"The idea of shamanic spirit-flight, universal as it is, has come to be encapsulated in European folklore in the image of the broom-riding witch. In other folklore, as well as the witch-trials and records of clergymen from centuries past, we also hear of Witches taking to the air on the backs of horses, goats, stalks of ragwort or other plants, pitchforks, and brooms. We hear stories from as far back as ancient Rome of witches using special ointments to turn into screech-owls and fly through the air."
Robin Artisson - 'The Horn of Evenwood'
After my previous article on shamanism and the comments below it I began thinking about a number of things relating to the practice of traditional witchcraft and shamanism. I mentioned in the 'comments' section that I was just as happy to be called 'witch' or 'sorcerer' as I was 'shaman' but that what I lamented was the debarring (or just general disrespect) of any one from a universal spiritual reality on the basis of race.
I thought back to the training workshop run by Harner's shamanic institute that I attended and I remember as we went around the circle, doing that obligatory getting to know you speech, how many people were drawn to 'Celtic' or 'Germanic' myth and wished to know how to do 'Celtic Shamanism' or the like. It is interesting, given (as mentioned in the above quote) the existence of a much more recent strain of shamanic behaviour that they could be tapping into that no one said 'witchcraft.' Or is it?
The most obvious reason why people may hesitate to say they are, or to in fact be, interested in witchcraft is that the term still carries some kind of stigma. I must admit that when it was my turn to share I didn't identify myself as an old school witch. When asked I said that I had a long history of shamanic practice, primarily within cultures that were ancestral to me, such as the British Isles and Eastern Europe. Awesome politician talk in that one. It is, of course, all true.
Why did I want to say I was a shaman but not a 'witch', given that a great deal of contemporary work exists to identify witchcraft practices as European shamanism surviving into post-Christian times? In my case it had little to do with concerns that other people would think I meant diabolism and baby-eating, if only that were the case! At least people take you seriously when they imagine you feasting on infants. No, I was concerned at losing credibility based on being associated with fluffy, new-agey 'witches.' It just seemed there was more chance of establishing something that could be taken seriously if you vetoed the word altogether. And as I have said on a previous post on Traditional Witchcraft, I toyed for a while with refusing to use a word at all. However, Traditional Witchcraft today isn't just a term; no different than saying 'British shaman' or 'Celtic shaman' it implies the acceptance or non acceptance of certain things. And although part of my irredeemably savage soul will always connect with the most primal and ancient currents I can see much of value in some of the things that are accepted by the traditional witching way.
The first and most important thing about witchcraft is that it has persisted, to at least a limited extent into modern times. Most of the evidence for this is a little difficult to document but I can cite personal experience of at least the persistence of witchcraft belief and certain associated motifs in British country people of the older generations and there are discoveries such as this on in Cornwall, where the later end of the archaeological finds go up to the 1950's. Not only is it easier both intuitively and intellectually to make 'contact' with a practice that has persisted in this manner, (at least as an initial 'entry point' to to awakening otherworldy experience) witchcraft is also a way of operating that has been forced to adapt to the modern world. And when I say 'modern world' I should add I mean the post-Renaissance world. It is the way that our ancestral pagan practices adapted and changed over time and as their inheritors we stand on strong ground in reclaiming them, in some ways stronger ground than when we try to associate ourselves with the ancients.
Now before I continue I should probably add that I consider ancestral religion a huge part of my life. I keep a hearth and home that functions around principles all inspired by the gods of our British heritage and in my daily doings I make frequent recourse to an ancient pantheon. But mixed with that ancient understanding is less ancient material, folklore, saint-prayers adapted for pagan use. So really when you start to look closely the difference between these two aspects the 'religious' and the 'sorcerous' is less than it first appears. Both are strongly influenced by folklore from the past two hundred years and many of the 'prayers' I do as I light fire and bake bread possess a very fine difference between themselves and what one may call a 'charm.' So let it be nice and clear that I mean no disrespect to modern polytheism when I say this. But the purpose of 'religious' life, at one important level, is to bind together communities and sacralise daily activities, so it is important that their is a binding aesthetic a sort of singularity of purpose and vision. An agreement between people to worship together in the same poetic manner. The sorcerer however is more pragmatic. His history throughout the world, particularly the New World, shows us that he or she relentlessly cannibalises practices or skills that may add power to their work. And in this way the witch, part of a traditional practice which was always both immensely conservative (in that it's folk memory was extremely long) and immensely integrative (in that it took in new influences, such as heretical Christian practices, Hermetic and Ceremonial elements introduced into Britain at various points over the past thousand years, and in the New World native and African practices as in Hoodoo.)
