Dear Neophyte,
I wrote this history of witchcraft about a year ago when I was starting my religious studies from the top. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them after the essay. You having the exact same history books I do is highly unlikely, so I sited only the online sources here :)
History
of Witchcraft
By:
Sesh
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| Gris Gris Bag |
Witchcraft is the craft
of the Witch. A Witch is a person who
uses magic to bring about a desired change in the physical or metaphysical
world. Such magic includes health, wealth
and money magic. Folk magic is magic
that is tied to a specific culture or area, and is generally local herbalism,
charms and incantations to ensure good harvests and such.
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| Ancestor Shrine, Greece |
When human conscious
evolved to include a kind of religion, it’s thought that the first kind of
ritual was for the dead. Ancestor
worship became the first religion.
Since the ancestors were real and able to effect change, it was believed
that one could pray to ancestors for desired results. Paleolithic humans deified what they did not understand in a
process called animism. Soon, nature
and animal spirits were added to ancestors to create the first primitive
pantheons. What evolved into God/desses
came to have power over the world around Neolithic humans and humans began
attempting ritual and ceremony in order to curry the favor of the Devine. Soon it was noted that some members of a
tribe or family were better at getting results and they became the village
Shaman or Witch doctor. Thus is the beginning
of Witchcraft.
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| Village Witch |
In Neolithic times, early humans practiced what’s
called sympathetic magic. Sympathetic
magic is the act of showing a deity what one needs in order to get the desired
result. This magic included rain dances
and mock deer hunts to ensure the actual hunt would be fruitful.
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| Hunter's Magic |
Hunter-gather families became tribes, such as the
Native Americans, that followed animal herds and would often act out hunts
before they happened in order to achieve a successful hunt. As tribes became communities and kingdoms,
nomads settled down and began planting crops and domesticating animals. Fertility rituals were some of the most
common forms of magic used and ensured, not just human fertility, but also the
fertility of food animals and crops
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| Heket |
Early man took teachings and inspirations from
nature, animals and the heavens. There
was no set of dogmatic beliefs at first and obviously no scripture. Witches used Witchcraft to predict seasonal
and weather changes and to find water and other essentials for nomadic tribes. They were wise elders of the family. When groups of primitive humans banded
together, it was often the council of elders who lead the groups. When chieftains and kings arose, the elders
played a dominant role in the hierarchy as seers and mystics who used their
craft for the betterment of the territory.
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| Elders |
Shamanism is probably the oldest form of
witchcraft. Shamans, female and male,
would use noxious concoctions and fumes to induce trances and visions. These visions were called vision quests,
where a practitioner would often leave their body and visit their tribe’s deities
or ancestors on the astral plane. These
meetings would result in the parting of useful information that the shaman
would take back to their chief.
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| That's right: Magic Mushrooms, yo! |
The earliest God/desses were a Mother Goddess and a
God, who was a hunter figure, often portrayed with horns and other animal
parts. Aside from God/desses, there
were many spirits of animals, plants and natural elements that were all deified
latter. To show respect for the sacrifice
of animals, their unwearable or inedible parts were used as decoration around
camps and homes. Skulls, or instance,
were hung on poles around the perimeter of a community to ward off possible
attacks from other communities.
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| Rain Bringer |
Symbolism is of great importance in
the history of witchcraft. Symbols of
The Goddess were carved on cave walls and are the same ones used to this
day. In fact, the famous Goddess
Position in ritual came from one such cave painting. The God symbols, too, were on cave walls, often showing the
animals He ruled over and who sacrificed themselves for food.
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| Upper Left |
Life continued in tribes
and communities for thousands of years, until more powerful weapons were
devised and battle strategies were perfected.
Then chieftains united tribes and communities into clans, relying heavily
on witchcraft to ensure success, and clans became a people and people became a
kingdom with a name and one ruler.
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| King Author |
Perhaps the most famous
practicing group of witches was the Celts, who lived between 700 BC and 100
AD. Descended from Indo-Europeans, the
Celts were hunters, musicians, metalworkers, farmers and warriors. Deeply spiritual, they worshiped a vast
array of Deities, some adopted from conquered nations.
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| Celts, Celtic Burial |
All pre-Abrahamic
religions are Pagan. Pagan rituals, in
this area of the world, blended with Indo-European groups and spawned the
practice of concocting potions, ointments, casting spells and magic in
general. These practices, which were
held in high regard all over the world, were practiced by the Celts and became
known as Witchcraft.
