God of the Witches

god of the witches (1931) margaret murray

Margaret Murray wrote three books which are required reading for the proper study of witchcraft : The Witch-cult in Western Europe (1921); The God of the Witches (1931); The Divine King in England (1954).

In times past I have become familiar with all three of them : first of all in conjunction with the standard anthropological texts focussing on witchcraft; and, much later, while preparing an essay on the emergence of Gardnerian Wica [so spelt] in the mid-20th century.

In the past few days I have once again taken up The God of the Witches as part of my personal enquiry into the essential nature of Wicca and possibilities for its extension beyond the information so freely available in the public domain.

As an aside, I recall my first attendance at a Pagan Federation district convention. Ronald Hutton was the principal speaker. It was there, from him, I first became aware of academic objections to Murray’s thesis. It now seems to me that the generality of these objections have their origins in that portion of 18th century opinion which came to categorise ‘any belief in witchcraft’ as a falsehood deserving to be punished by the strictures of the 1735 Witchcraft Act.

It may also be the case that Murray, unwittingly, compounded the situation when she wrote her ‘Introduction’ to Gerald B. Gardner’s Witchcraft Today (1954).

As once again I make my way through her 1931 essay, I become aware that her technique, her method of presentation, is no longer fashionable. Her studies had led her to the conclusion that Pagan beliefs and practices – those of the Old Religion, as she has it – were never so completely eradicated or superseded by those of the Christian hierarchy as was once asserted to be the case. What did happen was that ‘the Church’ condemned any such manifestations as the machinations of its enemy the Devil and all his works. Hence the accusations and executions which are part of the historical record.

Rather than argue her corner, as a later generation of students has been taught to do, Murray simply sets out page after page of examples to back up her point. I am reminded of similar procedures by writers and speakers on country customs, their history, their variants, and their survival. She presents statements and restatements on the theme of : this is what people said or are alleged to have said; this is what people did or are alleged to have done. Much of what Murray offers us, I find quite convincing.

I do take issue with her on some of the conclusions she draws from preliterate illustrations. It is all very well to look at a display of figurines in a museum cabinet and accept that these are indeed miniatures of named gods and goddesses, because there is literary evidence to back up these attributions. But there comes a point when to extrapolate too far backwards in time leads us into an area of unprovable hypotheses tinged with wishful thinking.

To include an illustration of the Trois Freres ‘Masked Man with Stag’s Antlers’ among paragraphs concerned with the Horned God is going too far and her use of the ‘Masked Dancer’ (with musical bow) from the Fourneau de Diable is plain wrong. But then Murray is but one of a number of scholars misled by a figure wrenched out of context. I doubt any of them had actually seen prints showing the crowded state of the depictions on that particular wall. Look at any space where flyers have been posted one on top of the other, and you will see a modern example of a paleolithic practice.

For all that, Murray’s writing remains a valuable indicator of a particular ethos of the preWar days of the 1920s and 1930s. It is a part of the cultural atmosphere of a Southern England so very different from the present; part of the surroundings which nurtured the embryonic (was it really embryonic?) Craft of the Wise which eventually blossomed into the full flower of the Wicca.

© francis cameron, oxford, 9 july 2009

it's different down under

‘What Witches Do’ became a very useful source of inspiration, a stimulus to exploration and discovery, a prompting for more reading, deeper study and practical work. So we stepped into the Tarot. Trial and error eventually resulted in packs that suited each of us. At first there was much turning of pages when, after more trial and error, we came across books which were the right ones for us. Then we met with Dion Fortune’s ‘Mystical Qabalah’ and linked the two systems together, which has tended to influence my readings ever since. (These days, in my teaching of divination, I begin with psychometry and the resulting build up of images which deliberately excludes the use of books or other printed prompts.)

Stewart Farrar’s text set us off in the right direction. It was a brilliant starting point.

It was the observation of the seasonal feasts which first caused me to be aware of the difference between England and the Southern Hemisphere. I’d grown up in London with a full awareness of the power of Spring in the poetry painting song dance and instrumental music of our northern world. It was the great re‑awakening of life and new growth after the dark dormition of Winter. In all my time in Australia, I never once saw any sign of Spring. It just did not happen. Only the state government’s calendar contained the rubric that September 1st was the first day of Spring.

