DANCING, ITS USE IN WITCHCRAFT
Dancing is one of the activities, like poetry and music, which are essentially magical. All primitive people have ritual dances, not only for enjoyment, but with some purpose behind them. They dance for life, and they dance also for death; as the Irish still do for ‘wakes’, to give the deceased person a good send-off on their journey to the Other World.
Dancing is very often imitative magic. The witches danced on riding-poles, leaping to make the crops grow tall. The riding-pole between the legs was a phallic symbol, a bringer of fertility and continuer of life. The witches of Aberdeen in 1596 were accused of gathering upon St. Katherine’s Hill, and there dancing “a devilish dance, riding on trees, by a long space”. Much earlier, in 1324, an Irish witch, Dame Alice Kyteler, was accused of having “a pipe of ointment, wherewith she greased a staff, upon the which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin, when and in what manner she listed”. This kind of dancing helped to give rise to the legend that witches rode through the air on staffs or broomsticks.
Another kind of witch dance is the round dance, performed around a person or around some object such as a tree or a bonfire. The aim of the round dance is to raise power. When it is done with some person, probably the leader of the coven, in the middle, then that person is directing the ‘Cone of Power’ that is being raised. The Stone Age witch dance depicted in the cave-painting at Cogul is of this type. When done around a tree, a bonfire, or perhaps an old sacred stone, it can be simply for enjoyment and exhilaration, and for invocation and worship of the Old Gods by this means. Witches have the idea that the gods enjoy seeing people happy, and this is therefore an acceptable form of worship.
A third kind of witch dance is a spiral, which is danced into the centre and out again. This symbolises penetration into the mysteries of the Other World. It is sometimes called ‘Troy Town’, after the old maze pattern, which was supposed to resemble the walls of Troy. Britain has a number of turf-cut mazes scattered throughout the countryside, mostly of unknown date but certainly very old. They are connected with the ancient British Mysteries. The dwelling-place of dead heroes, and of the Cauldron of Inspiration, was called Spiral Castle by the old Bards.
The idea of using a maze to represent penetration into another world was taken up by Christianity, and the maze-pattern can sometimes be found in old churches, with ‘Heaven’ or ‘Zion’ in the centre.
So much did the ring dance come to be associated with witchcraft, that in Sussex the ‘fairy-rings’ found upon the grassy Downs are called ‘hag-tracks’, from the belief that they are formed by the dancing feet of witches. They are regarded as nautral magic circles, and used to this day by country folk for various private magics; though this is done in a very quiet and secret manner.
Witches are traditionally supposed to dance back to back. This seems to have been mainly a kind of frolic. The author of A Pleasant Treatise of Witches (London, 1673), says: “The dance is strange, and wonderful, as well as diabolical, for turning themselves back to back, they take one another by the arms and raise each other from the ground, then shake their heads to and fro like Anticks, and turn themselves as if they were mad.” This sounds like a very fair description of some of our present-day dancing: the Jive, Rock and Roll, the Twist, and so on!
In fact, the witch-dancing he is talking about was probably very much like our young people’s dancing today, free and uninhibited. Respectable folks in those days danced very formal and courtly dances, and thought any other style of dancing vulgar and immoral.
It may well have been the witches who founded modern dancing; because Reginald Scot quotes Bodin as saying that “these night-walking or rather night-dancing witches brought out of Italy into France, that dance which is called La Volta”. La Volta is the dance that is believed to be the origin of the waltz, whose exciting rhythms gradually superseded the old stately minuets and pavanes, and paved the way for the livelier dances we know today.
Dancing has a very important magical effect upon people. It unites them in unison, by the rhythm of the beat of the dance. A group of people dancing in harmony together are of one mind, and this is essential to magical work. Their mood can be excited or calmed, by varying the pace of the dance. In fact, a state of light hypnosis can be induced by magical forms of dancing; or people can achieve a state of ecstasy, which in its original form is ex-stasis, ‘being outside oneself’.
That is, the everyday world is left behind, with its squalor and cares; and the magical realms open. The old witch dances helped people to attain this experience, and it was the excitement and enjoyment of the wild dancing, by night in the open air or in some deserted ruin or secret rendezvous, that was one of the main attractions of the Old Religion, and made it so difficult for the Church to extirpate it.
It put colour and enjoyment into the common people’s lives, when they had little enough to look forward to but a life of hard toil and submission. Many ot its ceremonies and usages have spilled over into folk custom that is still alive and vigorous today; such as, for instance, the famous Horn Dance at Abbot’s Bromley in Staffordshire. In fact, a great many of our colourful and time-honoured folk-customs have something of the old nature-worship and wisecraft at the heart of them.
The round dance is an imitation of the circling stars, the movement of the heavenly bodies. Consequently it is a kind of imitation of the universe. It is the wheel of the seasons, the wheel of life itself, of birth and death and rebirth. To dance it is to enter into the secret and subtle harmonies of Nature, and become one with the Powers of Life. Something of this is what the witches felt, and still feel, when they dance. A dance can be a prayer, an invocation, an ectsasy, or a spell. It is world-old and world-wide magic.
DEE, DR. JOHN
One of the most famous names in English occultism is that of John Dee. He was born in London in 1527; but his family came from Wales, and claimed to be descended from Roderick the Great, one of the native princes of Wales.
Dee was educated at Cambridge, where he eventually became a Fellow of Trinity College. From his earliest years, he was devoted to occult researches, being particularly interested in alchemy. He was a notable mathematician, and a collector of books and manuscripts. One of the cruellest blows of his life was when, on a journey abroad, he learned that an ignorant, bigoted mob had broken into his house at Mortlake and pillaged his library, because they believed him to be a worker of black magic.
Most of Dee’s works have still never been published; but one, The Hieroglyphic Monad, was translated from the Latin by J. W. Hamilton Jones, and published in 1947 by John M. Watkins. This extraordinary book gives an insight into Dee’s strange and brilliant mind; as does a less accessible book, A True and Faithful Relation of what passed for many years between Dr John Dee and some Spirits, by Meric Casaubon, published in 1659.
Under the rule of the Catholic Mary Tudor, Dee came dangerously near to being burned as a heretic and “a conjurer, a caller of devils”. Somehow he managed to clear himself of this charge, though he spent some time in prison. On the accession of Elizabeth I, he was received favourably by her at Court. He was responsible for selecting by astrology the most fortunate day for her coronation.
