HALLOWEEN
Hey, hey, for Halloween!
Then the witches shall be seen,
Some in black, and some in green,
Hey, hey, for Halloween!
Horse and hattock, horse and go,
Horse and pellatis, ho! ho!
These are the words of an old folk-song referring to the festival of Halloween, on 31st October. This is the one of the four Great Sabbats of the witches that everyone has heard about. It is traditionally a weird and ghostly season, when spirits of all kinds walk abroad, as if released for one night of the year to hold communication with mortals.
In America the celebration of Halloween, by both children and adults, is more popular than it is in Britain. The children dress up in fancy costumes and masks, and go round knocking on people’s doors and calling “Trick or treat?” If the ‘treat’ is not forthcoming, in the shape of sweets, apples or pocket-money, then the house gets the ‘trick’ by having the maskers play some prank upon its occupants.
Adults, too, often dress up for Halloween parties in America, to dance by the flickering light of candles in pumpkin lanterns, and scare each other with spooky frolics.
To witches, however, Halloween is a serious occasion, however merrily celebrated. It is the old Celtic Eve of Samhain (pronounced something like ‘sowen’). Samhain means ‘Summer’s End’, when the winter half of the year begins on 1st November. This night and all the first week of November once blazed with ritual bonfires. This is the real origin of our Bonfire Night on 5th November, which is much older than Guy Fawkes and his abortive Gunpowder Plot.
On the blazing fires, the Celts symbolically burned all the frustrations and anxieties of the preceding year. Such rituals in pre-Christian times were organised by the Druids, the Celtic priest-philosophers. (See DRUIDS.)
With the coming of Christianity, the Church tried to Christianise the old festival by making 1st November All Saints Day, or All Hallows as the old term was. Thus Samhain Eve became All Hallows Eve, or Halloween. But the attempts to discourage the pagan celebrations were so unavailing that the festival was eventually banned from the Church calendar.
It was not until 1928 that the Church of England formally restored All Hallows to its calendar, on the assumption that the old pagan associations of Halloween were at last really dead and forgotten; a supposition that was certainly premature.
The many kinds of divination associated with Halloween have been immortalised by Robert Burns in his poem of that name. These are mostly directed to discovering the person one is fated to marry, and hence were usually practised by young people. Nuts and apples were the popular fare for these family fireside celebrations; in the north of England Halloween is sometimes called Nutcrack Night, for this reason.
The witches’ magical gatherings on Halloween were (and are) taken more seriously than the fun and mischief of popular folklore. To them, Halloween is the festival of the dead. This is not as grim as it sounds, Death, to the pagan Celt, was the door which opened on to another life. The idea that those who have gone before still retain an interest in the living, and are willing to aid them, has for centuries been part of the witches’ creed. The Church has given a kind of back-handed recognition of this fact, by the way in which Spiritualism has often been denounced by clergymen as witchcraft.
It was believed that not only the souls of the dead, but also spirits and goblins of all kinds, were abroad on Halloween. The witches took advantage of this belief as a cover for their meetings; and one of the ways in which they did this was by using the pumpkin and turnip lanterns that have come to be a part of Halloween decorations.
The big orange-yellow pumpkins, that ripen around this time of year, were plentiful in cottage gardens. It was easy to hollow them out, cut a grinning face on them, and then put a candle inside to shine through. Slung from a pole, they would look at a distance in the dark like a procession of goblins, In a similar way, hollowed-out turnips would provide smaller pixy faces. They served the double purpose of a lantern to light the way through woodlands and across fields, and an effective scaring device to frighten off anyone who might get too curious.
The black cloaks and hoods worn by the witches would be invisible in the dark. The goblin lanterns would be all that could be seen, and the effect of a cluster of them bobbing along through the misty autumn night must have been hair-raising indeed to anyone not in on the secret.
HAUNTINGS CONNECTED WITH WITCHCRAFT
The late Elliott O’Donnell, who was responsible for many volumes of ghostly tales, recorded a number of hauntings attributed to witchcraft in one way or another. The most frequent cause of such weird happenings was believed to be the lingering presence of the witch’s familiar spirits.
This, it seems, was particularly likely to occur if the witch had met a violent death. O’Donnell himself was a witness to one such apparition, that of a large black bird which haunted a crossroads somewhere in the north of England.
Apparently the bird had been the pet of an old woman who lived in a cottage nearby, and was reputed to practise witchcraft. One night a mob had dragged her from her bed and subjected her to the notorious swimming test in a pond. In the course of the proceedings she died, and her friendless corpse had been buried at the crossroads. The bird, at first in material and then in phantom form, had haunted the spot ever afterwards. Its most frequent spectral appearances were in March and September, the months of the equinoxes—periods well known to occultists as being times of psychic stress.
O’Donnell also recorded several phantom cats, reputed to have been witches’ familiars. People may sneer at the possibility of the spirit of an animal surviving death; but why should it not? An animal that has been closely associated with humans develops as an individual. It has a personality, as any pet-lover can testify. It is no longer merely part of a group-soul.
Animals which do not develop as individuals may simply return to their own group-soul at death; but what of those who are distinct personalities? A witch’s familiar in particular would be likely to survive because it would be a creature selected for its intelligence, and closely attached to its owner.
However, another haunting recorded by O’Donnell scarcely seems to come into this category. It is simply one of those inexplicable and rather horrible things that one finds on the borderlands of occult lore. The story was told to him by a man in Ireland, whose parents once took an old house in which strange things occurred. On several occasions, the family had seen the apparition of a horde of mice, apparently dragging some large, shapeless object across the floor. The noise they made could be heard, but they were evidently phantom mice, because when pursued they and their mysterious burden simply disappeared. No dog or cat would stay in the house, and the family eventually left before their lease had ended.
Upon enquiry, it was discovered that a previous occupant of the house had been a woman reputed to be a witch, whose craft was of a dark and sinister kind.
Another haunting, which was described to Elliott O’Donnell’s mother by a Worcestershire farmer, concerned a strange spectral figure, something like an animal yet not an animal. It may have been an elemental spirit. Its abode was an old elm-tree by the side of a road, and it was locally believed to be the familiar of an old woman called Nancy Bell, a witch who had lived nearby many years ago.
The farmer declared that he had seen it one moonlight night, as it crossed the road and disappeared into the tree. He said it was something like a rabbit, but much larger, and with a strangely-shaped head. Elementals of certain other frightening types are often described as appearing in misshapen, semi-animal forms such as this.
Any place where magical rites have been performed is likely to have curious things occurring there, if the power that has built up there is not dispersed. The magic need not necessarily be black magic, either. The performance of magical ritual creates an atmosphere which attracts spirits and elementals. This is why experienced occultists never abandon a place of working without ceremonially clearing it first. Sometimes, however, circumstances prevent this being done, and odd phenomena often ensue.
A haunting directly connected with a famous witchcraft case in Scotland, was that which afflicted a grim old house at the Bow Head, Edinburgh. This house was once the residence of Major Thomas Weir and his sister Jean, who were both executed for witchcraft in 1670. Robert Chambers, in his Traditions of Edinburgh (Chambers, London and Edinburgh, 1896), tells how the house and its neighbourhood were believed to be haunted by the unquiet spirits of Weir and his sister: “His apparition was frequently seen at night, flitting, like a black and silent shadow about the street. His house, though known to be deserted by everything human, was sometimes observed at midnight to be full of lights, and heard to emit strange sounds as of dancing, howling, and, what is strangest of all, spinning.”
One of the accusations against Jean Weir at her trial was that her prowess in using a spinning-wheel had been aided by witchcraft. Presumably, this sound was thought to be the witch-woman still plying her ghostly wheel. Sometimes, too, there were sounds and apparitions of galloping horses, which the fear-stricken inhabitants of Edinburgh believed to be caused by the spirits riding abroad at night.