I was prepared to find December 25th celebrated with a turkey lunch on a suitable beach while the surf rolled in from across the Pacific. It never quite worked out like that. Christmas Day was a time to invite friends to a full Christmas lunch, a swim and much partying. Only as time went by did I feel it quite incongruous to be singing ‘See amid the winter’s snow’ when the temperature outdoors was up in the 80s Fahrenheit with humidity to match. Easter was similarly out of joint. Easter is the great festival of rebirth after the drama of death. How could you really celebrate Easter when the deciduous trees in the Botanical Garden were dropping their richly coloured leaves as they moved to the end of yet another annual cycle? (The ubiquitous indigenous gum trees celebrated no cycle at all. Their leaves always turned edgeways on to the rays of the sun.)

In time I recognised that we lived with the equivalent of just two seasons a year. Summer was hot and often tropically wet. Winter was cool and dry. ‘Cool’ meant about 15º Celsius, though indoors and at night it felt colder than that.

The phases of the Moon we could appreciate and celebrate. The daily round of the Sun was a different matter. Yes, we could turn to the eastern horizon for the sunrise but the transition from complete darkness to full light was accomplished quite suddenly. (So different from standing with Bobcat and her Druids on the ramparts of Avebury while I grew to understand why our forebears had lit fires to inform the stations down the line that something really was happening.) In Australia I observed many a brilliant sunset on the western horizon even though twilight was quite absent. Nightfall was like the dropping of the Safety Curtain in a theatre.

But the Sun at Noon stood in the North. And there was the problem. Should we dance and circle clockwise, as the books said? or should we go with an Australian deosil : East North West and South?

Then there were the Guardians of the Four Quarters and their associations. I began to understand that what suits one location may not suit another. To our East, hardly more than a few steps away, were the endless rollers of the Pacific Ocean. Surely this must be the home of the Watchtower of Water? And out to the West, beyond the city, the high landscape of the Blue Mountains. Earth. Surely? And in the South, that Summer phenomenon known as the Southerly Buster, a harsh wind which could sweep up direct from the Antarctic with a drop in temperature of 15 Celsius or more. A powerful dominating demonstration of Air. And so, leaving us with the Sun at Noon in the North : Fire, to complete the tetrad.

It’s only in more recent years, sitting here in a gentler clime, within walking distance of Carfax, where the Four Ways meet, that I came to appreciate how much the Pagan components of Wicca depend on local landscapes. The changing angles of the Sun observed as it swings on its pendulum from solstice to solstice and back again. The eagerly sought for first signs of the green shoots of Spring troping the bare branches of Winter. The delightful chromaticisms of the Fall of the Leaf as a prelude to hibernation. And all that goes betwixt and between.

Magic. Sheer magic.

© francis cameron, oxford, 1 july 2009

it's different down under

‘What Witches Do’ became a very useful source of inspiration, a stimulus to exploration and discovery, a prompting for more reading, deeper study and practical work. So we stepped into the Tarot. Trial and error eventually resulted in packs that suited each of us. At first there was much turning of pages when, after more trial and error, we came across books which were the right ones for us. Then we met with Dion Fortune’s ‘Mystical Qabalah’ and linked the two systems together, which has tended to influence my readings ever since. (These days, in my teaching of divination, I begin with psychometry and the resulting build up of images which deliberately excludes the use of books or other printed prompts.)

Stewart Farrar’s text set us off in the right direction. It was a brilliant starting point.

It was the observation of the seasonal feasts which first caused me to be aware of the difference between England and the Southern Hemisphere. I’d grown up in London with a full awareness of the power of Spring in the poetry painting song dance and instrumental music of our northern world. It was the great re‑awakening of life and new growth after the dark dormition of Winter. In all my time in Australia, I never once saw any sign of Spring. It just did not happen. Only the state government’s calendar contained the rubric that September 1st was the first day of Spring.