We now know that Dee was much more than Queen Elizabeth I’s occult adviser. In his frequent journeys abroad, he acted as a secret agent for the Queen; and by a curious coincidence, his code-name was ‘007’. Whether Ian Fleming, the creator of the present-day ‘007’, James Bond of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, was aware of this, is unknown; but some of Dee’s adventures were in stranger realms than Bond ever knew.
It has often been alleged by writers on the occult that witches have a secret language. It is true that a magical language exists; though witches are not the only occult practitioners who study and sometimes use it. This language is called Enochian; and we owe it to the researches of Dr. John Dee and his associate Edward Kelley.
The Enochian language was obtained by the clairvoyance of Edward Kelley, using a crystal or ‘shew-stone’ as a scrying instrument. (See ‘Scrying’.) By this means, Kelley obtained a number of large charts divided into squares, each square having a letter of the alphabet. These charts or ‘tablets’ were copied out, and then Kelley would describe how he saw in his vision an ‘angel’ or spirit pointing to one letter after another, to spell out a message. Dee, who acted as recorder at these seances, would note the message down from his copy of the chart. Sometimes the messages were given backwards, because the spirits said that the sacred names and invocations transmitted in this rather complicated way were so potent that their straightforward recitation could raise powers too strong to handle, and the magical operation of transmission might be upset.
Aleister Crowley, who was very interested in the Enochian language, endorses this view in his Magick in Theory and Practice. He says that use of the magical Enochian words requires prudence, because when they are used things happen—for good or ill. He notes also, as others have done, that this mysterious tongue really is a language, and not just a farrago of strange words. It definitely possesses traces of grammar and syntax. It also possesses a distinctive alphabet; though the Enochian words resemble Hebrew, in that they mainly consist of consonants, and the vowels have to be supplied by the speaker, according to certain rules.
The Enochian language is a complete philological mystery. It has been suggested that it is the remains of the speech of ancient Atlantis; perhaps because it seems to be named after the mysterious patriarch Enoch, who lived before the Flood, and who “walked with God, and he was not, for God took him” (Genesis, Chapter 5, verses 21–4). There exists a strange old volume, The Book of Enoch, which purports to tell the story of those ‘Sons of God’ who came down from heaven and mated with the daughters of men, and thereby gave forbidden knowledge to mankind, including the knowledge of magic. (See DEMONOLOGY.)
A memory of John Dee lingers on the borders of Wales, where between Knighton and Beguildy is a hill called Conjurer’s Pitch. According to local tradition, this is a place where Dee, when visiting Wales, used to perform magical rites.
Elizabeth’s successor, James I, looked upon Dee with less favour than had the Virgin Queen; and he ended his days in comparative poverty and obscurity, dying at Mortlake in 1608. In his time, however, John Dee had been the friend of men like Sir Francis Bacon and Sir Walter Raleigh. He was a member of the circle called ‘The School of Night’, which met secretly at Sir Walter Raleigh’s house at Sherbourne in Dorset, for the purpose of discussing occult and scientific subjects. Sherbourne is not far from the area of the Glastonbury Zodiac, so it may have been here that Dee learned of this. (See ZODIAC.)
DEMONOLOGY
A knowledge of demonology, or the supposed science of the study and classification of demons, was considered in times past to be essential to the investigation of witchcraft. This followed logically upon the Church’s doctrine that all witchcraft, and indeed all rival cults to that of Christianity, were inspired and directed by Satan.
This attitude is exemplified by the fact that in medieval times Mahound, a popular form of Mohammed, the founder of Islam, was another name for the devil.
The whole doctrine rested upon the Biblical references to the fallen angels, who were supposed to have been cast out of heaven, together with their leader, Satan or Lucifer, and thereafter to have become the implacable enemies of God and mankind. It is doubtful, however, if the ancient Hebrews originally meant anything like this by their references to Satan. In the Book of Job Satan figures as a sort of heavenly agent provocateur, employed by God to test people’s faith. He enters boldly into heaven among the sons of God, a term used in Genesis to refer to the angels. The word satan means an adversary.
An echo of this doctrine is found in the Lord’s Prayer, in the rather puzzling words “and lead us not into temptation”. The famous French occultist Eliphas Lévi has pointed out that if the Devil exists, he must be a Devil of God. Lévi had to write in an obscure manner to avoid offending the Catholic Church, of which he was a member; but he protests in his chief work, Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (Translated as Transcendental Magic by Arthur Edward Waite, George Redway, London, 1896), against the ideas of the demonologists. He accuses them of setting up Satan as a rival to God, and derives their beliefs from the Eastern doctrines of Zoroastrianism rather than from true Christianity. Zoroaster postulated two great powers, one of light and one of darkness, between which the rulership of the universe was divided.
The identification of Satan with Lucifer rests upon a text in Isaiah, Chapter 14, verse 12: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!” Early Biblical scholars connected this with the story in Revelations about the great star that fell from heaven, and with the words of Jesus in the Gospel of St Luke, Chapter 10, verse 18: “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.” Yet it is obvious from the context of this passage from Isaiah that the prophet is not referring to Satan at all, but to a proud and oppressive king of Babylon. The Hebrew word translated as ‘Lucifer’ means ‘shining one’, one of the stars of heaven. Out of such doubtful beginnings did religious doctrines grow, with the assistance of pious and semi-literate demonologists.
One of the chief source-books for the story of the fallen angels is The Book of Enoch, a collection of pre-Christian fragments which enlarge upon the strange story about the sons of God who “came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown” (Genesis, Chapter 6, verses 1–4). The Book of Enoch tells how, in the days before the Flood, some 200 ‘angels’ descended upon Mount Hermon, and took wives from among earthly women. The ‘angels’ not only interbred with the people of earth, but also taught them all kinds of knowledge they had never possessed before. For this, they were punished with great severity, and God sent the Flood to destroy the dangerous hybrid race of ‘giants’ which had resulted from this forbidden mating. (The Book of Enoch, translated by R. H. Charles, S.P.C.K., London, 1970.)
In the days when these accounts were written, the earth was thought to be the centre of the universe, the only place inhabited by men; and any other beings who descended from heaven could only be either angels or devils. Today, with our beginning of space travel and our knowledge of other possible worlds inhabitated by intelligent beings, perhaps more advanced than ourselves, we can see quite a different explanation for these traditions.
