Historical Witchcraft And Wicca History
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
Within the umbrella of witchcraft, until recently, fell all forms of living that were not pious capitulation to the belief systems of the empowered religions of the past. Therefore witchdoctors, herbalists, priestesses/priests of other faiths, midwives, shamans, diviners, astrologers, psychics, healers, elder counselors, freethinkers, mediums, sorcerers, sacred prostitutes, gender benders, any and everyone who did not conform to the rigid dogma of the “true believers” was insofar as the contemporary namers of these people—considered witches. From Starhawk’s appendix in Dreaming The Dark (1997), “The image of the Jew as a demonic alien was similar in many ways to that of the Witch.”
Shamanism is witchcraft, and all evidences of shamanic practices are therefore records of techniques of then practicing witches. As explained by Starhawk in the Spiral Dance (1979), “The Old Religion, as we call it, is closer in spirit to Native American traditions or to the shamans of the Arctic. It is not based on dogma or a set of beliefs, nor on scriptures or a sacred book revealed by a great man. Witchcraft takes its teachings from nature…” Archeology’s oldest record keeping finds contain images and iconography attesting to the interdependence of survival and personal exploration by means of magick, the special skill-set, of witches.
There is no history of witchcraft in the way that there is a history of Christianity, Islam or Buddhism. There is a history of Wicca, which we will explore shortly, but witchcraft is inseparable from human evolution. As such, the contemporary expression of witchcraft has mirrored the needs of the human communities throughout time, and is inclusive to each geography. Modern witchcraft cannot be separated from and traced via an unbroken lineage distinct from human spiritual development.
As described earlier those who sought to control the people, and things they were describing, wielded the title “witch” and the term “witchcraft” prior to the early 1900s. Starhawk explains in the appendix of Dreaming Of The Dark (1997), “In 1484, a papal bill by Pope Innocent VIII declared witchcraft heresy and extended the power of the inquisitors to hunt witches in southern Germany. In 1486, the Dominican inquisitors Kramer and Sprenger published the Malleus Maleficarum (called “The Hammer of the Witches”), which became the witchhunters manual for the next two and a half centuries.”
Historical reference to witchcraft gives few unbiased clues related to where in the process of evolution witchcraft may have been. Modern study of this field however provides relevant information from an array of practitioners and academicians to the questions: What is witchcraft and who are witches?
Prior to 1951, the year when England repealed its laws forbidding witchcraft students of the occult, did not openly embody the word witchcraft. Quoting Gerald Gardiner in the Witch Book (2002) Raymond Buckland writes, “Crowley knew of witchcraft but considered it ‘too tame’ and never practiced it.” In the 50 years prior to Gerald Gardiner, a renaissance of magickal study and practice occurred and became the foundation stones from which witchcraft as we know today was built. Gerald Gardiner was a well-known witch.
The choice to identify oneself as a witch and the decision to reclaim the power of the definers of witchcraft is modern. Wicca is the most popular modern outlet for witchcraft. Raymond Buckland writes in The Witch Book (2002), "Wicca is the preferred word for ‘Witchcraft’ with most Witches today, since it does not carry the negativity associated with the stereotypical witch promoted by Christianity. It denotes the positive, nature-oriented pagan religion derived from pre-Christian roots.”
The
history of Wiccan witchcraft is rather complex. Traditional spells
are Wicca. Some history witchcraft has been lost through the years.
Now, there is increasing belief in and desire for the secret spells of this
ancient craft. Belief in witch craft mythology and magic is a sensitive
subject to some. Demonology has been a dark part of witch craft and
magic for centuries keeping many a spell secret. A beginner can find
free guides on the net which better explains pagan beliefs.