I was prepared to find December 25th celebrated with a turkey lunch on a suitable beach while the surf rolled in from across the Pacific. It never quite worked out like that. Christmas Day was a time to invite friends to a full Christmas lunch, a swim and much partying. Only as time went by did I feel it quite incongruous to be singing ‘See amid the winter’s snow’ when the temperature outdoors was up in the 80s Fahrenheit with humidity to match. Easter was similarly out of joint. Easter is the great festival of rebirth after the drama of death. How could you really celebrate Easter when the deciduous trees in the Botanical Garden were dropping their richly coloured leaves as they moved to the end of yet another annual cycle? (The ubiquitous indigenous gum trees celebrated no cycle at all. Their leaves always turned edgeways on to the rays of the sun.)

In time I recognised that we lived with the equivalent of just two seasons a year. Summer was hot and often tropically wet. Winter was cool and dry. ‘Cool’ meant about 15º Celsius, though indoors and at night it felt colder than that.

The phases of the Moon we could appreciate and celebrate. The daily round of the Sun was a different matter. Yes, we could turn to the eastern horizon for the sunrise but the transition from complete darkness to full light was accomplished quite suddenly. (So different from standing with Bobcat and her Druids on the ramparts of Avebury while I grew to understand why our forebears had lit fires to inform the stations down the line that something really was happening.) In Australia I observed many a brilliant sunset on the western horizon even though twilight was quite absent. Nightfall was like the dropping of the Safety Curtain in a theatre.

But the Sun at Noon stood in the North. And there was the problem. Should we dance and circle clockwise, as the books said? or should we go with an Australian deosil : East North West and South?

Then there were the Guardians of the Four Quarters and their associations. I began to understand that what suits one location may not suit another. To our East, hardly more than a few steps away, were the endless rollers of the Pacific Ocean. Surely this must be the home of the Watchtower of Water? And out to the West, beyond the city, the high landscape of the Blue Mountains. Earth. Surely? And in the South, that Summer phenomenon known as the Southerly Buster, a harsh wind which could sweep up direct from the Antarctic with a drop in temperature of 15 Celsius or more. A powerful dominating demonstration of Air. And so, leaving us with the Sun at Noon in the North : Fire, to complete the tetrad.

It’s only in more recent years, sitting here in a gentler clime, within walking distance of Carfax, where the Four Ways meet, that I came to appreciate how much the Pagan components of Wicca depend on local landscapes. The changing angles of the Sun observed as it swings on its pendulum from solstice to solstice and back again. The eagerly sought for first signs of the green shoots of Spring troping the bare branches of Winter. The delightful chromaticisms of the Fall of the Leaf as a prelude to hibernation. And all that goes betwixt and between.

Magic. Sheer magic.

© francis cameron, oxford, 1 july 2009

body and soul

As I sat across the street I heard a familiar chord sequence and then I put together the fragments of melody. He was playing ‘Body and Soul’. He was just a mendicant guitarist in Cornmarket Street, but he played ‘Body and Soul’ and I haven’t heard that since it became almost my signature tune.

I don’t expect the name to mean anything to you. You might have sung along while he was playing ‘As Time Goes By’, but that’s been in a film. A black and white classic.

‘Body and Soul’ never was in no film. Just the tinkle of its tune brings back such poignant memories, the memories of my first professional tour. I was ‘the 16 year old boy wonder pianist’ with an ENSA concert party. The Solid Eight. The year was 1944. Flying bombs were dropping on London. V2 rockets were just appearing. The great battle for Europe had yet to be won. We played to Canadian troops in camps all over England. They were ready for action wherever they were needed.

That tour did so much for me. I had to learn to play unfamiliar idioms : boogie-woogie, rumba, the special kind of accompaniment that goes (went?) with an Old Tyme comic’s patter. A life changing experience. The thrill of playing to packed houses in Garrison Theatres and NAAFI canteens. The camaraderie of our tiny touring company.

Olive was a dancer. Wrapped up in her work. Introvert, almost. ‘Body and Soul’ was her point number.

Pamela Cundell was another of the Eight. She’s still around. Must be that much older than me! It’s not so long since I saw her on television one evening. Still as inimitable as ever.