Some extra-terrestrial beings may have come to this earth in the far-distant past, sufficiently like ourselves to mate with human women and produce children, yet more advanced in knowledge and civilisation. The ordinary men of earth would naturally have been jealous and suspicious of these interlopers, and when the flood that drowned Atlantis took place—an event of which there are many traces in legend—they would have blamed it on the newcomers, with the old argument of post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
However, to the demonologists of the Middle Ages, the subject of the fallen angels was of great importance. In the notorious grimoire called The Goetia, or Lesser Key of Solomon, we are given the names and descriptions of seventy-two fallen angels, each of whom is a ruler over legions of spirits. We are told that King Solomon, by his command of magic, confined these demon rulers within a vessel of brass, which he then sealed with a magical seal and cast into a deep lake. Unfortunately, the people of Babylon, thinking the vessel contained treasure, drew it out and broke it open, so that all the demons escaped again. Nevertheless, by means of the magical sigils and instructions derived from Solomon, the magician may command these spirits and make them obey him. The same theme is repeated in other grimoires.
Another view of demons is that they are not fallen angels, nor created wicked, but rather the personification of blind forces of nature. Alternatively, they may be regarded as non-human spirits of a violent, capricious nature, often hostile to man, but of inferior mentality to him, and therefore able to be commanded by a powerful magician. This latter concept of demons is one which prevails among practitioners of magic all over the world.
The Victorian novelist Bulwer Lytton, who was the leader of a secret magical circle, tells us in his occult novel A Strange Story:
In the creed of the Dervish, and of all who adventure into that realm of nature which is closed to philosophy and open to magic, there are races in the magnitude of space unseen as animalcules in the world of a drop. For the tribes of the drop, science has its microscope. Of the hosts of yon azure Infinite magic gains sight, and through them gains command over fluid conductors that link all the parts of creation. Of these races, some are wholly indifferent to man, some benign to him, and some deadly hostile.
Such is an initiate’s view of demons, namely that some spirits may be dangerous for man to meddle with, not because they have been created for the purpose of tempting and tormenting, but in the same way that a wild animal is dangerous.
This is a dark and difficult subject. Nevertheless, demonologists in years gone by undauntedly drew up the most precise, detailed and fantastic list of demons, and their various powers and offices. The legions of hell were believed to be everywhere, and witches were their agents. These beliefs undoubtedly contributed much to the panicking of public opinion, until people unthinkingly acquiesced in the cruellest persecutions of the days of witch-hunting. (See DEVIL.)
DEVIL
This word of fear to the superstitious, and of profit to the sensational reporter, is generally taken to mean the personified principle of evil. However, the doctrine of the existence of a personal Devil has of late years been dropped by many leading churchmen. The belief in a rebellious Satan as the Power of Evil has always been contrary to the text in Isaiah, Chapter 45, verse 7: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.”
Some religious people need the concept of the Devil; it comes in extremely useful. For one thing, the idea that man is responsible for his own evils is distasteful to him. He likes to have something, or someone, to blame. The pattern was laid down very early, according to the story of the Garden of Eden; Adam blamed the woman, and the woman blamed the serpent. In the eyes of the early Church, which was markedly anti-feminist, woman and the Devil had been responsible for all mischief ever since.
DEVIL (above left) Two woodcuts illustrating conceptions of the Devil. (above right) An old engraving of the Wild Hunt riding the night wind at the full moon.
Also, the story of the Devil, ever seeking and plotting for man’s damnation, has been a powerful weapon of fear, to be used to keep people in line. When the very successful film, Rosemary’s Baby (which deals with the alleged diabolical activities of some modern witches), was first shown in America, it was condemned by the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures. The plot of the film concerns a girl who has a baby by the Devil; and Mia Farrow, who starred in this part, spoke up in reply to the Catholic Office’s ban.
She was quoted as saying that she did not see what grounds they had for condemnation of the picture, because it was the Catholic Church itself which had “invented the Satan figure” and it was they who were trying to hold masses of people together by the fear of hell.
Miss Farrow could have added that it was the Catholic Church which laid down the dogma that, because all the gods of the older religions were really devils, all pagans were devil-worshippers, and therefore fair game for any treatment, however bad. This attitude appears still to be maintained today, in certain sections of the Press.
Yet the very fact of the enormous success of Rosemary’s Baby, both as a book and a film, indicates the ambivalent attitude of society towards the concept of the Devil. He is supposed to be the personification of evil, and yet he fascinates. Why?
The statement that “the god of the old religion becomes the devil of the new” is something which anthropologists, and students of comparative religion, have found to be literally true. For instance, ‘Old Nick’ as a name for the Devil is derived from Nik, which was a title of the pagan English god Woden. Sometimes the Devil is simply called ‘the Old ‘Un’, another name full of meaning in this respect. (See OLD ONE, THE.)
The conventional representation of the Devil is that of a being with horns upon his head, and having a body which terminates in shaggy lower limbs and cloven hoofs. Again why? Is there any text in the Bible which describes ‘Satan’ or ‘the Devil’ in this manner? None whatever. Yet this is the picture which a mention of ‘the Devil’ conjures up.
In fact, it is simply a representation of Pan, the goat-footed god of nature, of life and vitality; and the Great God Pan himself is just another version of the most ancient Horned God, the deity whom the cave-men worshipped.
“Beloved Pan, and all the other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inmost soul; and grant that the outward and the inward may be as one.” Such was the prayer of Socrates. Was he a devil-worshipper?
Certainly the pagans had some gods of terrifying aspect. But these gods were not fallen angels, who plotted hideously to encompass man’s misery and perdition. They were the personification of destroying natural forces: the storm-wind, the darkness, the plague. The people who really worshipped Nature knew that she was not all pretty flowers and charming little birds and butterflies. The forces of creation were counter-balanced by the forces of destruction; but the Great Mother destroyed only to give rebirth in a higher form.
The word ‘Devil’ is of uncertain derivation. In my opinion, its most likely origin is the same as that of Deus, God; namely the Sanskrit Deva, meaning ‘a shining one, a god’. The Gypsies, whose Romany language is of Indo-European origin, call God Duvel. Truly, Demon est Deus Inversus, “the Demon is God reversed”, as the old magical motto has it.
The word ‘demon’ itself comes from the Greek daimon, which originally meant a spirit holding a middle place between gods and men. Only later, in Early Christian times, was it taken to mean an evil spirit.
The spirits of Nature which the pagans sensed as haunting lonely places, were neither good nor evil. They were simply different from man, not flesh and blood, and therefore best regarded with caution and respect. People of Celtic blood in the lonelier parts of the British Isles take this attitude to this day towards the fairies, whom they call the Good Neighbours or the People of Peace.
