Abstract
While Wicca has become somewhat socially accepted in recent years, a split has developed between its practitioners and self-styled “traditional witches”, who seek inspiration in the tales generated by the witch trials: of sabbaths, of pacts, of flying, of communication with the dead. Discussion of “flying ointment”—literally a homemade ointment containing psychotropic herbs, but which might also be extended metaphorically to include other entheogens—has become something of a shibboleth to distinguish between those Pagan witchcraft or Wiccan groups that seek a degree of respectability and those that spurn it. It furthermore offers a lens through which to examine claims of authenticity and claims of secrecy in contemporary witchcraft. In doing so, it draws upon the notion of “secretism”, the idea that the impression of an individual or group possessing secrets is more important than the actual content of those secrets.
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Notes
- 1.
Murray supported Gardner to the extent of writing in her introduction to Gardner’sWitchcraft Today, “Dr Gardner has shown in his book how much of the so-called ‘witchcraft’ is descended from ancient rituals.” Gerald Gardner, Witchcraft Today (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1973 [1954]), 16.
- 2.
Taliesin, “‘Ancients’ and ‘Moderns’,” Pentagram 3 (March 1965), 1.
- 3.
Taliesin refers to “my mother and my aunt”, but of course they are not named.
- 4.
Taliesin, “‘Ancients’ and ‘Moderns’,” 1n1. One of Gardner’s leading initiates, Doreen Valiente, argued that Gardner was indeed knowledgeable about herbal hallucinations but just did not discuss them with everyone. Doreen Valiente, The Rebirth of Witchcraft (London: Robert Hale, 1989), 132.
- 5.
Michael Howard, “Flying Witches,” in Witchcraft and Shamanism, ed. Chas S. Clifton (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1994), 37.
- 6.
Ronald Hutton, Witches, Druids and King Arthur (London: Hambledon and London, 2003), 229–230.
- 7.
For further examples and discussion, see the chapter “The Rhetoric of Wicca,” in Chas S. Clifton, Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2006).
- 8.
Frequently but not always lowercase.
- 9.
Peter Grey, Apocalyptic Witchcraft (London: Scarlet Imprint, 2013), 156.
- 10.
Peter Grey, “Rewilding Witchcraft,” 2014, https://scarletimprint.com/essays/rewilding-witchcraft.
- 11.
Grey, Apocalyptic Witchcraft, 8.
- 12.
Seth David Rodriguez, “How to Be a Traditional Witch on the Internet,” Rodriguez Mystic blog, 15 June 2016, http://rodriguezmystic.blogspot.com/2016/06/how-to-be-traditional-witch-on-internet.html.
- 13.
Michael Howard, Children of Cain: A Study of Modern Traditional Witches (Richmond Vista, CA: Three Hands Press, 2011), 191.
- 14.
Ibid., 195.
- 15.
Ibid.
- 16.
Ibid.
- 17.
Some modern traditional witches favour the spellings covine or cuveen over coven as another way of setting themselves apart from Wicca.
- 18.
Howard, Children of Cain, 195.
- 19.
Peter Grey, Apocalyptic Witchcraft, 80.
- 20.
Ibid., 89.
- 21.
Apuleius, The Golden Ass, trans. Robert Graves (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951), ix.
- 22.
Bill Donohue, “Apuleius Unbridled,” Reed Magazine (June 2013), 33.
- 23.
Julio Caro Baroja, The World of the Witches (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 28.
- 24.
Pronounced “kit-ler”, at least in Ireland today.
- 25.
Collected in L. S. Davidson and J. O. Ward, eds., The Sorcery Trial of Alice Kyteler (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1993), together with other related documents.
- 26.
Gerald B. Gardner, Witchcraft Today (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1973 [1954]), 97.
- 27.
In other words, they had fled.
- 28.
Quoted in Davidson and Ward, eds., The Sorcery Trial of Alice Kyteler, 81–82.