No one would venture to live in the house, until one bold sceptic, an ex-soldier named William Patullo, obtained the tenancy of it at a very low rent. But on the first—and only—night he spent in the old house, Patullo’s scepticism was turned to terror. Robert Chambers continues the story:
On the very first night after Patullo and his spouse had taken up their abode in the house, as the worthy couple were lying awake in their bed, not unconscious of a certain degree of fear—a dim uncertain light proceeding from the gathered embers of their fire, and all being silent around them—they suddenly saw a form like that of a calf, which came forward to the bed, and, setting its fore-feet upon the stock, looked steadfastly at the unfortunate pair. When it had contemplated them thus for a few minutes, to their great relief it at length took itself away, and slowly retiring, gradually vanished from their sight. As might be expected, they deserted the house next morning; and for another half-century no other attempt was made to embank this part of the world of light from the aggressions of the world of darkness.
(See also WITCH OF SCRAPFAGGOT GREEN AND TREES AND WITCHCRAFT.)
HECATE
Hecate is the Ancient Greek goddess of witchcraft. She is represented on a Roman engraved gem of the classical period as enthroned in triple form, with three heads and three pairs of arms, which hold daggers, whips and torches. Coiled at her feet are two huge serpents. Engraved gems of this kind were carried as amulets, especially by people interested in the occult sciences.
Hecate is a very ancient goddess, considered to be older than the Olympian gods and goddesses of classical myth. She was venerated by Zeus himself, who never denied her time-honoured power of granting or withholding from mortals whatever their hearts desired.
For this reason, Hecate was a goddess much invoked by magicians and witches. Her power was threefold: in heaven, upon earth and in the underworld of ghosts and spirits. One of her symbols was a key, indicating her ability to lock up or release spirits and phantoms of all kinds. Euripides, the Greek poet, called her “Queen of the phantom-world”.
Her statue stood at the cross-roads, or where three ways met; and here those who wished to invoke her foregathered by night. In later years, witches assembled at the cross-roads to celebrate their rites.
Although her rulership extended over heaven, earth and the underworld, Hecate came to be particularly associated with the moon, and with the other moon goddesses, Diana, Artemis and Selene, with whom she was identified. Her triplicity mirrored the moon’s three phases, waxing, full and waning.
She was depicted as being accompanied by howling dogs, probably because of the way dogs have of baying at the moon, though dogs are also said to howl when a ghost is nigh, even though no spectre is seen; and they react strongly to haunted places.
The Gnostic philosophers, who foregathered in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, revered a collection of ancient fragments of poetry called the Chaldean Oracles. Some of these have come down to us, written in Greek; and in them Hecate appears as the Great Mother, or the life of the universe. Nature is her garment or mantle: “And from her back, on either side the Goddess, boundless Nature hangs.”
The name of Hecate may not be a Greek word; some authorities doubt this, and in general there is much uncertainty about its derivation. Some have suggested that it means ‘the Far-off One’, or ‘The One who Stands Aloof’. There is a resemblance between the name Hecate and the Ancient Egyptian hekau, meaning ‘magic’. Two of Hecate’s ancient titles are Aphrattos, the ‘Nameless One’, and Pandeina, the ‘All-Terrible’.
Robert Graves, however, in his Greek Myths (Penguin Books, London, 1957 and Baltimore, Maryland, 1955), gives the name of Hecate as meaning ‘one hundred’, and connects it with the Great Year of one hundred lunar months, during which in very ancient days the Sacred King was permitted to reign. At the end of it he was sacrificed, so that his blood might enrich the land and renew the prosperity of his people. This institution of the divine king who was sacrificed was very widespread in the ancient world, and goes back a long way into human history. It is intimately connected with the matriarchal order of primitive times, when the Great Goddess of Nature, the Magna Mater, was pre-eminent.
Shakespeare in Macbeth represents his three witches as worshippers of Hecate; not as invokers of the Devil or Satan, although the latter was what witches had for centuries been accused of being. A number of Shakespeare’s contemporaries also introduced ‘Dame Hecate’ into their plays and poems, as the goddess of the witches.
In Thomas Middleton’s play The Witch, his principal character takes the name of Hecate, naming herself as a witch after the goddess of witchcraft.
If, therefore, we wished to choose a name which was probably used by people in Shakespeare’s day and afterwards, to invoke the goddess of the witches, ‘Hecate’ would be a natural choice. The Greek pronunciation of this name is Hek-a-tee; but this became Anglicised into Hek-at.
The sigil used by magicians to invoke Hecate is a crescent moon with the two points upwards, and a third point in the middle between them.
HERBS USED BY WITCHES
The folklore of flowers, plants and trees is a vast subject, which would need a book to itself to expound fully. The old word used for the knowledge of the secret properties of herbs is ‘Wortcunning’; and this has always been a particular study of witches.
Herbal lore has two aspects. The first one treats of the actual medicinal properties of herbs; the second is concerned with their occult, hidden, magical properties. Witches used both sides of this knowledge in their craft.
We may note that the word ‘pharmacy’ is derived from the Ancient Greek pharmakeia, and this word meant not only the compounding of medicinal drugs, but also the making of magical potions and philtres. The Greek goddess who was the patroness of witchcraft was Hecate, the triple moon goddess, and there are many classical allusions to her, and to Medea and Circe, the famous witches of Greek legend. (See HECATE.) The second Idyll of Theocritus, called the Pharmaceutria, deals not with innocent medicines, but, in the words of Montague Summers, “gives a vividly realistic and impassioned picture of Greek sorcery”. (The Geography of Witchcraft, Kegan Paul, London, 1927.)
The witch and her bubbling cauldron, therefore, demonstrably go back to pre-Christian times; though the contents of the cauldron might be either beneficent or baleful. Herbs were studied in Ancient Egypt also; and before Hecate was Isis, the Egyptian Lady of the Moon and Mistress of Magic. The famous Ebers Papyrus, which was found buried with a mummy in the Theban Necropolis, contains a great many herbal recipes; and the simples it prescribes include a number of herbal substances still used by herbalists and witches today. Among them are onions, pomegranates, poppies, gentian, squills, elderberries, mint, aloes, myrrh and colchicum.
Of the 400 simples (i.e. single herbs) used by the great Greek doctor, Hippocrates, half that number are still in use today. But the authorities from whom European witches and magicians derived most of their knowledge were the first-century Greek physician Dioscorides, who compiled the earliest herbal in existence, which continued to be used for 1,600 years; and the Natural History of Pliny, which is packed with curious lore, and from which Cornelius Agrippa in the sixteenth century borrowed much of the material on “Natural Magick” in his Occult Philosophy (Cologne, 1533; English translation published in London in 1651).
In such centres as Toledo in Spain, where European and Islamic culture mingled, medicine was studied as well as magic, alchemy and astrology; and so the knowledge of Eastern drugs such as hashish, derived from the hemp plant, was added to the learning handed down from the old classical writers. The knowledge of these things gradually spread, and filtered its way down to the village witch, mingled with traditions derived from Norse, Celtic and pre-Celtic sources.
The village witch of olden time was herbalist, spell-caster, interpreter of dreams, healer, midwife and psychologist, all rolled into one. In the days when present-day medical science, let alone the National Health Service, was unknown, she was practically the only resource of poor people in remote parts of the country. In fact, in those times when surgery was in its infancy, and blistering and bleeding were the order of the day among orthodox medical men, the village witch, with her simple herbal brews and her practical psychology, probably killed fewer people than the doctors.
Not all witches lived in obscurity, however. There was a famous lady called Trotula, of Salerno in Italy, who became known all over Europe for her remedies and recipes. Her name is the origin of the expression ‘Dame Trot’ or ‘Old Trot’, applied to a witch.