The Devil is that which is wild, untamed and unresolved—in nature, and in human nature. He is the impulses in themselves, which people fear arid which they dislike to admit the existence of. Hence these impulses become exteriorised, and projected in the form of devils and demons. No wonder that in the Middle Ages, when the Church ruled with an iron hand, the Devil appeared everywhere! He was the projected image of the natural desires, especially sexual desires, which would not be denied, however much the Church denounced them as sin.
The Devil as the personification of the mysterious and untamed forces of nature, appears all over the British Isles in place-names, applied to things which seemed extraordinary and inexplicable. There is the great gash in the South Downs, near Brighton, called the Devil’s Dyke. Hindhead, in Surrey, has the Devil’s Punch Bowl, and there are two more in the Scilly Isles and in Eire. There are two Devil’s Glens, one in Wicklow and another in the Vale of Neath. A curious pinnacle of rock in the witch-haunted Cotswolds is called the Devil’s Chimney. On the bank of the River Wye, opposite Tintern Abbey, is the Devil’s Pulpit, from which he is said to have preached in defiance of the Church.
There are the Devil’s Cheese-Wring, a strange heap of rocks near Liskeard in Cornwall; the Devil’s Frying-Pan, in the same county; the Devil’s Jumps, a series of low hills near Frensham in Surrey; and so on and on, all over the map.
Curious old buildings often have the Devil’s name attributed to them. There is a Devil’s Tower at Windsor Castle, and a Devil’s Battery in the Tower of London. Prehistoric stone monuments have been called the Devil’s Arrows or the Devil’s Quoits; and one legend ascribes the building of Stonehenge to the Devil. Anything which was felt to be beyond human ingenuity or comprehension, belonged to the realm of the Devil. He was the personifiction of the Unknown.
He was the rebel; he was everything which would not conform. He was the spirit of the wild, the darkness, the storm, the Wild Huntsman riding the night wind. He was the forbidden, yet dangerously attractive; the secret, which allured while defying one to find it out. He put the spice into life, in a situation where goodness had become synonymous with dullness and respectability. He was the enemy of the negative virtues.
As such, the Devil has played an important part in the psychological development of mankind. The corruption of man’s heart has been projected on to him. People have accused his supposed servants, the witches, of doing the forbidden things they wanted to do themselves, in the dark deep hells of their own souls, and then tortured and burned the witches for being so ‘wicked’. It is significant that the word ‘hell’ comes from the same root as the Anglo-Saxon helan, ‘to conceal, to cover over’. The real powers of hell come not from external devils, but from the unacknowledged contents of man’s own mind.
To what extent, then, is the Devil the god of the witches? The answer is that the Church, and not the witches, identified the old Horned God with the Devil, precisely because he stood for the things the Church had forbidden—especially uninhibited sexual enjoyment and the pride that will not bow down and serve. So determined were they upon this identification, that in the old accounts of witch trials nearly every mention by the witches of a non-Christian deity is set down as ‘the Devil’ by those recording the proceedings. The male leader of the coven, also, was so persistently described as the Devil that some witches actually began to call him this—though the term is seldom used by witches today.
In fact, the Horned God of the witches is far, far older than Christianity; and he only began to be identified with the Devil when the Church branded nature itself as ‘fallen’, and natural impulses as ‘sin’. This identification was not only a deliberate matter of dogma; it was a psychological process, which in some places is still at work.
It was this deep-seated emotional drive which gave the witch-hunts of olden days their horrific impetus, their pitiless and obscene cruelty, their element of nightmare unreason. In those days, the dark forces were indeed released; but the hell they came from was of man’s own making, not God’s or the Devil’s.
DEVIL’S MARK
The Devil’s mark was supposed to be the mark placed upon a witch by the Devil at the time of his or her initiation. It was also called the sigillum diaboli or Devil’s seal.
It might have been argued by any reasonable person that it was surely very unwise of the Devil to be obliging enough to mark witches in this way, so that they could be the more easily detected. To counter this argument, the witch-hunters asserted that this mark was of a very specialised nature, and it took great skill and experience to find it.
Consequently, a veritable guild of witch-prickers, as they came to be called, at one time existed in Scotland. These men spread the belief that witches were marked in a very subtle, often invisible manner; but that nevertheless, the Devil’s mark could be detected by them, because it was insensible, and when a pin was driven into it it would not bleed.
A suspected witch would therefore be handed over to the witch-pricker, who would strip her naked, sometimes in public, and proceed to search her for the Mark of the Devil. As these men were paid by results, and made a livelihood of their trade, one may be confident that they would not fail to find something which they would say was the Devil’s mark; unless, of course, they were well bribed not to do so.
Some of them made use of a trick bodkin, which would only appear to penetrate the skin, when in fact the point was retracted inside the hilt. So by means of a simple conjuring device they seemed to the horrified onlookers (who, impelled by religious duty, had flocked to see a naked woman being tortured), to have driven a point into her flesh, without her feeling anything or any blood issuing forth. If they had previously been using a real bodkin, which caused sufficient agony and flow of blood to convince the spectators of the seriousness of the trial, and then by sleight of hand switched to the fake one, the effect was very striking and realistic.
Eventually, after they had caused many executions, the cheats of these rogues became so notorious that in 1662 the practice of ‘pricking for witchcraft’ was forbidden by law, unless it was done by special Order in Council; and when some of the men concerned received prison sentences for their frauds, the practice died out.
However, in the days of witch-hunting, almost any natural mark or peculiarity could be passed off as the Devil’s mark, if someone was determined to convict a person as a witch. The descriptions of this supposed sigillum diaboli were vague and variable. Sometimes it was said to be a blue spot, sometimes something like the print of a toad’s foot, sometimes a physical peculiarity of almost any kind. Thus, when King Henry VIII had fallen out of love with Anne Boleyn, he accused her among other things of witchcraft, and declared that a certain natural oddity of her person was the Devil’s mark.
There are various traditions of what this peculiarity was. One account says that Anne Boleyn had a rudimentary extra finger on one hand; another states that she had an extra nipple on one breast. Whatever it was, Henry seized on it to declare that “he had made this marriage seduced by witchcraft; and that this was evident because God did not permit them to have any male issue”.
The extra nipple or ‘witch’s teat’ was supposed to be a particularly certain and damning mark of the Devil; because this was bestowed upon a witch in order that she could give suck to her familiar, when the latter took animal or reptile form. Sometimes even male witches were accused of maintaining familiars in this way. ‘Evidence’ of this nature was particularly frequent in witch trials in Britain. The Act of Parliament of King James I against witchcraft specifically mentions those who “consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil and wicked spirit to or for any intent of purpose”; making it an offence punishable by death.
