Marian Green - A Witch Alone - Thirteen Moons To Master Natural Magic

There is no evidence at all of regular celebrations, although there are many pre-Christian customs set at the beginning of May and the end of October which echo parts of what modern witches do. The contemporary arts of coven witches and the set rituals they attend were written largely by Doreen Valiente and Gerald Gardner in the 19505. Some newer versions, using festivals called Litha and Mabon, were invented by Alex Sanders and his followers in the 1960s.

Doreen Valiente has written many excellent books on aspects of the Crafts which she learned from many sources, including the village witches of her native Sussex, described in her first book Where Witchcraft Lives, now, I believe, out of print. She points out that there are many simple spells, arts and bits of folk magic too trivial to be written out by the medieval scholars who formalised much of

ceremonial magic, with its Hebrew and Latin roots.

Old spells included making ‘witch bottles’ full of pins or coloured threads, keeping harm at bay; stopping gossip by creeping up behind the tell-tale and sticking an iron nail through her shadow, or leaving open scissors or crossed knives on your doorstep so that no evil could enter. One charm used a snail pinned to a thorn tree to cure warts.

The oldest charms often used thorns to ‘prick the conscience of those who wished you harm’ by naming a leaf and sticking prickles through it, or by binding a red cord around a bundle of rushes, named after someone who was maligning you. The Witch Museum in Boscastle, Cornwall, used to be full of traditional amulets made of stone or clay, wax images used to heal or curse, and haunted stick figures still imbued with the power given them hundreds of years ago.

Spells wrapped in magical red flannel containing simple verses written on parchment, with bits of hair or nail clippings to link them with the person for whom help is sought, are often turned up in boxes up the chimneys of old cottages. Mummified cats or the skeletons of hares are unearthed beneath the hearth stone, or the door step, traces of protective rites going back before the Romans, or holy, holed flints hung with red ribbons over the stable doors, alongside the horseshoe, points up, to prevent the animals being lamed or overridden.

These were, and still are, the arts of the lone country witch who practises his or her arts secretly, at night, in the bat-flittering, owl-sounded safe places of the wilderness where Pan still plays his pipes and the Moon Maiden enchants us with her song.

These are the traces you may find in local museums, if you poke about the dusty showcases. These are the old ideas which some of the learned journals of folklore have commented upon in their crusty articles for the last hundred years or so. These are the clues to the web of traditional green folk magic, which has threads in every village, and old sacred centres as the hubs.

Spells about the weather may be found in books on local peculiarities; or how winds may be tied as knots in a cord and were sold to sailors to speed their journeys; how rain might be called down, or kept away; and the old method of whistling for a wind, recalled in the rhyme ‘A whistling woman or a crowing hen, Ain’t no use to gods nor men!’ Raising storms to sink ships may have been part of the old arts but today’s witches try spells to prevent roads going through ancient sites, or rail tunnels disrupting rare woodlands.

Underneath, there is a common thread of caring for the community. Not all spells were or are carefully thought out; some will do more harm than good, some will bring unfortunate results or short-term gains leading to longer term losses. If you try out magical spells you will soon learn what can and can’t be done, what charms and chants work, and which bring only the sure answer that that working will fail and an understanding of why that will be so.

Most witches, or rather those who were accused and convicted of witchcraft, were hanged, so if you delve into past lives and find yourself on a bonfire, either you are misleading yourself or you are undergoing the penalty in Scotland or Europe, or were accused of heresy.

Witch-finders were paid to bring people to trial, but most of those who met their fate on the gallows were social outcasts of their day. The real Wise Women and Cunning Men should have been well aware of any such mortal danger, and found ways of going into hiding. Those who were accused were tried in courts speaking Latin, the official language of the courts and the Church, and would have understood little of what was going on.

In England they were not allowed to be tortured, only kept awake for nights on end, made to stand or squat in one position. Any small animals or flies were thought to be familiars. Those who were convicted, on evidence usually from insulted neighbours or those with a local grudge, were hanged and often buried at a crossroad (which was actually sacred in pagan terms, being the place of the dark Goddess, Hecate) outside the Church’s hallowed grounds.

Do some historical research into what really did go on, and you will find that medieval England was very different from the ideas put forth by some ‘past life recallers’, who can tell you about being burned at the stake as a witch, having joined in coven meetings at Stonehenge and the like!

Also remember, most of the records of the witch trials were issued by those who were convinced that individuals were really evil-doers, in league with the Devil, capable of causing sickness, blasting crops or raising storms. They were determined to find a victim and bring him or her to the gallows, and those accused had no counsel for the defence and probably little idea of what was going on.

The Inquisition, setting out to find ‘heretics’ come what may, even had a list of improbable accusations against which those brought to the test were questioned. Most of the questions were impossible to give a right answer to; for example, victims were asked ‘Do you believe in the Devil?’ If they said ‘Yes’ because that was what the Church, who invented the Devil, wanted them to say, they were accused of Devil worship, if they said ‘No’, the real pagan answer, they were convicted of heresy, for doubting the teaching of the Church. It was a no-win situation. However, it is extremely unlikely that many real ‘witches’ were caught, especially if you examine the answers some gave.

There is no hint of pagan beliefs, no concensus of opinion about covens, there is no mention of female priestesses leading rituals, no word about spells or magic, even. In Scotland some were made to speak of a ‘man in black’, supposed by writers like Margaret Murray to be some sort of high priest or master of a coven, but there isn’t a lot to go on.

Certainly there are a few surviving old family groups in Britain where the Magister, a male leader, is the one who arranges seasonal festivals and magical gatherings, but even these few such modern ‘men in black’ might find it hard to prove their ancient heritage didn’t come from a book on the witch trials, or was a fairly recent idea, dreamed up to give them greater power than the usual leader, the female High Priestess, whose word is law.

Whatever historians have recovered by their literary researches and discovered from tales or folk superstitions about the old ways, there is a great deal of valuable material to be recovered by those who wish to reawaken their heritage. As has been said before, no learning or knowledge can ever be completely lost.

It may well be deeply buried, it may be fragmentary, it may be found in many local traditions, with widely scattered fractions being part of the seasonal or calendar feasts in certain places, making it hard to see the whole rite or celebration in its entirety, but somewhere all old wisdom can be retrieved.