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The God of the Witches (Galaxy Books) (Paperback)

~ Margaret Murray (Author) "The period when the figure was painted is so remote that it is not possible to make any conjectures as to its meaning except by..." (more)
Key Phrases: same coven, processional dance, divine victim, Joan of Arc, Bronze Age, Gilles de Rais (more...)
2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
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  Hardcover, February 12, 2009 $28.20 $21.55 $28.47
  Paperback, August 3, 2005 $16.70 $11.76 $9.48
  Paperback, September 15, 1970 $17.09 $8.37 $2.75
  Mass Market Paperback, December 31, 1959 -- -- $16.00
  Unknown Binding, December 31, 1973 -- -- --

Frequently Bought Together

The God of the Witches (Galaxy Books) + The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (Forgotten Books) + ARADIA: Gospel of the Witches
Price For All Three: $35.67

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  • This item: The God of the Witches (Galaxy Books) by Donna Huston Murray

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  • The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (Forgotten Books) by Margaret Alice Murray

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  • ARADIA: Gospel of the Witches by Charles Godfrey Leland

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"An important and fascinating book."--New Statesman and Nation

"A book of absorbing interest."--Psychic News


Product Description

This celebrated study of witchcraft in Europe traces the worship of the pre-Christian and prehistoric Horned God from paleolithic times to the medieval period. Murray, the first to turn a scholarly eye on the mysteries of witchcraft, enables us to see its existence in the Middle Ages not as an isolated and terrifying phenomenon, but as the survival of a religion nearly as old as humankind itself, whose devotees held passionately to a view of life threatened by an alien creed. The findings she sets forth, once thought of as provocative and implausible, are now regarded as irrefutable by folklorists and scholars in related fields. Exploring the rites and ceremonies associated with witchcraft, Murray establishes the concept of the "dying god"--the priest-king who was ritually killed to ensure the country and its people a continuity of fertility and strength. In this light, she considers such figures as Thomas a Becket, Joan of Arc, and Gilles de Rais as spiritual leaders whose deaths were ritually imposed.

Truly a classic work of anthropology, and written in a clear, accessible style that anyone can enjoy, The God of the Witches forces us to reevaluate our thoughts about an ancient and vital religion.

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Product Details

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (September 15, 1970)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0195012704
  • ISBN-13: 978-0195012705
  • Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #848,695 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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More About the Author

Donna Huston Murray
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
The period when the figure was painted is so remote that it is not possible to make any conjectures as to its meaning except by the analogy of historical and modern instances. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
same coven, processional dance, divine victim, horned god, horned man, dancing god, incarnate god
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Joan of Arc, Bronze Age, Gilles de Rais, Robin Hood, Agnes Sampson, Isobel Gowdie, North Berwick, Great Britain, God Incarnate, Iron Age, Little People, Middle Ages, Robin Goodfellow, Saint Michael, Dying God, Holy Ghost, Jeanne des Armoises, Mother Waterhouse, Andro Man, Christian God, Dame des Armoises, Divine King, Elizabeth Sawyer, Helen Guthrie, John Tailyour
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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This book cites 28 books:
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The Meaning of Witchcraft by Gerald Brosseau Gardner
 

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Customer Reviews

18 Reviews
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22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Rejected theory still important in history of world religion, June 16, 2000
By Bocasdeltorro "bocasdeltorro" (Wokingham, Berkshire United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
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.

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14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Murray needs another look, June 28, 1999
By A Customer
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.

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18 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars The Verdict of Other Scholars, November 27, 2000
By A Customer
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.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A New View of "Dark Age" History
This book is a real eye opener; Dr.Murray contends that the "Old Religion" did NOT die off instantly with the introduction of Christianity, but lingered for a thousand years, well... Read more
Published 10 months ago by J. Smith

2.0 out of 5 stars Pass this one up completely!
Most of the sources are taken directly from the inquisitors. What other information contained is based more on conjecture than science as we know it. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Adam L. Powers

4.0 out of 5 stars A book of religion, not a book about religion
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. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Lynn Hoffman, author:The Short...

3.0 out of 5 stars Non Fiction
Non-fictional whackiness with a lot of suppositional guesswork and theorising, I suppose you would call this, as Margaret Murray writes about a possible historical interpretation... Read more
Published on September 3, 2007 by Blue Tyson

3.0 out of 5 stars Writing this for both GOTW and Witch Cult
-Witchcraft is the remnants of a vast Pagan survivalist movement that dominated the European underground. Read more
Published on June 17, 2007 by matthew bennett

2.0 out of 5 stars wishful thinking and misinformed
Murray, like Gardner and Crowley, was one of those early eclectics about her study of the Old Religion. Read more
Published on March 9, 2006 by greenman

1.0 out of 5 stars Sorry, Miss Murray........
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. Read more
Published on March 5, 2005 by T. Walker

1.0 out of 5 stars Hard to believe we're still discussing this
Murray's book actually contains a statement to the effect of "What reason would there have been for anyone to be accused of witchcraft other than that they were a... Read more
Published on April 24, 2004 by F. Presson

4.0 out of 5 stars A very significant history - wrongly attacked by Cohn
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... Read more
Published on November 9, 2002 by Janine P. Roberts

1.0 out of 5 stars Murray's "God of the Witches"
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... Read more
Published on July 25, 2002

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