An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Eastern Links with European Witchcraft

It has not been generally realised by writers on witchcraft, that some very interesting links exist between European witchcraft and the Arabic and Near Eastern countries. However, some information about this has been published by Idris Shah Sayid, in his remarkable book The Sufis (W. H. Allen, London, 1964). Further details have appeared in A History of Secret Societies by Arkon Daraul (Tandem Books, London, 1965 and Citadel Press, New York, 1962).

We may never know the full story of what communications there were between the secret mystics of the East and those of the West. However, two points of contact certainly did exist in medieval times. One was the Moorish kingdom in Spain, which lasted from A.D. 711 until 1492. The scholarship of the Moorish doctors was far in advance of that of most of Europe. They gave us the Arabic number signs which we still use today, a great advance upon the clumsy Roman numerals; and many terms in astronomy and chemistry, such as ’azimuth’, ’alcohol’ and so on, are derived from Arabic. So are the astrological terms ’zenith’ and ’nadir’.

It was natural that men of such comparatively advanced scientific learning should be accused of sorcery. However, the Moors also had a considerable interest in occult philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and magic generally. The city of Toledo in Spain became notorious all over Europe as a place where the magic arts were studied; so much so that the word ’Toledo’ was used as a cryptic password among occultists. Its apparently casual mention in conversation was a clue that the speaker was interested in occult matters, and sought fellow students.

Saragossa and Salamanca also had a reputation for magical studies and practices. The name of the wizard Michael Scot was associated with Salamanca; and while many of the stories told about him are legendary, nevertheless he seems really to have existed. To have studied among the Moors was a necessary preliminary to achieving mastery of the occult arts, according to many old tales. Christian Rosenkreutz, the supposed founder of the Rosicrucians, was said to have journeyed to Fez in Morocco, and there to have acquired some of his learning.

The other point of contact between East and West was the Order of the Knights Templars. One of the reasons why this very important and powerful order of knighthood fell out of favour with the Church, and was suppressed, was that they were getting altogether too friendly with the Saracens instead of slaughtering them as became good Christian men.

The contrast of character between the noble and chivalrous Saladin, the Saracen leader, and the venal, squabbling chiefs of the Crusaders, had not been without its impression upon thinking people; all the more so as the Crusades, in spite of fierce fighting and bloodshed, had most undeniably failed.

The Knights Templars were accused of heresy, and of worshipping a deity called Baphomet, who bore a strong resemblance to the god of the witches. (See BAPHOMET.) Idris Shah Sayid has suggested that his name is derived from the Arabic Abufihamat, meaning ’Father of Understanding’.

The Arabic words for ’wisdom’ and for ’black’ closely resemble each other; hence to the Arabic mystics ’black’ became a synonym for ’wisdom’. This is based upon the Arabic Qabalah, which, like the Hebrew Qabalah, derives occult meanings from the numerical values of the letters of words.

The most famous order of Arabic mystics is that of the Sufis. This order still exists today, and claims to date back to before the time of Mohammad and the foundation of Islam, although its members respect Islam in their practices. The late Gerald Gardner, who contributed so much to the present-day rebirth of witchcraft, was also a member of a Sufi order, and had travelled extensively in the East.

The suggestion had been made that the triumph of Islam, and the rapid spread of the Mohammedan creed, caused a number of people in the affected Near Eastern countries, who adhered to older faiths, to become somewhat insecure, and to leave their native lands and travel Westward. It also caused some of the devotees of older faiths to go underground, even as the spread of Christianity had done, and to form secret societies and cults. Thus an Eastern version of witchcraft sprang up; and eventually there was a certain infiltration, and exchange of ideas, between the Wise Ones of the East and those of the West.

Hugh Ross Williamson based his fascinating historical novel, The Silver Bowl, first published by Michael Joseph (London) in 1948, upon the idea that there was an Eastern as well as a European version of the Craft of the Wise, and that some communication had taken place between the two.

Some writers have gone so far as to suggest that the medieval version of witchcraft in Europe, with its organisation of Sabbats, covens of thirteen and so on, was actually a Saracenic import, grafted on to the old moon-magic cult of Diana and Herodias. How much truth there is in this it is hard to say; because it is the old question of finding resemblances between two things, and then asking, “Is this evidence that the one was derived from the other, or is it evidence that both had a common origin in the distant past?” The writer inclines to the latter view, upon the present state of our knowledge.

However, it certainly does seem possible that the European witch cult, languishing under the increasing power and influence of Christianity, received a transfusion of new life and new ideas from the East. The possibility of such communication, as we have seen, was there. Also, as Gerald Gardner mentioned in Witchcraft Today (Riders, London, 1954), the witches have a tradition among themselves that their cult came from the East.

Idris Shah tells us of the Aniza Bedouin, whose great Sufi teacher was Abu el-Atahiyya (A.D. 748—circa 828). His circle of disciples were called The Wise Ones; and they commemorated him by the symbol of a torch between the horns of a goat. The tribal name Aniza means ’goat’.