In this way Traditional Witchcraft is well adapted to the modern day, it is already ready for a world that has got a lot smaller and is clearly ready for those cross-pollination's. It also provides the person of European extract who is called to behave shamanically with continuously worn and well-trodden tracks that they can follow. The very imagery of the witch is ground into the western psyche in the way that an imagined return to some kind of 'Celtic Shamanism' (I would argue) can not provide.
There may not be a lot we can do about the reputation of witches, and we would not be the only type of cultural shaman or witch-doctor anywhere in the world to have a bad reputation. The more recent bad-press we've received due to well meaning sweetness and light pagans and wiccans, trying to tell everyone that we all believe in the three-fold law and are cuddly crystal-huggers has trivialised the idea of witchcraft for so many that it is not surprising that often people of European extract look for a spiritual transformation and power in things like Core Shamanism to the exclusion of it. Alas it seems we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. If say 'shaman' we are white people trying to co-opt someone elses culture, if we say 'witch' we are either a new-agey reiki-fancier or a diabolical kitten-killer. Luckily for us witches we've spent hundreds of years surviving in the shadows and upon the edges of society, living with one foot outside the hedge and the comfortable 'in space' of the current day. And by embracing our history, not just the part that happened before the Christian-Misfortune, we benefit from those tropes and stories that teach us how to live in liminal spaces and on peripheries in as a society that still isn't ready for us.
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2 comments:
That last bit evoked a shiver of recognition '' living in the shadows ... on the edges", yet desiring the communion of common worship with others.
The great thing about the Web is that it does make it possible to have some sort of communion with like-minded others and banishes those (all-too enticing) shadows which have become a virtue in themselves for some.
When I was young I liked to call myself a witch and was a member of a worshipping group that liked to call itself a coven Now as an older (wiser?) 'polytheist' I feel I can be both more eclectic and also more focused on specific gods. I'm also easier with solo devotions while also being glad to meet and worship with others when the opportunity arises. I recognise that urge for communion and oneness with the ancestors. But I've also got so used to that liminality as definitive of significant experience that it seems - in itself - like an ancestral home.
As a mature polytheist myself I can certainly see the virtue that one experiences in moving from what most people term 'witchcraft' into this sort of ancestral religious practice. But British polytheist as I am I still require a word (and a somewhat a 'mode') to describe my large amounts of lone sorcery, trance work, healing and otherworldly activities of this sort. As I said in my article people understand the word 'shaman' in this capacity a lot better than they understand what 'traditional witch' implies; thanks in large amounts to the 'teen witch' phenomena. However, as someone of British background the witching path is a lot more clearly marked than say, trying to call myself a 'druid.' Maybe that would have been once the appropriate term for someone who was working 'shamanically' within Britain but now it seems unwise to try and claim such a thing too glibly. We don't really know anywhere near enough about it and what we do know suggests that it belonged to a very different social organisation than our own and contained a rigorous training that it's difficult to approximate to today.
The phenomena of witchcraft however, and I mean as experienced in the large corpus of information spanning from the seventeenth century to the early twentieth and beyond in both directions, was adapted to more modern ways of life. It seems unfortunate to me therefore that much modern 'witchcraft'is of the quality that the more discerning of us are forced to outgrow it. Because a word, and a poetry of being for that matter, is still needed to describe the spiritual specialists within a polytheistic culture. And it seems to me this word has less problems with it than either 'shaman' or 'druid', though all have suffered abuse.
The Web does indeed allow us to commune in a way otherwise impossible. I only hope one day that we can also find recognised positions in our immediate communities, even if they are only sub-cultures.
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