Hutton and the Writing of Witchcraft History

No - this article is not about UFOs or Fox Mulder! It is instead about the recent article written by Ronald Hutton in the latest issue of “The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies.” That article is entitled “Writing the History of Witchcraft: A Personal View,” and you can find it here. The reason why I chose the above famous picture for my article is because it has more to do with me and my recent support of Ben Whitmore’s book “Trials of the Moon,” and the fact that Ronald Hutton has written a professional and fair critique of that work. This is despite the fact that Ben Whitmore had attempted to paint a picture of Hutton as a cynical and calculating academic, whether that was his intention or not. His book has basically sought to question Hutton’s methodologies as an academic in such a fashion that one could only consider him to be a poor scholar at best, a mendacious and manipulative fixture of the bureaucracy of academia at worst. However, Hutton’s defense of himself, and his approach to this study and his motives, have now been eloquently revealed, much to the shame of Whitmore’s book. A useful quote from Hutton’s article shows that he was sincerely motivated from an objective interest in the subject matter, which, I might add, had also personally affected him. Thus I feel that he has been wrongfully maligned, much to my personal embarrassment.

“Triumph [of the Moon] was therefore written not to demolish a belief system but to fill a vacuum created by the collapse of one. Both in professional terms and those of my standing among Pagans, it would have been far better for me had I been able to rescue the old orthodoxy instead. To prove the existence of an early modern Pagan witch religion, after all, would have been a sensational coup among historians, while to prove its endurance to the present day would have endeared me to all modern Pagan witches. I simply found the task impossible, and indeed it became more so as my research for the book went on.”

I guess it comes down to taking Ronald Hutton at his word, and there seems little reason not give him the benefit of the doubt, considering his stature as an academic and his apparent sympathy to the pagan cause. Others may quickly disagree with me, but I have always found it prudent to trust someone and respect their opinion until such a time that it is proven to be motivated by selfishness, delusion or deceit.

In regards to Ben Whitmore’s book, it’s easy to cherry pick someone thesis and find supposed holes in the research and the logic underpinning a theory, since looking at something in that microscopic way keeps one from seeing the context and the larger picture. Mr. Whitmore made a lot of suppositions as to Hutton’s motives and the scope of his contacts, even asking if he had ever read any of Carlo Ginzburg’s writings, when in fact, they know each other and have met. It would seem obvious that Hutton knows about and has read Ginzburg’s work, and the reverse is also likely true. There appears to be a lot of agreement between these two scholars, because otherwise, I am sure that Hutton would have gotten an earful from him when he attended a conference recently celebrating Ginzburg’s work. As I was saying, it’s easy to pick holes in someone else’s work, but to do it while promoting an alternative theory, or coming up with an explanation that doesn’t personally attack the integrity of one’s intellectual opponent is at the very least a basic requirement in academic circles. I was remiss in not considering what Whitmore was saying personally about Hutton in his book, and that taken collectively, they were quite damning.

Perhaps the most telling thing that Hutton said in his article is that he has always felt that there were loose ends in his book, and that his word was not the final word in the history of British Witchcraft. What he has written over the last thirty years needs to be seen in the context of a scholar who is evolving his theories and refining his opinions. We also need to keep in mind that academics are constantly examined, critiqued and even challenged by their peers. Even the most critically acclaimed theory will eventually be altered or even discarded by later scholars. Since Hutton has written his books and also circulated his papers, he has been intensely scrutinized by his peers, some of whom have devoted their lives to areas of study that he has only limited or rudimentary knowledge. None of these academics have disputed Hutton’s theories or called on him to verify his sources, which would certainly have happened if he had supposedly “baked” his results. I think that we really need to take Whitmore’s claims with a great deal of skepticism, and ponder why such claims are even required. Otherwise, we will find ourselves in the unenviable situation of disbelieving and seeing some kind of conspiracy in nearly every academic discipline, not just in the study of the history of modern witchcraft and paganism. 

One thing that Hutton said in his article, which really reaffirmed some of my thoughts in the area of pagan survivals, was included in a statement where he talked about how he differed from other scholars in his approach, and that this was written into a paper that he delivered to an academic conference on Modern Paganism, at Newcastle University in 1994.

“It took direct issue with the view, often heard from colleagues in the university system, that there were no direct links at all. I identified four: ritual magic (again); cunning craft; folk rites, both ad-hoc and seasonally repeated; and (above all) the general love affair of Christian culture with the art and literature of the ancient world.”

