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This article is from the magicK kreEePing
oOze FAQ, by tyagi nagasiva tyagI@houseofAos.abyss.coM with
numerous contributions by others.
13.3: "Where did Wicca come from? Did Crowley invent it? (etc.)" cont
The term "witchcraft" is very specific, generally being descriptively
limited to 1450 to 1750 and (generally) to Christian western Europe
(with the exception of Salem). According to "The Encyclopedia of
Witchcraft and Demonology", "Sorcery is an attempt to control nature,
to produce good or evil results, generally by the aid of evil spirits.
On the other hand, witchcraft embraces sorcery, but goes far beyond it,
for the witch contracts with the Devil to work magic for the purpose
of denying, repudiating, and scorning the Christian God. The crimes both
sorcerer and witch are supposed to commit - that is, the whole range of
'maleficia' - appear to be alike, but the motives are distinct. This
is the basis on which the Inquisition built up the theory of witchcraft as
a heresy - a conscious rejection of God and the Church; witchcraft became
not a question of deeds but a question of ideas..."
So, we see from this that "witchcraft" was, as Bill Nelson suggests, purely
a fiction invented by the Church, for various reasons, not all of them
having anything at all to do with heresy. On the other hand, the practices
that Gardner and Crowley refer to are far older, though they do not appear to
have been called by that name or that term. Surely, the attempt to control
or manipulate nature and/or the gods is an art (or science, depending on who
you listen to) as old as Man:
Before 1350, witchcraft primarily meant sorcery, a survival
of common superstitions - pagan only insofar as the beliefs
antedated Christianity, never pagan in the sense of an organized
survival opposition to Christianity or of some pre-Christian
religion. Sorcery or magic is world-wide and world-old; it
is simply the attempt to control nature in man's own interests;
it is the forerunner of religion before priests appropriated
tribal lore for themselves.
"The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology",
-- Rossell Hope Robbins
erc@apple.com (Ed Carp)
-----------------------
It is mainly a matter of definition. Witchcraft, as a religion (or
even as a practice) does not appear to have existed until it was
invented by the fertile minds of certain Christian writers/examiners
etc. There is a fair amount of modern Witchcraft (even Wicca) that
is drawn from the writing of the authors during the Inquisition and
later. There is nothing wrong with this. Christianity itself was built
on the myths of religions that came before it.
My whole point was that there is no evidence that Witchcraft, as a
religion, was practiced prior to Gardner.
Bill
====
It's my impression that the very "FIRST" modern use of the word
"Witch" with a capital W, with today's positive connotations of
healing and resistance to tyranny, was in the English translation of
Jules Michelet's "La_Sorciere", a 19th century work of literary
Satanism. According to J.B. Russell in "A_History_of_Witchcraft",
nearly all of modern Wicca's commonly-acknowledged literary
ancestors -- Murray, Frazer, Leland, etc. -- drew significant
inspiration from Michelet. ("La_Sorciere" is still in print under
the English title "Satanism_and_WItchcraft".)
As for the use of "Witch" as a formal title, LaVey's Church of
Satan used "Witch" as a formal title of rank in their early years,
though they later dropped it. A few Satanists still do use it;
and pre-LaVey Satanists definitely used it. (I know someone who
briefly belonged to a pre-LaVey Satanic coven back in the
mid-1960's.)
On the other hand, "Wicca" is a completely archaic word that was
resurrected by today's Wiccans, so I have no problem with Wiccans
claiming exclusive use of that word.
dvera@met.com (Diane Vera)
--------------------------
Wicca was built on the foundation of thousands of years of Christian
and other middle-eastern mysticism. It uses the symbols, trappings,
and vocabulary that has come to be associated with "witchcraft," but
it has no more relation to actual pre- or non-Christian magic than a
"Celtic Twilight" romance novel has to the actual history of the
British Isles.
No one... is arguing that Gardner made magic up out of whole
cloth, or that people before him didn't do things that we could call magic or
witchcraft. What we are arguing is that the things that are today called
Wicca and Witchcraft, especially conceived of *as religions*, were the
invention of Gardner and a few others, based on mythology and the occult
revival of the 18th-19th centuries.
Wicca is much more Hermetic and Romantic than it is pre-Christian
or "Witchy".
Amanda Walker
-------------
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