1
THE ANCIENT WORLD
THE DAWN OF WITCHCRAFT
Most societies in the world have a tradition of witchcraft. Many societies also revered goddesses such as Ishtar and Isis, who were linked with magic and witchcraft. Meanwhile, the Hebrews developed the idea of an evil god or devil, which in turn came to be identified in Western culture with anyone who performed witchcraft.
Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion
The use of magicâin which the force of a personâs will harnesses natural forces to influence events or outcomesâis common to most cultures in the world. At its most basic, such magic is not part of a religion, but could be referred to as simple magic in which certain acts are carried out to produce defined effects. This might be sticking a pin in the image of someone to cause harm to that person; or having sex in a newly sown wheat field to ensure that the coming harvest is a good one.
This form of folk magic is similar to that practiced by those so-called âcunning folkâ or âwise womenâ who survived the persecutions of the European and North American witch crazes in the late Middle Ages and the early modern periods. These traditions lasted into and beyond the twentieth century, although today, this folk magic is practiced by only a few. For these people, spells to mend a broken heart, cure warts or other ailments, or simply to bring good luck were not, and are not, the rituals of a religion. They were, as they saw it, simply harnessing the natural powers of the world around them.
A different form of magic is that where spirits and ultimately gods are invoked in the process of rituals. Here, the magic is an integral part of a religious system, where the participants have a coherent set of beliefs that seek to explain humanityâs place in the world. This kind of magic is closely related to that practiced by most modern witchesâthose who are part of the Wicca or Witchcraft religion. These witches point out that such magic is not âsupernatural,â it is simply using hidden laws of nature. However, the rituals are in the context of worshipping or revering goddesses and gods, who are in turn but many different aspects of the one true Deity.
At the heart of this belief system is the role of the Goddess, Mother Nature, or, as she is also known, the Lady.
Many of the old gods revered today by modern witches have their origins in the cultures of the Near and Middle East, where goddesses, gods, and magicians were at the heart of societies. The gods and witches of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Egyptians in turn influenced the Hebrew world and its view of magic and gods. The shifting view of magic through this crucial period in history has profoundly affected the way that the Western world views witchcraft. When people today confront the reality of witchcraft, they are doing so with assumptions that go back thousands of years.
A woodcut showing witches dancing in a forest from The Witch of the Woodlands (1655) by Lawrence Price, a writer of pamphlets and amusing poems of the time.
This engraving of Allegory of Mother Earth (c.1515) by Italian artist Christofano Robetta depicts the Earth as a fertile goddess at the centre of Nature.
The Idea of the Goddess
The notion of a Mother Goddess was central to many ancient cultures, and is at the spiritual heart of the modern mystical religion of Witchcraft. But it has also been deeply controversial among historians and anthropologists. From the nineteenth century onwards, there was a growing consensus among experts that a religion worshipping the Earth Mother (or Great Goddess) had preceded all other deity-based systems of belief. At the time there was said to be a matriarchal society. Only later, the theory goes, did society become more patriarchal and the reverence for the Goddess was supplanted by a more masculine god, such as the God of the Hebrews and later the Christians.
This view of the Goddess as Mother Deity was expressed powerfully in a second-century novel known as The Golden Ass, written by the poet and philosopher Lucius Apuleius. In this work the goddess Isis is seen as all-embracing, all-encompassing, telling the hero, âFrom me come all gods and goddesses who exist.â
In 1948 the British poet Robert Graves followed other nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers when he published The White Goddess. In this book Graves, too, suggested that there had been a pre-existing universal moon and earth Goddess.
Nowadays, however, the accepted view of most experts is that there is no evidence for a predating religion of the Goddess. The archeological and anthropological evidence suggests that societies began with small, local deities, some of whom were later subsumed into bigger, more powerful gods and goddesses.
Mother Goddess
This does not mean, though, that the Goddess did not play a central role in many ancient religions. As we saw from Apuleius in his depiction of Isis, the Goddess in the ancient world could be an immensely powerful, awesome deity, representing the moon, the earth, fertility, and nature as well as magic. What is clear is that from the beginning of the early Christian eraâand possibly earlierâthe worship of the Goddess was replaced during the intensely patriarchal society that developed. This eclipse of the Mother Goddess in Western cultureâsome would probably see it as a suppressionâlasted until a revival of interest in the female deity and Nature emerged in the literary and philosophical Romantic movement of the nineteenth century. It now finds religious expression in modern Wicca.
The echoes of the Goddess did not disappear altogether, however, even from the ruthlessly dogmatic Christian Church. For, in the elevation of the Virgin Mary in Christian mythology, we see some strong similarities to the Goddess deities of the past. Though Christian scholars have insisted that she is just human, itâs a point that has perhaps been lost on the millions who have prayed to her over the centuries for comfort and guidance. To them, she performs some of the roles of a Goddess.
One more aspect of the Goddess needs to be mentioned here. Modern Wiccans revere three aspects of the Goddess, the so-called Triple Goddess. These are the Maiden (or Virgin), the Mother, and the Crone (or Hag). All are ...
