Wiccans and Margaret Murray’s ‘Witch-Cult’ in Popular Culture

 

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The representation of witches and witchcraft I will discuss today are amongst those I personally find the least interesting. Primarily this is because there were no ‘wiccans’ in early modern Europe, yet I am with some regularity asked about what Margaret Murray called the “Witch-cult” in early modern Europe.[1] The idea that the modern iterations of magic, occultism, Satanism, and wicca have ancient antecedents, or have existed as an enduring culture in just plain wrong. As with so many things we think of as being 'old' or 'traditional', they are recent inventions which use ancient ‘trappings’ to legitimise them.

In this post I will argue that most pop culture representations of a female-dominated mystical religion/magical practise which is primarily benign in nature, owe their underlying precepts to Margaret Murray, and to feminist interpretations of witchcraft – some of whom still continue to trot out thismyth to attack ‘the patriarchy’ and the forces of social conformity. And that the use f these ideas in popular culture continues to influence some of the representation of witchcraft we read in books, and see on our television screens or at the movies, even now.

The most notable popular culture outcome of these ideas was the TV series Charmed (1998-2006). Its premise was that the Halliwell sisters were part of an ancient magical family, and were supposed to use their powers for good, to defend and protect the human race.

The series placed the three sisters inter-relationship to one another at the heart of a female-driven series, which fed nicely into 1990s girl-power movement, and embraced (or at least used) some aspects of Third-Wave Feminism. It also gelled well with the other significant contemporary pop-culture supernatural series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003).

Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were joined by Sabrina the Teenage Witch, creating a triumvirate of supernatural shows (each in a different genre, and aiming at a slightly different audience) but all containing characters called witches, who were seen as benign forces on the side of the good guys(for the most part, although going ‘evil’ is used fairly often in these style of shows, for example see ‘Dark Willow’) .

Witches as persecuted outcasts also made an appearance in both the novel and film of Practical Magic (1995 and 1998, respectively), when two sisters find that only together can they overcome an ancient curse, and find happiness within a community that has rejected and despised them. The themes of sisterhood, and the way in which they must work together are echoed by Charmed’s premise, though the genre differences are quite stark.

Both Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer have been the focus of feminist discussion and have been studied by academics. I don’t intend today to examine those shows further,  not only because a lot already been said about them, but because I want to look at the use of wiccans as the descendant of Murray's fertility cult outside of thse two Tv shows.  Today I want to look in depth at an example of wiccans as 'witches' in a piece of popular culture which isn’t consciously attempting to be either ‘girl-power’ or feminist minded.

Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series has come in for quite a lot of serious criticism of incidences of casualmisogyny, usually as an outcome of the main character’s POV. It is an urban fantasy series, centring on a wizard who is aware that others within his world view some of his behaviour as somewhat misogynist (as obviously, do may of his readers). Notably the wiccans in the Dresden Files appear as a victimised group in only one book, White Night (Dresden Files, Book Nine).

 

 

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In White Night, the hero of the series Harry Dresden, is brought in to examine an apparent suicide. He soon discovers that the killer has used some of the murdered woman’s ‘sacred water’ from her holy chalice on her shrine (no Da Vinci Code jokes intended… I think) to inscribe Exodus 22:18:

Murphy furrowed her brow and stared at it. ‘A Bible verse?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t know that one,’ she said. ‘Do you?’

I nodded. ‘It’s one that stuck in my head: “Suffer not a witch to live.”’[2]

Dresden then explain to police officer who uses him as a Private Detective-Wizard-Consultant, that while not all ‘wiccans’ are witches (that is practise actual magic), their beliefs still form the basis of a religion.

What follows is one of the more interesting interpretations of religion and witchcraft in urban fantasy, after Murphy points out that the biblical reference seems pretty straight forwards in its meaning:

‘I dunno. “Suffer not a witch to live.” Seems fairly clear.’

‘Out of context, but clear,’ I said. ‘Keep in mind that this appears in the same book of the Bible that approves the death sentence for a child who curses his parents, owners of oxen who injure someone through the owner’s negligence, anybody who works or kindles a fire on Sunday, and anyone who has sex with an animal.’

Murphy snorted.

‘Also keep in mind that the original text was written thousands of years ago. In Hebrew. The actual word that they used in that verse describes someone who casts spells that do harm to others. There was a distinction, in that culture, between harmful and beneficial magic.

