HISTORY (NEOpagan; 1960s)

[_Witchcraft Today_, by Gerald Gardner, 1969; 22-8.]

I should like at this stage to deal with the view, not
infrequently held, that witchcraft has connections with
diabolism.  Mr. Summers himself appears to think the 
question is settled because the Roman Catholic Church
said the cult was diabolic, and Mr. Pennethorne Hughes's
book also gives the impression....  

...I have attended many of these cult rites, and
I declare that most of what he says is simply not true....

There are no crucifixes, inverted or otherwise, no sermons,
mock or otherwise, and no absolution or hosts save for the
cake and wine mentioned.  Incense is used, but this has a
practical purpose.  There is no praise or homage to the
Devil, no liturgy, evil or otherwise, nothing is said
backwards, and there are no gestures with the left hand;
in fact with the exception that it is a religious
service and all religious services resemble one another,
the rites are not in any way an imitation of anything I
have ever seen.  I do not say there have never been
diabolists.  I only say that, as far as I know, witches
do not do the thins of which they have been accused, and
knowing what I do of their religion and practices I do not
think they ever did....

It is often thought that the performance of the Black Mass
is part of the tradition of witchcraft; but to use the late
Dr. Joad's words, "it all depends on what you mean" by the
Black Mass.  I understand it to be a blasphemous parody of
the Catholic Mass.  I have neither seen nor heard of this
in connection with the cult, and I do not believe it ever
existed as one of their rites....

Another thing I have always understood is that to perform
a Black Mass you needed a Catholic priest who would perform
a valid transubtantiation: God so present in the Host would
then be descrated.  Unless it were a valid communion there
could be no desecration.  I should be surprised to find
a Catholic priest among witches nowadays, though in the
past many are said to have been members of the cult.  It has
been suggested that witches did not really celebrate the
Black Mass but that people become witches by obtaining hosts,
either by stealing the reserved sacrament from the churches
or by receiving the communion and keeping it under their
tongues and then putting it in their pockets; this was then
taken to the rites and desecrated.  During my lifetime there
has been much trouble because priests and missionaries have
destroyed or desecrated figures of heathen gods, and I also
believe that some eminent Nonconformist churchmen have
obtained consecrated hosts and held them up to ridicule.
But I have never heard that so doing made them witches, and
I do not think that witches ever do it or did it....

I believe, however, that sometimes the Black Mass *is*
performed.  Once I doubted it, but in February, 1952, I was
in Rome and was told that some unfrocked priests and nuns
celebrated it at times.  My informants said they could
arrange for me to see it done properly by these unfrocked
priests and nuns, but that it would cost me [20 lira]; I 
had not enough foreign exchange or else I would have gone,
so as to settle the queston to my own satisfaction.  I
think it was probably a show put on for the tourists,
though I was assured by responsible people that it was not.

In short, I believe that people may perform Black Masses
at times for a thrill, or with evil intent; but I do not
believe that these people are witches, or know anything
about witchcraft.  Incidentally, I met more than one witch
in Rome, though witches have to keep underground, and they
knew nothing of this Black Mass....

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[Ibid, p. 43-4.] 

Among the most common charges against witches is that they
denied or repudiated the Christian religion.  All I can say
is, I and my friends have never seen or heard of such denial
or repudiation.  My opinion is that in the early days everyone
was of the old faith and regularly worshipped the old gods
before they were initiated.  To people like the Romans and
Romano-Britons it woudl only be worshipping their own gods
who had become identified as Celti ones, so there would be
nothing to repudiate.

Possibly during the persecution times if unknown people
turned up at a big religoius meeting they would be questioned
to see if they were spies and might be asked to deny
Christianity, as a sort of test.  They would never initiate
anyone, take him into the circle, unless they knew him well
as one of the old faith.  When the persecution grew fierce,
the cult dived underground and practically only children,
born and bred into the cult, were ever initiated.  I can
well believe that sometimes, if someone not of the blood
wished to come in, he might be questioned; but it is to make
him deny a belief in the Fidlers Green, which old sailors
used to tell about: the paradise where old sailors went,
which lay at the far side of Hell.

So I think it is possible that though there may have been
cases of people denying Christianity, these were very few.
To say it is "proof" because many witches were tortured
until they admitted repudiating Christianity is like 
saying that similar testimony is proof that they flew
through the air on broomsticks.  My great trouble in
discovering what their beliefs were is that they have
forgotten practically all about their god; all I can get
is from the rites and prayers addressed to him....

