#Witchstorian

[breelandwalker]

heyyy, good natured question here: because i kind of think ignoring how incredible the tarot system built by waite is, just because it uses symbols from different religions is quite limiting. when i compared pre waite decks to his creation there really is s lot that doesnt quite have as much meaning. i feel like a lot of the pre golden dawn decks are more focused on mundane and fortune telling. while waites system is actually very mystical and its more of a system than what ive observed otherwise. this is just my own pbservation but i wonder what you think about it. i of course would neever propose any deck to a person who feels uncomfortable with what it depicts, especially when it concerns religions. but i feel like a lot of the new hip and aesthetic tarots kind of miss out on a whole lot of mysticism, symbolism and meaning. they become a bit watered down if you know what i mean? wonder if anyone else feels this way

Oooo, let me get my Witchstorian hat....because there is some TEA here.

The association of tarot cards with various types of mysticism goes back to 18th-century France. The decks existed in Italy before then, as playing cards for various types of trump-style games, some of which are still played on the peninsula today. A French scholar by the name of Antoine Court de Gebelin, who is considered the grand-daddy of many later occultist philosophies, published a piece in 1781 on the allegedly-ancient origins of the symbols on tarot cards. He claimed that Ancient Egyptian priests had encoded their sacred text, The Book of Thoth, into tarot cards and that if a person knew how to read the symbols properly, they could unlock all of human knowledge.

Fun Fact: Gebelin knew precisely jack shit about Ancient Egypt. The language on the ancient papyri hadn't even been translated yet when he put forth these ideas (and once it was, none of it supported his claims). But Gebelin was very popular and he was a white guy in colonial academia, so nobody was asking inconvenient questions.

The same year, another French guy wrote an essay that posited that one could map the 22 Major Arcana cards onto the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This eventually led to members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn creating the Rider-Waite deck with Hebrew lettering and the tetragrammaton, because they were Ob.Sessed. with Jewish mysticism even though none of them were actually Jewish.

The Order created the first modern standard set and the rules for reading them in 1909-1910, and these were later expanded upon by Eden Gray in the 1960s, which gives us the tarot as we know it today.

There's a lot more to the story of tarot than this, but that's the TL;DR version of how the cards became mystical and why some decks include Jewish symbols. Which, quite frankly, they shouldn't, mystical associations or no.

If you're interested in the full story, you can check out the August 2021 episode of my podcast, Hex Positive - "The Trouble With Tarot." I wrote it in response to a then-prevalent argument that tarot originated with the Romani people and that the use of the cards was culturally protected. (Spoiler alert: they didn't and it's not, but I do address the connection in the episode.)

Personally, I don't feel like artistic decks water down the practical use of the cards anyway, but I do find that people connect more strongly to some decks. I love my Visconti-Sforza deck with its' classical artwork and old symbols, and I love my Golden Nouveau deck with all the flowery, flowy paintings. And I learned to read on the Faery Wicca tarot deck, which is exactly as fluffy and ridiculous as it sounds, but I love that one too.

So really, I think it's all a matter of personal preference. If the artwork and symbolism in a deck doesn't resonate with you, that's probably going to feel kind of useless to you personally. But somebody else might pick it up and go, "Wow! This is exactly what I've been looking for!" and have great success with their readings. To each their own.

Hope this helps!

[cryptotheism]

I have never, in all my years discussing comparative religion and history, seen someone use the word "manichean" in conversation, let alone use it in proper context, and I want you know that that brought me some much-needed joy today. 😊

Sincerely, The Witchstorian

See I could have just said Dualist but why pass up an opportunity to be a pedantic pseudointellectual on the internet

[hexpositive]

Tidying up my new digs... can't wait to get back to work.

The Witchstorian is BACK, baby!

Love to all my witchy darlings! Thank you for your patience and support!