‘By the time we got to the Middle Ages, the general attitude within the faith was that anyone who practiced any kind of magic was automatically evil. There was no distinction between white and black magic. And when the verse came over to English, King James had a thing about witches, so “harmful caster of spells” just got translated to “witch.”’

‘Put that way, it sounds like maybe someone took it out of context,’ Murphy said. ‘But you’d get arguments from all kinds of people that the Bible has got to be perfect. That God would not permit such errors to be made in the Holy Word.’

‘I thought God gave everyone free will,’ I said. ‘Which presumably – and evidently – includes the freedom to be incorrect when translating one language into another.’

‘Stop making me think,’ Murphy said. ‘I’m believing over here.’[3]

Butcher was far from the first fantasy writer to note a relationship between his own work and the actual events of the early modern witch trials. For example, Harry Potter engaged with the history of witch trials through Harry’s study of the book A History of Magic. In The Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry is writing an essay which cited the history of a woman known as Wendelin the Weird who enjoyed the effects of being burned alive (she used a charm so that it tickled instead of burning) so much, that she allowed herself to be caught repeatedly.

 

But very few books, TV series, or films go as far Butcher does, in trying to actually discuss the problems of belief, tolerance, and interaction between the magical and the mystical in the present day, and relating it to historical events, ideas and theology (the series also includes allusions to Dresden being a descendant of Merlin, and one of his allies in the series is dressed like a modern day Knight Templar).

 

Of course, the basis of the conversation I quoted above is problematic, as theology would suggest any use of magic magic (as opposed to God-granted miracles) is wrong. Nor was it solely because of King James that the term witch (with all its pejorative and gendered meanings) was used in the English vernacular. In fact each vernacular translation uses similar words, for example an early Spanish vernacular bible uses the term ‘hechicera’, the later French translation by Louis Segonde had ‘magicienne’, while an even later Italian translation in 1927, used the term ‘Strega’, and many German versions have used the term ‘Zauberinnen’ - all of which are terms for female users of magic.

To return to the way Butcher uses witches of the Margaret Murray-type, my point is that although Butcher’s narrative denies the ‘wiccans’ in his narrative their agency by making them victims of a sadistic vampire who feeds on despair, he uses the same rhetoric that led the character of Xander  in Buffy the Vampire Slayer to sing:

'Cause witches, they were persecuted
Wicca good and love the earth
And women power and I'll be over here

Nor is Butcher alone in picking up on this concept and using it in a very different context. Similar ideas permeate several recent supernatural works, including Angelina Jolie’s titular character in Maleficent (2014), which is a paean to female virtue overcoming hatred and male greed, with rape metaphors thrown in for good measure. While Maleficent is not technically a witch, but rather a fairy, her appearance (and that of the cartoon character on whom she was based) owe a great deal to the iconography of witches (and the original cartoon character was spiteful, vengeful and jealous of young Aurora in a mode familiar to readers of last week’s entry).

There is so much more to say on this topic. For example Butcher’s wiccans only appeared in a later book, while one of his earlier works featured a vengeful trio of ex-wives (some of whom were pornographic film actresses. Yes, really) murdering potential lovers of their husband (or ex-husband) under the influence of a vampire (not the despair-feeding variety, but the kind that feeds off sexual energy. Yes, really).

Butcher’s Dresden Files  books therefore manage to use and abuse both extremes of the witch trope: promiscuous, greedy and vengeful in Blood Rites, and a sisterhood of essentially good people, who are also victims in White Night. Later these minor practitioners who are also wiccans become part of Dresden’s wider network of allies, though they have yet to play any important role.

But what does this use of two kinds of witches, one bad one good, have to do with witches in early modern Europe? You could possibly argue that ‘good witches’ in modern fiction play the role of Cunning Folk, as sources of magical lore who can also perform minor acts of magic (such characters have appeared in other series, for example Vorna in David Gemmell’s Rigante series).

But Butcher purposefully cites wiccan as separate from the magic practitioners who were persecuted in early modern times:

[“]Three hundred years ago, it made cream turn sour, disturbed animals, and tended to encourage minor skin infections in wizards. Gave them blemishes and moles and pockmarks.”[4]

In other words it was practitioners, and there is no mention of wiccan pre-existing modern iterations of the wiccan religion (in other words, this is a modern development).

So what are we to make of this late nineties moment, when witches were good, part of a sisterhood, and descended from those who were persecuted during the early modern period? Was this just a moment of cultural alignment, between a popular version of feminism in ‘girl-power’, and the interweaving notions of wiccans on the one-hand, and Margaret Murray on the other gelled? And what will its consequences be?

