An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Nudity, Ritual

The fact that some present-day witches believe in the old idea of ritual nudity, is one of the things that sensation-mongers have pounced on with delight. Every so often we are regaled by a certain section of the Sunday press with vivid descriptions of “nude orgies of devil-worship” and so on, that are supposed to be happening in Britain today. However, the older covens, which avoid publicity like the plague, in general make no great insistence upon ritual nudity, though they see nothing in it to make a fuss about. For some rites, on a really warm summer night, or indoors by a fire, it is pleasant to be naked. For others, outdoors in the darkness on Halloween, or at midnight of the full moon in some lonely wood, it is reasonable to be warmly clad.

NUDITY, RITUAL. Albrecht Durer’s engraving of four witches.

The idea of nudity as part of a magical or religious rite is found throughout the ancient world. In the famous paintings in the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii, the young girl who is being initiated starts off clothed and veiled; but at the end of the initiation ceremony she is shown dancing naked, in a state of religious ecstasy. She has cast off all worldly cares, all class distinctions; she is one with Nature and with the vitality of the universe. It was this freedom and beauty which constituted religious ecstasy to the pagan.

It appears from the Old Testament, particularly I Samuel, Chapter 19, verse 24, that the ancient prophets or seers of Israel did their prophesying in a state of ritual nudity. In this, they were like the Gymnosophists, or Naked Wise Men of ancient India. (Greek gymnos, naked, sophos, wise.) Perhaps for this reason, the idea came down to the Greeks and Romans that ritual nudity was favourable for the performance of magical rites. What had started as a religious custom, ended as a magical one.

Charles Godfrey Leland, in his Gypsy Sorcery (reprinted by University Books, Inc., New York, 1962), has noted the frequent appearances of ritual nudity in witch spells, and in magical folklore generally. He remarks on the likeness between the wild naked dances of the old-time Sabbats, as described by Pierre de Lancre, and the festivals of gypsies; and he reminds us that the Romanys come from the East, from whence so much erotic dancing by women in honour of the gods derives. Witches and gypsies have long been closely akin.

Maimonides tells us that the young women of Ancient Persia used to dance at dawn in honour of the sun, naked and singing to music; and we have the account given by Pliny in his Natural History, of how the women of Ancient Britain also performed religious rites in the nude. Pliny regarded Persia of the Magi as being the home of magic; but he says that its rituals were so well performed in Ancient Britain, that we might have taught magic to Persia, instead of the other way about. The custom of ritual nudity was certainly common to both.

Relics of the old belief in the magical power of nakedness may sometimes be found in folklore. For instance, there is an old idea that a woman can be cured of barrenness by walking about naked in her vegetable garden on Midsummer Eve, a date which, it will be remembered, is that of one of the witches’ Sabbats.

Thomas Wright, in his essay which accompanies Payne Knight’s Discourse on the Worship of Priapus (London, privately printed, 1865), has an interesting passage relevant to this matter.

We remember that, we believe in one of the earlier editions of Mother Bunch, maidens who wished to know if their lovers were constant or not were directed to go out exactly at midnight on St. John’s Eve, to strip themselves entirely naked, and in that condition to proceed to a plant or shrub, the name of which was given, and round it they were to form a circle and dance, repeating at the same time certain words which they had been taught by their instructress. Having completed this ceremony, they were to gather leaves of the plant round which they had danced, which they were to carry home and place under their pillows, and what they wished to know would be revealed to them in their dreams. We have seen in some of the medieval treatises on the virtue of plants directions for gathering some plants of especial importance in which it was required that this should be performed by young girls in a similar state of complete nakedness.

In Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, the followers of Diana are commanded to be naked in their rites, in sign that they are truly free. For this reason, many present-day witch covens insist on performing their rites in the nude. However, there is a big difference between the climates of Italy or the Near East, and the climate of the British Isles, as other witches point out. To demand ritual nudity at all times for witch ceremonies in Britain today is simply not practical.

Also, many of the older witches feel that all the publicity about nude witch dances has attracted quite the wrong sort of interest in what is, or ought to be, the Craft of the Wise. People come to it who are just looking for a bit of sexual excitement, without any serious commitment or belief. Too much emphasis, they feel, has been put on this feature of the Old Religion. They think that, along with the other old practice of ritual flagellation, ritual nudity is something that could well fade into the past, without any detriment to the witch cult, but rather the reverse.

Which, of course, leaves us with a question: is the public’s reaction to the idea of witches dancing naked, a criticism of witches—or a criticism of the popular mentality, after nearly 2,000 years of ’Christian civilisation’?

The real spirit of witchcraft has nothing in common with the banal sexual fantasies of thriller writers and the yellow press. Nor is it anything like the over-intellectualised occultism of both East and West, that takes to itself much importance today, and requires many long words to express itself.

The real secrets cannot be expressed in words. They are much more matters of feeling and intuition, than they are of the intellect. The joy and exhilaration of dancing naked is one way of drawing close to them.

However, present-day ’exposers’ of witchcraft are not the first to be excited by the idea of naked witches. A number of artists in times past have delighted to represent witches as voluptuous young women, naked and shameless. A notable artist of this genre was Hans Baldung Grun; and it was a picture of his that gave Albrecht Durer the idea for Durer’s famous engraving, The Four Witches.

This wonderful work of art, dated 1497, shows four buxom women stripping for a witch rite. The point of the picture, not always realised, is this: the women have removed all their clothes except their head-dresses, and these head-dresses, all different, show the various classes of society from which they come.

There is the great lady, with an elaborate coif of delicate material upon her head. There is the courtesan, with loose flowing hair, bound only with a garland of leaves. There is the respectable burgess’s wife, with a plain, rather severe head-dress, which covers all her hair closely and modestly. Lastly, there is the peasant woman, with merely the end of a scarf or shawl over her head. The artist is saying that all these are sisters in witchcraft, and that witches come from all classes of society. When they are naked, they meet as equals, and social distinctions are forgotten.