hi Bree! I am currently doing research on modern paganism as a whole, and have come across a few passages about how some practitioners claim to follow an 'old' or 'the old and true' religion. I know Margot Adler mentions this briefly in "Drawing Down The Moon" (page 77) - but I'm wondering if you've seen any other sources on this? I want to learn more about the origins of this 'old and true' religion, but none of my regular resources are turning up anything of substance.
-gasps in Witchstorian- Is it time? I think it's time. Excuse me while I put on my very best hat.
Today, we're going to have a chat about MARGARET FUCKING MURRAY and her thoroughly discredited theories about a Great White Western Witch-Cult. (I have plans to do a wholeass podcast episode on this nonsense in the coming year, so consider this a warm-up. I should also note that debunking claims of an Ancient Unified Religion of Witchcraft is part of how I first earned my stripes as a fledgling Witchstorian. So this be my wheelhouse and I welcome ye to it.)
In her 1921 book, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, Murray put forth the theory that the ceremonies and rituals detailed in witch trial documents were actually descriptions of practices utilized by a matriarchal pagan fertility cult whose adherents had survived in secret following the Christianization of the British Isles. She pointed to a number of historical personages accused of and/or executed for witchcraft as members of this alleged "Old Religion," presented the idea of "flying on broomsticks" as a ritual activity involving a leaping dance with brooms held between women's thighs (the handles being smeared with a hallucinogenic salve), and claimed that the "Horned God of the witches" was later twisted into modern artistic depictions of Satan as a method of quite literally demonizing these supposed pagan ways. Furthermore, according to Murray, the cult had survived into the present day in the form of a certain secret groups in rural areas of Britain. (It should be noted that while Murray did not invent this theory, she was its' biggest and arguably most legitimizing proponent in her day.)
If any of this is sounding familiar, you get a cookie.
Gerald Gardner was a big fan of these theories and further bolstered the claims when he touted the New Forest coven as a surviving group from the "Old Religion." He incorporated many of Murray's claims into the early framework of his own myth-building. If you read Witchcraft Today (1954), you'll see a lot of Murray's work repeated as a framework for Gardner's own theories on contemporary witchcraft practices, which later became the basis for Wicca.
The issue here is that Murray was working with both a flawed premise and a really terrible use of source material. Repeatedly, she cited superstition, prosecutorial arguments, and confessions from accused witches from 16th-17th century trial records as fact, completely ignoring that none of this had any physical evidence attached to it and that confessions were often made under torture or the threat thereof. She also cited a lack of evidence as alleged evidence of a coverup by the Church and the Crown, or the cult itself covering its' tracks. Even her contemporaries viewed her work as fringe theory and it's largely because she was invited to write the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Witchcraft and the later use of her theories in the creation of Wicca that she's taken seriously by anybody at all.
While Murray's claims are thoroughly discredited, almost literally laughed out of academia during her own lifetime, certain sectors of the modern witchcraft and pagan communities still cling to this idea of a secret surviving pre-Christian goddess cult. I can fully understand why this is tempting, given the romantic notion of clandestine meetings and bonfire dances out in the woods, as well as the need of some modern witches to feel connected to some form of borrowed martyrdom as a mirror for their own feelings of disenfranchisement. No serious scholar of the early modern period or the history of witch trials during that time considers Murray's work credible and modern historians are prone to cringing whenever her name is mentioned.
So yeah, if you see a work on modern paganism or witchcraft referring to "the Old Ways" or "the Old Religion," that's very likely what it's talking about. Margot Adler and Ronald Hutton, both noted and credible authors writing about the modern witchcraft movement, mention Murray's witch-cult hypothesis in their books....but mostly only to say what a crock of shit it was.
For further reading, I recommend Jacqueline Simpson's 1994 article, "Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her And Why?," Ronald Hutton's "Triumph of the Moon," and the Wikipedia article on the witch-cult hypothesis (purely for a condensed version of how the theory came to be and how it has affected modern thought).
I'll leave you with this quote from A New History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans (Russell and Brooks), regarding Murray's work:
"That this 'old religion' persisted secretly, without leaving any evidence, is, of course, possible, just as it is possible that below the surface of the moon lie extensive deposits ofΒ Stilton cheese. Anything is possible. But it is nonsense to assert the existence of something for which no evidence exists. The Murrayites ask us to swallow a most peculiar sandwich: a large piece of the wrong evidence between two thick slices of no evidence at all."
