History of the Craft - Our View
This history is extremely general in nature, not focusing on any one cultural or demographic influence. My desire in giving you this historical tour is to open your minds to the possibilities that the Craft is descended from the ancient Shamanic religions. Though our current rituals may not conform precisely to the forms practiced so long ago, there are distinctive similarities that have survived through cultural adaptation.
First, let's take a look at the definition of "Shaman". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition defines "shaman" as:
sha·man (shä¹men, shâ¹-) noun. A member of certain tribal societies who acts as a medium between the visible world and an invisible spirit world and who practices magic or sorcery for purposes of healing, divination, and control over natural events. -- Russian, from Tungus šaman, Buddhist monk, shaman, from Tocharian samâne, from Prakrit samaNa, from Sanskrit sramaNah, from srámah, religious exercise.]
Granted, that's a short definition, but, in its simplicity, it approximates how we view the Craft. The main dissimilarity is that most tribes had one shaman who was responsible for the spiritual well-being of the tribe. He may have had apprentices, but it was up to him to commune with the Spirits on the tribe's behalf. Tribal communities have given way to the often large and impersonal cities of today. Within the dissimilarity, the Craft recognizes that each initiated individual is priest or priestess in the Craft, responsible for his/her own spiritual knowledge and well-being. Therefore, while this is a literal deviation from the definition of shaman, it is a deviation borne of societal adaptation.
Shamanic tribes most often held a belief in animism, the belief that a spirit or force resided in every animate and inanimate object, every dream and idea; further, that this spirit gave individuality to each. While most of us today are not true animists, theologically speaking, this concept is certainly not alien to our belief structure. We may view Spirit, Itself, differently from the early shamans and even amongst ourselves, but most of us will agree that each animate and inanimate object has a spirit or force that aids us in our magick.
Even expressions within the religious worship form among the Shamanic tribes are similar to what we see in modern-day Craft. For example, worship often consisted of dance, and these dances were most often of two types: circle or line dances, often weaving in and out of Spirals.
But where do we start in our exploration of Goddess religions, if one does agree that early Shamanic practices echo modern expressions of the old religion? For me, it starts at the dawn of recognized archaeological history, during the Upper-Paleolithic culture of 25000 BC.
Johannes Maringer wrote in his book, The Gods of Prehistoric Man, that ‘it appears highly probable that the female figures were idols of a Great Mother cult, practiced by the non-nomadic Aurignacian mammoth hunters who inhabited the immense Eurasian territories that extended from Southern France to Lake Baikal in Siberia." It is thought that these tribes then migrated across the great land bridge between Siberia and North America, and became the ancestors of the North American Indian tribes. If this theory is accepted, it means tribes that migrated from what is now Europe to modern Siberia, brought their beliefs of a Mother Goddess to North America, which is one explanation for the similarities in religious beliefs and practices across the continents.
The most tangible proof we have that these were goddess worshiping peoples are the numerous sculptures of women found throughout most of Europe and the Near East, some dating back as far as 25000 BC. Most are small stone, bone, or clay figures, and most show the female as pregnant. However, figurines of this type have been found throughout the entire world: in Spain, France, Russia, Austria, and Germany.
From archaeological records, we surmise that these cultures practiced ancestor worship, and that they probably held the woman as sole parent of her child. Lineage, then, was matrilineal, being counted through he mother. Many cultures since have also counted lineage through the mother, including modern Judaism, which still determines whether a child is Jewish by virtue of whether his/her mother is Jewish.
But why would the ancient tribes believe in a mother goddess? The answer may have been as simply and mundanely inspired as a woman giving birth to a child. Since it is also conjectured that the knowledge regarding the roles that male and female play together in the creation of life may have come much later in humanity's development, they may have projected their limited knowledge of the mundane onto the unknown spiritual realm - ascribing the creation of the world to a Mother Goddess. In it's simplicity of logic, it still resonates stronger within many of us today than most of the creation concepts within the patriarchal religions.
As time progressed and tribal villages grew to cities and "city-states," religion and ritual became more formalized. In Mesopotamia, the ascribed seat of Western Civilization, the city-state of Sumer was at its peak between 2300 and 2400 BC. Sumer worshiped the Goddess under a variety of names and phrases, such as "Queen of Heaven." Many times, the priests and residents of a specific city would append the name to their characterizing phrase of the goddess, making her name and title even more specific. This grew into the practice and belief of "patron deities."