...it should be noted that there are certain rites where
a man must be the leader, but if a man of requisite rank
is not available, a chief priestess belts a sword on
and is thought of as a man for the occasion.  But although
woman can on occasion take man's place, man can never take
woman's place.  This may derive from the time of the
associations of Druidesses of whom the Romans spoke as
witches.  Whether these were true Druidesses I do not know.
It seems to have been a separate religious organization,
possibly under th rule of the chief Druid, much in the same
way that there was a priest or someone who might turn up
at a witches' meeting and be acknowledged chief who came
to be called "The Devil" in mediaeval times.  I think the
use of the witches' circle, in magic, may have come from
Druid, or rather the pre-Druid, people, who built Stonehenge.....

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[Ibid, p. 48-51.]

There is, of course, the orthodox Roman Catholic view that the
cult was either invented by the Devil or made up by people
who hated the Catholic Church.  If this was the case, I think
it would certainly have shown in the rites or the teaching;
but these all run as if the practisers have never heard of
either, which points to its being at least pre-Christian....
After all, the witches' paradise is very attractive to the
ordinary man.  Similar causes on the Continent may have
brought in new ideas.  Possibly the Great God, the Protector,
the giver of rest and peace, slowly came to be thought of
only in his function as god of death and so became more or 
less identified with the Devil....

The Church had never taken much notice of sorcery as it was 
not a rival in the way that witchcraft was, and many Popes
and prominent Churchmen were said to practise it.  With the
Renaissance the spirit of enquiry led to freethinking, and
this in turn led to a revival of mathematical magic,
astrology, and the Kabbala, to classical studies and thence
to knowledge of the classic gods.  The legend of Faust was
seized upon and the story circulated that to practise magic
one had to sell one's soul to the Devil.  The best-known
treatment of the theme in English literature is, of course,
the "atheist" Marlowe's *Doctor Faustus*, whilst a long
series of histories and plays on the theme in Europe
culminated in Goethe's magnificent *Faust*.  It was a 
credulous age and the story was readily believed: no one
seems to have considered whether anyone would think it worth
while to sufer millions of years of torture for the sake of
a few year's pleasure.  There are examples of the existence
of such pacts, but it is presumed that either they were
based on false evidence planted to convict the poor wretch,
or on the acts of stout freethinkers or madmen.  Bishop
Wilson reports a Manx case in his notebook dated Peel,
November 29, 1720, as follows:

"John Curlitt of Murlough, in the county of Down in the
parish of Killough, did give himself body and soul to
Satan the Devil, who is called Lucifer, after the term
of nine years, on condition that he would give him as
much money during that time as he should please, on
performance of which he did bind himself to the
performance of this bargain and promises to fight under
his banner during ye said term, which if he do desert
he leaveth himself to Satan's pleasure, and promises at
the end of nine years to go himself.  Signed with blood,
sealed and delivered to the Devil. John Curlitt."

John Curlitt stoutly denied writing this, saying that
it had been planted on him. The Bishop said it was in
his handwriting and evidently believed in it but,
curiously enough, seems not to have taken any legal
action.  This may have been a case of forgery by some
enemy, or possibly done for bravado, as there were
several Hell Fire Clubs then in existence.  But at that
time the idea of making pacts with the Devil was
firmly believed in and jurists accepted the idea that
if anyone were so evil as to sell his soul for money
or any other reason, then it was clear proof of heresy.
And heresy meant death.  Seemingly they did not bother
to think that if they executed the creiminal the Devil
would get his soul all the sooner.

The Church took measures to obtain information on all
subjects, and to counteract all practices disapproved
of....

...the Church got to know the type of people who were
likely to be witches.  The quest men pried and searched
everywhere, and they would be the people who searched
the belongings of John Curlitt and found, or pretended
to find, the pact with Satan....

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[Ibid, pp. 112-3.]

...Witches do not kiss the Devil's posterior, first
because they never kiss anyone's posterior, and,
secondly, because the Devil is never there for anyone
to kiss.  I cannot make it any clearer than that, can
I?  As I have said, there is no pact with the Devil
or anyone else.  This, I think, arose from the Faust
type of legend which may have been coined by clerics
to frighten people from thinking of engaging in
magical practices, or possibly to explain why people
who performed magical experiments of the more or less
permitted Key of Solomon type, without using a medium,
usually did not succeed.