The time when magical and medicinal herbs were gathered was ruled by astrology (See ASTROLOGY,) and particularly by the phases of the moon. The waxing moon was the time for constructive magic: and the waning moon was for destructive magic and banishing; but herbs were generally supposed to attain their maximum virtue for good if gathered at the full moon. On the other hand, herbs used for dark purposes would be gathered in the dark of the moon; and Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth used “root of hemlock digged i’ the dark”.
Herbs which have a narcotic or soporific effect have been specially associated with witchcraft, because of their use in compounding the Witches’ Salve. (See FLYING OINTMENTS.) Apart from these, a number of herbs have been given popular names which show their association with witches.
For instance, the great mullein (Verbascum thapsus), which grows in hedgerows with a tall downy spike of yellow flowers, was called Hagtaper. The Old English word haegtesse means ‘witch’; so Hag-taper means ‘the witch’s candle’. Foxgloves are sometimes called witches’ bells; and periwinkle (Vinca minor) is known as sorcerers’ violet.
This pretty blue flower is the Provinsa of Albertus Magnus, the reputed author of the magical book called Le Grand Albert (many editions; that printed in Paris in 1885 and edited by Marius Descrepe is considered probably most authentic). He calls it the most powerful flower for producing love. Another beautiful flower with the same reputation is the wild orchid, called satyrion. The plant received this name because its root resembles a pair of testicles; hence probably its magical repute. There are a number of wild orchids growing in Britain which have a root of this kind.
The romantically-named enchanter’s nightshade (Circaea lutetiana) is another plant with an aura of magic, which grows in English woods. It is not actually one of the nightshades at all, but a pretty, delicate-looking spike of white or pinkish flowers. Other attractive-looking plants with a magical reputation are Solomon’s Seal, a cottage garden flower, and the little mauve-flowered vervain, which is often found growing among ancient ruins.
On the side of magical protection, there is the splendid golden-yellow. St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum), which used to be called Fuga demonum, because it banished evil spirits. The rowan tree, or mountain ash, with its handsome red berries, performs the same good office, and dissolves evil spells. It was the great Gaelic charm against all bewitchment. An old Scottish greeting was, “Peace be here and rowan tree.”
The list of the magical properties attributed to flowers, trees and roots could be extended almost indefinitely. An important department of herbal lore was the making of ‘suffumigations’ or magical incenses, which would attract spirits and cause them to appear. (See INCENSE, MAGICAL USES OF.)
Centuries of mystic lore have accumulated around the plant called the mandrake. However, the true mandrake does not grow wild in Britain; so the plant used by witches for similar purposes, that is, the making of magical figures in the shape of a little man or woman, are the roots of the black or white briony. (See MANDRAKE.)
Believing as they do in the magic of numbers, witches like to use either three, seven or nine herbs in compounding a charm or a spell. These numbers have from time immemorial been considered to have potent occult properties.
Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) was called by the old-time herbalists Mater Herbarum, ‘the Mother of Herbs’, because of its pre-eminent qualities. It was particularly associated with the goddess Diana, and the pictures in old herbals show her holding a spray of it. Its leaves are silver underneath, and it is generally regarded as ruled by the moon, though Culpeper ascribes it to Venus. An infusion of tea made of mugwort is believed to aid in the development of clairvoyance. The young leaves are used, sweetened with a little honey; but of course the herb has to be gathered at full moon to be most effective.
As a witches’ herb, mugwort often appears in magical recipes. For instance, the magic mirror was sometimes anointed with its juice, and the herb was mingled with the burning incense when the mirror was used. (See SCRYING.)
HILLS ASSOCIATED WITH WITCHCRAFT
Perhaps the most famous British hill to figure in stories of witches is Pendle Hill, in Lancashire. Today, cheerful village shops cash in on its witchcraft associations by selling souvenir models of witches on broomsticks, to tourists in its vicinity. But in times past the shadow of Pendle Hill, and the wild doings that were said to take place upon and around it, lay dark across the countryside, and people spoke of it in whispers. The gypsies in George Borrow’s day called Lancashire Chohawniskytem, ‘Witch-country’.
Pendle Hill itself is almost a mountain; a dark, almost treeless bulk, flat on top, and giving a wide view over the countryside to the far-off waves of the Irish Sea. The name of Pendle became known all over England, when in 1613 appeared a book by Thomas Potts entitled The Wonderful Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancaster. This was a detailed account of the events of the previous year, 1612, when twenty people from the Pendle area stood trial as witches. Ten of them ended their lives on the gallows, and another, an old woman called Demdike, said to be a leading witch, died in jail before the trial started.
The Lancashire witches were accused of holding their meetings in Pendle Forest, close by the shadow of the great hill; but it is evident that Pendle Hill itself is a place with an unwritten history of ancient sanctity, dating from prehistoric times. Like Chanctonbury Ring, another witches’ meeting place on a hill, Pendle has a tradition of gatherings at the beginning of May, to see the sun rise from its height. An old festival called Nick o’ Thung’s Charity, which used to be held for this purpose, was revived in 1854; and on the first Sunday in May hundreds of working people from the countryside round used to gather on the slopes of Pendle Hill. They brought food with them, and cooked it in the open on camp-fires, just as the common people had done at the Great Sabbats in times past. This popular celebration was evidently connected with the old May Eve and May Day festivals.
It is not so well known about Pendle Hill, that upon its summit George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement, saw a vision and had a mystical experience which inspired him in his religious mission. This happened in 1652, at a time when the persecution of witches was still very active in Britain. Fox was lucky not to have been accused as a witch, in view of the place where his vision occurred. He tells us that he climbed Pendle Hill because he was “moved of the Lord” to do so. One may wonder whether something numinous, some psychic atmosphere, lingers upon the hill of Pendle, from days of long ago when it was a sacred height.
The connections between Chanctonbury Ring in Sussex and the practice of witchcraft have already been noted. (See CHANCTONBURY RING.) The notorious Brocken in Germany and Glastonbury Tor with its mystic associations have also been described elsewhere. (See BROCKEN, THE AND AVALON, THE ANCIENT BRITISH PARADISE.)
Another hill with witchcraft associations is Bredon Hill, near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire. On its summit are the remains of a prehistoric camp, and an ancient stone called the Bambury Stone. Harold T. Wilkins, who writes of Bredon Hill in his book Mysteries Solved and Unsolved (Odhams, London, 1960), suggests that this stone derives its name from Ambroisie petrie, ‘anointed stone’. It seems possible to me that another origin of the name is derived from the Latin ambire, ‘to go round’, meaning ‘the stone that is danced around’. Both derivations relate to the fact that this stone, as Wilkins notes, was a focus for witchcraft ceremonies in centuries past.
Bredon Hill earns its place in Harold Wilkins’ book, because in May 1939 it was the scene of the mysterious death of a man called Harry Dean, an event still surrounded with uncertainty and dark questioning. He was found dead in a deserted quarry, apparently strangled; in a place which itself seems to have been adapted at some time for ritual use, because it is described as having a level floor, and four boulders roughly marking the cardinal points, north, south, east and west. It was beside the boulder on the south side that Dean’s body was found. The coroner’s verdict was “Accidental Death”; a verdict which seems questionable, to say the least.
Bredon Hill marks an angle of a triangle, formed in the Cotswold area and which can be drawn on the map; the other two angles being occupied by Meon Hill, the scene of another mysterious death associated with witchcraft, and Seven Wells, the witches’ meeting-place referred to in Hugh Ross Williamson’s historical novel about Cotswold witchcraft, The Silver Bowl. The death of Charles Walton upon Meon Hill in February 1945 was definitely murder, still unsolved. (See COTSWOLDS, WITCHCRAFT IN THE.) Another triangle can be drawn between Seven Wells, Meon Hill and the Rollright Stones, another traditional haunt of witches.