- 29.
This “Aethiopia[n]” is not found in Holinshed, so Gardner might have had another source as well.
- 30.
Gardner, Witchcraft Today, 97.
- 31.
Ibid., 53–54.
- 32.
Ibid., 52–53.
- 33.
So Bishop Ledrede describes him. See Davidson and Ward, eds., The Sorcery Trial of Alice Kyteler, 63.
- 34.
Davidson and Ward, eds., The Sorcery Trial of Alice Kyteler, 26n4.
- 35.
The average male cranial capacity might be 1400 ml, or about three U.S. pints. But would bone have withstood the heat of cooking, or would the skull be set in a bain marie?
- 36.
Davidson and Ward, eds., The Sorcery Trial of Alice Kyteler, 29–30.
- 37.
Ibid., 81.
- 38.
Ibid., 50–56.
- 39.
The lack of details leads L. S. Davison to suggest that they actually never were punished but like Alice, escaped. See Davidson and Ward, eds., The Sorcery Trial of Alice Kyteler, 10.
- 40.
Ibid., 9–10.
- 41.
Michael Kunze, Highroad to the Stake: A Tale of Witchcraft, trans. William E. Yuill (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 232.
- 42.
Ibid., 235–236.
- 43.
How was this enclosed hearth ventilated? The record does not explain.
- 44.
Ibid., 245.
- 45.
Ibid., 252.
- 46.
Claudia Müller-Ebeling, Christian Rätsch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl, Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants, trans. Annabel Lee (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions 2003 [1998]), 133. Secular authorities, such as those who persecuted the Bavarian miller’s wife, were even more likely to use such evidence than was the Catholic Church.
- 47.
Maud Grieve, A Modern Herbal, 2 vols. (New York: Dover, 1971 [1931]), 584.
- 48.
Ibid., 585.
- 49.
Ibid., 804.
- 50.
Ibid., 806.
- 51.
Michael J. Harner, “Hallucinogens in European Witchcraft,” in Hallucinogens and Shamanism, ed. Michael J. Harner (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 135.
- 52.
Ibid., 131–132.
- 53.
Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath (New York: Random House, 1991), 90.
- 54.
Ibid., 70.
- 55.
Quoted in Harner, “Hallucinogens in European Witchcraft,” 138.
- 56.
See, for example, R. Gordon Wasson, Stella Kamrisch, Jonathan Ott, and Carl A. P. Ruck, Persephone’s Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986.) Ott is credited with coining the term “entheogen” (manifesting the divine) to replace “psychedelic,” whose meaning had become blurred in popular culture of the late 1960s.
- 57.
Richard Evans Schultes, “Foreword to the English Edition,” in The Witch’s Garden, ed. Harold A. Hansen and trans. Muriel Crofts (Santa Cruz, CA: Unity Press, 1978), x–xi.
- 58.
Dennis McKenna, The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss: My Life with Terence McKenna (St. Cloud, MN: North Star Press, 2012), 172.
- 59.
Ibid., 188–189.
- 60.
Michael Harrison, The Roots of Witchcraft (London: Tandem, 1975).
- 61.
McKenna, Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, 189.
- 62.
Ibid., 171.
- 63.
Harold A. Hansen, The Witch’s Garden, trans. Muriel Crofts (Santa Cruz, CA: Unity Press, 1978), 95.
- 64.
Ibid., 98–99.
- 65.
Personal communication, December 1999.
- 66.
Howard, Children of Cain, 73.
- 67.
For example, Valiente, The Rebirth of Witchcraft, 133.
- 68.
Paul Johnson, Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 27.
- 69.
Grey, Apocalyptic Witchcraft, 9–11.
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Clifton, C.S. (2019). Witches Still Fly: Or Do They? Traditional Witches, Wiccans, and Flying Ointment. In: Feraro, S., Doyle White, E. (eds) Magic and Witchery in the Modern West. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15549-0_11
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