Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/260

 ORGANISATIONS OF WITCHES IN GREAT BRITAIN.

BY M. A. MURRAY.

(Read before the Society, April 18, 1917.)

cult and ritual have not yet, as far as I am aware, been subjected to a searching scientific investigation from the anthropological side. The whole thing has generally been put down to hypnotism, hysteria, and hallucination on the part of the witches, to prejudice and cruelty on the part of the judges. I shall try to prove that the hysteriacum-prejudice theory, including that blessed word "autosuggestion," is untenable, and that among the witches we have the remains of a fully organised religious cult, which at one time was spread over Central and Western Europe, and of which traces are found at the present day.

I am not concerned with Operative Witchcraft or the effects, real or imaginary, of witch-charms, nor with the magical powers claimed by the witches, such as flying through the air and transformation into animals. It is the organisation and the cult, which I am about to describe.

Its organisation was recognised by the Roman Catholic Church which speaks of it as a sect; and in its latest stages in America, Cotton Mather is able to say with truth, "the Witches do say, that they form themselves much after the manner of Congregational Churches, and that they