being The point is wilt and Implies forward momentum.

You may be pushed forward in what it is you wish to reach for in your perfected nature.

All the parts of self-moving towards union with oneself with consciousness could be parts of your true self coming together Reality is subjective. Here we see this.

Personal power is a natural growth process that develops as a result of the life you live in the way of the witch.

Others will notice you even when you do not desire to be noticed.

Therefore, personal power is the ability to disappear when you want to and appear when you want to.

It is not an egoistical phenomenon! It is an energy, a presence about oneself that will require a firm rein for the first few years.

It will emanate from your physical body like a field phenomenon.

This field is neither a conscious, nor consciously acquired, function, and you are to know and understand this.

Posturing and arrogance are its illusory counterparts.

Personal power should not be treated as such (that will be the ego seeking to manipulate a natural force and that is both ugly and offensive).

Personal power is a direct result of accessing the life scape of magic and of living within its field.

If you allow yourself to become glamoured” by it, in either yourself or anyone else, you may disrupt the web of the world, and the places of power will withdraw, oh, even just a little, from the access of those who seek to live within their winder.

Personal power is an accumulation of awareness, preparation, intent, and your ability to focus, all through the vessel of the self.

Witchcraft is the set of beliefs and practices employed by Witches in ritual and spellwork.

Often, magical work is incorporated into the Shabbat and Esbat celebrations observed by covens and solitary Witches, though spellwork may be employed on its own on other occasions.

In fact, many Witches consider themselves to be constantly “practising” their Craft in their daily lives through the use of meditation, magically charged meals and beverages, colour choices in clothing and jewellery, nightly candle rituals, and other seemingly“small” enactments of magic.

The more one is in tune with the rhythms and energies of the natural world, the more “magical” one’s life will seem and feel, and this relationship with the cycles of life is deepened throughout one’s life through study and practice.

“Magic” is a word used for the phenomena that occur when people consciously participate in the co-creative forces of the Universe, by using the subtle energies of nature to cause the desired change in their reality.

People may use magic, or “the Craft” as it is often called, for many purposes.

This often includes spells, charms, and other workings for what could be called “personal gain,” such as a new job or improvements in a love relationship.

However, the Craft is also used to work for benefits to one’s family, community, or even to people across the globe.

For example, a coven may use an Esbat ritual as an opportunity to send beneficial healing light to victims of a natural disaster.

What the Craft is definitely not used for is anything that would cause harm to another person or other living being, even unintentionally.

Our wishes can often be manipulative when it comes to how they affect other people, even when we don’t realize it.

Therefore, ritual and spellwork often include safeguards against accidental misuse of magical energy, such as the phrases “for the good of all” and “harm to none”—taken from the Wiccan Rede.

Keeping this idea in the forefront of one’s mind is important, particularly in light of another basic tenet of Witchcraft: the Threefold Law.

Also known as “The Rule of Three” and “The Law of Return,” this principle states that whatever Witches send out into the Universe as intent, whether positive or negative, will come back to them three times as great.

While some Witches don’t subscribe to this particular belief, it is often invoked as a reminder that magical power should be used only for good, and never in the spirit of harm or manipulation

One of the witches’ most important basic beliefs, obviously, is the reality and possibility of magic.

This involves the idea that the physical world is only part of reality, the part that we are able to apprehend with our five senses.

Beyond are vaster realms; and in these the witch seeks to venture.

This, again, involves a further belief, namely that human beings have more senses than the usual reckoning of five.

By means of these innate psychic capacities, the realms beyond the physical are contacted.

These powers, say the witch, are perfectly natural ; but latent and inactive in the majority of people.

They are powers that have become overlaid and hidden by the artificialities of civilisation ; but they can be reawakened.

This is one of the matters that have brought witches so often into conflict with the priests of orthodox religions.

The established religion of a country does not find it acceptable for people to have their own contact with the Beyond, independently of orthodox priests and their rules and sacraments.

This may well have been the reason why the socalled Witch of Endor had to live in hiding.

The Establishment does not like having its authority weakened.

Witches reject the masculine, patriarchal concept of God, in favour of older ideas.

They do not see why a rigid monotheism should necessarily be a sign of human advancement, as it is generally taken to be.

It seems more reasonable to them to conceive of divinity as being both masculine and feminine ; and as evolving moreover a hierarchy of
great beings, personified as gods and goddesses, who rule over the different departments of nature, and assist in the evolution of the cosmos.
If witches’ concept of God were to be more precisely defined, it could perhaps best be called Life itself-the life-force of the universe.

This, it seems to witches, must be basically benign, however apparently destructive and terrible some of its manifestations may be ; because if this is not so, then Life is divided against itself, which is absurd.

Moreover, it must be supreme wisdom, because of the wonder and beauty manifested in its myriad forms. Its tendency is to evolve forms capable of expressing ever higher degrees of intelligence ; so we who are its children should seek to live in harmony with nature, which is the visible expression of cosmic life, and in doing so find true wisdom and happiness.

Witches do not believe that true morality consists of observing a list of thou-shalt-nots.

Their morality can be summed up in one sentence, “Do what you will, so long as it harms none.”