Now, the fact is that the occurrence of extra nipples on the human body is quite well known to medical science. It is not common; but it is by no means such an unheard-of thing as people might suppose, and it is a perfectly natural phenomenon.
Such supernumerary nipples, as doctors term them, usually occur on what is called ‘the milk line’, an imaginery line running through the normal location of the breasts on either side, up past the armpit to the shoulder, and downwards from the breasts towards the pelvic region. However, in some cases, though more rarely, such nipples are found in other places on the body also. Medical authorities have estimated that supernumerary nipples can be found in from one to two per cent of the population.
A famous case in medical history is that of a woman called Therese Ventre, who was written about by two French scientists in 1827. Madame Ventre not only had two normal breasts, but an extra breast on the outside of her thigh, which was sufficiently developed to give milk. A contemporary picture shows her holding a baby in her arms and feeding it in the normal way, while another small child is taking milk from the breast on her thigh. If this lady had lived a couple of centuries previously, she would certainly have been condemned as a witch.
DIANA
Diana is the Roman name of the goddess of the moon, whom the Greeks called Artemis. (See ARTEMIS.) Her temple at Ephesus was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.
The name Diana comes from the Indo-European root Di, meaning ‘bright, shining’, as befits the lady of the bright lamp of heaven. Under this name, she would have been equally acceptable to the people of the Celtic provinces of Rome, as the Celtic words dianna and diona also mean ‘divine’ or ‘brilliant’.
Perhaps this is one reason why the worship of Diana was so widespread and long-enduring. We have seen how the very early Canon Law of the Christian Church denounced women who continued to worship Diana by night. (See CANON EPISCOPI.) Charles Godfrey Leland tells us how in nineteenth-century Italy he found people who had insufficient education to know anything about the classical goddess Diana, who were yet perfectly well aware of her as queen of the witches. (See LELAND, CHARLES GODFREY.)
The beautiful invocations to Diana, which Leland collected from Italian witches and published in Aradia: the Gospel of the Witches of Italy (London, David Nutt, 1899), are proof of the surviving cult of Diana and its importance to the understanding of what witchcraft really is. (See ARADIA.)
Jerome Cardan, who wrote of witches in his books De Rerum Varietate, published in Basle in 1557, says: “They [witches] adore the ludi Dominam [the Lady of the Games] and sacrifice to her as a god.” This ‘Lady’ was Diana, and the “games” were the full-moon Esbats, which take their name from the Old French s’esbattre, meaning to frolic. In Italy, these witch frolics were sometimes called ‘the game of Benevento’, after a district notorious as a witches’ meeting-place.
Other names which the goddess acquired during the Middle Ages were Dame Habonde, Abundia, Satia, Bensozia, Zobiana and Herodiana. In Scotland she was called Nicneven, who rode through the night with her followers “at the hinder end of harvest, on old Halloween”, as an old Scots poet describes it.
Some of these names are evidently descriptions of her attributes. Abundia, for example, is connected with ‘abundance’, and Satia with ‘satisfaction’. Herodiana is a combination of the names of Diana and her witch-daughter Herodias. Bensozia could mean ‘the good neighbour’ an expression which was a name for the fairies. Many of the Old Gods became associated with the fairies in the popular mind, after the coming of Christianity. Shakespeare’s Queen of the Fairies, Titania, bears what is actually an old name of the Moon Goddess. In Ireland, the Sluagh Sidhe, or Fairy Host, was led by the beautiful and shining figures of the old Celtic gods and goddesses.
Fairyland, in fact, was simply the pagan Other World, to which the souls of pagans went when they died; and Diana was its queen. This was quite in accordance with classical myth, which gave to the triple goddess of the moon rulership over three realms; that of Heaven, Earth and the Other World, the dwelling-place of the dead. As the divinity of the moon, she was Selene; as the goddess of the woodlands and the wild things, she was Artemis; as the queen of the mysterious Beyond, she was Hecate.
The poet John Skelton describes her three-fold divinity:
Diana in the leaves green,
Luna that so bright doth sheen,
Persephone in Hell.
As a universal goddess, Diana had many forms and many names. In fact, it would be more correct to say that there was a universal goddess, of whose myriad names Diana was one. Naturally, the cult of a goddess so widely worshipped was carried on all over the ancient Roman Empire, where it mingled with those of native goddesses like Dana, Briginda and Cerridwen.
The cult of Diana was particularly important to Ancient Britain, because, according to legend, it was she who had directed the Trojan Prince Brutus, the founder of the royal line of Britain, to take refuge here after the Fall of Troy. The descent of British royalty from the Trojans was accepted without question in olden times and was a matter of pride. Britons called themselves Y Lin Troia, ‘The Race of Troy’.
The place where Brutus landed, at Totnes in Devon, is still shown; and London was called Troy Novaunt, or New Troy, because Brutus had founded it.
The sacred relic of London, London Stone, which is still preserved, is said to have been the original altar which Brutus raised to Diana, in gratitude for his kingdom. On its safety the fate of London is supposed to depend.
The temple of Diana founded by Brutus is said to have occupied the site of the present St. Paul’s Cathedral. This may be the real origin of a strange medieval custom which was formerly kept up at the cathedral on St. Paul’s Day, 25th January. In 1375 a certain Sir William Baud had been permitted to enclose 20 acres of land belonging to the cathedral, on condition that he presented annually to the clergy of the cathedral a fat buck and a doe. These animals were brought into the cathedral, when the procession was taking place, and were offered at the high altar.
The buck being brought to the steps of the altar, the Dean and Chapter, apparelled in copes and proper vestments, with garlands of roses on their heads, sent the body of the buck to be baked, and had the head and horns fixed on a pole before the cross, in their procession round about the church, till they issued at the west door, where the keeper that brought it blowed the death of the buck, and then the horns that were about the city answered him in like manner.
So says Robert Chambers in his Book of Days (2 vols, W. & R. Chambers, London and Edinburgh, 1869; also Gale Detroit, 1886), quoting from an old author. In fact, this ceremony is in keeping with a pagan rite associated with a pagan site, upon which the original cathedral was built. Then the old rite continued in a Christianised form; and in 1375 a man was given some land on condition that he supplied the annual sacrifice of the horned beasts of Diana.
The alchemists sometimes used figures of Diana as a symbol of silver, the moon’s metal. The old belief in turning your money over for luck, when you first see the new moon, is a relic of the worship of Diana. It should, of course, be silver money which you are asking her to increase.