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| Druids |
The Celtic form of
witchcraft became blended with the Romans when they were conquered. The Romans had their own way of practicing
magic, which included the use of anti-fertility curses etched on lead for those
who wanted to be promiscuous. There
were even laws distinguishing between good and bad forms of magic, bad magic
being banned of course.
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| Lead Curse Tablet |
When the Christians
began rising in power, the practice of witchcraft was accepted as being a
practice of the ‘paganus’, or rural people and their non-Christian
religions. As Christians gained more
power, and forced conversion became common in all conquered nations, the rural
religion was banned, as was the practice of witchcraft, which not longer had a
reputation of being usable for good.
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| Drove snakes, i.e. Druids, out of Ireland, forcing the Irish to convert to Christianity |
In Europe, beginning
about A.D. 700, witchcraft began to be associated with heresy. That is, the rejection of church
teachings. Prior to this, some say as
late as the 14th century, witchcraft was thought to be a collection
practices and beliefs that included healing through spell, ointments and
concoctions. It was also the act of
dabbling in the supernatural, divination and clairvoyance.
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| Cause Reading palms is DANGEROUS! |
Heresy was officially
made a crime in about 1000 A.D.
religious leaders made an effort to end heresy and sentenced what they
considered non-Christians to death. The
Inquisition, which was made famous in the Poe tale “The Pit and the Pendulum”,
officially began about 1230 A.D.
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| "Free thinking is bad for Church business, so STFU!" |
The Inquisition was an
attempt by the church to get the country folk to change their beliefs, but
mostly did more damage to the church by burning it’s own followers, most off
whom got on someone’s bad side before being accused.
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| Women were targeted in order to 'bring their gender to heel'. |
About this time North
America was discovered. Some went to
America to escape the Inquisition and settlers practiced witchcraft for the
same reason primitive man did- to grow crops and bring about a successful
hunt. Despite a decree that forbid
witchcraft in the North American colonies, some colonists continued to do
so. Some of these rituals were said to
help protect their settlements form hostile natives.
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| Witch Bottle, popular form of Colonial Witchcraft |
Back in Europe, by the
1500’s the secular (nonreligious) court was doing most of the trials of
witches, most of who were accused of human sacrifice and Devil worship. Historians doubt Devil worship was
widespread, though modern Satanists will agree that their religion came about
partially as a result of the hardship of Christian doctrine.
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| 15th Century Engraving of Devil Worhipers |
The peak of the witch
hunt came in the 1500s and early 1600.
Many said witches weren’t practitioners of any kind of Witch’s craft,
but were tortured until they confessed.
Even if they confessed, they still faced torture, banishment and
execution. Even in New England,
America, trials were being conducted into the early 1700s.
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| Salem Witch Trials |
As a result of the with hunt, which didn’t actually
get many witches, witchcraft and the Pagan religions had to go underground or
risk getting caught. Some formed secret societies, others died out. Though there is little proof, it’s nice to
think that those who claim hereditary descendant of an ancient branch of
witchcraft might be telling the truth.
Perhaps they are, maybe not.
Folk magic, a form of witchcraft, has been practiced around the world as
hearth craft for eons and is usually passed on from parent to offspring as
family tradition. Making soup for a
sick loved one, for instance, could be considered witchcraft.
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| Magic in Bowl, Mm-mm Good! |
In modern times, the
reemergence of witchcraft for the modern public began with Gerald Garner in
1954 when he started a new religion: Wicca.
Though Garner believed he had been initiated into a line of witches that
went strait back to the ancient days, there is irrefutable evidence that most
of his material was culled from different secret societies, brotherhoods and
lodges.
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| Freemasons are a (not so) Secret Society that Practices 'Witchcraft' by Modern Definitions of the Term |
Because of the need for
a more interactive religion, as well as reverence for the Mother Earth (the
concept as Gianims), Neo-Paganism and the practice of witchcraft quickly took
off. Garner’s book “The Meaning of
Witchcraft” became the basis for the modern movement of religious
witchcraft. We’ve come full circle with
our Neolithic forbearers.
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| Gaia |
The modern practice of
witchcraft has spread from Britain to the US and Ireland and from the UK to the
rest of Europe. Even Canada, Australia
and Asia. In the past books have helped
spread the word, but now the Internet is the most prolific instrument for the
reemergence of this truly ancient practice.
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| The Witches Voice (Witchvox) Website |
To this day we are
seeing the reemergence of more and more varied traditions of witchcraft. What in the past were only interesting
snippets of folklore and family tradition are being given new and greater
meaning by a new generation of Witches.
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| And I don't Care What they Come to Circle Wearing! |
http://www.satanic-kindred.org/history.htm
Salutations,
Sesh
