HISTORY (NEOpagan, 70s)


[An ABC of Witchcraft Past & Present, by Doreen Valiente, St. Martin's
 Press, 1973; pp. 15.]

With regard to black magic and Satanism, two things often 
confounded with witchcraft in the popular mind, these are
in fact nothing to do with the Craft of the Wise, nor do
modern witches wish to have anything to do with them or
those who practise them.  To say that black magic and
Satanism do not exist, in view of the desecrations of
churches and graveyards that have made the headlines in
recent years, would be to ignore a good deal of disturbing
evidence.  Nevertheless, witches were not the culprits.

--------------------------------------------------------------

[Ibid, pp. 61-4.]

_BLACK MASS, THE_

Popular belief credits the Black Mass with being the central
rite of witchcraft, and the very ultimate in horror and
abomination.  As a matter of fact, however, the Black Mass
is not a witchcraft rite at all.

     The whole point of the Black Mass is to pervert and
insult the highest Christian sacrament.  Therefore, one has
to accept the validity of the Mass as the highest Christian
sacrament, and to believe in its efficacy, before one can
pervert it; and people who believe this are Christians,
not witches.  They may be bad Christians, but they are
certainly not pagans.  In fact, they are really playing
Christianity, by their very laboured efforts at blasphemy,
a sort of back-handed compliment....

     The stories about the Black Mass have had a number 
of different sources; but they are not all fiction.  Black
Masses of various kinds have taken place, and probably
still do.  Where they are genuine, they arise mainly from
a revolt against Church oppression, and the frustration
of those who have to submit to it.

     In the Middle Ages the Church ruled public and private
life with an iron hand.  The feudal system, which the
Church supported, was a heavy yoke upon men's necks.  Under
the surface, resentment smouldered, and sometimes burst into
flame, only to be stamped out with pitiless severity.  The
lords ruled in their castles, while the serf had no future
but constant toil, in order to make them richer.

     In these circumstances, Satan in medieval France
acquired a significant title, *Le Grande Serf Revolte*,
'The Great Serf in Revolt'; and the stage was set for
probably the only circumstances in which real devil-worship
manifests itself.  Not because people choose to worship
evil; but because everything they can enjoy or hope for
in this world, they have been told belongs to the Devil.
Freedom is of the Devil; sexual enjoyment is of the Devil;
even music and dancing are of the Devil.  Very well --
then let us invoke the Devil!

   But how can we invoke the Devil?  What other means than
by reversing the forms of Christianity?....

     However, the Black Mass does not belong to genuine
witchcraft, because the latter has its own traditions
and rituals.  The real witch is a pagan, and the old
Horned God of the witches is much older than Christianity
or the Christian Devil or Satan.  Though it will be seen
from the foregoing how the Horned God can have come to be
united in the popular mind with the Devil; especially as
the Church had impressed upon everyone that the old pagan
gods were all really devils.  The only reason people ever
worshipped the Devil was that the image of the Christian
God was made so harsh and cruel that the Devil seemed
pleasanter....

     Moreover, the highly-sophisticated Black Mass, so 
beloved of films and books designed to thrill as they horrify, 
is mainly of literary origin.  The Marquis de Sade included
descriptions of it in his notorious novels, _Justine_
(Paris, 1791) and _Juliette_ (Paris, 1797). These
descriptions may have been inspired by stories of French
high society about the secret activities of Madame de
Montespan.  De Sade's books had an extensive circulation
'under the counter', in spite of efforts to suppress them.
Forbidden fruit is always attractive, hence the idea of
the Black Mass gained status, especially when suitably
decorated with beautiful, nude women.

     In Britain, the famous Hell Fire Club, or the Monks
of Medmenham, organised by Sir Francis Dashwood, had been
staging something very similar, though much more light-
hearted.  There were in fact a number of Hell Fire Clubs
in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; but
their object was more daring debauchery than serious
black magic.  Like similar organisations today, if their
'invocations of the Devil' had actually produced some
manifestation, no one would have been more terrified --
or surprised -- than themselves.