When Sumer was attacked by Sargon, it marked the first time that a single individual had attempted and succeeded in uniting a large expanse of land under one man. However, rather than replacing or demonizing the Sumerian gods and goddesses, the Babylonians incorporated the Sumerian deities into their belief system. For example, we see the Sumerian Goddess, Inanna evolving into Ishtar, the Great Babylonian Goddess.
Sargon was noted for not only his ability to unite many lands under his rule, but also for the way in which he conquered and ruled. He would only sack a city if that city resisted. He preferred to have the city come into his Empire peacefully, and to that end, he never attempted to usurp the beliefs and deities of the city. In fact, he would give homage and sacrifice to the city's deities, so that the people would see he came as a unifier, not as a conqueror.
Contrast that with the Hittites who overthrew the Babylonian empire in approximately 1600 BC. They were a warrior people who believed in a warrior god. When they conquered Babylon, all of Ishtar's temples were either destroyed or given over to their god, Marduk. They even fashioned a story that Marduk killed the Goddess (whom they knew as Tiamat), in a war over the empire.
So far, we have two examples of what happens to a conquered peoples' deities by a new ruling power. In the first example, the deities were recognized and allowed to coexist with the ruling kingdom's deities. In the second, they were "destroyed" and replaced by the conquerors. However, there is a third alternative that we've seen throughout the millennia, that of marrying the conqueror's deities to the conquered's.
We see this third alternative in the conquest by the Assyrians of the Mesopotamia region. They married their god Asher to the Babylonian Goddess, Ishtar. This example also illustrates a fatal flaw in the strategy of those who would "kill" a conquered nation's gods. Though they may publicly claim the old gods are destroyed, they cannot necessarily kill the love, adoration, and worship a conquered people continue to have for their deities. And, in fact, those fallen deities most often gain strength in the minds and hearts of their worshipers.
The Babylonians kept alive the love and worship of Ishtar, though they had either fled or gone underground with it during the 400 years or so that they lived under Hittite domination. When the region was again conquered by the Assyrians, the marriage between Ishtar and Asher merged the two kingdoms together, much as royal marriages did in medieval times. This marriage produced a son, Ninurta, and thus two separate kingdoms now became one, in much the same fashion in which we interpret the Tarot card, Art, in the Crowley Deck - as the melding of two opposites into a third, new manifestation. This was also the first record of a deity triad in the Near East.
Elsewhere in the region, goddess figures have also been discovered in present day Turkey, dating to 6500 BC. They, too, were conquered by the Hittites. Many of the Turkish Goddess worshipers refused to deny the Lady or to see Her married to a Hittite god, and fled to the West, towards Ephesus, rather than give up the worship of their goddess. Here, they later became the victims of the evangelical tirades of Paul (Acts 19:27). Their temple, however, remained active until 380 AD.
From Turkey we move to examine Crete, which has been conjectured to have been both matrilineal and matriarchal from the Neolithic era until the Dorian invasion. Worship of the Goddess as the supreme deity seems evident through examination of the many shards and artifacts in museums in Crete. This is also seen in Canaan, where the Goddess was worshipped as Ashtoreth, Asherah, Astarte, and by many other names, as well as in ancient Egypt, where the Goddess Nut was said to have existed before anything else was created (3000 BC). In fact, according to ancient Egyptian mythology, it was the Goddess who first put Ra, a sun god, in the sky. Other examples of ancient Egyptian mythology show the Creator Goddess as Hathor, who took the form of a serpent. Eventually, the different goddess mythologies came together in a composite, known as Isis. Isis was also part of a triad, joined by Her husband, Osiris, and their son, Horus.
For four generations in Egypt, the Hebrews had worshiped the Goddess Isis or Hathor, and held women in high status. Today, the last vestige of that ancient time still surviving is the matrilineal determination of Jewishness by the mother. As the worship of the warrior god Jehovah took hold, those who continued to worship the Goddess were either driven out or killed. However, archaeological records and artifacts point to a supreme goddess in the cities of Canaan, even after the Hebrews invaded and conquered it in the name of their warrior god, Jehovah.
