Rise of Witches And Perceptheism

(July 6, 2022) The year 1900 saw the publication of the book Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum in the United States which began the rehabilitation of witchcraft with Glenda the good witch of the north.  In 1902, a musical loosely based on the book debuted in Chicago which went on to Broadway in New York during January 1903 where it played for nearly two years. In 1939 the famous movie came out. (Good video history at: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/american-oz/)

Frank Baum's mother-in-law was the amazing theoretical and activist suffragette, Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826 - 1898). In 1893 she published Woman, Church, and State. In that book she argued that the institutional Christian church was responsible for women’s oppression throughout history. Gage believed that the church's resistance to women's equality was foundational to other church beliefs and that the church gained power through influencing marriage and education laws. 

This became the "radical" wing of the suffragette movement which led in 1890 to the creation of the more conservative National American Woman Suffrage Association whose less controversial views actually achieved the women's vote in the United States in 1920. Yet, the NAWSA was forced to officially repudiate Woman, Church, and State in 1913 when it was banned under the Comstock laws. This was a law passed by the U.S. Congress in 1873 which had the stated purpose of suppressing "Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use.”

 While federal anti-obscenity laws existed for some time, censorship itself was not mandated by federal or state governments. What codified censorship was the 1873 Comstock Act, which called for the banning of literature deemed sexually arousing, even indirectly. The man for whom the act is named, Anthony Comstock, was the leader of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and a special agent for both the U.S. Post Office and the New York state prosecutor’s office. The Comstock Act banned the mailing, importation, and transportation of any printed material (even private letters) that contained lewd or lascivious material. It also banned the transport of any sort of contraceptive drug or device, as well as literature describing contraceptive devices. What this meant was that a book that in any way made mention of any sort of birth control could be considered lewd and subject to confiscation. Individuals convicted of violating the Comstock Act could receive up to five years of imprisonment with hard labour and a fine of up to $2,000.

Other books that were affected by the Comstock Act included The Decameron (written by Giovanni Boccaccio in the fourteenth century), Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata, Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, and D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Beginning in the 1950s, a series of U.S. Supreme Court cases helped change the scope of censorship laws in the United States. In 1971 Congress removed the language concerning contraception, and federal courts until Roe v. Wade (1973) ruled that it applied only to “unlawful” abortions. 

Gage died in the Baum home in Chicago, in 1898. Although Gage was cremated, there is a memorial stone at Fayetteville Cemetery in Illinois that bears her slogan "There is a word sweeter than Mother, Home or Heaven. That word is Liberty." 

The Chapter Summaries of Women, Church, and State As Listed in the Front of the Book:

Chapter One—The Matriarchate

Tendency of Christianity from the first to restrict woman’s liberty. Woman had great freedom under the old civilizations. The Matriarchate; its traces among many nations; it preceded the Patriarchate. The Iroquois or Six Nations under reminiscences of the Matriarchate. Government of the United States borrowed from the Six Nations. To the Matriarchate or Mother-rule, is the world indebted for its first conception of “inherent rights,” and a government established on this basis. Malabar under the Matriarchate when discovered by the Portuguese. The most ancient Aryans under the Matriarchate. Ancient Egypt a reminiscence of the Matriarchal period. Authority of the wife among the most polished nations of antiquity. As Vestal Virgin in Rome, woman’s authority great both in civil and religious affairs. Monogamy the rule of the Matriarchate. Polygamy, infanticide and prostitution the rule of the Patriarchate.

Chapter Two—Celibacy

Original sin. Woman not regarded as a human being by the church. Marriage looked upon as vile. Celibacy of the clergy; their degrading sensuality. A double Code of Morals. Celibacy confirmed as a dogma of the church. Many notable consequences followed. Wives sold as slaves. Women driven to suicide. Influence of the church unfavorable to virtue. Women of wealth drawn into monastic life. The church in Mexico. President Diaz. Protestant Orders.

Chapter Three—Canon Law

The church makes the legitimacy of marriage depend upon its control of the ceremony. Change from ancient civilization to renewed barbarism at an early age of the Christian era, noted by historians, but its cause unperceived. The clergy a distinct body from the laity; their rights not the same. A holy sex and an unholy one. Rapid growth of Canon law in England. Alteration in the laws through the separation of Ecclesiastical courts from the Civil, recognized by Blackstone as among the remarkable legal events of Great Britain. Learning prohibited to women. The oath of seven persons required to convict a priest. Husbands prohibited by Canon law from leaving more than one-third of their property to wives; might [Pg xi]leave them less. Daughters could be disinherited; sons could not be. The Reformation effected no change. Governments catering to Pope Leo XIII, at time of his Jubilee; the President of the United States sends a gift.