[crazycatsiren]

Hello mother cat. I have a general wondering. A friend and I were discussing Christians and pagan holidays and we both hit a general wall of “is this hypocrisy or not” and I thought I would ask you for some clarification hopefully. I know that going to friends or random Christians and saying that they “stole” pagan ideal is shitty and wrong but if it’s a family member who just doesn’t stop and shoved their religion at you for anything and everything, is it still bad or harmful to say even though you know it gets under their skin and is the only way to get them to stop is to say something about how their religion “took” ideals from another group.

I mean no harm in this question, just looking for some clarification. I thank you for your time and knowledge.

I'm going to invite @breelandwalker our resident witchstorian to join me in this discussion because I think it's important that we talk about this.

Here's the historical truth of it, and I'm going to be blunt here as both a Christian and a Pagan who has actually studied the history of religions: Christians didn't steal shit from Pagans. From Jews? Yes. Pagans? No.

Anybody shoving their religion in another person's face is not cool, and you can tell them that. Religion is like a penis. It's cool to have one, it's cool to be proud of having one, but once you whip it out and smack other people with it, that becomes very much not cool. And you should tell them how you feel, as in, hey, you're invading my space and violating my boundary with your religious beliefs and you need to stop. But for the loves of the saints and spirits, using the misinformed "Christians stole everything from Pagans" argument is plain wrong, and doesn't make you look any better as a non Christian.

[jasper-pagan-witch]

i really like your vibes. i've seen you mention mutuals, but do you have other magic blogs you recommend?

Hey there, anon! In fact, I do!

@crazycatsiren aka Lorelei is a very common-sense-first Hellenic hearth witch. Cat provides valuable insight and incredible shitposts. She's also physically disabled and a witch of color, so fae is often talking about a lot of appropriation, racism, and ableism that crops up in magic spaces.

@breelandwalker aka Bree is our local witchstorian, author, and podcast host. Her ability to dig out sources to debunk bullshit is almost unparalleled.

@popwitch-astralae aka Astra is a good friend of mine and another pop culture magic practitioner. Hē is focused on Kingdom Hearts and other specific fandoms.

@will-o-the-witch aka Rabbit shines a light on a lot of antisemitic bullshit in magic spaces. You may know her best for xer tomato soup sigil. Ve also talks about different types of divination.

@faustianfandums aka Faust, the owner of @strixhaven-biblioplex, is my fellow MTG mage. We're currently trying to work together on an introduction to MTG-based magic and how that works. Needless to say, a shared Google Doc is a war zone.

@crimsondawnsdevotionals aka Crimson and @the-fox-jawed-witch aka Foxen are my fellow co-owners of the Coven of Cards, where we provide several magic services including divination, devotional writing, spell searching and casting, and more. We're starting to build it up into an even bigger project and love any assistance people can give us. You can see a lot of their respective works on their blogs!

@windvexer aka Fool Chicken is an absolute terror on my dash, and I mean that lovingly. Fool has made me rethink my approach to magic and how I interact with non-physical entities, along with being my strongest supporter as I carefully dip my toe into spirit work.

@alabaster-the-crow aka Uncle Alabaster is my future platonic husband and fellow cohost of the Jasper and Crow show here on Tumblr, where you guys get to see our DMs in real time, especially over my lack of cooking skills and my advocacy of microwave tea. He does a lot of cartomancy and we co-wrote a whole book on tarot, cartomancy, and dice divination in five days.

@serpentandthreads aka Runa is my pal who is helping me carefully dip a toe into folk magic. Her practice is incredible to see snippets of and I recommend having a look at her blog and folk magic Discord server.

And finally, the newest blog to reach my following page, we have @creature-wizard. Creature (I can call you that, right?) cuts through a lot of conspiracy theorist BS both past and present. I definitely recommend giving them a follow because the skepticism is tasty and needs to be appreciated more.

I hope this gives you a few new blogs to follow, anon!