After the death of Abu el-Atahiyya a group of his followers migrated to Spain, which was then under the rule of the Moors. The Maskhara Dervishes, called ’The Revellers’, are connected with this teacher and with the Aniza tribe.

However, this symbol of a horned head with a torch between the horns is much, much older than the time of Abu el-Atahiyya. It can in fact be traced back to Ancient India. (See ANTIQUITY OF WITCHCRAFT.) It also bears some resemblance to the horned headdresses of Ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses. These often take the form of two horns with a shining disc between them, which the torch or candle is a substitute for. The god Amoun, the god of mystery and the infinite, was represented as a ram, with an elaborate horned head-dress. At Mendes an actual sacred ram was adored with strange rites, described by Herodotus. Amoun was the primeval god of the Egyptians. He was believed to be able to take any form that he wished; all other deities were his various forms. Therefore his names were many; but his real name was secret. He was especially associated with all the gods of fertility, because he was Life, the Life Force itself.

The representations of Amoun as Harsaphes, the ram-headed god of the Faiyum district, are particularly beautiful and interesting, in this respect. They show a man with a ram’s head (or mask) having a disc between the horns, probably representing the sun, and also the Atef Crown of Osiris; one of the most splendid and impressive versions of the Horned God, an example of which can be seen in the British Museum.

It seems probable that the Aniza Bedouin were named after one of the ancient North African representations of the Horned God; and that Abu el-Atahiyya’s followers, the Wise Ones, adopted this symbol of a horned head with a light between the horns, because it not only commemorated their master and teacher, but also had an older and deeper meaning for them.

The Maskhara Dervishes, who, as we have seen, are connected with this great Sufi teacher, have given us the two words, ’masquerade’ and ’mascara’. They conducted wild dances dressed in animal masks; and they also used a cosmetic to blacken their faces in the course of some of their rituals. Hence the ’mascara’ that women use today for eye-paint. The purpose of this may have been the ritual connection between ’black’ and ’wisdom’, noted above.

In Britain, there are the Morris Dancers, today as British as roast beef, but their name means the ’Moorish dancers’, because they used to black their faces when they danced, so that they should not be recognised. Their dancing is believed to bring luck by its performance; and it is certainly a splendid and exciting thing to see, and very much alive today. Some historians think that the Morris Dance was brought to Britain from Spain, probably by John of Gaunt and his followers in the time of Edward III. John of Gaunt, the brother of the Black Prince, spent much time in Spain, and had some hopes of becoming King of Castile.

Arkon Daraul, in his book on Secret Societies, previously referred to, tells of a very curious secret cult, of a mystical and magical nature, called ’The Two-Horned Ones’ or Dhulqarneni. This arose in Morocco, and crossed into Spain as had the Aniza cult. The Moslem authorities frowned upon it, and tried to put it down; but nevertheless it became fairly widespread.

Its devotees believed that they could raise magical power by dancing in a circle. They had some association with moon worship; and they said the Moslem prayers backwards and invoked El Aswad, the ’Black Man’, to help them. Both men and women were admitted to this cult, and they were marked at their initiation with a small wound from a ritual knife, called Adh-dhane, the ’blood-letter’. This word resembles the witches’ Athame.

They met by night at the cross-roads; and their meetings were called the Zabbat, meaning ’the Forceful or Powerful One’. The circle of initiates was called the Kafan, which is Arabic for winding-sheet, because each member wore nothing but a plain white robe over his naked body. Thus attired, they would have looked like a company of ghosts, and probably scared off any intruder. The witches adopted frightening disguises for this purpose also.

The Dhulqarneni carried a forked staff, the symbol of horns, the sign of power. Early representations of witches show them riding upon forked staffs. The name ’Sabbat’ for witch-meetings of special importance has never been satisfactorily explained; but ’coven’ is a word which is connected with the Latin conventus, and meant a cult-group of thirteen people. (See COVEN.)

However, the circle of the Dhulqarneni was a circle of twelve people with a leader; and so are the circles of the Sufis at the present day.

The leader of the circle of the Horned Ones was called Rabbana, ’Lord’. He was also called the ’Black Man’ or the ’blacksmith’. Blacksmiths have always been supposed to have magical powers; and the old ballad of “The Coal-Black Smith” is regarded as a witches’ song. It is also called “The Two Magicians”, and tells how a blacksmith and a witch had a magical contest, which ended with them becoming lovers. Robin or Robinet is a name which was sometimes given to the ’Devil’ of a witches’ coven, and it bears a resemblance to Rabbana. It is also an old word for phallus. The terms the ’Black Man’ or the ’Man in Black’ were also used of a male coven-leader.

The cult of the Horned Ones continued among the Berber people of North Africa up to comparatively recent times, and may still exist. There are stories of followers of this cult dancing round lighted bonfires, carrying a staff which they call ’the goat’. They have a secret Grand Master called Dhulqarnen, the ’Two-Horned Lord’, who is reincarnated upon earth every 200 years.

It is remarkable from our point of view that this cult should flourish among the Berbers; because the Berbers are racially akin to the small, dark, long-headed people who inhabited Britain in the Neolithic period, and who migrated from North Africa. The people of pre-dynastic Egypt are also racially related to them.