Chapter Four—Maquette

Feudalism; its degradation of woman. Jus primae noctis. Rights of the Lords Spiritual. Peasants decide not to marry. Immorality of the heads of the Greek and the Protestant churches. Breton Ballad of the Fourteenth Century. St. Margaret of Scotland. Pall Mall Gazette’s disclosures. Foreign traffic in young English girls. West End. Eton. Prostitution chiefly supported by “Heads of Families.” Northwestern Pineries. Governmental crime-makers. Rapid increase of child criminals. The White Cross society. Baptism of nude women in the early Christian Church.

Chapter Five—Witchcraft

The possession of a pet of any kind dangerous to woman. Black cats and witches. The fact of a woman’s possessing knowledge, brought her under suspicion of the church. The three most distinguishing features of witchcraft. Opposition of the church to the growth of human will. Persecution for witchcraft a continuance of church policy for obtaining universal dominion over mankind. The Sabbat. The Black Mass. Women physicians and surgeons of the middle ages; they discover anaesthetics. Their learning; their persecution by the church. The most eminent legal minds incapable of forming correct judgment. Three notable points in regard to witchcraft. Persecution introduced into America by the “Pilgrim Fathers.” First Synod in America convened to try a woman for heresy. Whipping half nude women for their religious opinions. Famine caused persecution of women.

Chapter Six—Wives

“Usus.” Disruption of the Roman Empire unfavorable to the personal and proprietary rights of woman. Sale of daughters practiced in England seven hundred years after the introduction of Christianity. The Mundium. The practice of buying wives with cattle or money regulated by law. Evil fame of Christendom. “The Worthier of Blood.” Murder of a husband termed petit treason; punished by burning alive. Mrs. Sanio decapitated in Finland, 1892, for crime of petit treason. Husbands control wives’ religion. The “Lucy Walker case;” Judge Dodge decides a husband has a property interest in a wife. Davenport’s Rules for his wife. Assaulting wives protected by law. The Ducking Stool; its use in England; brought to America by the “Pilgrim Fathers.” Salic law. Gavelkind. Women not permitted to read the Bible. “Masterless women.” Women not admitted as a surety or witness. The Code Napoleon. Morganatic marriage. Ibsen’s “Ghosts.” Strindberg’s “Giftas.” Ancient Slavs. Russia under Greek Christianity. The Domstroii Marriage forms. Burying wives alive. “Darkest England.” Advertising wives. An English clergyman offers £100 reward for the capture and return of his wife. Civil marriage is opposed by the church. Action of the Chilian Republic.

Chapter Seven—Polygamy

Polygamy sustained by the Christian Church and the Christian State. The first Synod of the Reformation convened to sanction polygamy. Favoring views of Luther and the other “principal reformers.” Favoring action of the [Pg xii]American Board of Foreign Missions. Favoring action of a Missionary Conference in India. Mormons compared to the Puritans. Mormon theocracy similar to that of other Christian sects.

Chapter Eight—Woman and Work

God’s “curse” upon Adam. Opposition of the church to amelioration of woman’s suffering as an interference with her “curse.” Man’s escape from his own “curse.” The sufferings of helpless infants and children because of woman’s labor. Innutrition and the hard labor of expectant mothers the two great factors in physical degeneration and infantile mortality. Woman’s work in Europe and the United States. Woman degraded under Christian civilization to labors unfit for slaves.

Chapter Nine—The Church of Today

Sin killed by sin. Woman’s inferiority taught from the pulpit today. A Pastoral letter. The See trial. Modern sermons on women. Lenten lectures of Rev. Morgan A. Dix. The Methodist General Conference of 1880, reject Miss Oliver’s petition for ordination on the plea that woman already has all the rights that are good for her. Resolves itself into a political convention. The General Conference of 1888, rejects women delegates. The Catholic Plenary Council of 1884. Mazzini’s prophecy. The opposition of the church to woman’s education has killed off the inhabitants of the world with greater rapidity than war, famine or pestilence. The present forms of religion and governments essentially masculine.