Then there was Teddy Driver, the Top of the Bill star of our little troupe. He was part of Music Hall. I saw him, once, in a film. An Ealing Comedy. And once, when I was working for the LCC, there he was. Teddy Driver standing watching one of our concert parties in the parks. In those few short years before television put an end to all that.

And the years fall away.

I can never again be the boy I was when I was 16 but often it feels to me that dates on birth certificates are not to be taken too seriously. I’ve not yet reached the stage where I feel I really ought to act my age.

© francis cameron, oxford, 3 july 2009

the witch next door

Twice in the last couple of weeks I’ve been asked how I first became involved with the Wicca. It’s never happened quite like that before. Perhaps it’s because my pentacle is now all too visible on an area of shirtfront not obscured by the long white beard. (I was called ‘Gandalf’ in the pub last night. It was a friendly greeting. They were a very welcoming little crowd.)

So let’s answer the question. How?

The year was 1974. My professional career had taken me to Australia. On the evening in question I’d gone to visit a friend who lived in one of the older parts of Sydney. Down alongside the working harbour. A terrace of single story houses with rust-coloured corrugated iron roofs. Not uncommon in those pars. We were sitting in the kitchen. The front doorbell rang. It was the man from the house next door. He was expected. He came and joined us. Introduced himself as a witch. And began to talk about the Craft.

Now it happened that, although my headquarters were at the Conservatorium of Music, I’d recently felt the need to study anthropology. I’d been welcomed with open arms by the Faculty at the University. (Anthropologists are like that. Music is part of their remit but they are convinced that special attributes are needed to study music. I’ve never even tried to disturb that illusion.) Studying witchcraft – or, rather, studying books about witchcraft – is an obligatory part of the course in any anthropology department I’ve ever come across.

As I sat listening to our visiting witch, more and more of his words were familiar. They were straight out of Margaret Murray. I’d read all three of her witchcraft books only a few weeks before. But then he went on to other things which were not from Margaret Murray. Some of them I could compare with my experience of Spiritualist séances in my parents’ home. Other parts were quite new to me. Importantly, they all made sense, including his explanation that when the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay on 22 January 1787, there were witches among the convicts on board. The Craft had been handed down from them through the generations and was now flourishing quietly and discretely even as we spoke.

That was not the only time he came to visit. I was hooked right from the start. At this very crucial time of my own life, the teacher had made himself known. We began the practical work.

Looking back at it from what I’ve learned since, I guess there was a good deal of the hereditary still present, plus knowledge and practices with a Gardnerian flavour brought in from contacts with witches from England.

Eventually the witch from the house next door moved away with his Priestess partner. We continued working. Always skyclad. Always standing skyclad out at the back on the nights of the Full Moon. At certain times it seemed very near. Large and softly glowing. Low on the skyline.

We found ourselves alone. Just the two of us. We needed to consolidate and to move on. I found the Craftsman Bookshop in Sydney’s Kings Cross. The book I bought was ‘What Witches Do’ by Stewart Farrar, which had been published in 1971, only a few years before. It’s a book I still use from time to time. Its two hundred or so pages contain so much of the essence of the old witchcraft religion. It was a splendid foundation.

I may have moved on quite a long way since then, but every step along the path has been worth it.

francis cameron

oxford, 30 june 2009

turning points

When we look back at the past, those of us who are occupied with the writing and teaching of history find it useful to pick out certain significant events as markers separating before from after.

In my early schooldays, the first such event I learned about was 1066, the Norman Conquest, which conveyed the idea that this was when English history began. (And I well remember the cigarette cards issued in 1937 to mark the coronation of King George V and Queen Elizabeth. The set of ‘Kings and Queens of England’ began with William the Conqueror!)

At the Mercers’ School, I took in the date 1453, when Constantinople was finally conquered by the Turks, the scholars picked up their precious manuscripts, tucked them under their arms, moved to Italy, and the Renaissance began.

All good scholarly stuff, serving a (temporarily) useful purpose, but a bit far-fetched so far as implications go. (No one so much as mentioned Gutenberg and his printing press : the great revolutionary invention of that mid-century.)