We see an overall trend here that as tribes became more warlike with a conquering mentality, they supplanted the local gods and goddesses, and installed in their place their own deities, with their god of war as the supreme, if not only, deity. But what happened to cause this change? How did the warrior gods arise?
Think back to the environmental and cultural habits of pre-warrior gods and contrast that with the time of the rise of the warrior gods. Previously, tribes were nomadic. They were hunter-gatherers. Their chief deities were probably the God of the Hunt and the Lady of Fertility and Wild Things. We certainly see echoes of this in the cave paintings of totem animals and the hunt. As man stopped roaming and settled down, the emphasis shifted from hunting to agriculture. Phases of the moon and the changing seasons became more important, and the visualization of the Lord and Lady changed to reflect this agricultural society, as did the rituals performed in Their honor.
Tribes intermarried or otherwise merged to ensure enough peace to grow food. Cooperation was paramount, lest all the tribes in the area starve. As the first warlike tribes attempted to oust or kill the more peaceful tribes in order to expand or gain more fertile land, the peaceful tribes would physically join together in order to protect their land and themselves. Eventually, this gave way to villages, then cities, and then city-states; in other words, civilization. With civilization came more specialization of talents amongst the peoples. Those who could work the land best became farmers; others became toolmakers, etc. Suddenly, cities became places of perceived wealth, as they traded for what they needed or wanted, yet could not provide for themselves. This made the prospect of war more appealing than ever, and gave rise to the warrior gods amongst those people who would take what they wanted, rather than build it for themselves.
We can see this concept echoed often as humanity spread into Europe and were conquered time and again. Eventually, the warrior gods drove the people of the Goddess out of fertile lands and into the hills and mountains, where they became known as the Picts and the Fairy Folk.
Eventually, by sheer number alone, the people of the warrior gods drove the more peaceful people of the Goddess into hiding. In the East, in Canaan, Yahweh fought Her and all other gods, ensuring that His followers had "no other gods before me." If the Goddess wasn't outright conquered, She was often given a masculine named and proclaimed a "false god." Often, She was married off to the new gods, such as in Greece, and new pantheons were created, such as the Olympic Pantheon which replaced the older Titans. And always, as the warrior gods gained foothold, women lost rights and privileges, until they were eventually relegated to second class citizens, forced to submit and obey the word of their lords, their husbands and/or fathers.
In Gaul and the British Isles, though, the Celts kept alive the worship of Goddess. Of course, they were most often the victors in any war. They adopted much of what had come before and incorporated it into the Druidic priesthood. The Wheel of the Year was celebrated, though not quite in the way that we celebrate it today.
With the rise of Christianity, though, Goddess religions were once again forced underground. It is conjectured that these people may have broken up into small groups, often isolated from one another. These "families" would keep alive those aspects of the religion most important to them and their livelihood. Other aspects would eventually fall into oblivion for these groups, as they were unnecessary to the family as a whole. This would be the beginning formations of what are now known as "FamTrads" (Family Traditions), and the loss of any cohesive, complete record of the religion and rituals in whole.
Christianity converted entire cities by edict of the king. Shamanism, Witchcraft, the Old Way, the pagan arts and practices were rooted out, scorned, and it's practitioners persecuted and killed. The common people who had sincerely converted to the new religion felt righteous and justified in turning in Witches to the Inquisitors, in the name of their new God. But politics certainly played a large part in this Inquisition of the pagan folk. Those of wealth and power often made accusations of witchcraft in order to gain more land and power. It just happened that the accuser was most often the Catholic Church, one of the richest entities on earth. This was a time when magic was believed by all, and the Catholic church was moving to place itself in the forefront of city life. It aligned itself with ruling power structures, and in some instances, assumed direct political power. To be excommunicated meant a hell on earth, as well as hell in the hereafter for those poor people so victimized.
In the 12th century, the popes sought to strengthen their domination over the religious life of the people by issuing new letters against heretics, those people who held and/or taught ideas contrary to the essential doctrines of the Catholic faith. These new letters ordered the immediate excommunication of anyone convicted of heresy. Around the year 1200, the Inquisition was created to ensure that heretics were rooted out in southern France. In 1233, Pope Gregory IX placed the Dominican Order in charge of the Inquisition, with direct authority from him. The Dominicans were to discover the heretics and turn them over to secular authorities for execution. By now, heresy had become such a threat to the church, that excommunication wasn't deterrent enough.