Chapter Ten—Past, Present, Future

The most important struggle in the history of the church. Not self-sacrifice, but self-development woman’s first duty in life. The protective spirit; its injury to woman. Christianity of little value to civilization. Looking backward through history; looking forward.

References

(Dec 23, 2023, updated December 19, 2025) Margaret Murry realized that scattered bits of evidence showed that some sort of Ancient European wide Pagan religion existed prior to Christianity which was not classical. Not having access to modern historical genetics or historical linguistics which were in the future she turned to the only source of evidence that might provide some information, that witch trials. The hope was that peasant culture still retained some memory of this past religion. As evidenced by runic text translations not much actually remained in central Europe at the time of the trials so Murray allowed her imagination to run wild using the weakest evidence. The result was fake history. Yet Paganism survived as late as 1300 in the Baltic states so any surviving witch trial records from there might actually reveal some good information. 

Margaret Murray (1863–1963) was born in India to British parents. She moved to London, in 1894 where she began studying Egyptology at University College London, developing a friendship with department head Flinders Petrie, who encouraged her early academic publications and appointed her junior lecturer in 1898. She worked there until 1935. She was president of the Folklore Society from 1953 to 1955.

The rehabilitation of the witch's image set the stage for Murray to propose in 1921 that remnants of a European wide Nature religion were preserved into historical times as witch covens whose characteristics could be discovered from the transcripts of witch trails. Her 1921 book, “The Witch-Cult in Western Europe” was based upon witch trial evidence gathered between 1550 and 1700. She also notes that the first witch trails occurred in Britain during the early 1300's and that Joan of Arc was burnt as a witch in 1431. 

• Looked upon in the light of a fertility cult the ritual of the witches becomes comprehensible. Originally for the promotion of fertility, it became gradually degraded into a method for blasting fertility, and thus the witches who had once been the means of bringing prosperity to the people and the land by driving out all evil influences, in the process of time were looked upon as being themselves evil influences and were held in horror accordingly.

Chapter 1

Murry starts in chapter 1 by providing evidence from ancient sources that some sort of Pagan religion existed in central Europe prior to the arrival of Christianity:

• Eating and drinking in a Pagan temple ... Not only celebrating feasts in the abominable places of the heathen and offering food there but consuming it.... If anyone at the kalends (new moon of) January goes about as a stag or bull, that is, making himself into a wild animal and dressing in the skin of a herd animal, and putting on heads of beasts ... penance for three years because this is devilish.

• Offerings to devils of witchcraft; auguries according to the methods of the heathen; vows paid, loosed, or confirmed at wells, stones, or trees; the gathering of herbs with any incantation except Christian prayers.

• We earnestly forbid every heathenism: heathenism is that men worship idols, that is, that they worship heathen gods, the sun and the moon, fire or rivers, water wells or stones, or forest trees of any kind, or love witchcraft, or promote morth-work in any way. 

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 introduces the witch's god (called the devil by Christians). He was seen usually a handsome man but sometimes a woman (probably in proportion to the witches sexual orientation) or an animal. In rituals this god was usually played by some man dressed up as an animal. She says in section 4:

• The animal forms in which the Devil most commonly appeared were bull, cat, dog, goat, horse, and sheep. A few curious facts come to light on tabulating these forms; i.e. the Devil appears as a goat or a sheep in France only; he is never found in any country as a hare, though this was the traditional form for a witch to assume; nor is he found as a toad, though this was a common form for the familiar; the fox and the ass also are unknown forms; and in Western Europe the pig is an animal almost entirely absent from all the rites and ceremonies as well as from the disguises of the Devil.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 covers the admission ceremonies. 

• The ceremony for the admission of adults who were converts to the witch religion from Christianity follow certain main lines. These are (1) the free consent of the candidate, (2) the explicit denial and rejection of a previous religion, (3) the absolute and entire dedication of body and soul to the service and commands of the new Master and God.

A witches mark in some places and times was considered proof that a person had been ordained as a witch although it was not proof at other times and places:

• The Lawes against Witches and Conivration, published 'by authority' in 1645, state that 'their said Familiar hath some big or little Teat upon their body, where he sucketh them: and besides their sucking, the Devil leaveth other markes upon their bodies, sometimes like a Blew-spot, or Red-spot like a flea-biting'. Sir George Mackenzie, the famous Scotch lawyer, describing in 1699 what did and did not legally constitute a witch, says:

Chapter 4

In chapter 4 Murry describes the witches assemblies and their magical means of travel. Their main assemblies were their sabbaths or in French “sabbats.” 