This does not mean, however, that witches are pacifists.

They say that to allow wrong to flourish unchecked is not ‘harming none’.

On the contrary, it is harming everybody.

This bears some resemblance to Aleister Crowley’s law for the New Aeon :

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law, love under will.”

People often quote the first part of Crowley’s dictum, and claim that he advocated universal licence.

They forget the second part of his words.

Centuries before, Saint Augustine said something very similar :

“Love God, and do what you will.”

The idea of reincarnation seems to witches to be not only much older, but more reasonable and right, than the concept of only one short life,
to be followed by heaven for the righteous and hell for the wicked ; or than the materialist’s idea that when you’re dead you’re finished.

They quote the statement of the old occult philosophers-which could mean modern science supports-that nothing in this universe can be destroyed ; it can only change its manifestation.

Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.”

Human individuality and intelligence exist.

Through the physical body, they manifest.

When the body wears out, or is damaged beyond repair, the person is said to be ‘dead’.

But it is the body which is dead.

You cannot bury or cremate people-only bodies. In so far as a person is an individual intelligence, can that individuality be destroyed ?

The testimony of all ages and countries says, “No.” But at the same time, nothing can stand still.

Everything is constantly changing and evolving.

To be imprisoned in the personality of John Smith or Jane Brown for all eternity, is no more consonant with cosmic Jaw than being annihilated.

Here we may notice the derivation of the word ‘personality’. It comes from persona, a mask.

There is that in us which truly says, “I am.” The personality is the mask it wears-a new one for each incarnation.

Within the corner of a darkened room, a woman sits on a chair and hums a repetitive tune.

Her eyes are closed and she rocks back and forth, back and forth, back and forth-seeming to sway in some invisible wind like the rushes on a lakeshore.

Her hands are moving between threads as she weaves and plaits them, every now and then stopping to tie a knot; the silence more permeable for the lack of song.

She sits, thus, for hours until the room lightens with the glow of the rising Moon, the shafts of which pierce the window to land at her feet.

The monotonous humming stops, the rocking stops, the dancing fingers stop-her eyes are open.

She stands and walks to the center of the little room where her table is set with the instruments of her birthright: cup,

picking up the glow of moonlight and dripping it onto the cloth beneath; knife with the hilt as black as jet that glints with streaks of silver that have been set into the ancient runes that surround the base,

and with a double-edged blade that flares and tapers finely to its point of power;

pentacle that glows with burnished light, the symbols on its face deep and meaningless to any save its owner;

wand of willow wood, finely carved with her own hand into an intricate set of spirals and swirls,

worn in places where it has been lovingly worked; unlit candles of purest white to compliment the Moon’s glow,

and a heavy silver medallion on a cord, older than even she knows, that has been passed down, along with her knowledge and her sword, the Initiator,

from one to the other, in secret nights and ancient tongue, from one to another,

by right of succession and ancient oath, until to her it was bequeathed with all that belongs to the passage; a bowl of burning coals that glow and shed warmth round about, upon which she drops juniper twigs and wood from the dead bough of an apple tree.

From the coals she lights a taper, then the candles, one by one-all in silence and certainty of what is to follow.

Her shapeless dress is unbuttoned and dropped to the floor; her hair, bound about her head in a tight braid, is unraveled and spreads around her in a wild, burnished copper haze.

The medallion she takes lovingly in her hands to greet with a soft kiss before raising it to the Moon’s glow for approval; she then drops its cord over her head onto her breast, drawing comfort from its familiar coldness on her skin.

She kneels, raises her arms above her head, breathes deeply, and waits.

Very soon the Moon is fully risen and the shafts of silver cover her body and radiate around her.

She cries out, in the ancient tongue of the Lands of Lirian, that she is ready to greet her Goddess, whose name she summons by the name she knows, and it rings around her thrice, like the secret chiming of bells.

The air is still and expectant.

She slowly stands and takes the cup, this sacred chalice, now filled with water, later wine, and walks around the little room sprinkling as she goes.

A soft, melodious chant is rising, rising from her as she quickens her pace, deosil, deosil, leaving trails of moonlight glowing in a circle all around her.

She feels the force field, an almost imperceptible swishing that grows to a hum.

When it is constant she stops, moves back to her table, proclaiming it altar.

Now she dips her wand into the cup and uses the sacred water to seal her body from all things impure or mundane, thinking, “Be ye far from us, oh ye profane …”

She kisses the wand’s tip and lays it back on the altar.

She refuels the brazier and inhales the sw^eet-smelling smoke-a tribute to her Goddess.

She takes the pentacle between her two hands and raises it above her head, calling forth the force of the Four Winds to act as sentinels to her rite.

She takes the dagger, the power of her birthright, and presses it to her breast to fill it with her own essence, and then she stands.

The dagger is now athame.

She raises it slowly; her whole being is poured from its magnetized tip in shafts of blue fire as it pierces the night for the acknowledgment she knows will come.

Her breath is still. The night is still.

The forces of life wait expectantly, and suddenly the light returns to flood the room priestess of the Moon cries out to the primordial mother, to whom she was bequeathed before the dawn
of time.