Upon the heights of the Shropshire hills is the strange natural rock formation called the Stiperstones. Among these rocks is a throne-like elevation known as The Devil’s Chair. Upon this natural throne the Devil was supposed to sit, when he presided over the meetings of the Shropshire witches. The story goes that if anyone else ventures to sit in the Devil’s Chair, a storm will arise soon afterwards.
Ditchling Beacon, the highest point of the Sussex Downs, seems very innocuous in the summer season, occupied only by picnic-munching tourists admiring the view. In the winter, however, when these hills are lonely and deserted, it is a different story. Then the Wild Hunt, locally known as the Witch Hounds, goes yelling and raging across Ditchling Beacon upon windy nights; a rush of phantom hounds and horsemen, whose cries and hoofbeats pass by upon the wind, though nothing is seen.
Stray whispers of witch-gatherings upon lonely heights cling to The Wrekin, in Shropshire, close to where the old Roman road of Watling Street passes on the way to the ruins of Uriconium, an important town of ancient days. From here, perhaps, in the times of the Roman occupation, followers of pagan mystery cults went up to The Wrekin to celebrate their rites.
Britain has quite a few places called Herne Hill or some variant of this. These are usually explained as being named after hern, the old English name for a heron. But did herons really nest on all these hills? Or is this name, like that of Herne the Hunter, the horned phantom of Windsor Forest, derived from a name of the old Horned God?
Some gatherings were held also in times past upon Snaefell, in the Isle of Man; but, apart from calling them ‘disgraceful scenes’ and so on, local historians are very vague as to what they were.
As long ago as the days when the Old Testament was written, moralists have been denouncing ‘disgraceful scenes’ upon pagan high places. The Maenads and Bacchantes of Ancient Greece held their wild revels upon the hills. Yet upon high places also, men have experienced religious visions which changed their lives. The gods of many pantheons were believed to dwell upon mountain-tops. Perhaps it is the very inaccessibility of the height itself, the effort needed to climb it, which invests it with the sense of other worlds beyond the everyday.
There is a sense, too, of eternity upon heights seldom trodden by the feet of men; as evidenced in the popular saying, “As old as the hills”. There, indeed, “the Old Gods guard their round”, and the veil between the seen and unseen may grow thin. Pagan temples were frequently built upon hilltops; and the memory of these old gatherings and rites is often behind the association of a particular hill-top with witchcraft. This is certainly so in the case of Chanctonbury Ring and of the Brocken, as already noted; and another instance of the same thing is the Puy-de-Dome in France, which was once the site of a pagan sanctuary, and in later years became the traditional scene of witch rites.
HOLED STONES
Sir Wallis Budge, in his authoritative book Amulets and Superstitions (Oxford University Press, 1930), states that the first man who ever found a stone with a hole in it and thought to thread it on a string and hang it round his neck, had the credit of introducing the wearing of amulets into the world.
This is what happened back in the beginnings of history. Today, holiday-makers on a seaside beach amuse themselves by looking for holed stones; and if they find an attractive one, they may well keep it ‘for luck’.
The first holy stone very probably was actually a ‘holey’ stone; that is, a stone with a hole in it. The reason for its magical powers is the same as that for another very ancient amulet, the cowrie shell; namely, that it is a female emblem, representing the portal of birth. Hence it is a life symbol and a luck bringer.
Holed stones are also known as hag stones, because they are a protection against the spells of witches. An old antiquarian, Grose, tells us that “a Stone with a Hole in it, hung at the Bed’s head, will prevent the Night Mare; it is therefore called a Hag Stone, from that disorder which is occasioned by a Hag or Witch sitting on the Stomach of the party afflicted. It also prevents Witches riding Horses: for which purpose it is often tied to a Stable Key.” (Quoted in Observations on Popular Antiquities, John Brand and Sir Henry Ellis, Chatto and Windus, London, 1877).
If a holed stone repelled black witchcraft, on the other hand white witchcraft valued it as a lucky find. Some people believed that by looking through a holed stone one could see the fairies; that is, if the time and place and other conditions were right.
In Aradia, the witches’ gospel of Italy, we are told that “to find a stone with a hole in it is a special sign of the favour of Diana”. The finder should pick it up, and thank the spirit that led him to encounter it.
This belief, like that in the protection and luck of the horseshoe, is another instance of things that are sacred to the witches’ goddess being amulets against the darker uses of witchcraft. It will be noted how the affliction of nightmares and evil dreams was anciently ascribed to witches. It was, of course, the spirit of the hag or witch that came and oppressed people by night; or, as present-day occultists would say, the projection of their astral body.
HOPKINS, MATTHEW
The name of Matthew Hopkins is the most ill-famed in the story of English witchcraft. Although his career as self-appointed ‘Witch-Finder General’ lasted only for about two years, from 1644 to 1646, he was responsible for more executions than are recorded of any other person.
What made Hopkins particularly odious is that his witch-hunting was conducted for money, and his victims were the old, the poor and the most feeble and defenceless members of the community. In one instance, using his pretended commission from Parliament, he actually directed the citizens of Stowmarket, in Suffolk, to levy a special rate in order to pay the expenses of himself and his assistants. The sum of £28.0s.3d. (worth a good deal more in those days that it would be today) is recorded as having been extorted from the people of Stowmarket in this way.
The disordered state of the country, in consequence of the Civil War then in progress between the Royalists and the supporters of Cromwell, gave Hopkins and other rogues like him their chance to impose upon the disturbed minds of the people. The place, too, where Hopkins carried out his campaign, namely Essex and East Anglia, is an area of Britain where belief in witchcraft has always been strong and still lingers to this day.
Matthew Hopkins was the son of a Puritan minister, James Hopkins of Wenham in Suffolk. In his earlier years he had been a lawyer, and practised at Ipswich and later at Manningtree; without, however, making any particular figure in the world, until he found his real career in witch hunting.
He commenced his rise to fame while living at Manningtree, Essex. Here, as he tells us in his book The Discovery of Witches (London, 1647), “In March, 1644, he had some seven or eight of that horrible sect of Witches living in the Towne where he lived, a Towne in Essex called Manningtree, with diverse other adjacent Witches of other towns, who every six weeks in the night (being always on the Friday night) had their meeting close to his house, and had their several solemn sacrifices there offered to the Devil, one of whom this Discoverer heard speaking to her imps and bid them go to another Witch, who was thereupon apprehended.”
Hopkins seems to imply that he daringly acted as eavesdropper upon one of these meeetings. At any rate, a poor old one-legged woman called Elizabeth Clarke, whose mother had been hanged as a witch, was arrested at Hopkins’ instigation. After being searched for witches’ marks, and kept from sleep for three nights, upon the fourth night she started to ‘confess’ what was required of her and to name others as her accomplices. Hopkins avers that five familiar spirits, upon being named and called by her, then came one after another into the room, “there being ten of us in the room”, after which these apparitions vanished.
By the time Hopkins and his friends had finished their investigation no less than thirty-two people from various parts of Essex had been arrested and remanded to the county sessions at Chelmsford. Hopkins’ career as Witch-Finder General was fairly launched. So also were the careers of his assistants, John Stearne, Mary Phillipps, Edward Parsley and Frances Mills, all of whom swore that they had witnessed the appearance of the familiar spirits aforesaid. After this, of course, the assistants became indispensable as Hopkins’ ‘company’, which was later extended to six.
As a result of this first essay in witch-hunting by Hopkins, nineteen people were hanged and four died in prison. As a lawyer, Hopkins knew that torture in England was illegal; but his evil ingenuity had found various means of extracting ‘confessions’ by cruelty and browbeating, which did not legally rank as torture.
