Witchcraft & Heresy

Not too long ago I mentioned that I was in the process of writing a paper for my witchcraft and heresy class. Well I am posting it here today. This paper is basically an informal paper which can be written in the format as a letter to a friend [which I did]. It is just informing that friend of everything we have learned in the semester so far, at least as much as we can fit within the 5-10 page mark. We also include any of our personal comments and thoughts on the matter. Yes, this is going to be very long but also educational as well as a little bit more insight into me. I just got my grade back on this paper today and I got a 100%!!! This is the comment the professor made on my paper: Your first portfolio essay is very impressive work -- you provide a well-articulated and insightful summary and analysis of the material covered during the first half of the semester. Your writing style is very engaging and you demonstrate an excellent knowledge and understanding of key concepts, information, and issues. Please do more of the same when writing your final essay. Thanks for your very fine work on this first essay—a pleasure to read. A+.

That puts a smile on my face. I love feedback on my papers beyond just a grade. There are also some page numbers referenced throughout the paper which I am not going to omit. So here it is:

Dear M,
This semester I am taking a course called Witchcraft and Heresy in Europe, and so far it is one of the more interesting classes I have been enrolled in during my experience in college. I would definitely recommend the class to you and anyone else that has similar interest in what I consider the occult. We are covering a lot of material which is awesome because it keeps things very interesting and keeps me stimulated. We are currently in the halfway mark in class and so I will take the time to describe to you the best I can of vast information I have learned thus far.

To start off, the concept of “magic” is a very broad one, ranging from practices and traditions amongst several differing cultures across Europe both before and after Christianization during the Middle Ages. It is important to know that the term “magic” was not necessarily used nor did the practitioners think of themselves as magicians during this time period as is used a bit differently today. I cannot emphasize the time differences in which I explain all of this information and happenings in comparison to today. The textbook, “Magic in the Middle Ages” written by Richard Kieckhefer, is quite captivating. Kieckhefer describes magic as “point of intersection between religion and science” (p. 1). Both of which is consistently mentioned in the literature and very significant to the history of magic. This is a very interesting point because it does shed some realization on simple notion that magic is in fact very similar and much related to science and religion but has lines which are incredibly blurry. I will further explain the difficulty of defining the boundaries of the science and religious content within magic by informing you of the two most commonly referred to pieces of literature from the fifteenth century. There is the Wolfsthurn handbook and the Munich handbook, the Wolfsthurn handbook describes more scientific and medically inclined magical practices while the Munich handbook tells of more demonic, spiritual, and religious magical practices (p. 2). In the Wolfsthurn handbook, you learn of such things as preparing leather, making soap or ink, catching fish and so on combined with advice to make medical prescriptions for diseases experienced by humans and animals. It is fascinating to think that this is some sort of evidence of the beginnings of science and medicinal practice. The more magical aspect of these procedures involves either written or spoken words, phrases, or chants that are often in Latin or resemble religious texts. Moreover, doing such things on specific days according to the moon’s cycle or during the time of sunrise/sunset or repeated several times or any such specific and unusual progression of tasks (p. 3). The Munich handbook then goes on to explain more complex magic such as that of love spells, spells to cause a discord amongst friends, becoming invisible, as well as conjuring demonic spirits which all include some sort of form of gathering various materials such as animal parts, blood, hair, and the likes and combining them with images and spoken words (p. 7-8). Not to mention that magic also included charms, blessing, adjurations, and cures that could provide what is considered good purposes such as protection, healing, etc (p. 9). Divination is also a major branch of magic that may not necessarily be considered evil or demonic. Divination involves astrology, dream interpretation or oneiromancy, palm-reading or chiromancy, name analysis or onomancy, reading of omens amongst others that engage in any type of fortune telling or answering such questions about the past, present, or future. The use of gemstones and protective amulets as well as the practice of alchemy is considered part of magic in Medieval culture. Finally there is sorcery which is using any of these already mentioned practices for evil purposes. I will further explain some of these things later on.

The people involved with magic provide an interesting sentiment because it involved all people cutting through major demographic boundaries such as gender, social, religious, economic, as well as educational. Kings, peasants, men, women, pagans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, clergy, common people, educated, and uneducated peoples were involved in magic in some way. This is very important to know considering the evolution of magic in pre-modern European culture due to the rise of science and religion alike. Religion especially plays a role in the growth as well as the abomination of magic. I feel this is significant because of the fact that magic still existed and was quite widely used despite the fact that the Church strongly opposed it. Strict punishments and even death was imposed on those practicing any form of magic. This makes me think of the great difficulty and vast problems that would arise in the finding, conviction, determination of whether one has practiced magic. It reminds me of the colonial and even pre-colonial days in which people where punished, few killed, for sexual intercourse as well as adultery. How does one get caught having sex? Someone really has to go out of their way to catch people in the act, both sex and magic alike. In addition it occurs to me that this could cause a lot of dishonest accusations. For example, if say an individual is upset with someone they know or perhaps is seeking revenge for whatever reason could therefore accuse that person of magic and thus get them in some sort of trouble. This also leads me to feel that it was probably not so much a systematic legal process of determining if one really did engage in magic and more often than not innocent people were punished and even killed for this suspicion. This does not even cover my strong opinions on the mere fact that a person could be killed for such an act. I am completely appalled by this idea as well as I am amused by the fact that times and culture have evolved quite a bit, although some things still linger, in the sense that what I consider a simplistic act of engaging in astrology today could of had me killed in the Middle Ages.