~Jasper

[lia-witchcraft]

Your project sounds VERY interesting! My Witchstorian heart loves things that explore the intersections between major historical events and concurrent popular thought on witchcraft. Just did a whole project exploring the history of witchcraft-related law in Western Europe and the US last year, which definitely included a lot about witch trials, so I'm PRIMED for this. Definitely following for updates!

I'm so glad you are as interested as I am! Any insights or recommendations would be really appreciated.

[breelandwalker]

Oh great witchstorian, I bring to you an offering of tea and coffee and the promise of "I owe ya one" in return for an answer to a question of mine:

Do you know what that big deal about "Celtic astrology" is? Which group did it come from? Where's the rest of the context necessary to understand it? Or was it created recently and then applied backwards?

~Jasper from @jasper-pagan-witch

Ohhhhh THAT.... -claps on the hat-

Okay so, here's the thing. The ogham letter calendar? That exists. We have evidence of it dating back to the single-digit CE years. That's just how some Celtic peoples marked their year.

The Celtic Tree Calendar setup we see today, particularly the mapping of the tree calendar onto a "zodiac," is an entirely modern invention. It was invented by Robert Graves, yet another contribution to modern paganism from his novel, The White Goddess. (Honestly, I don't know how anyone can look down their nose at pop culture paganism when so much of Wicca and nondenominational paganism based upon Wicca can trace its' roots - pun fully intended - back to fiction and poetry from the 1940s.)

Graves was one of those people who was REALLY into trying to figure out what the ancient Druids were up to, and he made an attempt to figure that out by charting the mythology of Ireland, England, and certain parts of mainland Europe and the Middle East. One of the theories he put forward in The White Goddess was this idea of a tree calendar that more or less followed the same model as the Greek zodiac we're all familiar with from our daily horoscopes.

Now, witches, pagans, and New Agers just LOVE a good zodiac, and while there are many ways of casting a horoscope or calculating a birth chart, the systems do not always overlap or work in the same ways. But since when have details mattered when you can have a tree instead of a constellation for your birth sign, or a "Native American Moon Zodiac" infographic that just looks so cool and free-spirit-y on your Facebook page?

So yeah. When you see anything referring to a "Celtic tree calendar" that presents the idea as an astrological system? Completely modern invention.

Is it fun? Absolutely. Is it a neat thing we can do if we want? Sure.

Is it real in the sense of being created or used as an astrological device by pre-Christian Celtic pagans? Not even remotely.

Hope this answers your question!

[breelandwalker]

Hex Positive preview - Bree Ruins Everything

So I'm working on the September episode of Hex Positive, that "Bree Ruins Everything" one you all asked for, and I think I've finally picked my subjects for a discussion about concepts in modern witchcraft and paganism that are not as ancient or historically accurate as they first seem -

The Maiden-Mother-Crone archetype

The Wheel of the Year

“We Are The Granddaughters of the Witches You Couldn't Burn”

I'm not going to go into all the details here, as I still have a fair amount of research to do. Suffice it to say that while these concepts may reference older ideas and some historical happenings, all three are the product of modern invention. I'm not going to go too far into Margaret Murray's quackery on that last point, but I'll certainly be talking about her interpretation of witch trial evidence and returning to the subject for a proper roast at some future date. Pun FULLY intended.

It's important to note, since I know the idea of these things being...well, fake antiques is going to rankle some people, that the fact that these ideas are not actually ancient does not necessarily tarnish their legitimacy as fixtures in modern witchcraft and paganism. Even the Granddaughters quote, which I have roundly lambasted on more than one occasion, is as much a statement of feminist empowerment as it is an inaccurate meme about the victims of witch trials.

I'll be going into more depth in the episode, obviously, and I'll be sharing my sources in the show notes as usual. Just wanted to give you all something to look forward to. 😊

[breelandwalker]

Oh great and powerful Bree, share with us a tidbit of knowledge! What’s your favorite piece of witch history?

Ooo, good question! It's really a mix, but I think my favorite things that I've discovered are all the various people who published treatises during the height of the witch trial craze that were like, "No, sit down, y'all are crazyflakes, stop killing innocent people over superstitious delusion and village gossip, this is ridiculous. Shut. Up."