     Nevertheless, within the late and literary Black
Mass, with its theatrical trappings, there is one
genuinely ancient figure -- the naked woman upon the
altar.  It would be more correct to say, the naked
woman who *is* the altar; because this is her original
role, not that of sacrificial victim (whom the hero of
the thriller rescues just in time from the black
magician's knife, as so often seen in films).  This
use of a living woman's naked body as the altar where
the forces of Life are worshipped and invoked goes back
to the days of ancient worship of the Great Goddess of
Nature, in whom all things were one, under the image of
Woman.

-----------------------------------------------------------  

[Ibid, p. 84.]

     The magic of the grimoires, such as the _Key of Solomon_,
the _Legemeton_, the _Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses_, etc.,
is something entirely different from the old pagan traditions
of witchcraft.  Ceremonial magic is the magic of learned men,
and even of priests.  It has a strongly religious tinge, of
both Christianity and Judaism, and has mostly been derived 
from the Hebrew Qabalah and given a Christian veneer.

     Its method of working is to control the powers of nature,
which are conceived of as being either angelic or demonic,
by the powerful Divine Names which form the words of conjur-
ation.  Such words, for instance, Agla, Adonai, Tetragrammaton,
Sabaoth, Anaphaxeton, Primeumaton, Sother, Athanatos; words
which are a mixture of Hebrew and Greek, and are all names
of God.

     Its instructions are usually complicated and exacting,
and require the magician to purify himself by fasting,
taking baths, and dressing in clean and consecrated robes
before he enters the magic circle.  He uses pentacles and
consecrated tools, as does the witch, but all of a more
elaborate kind.  He prays at length, in the forms of either
Judaism or Christianity, for power to perform this magical
operation, by compelling the spirits of either heaven or
hell to do his bidding.

     The witch's method of proceeding is simpler and more
direct.  In fact, the people who practised witchcraft could
be and often were illiterate; while the ceremonial magician
had to be more or less a 'learned clerk'.

     His arts were officially forbidden by the Church, but
not in practice with such severity as those of the witch;
because the witch was a pagan heretic, while the ceremonial
magician, even when he set out to evoke demons, considered
himself to be within the Church's pale.

     He would indignantly deny that he was a Satanist or a
devil worshipper.  Indeed, the alleged cult of Satanism is,
in this writers opinion, something of a fairly modern and
mainly literary origin.  The Black Magic novels of Mr.
Dennis Wheatley, while first-rate entertainment as
imaginative thrillers, bear little relationship to the real
traditional practices of either ceremonial magicians or
witches.

      The witch's origins and practices go back to the dawn
of time.  She keeps pagan festivals and invokes pagan gods;
and while there is much common ground between witchcraft
and ceremonial magic, this is the main and essential
difference.

-----------------------------------------------------------

[Ibid, pp. 104- ]

_DEMONOLOGY_

A knowledge of demonology, or the supposed science of the
study and classification of demons, was considered in times
past to be essential to the investigation of witchcraft.
This followed logically upon the Church doctrine that all
witchcraft, and indeed all rival cults to that of
Christianity, were inspired and directed by Satan.

     This attitude is exemplified by the fact that in
medieval times *Mahound*, a popular form of Mohammed,
the founder of Islam, was another name for the devil.

[examination of _The Book of Enoch_ through this
 section, as per Cavendish, though not in as 
 much depth, omitted.]

... The famous French occultist Eliphas Levi has pointed
out that if the Devil exists, he must be a Devil of God.
Levi had to write in an obscure manner to avoid offending
the Catholic Church, of which he was a member; but he
protests in his chief work, _Dogme et Rituel de la Haute
Magie_ (Translated as _Transcendental Magic_ by Arthur
Edward Waite, George Redway, London, 1896), against the
ideas of the demonologists.  He accuses them of setting
up Satan as a rival to God, and derives their beliefs
from the Eastern doctrines of Zoroastrianism rather than
from true Christianity.  Zoroaster postulated two great
powers, one of light and one of darkness, between which
the ruleship of the universe was divided [note that
Crowley was fond of Levi, even suggesting that he might
be a reincarnation of Levi himself -- nocT].