These methods included firstly, the pain and humiliation of being stripped and searched for witches’ marks; then, of being made to sit upon a stool or table, cross-legged, and bound in this posture with cords, sometimes for as much as twenty-four hours, without food or sleep. Alternatively, the accused were kept walking without respite, up and down the room, until their feet were blistered; and this treatment is recorded as having been kept up for more than three days in some instances, until the victims broke down and ‘confessed’. Hopkins piously protested that he never called anyone a witch, “only after her trial by search and their own confession”.
Another favourite method of trial used by Hopkins, and one which provided an edifying public spectacle, was the ‘swimming’ or ‘fleeting’ of witches; that is, putting them into water to see if they would float. This idea had in fact been current for many years, and was based upon the belief that, as the witches had rejected the water of baptism, even so the element of water would reject them, and they would float thereon in an unnatural manner. It had been given more importance by being recommended by King James I in his book Daemonologie (Edinburgh, 1597), as a test of witchcraft guilt.
The method of applying the test, however, as used by Hopkins, was not merely to throw the person into some pond or stream. Hopkins was more careful and detailed than that. The accused had to be bound in a special manner, with their arms crossed, and their thumbs tied to their big toes. Then a rope was tied around their waist, and held by a man on either side. This was ostensibly to prevent the accused from drowning, if they started to sink; but it is obvious that whether or not the person sank would depend very much on the men who handled the rope.
Hopkins did not, however, originate this technique. It is depicted on the title-page of a pamphlet Witches Apprehended, Examined and Executed(London, 1613), in an old woodcut which shows the swimming of a woman called Mary Sutton in 1612. She is not only tied in this manner, but is also wearing a voluminous shift or underclothing which would help to keep her afloat for a few moments at any rate.
If a certain relic which I have seen in the Museum of Magic and Witchcraft at Castletown, Isle of Man, is authentic, then it is evidence of another money-making racket worked by Hopkins and his company. This relic consists of an example of a preventive charm supposed to have been sold by Hopkins, to protect people’s households from witchcraft.
The charm consists of a wooden box, lined with cloth and with a pane of glass on the top so that the contents can be seen. Inside is a bizarre collection of odds and ends, among which is the finger bone of a child. The idea was that the purchaser kept the box in his house, to prevent the spells of witches from harming him and his family. Of course, no one had to buy these boxes, when they were offered to them; but if anyone refused, they would come under suspicion of favouring witchcraft.
This practice of selling witch boxes was carried on by other members of the witch-hunting fraternity. I have seen another such box, in the collection of a friend of mine in London, which was sold by a ‘cunning man’ a couple of centuries or so ago, to protect people from witches. It is very similar to the one in the museum at Castletown, containing bits of long-dried and faded herbs, rowan-wood and so on. It has a similar glass front, also. One can picture some superstitious countryman, many years ago, sitting in his cottage on a dark winter’s night, listening to the wind howling outside, and looking for reassurance towards the shelf or chimney-piece, where the glass-fronted witch box stood, with its weird contents. No wonder there were so many fearful tales told, of the evils and dangers of witchcraft; there were so many people making money out of them!
Matthew Hopkins’ successful beginning in Essex set the pattern which he followed throughout East Anglia. How many people’s deaths he procured in all, or how much money he and his followers amassed in the process, will probably never be known precisely. These were troubled times; and the records are incomplete or have been lost. Hopkins visited Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire, as well as Essex. From such records as we do possess, we may guess that the final total of executions ran into several hundreds.
Eventually, however, the tide began to turn against Hopkins. Not all magistrates were as cruel and credulous as those of Manningtree in those days. In 1645 a special “Commission of Oyer and Terminer”, formed to deal with witchcraft trials, told Hopkins to stop his practice of swimming witches; but they did not stop his other brutal proceedings, and one wonders just how much authenticity there was in Hopkins’ claim that he had a Commission from Parliament, on the strength of which he called himself the Witch-Finder General. This has been generally regarded as being a fabrication. Yet it was on the strength of this pretended commission that Hopkins required the authorities of the towns he ‘visited’ to pay him and his company handsomely, for their professional services. Did no magistrate ever ask to see proof of this commission? Or is the truth of the matter that Hopkins did in fact possess some sort of official status; but when the scandal of his cruelty, brutality and fraud was exposed, the authorities found it prudent to disown him?
Samuel Butler, in his satire Hudibras, twitted the Parliamentarians with the Hopkins scandal:
Hath not this present Parliament
A Lieger to the Devil sent,
Fully impowered to treat about
Finding revolted Witches out?
And has he not within a year
Hanged threescore of them in one Shire?
Some only for not being drowned,
And some for sitting above ground
Whole days and nights upon their Breeches,
And feeling pain, were hanged for Witches.
And some for putting knavish Tricks
Upon green Geese or Turkey Chicks;
Or Pigs that suddenly deceast
Of griefs unnatural, as he guesst;
Who after proved himself a Witch,
And made a rod for his own Breech.
The last two lines of Butler’s verse refer to a tradition that Hopkins was eventually publicly discredited by a group of people, disgusted at his cruelties, who seized him and submitted him to his own test of “swimming”—and he floated! According to another version, Hopkins was drowned on this occasion. Bishop Hutchinson, in his Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft (London, 1718), accepted this tradition as factual: “That clear’d the Country of him; and it was a great deal of Pity that they did not think of the Experiment sooner.” But again, this is one of those matters we shall probably never know the precise truth about.
What is a matter of certain record, however, is the courage of an old country parson, John Gaule, the Vicar of Great Staughton, Huntingdonshire, who took a stand against the Witch-Finder General which played a big part in restoring sanity in East Anglia. John Gaule preached outspokenly against Hopkins, who was proposing to visit his part of the country. Hopkins retaliated with a blustering letter, full of veiled threats, addressed to one of Gaule’s parishioners. But he prudently avoided visiting Great Staughton.
John Gaule, who meanwhile had been collecting evidence about Hopkins’ proceedings, then published a book, Select Cases of Conscience Touching Witches and Witchcraft (London, 1646). It was well-written and convincing, and public opinion was aroused against the abuses it exposed.
The Witch-Finder General was forced on the defensive; and in 1647 Hopkins’ book The Discovery of Witchcraft appeared in an attempt to counteract the accusations brought against him. But by this time Hopkins was a spent force. He had retired to the town where he started his career, Manningtree in Essex; and in 1647 he died in the nearby village of Mistley. The Church Registers record his burial, on the 12th August 1647. He did not live long to enjoy his ill-gotten gains, whatever was the actual cause of his death.
His associate John Stearne wrote that Hopkins died “after a long sickness of a Consumption . . . without any trouble of conscience for what he had done, as was falsely reported of him.”
Hopkins was not the only villain to ply the trade of witch-finder in England. In 1649 or 1650 a Scottish witch-finder was invited by the magistrates to Newcastle, to search men and women for the Devil’s mark. His fees were twenty shillings for every witch discovered, and his expenses for his journey to and from Scotland, where pricking suspected witches to find the Devil’s mark had now become a regular profession. His trip to Newcastle proved lucrative; as a result of it fourteen women and one man were hanged.
However, this rogue too met his downfall. He was eventually indicted for his activities, and himself sentenced to be hanged. “And upon the Gallows he confessed he had been the death of above two hundred and twenty women in England and Scotland, for the gain of twenty shillings a piece, and beseeched forgiveness. And was executed.”