There's such a tendency to portray those couple of centuries as universally paranoid and just utterly rabid to hunt down anyone who even so much as forgot to say "bless you" if someone sneezed. So it's nice to know that even when things were depressingly awful, there were cooler, more logical heads trying to prevail.

[breelandwalker]

Friendly reminder that if you cannot explain, discuss, or celebrate your beliefs without shitting on someone else's, you neither understand nor truly believe in your chosen path.

Yes, even if you have trauma.

And no, you don't get to claim the suffering of people who died during witch trials because those were not secret pagan witches.

Also, learn your history. Not everything was originally a pagan sex festival, the Wheel of the Year is a recent invention, Christians did not steal our holidays, and cultural development doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Don't be a pick-me witch. You're better than that. So do better.

[breelandwalker]

Gearing up for the yearly presentation on why the date of Easter has nothing to do with the modern Wiccan holiday of Ostara like

[breelandwalker]

I'm just gonna go ahead and say it.

Y'all need to stop comparing Wicca to Christianity.

Stop claiming that a pagan religion that's not even a full century old has the same level of influence or the same cultural and historical impact as one that has existed for more than two thousand years, spending a good deal of that time as the official faith of multiple countries.

Stop transferring your issues with cultural Christianity onto a pagan religion that, until very recently, was the ONLY pagan religion publicly and legally recognized as a religion at all, and which laid the groundwork for ALL of the positive perception and freedom of practice that we enjoy as witches today.

Stop pretending that religions and people don't change and that problematic foundations automatically mean problematic followers. If that were true, there's not a single one of us that would escape being tarred with that brush. ALL of us have been problematic at some point. The point is not to Never Ever Be Problematic At All; it's to abjure what is most egregious (racism, sexism, LGBTQ-phobia, etc) and to correct and improve the parts of yourself that need it in an ongoing process. Purity culture is poison and it will destroy us all.

If you really want to get away from the "problematic" ideas connected with the origins of Wicca and the widespread presence of Wiccan ideas extent within the modern witchcraft community, stop going on about unbroken lines and secret goddess cults and the Burning Times, and start examining and decolonizing your own ideas and practices.

Learn to identify the difference between Wiccan ideas and New Age ones. Yes, there is a difference and yes, it matters. And learn your history. We would not be where we are without Wicca. The modern witchcraft community simply would not exist.

[breelandwalker]

hi! i was reading that post on things that need to stop in witchy/spiritual spaces and i was wondering what you meant by the burning times (spelled tymez)? i truly have no idea what this is and sometimes humor goes over my head. thanks!

Oh, my WHEELHOUSE! -claps on the Witchstorian hat-

The Burning Times is a revisionist bit of historical fiction passed around and promoted by the modern witchcraft and pagan communities. It refers to a very real period in European history in the 15th-17th centuries when witch hunts and witch trials were happening frequently, many ending in the hanging or burning of the accused. The revisionist myth seeks to turn these innocents into martyrs, labeling them as members of a secret underground pagan cult that survived the Christianization of Europe and were later hunted by the Church for their attempts to keep a pre-Christian nature-based religion alive. Estimates put forth by some community figures, most notably Gerald Gardner, total the supposed number of slain witches as close to nine million.

In reality, while these trials certainly happened, the accused witches were almost entirely marginalized or disenfranchised persons, targets of vicious gossip and hearsay, or victims of political and ecclesiastical machinations beyond their control. Some were on the wrong side of disagreements between Church factions. Others were Jews, Muslims, or Roma persecuted by a prejudiced and easily frightened populace. And by that point in history, it is safe to say that while pre-Christian trappings certainly remained part of various seasonal festivals and popular superstitions, none of the people accused, arrested, or executed in witch trials were actually pagans.