The mother answers with the heartbeat of a thousand million lives and acknowledges her daughter, sister, self.

They fuse and are one-was it ever any other way?

The cycle is complete, and the priestess of the Moon is assured.

The magic of her fingers will soothe where they lay, and the magic of her voice will heal where it is heard, the magic of her eyes will light the Earth, and all things will grow where she looks upon them.

The Way of the Goddess will continue, though to most her name is unknown.

As long as even one remembers will the knowledge proceed and the Earth be sustained.

Though the foolish fear what they don’t understand, the magic goes on and the secret survives, for the priestess of the Moon is a witch, and what she represents is at one with what’s living, and all that she is will continue-for without her the Earth would weep and the night would never understand and so would cease to be.

She is the spiral of life-the oceans, the rivers, the falling of the dew, the changing of the seasons.

She is the corn at harvest and the birth of birds. She is the wind on the mountain and the spider’s web

All things of beauty are the name that she summons, for she is the mirror of the Goddess that is life, and the mother of all living things.

If she could not continue or was the last of all, then all hope would cease to be.

Witchcraft is as old as the human race. It dates from the days when, by the flickering light of a clay lamp, a Stone Age artist worked in the silent depths of a cave sanctuary, drawing upon the walls the great beasts he hunted for his food.

Sometimes he depicted the beasts with arrows and spears in them, in order to gain power over them by sympathetic magic.

Sometimes he showed them in sexual union; because unless they mated freely and had abundant young the herds would diminish and he would be hungry.

Fertility of animals and humans was all he knew; farming had not yet been evolved.

The mysterious principle of life worked in Nature, and carried on the world ; a world of forests and plains, of chasing great beasts more powerful than himself, of the safety of the dark cave and
the warmth of the blazing fire ; a world where fire, water, the seasonchanging earth and the wide air, full of stars at night, were indeed the elements of life.

For him the moon waxed and waned, filling the night with ghosts and shadows, and manifestly ruling women in the cycle of their creative life, bringing each month either the magic moon-blood or a waxing of their womb, until a new baby appeared.

Woman was the vessel of fertility, the vessel of life.

The first known artistic works of humanity are little figurines representing a nude and pregnant woman.

Some of them are carved from mammoth ivory, others from stone.

They are beautiful, dignified, remote.

Beside them the Pyramids are things of yesterday.

They are not portraits.

They represent rather the abstract principle of fertility, of life itself; a goddess of fertility, man’s most primeval object of worship.

Because woman contained life, she also contained magic.

From Algeria comes a very interesting Paleolithic drawing on stone.

One might even call it the earliest known picture of a witch. It depicts a woman standing with upraised arms, in an attitude of invocation.

From her genital region a line runs across to the genitals of a man ; he is shown half-crouched, and in the act of releasing an arrow from a bow.

Around him are animals, and the arrow is being aimed at a large bird which looks like an ostrich.

This is obviously a scene of hunting magic ; the woman at home in her cave or hut, practising witchcraft to enable her man to kill game for their food.

The drawing, though primitive, is done with a true artist’s hand.

The tension in the man’s figure, the cautious hunter closing in for the kill, and the woman’s earnest invocation, are well conveyed.

She is depicted rather larger than the man, to give her importance, and seems to be wearing some magical jewellery, a girdle and some dangling amulets on either arm.

Upraised arms as an attitude of prayer and invocation are frequently seen in very ancient art.

Another remarkable picture that has come down to us from those twilight centuries of Stone Age time, is the famous ‘Sorcerer’ from the Caveme des Trois Freres, in Ariege, France.

This depicts a dancing figure, half-man, half-beast, with the spreading horns of a stag.

Some authorities regard this as a masked man, others as a Homed God.

Margaret Murray describes this picture as “The earliest known representation of a deity” ; but I believe the fertility goddess figurines, referred to above, are now thought to be older.

The naked goddess of life and fertility, and the Horned God, are still the deities worshipped and invoked by witch covens today. Of course, this does not prove a direct inheritance from Stone Age times, except that which we all bear in the deepest levels of our minds.

Nevertheless, witchcraft is certainly not the invention of superstitious churchmen in the Middle Ages, as some writers would have us think.

Witches very like those of the Middle Ages were known to the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Lucius Apuleius wrote about them.

So did Virgil, Pliny, Theocritus, Petronius Arbiter, Horace, Lucan and Tibullus. Medea and Circe were regarded as witches. Ovid describes Medea as using wax images to cause harm to the people
they represented, and Diodorus calls her Hecate’s own daughter.

Hecate was the Ancient Greek goddess of witchcraft. (How could the Ancient Greeks have had a goddess of something which did not exist until the Middle Ages invented it ?)

However, by the time of the classical writers, witchcraft had come to be feared as something rather uncanny, and not respectable to meddle with.

It belonged to an older stratum of society, before the polished urban civilisation of Rome ; even though the latter, in popular orgiastic rites such as the Floralia and the Lupercalia, retained distinct traces of more primitive times.