...

...to the demonologists of the Middle Ages, the subject
of fallen angels was of great importance.  In the notorious
grimoire called _The Goetia, or Lesser Key of Solomon_,
we are given the names and descriptions of seventy-two
fallen angels, each of whom is a ruler over legions of
spirits.  We are told that King Solomon, by his command
of magic, confined these demon rulers within a vessel
of brass, which he then sealed with a magical seal and
cast into a deep lake.  Unfortunately, the people of
Babylon, thinking the vessel contained treasure, drew it
out and broke it open, so that all the demons escaped
again [shades of Pandora! -- nocT].  Nevertheless, by
means of magical sigils and instructions derived from
Solomon, the magician may command these spirits and make
them obey him.  The same theme is repeated in other
grimoires.

     Another view of demons is that they are not fallen
angels, nor created wicked, but rather the personification
of blind forces of nature.  Alternatively, they may be
regarded as non-human spirits of a violent, capricious
nature, often hostile to man, but of inferior mentality
to him, and therefore able to be commanded by a powerful
magician.  This latter concept of demons is one which
prevails among practitioners of magic all over the world.

     The Victorian novelist Bulwer Lytton, who was the
leader of a secret magical circle, tells us in his
occult novel _A Strange Story_:

	  In the creed of the Dervish, and of all who
	adventure into that realm of nature which is 
	closed to philosophy and open to magic, there
	are races in the magnitude of space unseen as
	animalcules in the world of a drop.  For the
	tribes of the drop, science has its microscope.
	Of the hosts of yon azure Infinite magic gains
	sight, and through them gains command over fluid
	conductors that link all the parts of creation.
	Of these races, some are wholly indifferent to
	man, some benign to him, and some deadly hostile.

     Such is an initiate's view of demons, namely that
some spirits may be dangerous for man to meddle with, not
because they have been created for the purpose of tempting
or tormenting, but in the sam way that a wild animal is
dangerous.

     This is a dark and difficult subject.  Nevertheless,
demonologists in years gone by undauntedly drew up the
most precise, detailed and fantastic list of demons, and
their various powers and offices.  The legions of hell
were believed to be everywhere, and witches were their
agents.  These beliefs undoubtedly contributed much to
the panicking of public opinion, until people unthinkingly
acquiesced in the cruellest persecutions of the days of
witch-hunting.  (*See DEVIL.*)


_DEVIL_

This word of fear to the superstitious, and of profit to
the sensational reporter, is generally taken to mean the
personified principle of evil.  However, the doctrine of
the existence of a personal Devil has of late years been
dropped by many leading churchmen.  The belief in a
rebellious Satan as the Power of Evil has always been
contrary to the text of Isaiah, Chapter 45, verse 7:
"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace,
and create evil: I the Lord do all these things."

     Some religious people need the concept of the Devil;
it comes in extremely useful.  For one thing, the idea
that man is responsible for his own evils is distasteful
to him.  He likes to have something, or someone, to blame.
The pattern was laid down very early, according to the
story of the Garden of Eden; Adam blamed the woman, and
the woman blamed the serpent.  In the eyes of the early
Church, which as markedly anti-feminist, woman and the
Devil had been responsible for all mischief ever since.

     Also, the story of the Devil, ever seeking and
plotting for man's damnation, has been a powerful weapon
of fear ,to be used to keep people in line.  When the
very successful film, 'Rosemary's Baby' (which deals
with the alleged diabolical activities of some modern
witches), was first shown in America, it was condemned
by the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures.
The plot of the film concerns a girl who has a baby by
the Devil; and Mia Farrow who starred in this part,
spoke up in reply to the Catholic Office's ban.