Nor would they have labeled themselves as witches, despite what our modern standards may make of their practices and beliefs about the world they lived in. It's important to remember that "witch," up until the early 20th century was universally regarded as a derogatory term rather than an empowering one. It is still a derogatory and even dangerous thing to be called in many parts of the world today, despite efforts to reclaim it by the modern witchcraft movement.

(It should be noted that accused persons who confessed to being witches often did so under duress or torture, and it should go without saying that this does not constitute any kind of objective truth.)

Furthermore, the figure of Nine Million Witches is factually impossible in historic terms. With the continent already ravaged by war, famine, plague, and political upset during the 200 or so years that make up the so-called Burning Times, a loss of nine million people from witch trials alone (nearly all of them women, if Gardner is to be believed) would have completely decimated the population of Europe. The Black Death alone killed at least a third of the population less than a century before the first spate of these trials began and the continent wouldn't recover for another 150 years. Simply put, even with the most dedicated and zealous of witch hunters on the case, there wouldn't have been enough people to burn.

The actual number of witch trial victims is closer to about 100,000 all told. That's just what we can prove on paper. And even that made a huge impact. The real figures are enough of a tragedy on their own. No embellishment needed.

The Burning Times was adopted as both a pagan and a feminist buzzword for the patriarchal crimes of the Church, and a documentary film (riddled with factual errors) premiered in 1990 which spread the story to a wider audience and cemented the presence of the myth in the second wave of the New Age and witchcraft reconstructionist movements.

There have been many revelatory texts written by both pagan and secular scholars over the years which debunk the idea of the Burning Times, but it's so firmly entrenched, particularly in popular books by the likes of Buckland and Ravenwolf, that you still see it crop up from time to time. It's one of the things we often have to unteach newer witches and pagans, especially the ones who have an axe to grind.

When we say, "Oh they probably still believe in the Burning Times," with a bit of an eyeroll or a knowing look, it often signifies in a gently derivative way that the person is question is either new to the conversation and has not yet been disabused of certain outdated notions, or that they're clinging to those notions with a tenacity of cognitive dissonance too strong to be countered by common sense.

If you'd like more information on witch trials, I did a very long episode on the history of witchcraft and the law on Hex Positive back in September of 2021, tracing the evolution of witchcraft-related laws and notable trials from the Code of Hammurabi to the late 20th century. The Burning Times myth makes an inevitable appearance during the discussion.

Hope this cleared things up for you! 😁

[breelandwalker]

hi Bree! I am currently doing research on modern paganism as a whole, and have come across a few passages about how some practitioners claim to follow an 'old' or 'the old and true' religion. I know Margot Adler mentions this briefly in "Drawing Down The Moon" (page 77) - but I'm wondering if you've seen any other sources on this? I want to learn more about the origins of this 'old and true' religion, but none of my regular resources are turning up anything of substance.

-gasps in Witchstorian- Is it time? I think it's time. Excuse me while I put on my very best hat.

Today, we're going to have a chat about MARGARET FUCKING MURRAY and her thoroughly discredited theories about a Great White Western Witch-Cult. (I have plans to do a wholeass podcast episode on this nonsense in the coming year, so consider this a warm-up. I should also note that debunking claims of an Ancient Unified Religion of Witchcraft is part of how I first earned my stripes as a fledgling Witchstorian. So this be my wheelhouse and I welcome ye to it.)

In her 1921 book, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, Murray put forth the theory that the ceremonies and rituals detailed in witch trial documents were actually descriptions of practices utilized by a matriarchal pagan fertility cult whose adherents had survived in secret following the Christianization of the British Isles. She pointed to a number of historical personages accused of and/or executed for witchcraft as members of this alleged "Old Religion," presented the idea of "flying on broomsticks" as a ritual activity involving a leaping dance with brooms held between women's thighs (the handles being smeared with a hallucinogenic salve), and claimed that the "Horned God of the witches" was later twisted into modern artistic depictions of Satan as a method of quite literally demonizing these supposed pagan ways. Furthermore, according to Murray, the cult had survived into the present day in the form of a certain secret groups in rural areas of Britain. (It should be noted that while Murray did not invent this theory, she was its' biggest and arguably most legitimizing proponent in her day.)