Witchcraft belonged to the old half-forgotten days of the primeval matriarchy, when woman who tended the hearth-fire and stirred the cooking-pot was the first ‘wise one’, the seeker of herbs and binder of wounds, the seer of pictures in the fire, the hearer of voices in the wind, the interpreter of dreams and the caster of painted stones for divination, the worker of magic for hunting, and of the greatest magic of all, the magic of life.

Witches were the descendants of the Wild Women who had sacrificed the Divine King, when his term of office was fulfilled, so that his blood might fertilise the land. Their magic was both dark and bright, like the Moon Goddess they served.

But the time came when the masculine idea and the male gods began to rise and challenge the supremacy of the Goddess Mother of Nature.

Kings began to insist on ruling in their own right, instead of by favour of the goddess; nor would they accept a sacrificial death.

Descent began to be traced through the father, instead of through the mother.

Men began to arm themselves with stronger weapons, and war and conquest were glorified.

Laws and customs that tended to repress the dangerous powers of the feminine side of things came into existence.

Men took over the chief places of the priesthood, and organised religions that exalted the male side of deity.

The older, deeper things of religion found their way into the Mystery Cults.

These endured because they appealed to something within the human soul that felt a kinship with magic and mystery ; for the same reason that witchcraft and the fascination of the occult endure today.

With the coming of Christianity according to St. Paul, the takeover was complete.

Women were told to keep silent in church, that they should be ashamed to be female, that sex was unclean.

The pagan Mysteries were forbidden in the fourth century A.D., and their priests and priestesses denounced as sorcerers.

From then onwards, the underground organisation of witchcraft began to take shape.

So too did the various abominations witches were accused of.

Black witchcraft had always existed. Lucan’s Erichtho, and Horace’s Canidia and Sagana, are terrifying hags who take part in horrible rites involving blood sacrifice and desecrated graves.

But now came the complete refusal to recognise any other side of the coin.

All witchcraft was declared to be black, because the old gods were devils; so their servants must be devil-worshippers. (One finds the same outlook among some writers today).

The common people, however, tended to cling obstinately to the old ways; and there was a long transition period in Europe before the Christian Church finally gained the upper hand, which it did more by force than by popular vote.

The first English writer to recognise that the witches’ Sabbats were simply the continuation of the old popular Nature worship, more or less clandestinely, into Christian times, was the distinguished antiquarian, Thomas Wright.

In 1 865 a new edition, privately printed, was published of Richard Payne Knight’s Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, to which was now added another essay, “On the Worship of the Generative Powers during the Middle Ages of Western Europe”.

Owing to Victorian prudery, the book had to be privately printed; and Wright, remembering the storm of denunciation which had broken on the head of Payne Knight when his book first appeared in 1 786, prudently refrained from adding his name to the work.

The book was for many years classed as something to be sold under the counter, and only recently has it begun to receive the recognition it deserves, as an original piece of research.

Meanwhile, all the old fables of hell-fire and devil-worship continued to be told about witchcraft.

People did not mind hearing about Satan; but sex was really something terrible !

Briefly, the thesis contained in these two essays is that the worship of the powers and means of fertility by the ancient peoples of the world was in reality neither obscene nor depraved.

It was the worship of the fundamental power of Life itself, animating the universe, and bringing forth all the things of Nature in their wonderful beauty and diversity.

When the early Christian Church came under the influence of fiercely sex-hating puritans and ascetics, this old worship and its rituals, dear to the common people, were driven underground, and gave rise to the cult of witchcraft as we know of it today.

Historically and psychologically, this theory makes sense.

We have to remember that people died because they would not renounce the ‘heresy’ of witchcraft. When people die for a faith, that faith exists.

We know that in the full hysteria of witch-hunting that gripped men’s minds in the Dark Ages, many people perished who were not witches at all ; but this was not always so.

Nor did people risk persecution and even death to attend the Sabbats, if the Sabbats were the impossible farrago of horrors that official propaganda represented them to be.

People went to the Sabbats for a perfectly understandable reason ; they enjoyed them.

They carried on the witch cult for a perfectly understandable reason ; it was a different religion from orthodox Christianity, with a very different outlook, and they preferred it.

Thomas Wright regarded the witches’ Sabbat as being mainly derived from the Roman traditions of the Priapeia and the Liberalia, festivals of orgiastic Nature worship.

Today, however, we have a wider knowledge of ancient religions; and we know that in fact the ideas behind the worship of the Life principle are fundamental to them all, in both East and
West.

The Chinese formulated their philosophy of the interplay of Yang and Yin, the masculine and feminine principles of Nature.

The original Shiva of the Hindus was an ithyphallic horned god, whose representations, found in the prehistoric city of Mohenjo-daro, bear a curious resemblance to the Celtic horned god.

Cernunnos.

In some of them, he even has something which looks like a candle or torch between his horns, the very attribute of the Devil of the Sabbat.

Margaret Murray, in her famous book The Witch Cult in Western Europe (Oxford Paperbacks, 1 962}, draws an important distinction between Operative Witchcraft and Ritual Witchcraft.

Under Operative Witchcraft she classes charms and spells of all kinds; but Ritual Witchcraft is witchcraft as a system of religious belief and ceremony.