In the past week or so, I find the date 1951 popping up here and there in various books I’ve been reading. !951. I remember it well. It was the year of the Festival of Britain, originally proposed as a centenary celebration of the Great Exhibition of 1851, but more specifically as an antidote to the postwar years of drab austerity, an indicator that Britain was on its feet again, standing on the brink of another brilliant future. A Dome of Discovery and a Skylon were erected on the South Bank of the Thames and a Heath Robinson pleasure gardens transformed Battersea Park.

Yes, 1951 also proved to be a significant turning point for the government. Labour lost the General Election in October and remained in opposition until 1964.

I’ve begun to consider the possibility of 1951’s having rather deeper implications. When I was lecturing on the history of the Arts, especially classical music, the years round about 1900 seemed to be crucial. The great works of 19th century Romanticism were coming to an end. A new generation was exploring – even desperately searching for – new ideas. Then came The War (1914 to 1918, that is) followed by the reaction of the 1920s, the very arid 1930s, and the renewal of The War (1939 to 1945). The first part of The War took out a whole generation of young men. The second part was widespread devastation. Twice in a handful of decades artistic impetus were shattered.

Perhaps, then, 1951 did mark a re-start, a fresh imperative, though it was more than a little infected by the attractive delusion that we remained the Great Nation of the days when the genial Edward VII was our monarch. (1951 was not the last time British troops were to engage in Suez.)

For tens of thousands of us, 1951 has a special significance, for that was the year when Parliament passed the Fraudulent Mediums Act to regularise the position of Spiritualists still smarting from the effects of the Witchcraft Trial of 1944 which had sent one of their leading mediums to prison. The first clause of the 1951 Act repealed the Witchcraft Act of 1735. Spiritualists would no longer be subject to prosecution. And there it might all have ended, a chapter closed, save that a single alert individual saw his chance and seized it.

For Gerald Gardner this was the liminal moment. He stood on the threshold. Behind him was more than a decade of enthusiastic personal involvement in the Wica (his spelling). Out there in front was a whole wide world where he could spread his eager word. And so it was. He stepped forward. He went public, spreading the news of a surviving and renewed pagan religion whose roots were flourishing even in the days ‘Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode’.

francis cameron

oxford, 28 june 2009

legendary

In the mid-1970s as part of my studies in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, I read in translation The History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours. It’s quite a fat little volume in the series of Penguin Classics. A long and complex tale. I admit it required no little persistence on my part to complete my scrutiny from cover to cover. And right away the text bothered me.

Gregory writes in a sequence of episodes neatly ruled off from each other. I find myself reminded of Herodotus. Many – indeed, most – of Gregory’s episodes come across as reliable accounts of genuine historical events. This, after all, is Gregory’s prime purpose. By showing how the genealogy of the Frankish people fits smoothly and auspiciously into the patterns of the past – from the moment of Creation onwards - Gregory validates the authenticity of the Merovingian royal line which, in his own portion of linear time (Gregory died in the year 594 of our era), asserted its authority over the former Roman province of Gaul.

So much for the histories. But Gregory includes episodes belonging to a more intense perception : a perception where miracles and the interventions of the Holy Saints are as normal and expected as human mortality ; a perception where the sacred and the profane exist side by side in the same ambience, but where the sacred is to be regarded and approached with a special reverence and respect. I found myself asking : if we regard the mundane episodes as historically true, are we thereby to regard the miraculous episodes as historically true? On the other hand : if we regard the miraculous episodes simply as products of the imagination, what reliance can we place on the remainder of the material?

After more than three decades, I begin to see a possible resolution : a resolution which requires an exchange of categories, a setting aside of a current orthodoxy of historiography in favour of allowing an equal validity to legendary history for, in the middle of the first western millennium, the past was re-invented in ways which allowed, even ‘required’, genuine historical figures to be clothed in the raiment of legend : real mortal people enhanced with the attributes of immortality.

I am reminded of Tintagel where the tangible artefacts of history are subtly interpenetrated by the intangibles of legend. I am also reminded of Brocéliande where Merlin and Morgana still hold sway and where ‘the once and future king’ is worshipped as a saint and portrayed in the stained glass of sacred fenestration.

francis cameron

oxford, 25 june 2009