If any of this is sounding familiar, you get a cookie.

Gerald Gardner was a big fan of these theories and further bolstered the claims when he touted the New Forest coven as a surviving group from the "Old Religion." He incorporated many of Murray's claims into the early framework of his own myth-building. If you read Witchcraft Today (1954), you'll see a lot of Murray's work repeated as a framework for Gardner's own theories on contemporary witchcraft practices, which later became the basis for Wicca.

The issue here is that Murray was working with both a flawed premise and a really terrible use of source material. Repeatedly, she cited superstition, prosecutorial arguments, and confessions from accused witches from 16th-17th century trial records as fact, completely ignoring that none of this had any physical evidence attached to it and that confessions were often made under torture or the threat thereof. She also cited a lack of evidence as alleged evidence of a coverup by the Church and the Crown, or the cult itself covering its' tracks. Even her contemporaries viewed her work as fringe theory and it's largely because she was invited to write the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Witchcraft and the later use of her theories in the creation of Wicca that she's taken seriously by anybody at all.

While Murray's claims are thoroughly discredited, almost literally laughed out of academia during her own lifetime, certain sectors of the modern witchcraft and pagan communities still cling to this idea of a secret surviving pre-Christian goddess cult. I can fully understand why this is tempting, given the romantic notion of clandestine meetings and bonfire dances out in the woods, as well as the need of some modern witches to feel connected to some form of borrowed martyrdom as a mirror for their own feelings of disenfranchisement. No serious scholar of the early modern period or the history of witch trials during that time considers Murray's work credible and modern historians are prone to cringing whenever her name is mentioned.

So yeah, if you see a work on modern paganism or witchcraft referring to "the Old Ways" or "the Old Religion," that's very likely what it's talking about. Margot Adler and Ronald Hutton, both noted and credible authors writing about the modern witchcraft movement, mention Murray's witch-cult hypothesis in their books....but mostly only to say what a crock of shit it was.

For further reading, I recommend Jacqueline Simpson's 1994 article, "Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her And Why?," Ronald Hutton's "Triumph of the Moon," and the Wikipedia article on the witch-cult hypothesis (purely for a condensed version of how the theory came to be and how it has affected modern thought).

I'll leave you with this quote from A New History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans (Russell and Brooks), regarding Murray's work:

"That this 'old religion' persisted secretly, without leaving any evidence, is, of course, possible, just as it is possible that below the surface of the moon lie extensive deposits of Stilton cheese. Anything is possible. But it is nonsense to assert the existence of something for which no evidence exists. The Murrayites ask us to swallow a most peculiar sandwich: a large piece of the wrong evidence between two thick slices of no evidence at all."

[breelandwalker]

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The Witches Table Podcast

Your favorite Witchstorian was a guest on The Witches Table Podcast this week! I had a lovely chat with Lew and Rayne about secular witchcraft and where I draw the line between my craft and my spirituality, as well as some other fun and thought-provoking rambles.

Check it out wherever fine podcasts are streamed!

[breelandwalker]

Willow Wings Witch Shop - Samhain Sale!

It's that time of year once again, my lovelies! Time for brooms and bats and pumpkin spice EVERYTHING. And to celebrate this season of the witch, I'm offering a special sale for my social media followers.

Use code "WITCHSTORIAN" when you place an order between now and midnight EST this Halloween and you'll receive a free gift! (U.S. orders will receive a small gift. International orders will receive free shipping - please be advised that books are the only items in my shop that can ship internationally.)

I've just restocked all my books and kits ahead of the autumn market season, so visit the shop and place your order today! Don't forget to use code "WITCHSTORIAN" for those extra goodies!

Thank you for all your support and have a blessed and abundant autumn! 🎃