Wicca
and Witchcraft
Index – click to navigate
LYING RELIGION IS A WITCH-CULT
SUMMARY
Though witchcraft
today claims to be a benign nature religion the fact is that all magic is evil
magic, trying to avoid what really matters.
What matters most is not spells, believing in God, a man who rises from
the dead, in miracles but believing in your power to change and make yourself
happy. Don’t try to change the world but
change yourself and nice changes will happen automatically around you. It is not what you have in life that matters
or who loves you. What matters is how
you feel about your life. What people
need is self-esteem training not magic.
Magic then arises from laziness and therefore lack of concern for
self-esteem. Magic workers say that
magic cannot work without self-esteem for you produce magic from your own mind
and emotions and if you don’t have good self-esteem you cannot really trust in
the spell so it can’t work. So magic
contradicts itself by requiring something that it forbids!
Magic is trying
to manipulate reality. Believers claim
that love spells are wrong for they are too manipulative for they are trying to
make another person love you. They say
that instead you should do a spell to make yourself more lovable to
another. But there is no difference in
forcing a person to love you and in forcing them to see that you are lovable
and therefore attract them. Nobody can
love anybody unless they see them as attractive. If love spells are wrong, then who will want
to do magic? To do a spell to make
yourself more lovable to another is also manipulative for you are degrading
yourself by turning yourself into somebody else’s idea of desirability. We all love people with faults. The Witch trying to use magic to catch a man
who likes gossip is making him see her as a gossip or using magic to turn
herself into a gossip! This is
self-manipulation, self-deception. Also
to magically make yourself more lovable in the eyes of
the other is to manipulate him so that he will see this. For example, the spell might have the
side-effect of putting his mother in an accident so that you can help her and
he can see that.
The
self-righteous say that spells that use force are wrong. But that can be said of any spell. For example, a healing spell will try to
force a person to have a better attitude for a good attitude is one of the main
helps in recovery. A person wants to
change their own attitude. They don’t
want forces doing it for them.
All magic is
harmful and the notion of white magic is nonsense and sooner or later the white
magician will see that and the temptation to use malicious magic and start
calling up demons will get too much.
Magic should lead to black magic and Satanism. Magic workers who claim to harm none are just
deceivers.
We know that some
people will die in accidents. Nothing
can stop that. Then why not use magic so
that evil people or your enemies will be the ones struck down instead of the
innocents that these things happen to?
You would be shuffling the pack so that the deserving people have the
accidents. It is probably because magic
leads to attempted murder and evil that the Bible God says that we should not
suffer a sorceress to live (Exodus 22:18).
The context doesn’t allow us to get liberal. God is blunt.
He says the life of a sorceress should not be tolerated. He could have demanded some other treatment
for them but he demanded execution indicating that this was compatible with
love your neighbour as yourself for the sorceress is dangerous no matter how
altruistic she seems to be or acts. God
evidently believes that there is something in this magic – why else be so harsh
against it - but we know better! The
view that God opposed it for he wanted to keep his people free from pagan
influence doesn’t explain the harshness.
Magic workers
still get cancer and have accidents and die so magic is wasting time. Magic is always evil because it implies that
it is better to do nothing active for other people but spend all your time
casting spells to help them. This like
becoming a contemplative nun dedicating yourself to a
life of prayer for others is really putting faith before people. Religion is schizophrenic,
it pretends to want to help people and then chooses, in its smugness, a futile
way of doing so. Magic workers will
respond that magic doesn’t happen just if you sit back you have to help it to
work by doing something. But though you
may help it to work it is only a small part.
If you help your sick father by looking after him it is mostly how
circumstances you can’t control work out that do any good. The doctor will help, the nurse will help,
his medicine has to agree with him, the heating has to work, your
own health has to be okay there is so much.
Magic then needs to be very powerful to look after all those things so
why shouldn’t it work if you do nothing?
What I could
never understand was how people who could allegedly bend spoons by mind power
can’t change their DNA so that they remain youthful until death or manage to
change their DNA so that they never die or get cancer. They say magic cannot give you a new set of
teeth if your adult teeth all fall out. But why not? Some
people do grow teeth a third time. When
magic changes what is going to happen it should be able to change nature for
changing this is still changing nature.
Top of the Document
LYING
RELIGION IS A WITCH-CULT
Much religion denounces witchcraft and occultism as delusion and of the
Devil. Yet there is nothing that is more
into magic, deals with the Devil and hexes than itself.
