{"collection":"bos","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/bos/bos309.htm","path":"bos/bos309.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/bos/bos309.htm","text":"Internet Book of Shadows, (Various Authors), [1999]\n The article below was written back in 1991 or 1992 e.v.\n For an update by the author, please see:\n \n https://www.angelfire.com/ny5/dvera/pagan/intro.html#bos.\n \n Modern Wiccan Concepts based in Literary Satanism \n \n By: Diane Vera\n \n As I pointed out to Warren Grant in the PAGAN echo recently, Charles\n G. Leland mentions Michelet in the Appendix to _Aradia:_\n _Gospel_of_the_Witches_: \"Now be it observed, that every leading\n point which forms the plot or centre of this _Vangel_ [...] had\n been told or written out for me in fragments by Maddalena (not to\n mention other authorities), even as it had been chronicled by Horst\n or Michelet\" (pp.101-102, 1974 Weiser paperback edition).\n .\n In _A_History_of_Witchcraft_, Jeffrey B. Russell writes:\n \"Michelet's argument that witchcraft was a form of social protest\n was adapted later by Marxists; his argument that it was based on a\n fertility cult was adopted by anthropologists at the turn of the\n century, influenig Sir James Frazer's _Golden_Bough_, Jessie\n Weston's _From_Ritual_to_Romance_, Magaret Murray's _Witch-\n Cult_in_Western_Europe_, and indirectly T.S. Eliot's\n _The_Waste_Land_\" (_A_History_of_Witchcraft_, p.133).\n .\n Russell states further: \"Neopagan witchcraft has roots in the\n tradition of Michelet, who argued that European witchcraft was the\n survival of an ancient religion. This idea influenced Sir James\n Frazer and a number of other anthropologists and writers in the late\n nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The publication of\n Charles Leland's _Aradia_ in 1899 was an important step in the\n evolution of the new religion of witchcraft. [...] The doctrines\n and practices of the witches as reported by Leland are a melange of\n sorcery, medieval heresy, witch-craze concepts, and political\n radicalism, and Leland reports ingenuously that this is just what he\n expected, since it fitted with what he had read in Michelet\"\n (Russell, p.148).\n .\n As far as I know, it's possible that Michelet's influence on Gardner\n was only indirect, via the other above-named writers. This would\n not invalidate my point, which is that Michelet played a key role in\n the development of the ideas in question.\n .\n Michelet has had a more direct influence on feminist Goddess\n religion than on Wicca proper. Michelet's _La_Sorciere_\n (_Satanism_and_Witchcraft_) is listed in the bibliography of\n _Woman,_Church,_and_State_ by Matilda Gage (19th-century Women's\n Suffrage leader and the founder of pre-Wiccan feminist Goddess\n religion) and, more recently, in _Witches,_Midwives,_and_Nurses:_\n _A_History_of_Women_Healers_ by Barbara Ehrenreich and Dierdre\n English (1973).\n .\n In my opinion, Michelet's most important contribution to both Wicca\n and feminist Goddess religion was that, as far as I know, he was the\n first well-known writer (in recent centuries, anyway) to use the\n word \"Witch\" (capital W) with its present-day positive connotations\n of healing and opposition to tyranny.\n \n \n 1536","title":"Internet Book of Shadows: Literary Roots of Wicca (Diane ...","type":"page"}