An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Introduction

Yes, this is a biased book about witchcraft; but it is biased in the opposite direction to that of most books on the subject. This book is on the side of the witches.

The reason is that the writer is a witch herself. Three hundred years ago that statement could have brought me to the gallows. But times have changed. Today, the Craft of the Wise has to a certain extent come out into the open as a pagan faith in which those who practise it can find enjoyment and fulfilment.

It has been argued by sceptics that witchcraft cannot possibly be a genuine religion, because it has no sacred book, no sacred liturgy, nor anything which identifies it with the other religions of mankind. The reason, however, why witchcraft has none of these things, is that it is older than these things. Witchcraft is as old as mankind itself; and it does not begin from books. It begins in the heart. Anyone who has a sense of wonder, an imagination that can respond to the moods of nature, who is not satisfied with the glib answers of the intellectual and materialist, who has curiosity and awareness—that person has the beginnings of witchcraft.

I became a witch many years ago. That is, I was initiated into one of the various branches of the witch cult in Britain today; and since that time I have made contact with other sections of the cult and been initiated into some of those also.

I have danced at the witches’ Sabbat on many occasions, and found carefree enjoyment in it. I have stood under the stars at midnight, and invoked the Old Gods; and I have found in such invocations of the most primeval powers, those of Life, Love and Death, an uplifting of consciousness that no orthodox religious service has ever given me.

I found, however, that apart from a small band of writers such as Charles Godfrey Leland, Margaret Murray, Gerald Gardner and Robert Graves, nearly everyone who wrote books about witches presented them as being either crazily evil celebrants of the Black Mass and confederates of Satan, or else as pathetically deluded victims of mass hysteria.

So I wrote a book called Where Witchcraft Lives (Aquarian Press, London, 1962 and Wehman, 1962), about witchcraft in the county where my present home is, Sussex; and I brought into it some of the things I had been taught about what witches really did and believed. At that time for personal reasons I was not able to come out openly and say I was a witch. Instead, I described myself as a student of witchcraft.

In fact, I still am such a student. I do not profess to tell all, because unlike some writers on the subject, I do not profess to know all. Witchcraft is a big subject—as old as the human race and as deep as the human mind. I can only shed light on some aspects of it in a book like this. There are many realms still to be explored, and doubtless many discoveries still to be made.

By ’witchcraft’ I mean the remains of the old religion of Western Europe, driven underground by the rise of Christianity and compelled to organise itself as a secret cult in order to survive; a cult which spread to North America and elsewhere, carried there by European immigrants.

I have not touched upon so-called African ’witchcraft’, or the ’witchcraft’ of any other of the peoples that we are pleased to regard as primitive; because ’witchcraft’ in all these cases is the white man’s opprobrious or patronising word for what these people believe and do. It is not what such people themselves call it.

Magic, both black and white, is a world-wide heritage. All over the world, in every society, occult powers have been used—and sometimes misused. Witchcraft is an Anglo-Saxon word, coined at a period when the old pagan faith and the new Christian faith were overlapping each other; when a king’s warriors might submit to being baptised because their liege lord was baptised, but would still call on Thor when they went into battle; and when the Christian missionary priests were trying to persuade the ’heathen’—the people of the heaths—that their old gods were devils. It is a very old word : witchcraft—the craft of the wise. And yet it keeps cropping up in the most unexpected places; even in this slick, new world of space flight and computers. People can laugh at it; they can be afraid of it; they can denounce it; they can deny that it exists; but somehow man cannot seem to get away from it.

Moreover, with regard to psychic powers and happenings, from my own experience and conversations with others, I believe that these things are actually far more common than people realise. The reason people believe them to be something rare and bizarre, is that those who experience something of this nature are afraid to talk about it, because they are worried about what others might think. People’s minds have been literally bedevilled by fear of the unknown.

Today a great many taboos are being swept away. The frank discussion of the occult and the supernormal is going hand-in-hand with a franker attitude towards sex, nudity, and other previously banned subjects. People are beginning to say what they really think and feel about these matters, instead of what hitherto they have imagined that they ought to think and feel in order not to offend society. The wind of the Age of Aquarius is rising.

In these extraordinary days, it is no wonder than anything so apparently extraordinary as a revival of witchcraft should be taking place in Europe and America. People are not trying to put the clock back, however. They are advancing towards a new society, of which a regenerated and enlightened paganism is going to be part.

