A TRUE HISTORY OF WITCHCRAFT  ©Copyright 1992 by Allen Greenfield. All rights reserved.    "The fact is that the instincts of  ignorant people invariably find expression in  some form of witchcraft. It matters little  what the metaphysician or the moralist may  inculcate; the animal sticks to his  subconscious ideas..."     Aleister Crowley    The Confessions  "As attunement to psychic (occult) reality  has grown in America, one often misunderstood  and secretive branch of it has begun to flourish also -- magical  religion..."   J. Gordon Melton Institute for the Study of       American Religion, Green Egg, 1975  "Curse them! Curse them! Curse them!   With my Hawk's head I peck at the eyes of   Jesus as he hangs upon the cross   I flap my wings in the face of Mohammed &   blind him   With my claws I tear out the flesh of the   Indian and the Buddhist, Mongol and   Din..."    Liber Al Vel Legis 3:50 - 53    "Previously I never thought of doubting that  there were many witches in the world; now,  however, when I examine the public record, I  find myself believing that there are hardly  any..." Father Friedrich von Spee, S.J. , Cautio  Criminalis, 1631 I use  the word `mythology'in this context in its  aboriginal meaning, and with considerable respect. History is more metaphor than factual accounting at best, and there are  myths by which we live and others by which we  die. Myths are the dreams and visions which  parallel objective history. This entire work is, in fact, an attempt to approximate history. To arrive at some perspective on what the  modern mythos called, variously, "Wicca", the  "Old Religion", "Witchcraft" and  "Neopaganism" is, we must firstly make a firm  distinction; "witchcraft" in the popular  informally defined sense may have little to  do with the modern religion that goes by the same name. It has been argued by defenders of  and formal apologists for modern Wicca that  it is a direct lineal descendent of an  ancient, indeed, prehistoric worldwide folk  religion. Some proponents hedge their claims,  calling Wicca a "revival" rather than a  continuation of an ancient cult.  Oddly  enough, there may never have been any such  cult!  The first time I met someone who thought she was a "witch," she started going on  about being a "blue of the cloak."  I  should've been warned right then and there. In fact, as time has passed and the religion  has spread, the claims of lineal continuity  have tended to be hedged more and more. Thus, we find Dr. Gardner himself, in 1954,  stating unambiguously that some witches are  descendants "... of a line of priests and priestesses of an old and probably Stone Age religion, who have been initiated in a  certain way (received into the circle) and become the recipients of certain ancient learning." (Gardner, WITCHCRAFT TODAY, pp  33-34.)  Stated in its most extreme form, Wicca may  be defined as an ancient pagan religious  system of beliefs and practices, with a form  of apostolic succession (that is, with  knowledge and ordination handed on lineally  from generation to generation), a more or  less consistent set of rites and myths, and  even a secret holy book of considerable  antiquity (The Book of Shadows).  More recent writers, as we have noted, have  hedged a good deal on these claims,  particularly the latter.  Thus we find  Stewart Farrar in 1971 musing on the  purported ancient text thusly: "Whether,  therefore, the whole of the Book of Shadows  is post- 1897 is anyone's guess. Mine is that,  like the Bible, it is a patchwork of periods  and sources, and that since it is copied and  re-copied by hand, it includes amendments,  additions, and stylistic alterations  according to the taste of a succession of copiers...Parts of it I sense to be genuinely  old; other parts suggest modern  interpolation..." (Farrar, WHAT WITCHES DO,  pp34-35.)   As we shall discover presently,  there appear to be no genuinely old copies of the Book of Shadows. For Next Page