The Witch Religion: A Fantasy

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A persistent myth in the historiography of Witchcraft and the Witchcraze is the idea that underneath the distortions of the witch hunters and the hysteria of alleged “Devil Worship” was a real “Witch religion” that the Church was suppressing. The idea that the craze was about something that was nonexistent is very hard for a lot of people to swallow. The modern origin of this notion can be reduced to three figures. The French historian Jules Michelet in his book La Sorciere1, published originally in 1862. Another writer who helped to launch the idea of an organized Witch religion was the writer Montague Summers, who wrote among a number of Books on Witchcraft, including The History of Witchcraft and Demonology, who published translations of many Witch Hunter manuals including the infamous Malleus Maleficarum, published 1486, by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger. 2 The third writer was Margaret Murray, an Egyptologist, who wrote The Witch-cult in Western Europe, (1921) and God of the Witches, (1933).3 To begin with Jules Michelet. His book La Sorciere contains a describtion of the Black Mass which is a tissue of conjecture and fantasy. It was based on his idea that the “witch” religion was a response to severe oppression by the enserfed peasant population: "They decked an altar to the arch-rebel of serfs to him who had been so wronged, the old outlaw hunted out of heaven, “the Spirit by whom earth was made, the Master who ordained the budding of the plants."4 Thus does Michelet begin his description of the Black Mass, which he proposes was an ideological attack against the oppressions inflicted on the peasantry by Church and State. Michelet goes on to describe the ceremony as being organized by a “Witch”: "At the back of all is the Witch, dressing up her Satan, a great wooden devil, black and shaggy. By his horns, and the goat-skin near him, he

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