The Roots of Witchcraft By Michael Harrison Contents: Book Cover (Front) (Back) Inside Cover Blurb Quotes In Respectful Memory Of Margaret Murray List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Foreword by Colin Wilson In The Beginning: A Sense Of Wonder ... 1 - The Gods of Sky and Field 2 - Father God ... or Mother God? 3 - Fertility Religion and the Celtic Spread 4 - Birthplace of an Old Religion 5 - The Emergence of the Enemy 6 - Rome attacks the 'Witches' 7 - The Language of the Witches 8 - The Historical Conclusions 9 - New Blood for an Old Religion 10 - The Old Faith Regenerated 11 - Mopping-up Operations Bibliography (Removed) Index (Removed) Inside Cover Blurb - The Roots of Witchcraft 'It may well be asked: Why yet another book on Witchcraft? ... I shall content myself with giving the three principal reasons which persuaded me to write this book. 'In the first place, I am not satisfied that any books on Witchcraft ... have clearly denned Witchcraft or have made sufficiently clear the essential distinction between Witchcraft and Diabolism. '... In the second place ... I am concerned with the origins of the cult; more particularly with the geographical situation of the region from which this ancient faith spread over Europe. '... In the third place, I shall produce evidence ... to shew that, whilst Witchcraft was not, after ... 1948, as widespread or as powerful as vested ecclesiastical and political interests found it useful to make it out to be, the Old Religion ... was far more established, far more widespread, until at least the year AD 1400, than the activities of the Inquisition would imply. '... I shall point out that the modern highly-publicised "revival of Witchcraft" is a non-fact; that Witchcraft - or the Old Religion - cannot be revived until the beliefs associated with natural ... agriculture be revived. I shall further point out that, in "extirpating" the Old Religion ... the Dominicans, Kramer and Sprenger, ... succeeded, not only in destroying the ancient, simple Fertility Cult ... but also in reviving and strengthening that Diabolism which ... had been, for political reasons, identified with the Old Religion ..." Michael Harrison Quotes What Song the Syrens sang, or what Name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among Women, though puzzling Questions, are not beyond all Conjecture. Hydriotaphia I have ever believed, and do now know, that there are Witches: they that are in doubt of these ... are obliquely and upon consequence a sort, not of Infidels, but Atheists. Religio Medici In Respectful Memory Of Margaret Murray archaeologist, anthropologist and scholar with the creative imagination of the poet. With the intellectual detachment of genius she pioneered her lonely way against the ossified thought of entrenched prejudice. By bringing the light of science to bear upon what was then deemed the outworn superstitions of the vulgar and illiterate, she shewed the antiquity no less than the continuity of an ancient belief. If I have sought to follow in the path that she first opened up, I have gone the more eagerly in her footsteps because it was she who urged me to do so. SLP Nil tam difficile est quin quaerendo investigari possit. List of Illustrations Line illustrations appearing in text 'Alexamenos Worships His God!' - Contrad Research Library 'Animal Magnetism' - Or Eighteenth Century Hypnotism - Author's collection The Dawn Of Magic - Contrad Research Library Cybele's Castration Forceps - Contrad Research Library Great Mother Of The Aegean - Author's Collection The 'Other People' - Contrad Research Library The Horned God - Contrad Research Library The Enduring Faith - Courtesy Of Routledge and Kegan Paul The Agape: Feast Of Brotherly Love - Author's Collection Medieval Agape - Author's Collection The Good Shepherd - Contrad Research Library The True Vine - Contrad Research Library Christian Orphism - Contrad Research Library More Eclectic Christianity - Author's Collection Egyptian Masked Priest - Author's Collection The Witch Of Edmonton - Contrad Research Library: from Caulfield's Wonderful Museum of Remarkable Portraits Toads As Familiars - Contrad Research Library Witchfinder-General - Author's Collection: from Hopkins's own work, Discovery of Witches, 1647 Shiela-Na-Gig - Courtesy: Routledge And Kegan Paul Ltd A Conjuration - Author's Collection: From John Ashton's The Devil In England And America, 1896 Pan In The Seventeenth Century - Contrad Research Library The Storm-Raisers - Contrad Research Library Witches And Their Imps - Contrad Research Library Mandrakes - Male And Female - Contrad Research Library Hanged By The Neck - Author's Collection: From Ralph Gardiner's England's Grievance Discovered In Relation To The Coal Trade, 1655 ~~ Half-tone (Plate) illustrations Plate I The Bear-Goddess - Chinese Artemis British Museum Great Mother Of The Steppes - Novosti Press Agency (A.P.N.) Plate 2 