     She was quoted as saying that she did not see what
grounds they had for condemnation of the picture,
because it was the Catholic Church itself which had 
"invented the Satan figure" and it was they who were
trying to hold masses of people together by fear of hell.

     Miss Farrow could have added that it was the Catholic
Church which laid down the dogma that, because all of the
gods of the older religions were really devils, all pagans
were devil-worshippers, and therefore fair game for any
treatment, however bad.  This attitude appears still to be
maintained today, in certain sections of the Press.

      Yet the very fact of the enormous success of 
'Rosemary's Baby', both as a book and a film, indicates
the ambivalent attitude of society towards the concept
of the Devil.  He is supposed to be the personification
of evil, and yet he fascinates.  Why?

     The concept that "the god of the old religion
becomes he devil of the new" is something which
anthropologists, and students of comparative religion,
have found to be literally true.  For instance, 'Old
Nick' as a name for the Devil is derived from Nik,
which was a title of a pagan English god Woden.
Sometimes the Devil is simply called 'the Old 'Un',
another name full of meaning in this respect.  (*See
OLD ONE, THE*.)

     The conventional representation of the Devil is
that of a being with horns upon his head, and having
a body which terminates in shaggy lower limbs and
cloven hoofs.  Again why?  Is there any texts in the
Bible which describes 'Satan' or 'the Devil' in this
manner?  None whatever.  Yet this is the picture which
a mention of 'the Devil' conjures up.

     In fact, it is simply a representation of Pan,
the goat-footed god of nature, of life and vitality;
and the Great God Pan himself is just another version
of the most ancient Horned God, the deity whom the
cave-men worshipped.

     "Beloved Pan, and all the other gods who haunt
this place, give me beauty in the inmost soul; and
grant that the outward and the inward may be as one."
Such was the prayer of Socrates.  Was he a devil-
worshipper?  [Socrates is also said to have had an
'augoeides' or guardian angel along the lines of a
familiar spirit -- nocT].

Certainly the pagans had some gods o terrifying aspect.
But these gods were not fallen angels, who plotted
hideously to encompass man's misery and perdition.
They were the personification of destroying natural
forces: the storm-wind, the darkness, the plague.
The people who really worshipped Nature knew that she
was not all pretty flowers and charming little birds
and butterflies.  The forces of the creation were
counter-balanced by the forces of destruction; but
the Great Mother destroyed only to give rebirth in
a higher form.

     The word 'Devil' is of uncertain derivation.  
In my opinion, its most likely origin is the same as 
that of *Deus*, God; namely the Sanskrit *Deva*,
meaning 'a shining one, a god'.  The Gypsies, whose
Romany language is of Indo-European orign, call God
*Duvel*.  Truly, *Demon est Deus Inversus*, "the
Demon is God reversed", as the old magical motto has it.

     The word 'demon' itself comes from the Greek
*daimon*, which originally meant a spirit holding 
a middle place between gods and men.  Only later, in
Early Christian times, was it taken to mean an evil spirit.

     The spirits of Nature which the pagans sensed as
haunting lonely places, were neither good nor evil.  They
were simply different from man, not flesh and blood,
and therefore best regarded with caution and respect.
People of Celtic blood in the lonelier parts of the
British Isles take this attitude to this day towards the
fairies, whom they call the Good Neighbours or the People
of Peace.

     The Devil is that which is wild, untamed, and
unresolved -- in nature, and in human nature.  He is
the impulses in *themselves*, which people fear and
which they dislike to admit the existence of.  Hence
these impulses become exteriorised, and projected in
the form of devils and demons.  No wonder that in the
Middle Ages, when the Church ruled with an iron hand,
the Devil appeared everywhere!  He was the projected
image of the natural desires, especially sexual desires,
which would not be denied, however much the Church
denounced them as sin.