• There were two kinds of assemblies; the one, known as the Sabbath, was the General Meeting of all the members of the religion; the other, to which I give—on the authority of Estebène de Cambrue—the name of Esbat, was only for the special and limited number who carried out the rites and practices of the cult, and was not for the general public.

Some witches reported that they were magically transported to their sabbats via applying magical oils 

• 'Before they are carried to their meetings, they anoint their Foreheads, and Hand-wrists with an Oyl the Spirit brings them (which smells raw) and then they are carried in a very short time, using these words as they pass, Thout, tout a tout, tout, throughout and about. And when they go off from their Meetings, they say, Rentum, Tormentum ... all are carried to their several homes in a short space.' Alice Duke gave the same testimony, noting besides that the oil was greenish in colour. Anne Bishop, the Officer of the Somerset covens, confessed that 'her Forehead being first anointed with[102] a Feather dipt in Oyl, she hath been suddenly carried to the place of their meeting.... After all was ended, the Man in black vanished. The rest were on a sudden conveighed to their homes (Glanvil, pt. ii, pp. 139, 141, 148-9, 151)

From these magical but ambiguous beliefs came the idea that witches rode on broomsticks for as Murry says:

• The number of cases vouched for by the persons who actually performed or saw the feat of riding on a stick through the air are disappointingly few.

In contrast to attending sabbats, other witches just rode around at night. These nocturnal reports associate witches with the goddess Dianna:

• The laws of Lorraine (1329-46) decree that 'celui qui fera magie, sortilège, billets de sort, pronostic d'oiseau ou se vanteroit d'avoir chevauché la nuit avec Diane ou telle autre vielle qui se dit magicienne, sera banni et payera dix livres tournois'. (whoever does magic, spells, spell tickets, bird prognosis or boasts of having ridden at night with Diane or some other old lady who calls herself a magician, will be banned and will pay ten pounds tournaments)

• 'Certeine wicked women following sathans prouocations, being seduced by the illusion of divels, beleeve and professe, that in the night times they ride abroad with Diana, the goddesse of the Pagans, or else with Herodias, with an innumerable multitude, upon certeine beasts ... and doo whatsoeuer those fairies or ladies command.

(Murray's source here was incorrect, this quote did not come from that council so it must be considered to be from the European 800's) Diana was the Roman moon goddess and the main feminine deity of the Latin west. She was probably in the line of Sumerian Inanna, Mesopotamian Ishtar, Mediterranean Ayu, and Greek Artemis. Herodias seems to be a temptress goddess based upon Herodias, the woman who causes John the Baptist to be executed by King Herod Antipas of Galilee back when Jesus was living.

Chapters 5 and 6

Chapters 5 and 6 describes the Sabbat proceedings. A French source, Boguet (1589), describes the "typical" Sabbat as revealed by the witch trials (translated into English): 

• The Sorcerers assembled in their Synagogue worship Satan first...they offer him candles, & kiss him in the shameful parts behind. Sometimes still he holds a black image, which the Sorcerers must kiss.... The Sorcerers in second place dance.... The dances finished, the Sorcerers come to couple.... The Sorcerers, after wallow among the filthy pleasures of the flesh, banquet & feast.... Sorcerers tell Satan what they have done since the last assembly.... He makes these wretches renounce again, God, Christianity, & Baptism. He makes them refresh the solemn oath they have taken.

Chapter 7

Witch hunters were motivated by the fear of organized conspiratorial groups which could corrupt the social order. In some cases the prosecutors found or more likely invented what they were looking for. Murry says this:

• The word coven is a derivative of 'convene', and is variously spelt coven, coeven, covine, cuwing, and even covey. The special meaning of the word among the witches is a 'band' or 'company', who were set apart for the practice of the rites of the religion and for the performance of magical ceremonies; in short, a kind of priesthood.

Appendix

In an appendix Murray links fairies and witches:

• The dwarf race which at one time inhabited Europe has left few concrete remains, but it has survived in innumerable stories of fairies and elves. Nothing, however, is known of the religious beliefs and cults of these early peoples, except the fact that every seven years they made a human sacrifice to their god—'And aye at every seven years they pay the tend to hell'—and that like the Khonds they stole children from the neighbouring races and brought them up to be the victims.