A Worshipper From Crete - British Museum An Iberian Shaman - British Museum Plate 3 The Formality Of Ritual - British Museum The Eleusinian Goddesses - British Museum Plate 4 The Horned God Of Ch'ang-Sha - British Museum Plate 5 Cernunnos Of The Parish - Service De Documentation Photographique, (Through Contrad Research Library) The Watcher Over Paris - Author's Collection Plate 6 The Cernunnos Of Britain - The Verulamium Museum: Author's Collection Plate 7 The Cerne Abbas Giant, Dorset - National Monuments Record Plate 8 The Folkton Drums - British Museum Acknowledgements One of the few pleasures of an author's life which never lose their savour is to be found in the honest recognition of the debt that he or she always owes to others. If no man is an island, entire of itself, then certainly no book is the work of any single mind, entire of itself. We not only need the help of others; it is right that we should have that need; and, if we are as fortunate as we could hope to be, we shall find ourselves needed as much as we need others. First and foremost - the trite phrase is unavoidable here - I have to thank the late Dr Margaret Murray for that inspiring encouragement to which I have alluded more than once in the book that she so warmly urged me to write. That she died as her last letter to me was being written only adds an unusual -perhaps unique? - force to the urgings of one of the most brilliant minds that this or any other period has produced. Margaret Murray was fortunate in being born into an age of brilliant women, all as eager and competent to exploit Woman's new 'liberation' as any of these noisier contemporary 'Liberators' who, to flatter themselves, have managed to persuade many that Woman's almost complete liberation did not come a century ago - a fact which was proved, in the academic field alone, by such dazzling imaginative intellects as those of Margaret Murray, Jane Harrison, Jessie Weston and Janet Bacon: to all of whom I have often acknowledged my deep indebtedness. It is the fashion, among some shallow minds, to dismiss Dr Murray's theories as - I quote one such opinion - 'vapid balderdash'. I am not sure, but I have the uneasy feeling that the reluctance to accept Dr Murray as a pioneer in the more speculative aspects of Anthropology springs simply from a far too common masculine prejudice (that I, thank Heaven, do not share!) against conceding the possibility that any woman could contrive to pioneer in any activity, physical or mental. How may this indefensible prejudice possibly continue to exist in the age which has produced its Nightingales, its Garret Andersons, its Curies, its Meitzners, and so many other women pioneers! Fortunately, as I have mentioned in the text, Dr Murray's warm supporters far outnumbered her detractors, and it is my hope that, in the not-so-distant future, all will agree with me that, in her literally epoch-making book, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, Dr Murray shewed, for the first time, the true relationship of Western Witchcraft to that Primaeval Faith which sprang from Man's first important use of his differentiating and segregating mental superiority. That first important use of his mind was demonstrated when he asked those three questions which lie at the beginning of all intellectual enquiry; which are, indeed, the origin of all intellectual enquiry: 'Who am I?', 'Who made me?' and 'Why am I here?' In this book, encouraged by many a dead and living writer, I have endeavoured to state the conditions in which these essential questions were first asked - and (to a much larger extent than many think) were answered. The several sources that I have used have been acknowledged both in the body of the text and in the Bibliography at the end of this book. Such acknowledgement is not only the courteous and just admission of a debt to others, it serves, also, as a useful guide to further reading on the subject. However, there are two writers on Witchcraft whom (with their respective publishers) I wish specially to thank for permission to quote from their books: the late Mr Pennethorne Hughes and Messrs Longman, for permission to quote from Witchcraft; and (the Executors of) the late Mr T.C. Lethbridge and Messrs Routledge & Kegan Paul, for permission to quote from Witches: Investigating an Ancient Religion. I must also acknowledge my deep debt to two other books, both of which treat of the Fertility Religion only incidentally: the late Sir F.M. Stenton's Anglo-Saxon England, my opinion of which is sufficiently indicated, I trust, by the frequency and length of my references to it in my book; and - once again! -Professor L.R. Palmer's The Latin Language, the one indispensable handbook, in my opinion, to any writer whose work involves the subject of Dr Palmer's matchless book. Anglo-Saxon England is published by The Clarendon Press, Oxford; The Latin Language by Messrs Faber & Faber.