Religionists who freely practice their religion knowing that it is untrue
are practicing black magic for they couldn’t be serving their cult if they felt
there was no magic power in it.
After I discovered the Catholic Church to be an anti-truth crusade I was
still emotionally drawn to it. It didn’t
bother me that it was a fraud – I wanted it to be true therefore I was
determined to delude myself into thinking that it was the true Church. I was too turned on by the history and rites
of the Church and by the desire to help it look to into Protestantism which I
despised. I hated non-papists far more
when I founded the real truth about my Church and that hey had been right all
along. This was out of a combination of pure
wickedness and jealousy for I didn’t want them to be right.
Incredibly, I prayed quite a bit and liked to visit the “blessed”
sacrament most days. I felt that the
prayers would still work and do me good even though I perceived them to be
mockeries and blasphemies coming from the likes of me! It is obvious that my praying was really just
spell casting.
Useless prayers could only be viewed to be of help if they were held to
possess magic power and be indirect devil-worship! The Catholic Church made me a warlock! I could have been one of millions!
The Catholic Church attributes sin to God no matter how vehemently she
says she doesn’t. If she does this in
earnest then she does not worship God for God is infinite good. God is literally truth, love and
justice. We cannot understand this. Yet it is in the Bible (John 14:6; 1 John
To pray to evil
or to nothing is to invoke occult forces.
The Church drags many into occultism by making it a disgrace to leave
her. Rather than live in spiritual
unhappiness and under a sense of bondage many who are coerced prefer to be
freely pious which means becoming sorcerers.
WICCA OR WITCHCRAFT
Some scholars and
practitioners of Wicca and Witchcraft make a distinction between Wicca and
Witchcraft. If they are right you can be
a Witch without being a Wiccan or vice versa. They see Wicca as an offshoot of Witchcraft
or an outright invention that appeared in the middle of the twentieth century. For traditional Christianity, Witches were
women who consorted with the Devil and obtained favours from him.
Charles Godfrey Leland was the first to argue that the Christian claim
that Witchcraft was Devil-worship was not true.
He gave the world, Aradia, the Gospel of the
Witches, which was allegedly partly written by an Italian witch called Maddelena. It was
first published in 1899. This small book
declares that Diana is the supreme goodness and rules the universe with Satan
who is her equal. Witchcraft is declared
to be a pagan religion. If religion is
the right word to describe a system that blessed the gods if they did what you
wanted and cursed them and wished them ill if they did not.
Margaret Murray claimed that Witchcraft was paganism, the Old Religion
that had nothing to do with Satanism.
She just guessed this for all the records claim that the witches did
worship the Devil. She accepted parts of
the records that described rites and ceremonies and ignored the rest which
spoke of orgies with the Devil and his magical powers except to turn the Devil,
when she could, into a man in black who led the ceremony so he was not the
Devil after all.
Gerard Gardner revived Witchcraft in the middle of the twentieth century
when he founded it with the aid of his Book of Shadows, a grimoire
for witches, but there is no evidence that he was telling the truth. Certainly, some of his rites were from Aleister Crowley and Aradia and
some of the material was invented. But
it is best and most rational to assume that
It is likely that the Witch rites of casting magic circles and using
pentacles and complicated paraphernalia were borrowed from the ceremonies of
Ritual Magic. There is no proof that
Witchcraft was founded by Gerard Gardner.
He might have been in contact with Witches. It was natural that there would not have been
much proof that the rudiments of Gardnerian
Witchcraft were always cherished and practiced on the earth. We know that
The religion as revealed by
Aradia never mentions the eight festivals celebrated in Wicca. The magic circle isn’t mentioned in it at all
while in Wicca it is an essential that the magic circle be
set up. Representing the four elements
of fire, water, earth and air is essential in Wicca but Aradia
has not even thought of it. The Witches
Law, An it harm none do what ye will, is denied in Aradia
which allows the use of poisonous magical potions to get rid of rich people who
oppress the Witches. There is no
evidence that
Witches follow the Wiccan Rede,
their law of magic, “An it harm none do what ye will”. Witches are not allowed to do harm with their
magic.
Laurie Cabot, official Witch of Salem, says that all spells must be cast
in the spirit of intending it to be for the spell-casters good and for the good
of all people. Read her book, Power
of the Witch.