Interestingly enough at this point, Paganism had been defined as a religion outside the faith and therefore, not subject to the Inquisition. Several requests were made to the Pope, starting around 1257, to include it in the scope of the Inquisition's hearings. Each time, the request was denied because Paganism could not be defined as heresy. Finally, in 1320, limited power to deal with sorcery was allowed, but it was withdrawn again in 1333. Finally, in 1451, Pope Nicholas V granted broad authority to act on sorcery where heresy was alleged.
The Inquisition attempted to call Witchcraft into question in France in 1390, by attempting to explain that all magic effecting more than could "reasonably be expected from nature, implied a pact with Satan had been made, and that the accused was a heretic." However, France wasn't having any part of it at this time, and the Inquisition's attempt to move against witches was widely condemned.
In 1484 however, Pope Innocent VIII, issued the "Summis desiderantes affectibus" as one of his first papal acts. This changed the assessment of Witchcraft from a religion outside the faith (one of unbelief) to that of heresy. Thus, witches now officially fell under the scrutiny of the Inquisition. Two years later, two Dominicans, Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, authored the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of the Witches), in which all folklore, church teachings, and rumors were shaped into a systematic presentation of the Old Religion as Satanism, and over the next period, this presentation worked its way into the Church's theology. However, for all the fear of Witchcraft that the Church was spreading at this time, I like to think of this period as the "Age of Disbelief."
You see, during this period people refused to believe rumors of witches flying through the air on brooms, or pacts being made with the devil. They did believe in poisonings affected by witches, or that witches could and did cause storms. In fact, just about anything physically harmful was blamed on witches. But as early as 800 CE, an Irish synod pronounced the belief of flight through the air and vampirism as incompatible with Christian doctrine, and thus were elements of delusion. Those holding such beliefs were punished by penance. This didn't sit well with the Inquisition, though, which was increasing its power, prestige, and coffers by the execution of witches. This wholesale abrogation of the spiritual (supernatural) side of the Old Religion had to be stopped, or the gravy train would stop. The church finally stepped in and backed the teachings of witchcraft and demonology. The old Deities were cited as examples of sorcery and demons. The Church soon worked itself as the supreme spiritual force where all should take refuge against the legions of the devil. Meanwhile, kings and Church filled their coffers.
The majority of witch trials were held between the 15th and 17th centuries. However, a woman was convicted of Witchcraft in England in 1712; in Scotland in 1722; in Germany, in 1793, in Spain in 1781; and in Peru in 1888. England finally repealed it's Witchcraft Act of 1736 in 1951, which meant that for the first time in 300 years, Witchcraft was no longer a crime in England. But even today, witches are still executed for practicing their religion in the Middle East. The last execution among those countries took place last year.
Wheel of the Year and the Cycles of Nature
As has been discussed earlier, earliest man was nomadic, a hunter-gatherer. He viewed the God and Goddess as the Lord of the Hunt and the Lady of the Wild Things. But as he settled into cities and began farming food, he took note of the moon's phases and the changes in the seasons. He designed rituals and religious festivals to gain favor for good crops. He learned to plant by the moon, and harvest by the seasons. Thus, his universe became segmented, and the Lord and Lady were seen to rule over separate "halves" of the year: The Lady in the Spring and Summer months, when fertility and growth was most important, and the Lord in the Autumn and Winter, when crops could not grow and the hunt was still necessary. The Spring and Summer months were seen as the time of work for women and in the winter they rested; the winter months were a time of male rituals and activities.
Later, other personifications of Deity were made, generally where the male aspect of the Goddess was concerned. He became the sacrificial king, born of the Goddess through the grain, and giving his life for his people at the harvest. As time passed, this simple dichotomy gave way to more segments marking each specific season, such as the bleidonii, the Celtic Wheel of the Year, which counted the four main cross-sections (Samhain/Beltaine and Lughnasadh/Imbolg).
Today, the Wheel of the Year has expanded to contain eight Spokes, each spoke marking a specific season of the year. Thus, the Craft once again has adapted - this time to fit the needs of urban pagans, while its foundation remains grounded in the needs, rites, and ceremonies that we continue to share with our ancient ancestors.