So says Ralph Gardiner, in his book England’s Grievance Discovered in Relation to the Coal Trade (London, 1655). This book is illustrated by a significant and terrible picture. It shows four women hanging from a mass gallows, while three more below wait their turn to die. The executioner, standing on a ladder, is in the act of adjusting the rope round one woman’s neck. Mounted sergeants and foot-soldiers look on, while a bellman shouts a proclamation; and in the corner of the picture, a well-dressed man, the witch-finder, is holding out his hand and having money counted into it.
HORNED GOD, THE
The greatest temple ever raised by man, that of Karnak in Ancient Egypt, was built in honour of a horned god, Ammon-Ra, who bore the curling horns of the ram.
The attribute of horns as a symbol of power was wide-spread throughout the ancient world. Many Egyptian gods and goddesses were depicted with horned head-dresses. In Ancient Crete, to set up a pair of horns was the sign of a sacred place. The Old Testament speaks of “the horns of the altar”; and there was a legend that Moses, after he had talked with God upon Mount Sinai, came down from the mountain horned. Michelangelo’s famous statue of Moses bears witness to this belief, as it depicts him with small horns upon his forehead.
Alexander the Great was known as ‘The Two-Horned’. Greek warriors wore horns upon their helmets, as in later years did the Vikings, the Celts and the Teutonic races. The horned helmet, as the insignia of a powerful warrior, survived into the Middle Ages. There are many pictures of armoured knights wearing such helmets. The idea is found even in the Far East. The Samurai, or armoured warriors of old Japan, wore helmets with horns.
African witch-doctors, too, often wear a horned head-dress as part of their ceremonial attire; while on the other side of the world, the Red Indian medicine man wears a horned helmet as the emblem of his power.
The oldest known representations of a male deity, the pictures from the painted caves of the Stone Age, show him as a horned, ithyphallic figure. (See CAVE ART, RELIGIOUS AND MAGICAL.) The connection between this most primeval of gods, and the sophisticated, wide-ruling deities of Ancient Egypt, is far-stretched, but quite clearly traceable. It stretched again to the Great God Pan of the mountains and forests of Greece, the god of fertility and vitality; and to Cernunnos, ‘The Horned One’, worshipped in Celtic Europe and in Ancient Britain. Many statues of Cernunnos have been discovered in Britain; and a temple to him stood upon the site of the Church of Notre Dame in Paris.
Still more tenuous, the link stretches to the Horned God worshipped at the witches’ Sabbats, and denounced by the Christian Church as the Devil; “Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick or Clootie”, as Robert Burns called him. However, we do not find horns referred to in the Bible as a symbol of evil, but of sacredness and protection. “He is my shield, and the horn of my salvation” (2 Samuel, XXII, 3). “My buckler, and the horn of my salvation” (Psalm XVIII, 2). “And hath raised up a horn of salvation for us” (Luke, I, 69). There are many Biblical texts containing such expressions as “The horns of the righteous shall be exalted”, “Mine horn is exalted in the Lord”, and so on. The idea of horns as a sign of wickedness is a comparatively modern one.
On the Continent of Europe, horns were, and still are, an extremely popular amulet against the Evil Eye; so much so, that in Italy the word corno has come to mean almost any kind of lucky charm. (See EVIL EYE.) The same belief, less marked perhaps but still existing, can be found in Britain. A pair of horns hung up in the house as a decoration is still believed to be lucky, by some country folk.
The idea that there is something magical about horns derives from a very distant past, the time before man discovered agriculture. When our remote ancestors, the primitive hunters, roamed the land in search of the herds of wild game on which they depended for food, they must have admired the mighty stag, or the splendid bison, with his imposing horns, his beauty, his power, his strength and virility. He was the incarnation of maleness, the sire of the herds. They painted his likeness upon the walls of their caves; and their priest-magicians wore his horns and his skin in their magical rites.
Some of this hunting magic may have been of a very practical kind. It has been conjectured that one of the ways in which men of the Old Stone Age hunted was to have a clever and daring member of the tribe to act as a decoy. This man would dress himself in the horns and skin of the hunted animal, and lure a number of animals into a trap; for instance, towards some steep place, over which they could be stampeded, and then despatched with bows and arrows, if they were not killed by the fall. This is in fact a possible form of hunting for people armed only with primitive weapons and their own cunning; but all depends upon the nerve and sagacity of the man who acts the part of the decoy ‘beast’. He would certainly have been the magician of the tribe.
This magician who was en rapport with the great beasts, is one very probable origin of the concept of the Horned God, but the Horned God himself is more than that. He is the masculine, active side of Nature, as the Moon Goddess represents the feminine side, in the witches’ theology. The Horned God is the opener of the Gates of Life and Death; because that which is born through the Gate of Life must return through the Gate of Death, when the time comes to leave this world again.
Hence the Horned God is the power of returning vitality in the spring; but he is also the Old God of the Underworld, that Dis from whom, according to Caesar, the Gauls claimed to be descended. Every year we see re-enacted the Fall of Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, when the sun, the source of vitality for this planet, attains the height of his power at midsummer, and then falls from that height to hide himself in the realms below. Osiris, the Egyptian sun god, was also ruler over the realms of the dead; and his consort Isis, the moon goddess, was mistress of magic. The heart of paganism is a philosophy based upon Nature, and veiled in symbol and myth.
One wonders how much the Ancient Britons and Gauls knew of astrology; because the particular attribute of Cernunnos in Celtic art is the serpent with a ram’s head. Now, the ram’s head is the emblem of Aries, the sign of the spring equinox; while the serpent is one of the emblems of Scorpio, which astrologers call the natural ruler of the House of Death, and which is the sun sign at the time of Halloween, the Celtic festival of the dead. Both Aries and Scorpio are ruled by Mars, the planet which is so much the emblem of male virility that its symbol is used by naturalists for that purpose, to indicate the masculine gender.
The Horned God, then, is the phallic god, the personification of the masculine side of Nature. When man discovered agriculture; and started to till the land and keep flocks and herds, the potency of the bull, the ram, and the goat became important to him also, and these animals played their part in the cult of the Horned God.
Kings and priests wore the horned helmet, crown, or head-dress, in its various forms, all over the ancient world. In Egypt actual bulls and rams were kept as sacred beasts and regarded as dwelling-places for the spirit of the god; even as the god Shiva has his sacred bull in the temples of India today. Extraordinary scenes were enacted in the temple of the ram god Mendes, when women regarded it as a religious rite to couple ceremonially with the sacred ram. The historian Herodotus witnessed this fantastic ritual.
Stories like this, and the many representations in Egyptian art of worshippers, especially women, adoring a sacred horned animal which stands upon an altar, remind us of the shocked descriptions, many years later, of what is supposed to have happened at the witches’ Sabbats; when a horned beast, or a man in the guise of one, was adored in similar fashion.
The gods of paganism are not remote. Their living symbols can be found close at hand in the world of Nature. But this does not preclude the god who is immanent being also transcendent, beyond the veil of manifested Nature.
Pagan and primitive mankind, however, liked to be able to contact, literally, the likeness of their god. He was there for them in the beast upon the altar; or at any rate, the principle of him was there. Even, probably, as the principle of the goddess, the Great Feminine, was present among her priestesses, dancing girls and temple prostitutes of ancient times.
This idea of contact with the living representative of the Horned God was probably the origin of the bull-leaping cult of Ancient Crete, a dangerous sport in which both youths and girls participated, and of which wonderfully graceful representations are found in Cretan art. Later still, we have the bull fight as the continuation of the same idea; not, however, as it is put on today, a bloody and sadistic spectacle but as its name of corrida de toros describes it, ‘a running of bulls’. In some of the old towns and villages of Southern France and Spain, the original dangerous and exciting ‘running of bulls’ can still be seen, when the young bulls are released to career through the narrow streets of the town, while the young men vie with each other to see who can play the most hair-raising pranks with them, coming within inches of the horns, and often having to save themselves by leaping over fences or shinning up lamp-posts.