Witches of all kinds are present on TV, in movies, and books. Since the successes of Harry Potter and Twilight a lot of authors have written series for children, young adults and adults, that revolve around the supernatural, and are set in the current era. On the big screen Nicholas Cage has appeared in two horror/adventure movies, The Last Witch-Hunter (2015), Season of the Witch (2011) which revolve around witchcraft, and on TV there are American Horror Story: Coven, and The Witches of East End on TV.  Nor are they alone with series like Game of Thrones, taking high fantasy from ‘nerd’ to ‘cool’, and subverting witch tropes in the process.

While The Witches of East End features a female-centric cast, which features two pairs of witches who are sisters, most representations of witches in recent media have tended to be at least questionable characters, if not outright villains. Some would undoubtedly argue that this is a backwards step for feminism, but I am left unsure if building a positive female character on a basically flawed historical theory (that witches were part of a female-dominated fertility cult of pagan origin) was ever a good idea.

 

* I apologise for this post being a day late, but my internet provider has had some sort of ongoing issue, so my internet connection is on the fritz. As a result I have spent unmentionable hours going through "push one, push two, push three" on the phone, and I have found that when you actually reach a human being they are inevitably from the wrong department, so they transfer you to someone else who always want to ask if you have tried turning the device off and on...

 

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[1] Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, (1921); see also Margaret Murray, The God of the Witches, (1933); Margaret Murray, The Divine King of England, (1954).

[2] Jim Butcher, White Night (Dresden Case Files): p. 8. Note, I personally still very much enjoy these books in spite of needing to roll my eyes at the main character’s sexism. Which is, in my opinion, is significantly less sexist than most stand-up comedy, and quite a few prime time TV shows of the past decade – hell the past few years. Nor is it as un-self-aware as the sexism of Patrick Rothfuss.

[3] Butcher, White Night, pp. 10-11

[4] Jim Butcher, Cold Days: A Dresden Files Novel (The Dresden Files) (p. 184).

"Hags"?: Transformation and the problem of age in modern fantasy and fairytales

 

What do the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1996-2003), the musical Into the Woods (2014), the film of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust (2007), and Doctor Who's “The Shakespeare Code” (2007) have in common?

They all show witches who appear as young and beautiful as the coven from Supernatural in last week’s post, but are in reality a middle aged mother (desperately wishing to relive teenage glory years), hags seeking to restore their youth, or an alien who looks like a hag, disguising herself as a young woman to seduce victims. Nor are they alone. Women who use magic to attain a youthful appearance, or who are deeply threatened by women who are younger are recurring theme in modern fantastical fiction, and adaptations of fairytales.

This trope is almost an ugly duckling in reverse, and I think exposes an ongoing concern with the ephemeral nature of beauty, and concerns over the behaviour of women 'of a certain age'. Unlike the Ugly Duckling however, these women rarely experience a permanent transformation, and are usually severely punished.

The problem with this trope is there are very few cases from history where witches used witchcraft to restore their youth (after all, botox and face lifts weren’t available in the early modern period). However the quest for an elixir of youth or the desire to restore one’s youth and beauty certainly did appear in Gothic literature, and the exchange of one’s soul for youth has been incredibly influential ever since Oscar Wilde penned his hedonistic Faust-tale The Picture of Dorian Grey.

In fact these witches owe far more of their trope to Dorian Grey, the stereotypes associated with female vanity, and ideas about the transitory nature of female beauty ( which is an illusion that amount to subterfuge where hags appear as beautiful younger women, like Michelle Pfeiffer’s Lamia in Stardust), than they do to actual early modern witchcraft cases. ), there are no direct parallels in the cases I look at in early modern England.

However there are other links that should be briefly addressed here. In Thinking with Demons Stuart Clark points to complaints about the use of masks in popular festivals as a Devilish, and were derided in language that mimicked critiques of witches’ sabbats.[i] For the witches in Stardust, the heart of a Star can maintain their youth, but it is not a permanent change, or solution. Like the elixir made from Harry Potter’s eponymous Philosopher’s Stone, this is a youth booster, not true eternal life.

It has been contended in the media that we live in a world which prefers women to be young, but any attempts to maintain female youth are through invasive surgery are treated as the domain of the foolishly vain. To say we, as a society, have a problematic relationship with female appearance would be an understatement.

