Thirteen Witches Make a
Coven
THE MYTH content of witchcraft is endlessly complicated. To bring order out of all its varieties, ancient and modern, seems almost impossible.
What are its common elements?
First is the person who wants something. He may be a migrant worker or the head of a nation. But he wants something that is beyond his grasp.
Second is what he wants, the object of his desire. This may be victory over his country's enemies, knowledge of what will happen in ten years — or tomorrow, sexual conquest, a winning number, healing, the sickness or death of a personal enemy. (It is wrong to assume that every desire of one who seeks a witch's mediation is evil. Some desires may be good, some bad.)
Third (the constitutive element of witchcraft) is the intermediary through whom he seeks to attain the object he wants. This mediator is a witch, who stands in the same relationship to the one who seeks him out as a priest stands in religion — which also is endlessly complicated in its varieties.
The mediator may be called a witch, or he may not. He may be called an astrologer, a Satanist, a fortune-teller, magician, conjurer, sorcerer, demonologist, palmist, card reader. Regardless of
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his title or the method he uses, he is an intermediary who exists to enable the seeker to find what he wants. (The term "medium" comes closest to describing the witch's essential mediating function.)
An intermediary between the seeker and what? What
is the source of the power a witch claims to foretell the future, to establish
contact with the dead?
The one person this is not is God. Witches do not claim to mediate
between a seeking person and the divine being; if they did they would be
priests rather than witches.
Whether they are as explicit as Anton LaVey — who asserts that his mediation is with Satan — or not, witches are in contact with the unseen powers of darkness rather than the powers of light, if they have any contact at all.
Witchcraft has probably been helped with the historic problem of its image by the recent movie Rosemary's Baby, and by the television series, Bewitched. The latter features a beautiful witch, Samantha.
There are good witches. But even they acknowledge the frailty of human flesh.
"People are searching," said Sybil Leek, in a New York Times interview. "They are searching for a religion where they don't have to live a Godlike life, a religion that acknowledges them as human beings.
To be a witch involves commitment, according to Mrs. Leek (as reported by the Chicago Daily News). "I did not just wake up one morning and discover I was a witch," she explains. "Witchcraft,
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like any other religion, must be accepted consciously. It is a decision that requires maturity." (The historic view of a witch was that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for arcane powers.)
Secrecy surrounds the Craft, which is the way witches refer to their dark religion. The Book of Shadows is the Craft's bible; it contains spells, charms, rituals, chants and curses.
A coven is the standard unit of witchcraft. It consists of 12 witches (six male, six female) and a high priest or priestess. Meetings are held each month, usually when the moon is full, with eight festivals during the year. These festivals are called sabbaths, or sabbats. Major sabbats are held on Candlemas (February 2), May Eve (April 30), Lammas (July 31) and Hallowe'en, the really big one (October 31). Lesser ones are celebrated on spring and fall equinoxes, and summer and winter solstices.
Hallowe'en sabbat at the Bucklands' home on Long Island, New York, follows this pattern: "First the witches remove their clothes and bathe in salt water to purify themselves. Then, still nude (or 'skyclad,' as they call it), they descend to the basement and step inside a nine-foot circle that is drawn about them with a 400-year-old sword by Mrs. Buckland, the high priestess, who is known in the craft as Lady Rowen. A bewitching ambience is provided by music from a tape recording and incense burned in a brass center.
"Once inside the circle, the witches sing, chant, dance with broomsticks in commemoration of an ancient fertility rite, drink tea and wine, and
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listen to the high priestess read from The Book of Shadows.
"The ceremony ends after Lady Rowen, dressed only in a silver crown, bracelet, necklace and green leather garter belt, takes a horned helmet and places it on the head of her husband, the high priest, who is known as Robat. This signifies that power has been transferred from the high priestess who reigns during the six months of summer, to the high priest, who rules during the six winter months." (The New York Times)
Of course there are put-ons, people who are merely making a good thing out of America's current affair with the occult. They're in it for the money, they produce what consumers want, and they depend on laws of probability for the measure of success they enjoy. Their utterances are often Delphic.
Jeane Dixon may be this sort of person, although her writing seems sincere and she claims that God is the source of her prescience.
But if He is, His batting average on foretelling the future is low.
This is a major test of whether a person who predicts the future speaks from God or not, according to the Old Testament. Moses said, "When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word which the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously, you need not be afraid of him." (Deuteronomy 18, R.S.V.)
Another test of whether a prophet speaks for God or not is given by Moses in Deuteronomy 13 ( R.S.V): "If a prophet arises among you, or a
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dreamer of dreams, and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder which he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, 'Let us go after other gods,' which you have not known, 'and let us serve them.' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or to that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
When a man or woman claims to speak for God, to foretell the future on the basis of divine revelation, there is no margin for error. And what he says is to be tested by whether he turns his followers to the true God or not.
If he doesn't, God disowns him and his words.
Modern horoscopes (and other "revelations" from "the other side") do not measure up to what we would expect, if their source were God, in their thought content. If God speaks through Jeane Dixon, His daily revelations are quite pedestrian when contrasted to His revelations through Old Testament prophets. "Stand on your own feet and do what you find is well within your reach," says Mrs. Dixon.
Compare an example of what God says (through Jeremiah): "If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? And if in a safe land you fall down, how will you do in the jungle of the Jordan?"