Perhaps the only area of quibbling would be the possible survival of shamanic elements from the past, as shown by Emma Wilby in her recent writings (most notably, on the Witch Trials of Isobel Gowdie). Hutton doesn’t quite agree with this perspective, yet other scholars might find it a definite possibility. Even so, this could be an area where further research and analysis might reveal some new possibilities. It is interesting to note that Hutton had helped Wilby with her first book, even encouraging a publisher for it. He had this to say about Wilby’s notion of shamanic survivals: “Certainly I think some of her suggestions more speculative than others, and (as she knows) I worry a bit about her selective use of widely scattered examples of what can be called shamanism taken from other parts of the world. This, however, does nothing to diminish my enthusiasm for her work.”

Hutton’s studies has shown that modern witchcraft and paganism were not invented out of whole cloth by some untutored and eccentric individuals who were part of a fringe movement within society. If anything, a lot of pagan beliefs have been encapsulated and carried into the modern age through the folklore, magic, myths, art and literature of our popular culture. Those who sought to preserve and eulogize the various cultural remains of antiquity were nominally Christian, although greatly sympathetic to pagan themes and practices. I have often stated that modern Wicca and Paganism seem more to be the product of the British middle class than something that was actually antique or even atavistic. To inflate Hutton’s work as stating that ancient paganism had completely died out and disappeared, leaving no cultural traces whatsoever is to miss the overall point of his book, “Triumph of the Moon.”

Reading through the section of Hutton’s article where he deals particularly with Ben Whitmore’s book “Trials” shows the true nature of an unequal battle, where every instance of disagreement and protest in Whitemore’s book is shown to be hollow, inconsistent, erroneous and obviously extremely biased against anything that Hutton might have said in any of his books or papers. Hutton graciously but throughly demolishes Whitmore’s book, painting a picture of him as some kind of sectarian hack who doesn’t have the breadth or the depth to really logically dispute his theories. While it is not true that Whitmore is a sectarian hack, I did feel quite deflated by what Hutton had to say. Indeed, I had to pick myself up off the metaphorical floor and dust my clothes off, because, I, too, had felt that Whitmore’s book was compelling and insightful. I have now realized that the truth is actually far more complicated, and that academic disciplines are rigorously enforced and maintained for a reason. They can be wrong, perhaps even promote falsehoods, but not for very long, since the inexorable powers of change, new technologies and new discoveries are constantly modifying the collective knowledge of humanity. It also seems obvious that there certainly isn’t any kind of unified conspiracy within academic organizations.

After such a profound drubbing, there doesn’t seem to be much more to do except ponder why I so eagerly jumped on the anti Hutton bandwagon, when several of my fellow respected witches were not so moved. Why was I so eager to believe that Hutton was some of kind of fallacious shill for Christianity, when he has actually been our advocate, even considering the daunting limitations of academia? The question is really why did I need and want to believe that there were antecedents to modern paganism that survived intact to the present times? Why indeed?

Hutton goes on to state that he sees three scenarios affecting the future of the witchcraft and pagan movements. I found the first one to be optimal, and the other two to be quite pessimistic.

“The first is that trial, error, and debate produce a consensual picture, solidly based on primary research and accepted by professional scholars who are not themselves Pagan, to which Pagan authors have made a significant contribution.”

The second and third are where witchcraft and paganism break up into mutually hostile sects, each with its own promoted history, and separated by geographic location and the length and breadth of one’s involvement in a specific faction. I found the second and third future options to be quite terrifying, knowing that they could represent the ultimate end of these sects and the entire movement of modern paganism. It’s a gloomy picture where these various factions, fragmenting into smaller and smaller groups, disappear altogether. With a shudder, I realized what Hutton was actually trying to say, and I felt compelled to deeply question my own motivations in order to realize the first possibility, and thereby negate the second and third.

It all boils down to a question of legitimacy versus authenticity. I had stated even in this blog that authenticity is much more important to me (and other followers of modern occultism) than legitimacy. But I was seduced, since constantly rubbing elbows with Christians, Jews, Muslims, and even Buddhists, and Hindus, I found myself secretly lusting after some degree of legitimacy. The other religions have been around for at least a thousand years or longer, and I was the new kid on the block. I wanted to be both authentic and legitimate, and Whitmore’s book seemed to open the door to that kind of self justification. I must admit now that it was a tempting illusion, and one fostered by unmet desires. I should be much more concerned with what actually works and what is meaningful to me in the present world, not chasing after fleeting ghosts from antiquity.