All things are caused by a universal domino effect. For example, if I had went a minute earlier
to get my exam results last year all subsequent events would have been
different and so John would not have died in a horrific car smash when and why
and where he died. When the spell cannot
cause the good of all it is either nonsense or it is evil. The evil forces may give you what you want
but at a huge price to other people. The
notion of white and black magic is a mistake.
All magic is trying to get something at the expense of other
people. The Witches Law says that if you
do any bad magic it will come back on you three times stronger. This idea seems to have arisen in the
seventies and probably was inspired by attempts to make it seem that witches
would be too scared to get up to no-good or by the superstition that luck, bad
and good luck, comes in threes. If you
do a spell to make a person sick the magic will return to you and make you
three times worse. If that were true
there were would be no happy witches but they would all be getting electric
shock treatment for acute depression for in magic you have to do and cause some
evil to do good. For example, if you
cast a spell to make Amy more loveable to Jake and she meets Dean and Dean dies
in a stabbing the magic could have killed Dean to stop him getting in the way
of Jake seeing Amy as nice and perhaps somebody he would like to love. You will have to die three times for you are
still responsible no matter what your intention was.
Witches say that desiring the
effect and visualising it are essentials in doing magic effectively. Cabot and most witches say you have to be
very careful how you word a spell for what you ask for you will get. This denies that desire causes the spell to
work and takes us back to the superstition that just thinking about something
and saying some words is enough to make a spell work. We know by thousands of years experience that
this is wrong. If spells work by
pictures in your head and by desire then the desire for what you want will
determine what you get not mistakes in the words for words are only as good as
what you mean by them.
The witches also say that if you are healing a person you must project
for the end result not the means in case you are not projecting the best way to
help the person. This contradicts the
rule that you must cast a spell “for my good and the good of all” as they
direct. If this command was effective
and made sure the magic did only good why would it matter if you project the
means or not? They use their rule so
they should not worry about causing the wrong way to help somebody. The real reason for the rule is to cover up
the ineffectiveness of magic. John and
Tanya are trying to have a baby. John
wants Tanya to have their baby and casts a spell for it to happen. If he projects that the baby will be born by IVF and she has one naturally then clearly the spell has
failed. But if John projects simply so
that she will have a baby he will think his spell worked. By leaving the means out it makes it look
more like the spell worked. It was
perhaps 50/50. Witches then must refuse
to project how the result will take place to make it more likely that it looks
that their spells work. If they project for the means that is harder than just projecting
for the end and far more daring. The
end is one thing but there are millions of means that happen in millions of
ways – so they want to cover up that magic is a failure.
You could project that John will get cured of his pneumonia in
If you project simply that he gets better of his pneumonia then what if he gets better of his sickness without magick? Surely then the spell will have to make him contract the illness again so that he can be cured as in the projection you made?
Somebody has a deep wound. You visualise it healed. You see intact skin in your visualisation. Now to cause the perfect skin, the spell might cause an infection in the wound that is so bad that the skin has to be taken off and replaced with grafts. No wonder it looks so perfect in your visualisation. And if you visualise a scar you are causing a scar. The Church seems to be right that all works of magic, if there is a Devil, are his work.
Some witches visualise a scene they don't want to happen. Then they might imagine a white x appearing across it as they call on magic to prevent the event happening. But they see the scene and so are causing it to happen and then the x to cancel it is seen. The magic then will surely cause the unwanted event but get it over with quickly like it has been cancelled or something. The x is violent in the sense that it fights an event that is feared. It is fighting evil with evil. No evil should be necessary in magic.
If you imagine your house on fire and then an x appearing across it you may be both projecting a fire and not projecting it. The spell then will do nothing for you at all except make it a fifty fifty chance that your house will go on fire or will not. What else can it do for it can't make both? You are increasing the chances of fire! If you let it alone, the chance of fire breaking out would be a lot lot less.
Witches don’t believe in the good of all rule
which will block their spells from working for they are afraid of spells that
are not of pure motivation. They either
do their spells with a bad hypocritical motive or they are only pretending to
themselves and everybody else that they cast them.
If it is true that you might not project the best means to the end then
it follows that if you project the end you might be zapping for something that
is not best for the person. Maybe they
need to suffer and die to learn a lesson before they come back in another
life? Many would say the witches are
definitely being hypocritical.