In Films like Stardust the witches are contrasted with both the eternally youthful, beautiful and good Yvaine, and the gracefully aging Princess Una (whose many years of imprisonment by the witch Ditchwater Sal have not aged her apart from a single streak of white hair). While the witches in Stardust are portrayed as greedy, vicious, selfish murderers, while Yvaine and Una are generous, loving, and selfless.[ii]

In “Beyond Wicked Witches And Fairy Godparents: Ageing and Gender in Children's Fantasy on Screen”, Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozarion and Deb Waterhouse-Watson argue that “Crones [...] are frequently penalised for the magical appropriation of youthful, beautiful bodies, as more adult fantasy films such as Stardust [...] and Into the Woods [...] show.”[iii]

I would argue that in the case of Stardust the punishment is meted out primarily be turning Lamia’s deteriorating youth into a recurring joke. In early modern plays, witches’ lust and stupidity (or the gullibility of their victims) could similarly be played for comic affect, as in The Late Lancashire Witches (1634).

I suspect there is quite a deal to say about our current obsession with youth and beauty (particularly in relation to women) in these portrayals of witches. An obsession we might likewise compare with early modern concerns over female sexuality and the susceptibility of women to the Devil’s influence (though I would argue that those concerns also play a role in our current obsession with female beauty).

Last week I suggested that witches on supernatural were simply updated caricatures of early modern conceptions of witches - with a little occultism thrown in for good measure. They were the worst nightmares of early modern theologians come to life. The witches in Stardust, and other films present different nightmares: that young women are or will soon be hags; that ‘bad women’ lie about their appearance to deceive others; and that age is a punishment – particularly for women.

On the last idea, I was particularly struck when I recently watched Into the Woods. The film is of Sondheim’s musical, and in the witch becomes the meeting point for different fairytales: she is both Rapunzel’s abductor  and the source of Jack and the Beanstalks’ magic beans. Meryl Streep’s character declares early on:

The Witch: You see, when I had inherited that garden, my mother had warned me I would be punished if I were ever to lose any of the Beans.

In flashback we see how The Witch was transformed into the crazy-haired hag figure we see in the first two-thirds of the film. The Witch’s desire to break her mother’s curse and regain her beauty is both the driving force behind the narrative of the film, and an interesting comment on the relativity of youth and beauty (after all it is still Meryl Streep, she doesn’t transform into a girl of 20).

Similarly Michelle Pfeiffer, while acclaimed as one of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood, is not ‘young’ in the traditional sense either. So perhaps the concern here is really with that mid-life period, where women are no longer nubile girls, but not yet crones either. When botox injections, cosmetic surgery, and cosmetics can deceive the eye, I suppose a concern with appearance (not unknown in the early modern era either) and magic's transformative powers in that area seems a rich vein for fictional witches to exploit. The other side of this trend is that in which vanity leads the wicked woman to be jealous of young women’s beauty (see Evil Queen in the various adaptation of Snow White),[iv] and attempt to use magic to destroy her, with sometimes drastically ageing consequences, as in Mirror Mirror.

While this might seem just desserts for a would-be murderer, it is the motivations of 'femme fatales' (including the non-witches) in fantasy films that often strikes me. As with the recent (scintillating) portrayal of the wicked stepmother in Cinderella (2015) by Cate Blanchett, and Angela Lansbury's earlier turn in the same role in Ever After (1998), women 'of a certain age', are viewed as predatory, and a little bit desperate. And not only for themselves, but for their daughters. There is often a sense that these women see the clock moving forwards, and while they cannot (as Lamia and other witches do) move time backwards, but they can ensure that their daughters do not waste their own youth (and/or beauty). In an aside, one of the more amusing comments on this portrayal was an assertion on Hollywood Life that this was the most evil portrayal, because Blanchett emphasised the Evil Stepmother's envy and jealousy.

So as I attempt to wrap up what has rapidly become something of a ramble, let me say that there has been quite a good deal said on the topic of female age, and our societies apparent disposal of women over a certain age. The portrayal of women over 30 in fantasy or modern interpretations of fairytales often show these women as aware of their fading youth, and enraged by it (if they are not saintly mothers, or the heroine. And yes, we are definitely in Madonna/whore territory here - see Stardust, above). 

These women who rage at middle age is perhaps best epitomised by the mother who literally steals her daughter's body in Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Season One episode "Witch":

Catherine:  How dare you raise your hand to your mother! I gave you birth. I gave up my life so you could drag that worthless carcass around and call it living?