Diana’s crescent moon and blue robe of stars were directly taken over by artists, and bestowed as attributes of the Madonna, when she is represented as Queen of Heaven. The beauty of medieval Madonnas is the loveliness of a goddess, who was anciently Diana, and before that Isis, and before that the Divine Woman of the dark and secret sanctuaries of the cave men.
DIGITALIS
This drug, the active principle of the foxglove plant, was first introduced into general medical practice by a doctor who bought its secret from a witch.
He was Dr. William Withering (1741–1799), who was born at Wellington in Shropshire. He published An Account of the Foxglove and Some of its Medical Uses in 1785.
Withering discovered in his practice in Shropshire that people resorted to village wise women, or white witches, for cures; and he was intrigued to find that such cures were sometimes successful. There was one old lady in particular, who had a herbal medicine which benefited certain heart conditions.
Having established this as a fact, Withering went to see the old witch-wife, and bought the recipe from her. He found that the most important ingredient was foxglove, and this started him on his own study of the properties of this plant.
He became famous during his lifetime as a result of his contribution to medicine; and his monument in Edgbaston Old Church was ornamented with carvings of foxglove, in tribute to his discovery.
The foxglove plant has for a very long time been associated with witches, and is sometimes called witches’ glove or witches’ thimble. Its name is really nothing to do with foxes; but was originally folks’ glove, ‘the glove of the good folk, or fairies’.
Digitalis is in regular use in medical practice today. This proves that the traditional lore of the witches was not all superstitious nonsense; especially in the department of ‘wortcunning’, or knowledge of the properties of herbs.
DIVINATION
Divination is the name given to the art of foretelling the future, or discovering hidden things, by magical means.
It is a practice as old as the human race itself, and innumerable means have been used, and still are used, for this purpose. Cards, teacups and crystal gazing are resorted to, often by people who would indignantly deny that they were practising witchcraft or even magic. Nevertheless, divination in all its forms has always been an important part of the witch’s craft.
It is difficult to say what is the oldest form of divination; probably seeing pictures in the fire, or listening to the voice of the wind, or the sound of a running stream or waterfall. Even a very ‘civilised’, intellectual person today—by quieting the thinking mind and attuning himself or herself, in the right atmosphere, to the subtler forces of Nature—can achieve a certain message, a perception of the inner mind, by these means.
Many people have the erroneous idea that clairvoyance necessarily involves going into a trance; but this is not so. It means a degree of quietness, attunement and perception; the ability to lay aside for a while all the jumble and chatter of everyday life and allow the inner mind to speak, and tell what it perceives, either by means of symbolic vision, an inner voice, or simply by intuitive impression.
Because clairvoyance so often conveys its meaning by symbols, one finds so many lists of symbols and their meanings connected with, for instance, tea-cup reading. However, one does not need to learn a list of this kind, and stick to it by rote, although it may be helpful to the beginner to do so; because what really matters is what a symbol means to the person who is doing the reading.
For instance, the figure of a dog is usually given in these lists as meaning “a faithful friend”. But suppose the person reading the cup disliked dogs, and was frightened of them? This meaning would hardly apply in such a case. Therefore the individual element always enters into the interpretation of any divinatory symbols, and should be allowed for.
However, as psychologists are finding out in their interpretation of dreams, there are many symbols which do have a more or less universal meaning; and anyone who wants seriously to practise divination will benefit by a study of symbolism in all its many manifestations.
The writer can testify from personal experience that if divination is practised seriously it will give worthwhile results. If, however, it is done ‘just for a laugh’, or in the spirit of, ‘Oh, well, we’ll try it, but of course it won’t work’, then naturally no good results can be expected.
Sometimes ready-made sets of symbols are used for divination. The painted pebbles which are often found in the caves once inhabited by Stone Age man, were probably used for this purpose. Later, as civilisation advanced, man evolved much more sophisticated methods; for instance, the I Ching of Ancient China, the Tarot cards of mysterious and unknown origin, or the sixteen symbols used in the Western system of geomancy.
The essential thing is that the diviner should have some basic set of symbols which he is thoroughly familiar with, and which convey a definite meaning, but that is nevertheless elastic enough to give full play to the powers of psychic perception. It is necessary also that the question should be precisely formulated and concentrated on, with real desire for a true answer. Furthermore, the selection of the meaningful symbols must be at random, left to be carried out by the subconscious mind. There must be no attempt to force or twist the answer.
The most difficult thing for a diviner to establish is time; that is, when the thing will happen. Some rules about this are usually laid down in the method of divination adopted. In reading the symbols formed by the tea-leaves, for instance, the ones nearest the rim of the cup are supposed to be near at hand in point of time, especially those closest to the handle by which you are holding the cup, because that represents the person you are reading for. The ones in the bottom of the cup are fading away in the distance, into the future. But in the last resort, the diviner’s own feeling about a particular manifestation is the most important thing.
Various little ceremonies are associated with divination, to attract the right influences and make it fortunate. For instance, in tea-cup reading we are told to swirl the remainder of the leaves three times round the cup, then up-end it in the saucer and give three slow taps on the base, before attempting to read it. What this actually does is to distribute the leaves well, and allow time for the liquid to drain away, so improving the chances of the reading.
People may jeer at the simplicity of tea-cup reading; but it is in fact a very practical means of divination. The random shapes of the leaves give the inner mind something from which to form meaningful pictures; rather like the ink-blot test, which is a standard method of psychological testing. Also, the fact that a person has just drunk from the cup, and has thus been in intimate contact with it, has put that person’s influence momentarily upon the cup and its contents.
The methods used for divination in all ages and countries are legion; but the basic principles which have been explained in this article underlie them all. One should distinguish, however, between divination by the use of some method of signs, such as a spread of Tarot cards for instance, and divination by omens which happen without being sought for. To know the meaning of the latter is an occult study in itself.
While long scoffed at as mere superstition, the observation of odd and curious events has today been restored to respectability by psychologists of the school of C. G. Jung, who have given it the name of ‘synchronicity’. It is wonderful what a long, high-sounding word will do! The study of witchcraft is often frowned upon; but the study of extrasensory perception, hypnosis, psychic phenomena, astral projection, telepathy etc., is today carried on by learned professors at many universities. Yet all these things in the old days were part of witchcraft, and were generally included under that heading. (See TAROT CARDS AND SCRYING.)
This is the name given to a very curious horned mask, with a still more curious history attached to it. It is certainly connected with the Old Religion, and that from a long way back.
