Ancient Witchcraft Origins
The Witch trials executed a number of innocent souls. They thought the Sabbaths were a time when the witches consorted with the devils and flew around the country on brooms. In the 1920’s and 30’s a number of people like Alex Sanders, Gerald Gardener and Dr. Margaret Murray tried to discover the ancient witchcraft origins. A number of books were written and published at the time to dissolve the misconceptions related to witchcraft. They discovered that Wicca had deep roots in mythologies of various cultures from Italy, Slavic, and Irish to even African. It was found that Witches were not followers of Satan but simply an ancient pagan religion that continued to flourish after the rise of Christianity.
The ancient origins of witchcraft were delved into more enthusiastically after the repeal of the Witchcraft act of 1735 during the 1950’s. Wicca is now considered to be a Neopagan religion and its origins are widely disputed. Gerald Gardener was a British citizen who brought back the Wicca religion. The term ‘’ Wicca’’ was introduced by one of his rivals who derived it from an old English word meaning Sorcery. A lot of various branches of Wicca religion sprouted thereafter. Some of the popular ones were Gardenerian, Alexandrian, Dianic, or the British traditional witch.
Wicca became popular during the 20th century and it is heavily influenced by the natural pagan rituals. Most of these rituals came out of ancient practises of the northern European people. These rituals were passed down through the ages and were mainly practised in secret. It celebrates the life force on earth and at the time when survival was depended on nature and its produce people created a number of rituals to try and control the natural elements.
The Celtic influence is the strongest in all Wicca’s as seen today. The ancient witchcraft origins are difficult to pin down since the burning times destroyed a lot of important data regarding them. A lot of Wicca’s went into hiding and many important sources have been lost. Today Witchcraft is popular again and people have renewed efforts to rediscover the secrets of these Neopagan rituals.
January 02 2010 12:22 pm | Uncategorized