     The Devi las the personification of the mysterious
and untamed forces of nature, appears all over the 
British Isles in place-names, applied to things which
seemed extraordinary and inexplicable.  There is a 
great gash in the South Downs, near Brighton, called
the Devil's Dyke.  Hindhead, in Surrey, has the Devil's
Punch Bowl, and there are two more in the Scilly Isles
and in Eire.  There are two Devil's Glens, one in
Wicklow and another in the Vale of Neath.  A curious
pinnacle of rock in the witch-haunted Cotswolds is
called the Devil's Chimney.  On the bank of the River
Wye, opposite Tintern Abbey, is the Devil's Pulpit,
from which he is said to have preached in defiance of
the Church.

     There are the Devil's Cheese-Wring, a strange heap
of rocks near Liskeard in Cornwall; the Devil's Frying-
Pan, in the same country; the Devil's Jumps, a series
of low hills near Frensham in Surrey; and so on and on,
all over the map.

     Curious old buildings often have the Devil's name
attributed to them.  There is the Devil's Tower at
Windsor Castle, and a Devil's Battery in the Tower of
London.  Prehistoric stone monuments have been called
the Devil's Arrows or the Devil's Quoits; and one
legend ascribes the building of Stonehenge to the Devil.
Anything which was felt to be beyond human ingenuity
or comprehension, belonged to the realm of the Devil.
He was the personification of the Unknown.

     He was the rebel; he was everything which would 
not conform.  He was the spirit of the wild, the darkness,
the storm, the Wild Huntsman riding the night wind.  He
was the forbidden, yet dangerously attractive; the secret,
which allured while defying one to find it out.  He put
the spice into life, in a situation where goodness had
become synonymous with dullness and respectability.  He
was the enemy of the negative virtues.

     As such, the Devil has played an important part in
the psychological development of mankind.  The corruption
of man's heart has been projected onto him.  Peopl have
accused his supposed servants, the witches, of doing the
forbidden things they wanted to do themselves, in the
dark deep hells of their own souls, and then tortured and
burned the witches for being so 'wicked'.  It is
significant that the word 'hell' comes from the same root
as the Anglo-Saxon *helan*, 'to conceal, to cover over'.
The real powers of hell come not from external devils,
but from the unacknowledged contents of man's own mind.

     To what extent, then, is the Devil the god of the
witches?  The answer is that the Church, and not the
witches, identified the old Horned God with the Devil,
precisely because he stood for the things the Church
had forbidden -- especially uninhibited sexual 
enjoyment and the pride that will not bow down and
serve.  So determined were they upon this identification,
that in the old accounts of witch trials nearly every
mention by the witches of a non-Christian deity is set
down as 'the Devil' by those recording the proceedings.
The male leader of the coven, also, was so persistently
described as the Devil that some witches actually began
to call him this -- though the term is seldom used by
witches today [cf. GBGardner, Witchcraft Today -- nocT].

     In fact, the Horned God of the witches is far, far
older than Christianity; and he only began to be identified
with the Devil  when the Church branded nature itself as
'fallen', and natural impulses as 'sin'.  This identifica-
tion was not only a deliberate matter of dogma; it was a
psychological process, which in some places is still at
work.

     It was this deep-seated emotional drive which gave
the witch-hunts of olden days their horrific impetus,
their pitiless and obscene cruelty, their element of
nightmare unreasonable.  In those days, the dark forces
were indeed released; but the hell they came from was
of man's own making, not God's or the Devil's.

-------------------------------------------------------

[Ibid, p. 328.]

     One of California's Satanist cults has found a
nastily ingenius way to hold a 'human sacrifice' and
yet keep within the law.  Their Satanic chapel is the
basement of an old building, where a 6-foot-tall crucifix
hangs upside down over an altar made of oak, and adorned
with weird carvings.  Skulls are used as chalices, and
the scene is dimly lit by flickering candles.  But the
naked girl victim who lies upon the altar is actually
a realistic, life-size plastic doll.