These stories were usually fabricated in order to
boost the power of some saint and were to the effect
that a sorcerer, after years of failure, had made a
pact with the Devil, selling his soul for so many
years of wealth and power.  When his time came he
prayed to a particular saint, who called up the Devil
and by force or trickery got the pact back.  The
sorcerer then promptly gave all the profits of his
sorcery to the saint's shrine and died in an odour
of sanctity.  The story of these pacts is rather
naive, but there was a belief in them, and *Grimoires*,
textbooks of semi-Black Magic, were printed, professing
to tell how to raise the Devil and conclude a pact with
him, and at the same time to trick him....

[Gardner goes on at some length about particular cases
 of pacts with the Devil...]

I suppose these books were sold to the type of people
who believe nowadays in sixpenny fortune-telling
pamphlets; they were made to sell, and the most famous
among them was the *Grimoire* of Pope Honorius.

The whole question of belief in such pacts intrigues
me, because a certain number of specimens do exist.
It would seem that the belief was that at the last
day, as a great trial, the soul swore that it had never
used any sorcery; it was on the point of gaining
Heaven, when suddenly a Devil would produce the
missing document from his files.  It would be admitted
as evidence, proved to be the accused signature, and 
the Devil would win the case and the soul.

Now each coven is independent, and during the fierce
persecution the members of some of them may have used
some sort of pact to bind them together; but this would
not have had any diabolical associations, if only
because this would have had hte most disastrous results
if found.  Again, when the Hell Fire Clubs were in vogue
amongst freethinkers two hundred years ago....  Members
of these Clubs might have been interested in things
phallic, as they interested Aleister Crowley fifty
years ago.  He belonged to the witch cult; he certainly
knew about it and he may have had some hand in
reconstructing rituals.  If he did, he kept his oaths
of secrecy and never gave a hint of it away in any of
his writings....

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[Ibid, pp. 130-2.]

Now the god is represented by the high priest (if there
is one) and it is he who was called the Devil in the old
days.  I was very curious about him and asked at once
when I was "inside", by which they mean a member of the
cult: "Who and what is called the Devil?"  Though members
of the cult never use and, indeed, dislike the term,
they knew what I meant and said: "You know him, the
leader.  He is the high priest the high priestess's
husband."

This, though true, was not the exact answer.  It really
should be: "He is whoever the high priestess appoints
to take his position."  In practice she always appoints
her husband if he has sufficient rank; but she may 
appoint anyone who is eligible, including herself; she
belts on a sword and acts as a man.  In the old days it
was often a distinguished visitor who was appointed.

In the times when the People of the Heaths held their
meetings the high priest was a man of great learning
in the cult, probably a tribal chief, or possibly a
Druid, and most likely everyone would know who he was.
He was the horned god, recieved divine honours and
possibly took precedence of the high priestess; but
when the people of the mixed races became strong in the
cult, I thin kthere came a time when the masked (unknown)
man took his place, and he was most likely a Norman
manorial lord or local churchman who protected the cult
in secret.  It is very likely that it might be agreed
that at one meeting the masked unknown (whom I shall
for convenience call the Devil) took the place and, at
the next, the old known tribal chief took it.  It seems
likely that this depended on local arrangements.  It
was soon found that the uninitiated congregation of
farmers, fishermen and such-like had such awe of the
great unknown that the cult became more powerful, and
that then, even when the old tribal chief played the
part, he too was masked and unknown.  The Church called
him the "devil" and he became known as such.

"If this mysterious man turned up," I asked, "how would
you recognize him?" and I found that they had joked
about this.  They wouldn't know if he were genuine or
not!  It had never happened to their knowledge; but
there was always the possibility of someone from another
coven turning up and claming this right.  Actually, the
high priestess said: "I'd talk to him and if I found
he really had great knowledge and I liked him and found
him interesting, I'd treat him as a distinguished 
visitor and appoint him for the day.  Another high
priestess might think otherwise."  She went on to say:
"I wish one of the old sort, a great protector, would
turn up, who had a great big house and grounds to lend
us for meetings.  If he really were of us, I wouldn't
bother too much about his vast learning; I'd appoint
him and teach him the job."  So here's a chance for
anyone who wants to play the Devil!

I trust I have made myself clear.  The Devil is, or
rather was, an invention of the Church.  Witches
found that popular view that Satan was one of them
added to their power, and rather adopted it, though
they never called him by that name except perhaps,
on the rack; and even then, as Dr. Murray has
pointed out, sometimes a confession made under
torture would name him as their god, but a transcript
produced in court would substitute the world DEVIL.
Now you cannot blame the poor witch for this.  The
tortures witches suffered would make anyone confess
anything....

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