The very fact that witchcraft needs to be so divided is another pointer to its great antiquity.

In the beginning, religion and magic were two aspects of the same thing, the belief in numinous, unseen powers, both inherent in Nature and transcending Nature.

Only slowly and lately did the division between religion and magic take place.

The original priest was also a magician ; and before the priest was a priestess, who was also a witch.

Village witch or healer who provided cures, remedies, charms, spells and divination, usually in exchange for a fee or gift. “Cunning” comes from the Old English term kenning, meaning “wise” or “knowledgeable.”

Other terms for cunning man and cunning woman are wise man, wise woman, sorcerer, wizard, conjurer, charmer, blesser, white witch and witch.

Traditionally, cunning men and women came into their craft by heredity, such as James Murrell, one of England’s most famous cunning men.

Others acquired their gifts by supernatural intervention, such as from fairies or the dead, or from divine intervention.

Some, in fact, were revered in earlier times as semi-divine. Their abilities were from their gifts and knowledge, or “cunning,” as opposed to any particular holy status in the church.

The magic they practised was a home-made amalgam of Christian prayers and rites mixed with pagan material, folk magic and occultism.

Folk magical arts were passed along in oral tradition, embroidered, embellished and changed as time passed.

Cunning men and women who could read possessed various magical texts, including famous grimoires such as The Greater Key of Solomon or the Fourth Book of Agrippa.

Many cunning men and women were described as odd people, with strange or unusual appearances, or living alone or in semi-seclusion, who could “do a thing or two.

” Their animals were regarded as their familiar servants, or, when public opinion was charitable, as their “good angels.”

Fees for magical services generally were small, as most clients were poor locals; thus, cunning men and women often lived on the edge of poverty themselves.

The better ones were sought out by aristocrats, usually for procuring the love of someone or faithfulness from a wayward spouse.

Court records in England show that not all cunning men and women worked cheaply.

Some assessed the aristocracy for hefty 40- and 50-pound fees, even annuities.

In 1492 a cunning man set a fee of 1,000 pounds for a charm to procure a husband for a widow, while a cunning woman of the same time period took 25 percent of all stolen goods she found through divination.

By contrast, the Church of England took in slightly less than 100 pounds in offerings in a year.

Some cunning men and women became wealthy enough to buy land and build homes.

Cunning men and women flourished up until about the late 17th century, when belief in magic was high.

They served as a sort of unofficial police and as a deterrent to wrongdoing, for when crimes were committed, a cunning man or woman was consulted to divine the guilty party.

Though magic declined in importance from the 18th century on, their presence in society continued even into modern times, especially in rural areas, albeit in a diminished status.

They practised their magical arts as an open secret, conducting their business quietly so as to avoid prosecution under various anti-magic and anti-witchcraft laws.

Sometimes they met with little interference from authorities, who looked the other way unless a client complained.

Some, such as Biddy Early, were regularly denounced from pulpits but were more or less not bothered because of their popularity.

During the Inquisition, however, cunning men and women became vulnerable targets for charges of Devil worship and evil witchcraft.

A proliferation of laws made it illegal to divine, heal and cast spells for virtually any reason.

If a cunning man or woman was quite successful and competed with the church for the locals’ meager wages, the church got rid of them by bringing charges of witchcraft.

Some cunning men and women (mostly women) simply became scapegoats for waves of witch hysteria.

But even prosecution failed to dampen public support in some cases, and visitors would throng a jail to seek a fallen cunning woman’s services before she was likely executed for her “crimes.”

The art of the old cunning man and woman lives on in modern times in a variety of guises: the astrologer, psychic or intuitive counsellor, energy healer and herbalist.

Some of these individuals consider themselves part of Wicca or Paganism; others belong to mainstream religions; still others consider themselves part of no particular religion at all

The best-known Biblical text referring to witchcraft is verse 18 in the twenty-second chapter of Exodus, which states: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

It is printed on the title-page of The Discovery of Witches by Matthew Hopkins, the notorious Witch-Finder General.

His book was published in 1 647, “For the Benefit of the Whole Kingdome”.

This supposed portion of the word of God has been the pitiless death warrant of thousands.

Yet it is nothing but a false translation.

The Authorised Version of the Bible was produced in the time of King James, a monarch who fancied himself as an authority on witchcraft, while at the same time being much afraid of it.

To gratify the King, numerous references to witchcraft were worked into the translation, which the original does not justify.

This particular text, the most useful of all to the witch-hunters, does not in fact refer to witchcraft at all.

The word translated as ‘witch’ is the Hebrew chasaph, which means a poisoner.

In the Latin version of the Bible called the Septuagint, this word is given as veneficus, which also means a poisoner.

Another well-known supposed reference to witchcraft in the Bible is the story of the so-called ‘Witch of Endor’ (I Samuel, Chapter 28.)

However, the actual text refers to her simply as “a woman that hath a familiar spirit”.

She seems to have been a clairvoyant or medium, and a genuine one ; though we are not told precisely how the apparition of the deceased prophet Samuel took place.