The religion of the witches is a nature religion. God and nature are regarded as the same
thing. However, their God is two beings,
the Goddess and the God. The Goddess has
three aspects, Maiden, Mother and Crone and her manifestation is the form of
woman and in the form of the moon. The
God is the Horned Nature God, the prince of Day and Night, who is every man and
who is the Sun. He is the Prince of Evil
in the sense that he is evil that is necessary for good. So, he is not the Devil. The nature of the God and Goddess is
love. This is all wrong for evil has no
meaning or use for us. We don’t need it
when we have unfree will. It simply should not be. And when magic is evil how could it be the
energy of the Goddess and the God? Magic
insults them if they are love so Witchcraft and Religion, the worship of
superior beings are incompatible. The
Goddess is the mother of the God and he dies in winter and is reincarnated when
his mother gets pregnant by him. This is
not incest but nature symbolism.
If the Witches were really wise they would abandon their religion. Their spells are so ineffectual that they
cannot even lead them into the simple truth that is Humanism.
If the God and Goddess are really good then why don’t they make bad
spells ineffectual instead of letting people perform them to get the bad energy
back three times. They go further than the
biblical law of tit for tat. Isn’t it
coming back once enough? Witches say the
gods honour our free agency so they let us have the power to do harmful magic. Then why don’t most people have these
powers? Why don’t all spells work? Why it is if a woman casts a spell to make
Ricky Martin fall for her that if the spell can’t work why can’t it give her
virtual reality dreams in which she makes a heaven with him? It is the nearest she can get to fulfilling
her will. Some respect for free will
this! Also, you do the rite but you have
no evidence that the magic will succeed so what difference does it make to your
free will if bad magic works or not for you still made a choice and things did
not work out?
Witches have such reverence for nature though nature is evil and
cruel. That makes people suspicious
about how good they really are.
Also, the coven is important in Witchcraft though there are many solitaries. But resentment and jealousy will happen meaning that much of the magic will be spoiled. The true witch would be a lone one and would
not wear her or his religion on her or his sleeve.
All Witchcraft is
evil magic because when I am surer I will exist if my body is preserved it
follows that I should put using magic to live forever in this body here and now
first. Anything else is immoral
magic. I should do spells to increase my
power of matter so that I can expel the forces of aging from my flesh. If magic is really able to bless it should
make me see this. So, magic is
evil. Magic works by visualisation and
willpower. If I only choose what I think
is good then when I do evil it is because of a delusion. The true will wills only good so I can’t do
evil magic. I can’t do any magic be it
bad or good.
The Law that any bad magic you do comes back to you three times seems to
have been invented in the seventies. The
Witches often claim that the God and Goddess are love which is odd if they make
a law that the magic returns three times stronger to harm you. One time would be enough. To cast a harmful spell is not as bad as
stabbing anybody to death for the spell can be counteracted so it seems all
evil must return three times. That is a
depressing doctrine and implies there should be more suffering than there is.
Let us think about prayer. To work,
prayer has to require some power from God to see into the hearts and minds of
others. If you pray to be holy you are
praying above all for guidance for if there is no guidance there can be no
holiness. So you need guidance to see
who is trying to corrupt you, who is opposed to God and your holiness. You have to be shown the secrets of the
hearts of others to some extent. So
prayer is a sneaky attempt to invade the privacy of others. Its an attempt to violate their secret
place. Astrology and fortune telling
are evil attempts to find forbidden information about others and prayer is no
better. The fact that the vast majority
of people are not that holy and have no right to the information because of
that shows how evil prayer is. Its
sneaky. Spells are probably more ethical
than prayers!
http://www.controverscial.com/My%20Personal%20Photo%20Gallery.htm
Gardnerian Wicca
The modern witchcraft revival can be largely attributed to Gardner's publishing
his non-fiction book Witchcraft Today in 1954. The repeal of the last English
witchcraft laws in 1951 made it possible for Gardner, a retired British civil
servant with a long career in the Far East, to openly publicize his 'witchy'
religion.
Witchcraft Today described a surviving pre-Christian religion that celebrated the seasonal changes with Sabbats and the lunar cycles with Esbats. The model Gardnerian coven consisted of thirteen people who worked together skyclad during fairly elaborate rituals. The High Priest and High Priestess participated in 'The Great Rite' of ritual sex at least in private if not at coven events. Gardner called this religion 'Wica.' Later another "c" was added to Wica to form the word 'Wicca' commonly used today. Wicca is the Anglo-Saxon word for a male witch according to Baker, who notes that this term had been out of popular usage centuries before Gardner adopted it.