The particular mask known by this name to students of folklore was first written about in Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries, in 1891. Fortunately, it was not only described but photographed; because, like the head of Atho, it has since disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Margaret Murray reproduced this photograph in her famous book The God of the Witches, as an example of the long-surviving customs connected with the worship of the Horned God.
The mask was hollow, and made of painted wood. It was trimmed with hair, and bearded, and also provided with a fine pair of bull’s horns. Its peculiarly vivid expression, lively and fear-inspiring, made it a splendid example of folk-art in itself, apart from its strange and secret associations.
The lower jaw was movable, and worked by pulling a string; and a very remarkable feature of this mask was that in the centre of the forehead it bore a rounded boss, exactly in the place which the Eastern yogis and lamas call ‘the Third Eye’, regarding it as the seat of psychic powers.
At the time when it first came to be noticed by writers on folk-lore, the Dorset Ooser was in the possession of the Cave family, of Holt Farm, Melbury Osmond, in Dorset. They knew that its traditional name among local people was the Ooser; but do not seem to have been too sure of its real significance, except that it was associated with village revels.
Further research has shown that it was formerly worn at the Christmas festivities, by a man dressed in animal skins. He was known in Dorset as ‘the Christmas Bull’, the ‘Ooser’, or ‘Wooser’; and a similar figure used to accompany the Christmas Wassailers at Kingscote, in Gloucestershire.
This is interesting; because a very old book of Church ordinances, called the Liber Poenitentialis of Theodore, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 668 to 690 A.D. sternly castigated those heathenish people who kept up this very custom; “Whoever at the Kalends of January goes about as a stag or a bull; that is, making himself into a wild animal and dressing in the skin of a herd animal, and putting on the heads of beasts; those who in such wise transform themselves into the appearance of a wild animal, penance for three years because this is devilish.” (“The Kalends of January” is the beginning of the month, which was within the old Twelve Days of Christmas during which the festivities were kept up.)
In Dorset Up-Along and Down-Along, a collection of Dorset folklore collected by members of the Women’s Institutes and published in 1951, it was stated that the appearance of the Wooser was a recognised Christmas custom “up to forty years ago”; that is, to about the turn of the century at least. So the particular mask belonging to the Cave family must have been only one of a number. Evidently the people of Dorset down the centuries cared little for the Archbishop’s wrath or penances, but retained their pagan customs just the same. Perhaps they cared more about keeping the luck of the Old Gods than they did for the threats of the Archbishop and his successors.
As late as 1911, a Dorsetshire newspaper carried a report of a man being charged with frightening some girls by chasing them when he was “dressed in a bullock’s skin and wearing an ooser”.
This word ‘ooser’ as the dialect term for a horned mask, has intrigued philologists. It is pronounced ooss-er, with a short ‘s’ sound; not ooze-er, as it might appear to those not of Dorset. This may derive from a medieval Latin word osor, as a synonym for the Devil, as F. T. Elworthy suggested in his book Horns of Honour (John Murray, London, 1900). However, the writer would like to advance another suggestion: namely, that ‘Ooser’ comes from the Old English Os, meaning a god. This word survives in such names as ‘Oswald’, meaning ‘God-power’; ‘Osmund’, meaning ‘God-protection’, and so on. It is notable that the village where the Caves lived is called Melbury Osmond.
The circumstances in which the Dorset Ooser disappeared are as follows. Its owner, Dr. Edward Cave, left Holt Farm for Crewkerne, in Somerset, and took the mask with the rest of his goods. In 1897 he moved his residence again, from Crewkerne to Bath. This time, the mask was left behind at Crewkerne, stored with some other property in a loft, in the care of the family coachman. When Dr. Cave enquired for the Ooser, it could not be found. A groom admitted that he was responsible for letting it go. He said that a man from “up Chinnock way”, had called one day and asked to buy it; and the groom, thinking it of no particular value, had sold it to him.
When one recollects that this horned mask had been in the possession of the Cave family for ‘time out of mind’, the groom’s story sounds rather thin; though of course possible. At any rate, all enquiries for the mysterious stranger from “up Chinnock way” proved fruitless. Neither he nor the mask was ever seen again.
Perhaps someone didn’t like the Dorset Ooser being taken out of Dorset? There may have been some idea that its removal was taking away luck or protection. It is possible also that a coven of witches saw a chance to obtain possession of something which would have been of great significance to them. To date, the mystery remains unsolved.
DRAKE, SIR FRANCIS
Sir Francis Drake is known in all English history books as the man who delivered England from the Spanish Armada. Not so well known is the fact that in his native Devonshire he is reputed to have belonged to the witch cult.
During the Second World War, at the time when England seemed in imminent danger of invasion, a large gathering of witches took place in the New Forest, to work a rite to protect our country. It was recalled then that similar rituals had been carried out in past years against Napoleon, and before that against the Spanish Armada. (The ceremony against Hitler took place at Lammas 1940; and the writer has known personally two people who took part in it.)
Many legends have gathered about Drake and his defeat of the Armada. That of Drake’s Drum is well known; and its ghostly beat is said to have been heard during both the First and the Second World Wars. In the West Country, Drake is told of, in winter evening fireside tales, as a particularly active ghost, who has been known to lead the Wild Hunt on dark nights of wind and storm.
This identification of Drake with the leader of the Wild Hunt is interesting, because the Wild Hunt, is definitely connected with the Old Religion. Other stories say that, because he practised witchcraft in his lifetime, Drake’s soul cannot rest. This is why his ghost drives a black coach and four about the Devonshire lanes on stormy nights.
Another version of the story says that Drake sold his soul to the Devil in return for the defeat of the Spaniards, and this is why his spirit is doomed to wander. Both tales are basically versions of the same thing, that Drake belonged to the Old Religion.
There is a headland at Plymouth, to the west of the docks and overlooking the entrance to Devonport, which is called Devil’s Point. It was here that Drake is said to have foregathered with the witches, in order to raise the storms that harried the Spanish ships and played a large part in the Armada’s defeat. This headland is still believed to be haunted as a result of the witchcraft that took place there in olden times.
DRUIDS, THEIR LINKS WITH WITCHCRAFT
The question of what links, if any, Druidism had with witchcraft is a difficult one, because our knowledge of Druidism is very incomplete.
However, we do know that there were Druidesses as well as Druids; and when Druidism was suppressed these women may well have joined the cult of witchcraft. Lewis Spence, in his book The Mysteries of Britain (Riders, London), regards witchcraft as “a broken-down survival of Iberian-Keltic religion.”