Many wild guesses have been made at the actual number of practising witches in Britain today. None of them are or can be accurate, because the Craft of the Wise is not all organised under the same leadership. There are covens which seek publicity; there are others which abhor it. There are covens which insist on the old concept of ritual nudity; there are others which do not. There are covens which are devoted mainly to the moon goddess Diana; there are others which give the greater importance to the Horned God—call him Pan or what you will; and there are other covens which invoke both the male and female aspects of Divine Nature equally. However, in spite of this apparent diversity, there is a certain basic feeling and attitude to life which is common to all who have any real knowledge of witch lore.

There is a general belief among witches in the invocation and worship of the forces of life, the male and female aspects of nature, through which all manifestation takes place. These powers are personified as the Horned God and the Moon Goddess. They have a great many names, because of their great antiquity. Witches believe that ancient works of art, dating back to the Stone Age, depict the same deities which they worship today; and therefore, they say, witchcraft is the oldest religion in the world.

The cult group of thirteen, called a coven, is generally, though not invariably, adhered to. Coven meetings take place every month, at or near the full moon. These monthly meetings are called Esbats.

In addition to these, there are the more religiously important Sabbats, of which there are four Greater Sabbats and four Lesser Sabbats. The Greater Sabbats are Candlemas, May Eve, Lammas and Halloween, The Lesser Sabbats are the Equinoxes and the Solstices.

The means of invocation are simple, such as dancing, chanting or sitting cross-legged in meditation. There are other techniques in the more advanced stages of the cult, and these sometimes involve trance. These practices take place within the magic circle, which is drawn to concentrate the power that is raised, and to exclude any hostile forces. The circle is lit by candlelight if the rite takes place indoors. Outdoors, a bonfire is often lit. The burning of incense is involved whenever possible, and the ritual black-hilted knife, called an Athame, is used to draw the circle. The participants may be nude, or they may wear cloaks and hoods.

It has been suggested that witchcraft is connected with drug-taking. I have never seen this happen in any circle I have ever attended; and I do not believe it plays any significant part in modern witchcraft. In the old days, witches undoubtedly had a great knowledge of the safe use of vegetable drugs; but a good deal, though not all, of this has been lost.

There is a general belief that initiation should always pass from a man to a woman, and from a woman to a man. In other words, initiation into witchcraft must be given by a person of the opposite sex. The exception to this rule is when a witch initiates his or her own children.

There is also a general belief in the world of spirits, both human and elemental. Those who have been powerful witches in the past are believed to be still able to aid and counsel their descendants in the present day, if rightly invoked to do so.

Another general tenet of belief is in reincarnation, and the destiny involved therein. Many members of the witch cult today feel that they have been members in the past also; there is a saying ’Once a witch, always a witch’.

Contrary to popular belief, witches’ attitude towards Christianity is not particularly hostile. I have heard of one witch who put a portrait of Jesus in her private sanctuary because, she said, he was a great white witch and knew the secret of the coven of thirteen. However, witches have little respect for the doctrine of the churches, which they regard as a lot of man-made dogma; and they can scarcely be expected to remember kindly the years of Church-directed witch-hunting, torture and death.

Witches do not claim that the rites they use today have descended unchanged from the Stone Age. Could any living religion of any antiquity claim that its rites today are precisely the same as those used when it was founded? If it did, it would not be a living religion; it would be fossilised. On the contrary, what modern witches practise is a present-day version of a very old faith, of which the basic essence has remained unchanged.

With regard to black magic and Satanism, two things often confounded with witchcraft in the popular mind, these are in fact nothing to do with the Craft of the Wise, nor do modern witches wish to have anything to do with them or those who practise them. To say that black magic and Satanism do not exist, in view of the desecrations of churches and graveyards that have made the headlines in recent years, would be to ignore a good deal of disturbing evidence. Nevertheless, witches were not the culprits.

I have written this book as it stands because I wanted it to be not just another book about witchcraft but something different. That I am inclined to favour the Old Religion, I do not deny; but is it wrong for me to write in this way, when so much has been published that is prejudiced against it?

Let me assure the reader, however, that I am not seeking to convert anyone; merely to present a different point of view. If he or she can find interest and pleasure in the savour of this cauldron I have brewed, from so many and varied ingredients, I shall be content.

So with the little rune that Charles Godfrey Leland learned from the witches of Italy:

May Diana the Queen of the Moon,

The Sun and the Stars,

Earth and Sky,

Send you fortune!

DOREEN VALIENTE

Brighton, 1972

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