In the thirty years since Gardner's death in 1964, Wicca has had an amazing growth. This religion obviously fills a need in the lives of people, who seek spirituality but who reject patriarchal and often anti-sexual alternatives. Wicca, or the Craft, is the major path followed by members of a neo-Pagan community now estimated to be 500,000 people by Aidan Kelly, who believes that Wiccans should distinguish between Gardner's Wiccan mythology and its actual history.
Gardner's source of information about Wicca came purportedly from the New Forest coven in England where he was initiated as a witch in 1939 by 'Old Dorothy' Clutterbuck. He also traced the roots of the New Forest coven back to pre-Christian times, and stated that a handwritten Book of Shadows was the source of their ancient rituals.
However, starting in Gardner's lifetime and continuing until today, several persistent critics have challenged his claim that Wicca was a surviving ancient religion. His critics primarily focus on the fact that no independent research has validated the existence of Wicca. Baker, for example, notes that Gardner was a member of the Folklore Society in England, but society members interviewed after his death said they had never heard of the Wiccan sect that Gardner claimed to have uncovered.
The Four Criticisms
I will now examine in greater detail four of the criticisms raised about Wicca
by those who believe that Gardner completely fabricated it. The first criticism
is that the New Forest coven too neatly followed the model of witchcraft that
Margaret Murray had described in her 1921 book, The Witch Cult in Europe.
Murray's thesis was that a universal, pre-Christian, goddess-based religion
existed throughout Europe. This idea was greeted with ridicule by her academic
colleagues and damaged her credibility as a respected Egyptiantologist. Today,
few scholars consider her interpretations of the then-known facts to have been
accurate. Still, Murray brought the idea of goddess-worship, which Gardner's
Wicca practiced, back to center stage after a long absence.
A second criticism is that 'Old Dorothy' Clutterbuck and her New Forest coven never actuality existed, except in Gardner's mind. However, Doreen Valiente, who in the 1950s belonged to Gardner's coven (which was not the New Forest coven), located the birth and death certificates of Dorothy Clutterbuck in the early 1980s. Clutterbuck was born in India in 1881 and died in England in 1951. She left an estate of 60,000 pounds, which made it reasonable for her to have owned the old large house near the New Forest where Gardner said he was initiated.
A third charge is that British occultist Aleister Crowley was paid by Gardner to write his rituals. Valiente, who is the author of several books about modern witchcraft, is a source of many facts about Gardner. After joining Gardner's coven, she said she helped him write or rewrite some of his original rituals. The copy of Gardner's Book of Shadows that Valiente first saw did owe a good deal to the works of Aleister Crowley, as well including an adaptation of a poem by Rudyard Kipling called "A Tree Song." When she confronted Gardner, he admitted that he had borrowed freely from Aleister Crowley's writings to fill in gaps in the original New Forest materials. Valiente, however, dismisses the charge that Aleister Crowley who died in 1947, several years before Witchcraft Today was published, wrote Gardner's rituals.
Valiente further believes that Wicca's Freemasonry terms such as 'the working tools,' a reference to the candidate's 'being properly prepared' for initiation, plus the three-degree system of initiations were incorporated from Masonic ritual by Gardner, who also was a Co-Mason.
A fourth criticism, made by Issac Bonewits, is that the Wiccan Rede is also of modern origin. Bonewits is an independent scholar, active Druid, and long-time critic of Gardner. He noted that Crowley wrote "Do what thou whilst, that is the whole of the Law," early in the 20th century. This statement is quite similar to the second part of the Wiccan Rede, "Do as thou whilst." The first part of the Wiccan Rede, "And ye harm none," may have been added by Gardner, Bonewits believes, to avoid charges that Wicca was a negative religion involved in cursing people.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, it mattered greatly to some witches whether or not Gardner had discovered a true surviving witch's coven or if, instead, he mostly created the Wiccan religion based on his extensive knowledge of the occult. It's true that Gardner did boast about his extensive knowledge of the occult in Witchcraft Today. Based on the critiques made by Bonewits, Baker, Kelly and others, today most Wiccans accept that Gardner freely added materials from other occult traditions to his brand of Wicca.