     The doll is hollow, and inside is a plastic bag
filled with fake 'blood' and 'entrails'.  In the course
of the ritual, the self-styled priest of Satan gashes
the figure open with a knife, and the 'blood' flows
freely, to the accompaniment of wild yells from his
congregation, many of whom are young girls.  Magic
signs are drawn upon the girls' bodies in 'blood',
and the ritual ends with a sexual orgy.

--------------------------------------------------------

[Ibid, pp. 375-6.]

     A more serious, and sadder, development is the 
number of mushroom 'Satanist' cults which have sprung
up.  These insist upon identifying witchcraft with
devil-worship and Satanism.  Their rituals are 
synthetic as the plastic horns their flamboyant
leaders delight to be photographed wearing; as any
experienced occultist would immediately recognise.
But to the frustrated and sexually repressed, and
to young people looking for kicks, these cults are
attractive.

     What is sad about them is the way in which they
show that there are many people who can only under-
stand sexual satisfaction as being the work of the
Devil.  Hence such people can only achieve the 
fulfilment of their natural instincts in a context
of 'wickedness'.  In the surroundings of what they
conceive of as a 'Black Mass' or a 'witches Sabbat'
-- the more lurid the better -- they find at last
the orgasmic release that has hitherto been denied
them.

     People of this mentality have been sexually
crippled by life-denying negative morality, phoney
'purity' and hypocritical prudery.  The sadism and
blood-lust which often go hand-in-hand with Satanism,
are further symptoms of what Wilhelm Reich has truly
called the emotional plague, which is the result of
centuries of 'Churchianity'.  People have been
indoctrinated with the idea that nearly all their
natural feelings and desires are evil; and the old
gods have been hidden behind the ugly mask of Satan.

      Some of the leaders of these cults believe in
what they are doing, and are a classic example in the
occult world of saying that a little learning is a
dangerous thing.  Others are simply clever psycholo-
gists, whose only real belief in Satanism is that
they've found a devilish good racket.  In my opinion,
all are dangerous; not because they can evoke a non-
existent 'Satan', but because they invite their
followers to attune themselves to the unseen forces
of evil, and to the lowest planes of the astral world.

     One of the influences which have brought about
the craze for delving into the darker regions of the
occult, is the sensational film 'Rosemary's Baby',
which deals with Satanism.  Was it more than a cruel
coincidence that the producer of this film, Roman
Polanski, lost his wife and their unborn child in the
horrific murders carried out by Charles Manson and
his followers, who called themselves Satan's Slaves?...

     American witches who are serious followers of the
Craft of the Wise have, like their brothers and sisters
in Britain, been coming forward publically in an effort
to combat misrepresentation, and clear themselves of
the stigma of Satanism....  

--------------------------------------------------------

[Ibid, pp. 391-2.]

...anyone, up to comparatively recent years, who demon-
strated any psychic or mediumistic ability, was likely
to be accused of being in league with Satan, or at
least with evil spirits; even though [citing Dr. Henry
More, 1614--1687] this was not originally implied at
all by the word 'witch'.

     So ingrained in some followers of the Christian
denominations is this idea that we still sometimes see
condemnations of Spiritualism on these grounds; namely
that it is 'dealing with the Devil'.  When the famous
medium, Daniel Douglas Home, was travelling in European
countries where the Catholic Church was predominant, 
he was quite seriously accused of having a pact with
Satan!  The Witchcraft Act was persistently used to
harass Spiritualist mediums.  In fact, the last big
trial under this Act was that of the medium Helen
Duncan, in 1944; and it was not until 1951 that the
Act was finally removed from the Statute Book....