As always, Catherine is punished for her crimes with what she wanted: to return to her glory days as cheerleader, albeit forever trapped as the moving eyes of her own cheerleading trophy.

I suppose the question I am really posing here is: what is our problem with women and the ageing process that it recurs so frequently in recent portrayals of witches?

I hope you have caught on by now that I don't think this is a recent development, after all older women make up a significant percentage of early modern witch trials in some jurisdictions, and men have been concerned about women's use of cosmetics to falsify youth and beauty for millennia. I would argue that little has altered to our perception since Snow White was first penned that women who are vain cannot be good, or that old chestnut that true beauty comes from within (though being physically attractive is usually also a requirement, even if it involves its own transformation).

As with the recurrence of the coven of sexy young women who are avaricious and stupid enough to become enslaved to the Devil (see last week’s post), I don’t see this trope fading away. So expect to see more vain women trying to use magic to either transform themselves, or eliminate their younger competitors. As long as we still associate age with ugliness and female envy, there will probably be witches on film who rue the loss of their youth, and are prepared to do anything to get it back.  

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[i] Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, 1996: 22.

[ii] The only other notable female character, Victoria, is also portrayed as vain, greedy, and self-interested.

[iii] Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozarion and Deb Waterhouse-Watson “Beyond Wicked Witches And Fairy Godparents: Ageing and Gender in Children's Fantasy on Screen” in Imelda Whelehan and Joel Gwynne eds., Ageing, Popular Culture and Contemporary Feminism: Harleys and Hormones, (2014).

[iv] As with Lamia in Stardust, these witches are portrayed by famously beautiful actresses, Charlize Theron and Julia Roberts.

Malleus Maleficarum

*Note, this blog contains some obscenities. If you find that offensive, please do not continue reading.

When it comes to fictional witches on our television screens (or our computers or tablets, come to think of it) there is often a simple dichotomy: good sisters of an ancient wiccan-style religion, or evil, licentious backstabbers using harmful magic to get ahead whatever the cost.

Over this post, and the next two, ending with the post on November 1^st (All Saints Day), I want to examine some of the common tropes used to portray witchcraft in our contemporary media, and contrast these with early modern examples and concepts. Next week I intend to discuss the use of age and vanity as a trope in depictions of evil witches, and on November 1st I want to examine the 1990s obsession with witches of the first kind described above - witches who owe a great deal to the fertility cult conception of Margaret Murray adopted by many modern wiccans.

But this week and next week I want to discuss popular depictions of witches that have far more in common with how most people in early modern Europe would have conceived of them: members of a satanic cult which sought personal gain at the expense of their souls.

In 1928 the occultist, Priest, and early modern drama enthusiast Montague Summers translated the Malleus Maleficarum, a late fifteenth-century work on demonology and witchcraft. The Malleus is most famous (or infamous) for serving as a practical guide to discovering witches in early modern Europe. Summers endorsed the content of the Malleus, and by increasing its availability, and translating it into English he obviously extended the reach of its ideas.

For example when a group of young drama students (including me) went looking for rituals associated with witchcraft and Satanism at the university library, the Summers 1928 edition of the Malleus was still available (sadly it lacked the sort of things we were looking for).

In the last century wicked witches have often taken the form of hags: older, warty, suffering from an unfortunate case of verdigris, cackling and mean to children.

However there is another popular conception of witches as attractive women, often promiscuous, treacherous, vengeful and driven by their lusts (with a sub-category of extremely vain witches, I will examine next week).

Unsurprisingly the CW channel show Supernatural (2005-present) has tended to use witches of youthful, attractive sort. The first truly witch-centric episode of the show came in Season Three, with the amusingly titled “Malleus Maleficarum”.

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One of the opening scenes shows the two heroes of the show, brothers Dean and Sam, discussing witches in a rather long piece of exposition which both rhetorically references and dispenses with the concept of the old hag:

DEAN
So we're thinking witch?

SAM
Uh, yeah, and not some new age wicked water douser either. This is Old World black magic Dean, I mean, warts and all.

The exposition continues with:

DEAN
So what are we thinking, we're uh, looking for some old craggy blair bitch in the woods.

SAM
No it could be anyone. Neighbor, coworker, man, woman that's the problem Dean, they're human, they're like everyone else.

In the end the brothers discover a coven of women, three of whom were driven by petty desires to do better materially.