Apparently, the woman saw him first, and then his message was conveyed to Saul ; but it is not clear whether Saul could see him too, or whether he “perceived that it was Samuel” from the woman’s description.

The whole episode is reminiscent of Spiritualistic practices today.

It is notable that the woman had been driven into hiding, and was in fear of persecution when Saul consulted her.

She may have been a priestess of an older, pagan faith, outlawed by the monotheistic, patriarchal creed of the followers of Yahweh.

Hence the two most famous references to witchcraft in the Bible, though often quoted, do not in fact have quite the meaning usually given to them.

The Greek goddess of witchcraft, Hecate, was also the goddess of the crossroads, and animals were sacrificed to her at such locations.

It was believed that Hecate appeared at crossroads on clear nights, accompanied by spirits and howling dogs.

Offerings were placed there to propitiate her and ask for her intercession in cases of madness, which was believed to be caused by departed souls.

In Ireland and Wales, it was traditional on Samhain (All Hallow’s Eve), the Druidic new year, to sit at a crossroads and listen for the howling of the wind, which would prophesy the year to come.

During the witch hunts, sorcerers and witches were said to frequent crossroads to conjure the Devil or his demons or make sacrifices to them.

In the sixth century, the sorcerer Salatin conjured the Devil for Theophilus at a crossroads.

In 1324 Dame Alice Kyteller, an accused Irish witch was said to sacrifice cocks to her familiar at a crossroads.

According to Carl G. Jung, a crossroads is a mother symbol; in that respect, it corresponds to the emphasis placed on the Mother Goddess in contemporary witchcraft.

The crossroads also represent the intersection of positive, neutral, and negative forces. It is a place of flux and of change.

One of the witches’ most important basic beliefs, obviously, is the reality and possibility of magic.

This involves the idea that the physical world is only part of reality, the part that we are able to apprehend with our five senses.

Beyond are vaster realms; and in these the witch seeks to venture.

This, again, involves a further belief, namely that human beings have more senses than the usual reckoning of five.

By means of these innate psychic capacities, the realms beyond the physical are contacted.

These powers, say the witch, are perfectly natural ; but latent and inactive in the majority of people.

They are powers that have become overlaid and hidden by the artificialities of civilisation ; but they can be reawakened.

This is one of the matters that have brought witches so often into conflict with the priests of orthodox religions.

The established religion of a country does not find it acceptable for people to have their own contact with the Beyond, independently of orthodox priests and their rules and sacraments.

This may well have been the reason why the socalled Witch of Endor had to live in hiding.

The Establishment does not like having its authority weakened.

Witches reject the masculine, patriarchal concept of God, in favour of older ideas.

They do not see why a rigid monotheism should necessarily be a sign of human advancement, as it is generally taken to be.

It seems more reasonable to them to conceive of divinity as being both masculine and feminine ; and as evolving moreover a hierarchy of
great beings, personified as gods and goddesses, who rule over the different departments of nature, and assist in the evolution of the cosmos.
If witches’ concept of God were to be more precisely defined, it could perhaps best be called Life itself-the life-force of the universe.

This, it seems to witches, must be basically benign, however apparently destructive and terrible some of its manifestations may be ; because if this is not so, then Life is divided against itself, which is absurd.

Moreover, it must be supreme wisdom, because of the wonder and beauty manifested in its myriad forms. Its tendency is to evolve forms capable of expressing ever higher degrees of intelligence ; so we who are its children should seek to live in harmony with nature, which is the visible expression of cosmic life, and in doing so find true wisdom and happiness.

Witches do not believe that true morality consists of observing a list of thou-shalt-nots.

Their morality can be summed up in one sentence, “Do what you will, so long as it harms none.”

This does not mean, however, that witches are pacifists.

They say that to allow wrong to flourish unchecked is not ‘harming none’.

On the contrary, it is harming everybody.

This bears some resemblance to Aleister Crowley’s law for the New Aeon :

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law, love under will.”

People often quote the first part of Crowley’s dictum, and claim that he advocated universal licence.

They forget the second part of his words.

Centuries before, Saint Augustine said something very similar :

“Love God, and do what you will.”

The idea of reincarnation seems to witches to be not only much older, but more reasonable and right, than the concept of only one short life,
to be followed by heaven for the righteous and hell for the wicked ; or than the materialist’s idea that when you’re dead you’re finished.

They quote the statement of the old occult philosophers-which could mean modern science supports-that nothing in this universe can be destroyed ; it can only change its manifestation.

Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.”

Human individuality and intelligence exist.

Through the physical body, they manifest.

When the body wears out, or is damaged beyond repair, the person is said to be ‘dead’.

But it is the body which is dead.

You cannot bury or cremate people-only bodies. In so far as a person is an individual intelligence, can that individuality be destroyed ?

The testimony of all ages and countries says, “No.” But at the same time, nothing can stand still.

Everything is constantly changing and evolving.

To be imprisoned in the personality of John Smith or Jane Brown for all eternity, is no more consonant with cosmic Jaw than being annihilated.

Here we may notice the derivation of the word ‘personality’. It comes from persona, a mask.