Gardnerian Wicca does provide us with a positive mythology of pre-Christian religion that we wished had survived, but for which there is almost no historical evidence. The worship of the Goddess and the Horned God of Nature at seasonal and lunar celebrations are authentically very ancient. Only the Gardnerian rituals and tools we use are of modern origin.
Historical Witchcraft
A traditional witchcraft, untainted by Gardner or other modern
reconstructionists, does exist, although its practitioners usually do not call
themselves witches. Instead, Baker writes that they are called the village
sorcerers, wizards, cunning men, and wise women. These wise ones, or white
witches, were common in the British Isles and isolated parts of the United
States until well into this century, when mass public education spread a
scientistic viewpoint that devaluated and dismissed traditional knowledge as
being merely superstitious. Baker says that the cunningfolk had no unifying Book
of Shadows that contained their standard rituals. Traditional village witchcraft
was practiced by solitaries who passed on their knowledge to one apprentice at a
time. Local folk went to the wise ones for cures, prophecy, and protection. The
wise ones also knew and used local native plants in their medicines and magical
potions.
Two American folk magic traditions with historical roots in white witchcraft are those of the Southern Appalachians and the Pennsylvania Dutch. I will examine each of these traditions in the following sections.
Appalachian Folk Magic
Starting in the mid-18th century, Anglo-Celtic settlers from the lower social
classes sought to flee recurring religious and political persecutions in
Scotland and Ireland by immigrating to the southern Appalachian mountains in
North America. Cross-cultural exchanges of customs and intermarriage between the
European immigrants and American natives led to a hybrid magic that was based on
Celtic and some native customs.
Geographical barriers, imposed by the mountains, resulted in widespread poverty and isolation among the mountain people, which allowed their beliefs and magic that dated back to the Middle Ages to survive undisturbed.
Edain McCoy summarizes both the beliefs and rituals of this magical tradition in her book Mountain Magick, Folk Wisdom from the Heart of Appalachia formerly called In a Graveyard at Midnight. A spell cast in a graveyard at the stroke of twelve was the most prevalent folk magical practice, because while burial grounds were considered places where evil lurked, they also were believed to contain great magical power that could be harnessed for good or evil.
McCoy writes with a special understanding about this magical tradition because she is both a descendent of the "feuding" McCoy clan of eastern Kentucky and a practicing Wiccan living in Texas. Some of the specific beliefs behind the magical practices she writes about include the following:
1) Good and evil are divided into two distinct and warring camps that are lead by the Christian God and the powerful Devil, respectively.
2) Mountain people have a sense of fatalism, which means they believe there are certain conditions that their magic cannot cure. Fatalist thinking is related to predestination and is a legacy of the Calvinist theology of the early Scottish Protestant churches.
3) Certain individuals are blessed with paranormal powers and have more powerful magic than ordinary people. These people can choose to use their power for either good or evil purposes.
4) Magical curses are both real and potent.
5) Nature provides omens and portents of the future which the wise heed.
Southern folk magic has always tended to be a solitary practice. This folk magic requires little preparation, and no expensive tools, specialized knowledge, nor priestly caste. It is primarily concerned with omens, portents, curses, cures, and protection and is not geared toward obtaining material goals. For more information on how to perform the Southern mountain spells, make the charms, do the divinations, or even cook traditional southern recipes, you should check out McCoy's charming book. Today the continuing survival of Southern mountain magic as an indigenous folk practice is doubtful. However, elements of this folk magic may survive or be revived through McCoy's book and her personal magical practice.
Pennsylvania Dutch Hexcraft or "Pow-wow"
Further north in Pennsylvania, German settlers began arriving in the late 17th
century, the bulk of them immigrating in the first half of the 18th century. The
term Pennsylvania "Dutch" is a corruption of the German word "Deutch" meaning
German. Silver RavenWolf lives in Pennsylvania and describes this magical
tradition in
American Folk Magick: Charms, Spells & Herbals [formerly called]
HexCraft. She has Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors, as I also do.
Two distinct groups of German immigrants came to Pennsylvania. The Fancy Germans, or Lutherans, brought their elaborate folk history with them, including the ornate customs of Christmas and Easter, the Yule tree and log, colorful decorations, baskets, and pictures of bunnies. The other German group was the Plain or Pietist Germans. They included members of the Mennonite, Amish, Dunker, and Brethren denominations. The Plain Germans wore distinctive clothing and tried to live a simple rural life-style guided by their interpretation of the Bible. Some of the pow-wowers Silver RavenWolf interviewed were Brethren, Mennonites, and Dunkers.