What all of this means to me is that I have emotionally bonded with a concept (legitimacy), even though I have emphatically stated the opposite. I must correct this error and even perhaps go so far as to admit it publically. The problem is that “I want to believe,” even though I should know better, realizing that it’s actually not important in the here and now.

Over the years I have found that the various magickal lore from previous historical epochs, which are available to us today, have to be highly modified in order to make them effective and useful in the modern world. Would that logic not extend to a verifiable antique pagan belief or practice? Would I really want to sacrifice humans and animals, treat women as chattel, own slaves and enjoy public exhibitions of murder and mayhem in order to be truly an antique pagan? Of course not! I am not the same kind of person who lived in antiquity, and in fact, I couldn’t even imagine what it was like to think and act through the lens of that culture and epoch.

Those times are gone, and the locations, languages, cultures and even the people are also long gone. We have only fragments from those times, and certainly not enough to recreate that world as it was. Yet it is those fragments that are so wonderful and amazing, and they have enriched our present world, even helping us to create a new pagan religion. My faith and practices were from sources that evolved over time, they were touched and given expression by many hands, and they were not invented out of nothing by some obscure crank. That alone should give me a sense of belonging and fullness, even a kind of legitimacy, and indeed, it actually does.

The problem that continuously faces me (and other occultists) is the balancing act of acknowledging the work of academics on one hand, and glorifying in the myths and lore of my occultic practices and beliefs on the other hand. This is a very delicate balance, and where problems arise is when I might lose my objectivity and confuse one for the other. These two perspectives are complimentary, but they occupy completely distinct domains - the one being the domain of objective science, and the other, the subjective domain of faith and spiritual wisdom.

Science says that matter existed before the mind, and that we are a product of a long and torturous evolution; yet religion and magick say that the mind existed before matter, and even participated in its creation and formulation. Both of these perspectives are correct, but it is important to distinguish between them and not confuse them. As a pagan, I can say that I need my myths, magick and my secret lore to subjectively explain my existential place in this world living in this time (and also, to define the powers and entities that are aiding me in this quest). I also need science and history, to help me build an objective context for everything else, which includes the populace of the whole world and its diversity.

Frater Barrabbas

Ronald Hutton - Shibboleths and Moonshine?

There has been some discussion just recently in the blogsphere that appears to debunk some of Ronald Hutton’s core theories for the historical veracity of witchcraft and paganism. It all started when Peregrine, the owner of the blog “Magic of the Ordinary” wrote a response to a rather passionate anti Christian pagan article found in the Green Egg. While I would agree with some of Peregrine’s arguments about the tone and the perspective of the article, I also felt that the author had some justification for why he presented his arguments with such umbrage. David Griffin offered some pointed rebuttal to the comments in this article, which I felt were also quite valid and correct. Then the discussion tangentially went into discussing the merits of the writings of Ronald Hutton, and the real debate began.

The central premise to this debate is whether or not there is any connection between modern witchcraft and paganism, and the paganism of antiquity. This would include the possibility of the survival of witchcraft practices and family traditions from antiquity, through the middle ages to the present time. Hutton has forcefully denied that there is any connection whatsoever between the past and present beliefs and practices, and has said that other historians steadfastly agree with him. That heated discussion brought forth an article by David, who took on the Hutton premise, and in the process, revealed some interesting new perspectives in the disciplines of history and anthropology, some of which I was not fully aware of. You can find Peregrine’s original article here, and David Griffin’s article here. I’ll let you judge these two different perspectives on their own merits.

I was actually loath to get into this heated discussion since I had also bought into Hutton’s arguments and his basic premise. Yet after being shown a link to a well written and researched book that successfully takes on Ronald Hutton’s prize theories, I had a change of heart. (Many thanks to David for that link.) I carefully read that work, and I finally decided that I had to say something about this contentious issue. That wonderful book not only empowers misgivings and personal issues that I have had all along with Hutton’s declarations, but it was also quite illuminating. As a result, I am amending and modifying my opinions about the historical validity of pagan and witchcraft survivals. I will continue to be skeptical, of course, but I will not be dismissive of them either, and for some very good reasons, some of which I will discuss in this article.