Murray's 1933 Sequel

In 1933 Murray brought out a sequel entitled “God of the Witches” aimed at the more casual reader. She continue to claim that the fairies originated out of a race small people and that they originated the witch religion.

But the big difference is that Murray now linked the Devil with the Goddess Diana instead of a fertility god in a convoluted and fraudulent linkage which goes as follows:

She claimed that the Devil derived from the nature god Pan who was the two horned god representing the masculine aspect of nature (the imagery was certainly borrowed).

 She further claimed that Pan was the same as the god Janus who was the god of gateways and transitions who was often represented as two heads facing in opposite directions (we get the month of January from Janus in a representation of the yearly transition). Sometimes one of the heads of Janus is horned in a representation of the transition from the divine to the material realms.

Next Murray claimed without any evidence that Janus was the same as a male version of the goddess Diana whom she called  Dianus (such a god does not exist in the classical texts). She got this speculative linkage from chapter 16 of the book The Golden Bough by James Frazier. The Golden Bough was first published in two volumes in 1890; in three volumes in 1900; and in twelve volumes in the third edition, published 1906–1915. While those books popularized anthropology they were full of speculation and short on facts.

Murry now claimed that Diana was the original Goddess of the witches before the rise of Christianity.

Initially these books had little impact with the first book only selling 2,020 copies while the second book was pulled from publication and discounted in price after two years (Hutton, p 200). Yet due to the increased interest in witches due to the Wizard of Oz movie, the second book was republished during the late 1940’s and it became a bestseller. 

References

(July 6, 2022) Perceptheism is a mental framework which claims the details of the divine realm are objectively unknowable so all conceptions of the divine are personally valid as long as such conceptions are not claimed as something which others should believe. Monotheism, polytheism, pantheism, and atheism all assume the divine can be known in an objective sense and claim the other theisms are wrong.

This concept is found as specific examples throughout the ancient Druid rune texts and also in Greek philosophy in which a principle like wisdom (sophia) could be optionally perceived as the goddess Sophia. Yet Alcoholic's Anonymous seems to have been the first in history to state it as a general principle in opposition to the various  dogmatic concepts of the divine. For this organization's founders, the establishment of a strong connection to Divine along with peer pressure was an essential aid in overcoming the power of addiction.   

This conceptual freedom to view the Divine in a way most natural for each person is called Perceptheism. The importance of divine connections in the recovery of the alcoholic was well stated by George Little who wrote in 1948:

• The distinctive novelty is that each alcoholic is allowed to choose his own concept of God. There is full liberty of belief and no end to the varieties of belief. Therein Alcoholics Anonymous differs from the churches which require belief in certain sets of dogma. An alcoholic refuses to accept these ready-made, he wants to make his own. In A.A. he is encouraged to do so, with this rider, that he obey the Higher Power as he understands it. That is intriguing. That places the responsibility on the alcoholic. He is on trial, not an organization, a book, a creed, or a sacrament. Can he act according to his own faith?​
• Every person has some belief, more or less vague, in a creative, life-giving force, a universal mind or oversoul. Alcoholics Anonymous begins by thinking of this as a Power rather than a Person. It works unseen as electricity, may be thought of as gravitation, evolution, or growth. Thought is a power, good will is a power, trust is a power. Trying to visualize the Higher Power is a hinderance rather than a help. Formulas are of little value. Like the-wind, the spirit can be felt but not seen. Instead of expecting ecstasies, visions, trances, one finds God in what is; contact may be made through gratitude.
•  Surrender to the Higher Power is not difficult for alcoholics, because for years they have surrendered to a lower power. Alcohol has a power, an intoxicating power. It gives a lift, euphoria, escape, release, cessation from fear and worry, a lightening of reality, forgetfulness, stupor, and sleep. In time, however, there are craving and compulsion, memory blanks, shakes, sweats, headaches, and hangovers. One man after a bout felt as though he had seven skulls. In devotion to this autocratic tyrant alcoholics will surrender thought, time, money, health, friends, and vocation. To surrender to the Higher Power involves no more exacting a demand than the surrender they have made to alcohol, perhaps over a drinking period of twenty years. (Little 1948)​

References