     Charles Godfrey Leland regarded the alleged
'Satanic' side of witchcraft as being the creation
of the Churches, and grafted by them on to the old
paganism.  The darker hues of witchcraft, where they
existed in the Middle Ages, he saw as being shadowed
upon it by the misery nd oppression prevalent in
society at that time.  In this _Legends of Florence_
(David Nutt, London, 1896), he has this to say about
the history of witchcraft:

	The witches and sorcerers of early times
	were a widely spread class who had retained
	the beliefs and traditions of heathenism
	with all its license and romance and charm
	of the forbidden.  At their head were the
	Promethean Templars, at their tail all the
	ignorance and superstition of the time, and
	in their ranks every one who was oppressed
	or injured either by the nobility or the
	Church.  They were treated with indescribable
	cruelty, in most cases worse than beasts of
	burden, for they were outraged in all their
	feelings, not at intervals for punishment,
	but habitually by custom, and they revenged
	themselves by secret orgies and fancied devil-
	worship, and occult ties, and stupendous sins,
	or what they had fancied were such.  I can
	seriously conceive -- what no writer seems to
	have considered -- that there must have been
	immense satisfaction in selling or giving
	one's self to the devil, or to any power which
	was at war with their oppressors.  So they
	went by night, at the full moon, and sacrificed
	to Diana, or 'later on' to Satan, and danced
	and rebelled.  It is very well worth noting that
	we have *all* our accounts of sorcerers and
	heretics from Catholic priests, who had every
	earthly reason for misrepresenting them, and
	did so.  In the vast amount of ancient witch-
	craft still surviving in Italy [see Ginzburg's
	_Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath_
	for more on the question of Italian witch-
	craft and its possible survival -- nocT], there
	is not much anti-Christianity, but a great deal
	of early heathenism.  Diana, not Satan, is still
	the real head of the witches [see Leland's own
	rendering of their 'Gospel', _Aradia..._, in
	which Lucifer figures as Diana's consort! -- 
	nocT].  The Italian witch, as the priest 
	Gilandus said,  stole oil to make a love-charm.
	But she did not, and does not say, as he
	declared, in doing so, 'I renounce Christ'.
	There the priest plainly lied.  The whole
	history of the witch mania is an ecclesiastical
	falsehood, in which such lies were subtly
	grafted on the truth.  But in due time the
	Church, and the Protestants with them, created
	a Satanic witchcraft of their own, and it is
	this aftergrowth which is now regarded as
	witchcraft in truth.

     I agree with Leland's view, because it makes sense
and can be supported by the evidence of history and
folklore.  If any witch ever 'renounced Christ', it was
in blazing resentment against a Church that supported
the oppressors and stifled human liberty.  If he or she
ever indulged in 'devil worship', it was because the
Church had declared the ancient gods to be devils,
and invested the Devil with the attributes of Pan.

     In the second volume of the same work, Leland
declares: "I could, indeed, fill many pages with
citations from classic and medieval authors which
prove the ancient belief that Diana was queen of the
witches."

     Further on, he says:

	     It is worth noting that sundry old writers
	trace back the witch sabbats, or wild orgies,
	worshipping of Satan, and full-moon frolics
	to the festivals of Diana.  Thus Despina
	declares:
	      "It was customary of old to celebrate the
	nightly rites of Diana with mad rejoicing and
	the wildest or most delirious dancing and sound
	(*ordine contrario sen praepostero*), and all
	kinds of licentiousness, and with these rites
	as partakers were popularly identified the
	Dryads of the forests, the Napaeoe of the
	fountains, the Oreads of the mountians, nymphs,
	and all false gods."
	     If we add to this that all kinds of outlaws
	and children of the night, such as robbers and
	prostitutes, worshipped Diana-Hecate as their
	patron saint and protectress, we can well believe
	that this was the true cause and origin of the
	belief still extremely current or at least known
	even among the people in Florence, that Diana
	was the queen of the witches.
	     In a fresco of the fourteenth century in the
	Palazzo Publico in Siena, Diana is represented
	with a bat flying under her, to indicate night
	and sorcery.

     There is no reason to believe that the witchcraft
of Italy is *basically* any different from that of the
remainder of Western Europe; though the more Celtic
regions will naturally show an admixture of their own
traditions, as will those where Norse ancestry is
prevalent, and so on.

     Witchcraft is not only the secret religion of the
outcasts of society such as mentioned above, however.
It was also the cult of *people who did not conform*,
in whatever walk of life they found themselves....

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