Many have read Hutton’s book, “Triumph of the Moon,” as well as some of his other books, such as “Stations of the Sun” and “Pagan Religions of the British Isles.” Many are familiar with Hutton’s writings, but typically unfamiliar with others who have taken issue with Hutton’s over-reaching declarations. The book I mentioned above, entitled “Trials of the Moon,” was written by one of those very same authors who has brilliantly revealed the flaws in Hutton’s work. I have ordered the actual book from CreateSpace dot com because I wanted to honor the author, as well as look over his bibliography and have access to an index. You can find it here.

Needless to say, Ben Whitmore has done a fabulous job showing that the case for a historical witchcraft and paganism is anything but closed. Other areas that Whitmore has opened the door to consider involve the historical validity of the occurrence of a Mother Goddess in Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Greece, and whether any pagans or actual witches were killed during the witchcraft hysteria in Europe. Whitmore has also softened the harsh criticism of Margaret Murray, Leland and other earlier scholars and their theories - individuals that Hutton has ridiculed and thoroughly dismissed.

I have to admit that my opinions are in flux right now, so my readers will have to patiently wait for me to make a more thorough study of this work. Have no fear, this issue will most definitely get more consideration in the future. I also feel obligated now to read and examine the books written by the Italian historian, Carlo Ginzburg (“Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches Sabbat,” and “The Night Battles: Witchcraft & Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries”) to see another quite different perspective by an accredited historian. Yet even now, I can at least make a few amendments on some of the previous statements that I have made in regards to the history of witchcraft.

You see, I freely admit that I was completely bamboozled by Ronald Hutton, taking many of his comments that I neither liked nor found palatable as a kind of academic gospel, when in fact they were poorly contrived and not supported by the actual evidence, or even by other researchers, writers and scholars. Despite his good humor and supposed regard for modern witches and pagans, Hutton must have secretly had an axe to grind, and instead of being considered an academic friend of neopagans and witches, he should actually be revealed to be quite inimical to those same people. He is, therefore, much more of a Christian apologist than a promoter of modern paganism. What Hutton did with a stroke of his academic pen was to eliminate any consideration of the historical roots of modern paganism and witchcraft. After his book became vogue and accepted as the new status quo, we who were pagans and witches found ourselves cut off from the various sources of our own beliefs and creeds, since anyone who wrote about vestigial rites, family traditions and cultural artifacts were ridiculed or vigorously dismissed. A veritable cloak of silence was placed over the writings and findings of many other historians and researchers, due mostly to the wide and uncritical acceptance of Hutton’s books.

Now I have come to discover that there are indeed many peculiar practices, beliefs and symbolism that have survived the onslaught of Christian persecution and continue to exist today, whose source was indeed antique paganism. This would seem so obvious to anyone, but was harshly and intensely contradicted by Hutton, who made the global pronouncement that there were no pagan survivals; that all cultural relics which seem to be pagan are in fact more recent creations. This has now been shown to be completely false, and not only by other practitioners of modern paganism and witchcraft, but by other scholars as well. Ronald Hutton represents a very ultra-conservative view point, which is not shared by other scholars who have researched the same or analogous evidential materials. The fact that they have come to completely opposite conclusions than what Hutton has written about is something of a profound eye opener, to say the very least.

What this means is that there are a lot of pagan practices, beliefs and symbolism embedded in our culture today. They are buried and integrated into a modern Christian post-modern culture, but they can be identified, extracted and placed in a new context, one that is exclusively pagan. In fact one could say that modern Christianity and its cultural beliefs and practices owes a tremendous debt to ancient pagan beliefs and practices. This, of course, takes the argument that Peregrine was making (that modern paganism and witchcraft owes a great debt to Christianity) and completely turns it on its head. What we have to consider now is that perhaps the founders of modern paganism and witchcraft weren’t just shamelessly appropriating Christian practices and beliefs, and then populating them in a new package, but maybe they were just extracting what they supposed were the pagan components from Christianity and properly restoring them into a modern pagan reconstruction.

 Still, Hutton was mostly correct about Gardnerian witchcraft and all of its various offshoots - they’re, without a doubt, all modern practices and traditions. The history of the Gardnerian tradition of witchcraft probably only goes back to the late 19th century, earlier than Hutton has allowed, but very much in line with what Phillip Heselton has discovered and written about in his books. Even so, modern witchcraft and paganism were not formed in a vacuum. These modern religions could easily have a lot of comparable beliefs and practices analogous to pre-Christian pagans. The times may have irreparably changed, the mind-sets and cultures are completely different, but the human condition is forever analogous. It is there, in that place of confluence, where we meet and join with what was practiced by our ancestors before Christianity became the dominant faith.

