Carla O'Harris
March 20th, 2006, 11:17 AM
I'm not feeling so well today, but this will be a preliminary attempt to answer some of Silverfire Darkmoon's questions. He said,
"As for Murray - exactly why she is considered a credible source will forever be beyond me. The way she manipulated evidence to make it seem like there were always thirteen members in a coven, for instance - in spite of the fact that 'coven' was used in approximately ONE trial, which does not exactly make for sweeping evidence that thirteen-member covens were organized across Europe and were even to be found in New England, yet that is what she postulates.
Similarly, the religion of the witches as described by Murray is so profoundly dissimilar to Gardner's Wicca that I wonder why she is cited as often as she is. Murray's witches worshipped one (1) god, named Janus or Dianus, who was often in the form of a goat, toad, cat, or black man. Murray *does* state that the god also appeared in the form of a woman, and was usually called the Queen of Elfame, but there is far more testimony as to the man, goat, or other animal forms taken. They also practiced child sacrifice and ate human corpses, neither of which are, to my knowledge, part of Wiccan rituals. Curiously, the deity worshipped is given in her quotations as Satan, Sathan, or Lucifer, and not 'Dianus' or 'Janus'. I suspect Murray was heavily influenced by Frazer, and that is why she stresses that the dancing was for fertility and invents the 'Greater Sabbats' idea, as accused witches often said they met on *Christian* holidays.
Of course, she also states that Gilles de Rais and Jeanne d'Arc were members of her pagan religion, as were many of the crowned heads of England, not to mention Thomas a Beckett (because archbishops will leap at the chance to be ritual sacrifices in pagan ceremonies). Such ideas clearly contribute to the lucidity of her theory."
Let's remember that Murray was attempting to read the Witch Trial material as a palimpsest in which she was trying to crack the code of the Inquisitors. Her knowledge of Classical religions with their emphasis upon masks and transformation (one need only read Burkert in this regard to get an idea within the Greek setting) enabled her to have a different reading of the material, accounting for the various animal forms of the God.
It's a fact that Christianity had a tendency to diabolize other pagan gods, so it's no giant leap to suppose that had there been a pagan god form within witchcraft that the Christians would have called that form the Devil.
Many historians who have had a chance to look at the trial material in much greater depth (Ginzburg, Henningsen) have felt there was a historical core of truth to Murray's thesis. I think Murray knew this, and engaged in a fairly typical pioneer's enthusiasm. Her solving of the "cipher" may be taken as too simplistic, reducing complex hermeneutics and flattening them down to one interpretive level. She does see a connection with the Fairies, which is important, but since she was fond of an archaeological theory that the Fairies represented a marginal pygmy-like race existing on the outskirts of European civilization (a charming theory to read, btw, entertaining, and possibly a folkloric remnant of remembering pre-agricultural peoples displaced in IndoEuropean movements), she doesn't call upon the full weight of the Fairy Faith in her interpretations. She might, therefore, have seen child sacrifice in its context of the trope of the Changeling. The human corpses theme seems more like the superimposition of either revenant-lore or more likely blood libel type slander on the part of the Church. Just because there is a core of validity hidden within the trial records does not mean that everything said is a characteristic of the cult. A more careful peeling of layers within the palimpsest is necessary.
I think her enthusiasm drove her to exaggerating the extent of the cult, instead of assuming that it was a minority around which a much larger storm of innuendo and cross-accusation centered, drawing in large numbers of people who had nothing to do with the core of the cult. The idea that the victims of the Inquisition were innocent victims and bystanders drawn in was by her time a familiar one, characterized for example by the important historian Lea. It is possible that since her theory opposed that, she dismissed it rather than synthesizing it into her own. From our modern perspective, we can integrate both theories rather than discarding them.
As far as when the witches met, the overlap between Ember Days and the Sabbats is obvious and close enough as to not really present any problem. The Ember Days were based upon already existing pagan holidays.
Because of the idea of human sacrifice / ritual murder that was prevalent at the time in examinations of pagan religions, it wasn't too illogical for her next step to be to examine evidence of ritual murders, which is what led her into her ideas about kings and so forth. If we as moderns don't place as much emphasis upon the centrality of ritual murder to witchcraft -- which we most certainly do not -- it explains why we don't find those elements of her later ideas as intriguing or important.
de Rais is in my opinion a misreading, although certainly worth reading in his own regard, but as far as Joan of Arc is concerned, I consider the jury still out on that one, and not implausible for her to speculate about.