But how did this magical image of a Horned God come to be especially the god of the witches? Of all the ancient gods whose cults were displaced by that of Christianity, why is it specifically this god who survived in the secret covens?
The Horned God of witchcraft, has, of course, absorbed many of the characteristics of other popular pagan gods. For instance, the figure of Herne the Hunter, specifically associated with witchcraft in Windsor Forest, has taken on some of the attributes of Woden, and of Gwynn ap Nudd, both of whom were leaders of the phantom Wild Hunt.
The horned and hoofed ‘Devil’ of the witches’ coven has a strong resemblance to the Greek god Pan, worshipped with orgiastic rites by the witches of Thessaly. He also has obvious links with the Celtic Cernunnos, especially as the Ruler of the Underworld or Otherworld, beyond the veil of mortal life. Cernunnos, incidentally, ruled beer and ale in Celtic Europe; even as in Greece the horned Dionysus presided over wine. In the days when every good housewife was proud of her home-brewed ale, and tea and coffee were unknown, it was Cernunnos who was the spirit of the working man’s tipple, as downed by thirsty harvesters in the summer fields, or sipped cheerfully by the winter’s log fire.
It was the grass-roots antiquity of the old Horned God that made him survive, when more sophisticated god-forms were forgotten. He was from the morning of the world, deep down in man’s mind, among the primeval things. The impression of him has lasted longer because it is deeper. He is the oldest god man has; even as the White Lady of the Moon, the Great Mother, is the oldest goddess.
The Christian Church might denounce him as ‘The Devil’ as much as it liked; and obviously many of the things he represents are antipathetic to the medieval Church’s version of Christianity; strong drink, merry-making, and ithyphallic vigour, for instance. His cult could be driven underground; but it could not be extirpated, because both he and his female counterpart, the moon goddess of the witches, represent forces vitally present in Nature, and in human nature.
Christian morality, however, did manage to twist the significance of horns into the sign of a cuckold. There has been a great deal of speculation among antiquaries as to why this significance should be. The reason is that Christian moralists regarded pagan women as whores, because of their free-living, emancipated ways; and regarded pagan deities with their orgiastic rites as the promoters of fornication. Hence, men who were pagans were cuckolds, because of the shamelessness of their women; or so the Church taught people to believe.
The Horned God was degraded into the Devil; and the Horns of Honour were made into a badge of shame. The moves of propaganda were known in the old days, even as they are today; but even so, this denigration of ancient symbols has never been entirely successful.
HORSES AND WITCHCRAFT
In the days before the coming of the motor-car, when nearly all transport depended upon the horse, the importance of horses to man was such that they were certain to come within the sphere of magic.
The horse is notoriously a highly sensitive animal, and will seem to react to presences invisible to humans. Hence witches were often accused of bewitching horses, and making them stand still and refuse to move or refuse to pass a certain place.
Witches were also believed to borrow horses at night, and take them on wild rides through the darkness, returning them by day-break with tangled manes and their hides lathered with sweat. The expression ‘hag-ridden’, used of someone strangely oppressed, derives from this belief.
Naturally, there were charms used by farmers and carters, to prevent their horses from being molested by witches. One of the most popular was to hang up a holed stone in the stables; and such stones came to be called hag stones, for this reason. Sometimes, such a stone was tied to the key of the stables also. (See HOLED STONES.)
The handsome ornaments called horse brasses were originally not only for decoration. They were amulets to protect the horse from bewitchment and from the Evil Eye. Their shining would reflect the baleful glance away from the animal; and the pattern of the horse brass itself often contained some fortunate and magical figure. Such, for instance, were the sun, the crescent moon, a sprig of oak leaves with acorns, or a single acorn, a star, a trefoil, a heart, and so on. Horse brasses display an amazing and delightful variety of subjects and designs, which make them today much sought after by collectors; but their original purpose was to ward off evil magic. The purely decorative, commemorative or heraldic designs came later.
Closely allied to witchcraft, in the popular mind at any rate, were the secret fraternities among horsemen, such as the Society of the Horseman’s Word. These fraternities had jealously guarded secrets of how to tame and govern horses by means which certainly appeared to be magical; and they had regular ceremonies of initiation, by means of which new members were admitted.
If the description given to me of how men used to be initiated into the Society of the Horseman’s Word is correct, then there is an evident relationship between this society and the beliefs of the witches. This fraternity flourished particularly in Scotland; and I was told that when a horseman was felt to have earned the privilege of being admitted, which was by no means easily come by, he was taken one night, blindfolded, to some lonely spot. This would probably be some old, half-ruined bothy, or a remote barn or stable, where other members would be assembled.
I was not given a full description of what ensued, save that everything was done with the utmost seriousness, to instil suitable awe and terror into the novice. The climax of the ceremony consisted of requiring him to take a solemn oath of secrecy, and to seal this he was told, being still blindfolded, to “tak’ a grip o’ the Old Chiel’s hand”.
The novice held out his hand; and into it was thrust the end of a kind of ceremonial staff, which consisted of an actual cloven hoof of some animal, dried and preserved. The effect of such an experience, in a strange, dimly-lit place by night, must have been well-remembered, even after the man had attained sufficient status in the guild to know how it was worked.
The ceremony ended, I was told, with the newly-admitted member paying for drinks for the whole company, and being told some of the secrets which the society preserved.
These secrets were far from being mere mumbo-jumbo. On the contrary, they consisted of a very thorough and practical knowledge of herbs and other substances which would enable a man to influence horses, if he knew how to use this knowledge. The men sometimes committed these matters to paper; but if they did, something essential, either an ingredient or some trick of using the recipe, had to be left out, and communicated only by word of mouth; so that no outsider could profit by it even if it fell into his hands.
These recipes were mainly of two kinds; substances which were ‘drawing’ and substances which were ‘jading’. The former attracted and pleased horses; the latter repelled and alarmed them. In the light of this knowledge, one can understand the many tales of witches who were able apparently to bewitch horses belonging to someone who had offended them, and cause them to stop still until released from the spell, or else to become wild and unmanageable. Like most other beliefs about witches, this story has a basis of fact, if one seeks deep enough to find it.
A good deal of very valuable research about the secret fraternities among old-time horsemen, especially in East Anglia, has been done by George Ewart Evans; and much interesting information on this subject may be found in Mr Evans’ book, The Pattern Under the Plough (Faber and Faber, London, 1966).
The Society of the Horseman’s Word took its name from the story that its members were taught a secret word, which when whispered into a horse’s ear, would give the whisperer immediate command over the animal. Popular legend embroidered this tale by saying that in return for this mysterious power over horses, the horseman sold his soul to the Devil.
Such horse-whisperers, as they were called, undoubtedly existed. Probably the most famous one was an Irishman called Sullivan, who flourished around the beginning of the nineteenth century. He became well known as a result of taming a fine but very intractable racehorse belonging to Colonel Westenra, afterwards Lord Rosmore. Sullivan asked to be shut in alone with the animal and this was done. After about a quarter of an hour, he called for those outside to come into the stable. When they entered, they found the erstwhile savage horse lying down quite happily, and letting Sullivan sit beside him. Both horse and man, however, seemed very tired, and Sullivan had to be revived with brandy; but the cure of the horse was lasting. Sullivan would never reveal how he accomplished his taming of horses, declaring that in fact the best horse-whisperers could not explain the source of their power, it was an innate gift. Similar mysterious powers over horses are believed in and practised among the gypsies of Europe, and in North and South America.
One of the most popular of lucky charms continues to be the horseshoe. In may places in Britain, actual horseshoes can still be seen, nailed up over doorways. It is said that a horseshoe found accidentally upon the road is the luckiest one, and that it should always be hung with the ends of the shoe upwards, or ‘the luck will run out’. In this position, it is an upward-pointing crescent, and hence a symbol of the moon, from which it derives its magic. Some old representations of the moon goddesses Diana and Hecate show them as having the heads of mares.