Divination, as you may have obviously guessed, was one of the main topics I took the most pleasure learning about. As you know, I’m an avid astrology student, amongst other occult subjects. Therefore, I thoroughly enjoyed learning a bit more about this history of astrology and some of its origins and initial practices. For instance, astrology was very low key in Hellenistic culture from at least the fourth century and then flourished in Roman culture during the fall of Rome. Much later, astrology migrated into Europe from Arabic sources and thus European practices incorporated some Arabic astrology into their own magic and became quite widespread. Astrology was used so extensively; astrologers were hired by people, generally royalty, to be advisers to these people. Astrologers were best to advise people when a good time and who to marry, when to enter war, to identify a thief, amongst many other uses. Medical astrology was especially popular, as you and I already know that each astrological sign rules a specific body part, well this was a major part of medical astrology. European universities taught astrology as well as they provided astrological exams in which an individual wishing to become a doctor had to pass in order to become one. It is intriguing that as popular and well known as astrology was, the Church condemned practices of divination the most. The concept of predicting the future and eradicating the idea of free will completely goes against the teachings of the Church. I guess this surprises me because I would assume that the Church would have a far greater influence. I understand that people, even today, still do things that go against their church, but popularity of astrology especially in the universities during that time astounds me. The Church, however, did enforce severe punishments for those actively pursuing astrology and other magic. Such punishments included five years penance for practicing divination, death was even a punishment for those who used magic for harmful purposes and later spread to all forms of magic (p. 41). Kieckhefer goes on to describe some basic principles that make up astrology, most of which I have already known, but there were some newer ideas which I did not know, or I enjoyed the ways in which he worded them which further clarified some ideas I previously had. For example, the way in which he described the houses made more sense to me after reading it.
The path along which these heavenly bodies traveled was divided into twelve “houses” of unequal size, six of which were in the visible sky and the other six below the horizon. Thus, as a planet moved through the sky it would pass through all twelve houses in succession. The area of life that the planets influenced would depend in part on what house they were in at a given time (p. 126).
Most interestingly, in the discussion of the influence, or determinism, of astrology it was stated that most of the philosophers and theologians believed that the stars and planets do have a strong influence but it can be resisted (p. 129).

I have had the opportunity to learn a bit more in depth about paganism over the course of this class, which I was excited about. You know that you and I alike have some friends that are quite interested in paganism of Celtic and Nordic cultures. What I found as a fascinating difference between Christianity and paganism is that paganism is open to beliefs and your choices on your beliefs. Paganism does not “preach” so to speak, pagans do not force a god or set of beliefs onto others, the really just don’t care. While Christianity is more forceful or concerned about the beliefs and choices of others as well as themselves. Another major difference between the views of magic amongst Christians and pagans was that Christians view any type of conjuring of spirits were always demonic and evil, while pagans did not necessarily view these spirits as evil (p. 37). With that in mind, Christianity also incorporated pagan elements into their literature by means of not wiping out paganism but by gaining a wider audience. This is actually irritating to me because of how much Christianity frowned upon magic and they turn around and use pagan stories, which are very much rooted in magic, but change the names and other details and make the stories their own. For example, The pagan god Woden, or popularly known as Odin, is depicted in an early Germanic story in which he was riding a horse through the woods which was later used as a story but of Christ riding a horse into Jerusalem in a Christian account (p. 45). This process strikes me as some sort of propaganda or some form of promotion to gain more people into Christianity, it reminds me of commercialism in some way.

Amongst the aforementioned topics, this course has also touched on various things including Arabic, Jewish, Norse, and Celtic magical practices. Whilst studying Celtic medieval magic I discovered that the first witchcraft trial occurred in 1324, in Ireland. This trial convicted Lady Alice Kyteler along with eleven other pagans; however Lady Kyteler escaped the night before she was to be executed. I noticed that pagan groups tend to have quite an emphasis on shape-shifting which is when a person can shape shift into another creature such as wolves, cats, etc. Jewish intellectuals popularly used astral magic which is the use of celestial forces for individual benefit. Other fascinating magic types include idolatry, which is the worship of a particular image, idea or object. This is especially controversial to the Church because it involves the worship of that object or whatever it may be as opposed to the worship of the god. Hence it was considered an enormous sin within the religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Finally, the runic alphabet was discussed in class. As you know runes are common in Nordic culture, and are particularly appealing because the Norse believed that spoken word had great power and thus have a unique alphabet to express and capture the ways in which these words should be said.

Although the course has covered a great amount of information thus far, I have broken down some of the major points and especially those of which I find most interesting to me personally. I cannot wait for the next half of the semester where we will be learning more about the Church and witch trials and the persecutions of magic practitioners. I hope you found this knowledge as interesting as I did and use it to gain more insight into the changes that have occurred in the past and present regarding magic, religion, science, and cultures as a whole.