I've been thinking about the history behind the central motif in The Burning Times, which is that some sort of authentic pagan religion survives into 17th century Europe and is the reality behind the 'witch scare' that the Christian establishment is conducting.
The idea isn't mine. It was famously prompted by the 20th century anthropologist Margaret Murray and her follower Gerald Gardner. Murray pitched the idea of a 'European Witch Cult' with its roots in Norse and Celtic paganism that had survived, through folk practices and oral transmission, right through the Middle Ages, despite the best attempts of the Christian authorities to stamp it out. In Murray's analysis, many of the 'wise women' and 'cunning men' that villages in rural areas depended on for physicians, midwives and spiritual counselors were in fact the direct descendants of Druids and Galdors, preaching an earth-based religion and secretly worshipping an immanent Mother Goddess as an alternative to the Church's transcendent Father God.
Gardner took this idea a bit further. He suggested that the Goddess-cult was deliberately targeted by the Church as part of a sort of spiritual land-grab. Without the wise women and their ilk, you see, the peasants would come running to the church for doctors, educators and comforters. So the "Burning Times" (Gardner's word for the three centuries of intensive witch hunting from the 1500s onward) were really a smoke screen. The Church wasn't hunting devil-worshipping witches - and the church leaders knew it! - no, the Church was wiping out a rival religion. Gardner is known as the 'Father of Wicca' and his analysis is dear to the hearts of many modern day pagans.
Is it true, though?
I want to be clear what I mean. I don't think it's very controversial to say that a lot of the folk songs, country ballads and village festivals all across Europe had (and still have) themes and characters and images and motifs that date from pagan myths. A whole bunch of folklorists came along in the 18th and 19th centuries to preserve these remnants of folk culture from the advance of Modernity - people like the Grimm Brothers, for example. Later writers, like Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough, delighted in reconstructing these pagan ideas from the outlines. But Gardner's idea is much more extraordinary. He's saying the pagan ideas didn't need reconstructing and were more than just outlines. He's saying a self-conscious practising paganism was going on, right under the noses of churchmen, in the cracks and shadows of European society, right up to the 17th century. When he refers to 'The Burning Times', he's thinking of something like a pogrom or a genocide, a holocaust in fact, the systematic extirpation of one religion by another with 'witchcraft' cited as an excuse and a justification.
Clearly, this isn't mainstream history. But then, Gardner's contention is that mainstream history is Christian propaganda. Just as the ancient Persians and Egyptians freely altered their histories, excising the names of disappointing dynasties from the monuments, so Christian historians have excised the very existence of the Witch Cult.
There's a point where this simply becomes a faith position. After all, millions of people believe in the literal historical truth of the Exodus, the reign of King Solomon or the Empty Tomb of Jesus, without a shred of archaeological evidence. That's a fair enough view for Wiccans to take, sort of credo quia absurdum. But what about me? Are the heroic pagans of The Burning Times pure fantasy or are they a swashbuckling and glamourous interpretation of actual beliefs, actual resistance, actual victims?
Modern historians are less romantic than their 19th century forebears and I don't think you'd find many today who would subscribe to the idea of a pan-European Celtic or Norse imperium, with an organised religion that could endure underground for centuries. The standard view is that the victims of the witch trials were just that - victims. They were hapless Christians who were unlucky in their neighbours, husbands or ability to have babies, people with unusual attitudes or unpopular professions, people who'd made unfortunate friendships or been too successful for their jealous rivals. This view sees the Burning Times as one of those baffling eruptions of social hysteria with its causes lost in economics and village politics.
Of course, both views make for the ingredients of a good book...
The idea isn't mine. It was famously prompted by the 20th century anthropologist Margaret Murray and her follower Gerald Gardner. Murray pitched the idea of a 'European Witch Cult' with its roots in Norse and Celtic paganism that had survived, through folk practices and oral transmission, right through the Middle Ages, despite the best attempts of the Christian authorities to stamp it out. In Murray's analysis, many of the 'wise women' and 'cunning men' that villages in rural areas depended on for physicians, midwives and spiritual counselors were in fact the direct descendants of Druids and Galdors, preaching an earth-based religion and secretly worshipping an immanent Mother Goddess as an alternative to the Church's transcendent Father God.
Gardner took this idea a bit further. He suggested that the Goddess-cult was deliberately targeted by the Church as part of a sort of spiritual land-grab. Without the wise women and their ilk, you see, the peasants would come running to the church for doctors, educators and comforters. So the "Burning Times" (Gardner's word for the three centuries of intensive witch hunting from the 1500s onward) were really a smoke screen. The Church wasn't hunting devil-worshipping witches - and the church leaders knew it! - no, the Church was wiping out a rival religion. Gardner is known as the 'Father of Wicca' and his analysis is dear to the hearts of many modern day pagans.
Is it true, though?
I want to be clear what I mean. I don't think it's very controversial to say that a lot of the folk songs, country ballads and village festivals all across Europe had (and still have) themes and characters and images and motifs that date from pagan myths. A whole bunch of folklorists came along in the 18th and 19th centuries to preserve these remnants of folk culture from the advance of Modernity - people like the Grimm Brothers, for example. Later writers, like Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough, delighted in reconstructing these pagan ideas from the outlines. But Gardner's idea is much more extraordinary. He's saying the pagan ideas didn't need reconstructing and were more than just outlines. He's saying a self-conscious practising paganism was going on, right under the noses of churchmen, in the cracks and shadows of European society, right up to the 17th century. When he refers to 'The Burning Times', he's thinking of something like a pogrom or a genocide, a holocaust in fact, the systematic extirpation of one religion by another with 'witchcraft' cited as an excuse and a justification.
Clearly, this isn't mainstream history. But then, Gardner's contention is that mainstream history is Christian propaganda. Just as the ancient Persians and Egyptians freely altered their histories, excising the names of disappointing dynasties from the monuments, so Christian historians have excised the very existence of the Witch Cult.
There's a point where this simply becomes a faith position. After all, millions of people believe in the literal historical truth of the Exodus, the reign of King Solomon or the Empty Tomb of Jesus, without a shred of archaeological evidence. That's a fair enough view for Wiccans to take, sort of credo quia absurdum. But what about me? Are the heroic pagans of The Burning Times pure fantasy or are they a swashbuckling and glamourous interpretation of actual beliefs, actual resistance, actual victims?
Modern historians are less romantic than their 19th century forebears and I don't think you'd find many today who would subscribe to the idea of a pan-European Celtic or Norse imperium, with an organised religion that could endure underground for centuries. The standard view is that the victims of the witch trials were just that - victims. They were hapless Christians who were unlucky in their neighbours, husbands or ability to have babies, people with unusual attitudes or unpopular professions, people who'd made unfortunate friendships or been too successful for their jealous rivals. This view sees the Burning Times as one of those baffling eruptions of social hysteria with its causes lost in economics and village politics.
Of course, both views make for the ingredients of a good book...