THE GOD OF THE WITCHES - World eBook Library - World Public ...

immigrant Christians. The country must therefore have been Pagan with Christian rulers and a Christian
aristocracy. A parallel case is that of Spain under the Moslems. There the rulers were of one religion, the people
of another, the popular religion receiving continual reinforcements from abroad. In the case of Spain the popular
religion organised by the civil power drove out the superimposed cult. In England, however, the final conquest
was by the Normans, whose ruler was of the same religion as that of the king whom he defeated; but the
Norman people, like the English, were largely of the Old Faith, and the Conquest made little difference to the
relative position of the two religions. Therefore though the rulers professed Christianity the great mass of the
people followed the old gods, and even in the highest offices of the Church the priests often served the heathen
deities as well as the Christian God and practised Pagan rites. Thus in 1282 the priest of Inverkeithing led the
fertility dance round the churchyard;[2] in 1303 the bishop of Coventry, like other members of his diocese, paid
homage to a deity in the form of an animal;[3] in 1453, two years before the Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, the
Prior of Saint-Germain-en-Laye performed the same rites as the bishop of Coventry.[4] As late as 1613 de
Lancre can say of the Basses Pyrénées, "the greater part of the priests are witches",[5] while Madame
Bourignon in 1661 records at Lille that "no Assemblies were ever seen so numerous in the City as in these
Sabbaths, where came People of all Qualities and Conditions, Young and Old, Rich and Poor, Noble, and
Ignoble, but especially all sorts of Monks and Nuns, Priests and Prelates".[6] The political aspect of the
organisation is well exemplified in the trial of the North Berwick witches, when at the instance of their
Grandmaster they attempted to kill James VI. Another example is found among the Elizabethan State
Papers;[7] "The names of the Confederates against Her Majesty who have diverse and sundry times conspired
her life and do daily confederate against her Ould Birtles the great devel, Darnally the sorcerer, Maude
Two-good enchantress, the ould witch of Ramsbury".
William the Conqueror rendered waste and desolate nearly half of his new kingdom; the re-peopling of the
wilderness seems to have been done in great measure by the descendants of the Neolithic and Bronze-age
stock who were saved from massacre by the remoteness and inaccessibility of their dwellings. These were the
places where the Old Religion flourished; and it was only by very slow degrees that even a small amount of
outward conformity with Christianity could be established, and then only by means of compromises on the part
of the Church; certain practices were permitted, certain images were retained, though often under different
names.
The Reformation appears to have had the same effect on Great Britain as the Mahommedan conquest had on
Egypt. The Moslems found Christianity established in the towns of the Nile Valley while a debased Paganism
still existed among the agricultural population. The religion of Islam swept through the country like a flame, the
converts being chiefly from the Pagans, not from the Christians. In Great Britain the appeal of the Reformation,
like the appeal of the even more fanatical Islam, was to the Pagan population; but with this difference, that in
England political conditions brought in the higher classes as well. It was then that the dividing line between
Christianity and heathenism became more marked, for the Old Religion was gradually relegated to the lowest
classes of the community and to those who lived in remote parts at a distance from any centre of civilisation.
The records of the Middle Ages show the ancient god was known in many parts of the country, but to the
Christian recorder he was the enemy of the New Religion and was therefore equated with the Principle of Evil,
in other words the Devil. This conception, that a god other than that of the recorded must be evil, is not confined
to Christianity, or to the Middle Ages. St. Paul, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, expressed the same
opinion when he wrote, "The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to God. Ye
cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils; ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and the table of
devils". The author of the Book of Revelation is equally definite when he calls the magnificent altar of Zeus at
Pergamos "the throne of Satan", "I know thy works and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's throne is". In
1613 Sebastian Michaelis spoke with no uncertain voice, "The Gods of the Turks and the Gods of the Gentiles
are all Devils". In India, Hindus, Mahommedans and Christians unite in calling the deities of the aboriginal tribes
"devils". The gentle peaceable Yezidis of modern Mesopotamia, whose god is incarnate in a peacock or a
black snake, are stigmatised as "devil-worshippers" by their Moslem fellow-countrymen. As late as the
nineteenth century Christian missionaries of every denomination, who went out to Convert the heathen in any
part of the world, were apt to speak of the people among whom they laboured as worshippers of devils, and
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