South central Pennsylvania was fertile and not physically isolated, as were the southern Appalachians. Hexcraft, or pow-wow, as it is locally called, survived because of the tendency of both Fancy and Plain Germans to live in tightly knit communities, where they preserved their customs and language into the 20th century.
Native Americans were present, at least initially, when the Germans arrived and the term pow-wow was possibly derived from the early settlers' observations of Indian pow wows. Silver RavenWolf thinks the word pow-wow may also be a derivative of the word power or may come from the Native American pow wow definition meaning "he who dreams."
Pow-wowing includes some charms and incantations dating from the Middle Ages plus elements borrowed from the Jewish Qabala and Christian Bible. Pow-wowing generally focuses on healing minor health problems, the protection of livestock, success in love, and the casting or removing of hexes. For over 200 years, pow-wowers have considered themselves to be staunch Christians endowed with supernatural powers to both heal and harm.
Hex signs are the most widely recognized symbols associated with pow-wow magic. The word hex means a spell or bewitchment and comes from the German word hexe for witch. Hex signs are round magical signs and symbols used primarily to protect against hexerie (witchcraft). They were used by the Fancy Dutch but not the Amish and strict Mennonites.
Some hex symbols and designs originate in the Bronze Age. Ancient Celtic and Germanic tribes put emphasis on the energy patterns of the divine Source rather than its representation as a human archetype. The Source was depicted in universal designs that assisted in focusing power either toward or away from the design. The basic pattern found in the original hex signs is the double rosette, which is found at many ancient European holy sites.
Most of the charms used in pow-wow magic were originally described in two books. The first book, Long Lost Friend, was written in 1820 by John George Hohman. He was a German Catholic immigrant who documented various charms and herbal remedies that had been preserved orally for centuries. The second book is the anonymous Seventh Book of Moses, also called the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses. This book contains a mixture of wisdom derived from the Talmud, Qabala, and Old Testament. Silver RavenWolf says these two books were once found in almost all Pennsylvania Dutch households.
Pow-wow tools include common items such as spools of red and black thread, a ball of red yarn, several lengths of red and black ribbons, small hand-made ceramic bowls, a seam ripper, a creek stone (divinity stone) and a container of holy water. Red and white are the basic colors used in pow-wow.
Pow-wowing was still common in the early 20th century. Gradually over time, several local murders were attributed to pow-wowers. One belief held by some pow-wowers was that a curse could be broken by killing the person who placed it. Pow-wowing rapidly declined in the 1920s when the news media portrayed it as an embarrassing example of backward and superstitious Pennsylvania Dutch behavior. While researching her book, Silver RavenWolf found only elderly pow-wow practitioners, who often lived in local nursing homes.
Conclusions
Gerald Gardner's reputation as the "discoverer" of an ancient witch religion may
have been damaged beyond repair. However, even staunch critics, Issac Bonewits
and Aidan Kelly, point out that his role as the inspired creator of a 'new'
religion has not been given its deserved recognition. For example, the Wiccan
Rede, regardless of its origin, has greatly helped Wiccans in distinguishing
their positive magickal religion from that of Satanic cults and other negative
occult groups.
The folk magic of the southern Appalachians and the Pennsylvania Dutch is rapidly disappearing as these communities are integrated into the modern America of satellite television, fancy cars, and conspicuous consumption. Edain McCoy and Silver RavenWolf have performed a valuable service in recording what is left of these magical traditions.
The power of American folk magic rests on its ability to fulfill a basic human need by providing more certainty and control in the lives of its practitioners. Adding elements of either folk tradition to our Wiccan practices can help us become more connected with an authentic folk magic brought to this continent by our immigrant ancestors.
In Part 2 of this series, the Roots of Our Religion, I will describe Wicca's medieval roots including those derived from Hermeticism, the Qabala, and the Tarot.
To read Part 2, and the rest of this series by Merlyn, visit http://connectionsjournal.com/files/archives/rootsreligion/reroot.html
References
James W. Baker, "White Witches:
Historic Fact and Fantasy," in Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft, James. R.
Lewis, ed., SUNY Press, 1996.
Farrar, Janet and Stewart, A Witches Bible Compleat, Magickal Childe, 1984.