The Berbers are regarded in North Africa as a race of sorcerers, whose outward submission to Islam covers the hidden practice of strange and heretical creeds. They hold women in great esteem, as repositories of ancestral wisdom and magic. This is in marked contrast to the usual Arabic attitude of contempt for women, as the inferior sex. Many strange travellers’ tales of Berber magic have come out of North Africa. They are said to have a secret language, in which, and only in which, magical matters can rightly be discussed.

The relationship between such Eastern seekers of wisdom as the Sufis, and the European witches, or devotees of wise-craft, is a subject of which we know all too little. Future study may, we hope, reveal more.

One belief the Sufis and the witches have in common is that of baraka, meaning ’blessing’ or ’power’. This is not a mere metaphysical abstraction, but something that can be actually raised and transmitted. The Sufi utterance, “Baraka bashad”, “May the blessing be”, is very similar to the greeting of the witches, “Blessed be”. It also resembles the time-honoured Word of Power, ’Abracadabra’, meaning Ha Brachab Dabarah, ’Speak the blessing’. The essential meaning of these concepts is practically the same, and can be paralleled by the mana of the Kahunas of Hawaii.

The Jewel in the Lotus, by Allen Edwardes (Tandem Books, London, 1965), gives an extraordinary insight into the sexuality of the East, which is inextricably bound up with Eastern religion. It describes some of the Eastern holy men, and the way in which sexual intercourse with them was regarded as a privilege conferring sanctity. This is reminiscent of the way in which medieval witches are said to have regarded their Devil, the ’Man in Black’, when he presided over the coven wearing his ritual grand array, the horned mask, animal skins, etc.

It is implied in many of the accounts of old-time witchcraft that the Devil of the coven had a kind of droit de seigneur over the young girls and women who joined, which they probably found agreeable rather than otherwise. We find, in the very detailed accounts of the confessions of witches, preserved by Pierre de Lancre (Tableau de l’Inconstance des Mauvais Anges, Paris, 1613), the allegation that the Devil “oste la virginité des filles” at the time when he joined male and female witches in marriage.

Some holy men of the East regarded it as a sacred duty to do the same thing, namely to deflower virgins. Some Western critics have jeered at Eastern religions for this reason, regarding them as a mere hypocritical cloak for the activities of shameless libertines. In doing so, they have completely failed to understand the ideas and emotions of Eastern people, who regarded sex as a most sacred manifestation of the Life Force, and therefore of the Creative Divinity behind it. There was nothing hypocritical, or to them immoral, in the phallic and sexual rites of Eastern people; rites which, in fact, were practised all over the world in bygone days.

This regard for sexual contact with the persons of holy men, as conferring sanctity and blessing, throws a new light upon the many stories of the Osculum infame, or so-called ’obscene kiss’, supposed to have been conferred upon the Devil of the coven by his followers on ritual occasions.

The Jewel in the Lotus tells us that in many areas the wandering holy man, the Dervish or Sufi, was greeted by devotees with an extraordinary token of respect. This consisted of kissing him upon the lips, then lifting his robe and kissing him successively upon the navel, the penis, the testicles, and the buttocks.

This is the exact way in which Jeanette d’Abadie, a young witch of the Basses-Pyrenees, confessed to greeting the Devil in 1609; “que le Diable luy faiscoit baiser son visage, puis le nombril, puis le membre viril, puis son derrière”, says Pierre de Lancre (op. cit). (“The Devil made her kiss his face, then the navel, then the virile member, then his backside”.) This charge of ’obscene homage’ was often made against witches.

In 1597 Marion Grant of the Aberdeen witches was accused of rendering homage to the Devil; who, it was said, “causit thee kiss him in divers parts, and worship him on thy knees as thy lord”. And earlier, in 1303, no less a person than a Bishop of Coventry was sent to Rome to face a similar accusation, the Devil in this case having been in the shape of a “sheep” (probably a ram is meant, or a man wearing a ram’s head mask). The Bishop managed to clear himself of the charge.

This latter case, according to Margaret Murray, is the earliest recorded one in Britain, of this kind of worship of the Horned God or his representative. It may therefore give some indication, if the theory of Eastern influence is correct, of at what period this influence began to show itself upon the Old Religion in Britain.

The Knights Templars also were accused of having a ritual kiss of this kind, demanded by the initiating Master from the men who were newly admitted to the order. This may be another indication of their absorption of Eastern religious ideas and customs, probably from the Sufis. “According to the articles of accusation, one of the ceremonies of initiation required the novice to kiss the receiver on the mouth, on the anus, or the end of the spine, on the navel, and on the virga virilis.” (Two Essays on the Worship of Priapus, Richard Payne Knight and Thomas Wright, London, 1865.)

The exact similarity of this very extraordinary ritual act, in the case of the Knights Templars, the witches and the devotees of certain Sufi holy men, seems beyond coincidence. It is a clue to the real meaning of the notorious Osculum infame, and to the strange and secret links between the occult circles of the East and those of Europe in past centuries.