Customer Reviews

The God of the Witches (Galaxy Books)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I actually came to this book after reading other scholarly texts that disprove, and books by modern witches that reluctantly admit to, the many unproven and unprovable assertions Margaret Murray made back in 1921. But, still, this book remains fascinating for its role in the growth of modern paganism and witchcraft -- and as a testament to the scholarly brilliance and creative thinking of a woman in what was still very much the male world of reseach and academia.

Murray was a brilliant thinker and researcher, but like many such people (male and female) since, and many more to come, her work has fed generations who have grown with her and now beyond her. Disproving her thesis does not denegrate the work or it's role in the history of a modern world religion.

I think the most fair assessment of the book's merits and demerits can be found in Jeffrey B. Russell's 1970s "A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics, and Pagans":

"Modern historical scholarship rejects the Murray thesis with all its variants. Scholars have gone too far in their retreat from Murray, since many fragments of pagan religion do certainly appear in medieval witchcraft. But the fact remains that the Murray thesis on the whole is untenable. The argument for the survival of any coherent fertility cult from antiquity through the Middle Ages into the present is riddled with fallacies..."

That doesn't mean that someone may not come up with a stronger set of theory or evidence later (after standing on the shoulders of a pioneer like Murray), but for now we have to admit the interesting but untenable nature of her sequence of evidence and her bottom-line conclusions.

In the light of recent scholarship by researchers such as Carlo Ginzburg, Murray' supposedly "discredited" theories look a lot better today than they did in the 1970's. She needs to be reassessed in this light.

It's a shame that Norman Cohn is so often seen as having made the definitive criticism; his own textual manipulations in the presentation of such documents as the Canon Episcopi make his accusations against Murray seem rather hollow. His major criticism of Murray is that he claims she left out mention of supposedly "impossible" elements in accounts by accused Witches, thus making their tales seem plausible. In fact, she did no such thing; her books are arranged thematicaly, and so these "impossible" elements are merely covered in other chapters. Further, "impossible" elements exist in the first-hand tales of believers in any religion; witness supposed "miracles" which still today are said to take place at the shrines of Christian saints.

Murray's works need to be re-read and looked at afresh. It's time for a more rational and unbiased re-assessment.

I guess on the plus side you could say that this book eventually sparked a more scholarly investigation into medieval paganism, but the book itself is far from scholarly or truthful. As a researcher who has translated the document which this book uses as the basis for its section about Joan of Arc (near the end of the book), I thought I would comment on that subject first. It's a little hard to believe that the author bothered to read that transcript even in translation, much less in the original language, since the book's version of the subject bears so little resemblance to the actual documents; for instance, the claim is made that Joan never used the phrase "Our Lord" in the original language and never identified "the King of Heaven" as Jesus Christ, both of which are patently false: all 5 surviving copies of the original transcript do, in fact, quote her as saying "Our Lord" ("Nostre Seigneur" in medieval French) when speaking to the clergy, and if you look at Article XXII you will see a copy of a letter in which she not only places the names "Jesus" and "Mary" at the top, but also identifies the King of Heaven as, quote, "the son of Saint Mary" (i.e., Jesus Christ, whom Christian theology considers the son of Saint Mary (the Virgin Mary)). The other surviving letters which she dictated (found in other documents aside from the trial transcript) are just as specific: one of these, dated July 17, 1429, contains the phrase "King Jesus, the King of Heaven"; another, dated March 23, 1430, orders the Hussites to return to the Catholic faith, which she describes as, quote, "the original source of light", thereby removing any doubt as to her religion. The author replaces all this with her own fictional spin on things, such as the invention of fictional "rules" of Christianity which Joan allegedly violated, and the attempt to confuse the modern and medieval usages of the term "Lorraine" in order to link her with a region allegedly associated with witchcraft, and so forth. As a final note on the subject, the book completely ignores all of the other documents which deal with Joan's life: military chronicles, letters, and the transcript of the Rehabilitation trial in which it was shown that the transcript of the original trial had been falsified at a number of crucial points in order to make the charge of heresy seem more plausible, a tactic which is also employed by this book.

On other fronts, the book has been rightly criticized by several generations of scholars for similar misrepresentations of evidence and outright invention on numerous topics; citing all of these would make for a fairly large book in itself, but in a nutshell the author has simply taken her knowledge of ancient religious practices, modified those practices wherever needed, and then inserted these beliefs into medieval European history, rewriting or concocting whatever evidence is needed to promote that view. It's refreshing to see that modern scholarship on this subject is moving away from the methods used by this book, although it remains to be seen whether a truly substantial view of medieval pagan beliefs will emerge. Hopefully it will.