There is that in us which truly says, “I am.” The personality is the mask it wears-a new one for each incarnation.

Between earthly incarnations, witches believe the soul rests in the Land of Faery, a pagan paradise like the Celtic Tir-Nan-Og, the Land of the Young.

Many references to this pagan otherworld can be found in British and Celtic legend.

It is a very different place from the Christian heaven, involving no harps, haloes nor golden gates, but a country like the old dreams of Arcady.

It is conceived of as being, not somewhere ‘up above’, but in another dimension co-existing with the world we can see with mortal sight.

Sometimes, say witches, we visit this other dimension in our dreams, and can bring back fragmentary recollections of it.

Another implicit belief is the power of thought, for good or ill. Truly, thoughts are things, and the realisation of this is one of the fundamentals of magic.

We have become accustomed to this idea as it is put forward in the modern world by the exponents of various movements, such as the so-called ‘New Thought’ , practical psychology and so on.

But as long ago as the beginning of the fourteenth century, Robert Mannying of Bourne wrote of the power of thought in his tale “The Wicche, the Bagge and the Bisshop”, an episode in his long poem Handlyng Synne.

This story tells of a naughty witch who made a magic bag of leather, that went about of its own accord and stole the milk from people’s cows.

Eventually she was arrested and brought before the bishop, together with the magic bag.

The bishop ordered her to give him a demonstration of her witchcraft, and she obliged by making the bag rise up and lie down again.

The bishop thereupon tried the charm for himself, doing and saying just as the witch had done ; but the bag never moved.

He was amazed, and asked the witch why the magic would not work for him.

She replied,

“Nay, why should it so ? Ye believe not as I do,”

and explained to him that

“My belief hath done the deed every deal.”

Whereat the bishop, rather set down,

“commanded that she should naught believe nor work as she had wrought”

This story is notable in that it ascribes the powers of witchcraft, not to Satan, as it would certainly have done in later centuries, but to the hidden abilities of the human mind ; and the bishop, instead of ordering the witch to be burned at the stake, simply tells her to go away and not do this again.

In Thirteen three, when this poem was commenced, the great illusion of ‘Satanism’ had not yet bedevilled men’s minds to the exclusion of reason.

Practitioners of magic have always emphasised that, although there are techniques to be acquired and the uses of magical accessories to be learnt, in the last resort it is the mind that holds the power of magic.

Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa, two famous adepts, said this in the sixteenth century ; and at the end of the nineteenth century Miss Mary A. Owen, telling of her investigations in America in Among the Voodoos (International Folk Lore Congress, London, Eighteen Ninety One ); said :

‘To be strong in de haid ‘-that is, of great strength of will-is the most important characteristic of a ‘conjurer’ or ‘voodoo’.

Never mind what you mix-blood, bones, feathers, grave-dust, herbs, saliva, or hair-it will be powerful or feeble in proportion to the dauntless spirit infused by you, the priest or priestess, at the time you represent the god or ‘Old Master’.”

This is the same as the witch belief, although it comes from the other side of the world.

There are two museums in Britain today which are devoted to showing the beliefs and practices of witches.

One is at Boscastle in Cornwall, and is run by Mr Cecil H. Williamson.

The other is at Castletown, Isle of Man, and is run by Mr and Mrs Campbell Wilson.

In African tribal traditions, witchcraft is part of the accepted supernatural landscape and is generally something to be feared.

Study of African tribal religions illustrates the African ancestry of modern Vodun, Santería and Candomblé.

There is a fairly universal belief in a supreme God, who manifests himself in light and brightness: a shining, snowcapped mountain, or the light streaming through a sacred grove of trees.

But such a God is remote, accessible only to the priests or elders.

God inspires great awe in his people, causing them to fear and avoid his symbols, such as thunder and lightning.

The birth of twins is also a sign from God, creating reverence for the twins’ divinity and their isolation from the rest of the community.

The spirits of the dead, or the “shades,” however, are regarded as alive and able to communicate the needs of humans to the divines.

They are always about, participating in daily living, evident in the rustling of leaves, dust spirals in the earth, currents in the river.

Southern Africans divide the shades into two categories: the deceased relatives of any particular family and the founding heroes, male or female, who define a community, chiefdom or region.

To keep the ancestors happy, living relatives offer food, drink and animal sacrifice.

Offering feasts must be attended by the ancestor’s kin, since the meal itself is a communion between the living and the dead.

Family members air and resolve any quarrels before the offering, since Africans believe that festering, unspoken anger is the root of witchcraft.

For the tribal African, the power of evil is everywhere, abetted by witches and their familiars but brought on by anger, hate, jealousy, envy, lust and greed—all the vices men observe in themselves and their neighbors.

It can even be brought on by laziness, as certain evil persons raise the dead to do their work for them (see zombie).

Evil does not come from the shades, nor do the shades possess a living person. Both are outside influences caused by witchcraft.

Members of the Nyakyusa tribes describe witchcraft as a “python in the belly,” while the Pondo people call it a “snake of the women.”

As in Europe, most witches come from the ranks of women, poor men and young people.