"As for Murray - exactly why she is considered a credible source will forever be beyond me. The way she manipulated evidence to make it seem like there were always thirteen members in a coven, for instance - in spite of the fact that 'coven' was used in approximately ONE trial, which does not exactly make for sweeping evidence that thirteen-member covens were organized across Europe and were even to be found in New England, yet that is what she postulates.
Similarly, the religion of the witches as described by Murray is so profoundly dissimilar to Gardner's Wicca that I wonder why she is cited as often as she is. Murray's witches worshipped one (1) god, named Janus or Dianus, who was often in the form of a goat, toad, cat, or black man. Murray *does* state that the god also appeared in the form of a woman, and was usually called the Queen of Elfame, but there is far more testimony as to the man, goat, or other animal forms taken. They also practiced child sacrifice and ate human corpses, neither of which are, to my knowledge, part of Wiccan rituals. Curiously, the deity worshipped is given in her quotations as Satan, Sathan, or Lucifer, and not 'Dianus' or 'Janus'. I suspect Murray was heavily influenced by Frazer, and that is why she stresses that the dancing was for fertility and invents the 'Greater Sabbats' idea, as accused witches often said they met on *Christian* holidays.
Of course, she also states that Gilles de Rais and Jeanne d'Arc were members of her pagan religion, as were many of the crowned heads of England, not to mention Thomas a Beckett (because archbishops will leap at the chance to be ritual sacrifices in pagan ceremonies). Such ideas clearly contribute to the lucidity of her theory."
Let's remember that Murray was attempting to read the Witch Trial material as a palimpsest in which she was trying to crack the code of the Inquisitors. Her knowledge of Classical religions with their emphasis upon masks and transformation (one need only read Burkert in this regard to get an idea within the Greek setting) enabled her to have a different reading of the material, accounting for the various animal forms of the God.
It's a fact that Christianity had a tendency to diabolize other pagan gods, so it's no giant leap to suppose that had there been a pagan god form within witchcraft that the Christians would have called that form the Devil.
Many historians who have had a chance to look at the trial material in much greater depth (Ginzburg, Henningsen) have felt there was a historical core of truth to Murray's thesis. I think Murray knew this, and engaged in a fairly typical pioneer's enthusiasm. Her solving of the "cipher" may be taken as too simplistic, reducing complex hermeneutics and flattening them down to one interpretive level. She does see a connection with the Fairies, which is important, but since she was fond of an archaeological theory that the Fairies represented a marginal pygmy-like race existing on the outskirts of European civilization (a charming theory to read, btw, entertaining, and possibly a folkloric remnant of remembering pre-agricultural peoples displaced in IndoEuropean movements), she doesn't call upon the full weight of the Fairy Faith in her interpretations. She might, therefore, have seen child sacrifice in its context of the trope of the Changeling. The human corpses theme seems more like the superimposition of either revenant-lore or more likely blood libel type slander on the part of the Church. Just because there is a core of validity hidden within the trial records does not mean that everything said is a characteristic of the cult. A more careful peeling of layers within the palimpsest is necessary.
I think her enthusiasm drove her to exaggerating the extent of the cult, instead of assuming that it was a minority around which a much larger storm of innuendo and cross-accusation centered, drawing in large numbers of people who had nothing to do with the core of the cult. The idea that the victims of the Inquisition were innocent victims and bystanders drawn in was by her time a familiar one, characterized for example by the important historian Lea. It is possible that since her theory opposed that, she dismissed it rather than synthesizing it into her own. From our modern perspective, we can integrate both theories rather than discarding them.
As far as when the witches met, the overlap between Ember Days and the Sabbats is obvious and close enough as to not really present any problem. The Ember Days were based upon already existing pagan holidays.
Because of the idea of human sacrifice / ritual murder that was prevalent at the time in examinations of pagan religions, it wasn't too illogical for her next step to be to examine evidence of ritual murders, which is what led her into her ideas about kings and so forth. If we as moderns don't place as much emphasis upon the centrality of ritual murder to witchcraft -- which we most certainly do not -- it explains why we don't find those elements of her later ideas as intriguing or important.
de Rais is in my opinion a misreading, although certainly worth reading in his own regard, but as far as Joan of Arc is concerned, I consider the jury still out on that one, and not implausible for her to speculate about.