He points out that there is a likeness between the traditional cauldron of the witches and the Sacred Cauldron of Inspiration presided over by the Goddess Cerridwen, who was revered by the Bards and the Druids.
In fact, says Spence, the Mysteries of Cerridwen were still being celebrated in Wales in the twelfth century A.D. Hywel, Prince of North Wales, was initiated into the Lesser Mysteries of Cerridwen in 1171. The goddess was addressed as “the moon, lofty and fair”, just as the goddess of the witches was. And, again like the witch-goddess, she had a dark as well as a bright aspect, as indeed any goddess of Nature is bound to possess, if she is to be a true deity and not a mere sentimental picture.
I have been told by a present-day Chosen Chief of a Druid Order that Druidism is not in fact a religion, but rather a philosophy and a way of life. If this viewpoint is accepted, then there is no reason why the Druids should not have respected the pagan relion of their day, much as the Greek philosophers did that of their country, while reasoning among themselves as to the true nature of the gods and goddesses whom the common people worshipped.
From the surviving relics which we have of Druid philosophy, handed down by the Bards of Wales and from other sources of Celtic tradition, we find that they had an important belief in common with witches, namely that of reincarnation.
The Druids taught that the human soul had to pass through a number of existences in Abred, the Circle of Necessity, before it could attain to Gwynvyd, the Circle of Blessedness. Abred was the condition of earthly life; but once it had been transcended, and its lessons learned, the soul would return to it no more. Three things hindered the soul’s progression, and caused it to fall back into the changes of Abred: namely, pride, falsehood and cruelty.
When Charles Godfrey Leland was carrying on his researches into the witch lore of Italy in the late nineteenth century, he found the idea of reincarnation cherished among the witches of the Romagna as a secret and esoteric doctrine, which was believed in but not much talked about. He testifies to this in his Etruscan-Roman Remains in Popular Tradition (Fisher Unwin, London, 1892).
The belief in reincarnation was widespread in the ancient world; so it is not really surprising that witches and Druids should have it in common, nor by any means impossible that it should have been transmitted by them to the present day. (See REINCARNATION.)
What is perhaps a closer link is the fact that the Great Sabbats of the witches are identical with the four great yearly festivals of the Druids in Celtic countries; namely Beltane (30th April), Lughnassadh (1st August), Samhain (31st October) and Imbolc or Oimelc (2nd February).
April 30th is of course May Eve, the witches’ Walpurgis Night; Lughnassadh is Lammas; Samhain is Halloween; and Imbolc is Candlemas.
The four lesser Sabbats of the equinoxes and solstices were also observed by the Druids. Their Druidic names are Alban Arthan for the winter solstice; Alban Eilir for the spring equinox; Alban Hefin for the summer solstice; and Alban Elfed for the autumn equinox.
These eight ritual occasions divide the year like the spokes of a great wheel; and they are in fact the natural progress of the seasons. The Celts very sensibly regarded the British Isles as having only two real seasons, namely summer and winter. Summer began on May Day, and was welcomed with the fires of Beltane, Maypole dancing, and the singing of May carols. Six months later, on 31st October, came Samhain, meaning ‘summer’s end’; and all the witchery of Halloween, when the forces of winter, dark and mysterious, gained the ascendancy.
Both May Eve and Halloween are still sometimes called Mischief Night in various parts of Britain, on account of the pranks and revelry enjoyed on these occasions. They were the in-between times, when the year was swinging on its hinges, the doors of the Other World were open, and anything could happen.
Parallels between the old Druidism and the religion of the witches are certainly there. However, in the opinion of the writer they are really indicative of a common origin in ancient nature worship, rather than meaning that either cult is derived from the other.
As well as the moon goddess Cerridwen, the Druids also reverenced a version of the Horned God. This was Hu Gadarn, who was associated with the cult of the bull. The name Hu meant that which is all-pervading. The bards used it as a title meaning the divine omiscience and omnipresence. In other words, Hu was the personification of certain attributes of deity, rather than a personal god.
Hu Gadarn was a god of fertility. According to the Bardic Triads, he was the first who taught men to plough and cultivate the land. His worship survived to a startingly late date.
The historical evidence of this is in a letter from Ellis Price to Cromwell, well, secretary to Henry VIII, dated 6th April, 1538, referring to pagan survivals to the Diocese of St. Asaph, in Wales:
There ys an Image of Darvellgadarn within the said diocese, in whome the people have so greate confidence, hope, and truste, that they comme dayly a pilgramage unto hym, somme with kyne, other with oxen or horsis, and the reste withe money; in so much that there was fyve or syxe hundrethe pilgrimes to a mans estimacion, that offered to the said image the fifte daie of this presente monethe of Aprill. The innocente people hath ben sore aluryd and entised to worship the saide image, in so much that there is a commyn sayinge as yet amongst them that who so ever will offer anie thinge to the saide Image of Darvellgadarn, he hathe power to fatche hym or them that so offers oute of Hell when they be dampned.
The authorities took action upon this information. In the same year the image was taken to Smithfield and burned. With it was burned also a man, described as a “friar”, who bore the same name as the image. He was evidently a priest of the cult of Darvellgadarn; and the latter name was a combination of part of the name of Hu Gadarn and—what? Could “Darvell” have been the Welsh-speaking countryside version of Devil, or even the Romany Duvel? He seems to have been a lord of the Other World, as well as a bestower of good fortune, to whom people made offerings for that reason.
For many years, Druidism was neglected and frowned upon because of its pre-Christian origin. Today, however, with a general widening of religious tolerance, and the renaissance of occult studies generally, people are beginning to look again at native Celtic traditions. There are a number of circles today which hold regular Druidic meetings, beside the well-known annual gathering at Stonehenge for the summer solstice.
Although we know that the Druids whom Caesar, Pliny and other classical writers described (and sometimes slandered), were not the actual builders of Stonehenge, nevertheless the ideas of the Druids, and their system of philosophy from Nature are in harmony with the beliefs that inspired the erection of the great stone circles and menhirs that enrich our landscape. The spirit of the old mystic sense of beauty, and faith in the unseen, overshadows both Druidic philosophy and the Craft of the Wise alike.
Wordsworth, a poet of Nature, wrote:
Though in the depths of sunless groves, no more
The Druid priests the hallowed oak adore;
Yet, for the Initiate, rocks and whispering trees
Do still perform mysterious offices.
The old paganism arose from a sense of the numinous, immanent in all Nature. If we follow all religion back far enough, we shall find its common source in this. (See also STONES AND STONE CIRCLES.)