In brief, one of the witches committed the first murder seen in the episode, in order to get revenge against her ex-lover (she kills his wife). That witch is then killed by another member of the coven, in order to protect them from her ‘instability’ – this other member of the coven is later revealed to actually be a demon disguised as their friend, and the instigator of the women’s decision to use witchcraft by providing them with the spellbook they use.

The kind of witches that appear most commonly as antagonists in Supernatural owe their trajectory to the real witches of the early modern period. They have made a deal with the Devil in return for powers in order to gain the things they desire in life. The Examination and confession of certaine wytches at Chensforde (1566), described how an accused witch called Elizabeth Francis was offered material wealth by an evil spirit, who came to her in the form of a cat:

this Elizabeth desired firste of the sayde Cat (callinge it Sathan) that she might be ryche and to haue goodes, and he promised her she shoulde, askinge her what she would haue, and she sayde shepe […] & this Cat forthwith brought shepe into her pasture to the nu[m]ber of .xviii blacke and whyte, whych continued wyth her for a tyme, but in the ende dyd all weare awaye she knewe not howe[…]

[W]hen she had gotten these shepe, she desired to haue on Andrew Byles to her husband, which was a man of some welth, and the cat dyd promyse she shold, but that he sayde she must fyrste consent that this Andrew shuld abuse her, and she so did.

And after when this Andrew had thus abused her he would not mary her, wherfore she willed Sathan to waste his goodes, which he forthwith did, and yet not beyng contentid with this, she wild him to touch his body, whych he forthewith dyd whereof he died.[i]

The comparisons with the witches in the episode of Supernatural are easy to spot. These are witches who would not have surprised the early modern observer.  

The other aspect of this episode that is of interest is the presence of a demon as a member of the coven. The use of a human figure who introduces a witch to the diabolic arts, but who may also be the Devil appeared in the famous case at Warboys, in the late 1580s and early 1590s.

After the guilty verdict and executions were announced at the trial of the Warboys witches (the Samuel family), the elderly Alice Samuel pleaded that she should be reprieved as she was pregnant, and a jury of women was therefore appointed to examine her. Given her advanced years, the women appointed to examine her determined ‘that she was not with childe, unlesse (as some saide) it was with the Diuell, & no marueile’.[ii]

This part of the case was discussed in detail in Philip Almond’s The Witches of Warboys. Almond suggests that the idea that the Devil may have impregnated Alice may have been put to the women by Henry Pickering, who was both involved in trial, and had some knowledge of continental cases where witches claimed to have copulated with Devils and been impregnated by them.[iii] The extent of Pickering’s influence may perhaps also be seen in Alice’s confession that she had allowed William Langley, from whom she received her spirits, to have ‘carnall knowledge of her bodie’ when he handed over her familiars.[iv] The pamphlet goes on to suggest that: ‘Some are of opinion, that [Langley] was the Diuel in mans likenesse.’[v]

So the idea that the Devil could masquerade as a witch in order to tempt others into becoming witches also has precedent in early modern Europe.

While witches had – until Season 10 – played a minor role in the show, the problems over the show's treatment of women have been raised by quite a few different writers, fans, and even a member of the show’s cast. Many of those questioning the simplistic characterisations - and often violent demises - of the show's female characters have described the show as blatantly sexist and misogynistic. However, Supernatural is part of a genre that is quite famous for its misogyny. The punishment of women in horror for sexual behaviour, or for being anything other than virtuous and/or maternal figures is quite well-recognised (and even has a Wikipedia page).

Hence the use of early modern conceptions of witches as women who are either promiscuous, greedy, venal, vengeful servants of the Devil or so stupid as to get involved in such clearly diabolic schemes, is unsurprising. The failure in this case is that Supernatural has shown so little desire to play with these tropes – as shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Game of Thrones have – and therefore create a dialogue with their audience’s preconceptions of gender and witchcraft. And I don’t see that happening any time soon.

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[i] John Phillips, The Examination and confession of certaine wytches at Chensforde in the countie of Essex, pp.13.

[ii] [Anon], The most strange and admirable discouerie of the three Witches of Warboys, p. 51.

[iii] Almond, The most strange and admirable discouerie of the three Witches of Warboys, p. 101.