In regards to the ongoing discussion between Peregrine and David Griffin, I think that one very important concept that no one has addressed is that "religion" in antiquity had three very specific domains - the religion associated with the State, the family, and the individual. The outlier is, of course, the mysteries. Yet in all cases, the only really organized religion in antiquity was the State religion, and that was not nearly as organized as it became under the authority and influence of the Catholic Christian church.

For instance, in antique paganism there were no theologies, tightly regulated scriptures, single source liturgies, professional priests with exclusive liturgical prerogatives, an over-arching hierarchy or even ecumenical councils to establish a common creed. Religion in antiquity was highly informal and unstructured, with only State festivals, celebrations and the larger mystery schools acting as exceptions to this rule, and even then, traditions were subject to change for various reasons, and nothing was considered a hardened doctrine. Heads of households could perform community sacrifices and other liturgies, and throughout that time, there wasn't either a book of common liturgy or common belief.

All of this massive organization and uniformity in religion came about when Christianity was elevated to the state religion in Rome. The common folk were quite happy to attend to the state sponsored religious activities as they always had, and then continued with their pagan family and personal traditions without so much as an eye blink. While many people may have converted to Christianity and gave up their pagan beliefs, others were more or less co-opted into the faith, particularly those who lived in outlying and fringe areas, away from the major cities and towns. Because a religion in those times would have been a mixture of State, family and individual practices, one would surmise that a truly ancient survival of the pagan times would also incorporate a mixture of State (in this case Christianity), family and individual practices.

By the early middle ages, the Catholic church was fully engaged with converting pagans to the church in massive numbers (instead of persecuting them), but there no longer was the desire or the ability, or even the number of trained educators and clergy, to thoroughly change the way that many of these pagans actually believed. So it would not be surprising if some of these folk kept their pagan beliefs and practices quite active while still attending church (if there was a church to attend) and outwardly behaving as good Christians. It would not have been until the Reformation that the church and civil authorities would send out teams of interrogators to find and prosecute anyone who wasn't pure in their faith. Still, there were no witch trials in Italy and probably in other locations as well.

Even so, a secretive family tradition could have been kept alive all through the middle ages and even into the 20th century, yet it would have been a heterodoxy of Christianity mixed with pagan beliefs and practices. So I think that Peregrine and Hutton are dead wrong about their pronouncement that nothing survived the two thousand years of Christian persecution. Since religion in antiquity differentiated between State, family and the individual, adopting Christianity would have satisfied the need for conforming to the State religion, yet that conformity wouldn’t have completely purged all such practices and beliefs from the family and personal domains.

I believe, then, that one of the major problems with this discussion is that the definition of what a religion is may be too heavily influenced by Christianity. Hutton is looking for an organized religion analogous to Christianity surviving into the present times, when the religion of antiquity was never organized to such an extent. He also requires that individuals must exclusively belong to one group or the other, when this probably didn’t always happen. Using this criteria, Hutton has judged that such a religion never existed, and he's right, it didn't; but then again, it never did until Christianity came along. How ironic all of this appears to me, and I never would have known these perspectives had I not boned up on my studies of Greek and Roman religion, particularly through the writings of Walter Burkert.

The possibility for survival seems much more likely, but the big question that remains is what do we do about it and where do we go with that discovery? What is the future destiny of our faith? I, for one, would not be interested in engaging with an authentic historical tradition that mixed Catholic Christianity with pagan beliefs and practices. What I would be interested in is filtering out the Christian beliefs and engaging in a reconstruction effort to create a modern tradition of witchcraft with lots of ancient pagan lore. As a friend of mine has put it, the purpose of religious reconstruction is to create a system that would approximate what that original pagan tradition might have looked like if it had survived intact and were practiced today, as a modern synthesis and expression of an ancient tradition. I believe that modern paganism and witchcraft, allied with the various heathen research and reconstruction efforts, has managed, in its own flawed way, to do just that. There is a lot of room for improvement on the existing praxis, but that is very likely the task of a new generation of elders in the religious traditions of pagans and witches. 

Frater Barrabbas