Others depict witchcraft as a baboon, and members of the Xhosa tribes see it as a fantastic hairy beast with exaggerated sexual organs.

People accused of witchcraft within a tribe often confess, attributing their evil to quarrels with wives, children or co-workers.

If witchcraft has caused sickness, no recovery is possible without the witch’s confession and subsequent goodwill toward the victim.

In his groundbreaking studies of the Azande tribes in the late 1920s, Professor E. E. Evans-Pritchard found that the Azande believe witchcraft, or mangu, is a hereditary trait found in the stomach of a witch.

Such an abdominal condition results in an oval, blackish swelling or sac containing small objects located near the bile tract.

The Azande admit not seeing this sac while a person is alive but claim to have extracted it in autopsy.

Professor EvansPritchard speculated that the Azande were describing the gall-bladder.

Nevertheless, the Azande attribute any misfortune, however, small, to mangu.

Many people who possess mangu do not know it; since the spirit of witchcraft leaves the witch at night to attack the victim’s spirit, such dirty work could occur while the perpetrator is asleep and unaware.

Nightmares are considered witch attacks.

Sons of male witches inherit the condition from their fathers, while daughters receive mangu from their mothers.

Children’s mangus are small and inexperienced, so children cannot be accused of witchcraft until they are older.

The Azande also believe that witchcraft emits a small, bright light, similar to that of fireflies or sparks, which is invisible except to other witches or to witch doctors, who are trained witch-hunters.

The Azande attribute little witchcraft activity to sorcery.

Sorcery is possible, but unlikely unless a man has seen an adandala—a species of wildcat associated with witchcraft, the sight of which is fatal—or has touched his wife’s menstrual blood or seen her anus.

Witches among the Azande call each other to meetings where they learn each other’s techniques, discuss crimes and rub their bodies with a special ointment called mbiro mangu.

A particularly successful supernatural killing may be celebrated by feasting on the revived body of the victim.

Their familiars, both animal and human, accompany them and goad them on to greater evil.

Whereas European witches were said to prefer cats, dogs and toads as familiars, African witches chose owls, bats, hyenas, baboons, zombies or, among the Xhosa, “hairy dwarves.”

To identify a witch, relatives of the sick first consult the iwa oracle, a rubbing board operated with a wooden instrument.

The names of possible suspects are placed before the iwa, and the oracle selects the culprit and his or her accomplices.

Then the family verifies the witch’s name via the benge oracle: chickens are given poison while a list of names is read aloud.

If a chicken dies while a particular person’s name is called, that person is guilty.

At that point, a wing from the unlucky chicken is cut off and attached to a stick like a fan.

One of the sick man’s relatives takes it to a deputy of the neighboring chief, to maintain impartiality, and the deputy carries the fan to the home of the suspected witch.

The suspect’s reaction and apparent sincerity are most important; if the suspect claims innocence and begs his mangu to stop bothering the sick person, recovery may occur.

If not, the procedure is repeated.

If the suspect is a respected figure in the community, the relatives may announce they know witchcraft is behind their relative’s illness without naming names.

Their discretion in the affair appeals to the pride and honor of the suspected witch, and he may stop the spell in appreciation.

Members of the Tswana peoples deny the possibility of an uncontrollable mangu; for them, all witchcraft involves malice aforethought.

They do, however, distinguish between “night witches” and “day sorcerers.”

Day sorcerers, called baloi ba motshegare, use magic to inflict harm through the use of herbs and other medicinal preparations on a specific enemy and do not practice witchcraft habitually.

African witchcraft Night witches, or baloi ba bosigo, are mainly elderly women who gather at night in small groups and then travel about the countryside bewitching the unfortunate.

Instead of wearing clothes, they smear their bodies with white ashes or the blood of the dead.

Admission is open to anyone, but the applicant must profess her zeal by causing the death of a close relative, usually a firstborn child.

Initiates receive an ointment that allows them to wake instantly and join their colleagues when called.

Some tribes say that a special medicine is injected into the witch’s thumb, and when her thumb itches, she will awake and depart.

Among their alleged activities is the exhumation of newly buried corpses, which the night witches accomplish by using a special magic that makes the body float to the surface.

The witches then take whatever body parts they need for their spells and medicines.

Walls and locked doors cannot keep a witch from entering a victim’s house; once inside, the witch cuts her victim and inserts small stones or fragments of flesh that will sicken him and eventually cause death unless treated.

Night witches choose owls as their familiars and ride on hyenas to cover great distances, with one foot on the hyena’s back and one on the ground.

Members of the BaKgatla tribe say that the witches make their own hyenas from porridge and then activate them with special medicines.

Although beliefs in night witches are widely held, many Africans take such stories lightly, acknowledging that no one has seen baloi ba bosigo at work.

But the activities of day sorcerers are taken seriously, as many people have seen the results of go jesa (“to feed”), or the practice of putting poison in food or drink. In some accounts the poison changes into a miniature crocodile, gnawing away at the victim’s insides until he dies in pain.

But most accounts describe true poison, acting so slowly that suspicions are not aroused until the victim is seriously ill or dying, and making identification and indictment of the poisoner very difficult.