[iv]  [Anon], The most strange and admirable discouerie of the three witches of Warboys p. 112

[v]  [Anon], The most strange and admirable discouerie of the three witches of Warboys p. 112                          

The Long Shadows of Montague Summers and Margaret Murray

Over the next few weeks I want to discuss some modern representations of witchcraft or uses of the term witch. I want to compare and contrast them with early modern examples. In order to do this, I want to briefly air some of my thoughts on the figure of ‘the witch’ in modern culture. I have been working on a piece on witches in a television series for publication elsewhere, and the process has caused some related thoughts to coalesce.

It could be witches
Some evil witches -
Which is ridiculous
'Cause witches, they were persecuted
Wicca good and love the earth
And women power and I'll be over here

~ Xander Harris, “I’ve Got a Theory”, from  “Once More with Feeling”, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 7

In the early twentieth century two authors wrote a series of works which argued that the idea of a secret cult within Christian Europe - often found in early modern witchcraft tracts and trials - had a basis in fact. The eccentric author and clergyman, Montague Summers believed that ghosts, werewolves, vampires, and witches were real.[i] While the folklorist Margaret Murray argued that early modern witches were part of a pre-Christian fertility cult.[ii]

Though this idea has been roundly dismissed by modern witchcraft historians,[iii] the idea still has great popular currency, not least because it suits a number of different agendas.

From genre fiction, to popular television shows, to modern wiccans, some feminist authors, and some atheists, the idea that witchcraft trials were the persecution of a religious minority by an oppressive Christian church is a rather appealing idea. Modern Wiccans and Satanists often believe their traditions extend from antiquity, not that they were inventions of the last two centuries (like so many other ‘traditions’), so calling those who died during ‘theBurning Times’ their sisters and brothers has some appeal.

In America associations between witchcraft and Satanism remain fairly strong compared to other countries, and modern day panics about satanic cults and secret religious societies are still a recurring theme of both public life and popular culture. Although I have noted another correlation with another popular conspiracy: alien abduction. For some people it seems that the Devil has been replaced by little green (or grey) men who may or may not be here to extract you organs, and may or may not be in league with Uncle Sam (their very own modern day Antichrist).

For some feminists the ‘gendercide’ of witchcraft remains a rallying cry against the patriarchy. While I am myself a feminist, I do wish people would at least attempt to get their facts right before explaining to me (again) that a million women burned, or that no men died in the witch trials. Or, worst of all, that witches were members of Margaret Murray’s female fertility cult.

And some atheists have pointed to the European witch trials as part of Christianity's oppression of those who think differently, or are different. Quite often you can find these ideas connected to one another, with the oppressive church targeting women, who were the last remnant of an oppressed religion with its own healing practices.

For Joss Whedon’s TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) witches got one of their many outings in genre television in the 1990s. The first appearance of a witch on the show was an evil, deceitful, and vain mother. But regular characters who had ‘wicca’ powers were, for the most part, portrayed more favourably.

Which is ridiculous
'Cause witches, they were persecuted
Wicca good and love the earth
And women power and I'll be over here

Is part of a verse from song “I’ve Got a Theory” in the musical episode “Once More with Feeling”, which captures the ‘wicca-fertility-cult/real-witches-that-were/are-empowered-women’ concept that underlay some representations of witches in the 1990s. This idea has ongoing resonance for some people, and continues to affect the way in which some people conceive of men and women killed for witchcraft in the early modern period.

 Around this time of year I am regularly reminded of David Mitchell's amusing discussion of the way in which distance removes the sting of actual historical events. Mitchell pointed out that the term "Rape and Pillage" has become an amusing term even though we would not find either rape or pillage amusing today. I don't wish to sound like a stick in the mud, nor do I find most genre depictions of witchcraft in anyway offensive. But occasionally I find the way people casually make some correlation between their own situation with that of early modern people who actually died for a crime that most likely they didn't commit (diabolism), or which from my point of view, they couldn't have committed (maleficium), somewhat problematic.  

I cannot count the number of times this concept has been raised by people when I tell them about the topic of my dissertation. In the past I have occasionally directed people to a few places where they might find facts to replace common misconceptions.

This post is not meant as a replacement for that, but as background for future posts on modern representations of witchcraft, particularly in genre fiction and television between now and Halloween.

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[i] Montague Summers, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology, (1956).

[ii] Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, (1921); Margaret Murray, The God of the Witches, (1933); Margaret Murray, The Divine King of England, (1954).

[iii] See James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, (1995): pp. 7-8; Brian P. Levack,  The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, (2006): pp. 19, 294-295.