According to old John Aubrey in his Miscellanies, “it is a thing very common to nail horseshoes on the thresholds of doors; which is to hinder the power of witches that enter the house”. Whether or not Lord Nelson believed in witches is not known; but the great admiral had a horseshoe nailed to the mast of his ship Victory.
It may seem strange that a symbol associated with the witch goddess of the moon should be regarded as a protection against witchcraft. Perhaps, however, the display of the horseshoe derives from a kind of propitiation of the moon goddess, and thus a protection against the powers of her darker aspect.
The only exception to the rule of hanging the horseshoe with its ends pointing upwards is made in the case of the blacksmith. Smiths have always been regarded as natural magicians; and the smith hangs his lucky horseshoe with the points downwards, ‘to pour out the luck upon the forge’. The three horseshoes which are displayed upon the coat of arms of the Worshipful Company of Farriers (founded in 1356) are shown in this position.
HYPNOSIS, WITCHCRAFT AND
There is no doubt that, under many different names, hypnosis has been known from very early times and practised as a secret technique of magic.
Given a knowledge of hypnosis, and of post-hypnotic suggestion, many strange tales of alleged bewitchments begin to make sense. There are the stories, for instance, of witches who relieved women from the pains of childbirth by casting the pains upon a dog or a cat. The woman was hypnotised, and then told that this had been done. She felt better, and the dog or cat was none the worse.
In some cases, however, the witch went a step further, and cast the pains upon the woman’s husband. Suggestion skilfully applied can be a very powerful thing! If the husband saw that his wife’s pain was relieved he would assume that the spell was working, and start to suffer accordingly; which was not a bad idea in the case of a man who forced upon his wife one pregnancy after another.
Suggestion has played a very big part in the practice of witches and magicians of all kinds, the world over. For this reason, the village ‘wise woman’, white witch, or ‘cunning man’ would take care to have a show of occult lore to meet the eye of the visitor to their cottage. There would, for instance, be jars of dried herbs on shelves; a few strange objects, such as preserved snakes or mummified bats, on display; perhaps a human skull or two; and some impressive-looking tome such as Culpeper’s Herbal or Lilly’s Astrology (whether the witch could read it or not). The rustic visitor would be suitably overawed; especially if the witch proceeded to tell them some simple facts about themselves, which they would assume had been gained by clairvoyance.
The ‘cunning man’ or ‘wise woman’ might even know enough about their affairs, unknown to them, to make a shrewd guess at what they had come for. This would really amaze their minds; and from then on the visitor would be as putty in the spell-binder’s hands. Actually, the thing is not so difficult, especially in a small village where gossip is one of the few recreations. The famous voodoo priestess, Marie Laveau of New Orleans, employed a regular corps of intelligence agents, recruited among the house servants of leading families, to glean information with which to startle her fashionable clients.
Of course, suggestion can be used, like any other power, for bad ends or for good. Actually, the village witch, with her knowledge of herbal medicines, her experience in midwifery (there was an old saying, “The better the midwife, the bettter the witch”) and her use of hypnosis and practical psychology, as we call them today, probably did far more good than harm. The famous medieval doctor, Paracelsus, who has been called the father of modern surgery, admitted that he had gained a good deal of knowledge from witches.
It is recorded that in 1570 the Vicar of St. Dunstan’s, near Canterbury, complained to the authorities about an imprisoned witch in Canterbury who was being treated far too leniently. Apparently, the keeper of the jail there had publicly remarked that “the witch did more good by her physic than Mr. Pundall and Mr. Wood being preachers of God’s word”; and the preachers were much offended.
One of the means witches used to induce hypnosis was to get their patient to gaze steadily at the bright blade of a sword or a knife. A compendium of the laws of England, made in the thirteenth century, condemns the practice of “enchantment, as those who send people to sleep”. The actual methods of doing this were kept as a great magical secret; and it was not until the early years of the nineteenth century that medical hypnosis began to be seriously studied by doctors, in the teeth of fierce opposition from those who regarded it as black magic.
One of the pioneers of medical hypnosis was Dr. James Braid, who was actually the first person to use the word ‘hypnotism’, in 1843; and he re-discovered one of the methods witches had been using for centuries; namely, that of getting his patient to gaze steadily at a bright object. Here in his own words, is Dr. Braid’s method:
Take any bright object (I generally use my lancet case) between the thumb and fore and middle fingers of the left hand; hold it from about eight to fifteen inches from the eyes, at such a position above the forehead as may be necessary to produce the greatest possible strain upon the eyes and the eyelids, and enable the patient to maintain a steady, fixed stare at the object. The patient must be made to understand that he must keep the eyes steadily fixed on the object. It will be observed that, owing to the consensual adjustment of the eyes, the pupils will be at first contracted, they will shortly begin to dilate, and after they have done so to a considerable extent, and have assumed a very wary position, if the fore and middle fingers of the right hand, extended and a little separated, are carried from the object towards the eyes, most likely the eyelid will close involuntarily, with a vibratory motion. If this is not the case, or the patient allows the eyeballs to move, desire him to begin again, giving him to understand that he is to allow the eyelids to close when the fingers are again carried to the eyes, but that the eyeballs must be kept fixed on the same position, and the mind riveted to the one idea of the object held above the eyes.
Another means used by witches to induce hypnosis in this way, as well as the knife or sword-blade, was the bright shiny ball known as a witch ball. These are often seen today hanging up in antique shops. They vary in size and colour, from the massive ones suspended by a chain, to others which are quite small, no larger than the Christmas tree decorations which they probably originated. (See WITCH BALLS.)
Witches, however, put these balls to definite magical uses, one of which was the induction of hypnosis as stated above. The shining ball was hung from the ceiling, or some convenient suspension, and the subject was told to sit in a chair, relax, and look upwards at it. In a candlelit cottage, with the light carefully arranged and a scent of herbs and incense in the air, this was an effective method of inducing trance.
A few years ago the Brighton Evening Argus featured a story about a local dentist, who was using hypnosis in his practice and finding it very helpful. His method of inducing the hypnotic state in his patients was the very thing the witches used to use—a shiny silver witch ball, hung from the ceiling of his surgery! The newspaper story gave no indication that the dentist realised this; but he was, in fact, using the witch ball in the traditional way.
Truly, “there is nothing new except what has been forgotten”.
Many old writers go into long arguments about whether or not witches could turn people into animals. Given a knowledge of hypnosis, a powerful practitioner could certainly have made a person believe that he had been turned into an animal. Some of the old time stage mesmerists regularly did this sort of thing as part of their entertainment; and if they could do it, a witch could also, especially in the days when almost everyone implicitly believed that such transformations were possible. The stage mesmerist’s subject would have realised afterwards that he had been the victim of an illusion; but the person whom the witch spell-bound generally knew nothing of such powers other than as witchcraft.
However, long before the days of Friedrich Anton Mesmer (1733—1815), who is generally regarded as the originator of mesmerism (the old term for hypnosis), some intelligent men had realised that this supposed diabolical power of witchcraft was simply a fact in nature.
Van Helmont, for instance, called it ‘magnetism’, and stated that it was active everywhere and had nothing new but the name; “it is a paradox only to those who ridicule everything, and who attribute to the power of Satan whatever they are unable to explain”. Like Mesmer, the early students of this subject regarded the effects as being produced by a kind of invisible fluid, which passed from one person to another, and which they compared to the force emanating from a magnet; hence the word ‘magnetism’ being used in this context. Most modern hypnotists discount this idea; but many occultists consider it to contain some truth.