Gardner, Gerald, Witchcraft Today, 1st edition, Ryder and Co, U.K., 1954; this edition, 7th paperback printing, Magickal Childe, 1991.
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Witches, Facts On File, 1989.
Hopeman, Ellen Evert and Lawrence Bond, People of the Earth: the New Pagans Speak Out, Destiny Books, 1996.
McCoy, Edain, In a Graveyard at Midnight, Llewellyn, 1995.
RavenWolf, Silver, HexCraft, Llewellyn, 1995.
Valiente, Doreen, The Rebirth of Witchcraft, Phoenix Publishing, 1989.
This article was originally printed in the Lady Letter, a publication of Our Lady of the Woods, a Wiccan coven.
Website
This website refutes the allegations made in the paranormal world that modern
physics is full of miracles and the supernatural and verifies it and psychic
powers.
http://www.csicop.org/si/2006-04/quantum-mechanics.html
BOOKS CONSULTED
ANATOMY OF WITCHCRAFT, Peter Haining, Tandem
Books,
AT THE HEART OF DARKNESS, John Parker, Pan,
BIZARRE BELIEFS, Simon Hoggart and Mike
Hutchinson, Richard Cohen Books,
INSIDE THE SUPERNATURAL, Jean Ritchie,
LOOKING FOR A
MIRACLE, Joe Nickell, Prometheus Books,
MAGICK IN THEORY AND PRACTICE, Aleister Crowley,
Castle Books,
MALLEUS SATANI,
Suzanne Ruthven, Ignotus Press,
MARTIAL ARTS, Mike R Taylor,
MIRACLES OR MAGIC? Andre Kole and Karl Janssen, Harvest House,
MYSTERIES, Colin Wilson, Grafton,
PAGANISM AND THE OCCULT, Kevin Logan, Kingsway Publications,
POWER OF THE WITCH, Laurie Cabot with Tom Cowan, Arkana,
Penguin,
POWERS OF DARKNESS POWERS OF LIGHT, John Cornwell, Penguin,
PSYCHIC SELF-DEFENCE, Dion Fortune Aquarian
SATANISM, Bob and Gretchen Passantino, GP Publisher
Services with Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan,
1995
SCIENCE AND THE PARANORMAL, Edited by George O Abell
and Barry Singer, Junction Books,
SECRETS OF THE AMAZING KRESKIN, Kreskin, Prometheus Books,
SPELLS AND HOW THEY WORK, Janet and Stewart Farrar, Phoenix Publishing
Inc Washington, 1990
SPIRITUALISM JB Norris, The Christadelphian,
TEST YOUR PSYCHIC POWERS, Susan Blackmore, Thorsons,
THE AMAZING WORLD OF KRESKIN, Kreskin, Coronet,
THE BLACK ART, Rollo Ahmed, Senate,
THE BOOK OF MEDIUMS, Allan Kardec, Weiser,
THE CHALLENGING COUNTERFEIT, Raphael Gasson,
Logos Books, Bridge Publishing Inc, New Jersey, 1985
THE COMPLETE BOOK OF FORTUNE, Blaketon Hall,
THE DEVIL HIDES OUT, David Marshall, Autumn House, Grantham, 1991
THE HIDDEN POWER,
Brian Inglis,
THE POLTERGEIST EXPERIENCE, D Scott Rogo,
Penguin, Middlesex, 1979
THE REAL EXORCISTS, Leslie Watkins, Futura,
THE SATANIC BIBLE, Anton Szandor LaVey,
THE SATANIC WITCH Anton Szandor LaVey, Feral House,
THE SCEPTICAL
OCCULTIST, Terry White, Century,
THE SCIENCE OF THE X-FILES, Michael White, Legend Books,
THE SILVA MIND CONTROL METHOD, Jose Silva and Philip Miele,
Harper-Collins,
THE SUPERNATURAL A-Z. James Randi, Headline,
THE TAO OF PHYSICS, Fritjof Capra, Flamingo,
THE UNICORN IN THE SANCTUARY, Randy England, TAN Books,
THE WORDSWORTH DICTIONARY OF THE OCCULT, Andre Nataf
Wordsworth Reference, Herts 1994
UNDERSTANDING THE NEW AGE, Russell Chandler, Word
WHAT IS THE NEW AGE? Michael Cole,
Jim Graham, Tony Higton and David Lewis, Hodder & Stoughton,
WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS, Michael Shermer,
21 April 2008