Historically speaking, this book deserves a rating of 1. "The God of the Witches" basically re-states the theories of "Witch Cult in Modern Europe" -- in a more extreme and dogmatic form. Murray's theories were conclusively debunked in the 1970's. Scholars demonstrated that she twisted and falsified evidence, that she ignored the vast majority of our data on historical Witchcraft. On the other hand, this book had a profound impact on modern Witchcraft (one might say a profoundly BAD impact, but that's another issue). So this is an important book to read if you want to understand the development of Wicca and modern Paganism. Just don't mistake it for history

While it is probably true that some of the witchcraft accounts are a reflection of surviving pagan (read: Celtic) beliefs, Murray's approach to the issue is not remotely accurate, and in fact most neo-pagans take a different view now. Perhaps more to the point: the vast majority of historians continue to view this book and most of its conclusions as a travesty, since it is transparently dishonest and / or careless with so much of the evidence. A representative example of this is the treatment of Joan of Arc's case: the author ignores 90% of the historical evidence by using a few isolated quotes from the Condemnation Trial transcript while admitting that there was a later Rehabilitation Trial twenty years after Joan's death, in which this transcript - Murray's source - was shown to be largely fraudulent by the men who themselves had taken part in the original trial; they, and the other 115 witnesses, described Joan as a, quote, "good Catholic" who was executed by a corrupt Church tribunal controlled by the opposing military faction (i.e., the English). Murray ignores this testimony, and also ignores the letters that Joan dictated (of which 11 have survived) in which Joan clearly identifies herself as a Catholic - and in fact there's a letter, dated March 23, 1430, in which she threatens to lead a crusade against the Hussites unless they convert back to Catholicism. This is the standard evidence which has always been used by professional historians who are interested in a thorough investigation of the facts rather than manipulation; and if space allowed, similar comments could be made about many of the other sections of the book. I would point out again that modern neo-pagans are taking a far different - and far more honest - view of the issue than Murray did: many of them make use of authentic ancient accounts of Celtic beliefs rather than attempting to rewrite medieval history. There are many such accurate books available.

Unlike most of the reviewers here, I come from a different starting place. I knew Margaret Murray. She lived to be a hundred years old and died in 1963.
It's a shame that she's known mostly now for her books on witches. She was an Egyptologist and did valuable work back in the late 1890's with Sir Matthew Finders Petrie.
This book is not one of her best. She was cantankerous to say the least. She would agree with me, if she were able. Sorry, Margaret.....

We would do well, at a remove of about 80 years to consider Margaret Murray's The God of the Witches as a religious document in itself. It propounded the idea that there was a remnant of paganism that was practiced in Europe despite the domination by and opposition of the Church. At the time of its writing, the dominant idea was that the persecution of witchcraft was a wholly mendacious exercise of social control. Murray's book was a mild and necessary corrective.
One of the results of her work was the contribution to the rise of contemporary paganism of a certain historical depth. This book matters because it mattered to many readers, not because it's correct.

Lynn Hoffman, author of bang BANG

While it seems to be the case that some pagan beliefs continued to be practiced by a small percentage of families during the medieval era, several generations of historians have pointed out that the more extreme claims made by this book (and its companion) are prime examples of falsification, a fact which becomes clear if you read the medieval source documents which the author misquoted to try to prove her theories.
Perhaps the most egregious falsification occurs in the sections on Joan of Arc. In order to try to link Joan to paganism, Murray made the claim that she never used the phrase "Our Lord" in the original language of the Condemnation Trial transcript, and never identified "the King of Heaven" as Jesus Christ, both of which are patently false: all 5 of the early copies of the transcript do, in fact, quote her as saying "Our Lord" ("Nostre Seigneur" in medieval French) when speaking to the Catholic clergy, and if you look at Article XXII of the first set of charges you will see a copy of a letter in which she not only places the names "Jesus" and "Mary" at the top (as Murray herself acknowledged) but she also identifies the King of Heaven as, quote, "the son of Saint Mary" (i.e., Jesus Christ). Even more specific are the other surviving letters which she dictated (which were all included in the series which Murray claimed to have read): one of these, dated July 17, 1429, contains the phrase "King Jesus, the King of Heaven"; one dated two weeks earlier makes another reference to "King Jesus"; still another, dated March 23, 1430, threatens to lead a crusading army against a group called the Hussites unless they return to orthodox Catholicism, which she describes as, quote, "the original Light", thereby removing any doubt as to her religion. Even English documents confirm what the eyewitnesses said about the actual motive behind her trial, as there are financial records proving that it was the English government which paid and summoned the judges and assessors from among their own cronies (e.g., the chief judge, Pierre Cauchon, was a salaried official of the English occupation government as well as having been appointed as a Bishop through the maneuvers of his secular patrons). She was prosecuted, as the eyewitnesses repeatedly say, because the English wanted to exact revenge for her army's victories against them, not because of any genuine belief that she was a heretic. And as Murray either knew or should have known, even Joan's judges dropped the charges of witchcraft before the final set of 12 articles were drawn up (her conviction was supposedly for alleged heresy, not witchcraft). Contrary to Murray's claims, she had the support of most of the other clergy throughout Europe, such as Jacques Gelu (Archbishop of Embrun), Jean Gerson, and so forth. Her friend Pierronne was executed by the same pro-English faction - not for witchcraft (which was never included in the charges) but merely for having stated that Joan was a devout Christian, which angered the English and their allies.
Murray consistently makes specious arguments based on a hodgepodge of items such as Joan's name (which was virtually _the_ most common female name in that era, not just among "witches". It would be like making assumptions about a man named "Bob" based on his name). She misinterprets Joan's quotes to people like Friar Sequin to pretend that such comments showed "contempt for the clergy", even though historians have viewed this comment about his accent as a light-hearted bit of humor (and Sequin himself couldn't have taken much offense, since he approved her, and in fact declared that she was sent by God). The claim is made that the term "Maiden" ("La Pucelle" - "virgin") could have "no other meaning" than a pagan identification, taking no notice of: 1) Joan's own explanation that she had promised her saints to keep her virginity; and 2) the Catholic Church itself used the term when it canonized her as a "Holy Maiden", a standard category for female saints (does this indicate that the Catholic Church itself is pagan for using such a term?)
Similarly, Gilles de Rais was neither a close associate of Joan (in fact the documents barely mention him), nor was he accused of being a member of a pagan group: the charges brought against him revolved around the murder of large numbers of children, which Rais said had been sacrificed on the command of a "demon" named "Barron". This is what we today would call a 'Satanic cult", not a pagan religion, and Rais himself, as the evidence also proves, said that he didn't adopt this mentality until some point _after_ Joan's death, confirming the many eyewitnesses who say that she tried to force all of her commanders to, quote, "live as good Catholics" while she was with them. Joan had nothing to do with his later crimes, just as she had nothing to do with the later treason committed by another of her commanders, Duke Jean II d'Alencon.
- On other topics: the business about "fairies" allegedly being a race of aboriginal European "pygmies" has justifiably raised a few eyebrows. For having allegedly played such a crucial role in the political history of the continent, it seems that these pygmies were remarkably successful at having escaped detection down to this day.
History is supposed to be based on a rigorous and honest appraisal of the evidence, not misquotation and invention. There are far more accurate treatments of this subject available, founded upon valid scholarship and promoting a far more restrained view.

This book came out in the 1930s and was one of the firtst to take the testimony of women put on trial as witches seriously - she described a witchcraft practice that may have existed in part in the late medieval period - but which is very different from the Wicca or Craft revived in the 20th century.

She may well be wrong in many parts, particularly on Joan - but the defamatory attack by Norman Cohn in his Europe's Innder Demons was completely out of order and wrong. He accused her of omitting from the testimony of the alleged witches that she quoted anything that they had said that would have discredited them. He quoted many samples of this... but I was astonished when I checked him against this book, to find that she had not omitted these passages but had considered them in detail! The passages moreover were not that discrditing - eg "I travelled to the fairy mound and there met the Queen of Elf who rules over the Craft." This is standard folklore and certainly does not prove the accused person was fraudulent in claiming to be in the Craft. Unfortunately Cohn's critique of Murray has been spread far and wide, particularly by Ronald Hutton who in his several books endorses Crohn's critique and says that it destroys Murray's credibility... Hutton was then quoted by many others who trusted him to have checked to see if Cohn was right...
However this does not mean that Murray does not greatly need updating - she wrote after all in the 1930s - particularly she did not understand shamanic language - and much in the witchtrial testimonies reflects shamanistic ideas - see Carlo Ginzburg and also a book entitled Between the Living and the Dead by Pocs - published in 1999 - this is a study of 2000 witchtrials - by far the largest ever done - and she reports that Medieveal witchraft was inseparable from an indigenous local shamanic tradition - this is totally interwoven rigtht throughout her period and probably back to earlier times.
So - `Murray made a start, - read her as a 1930s view.. she was brilliant for her time... - but as for her thesis that a pagan witchcraft survived, it may well be right some of- the witches she quoted may have possessed a truely old shamanic tradition.

Murray, like Gardner and Crowley, was one of those early eclectics about her study of the Old Religion. There is too much supposition and not enough factual basis for her conclusions on the development of the "Witch God." The first chapter, however, is a great read following the earliset depictions of the horned god. But the jump to stating that these depictions from all over Europe at varying times are linked to a single cohesive religion is tenuous. This is yet another case in which the author has made the facts fit her conception rather than objectively trying to make connections between the facts. This is the case, unfortunately, for almost all early expositors of witchcraft and the Old Religion. Read the more scholarly "Triumph of the Moon" by Ronald Hutton if you're looking for objectivity rather than charlatanism.